A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“A guy you want to run from,” I said, getting to my feet.

“Don’t leave me screwed up in the head like this,” Bottoms said. “I got a weak heart. You got to tell me who this guy is. That money is from the Mob? The guy is an assassin? Why you looking at me like that?”

“I hate people who hurt animals,” Clete said.

“Pit bulls are made to fight,” Bottoms said. “An animal has to earn its keep. It’s the law of nature.”

Clete slipped his .38 snub-nose from his shoulder holster, flipped out the cylinder, and dumped the rounds into his palm. I knew what he was going to do next. “Let it go, Cletus,” I said.

“Wait in the Caddy.”

“No.”

“I mean it, Dave.”

“No,” I repeated.

“You’re making me angry, big mon.”

I looked down at Bottoms. His face was white with blood loss. “What’s the last thing the guy in the hood said to you, Mr. Bottoms?”

He had to think. He looked up at me. “?‘No matter what you do, you’ll eventually be mine.’ What’s that mean?”

“You don’t want to know,” Clete said.

He snicked the cylinder back inside the frame of his pistol, then replaced the pistol in his shoulder holster and dropped the loose rounds in his coat pocket. He took out his cell phone and dialed 911 as we went out the door.

“You need to get the Humane Society out to the home of Jess Bottoms in Sunset,” he said. “I’m going to call the Associated Press in New Orleans about what I saw here. My name is Clete Purcel. Bring an ambulance for Mr. Bottoms. Out.”

Chapter Twenty-six

FRIDAY EVENING CLETE and I headed to Baton Rouge to hear Johnny Shondell and Isolde Balangie play and sing at a club by the LSU campus. The drive on the elevated highway across the Atchafalaya Basin is spectacular, particularly when a yellow moon is rising above the miles of black-water bays and flooded trees draped with Spanish moss. But I could not clear my head of the moral conflict I had brought into my life, namely my relationships with Leslie Rosenberg and Penelope Balangie. I was also worried about the degree of damage Clete had done to Jess Bottoms. Felony assault was felony assault.

“You think Bottoms will file charges?” I said.

“No, he’d have to explain too many things. Prostitutes, money laundering, illegal gambling. Plus, he’s afraid of Gideon. You shouldn’t have stopped me, Dave.”

“From forcing him to play Russian roulette?”

“You turned soft on me. You do that with these guys.”

“You don’t see it, Clete,” I said. “We’re becoming somebody else. It’s like catching a disease.”

He swerved in the middle of the causeway to miss a possum. “Wrong. We’ll never be like these guys. The Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Ted Bundy, that’s the kind of people you’re putting on the same level as us?”

“No,” I said, too tired to argue.

“Look at the books on the backseat I got from the library on the Renaissance and the Middle Ages. I just figured out something.”

He had changed the subject, as he always did when he felt he had hurt me. “Figured out what?”

“Nothing has changed since back then,” he said. “Rich families still use their children to forge alliances. How about the Kennedys auctioning off Jackie to that Greek, the one without a neck. He looked like a frog wearing sunglasses. I heard when he died, it took two months to bury his dong.” He took a hit from his flask, then another. “Dave, I’ve been thinking. As far as Richetti is concerned, I think he’s a defective. What’s the population of any prison like? Most of the inmates were probably beat on with an ugly stick when they were children.”

“Who were the two black kids with blue eyes that I saw with him in Henderson Swamp?”

Clete took another hit from the flask, the cap tinkling against the side. “He probably gave them five bucks to jerk your chain.”

The late sun had turned the trees red in the bays. Herons were standing in the shallows, their long legs as slender as soda straws. Clete was driving with one hand, the whiskey having its way, his face warm and serene in the dashboard’s glow.