A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“Open hit. I say fuck it. I been there before. You heard of Sammy the Bull?”

“Sure.”

“Sammy tole me I was the best.”

“But you got straight and you’re on the square now. I’ll fix us some coffee and you can tell me what’s on your mind. Okay?”

“No, not okay,” he said. He reached inside his raincoat and removed a Magnum-22 Ruger single-action revolver with white handles. He let it hang from his right hand, his slicker dripping on the rug. He tilted his head and grinned.

“Private joke?” I said.

“You ain’t never put it together, have you?”

“You lost me, podna.”

“I’m talking about you and me. You don’t see it? Look close. The hair, the eyes, maybe the nose a li’l bit.”

“We’re coon-asses,” I said. “Maybe distant cousins.”

“My mother tole me she got it on wit’ your old man, Big Aldous.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Big Aldous didn’t stick it to every woman on the bayou?”

“That was later in his life. When my mother was unfaithful.”

“You lying son of a bitch. He kept a whore in Abbeville. They had a son named Jimmie.”

“Why drag up all this grief? You were always stand-up. Are you going to let a bum like Shondell screw up your head?”

“It ain’t Shondell done it. It’s you. I didn’t have a father or mother. When you were seventeen, you went to SLI. When I was seventeen, I got my rectum tore out in St. John the Baptist Parish prison.” He shoved me again. “I want to hurt you, Dave. I want to kill your animals and burn your house. I want to do t’ings I ain’t never done to nobody else.”

“Your anger is with yourself, bub. Run your shuck on somebody else.”

“Big Aldous come to my house once. He was drunk. He had a Christmas tree tied on the roof of his car. He was taking it to y’all’s house. He didn’t bring nutting to mine.”

“I’m sorry all that happened, Marcel. But I can’t change it. Neither can you.”

“You got a gun on you, ain’t you?”

“No,” I said.

“You didn’t answer somebody beating on your door wit’out your piece? You’re a cop. Don’t be putting your hand behind you. I’ll dust you right here.”

“I’ve had a good life,” I said. “Do whatever you’re going to do.”

“Know why I use a twenty-two?”

“The round bounces around inside the skull. Unless you’re using hollow-points. Then it doesn’t matter.”

He lifted the barrel so it was pointed at my sternum. I had never seen his eyes so bright. They seemed about to shatter in the sockets. “You made fun of me when I said I might become a PI. ’Member that?”

“When I visited you at Huntsville? Yeah, I was kidding.”

“I ain’t,” he said.

He pressed the muzzle of the .22 into the soft flesh under his chin, pushing it deep as though he wanted to do double injury to himself. Then he pulled the trigger.