A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“No.”

“I’m a loser. Just like you. Know what losers have in common? They tell the truth because they don’t have anything to lose.”

I gave a urine specimen to the lab at Iberia General, then hitched up my boat trailer and met Carroll LeBlanc two hours later at the swamp.

* * *

THE SKY WAS clear and blue and bright as silk when the bow of my boat clunked against the tupelo stump. The strip of cloth was gone, but the blood had dried in the grainy wood.

“You’re sure this is it?” LeBlanc said.

“No doubt about it,” I replied.

“There’s stumps all over here. A bird could have smacked into this one. The cloth looked like it was from the girl’s dress?”

“Yes,” I said, my stomach hollow.

“Nope, this is a scam, Robo. Somebody is trying to mess up your head.”

“I saw what I saw.”

He stood up in the boat and used his pocketknife to cut a piece of the bloodied wood from the stump. He placed it in a Ziploc bag. “We’ll check it out at the lab. I could use something to eat. You hungry?”

“You’re an okay guy, Carroll,” I said.

“Say again?”

“You’re on the square.”

“If I were, I’d hang Shondell out to dry. But I want my job.”

“He’ll burn his own kite,” I said.

“Good luck on that.”

We drove to the levee and ate crab burgers and gumbo on the dock and watched a black kid fly a kite that resembled a quivering drop of bright red blood in an otherwise immaculate sky.

Chapter Twenty

CLETE HAD JUST gotten back from New Orleans and asked me to meet him on Sunday morning by the recreation building in City Park. I went to an early Mass at St. Edward’s, then drove across the drawbridge at Burke Street onto the oak-shaded serpentine lane that led to the playground and the swing sets and the jungle gyms in the park.

Clete was sitting at a picnic table, dressed as though for church, his porkpie hat crown down on the table, except he was not headed for church and was drinking from a long-neck, even though it was barely ten A.M. I sat down across from him. There were gin roses in his cheeks.

“Why’d you want to meet me here?” I asked.

“Somebody tried to creep my cottage and my office. I got to do a sweep.”

“Who’d want to bug your cottage and office?”

“For openers, that pus head Shondell.” His fingers were curled around the label on the beer bottle, his gaze unsteady, his knuckles as rough as barnacles.

“Hitting it pretty early today, aren’t you?” I said.

“It’s afternoon somewhere. I think you’re about to go in the skillet, Streak.”

“Not me.”

“Adonis Balangie came to my apartment in the Quarter last night. He had two of his gumballs with him. He said either you get your head on straight or you get disappeared, and disappeared will be the least of it.”