A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

He shook his head slowly.

“Why ain’t he?” she said.

“His circumstances have changed.”

“What happened out there?”

“You really want to know?”

She looked at him uncertainly.

“We talked a minute or two. That’s all,” he said.

Her eyes dropped to the bundles of money. She touched one as though it were a forbidden object. “This ain’t counterfeit?”

“Counterfeiters don’t give away the product of their labor. Show some trust in people, Sarah.”

She let out her breath as though a long day had caught up with her. “People don’t never tell me the troot’, not about anything. Why should you be different?”

“Because I’m a revelator.”

“A what?”

He put the bundles back in the box and replaced the top. He pushed the box toward her. “I’ll call a cab for you.”

“I ain’t taking this money. I ain’t taking this box. I ain’t taking nothing out of this room.”

“You have to take it.”

“No.”

He stood up, towering over her. He opened her purse and shook the bundles into it, then zipped it shut. The purse looked as big and round as a small watermelon. “Do as I say.” He raised a finger in her face when she tried to speak. “Don’t argue, and don’t disappoint me.”

She seemed to shrink, like a flower exposed to intense heat. “I ain’t meant to argue or make you mad.”

“Now go be a good girl.”

“Beaumont tole you where I stay?”

“Maybe.”

“What you done to him?”

He placed his hand on her head. His fingers resembled the tentacles of a small octopus threaded through her hair. “You’re a nice lady. The world has hurt you. I’ve tried to make up for that. It’s that simple.”

She waited a long time before she spoke. “If I walk out of here, you ain’t gonna do nothing to me? You’re sure about that?”

“You’ve done a good deed for me,” he said. “You just don’t know it.”

She looked at him, her eyes out of focus. Then she picked up the purse and put it inside her pink jacket and opened the door and hurried through the courtyard, the soles of her shoes clattering on the sidewalk. The rainwater on her hair looked like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

Down the street, two drunks stumbled from the topless bar. “Where you goin’, mama?” one yelled. “I got yo’ candy cane hangin’.”

Both men laughed so hard they could hardly hold each other up, then they followed her, bumping into each other, rounding the corner behind her and disappearing into the dark.

* * *

THE NEXT DAY, Tuesday, Carroll LeBlanc called me into his office. He was sitting in a swivel chair, dressed in a suit that was as bright as tin, his booted feet propped on the desk. The boots were Luccheses, the shafts hand-tooled with blue flower petals, the soles hardly scratched, the toes buffed. I had never seen him show any interest in horses or racetracks. A yellow legal pad covered with swirls of blue ballpoint ink and elaborate capital letters lay on his desk. He stared at me. “How’d your face get marked up?”