A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“Down in Vermilion?”

“They braced me on the bayou.”

“From what I hear, Clete Purcel might have been mixed up in this.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it.”

“A cop who killed a federal witness and was a hump for the Mob in Reno and Vegas? Yeah, I can’t imagine him going astray.”

LeBlanc closed the folder and placed it on his desk. His jaw went slack, the way an old man’s does when his thought processes take him into blind alleys. He scratched the row of moles that seemed to leak from his eye. “I can recommend you for temporary reinstatement until we get our administrative problems straightened out. In other words, you’ll be on probation and treated as such. You will also report to me, no one else. You copy?”

I stared into space.

“You got a bug up your ass about something?” he said.

“No.”

“I asked if you copy.”

“I’m extremely copacetic with everything you’ve said, Carroll. I appreciate your oversight. Thanks for being here.”

I could see an incisor whitening his lip. He waited for me to leave, but I didn’t. I let my eyes stay on his. “What?” he said.

“I think there may be an instance of human trafficking going on in Iberia Parish.”

“You’re talking about illegal immigrants?”

“I’m talking about Mark Shondell.”

He tossed my IA folder on the desk. “I knew it. You can’t keep your nose out of trouble.”

“Call the home of Adonis Balangie and ask him where his stepdaughter is.”

“You know the feeling I have about you, Robo?”

“No clue.”

“You think your shit doesn’t stink. You never had to work vice. You

never had to clean AIDS puke off your clothes. You never had to let a perv go for your joint.”

“I didn’t know that went with the job. AIDS puke?”

“Get out of my office.”

“Nice to be back working with you, Carroll. Keep fighting the good fight.”

Through the ceiling, I heard a toilet flush, the water powering through the drain pipe, shaking the walls.

* * *

I HAD PROMISED CLETE Purcel that one day I would tell him why I’d visited Marcel LaForchette in Huntsville Pen. It was the same reason I’d visited my priest friend Julian Hebert. I wanted to know the origins of human cruelty. Please notice I did not say “evil.” The latter is a generic term; the former is not. Evil can encompass addiction, greed, sloth, bad sexual behavior or just imperfection, and all the other doodah that goes along with the cardinal sins, depending on who the speaker is. Cruelty is different. It has no limits and no bottom. Often it has no motivation. It’s usually fiendish and more often is done collectively than by individuals.

In the year 1600, at the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Age of Reason, Giordano Di Betto was stripped naked and hanged upside down over a fire with his lips pinned together so he couldn’t speak or scream. Jump forward 365 years to an Asian country where I called in Puff the Magic Dragon on a ville after the enemy trapped us in a rice paddy and let loose with RPGs and a captured blooker and a fifty-caliber with tracer rounds just before bagging ass into the jungle.

I still remember the sparks twisting into the evening sky, the glow of the hooches, the screams of children. I tell myself I had no alternative. Am I telling the truth? To this day, I hate people who assure me I did nothing wrong. I hate them most for their sophistry and the hand they place on my shoulder as they talk about things of which they have no understanding. And finally, I hate myself.

I’m really saying I visited Marcel LaForchette in Huntsville Pen and Father Julian in Jeanerette to prove I’m not guilty of the behavior I have seen in others. But I know the level of rage I took with me to Southeast Asia, and I know the number of men I killed as surrogates for the man who cuckolded my father and destroyed my family. I would fire all eight rounds in my .45 auto at an Asian man’s face as though I were sleepwalking. Sometimes I had to be shaken awake by my sergeant when it was over. I received several medals for wounds and acts of bravery and felt I deserved none of them. The only true symbols of my war experience were malaria and scar tissue from jungle ulcers and the abiding conviction that the Beast had left his imprint on me.