A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“I don’t want any of that crap,” Clete said. “I’m going to cool out as many of these guys as I can and worry about the other stuff later on. Like after I’ve been dead a few hundred years.”

Carroll had gone into the head. He came back out, his face white. “There’s a porthole in there. Take a look.”

“What is it?” Clete said.

“See for yourself,” Carroll said. “I don’t want to believe in stuff like this. My head is coming off my shoulders. It’s some kind of mind-fuck. Sorry, Father.”

“I think I’ll survive,” Julian said. He went into the head, then came back out, pinching the bridge of his nose and widening his eyes, as though arranging words in his head before he spoke them. He looked at Clete. “Did you kill someone today?”

“No,” Clete said. “I ran Adonis’s head into the bulkhead and put a hypodermic needle in a guy’s neck.”

“The man you injected, what was he wearing?”

“Silver overalls.”

“He’s tied to the mast of Gideon’s prison ship. His entrails have been pulled out.”

“I didn’t do anything like that,” Clete said.

“I didn’t say you did,” Julian replied.

“What time of day is it out there?” Clete asked.

“You tell me,” Julian said. “The sky is purple and green and full of electricity.”

“Dave, we’ve got to make a move,” Clete said.

Just then the yacht pitched, then seemed to mount a swell and dip forward and slip down a deep trough. It smacked bottom with such force that it jarred out teeth and splashed seawater through the porthole in the head.

“Come on, Dave, don’t just stand there,” Clete said.

I looked at Leslie and her daughter. I had the feeling I would never see them again.

“Do you hear me, Dave?” Clete said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“What about me?” Carroll said.

“Give me the piece and stay here,” Clete said.

“I’m not up to it?” Carroll said.

“It’s me that green bastard is after,” Clete said. “You may be the guy who has to get everybody home, Carroll. Do us a solid.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Carroll said, handing the .25 semi-auto and spare magazines to Clete. “Yeah, we’re gonna get through this. Right? Somebody knows we’re here. We just got to hold on.”

Have you ever seen someone rolled up in an embryonic ball at the bottom of a foxhole, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his forearms clamped on his ears, while an artillery barrage marches through his position? That’s what Carroll LeBlanc made me think of.

Chapter Thirty-nine

CLETE AND I went into the passageway. The yacht pitched again, almost knocking both of us down. The only time I had been in seas this violent was during Hurricane Audrey in 1957, when I was on board a drilling rig. As then, I felt as though we were inside a maelstrom, one in which the physical laws of the universe had been suspended. I heard dishware crashing, furniture turning over. I felt a wave hit the gunwale and the side of a hull with the density and power of wet cement.

Behind me, someone opened the hatch on the cabin and stepped outside. It was Leslie.

“What is it?” I said.

She moved close to me so Clete couldn’t hear. “Maybe I’ll see you in another time.”