A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“Call me Julian.”

“We’re going to get you well,” Clete said. “Dave and me and the docs and the nurses. We’ll be going out on the salt and catching us some white trout.”

“I have to say something,” Julian said. His voice was weak, the corner of his mouth puffed, three inches of stitches in one cheek, one eye swollen shut, both hands wrapped with bandages.

“Go ahead,” Clete said.

“I watched my tormentor die. I took pleasure in his suffering.”

“You got it all wrong,” Clete said. “What you were watching was justice being done. You paid the cost for getting this guy off the planet. The pain you suffered made sure this cocksucker will never hurt anyone again. End of story.”

I had to hand it to Cletus. I had never thought of it that way, and I suspect Julian hadn’t, either.

“It was Gideon who ripped Pickins apart?” Clete said.

“Who?” Julian said.

“Delmer Pickins. The guy who tortured you. Gideon tore him up?”

“Yes,” Julian said.

“Who would send a guy like that after you?” Clete said.

Julian fixed his unclosed eye on the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not being on the square, Father,” Clete said. “Mark Shondell put a hit on both of us and, I suspect, on Da

ve, too. He’s going to send somebody else after us.”

“Don’t do what you’re thinking,” Julian said, his voice barely audible.

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Clete said. “See, my own thoughts scare me, so I don’t allow myself to think. That’s how I keep control of myself.”

Under other circumstances, we would have laughed. But there was a great evil in our midst, and it was of our own creation and had nothing to do with a time traveler from the year 1600. The evil I’m talking about was incarnate in a Sorbonne-educated man whose family had lived among us for generations. He had vowed to destroy Hollywood and the Jews in it and was probably a molester and had ordered the murder of his enemies. We feared his power and his name, and lied to ourselves and doffed our hats and pretended we were simply adhering to a genteel culture passed on to us from an earlier time. In the meantime Mark Shondell was kindling the fires of racism and the resurgence of nativism and division, all of it inside his headquarters on the banks of Bayou Teche, the place I loved more than any other on earth.

Clete and I left the hospital together. The rain had stopped, and the constellations were cold and bright, and great plumes of white smoke were rising from the lighted stacks of the sugar mill. Clete had not spoken since we had left the ER. An unlit cigarette hung from his mouth. He opened the door of his Caddy; the interior light reflected on his face. His eyes were pools of darkness. I pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it over my shoulder.

“Don’t try to stop me, Streak.”

I shoved him in the chest.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said.

I shoved him again. Hard.

“Cut it out, big mon.”

“You’re not going to do this, Clete.”

“I’ve done worse and you didn’t say anything about it. Now get away from me.”

“You’ll end up in Angola and give the high ground to Shondell.”

“The only ground he’s going to get is a shovel full of dirt in the face.”

“I’ll hook you up and put you in a cage if I have to,” I said.

He got in his pink Caddy and slammed the door, then started the engine and rolled down the window. “Mark Shondell turns people against each other. You’re falling into his trap, Streak. Now step back.”