A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

Chapter Eighteen

AT 4:23 A.M. I was admitted to Iberia General. The diagnosis was food poisoning. I have been wounded four times, twice in Vietnam (the second time by a Bouncing Betty) and twice on the job. I have never experienced any pain, however, as bad as that produced by the botulism that attacked my system that morning. It was the kind of pain that is so bad you cannot remember how bad it was.

By nine A.M. it was gone. My first visitor was Clete Purcel, whom I called as soon as I was able. The second person I called was Carroll LeBlanc, who said, “You didn’t shag that Italian broad again, did you? Hit it and git it, Robo.”

Clete pulled a chair up to the bed, his porkpie hat on his knee. Clete never wore a hat inside a building, never walked in front of a woman through a doorway, and never failed to rise from a chair when he shook hands or when a woman entered a room. “What did you eat?” he asked.

“That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“I thought I told you on the phone.”

“You didn’t tell me anything. You kept saying, ‘We can’t get the slick in. They’re coming through the wire.’?”

“The guy who hung you up in the Keys called me,” I said. “I saw the galleon out on the bayou.”

Clete was waving off the image before I could finish. “Don’t tell me that.”

“Okay, maybe I was out of my head.”

Clete’s right leg was pumping up and down. “The guy who called, he told you he was Gideon Richetti?”

“I addressed him by that name. He didn’t correct me.”

“Dave, I can’t take this.”

“I hit the deck minutes after his call. My memory is suspect. Nothing I say is reliable. But I’m telling you what I think I heard and saw.”

Why burden an already burdened man? I asked myself. But in truth, I wanted a rational explanation for the phone call, for the voice that rose from the disconnected receiver, for the prison ship that had wended its way out of history and up Bayou Teche. The sound of Richetti’s voice was like spittle in my ear.

“What are we going to do, Streak?” Clete said.

“Take it to them with tongs.”

“You can’t cowboy a guy like Mark Shondell.”

“I didn’t say anything about Shondell.”

“Then who are you talking about?” Clete asked.

Anyone and everyone, I thought.

“What’d you say?” Clete asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Rhetoric is cheap. I don’t know where to start on this.”

“It’s got to be about money,” Clete said.

“Richetti gave thirty grand to a hooker.”

“Yeah, and it probably came from a robbery,” he said. “Maybe he’s trying to buy his way into heaven.”

That wasn’t a bad speculation.

* * *

I SPENT THE REST of the day researching all disappearances and homicides in the greater New Orleans area from fifteen years before. I also talked with