A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“What look?”

“The one that means you should go to a meeting. I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He looked at the remainder of his whiskey sour and called the bartender over. “I’m done with this. Give me a glass of milk, will you? My ulcers are on fire.”

* * *

THE BAND TOOK a break, and I caught Father Julian at the bar. “What are you doing here, partner?” I said.

“What I always do,” he said. “Dance.”

“Have you seen a few people we’ve crossed paths with?”

A bartender squirted Coca-Cola in a cup full of ice and handed it to him. Julian waited until the bartender was gone. “You mean Mark Shondell?”

“Yeah. And Adonis Balangie. With his hired help.”

“I didn’t see Adonis. Is Penelope with him?”

“She’s staying at a hotel in New Iberia, out by the four-lane,” I said. I felt my heart swelling, my collar shrinking on my throat. “I’ve gotten involved with her.”

Julian looked out at the dance floor, his egg-shaped face composed, every hair on his head in place. He was wearing jeans and loafers and a long-sleeve workout shirt. I tried not to think about the loneliness and the longings that must live inside him.

“Marcel LaForchette took his life in your living room,” he said. “I know the kind of man you are, Dave. You blame yourself for what others do. But this time maybe you reached out to the wrong party.”

“You said Penelope was a good woman.”

“Some historians say Lucrezia B

orgia was charitable to a fault.”

“That just sent a shudder through me,” I said.

But I had lost his attention. He was staring at Mark Shondell’s table.

“What is it?” I said.

“Shondell bothers me. The people he brings to New Iberia bother me. What he has probably done bothers me.” His face looked as though the oxygen and the netlike reflections of the disco ball had been sucked from the room.

“What has Shondell done?” I asked.

His jaw flexed. “I don’t have the evidence. It involves the very innocent. I’ve already said more than I should. I don’t have my glasses. Who’s that man with him?”

“Eddy Firpo. He’s Johnny Shondell’s manager.”

“He’s a lawyer?’

“How’d you know?” I said.

“I’ve seen him in New Orleans. He’s an anti-Semite. He also represents child porn vendors.”

“Mark Shondell is a child molester?”

“I don’t know what he is. I’d hate to find out.”

“I need your help, Julian. Everybody in Iberia Parish is afraid of Mark Shondell, no matter what they pretend. Tell me what you know.”