A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“You’re stand-up, Robo.”

No, just dumb, I thought.

Carroll drove away. Clete and I walked along a partially destroyed levee. The sawgrass was flattening in the wind, the sky yellow, the air filled with salt spray. “LeBlanc’s dirty,” Clete said.

“His daughter is messed up. He’s going through a bad time.”

“Quit looking for good in people when it’s not there, Dave.”

Maybe he was right. Anyway, I knew better than to argue with Clete. We walked in silence until the levee made a bend and we could see a large house on stilts out in deep water. A tug and a pontoon plane were anchored by the pilings. Clete looked through his binoculars. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?” I said.

“Shondell is on the deck with Adonis and Penelope Balangie. They’ve been jerking us around from the jump.”

“Maybe they’re negotiating.”

“They’re scum, Dave, including Penelope Balangie. She’s taken you over the hurdles six ways from breakfast.”

“You shot at Shondell and the El Salvadoran, didn’t you?” I said.

“So what?”

“I didn’t get on your case, did I?”

“Of course you did. You’re always on my case.”

“Clete, no one is ever going to believe the events you and I have been privy to except Father Julian and Leslie Rosenberg. We can’t be fighting with each other.”

“Tell me about it.”

“No, you’re not hearing me. Maybe it’s all going to end here.”

His green eyes looked as hard as glass, unblinking even in the wind. “What do you mean ‘it’s all going to end’?”

“I think we’re outside of time now. I think the big secrets aren’t secrets at all. We turn them into secrets by denying their reality. Shondell is one of those guys who will destroy the earth. He’s the essence of evil. I wish you had smoked both him and the general.”

“This isn’t like you, noble mon.”

“Explain Gideon to me.”

“I think LSD is involved,” he said.

“You’re taking yourself over the hurdles, Clete.”

He put the binoculars in my hands. “You call the play. I say bust ’em or dust ’em.”

“There is no busting Mark Shondell.”

“Maybe you’re finally seeing the light.”

“No cowboy stuff. Got it?”

Clete began tapping the air. “I’m the one got hung upside down over a fire at Shondell’s orders. That guy is going to have dinner with the crabs.”

I looked through the binoculars. Penelope and Adonis and Shondell were talking on the deck. Penelope’s expression had the melancholy solemnity of the women in Botticelli’s paintings. I wanted to travel across the water and put my mouth on hers. I wanted to touch her breasts and hair and put myself inside her. Clete was right. Her presence in my life wasn’t nearly over.

I handed Clete the binoculars. “Carroll and I will knock on the door of the stilt house tonight.”