A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“What’s going on with the Balangie girl?” Clete asked.

“How should I know?”

“That’s where all this stuff started.”

“It started because you sent four people to the hospital,” I said, and immediately regretted my words.

“You’re right,” he said.

“No, I’m not. I should have stayed away from Marcel LaForchette. I should have forgotten my conversation on the pier with Isolde Balangie and never made contact with her family or Mark Shondell.”

“You’re a cop, Dave. Whether you’ve got your shield or not. What were we supposed to do? Leave a seventeen-year-old girl on the auction block? I feel like we’re in the Middle Ages.”

“There was a detective here from Bay St. Louis. He said the kingfish were running in Palm Beach and that’s where he’d be for a couple of weeks if he had his druthers. I think he was telling me to tell you to cool it and you’ll be all right.”

“They’re going to cold-case it?”

“That’s my guess.”

He was silent. I thought I had lost the connection. “You there?” I said.

“Don’t get mad at me, but I got to say this: You’re not having the wrong kind of thoughts, are you?”

“Thoughts about what?” I asked.

“I saw the look on your face when Penelope Balangie came out of the chapel with a rosary in her hand.”

“We’ve already been through this, Clete. Give it a rest.”

“You saw a woman with a rainbow around her. Get real, Streak. She’s Adonis’s wife. She knows Adonis has ordered people killed or done it himself, but she probably gets it on with him every other night anyway. Look at that image in your head and tell me you want to get mixed up with a broad like that.”

“You’re all wrong,” I said.

“Do you know why we drink? So we can do the things our conscience won’t let us do when we’re sober.”

If you’re a souse, try to refute a statement like that.

* * *

THE FOLLOWING WEEK, in the late afternoon, I saw a restored 1956 Bel Air parked under a live oak in front of Veazey’s ice-cream store on West Main. The trunk of the tree was painted white up to the fork, and in the fork was a loudspeaker blaring out a song by the Chordettes. I parked and went inside and saw Johnny Shondell seated on a stool, wearing gray drapes and a sky-blue cowboy shirt sewn with roses and tasseled loafers hooked on the rungs, his knees so elevated they were higher than his waist. The Wurlitzer against the wall was loaded with Swamp Pop and 1950s rock, the plastic casing swimming with liquid balls of color. Johnny’s mouth was bent to the straw in a chrome milk-shake container. His face lifted to mine. “Hey, Mr. Dave. What’s shaking?”

“No haps,” I said, and sat down next to him. “You doing all right?”

“Right as rain,” he said, his eyes drifting away, as though he were trying to wish himself out the door.

“Sorry we messed up your gig.”

“Yeah, I’d rather forget about that, Mr. Dave.”

“I know what you mean. But something was going on there that really bothers me. Stuff you and Isolde don’t need in your lives.”

“You’re thinking about some of the drugstore products that were floating aroun

d?”

“Blow and weed aren’t drugstore products.”

“Yeah, I dig what you’re saying, Mr. Dave,” he said, looking out the window where an orange sun glowed behind the trees. “Why’d your friend bust up those guys?”