A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“Isolde is on her way here,” Johnny said.

“From where?” I said.

“Another ship. I’m going now. I don’t like the way y’all are talking to me.”

“Then hoof it, kid,” Clete said.

Johnny went back up the ladder. He glanced back once, his face twisted with either hurt or anger, before disappearing.

“Think he’ll rat us out?” Clete said.

“Let’s get on the starboard side,” I said. “At least he won’t know our whereabouts.”

“I got to face this guy Gideon, Dave. That doesn’t sit easy.”

“Let him come to you.”

“My stomach is flopping,” he said. “Jesus Christ, we did it this time, didn’t we?”

* * *

WE FOUND A ladder to the top deck on the starboard side of the yacht. The air was cold, clouds of fog as white as cotton scudding across the water, the morning sun just breaking on the horizon, its rosy hue dissolving inside the fog. Flying fish skimmed the waves like bronze darts.

“Got any idea how far from shore we are?” I said.

“I don’t hear any buoys,” Clete said. “There’s no sand in the waves.”

“I wish I had a coat.”

“Dave, if I don’t come back from this, kill Shondell.”

“You’ll piss on his grave.”

He started to say something, then looked past me into the fog. “Oh, shit,” he said.

The prison galleon was no more than forty feet away, rising with the swells, the planks in the hull and gunwales and the quarterdeck bright with spray. Then it drifted closer, perhaps ten feet from the railing on the yacht, the oars receding inside the loopholes. Gideon Richetti descended from the quarterdeck. I didn’t say “walked,” he descended. He was wearing a long overcoat made of leather, the collar up, a floppy hat on his head. But he was not the same creature I had seen before. His scales were hardly visible, his face lean rather than triangular in shape. I wondered if I was looking at the same man.

“I want to speak to you, Mr. Purcel,” he said.

The voice, however, was the same; it echoed, or rumbled, as though trapped in a stone cistern.

“You’ll speak to us both, Mr. Richetti,” I said.

“Stay out of it, Dave,” Clete said.

“That’s a very good suggestion,” Gideon said.

“Say what you got to say,” Clete said. “Yeah, I’m talking to you. You hung me upside down and were going to boil my brains in my skull. You were a loser four hundred years ago, and you’re a loser now.”

“I wish to ask your forgiveness.”

“FTS on that, Jack,” Clete replied.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Fuck. That. Shit. You burned Leslie Rosenberg to death. You know where that puts you? With the Nazis. I’ve got a picture in my wallet I’d like to show you. A Jewish mother and her kids going to the ovens. Were you there?”

“I’m sorry for all the suffering I imposed on other people, Mr. Purcel. If you can’t forgive me, then don’t. But I had to try.”