A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“Like hell,” he replied.

* * *

I CHECKED OUT A cruiser, turned on the flasher, and drove straight to Adonis Balangie’s home on Lake Pontchartrain. Out on the lake, I saw the boat with black sails that I had seen on my last visit to the Balangie home. Its sails were swollen with wind, the nylon shiny and wet from the waves bursting on the bow. I rang the doorbell. When I looked back at the lake, the sailboat was gone.

Adonis pulled open the door. He was wearing brown dress trousers with a stripe in them and thin suspenders and a yellow shirt that looked as soft and smooth as butter. “What do you want, Robicheaux?”

“What’s with the sailboat that has black sails?” I replied.

“You’re here to ask about sailboats?”

“No, I want to see how your stepdaughter is.”

“None of your business.”

“You went to Clete Purcel’s apartment with a couple of your trained morons and made a threat against me. How about you step outside and repeat your threat to my face?”

He looked over his shoulder, probably to see where Penelope was, then looked back at me. He started to speak, but I cut him off. “I hear Leslie Rosenberg is trying to clean up her life. That means you stay away from her. You copy on that, you fucking greaseball?”

I guess until that point I hadn’t realized the degree of animus I bore Adonis. Maybe it was the pride he seemed to take when he inspired fear in others, or the way he posed as a family man while he kept a triad of mistresses, or the fact that he used his stepdaughter as human currency with Mark Shondell. Or maybe I didn’t like to visualize his trysts with Leslie Rosenberg. No, this wasn’t a time for self-mortification. Adonis was everything I said he was: a bully and a parasite and a narcissist who deserved a .45 hollow-point in the mouth.

Penelope Balangie came through the French doors, a cat as plump as a pumpkin in her arms. “Oh, hello, Mr. Robicheaux. Please come in.”

“I understand Isolde is back home,” I said. “I just wanted to see how she’s doing.”

Adonis bit his lip and stared into space. “Mr. Robicheaux is here to cause trouble in any way he can, Penelope. It’s time he had a history lesson.”

I saw the apprehension in her eyes. “No. Don’t do that, Adonis. Please.”

“Oh, Detective Robicheaux won’t object,” he said. “He has all the answers. Some of his friends put my father in Angola. A seventy-two-year-old man working in a soybean field. My father aged a decade in three years.”

“Could I speak to your daughter, Miss Penelope?”

“I’m going to show you some film footage,” Adonis said. “After we’re finished, I think you’ll want to be on your way. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you have no interest in Gideon Richetti.”

I wanted to believe he was mocking me, that his mouth would twist in a cruel or amused fashion, that in effect he would become a categorical persona I could define and dismiss. But his eyes had darkened with the same cast I had seen in the eyes of men who had witnessed events and deeds that will never leave their dreams.

I followed him and Penelope into a small theater at the back of the house. There was a big screen on one wall and a projector on a platform at the back of the room. The seats were made of deep, soft leather and arranged stadium-style.

“The footage you’re going to see has been digitized,” Adonis said. “But none of the images or the lighting have been altered.”

“So?” I said.

“You’ve seen Gideon, haven’t you?” he said.

“Why would you think that?”

“He broke the neck of a cabbie in the Quarter,” Adonis said. “He must have shown up on a security camera in the vicinity or at the guesthouse where he was staying. But I suspect he also came to see you. Am I correct?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to confirm anything he said and add to his show of superiority. He turned on the projector. “This footage was taken at a fascist rally in Naples in 1927,” he said. “That’s Mussolini in the jodhpurs and tasseled fez in the midst of his Black Shirts on the platform. Keep your eye on the right-hand side of the screen.”

There was no soundtrack, but it wasn’t needed to convey the essence of the man and the probable content of his speech. His fists were knotted and propped on his hips, his chin and nose in the air, his rubbery lips moving in a way that made me think of a spastic colon. The faces of his followers were filled with delight. Then I saw, at the edge of the crowd, a tall, lithe, and muscular man wearing a slug cap and a disheveled suit, his nose hardly a bump, a half-grin on his face.

“Look familiar, Mr. Robicheaux?” Adonis said.

“Detective Robicheaux, if you don’t mind,” I said.

He froze the image on the screen. “Do you know the man in civilian clothes or not?”