A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

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ON AN EARLY Friday afternoon, Clete Purcel got off the plane in Fort Lauderdale and took a cab up to Pompano Beach. The two-lane street bordering the beach was cluttered with coconut palms and neon signs and stucco motels painted with pastel colors. He checked in to a ten-story hotel that looked over the water, then he showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes, including a Panama hat and a Hawaiian shirt. Then he rented a car and drove down to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, where Eddy Firpo kept his recording studio, one half block from the ocean.

When Clete opened the door and went inside, an electronic chime rang in back and the clock over the counter said 4:49. No one was up front. Through a door behind the counter, he could see chairs and musical instruments and guitars and microphones and a glassed-in sound engineer’s booth. He flipped through a collection of celluloid-encased photos in a folder on the counter. The photos went back into the 1950s—working-class Italian kids from the Jersey Shore, R&B singers, a shot of Muddy Waters and Etta James together, Swamp Poppers who created what was called “the New Orleans sound.” The last photo was of Jerry Lee Lewis seated in front of a piano at the Apollo Theater, one two-tone shoe propped on the keys.

Clete heard someone from the inner doorway. A man in white slacks and a silk shirt as black and wet-looking as oil was staring at him, a gold cross hanging on his chest, his skin as brown as leather. “The fuck?” the man said as he realized who Clete was.

“I dig these photos,” Clete said. “But why is it a lot of these people don’t seem to have anything to do with your studio?”

“Take your greasy hands off my book. You wrecked my house and put my security guys in the emergency room. Three of my guests got busted for possession. I checked you out, asshole. You belong in a cage.”

“There’s a lot of agreement on that. Johnny Shondell back there?”

“Are you hearing me?”

“You might have kidnapping charges filed against you, Eddy. That’s a federal rap.”

“Who got kidnapped?”

“Isolde Balangie. Know where she is?”

“I’m a lawyer and promotor. I don’t kidnap people.”

“Did you know Jerry Lee Lewis is from Ferriday, Louisiana?”

Eddy looked from side to side, as though someone else were in the room. “What do I care about Jerry Lee Lewis?”

“He’s in your book.”

Eddy stuck fingers into both his temples as though they were drills. “You need to get yourself lobotomized. You got some kind of brain disease. Like you figured out a way to piss on it.”

“Not a time to be cute.”

“I’ll give you cute. This is South Florida. All I need to do is make one call.”

“You work with Nazis?”

“Keep talking, wisenheimer.”

“Where’s Johnny Shondell?” Clete said.

Eddy began punching in a number on the counter phone. Clete jerked the receiver from Eddy’s hand and wrapped the cord around his neck and pulled it tight, cutting off the carotid. Eddy’s eyes popped and his face darkened, as though someone had lowered a shade on it.

“Answer the question, Eddy,” Clete said.

Eddy’s fingernails were hooked inside the cord, spittle draining from his mouth. Clete tightened the cord. Eddy was making gurgling sounds, his face purple now. He swatted helplessly at the air. Clete unwrapped the cord and let Eddy drop to the floor. “I’m sorry,” Clete said. “You okay down there?”

Eddy made a sound like water being sucked through a water hose. He staggered to his feet, hardly able to speak. “You almost pinched off my head.”

“You dealt it, Eddy.”

“You’re nuts. You should be taken to a hospital and killed.”

“I know everything about you, Eddy. You’re paying three points a week to some shylocks in Miami, which means they own your soul. Your father was a hump for Joey Gallo. You do legal work for the Klan and some neo-Nazis up in the Panhandle. Bottom line, a guy like me is the least of your problems. Where is Johnny Shondell?”

Eddy huffed a spray of blood out of one nostril and wiped it on the back of his hand. “Rick’s, on Duval Street in Key West. How you know that stuff about me?”

“I do investigations. I got to say, I don’t see the upside of the connection with the Klan and the Nazis.”