A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“I got to get Isolde back,” he said.

“Get out of my sight,” Clete said.

Chapter Forty

WHEN JOHNNY WAS gone, we worked our way back to the storage compartments. We found a case of wine and poured out three bottles and refilled them with gasoline and recorked the necks, then taped cotton pa

ds from a first-aid kit to the bottoms and wet the pads with gas and put the bottles in a duffel bag with four emergency flares.

I suspect our behavior seemed grandiose. We were certainly outnumbered and outgunned. We were also physically exhausted and emotionally burnt out, the way you feel coming off a three-day whiskey drunk, lights flickering behind your eyelids, a bilious taste in your mouth, a clammy smell like a field mortuary on your skin. I tried to keep in mind the admonition of Stonewall Jackson I quoted earlier: Always mystify, mislead, and surprise.

I also believed we had another weapon on our side: Shondell was a bully, and like all bullies, he was probably a coward. The electrical system was still down, and the ship surrounded by fog, which gave us an appreciable degree of cover. The downside: We could not be certain of our environment. We seemed to be in a vortex, one similar to the eye of a storm. Even though the sun had risen, the skies were dark again, the waves filled with the same black luminosity I had seen when I stood on the dock by the amusement pier, wondering if Homer was still with us, his sirens winking at us, lifting their wet hair off their breasts, guiding us onto the rocks.

The truth is, I wanted the world to be enchanted, hung with mysteries and flights of the imagination. Why? Because with that belief, we become subsumed by creation and a participant in it, a living particle inside infinity. We abide in the presence of Charlemagne’s knights jingling up the road to Roncesvalles; we flee mediocrity and predictability, and we delight in the rising and setting of the sun and no longer fear death because indeed the earth abideth forever. I wanted Gideon to be real; I wanted to hear the clash of shields and Arthur pulling his sword from the rock and see Guinevere waiting on the parapet of the castle in the dawn, shrouded with a golden nimbus.

Why not? It beats dining out at Chuck E. Cheese.

* * *

WE SOAKED THE compartment with gasoline, and Clete lit a piece of paper and set the deck ablaze with his Zippo. In minutes flames were curling outside the hatch, flattening on the passageway ceiling. We worked our way forward again and started a fire among Shondell’s collection of torture instruments. The padding on the bulkheads burst alight and, in the heat, seemed to blacken and split instantly into lesions. The smoke was thick and black and noxious, like the odor that comes from the stack on a rendering plant.

Clete gagged. “What is that?”

“Blood,” I said.

“Shondell is going down for the count, right? We’re agreed on that?”

“We don’t know the politician he’s working for, the rich-kid gutter rat.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Clete said. “Shondell is joining the Hallelujah Chorus? We’re copacetic on that?”

“What do I know?”

“Don’t get in my way, Streak.”

Twice we encountered Shondell’s employees or acolytes, all of them carrying either flashlights or fire extinguishers. Only one had a firearm. Clete threw him overboard before he could use it, cracked another man’s skull against the bulkhead, and caused the others to melt back into the darkness. I began to feel there were different levels of people who worked for Mark Shondell. Louisiana’s economy is based on the oil industry. If you’re in, you’re fine. If you’re out, you might have to close one eye. Babylon might be a real fling with Beat-My-Daddy Slack, but you don’t have a lot of selections when you’re in the mop-and-pail brigade. It’s hard to be proud of your spendolies when you’re working in a porn shop or in a drive-through daiquiri window.

I thought I saw women in the shadows, perhaps the prostitutes I believed were on board the tugboat anchored by Shondell’s stilt house. Shondell was the light inside the lantern. The candle moths swirling around him would always be there, and if they were singed and killed by his flame, others would replace them. Bell was one of them, although more intelligent and experienced in the ways of the underworld. There must have been others on board like him, but we didn’t know where they were. Rats abandon sinking ships. I hoped that was the case.

Clete opened the valve on a propane tank in a compartment behind the galley, flung an emergency flare inside, and locked down the hatch. The aftermath of the explosion sounded like a junkyard falling off a truck.

Up ahead I could see flashlights inside the bridge, the beams crisscrossing and bouncing off the panoramic windows and consoles and panel monitors and chart tables and myriad dials that had been rendered inoperable by a force outside the yacht. The sky was now sealed with purplish-black clouds, except in the south, where a vaporous green ribbon of light stretched across the horizon and a solitary boat was pitching toward the yacht, its white sails swollen with wind.

Then I saw Johnny coming toward us, below the bridge, his clothes sculpted against his body, his hands held up as though he were trying to stop traffic on a street. “Don’t go up there, Mr. Dave,” he said. “Y’all don’t know what you’re doing.”

“How many people are up there?” Clete said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Y’all and Gideon are messing up the deal.”

“Messing up what deal?” Clete said.

“Isolde is on her way. Everything is set up. Gideon shut down the power. Fire is coming out of the portholes on the stern. Uncle Mark is backing out of the deal.”

“How many guns are up there, Johnny?” I said.

“That’s all you got on your mind?” he said.

“Where’s Bell?” I said.