Chapter Forty-one
CLETE PULLED ME aside. He had taken Carroll’s butcher knife from him. He put a fresh magazine in the semi-auto and pulled and released the slide and clicked on the safety and placed the gun in my hand. “I got to get to Bell. You keep him busy until I can get behind him.”
“That’s a bad idea,” I said.
“No arguments, big mon.”
“Where’s Adonis?” I said.
“Who cares?”
“He’s a survivor,” I said. “He’ll cut a deal. Maybe he can get us some serious weapons.”
“Adonis may also be rallying the troops. I can’t believe I ever stood up for that guy. Come on, we got to put it in gear. Hey, I got one for you.”
“What?”
“Know what Ambrose Bierce called a pacifist?”
“Wrong time for it, Cletus.”
“A dead Quaker.” He hit me on the arm. “Stomp ass and take names, noble mon. The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide are forever.”
Then he was gone.
The only other time I had ever been in such close proximity to a murderous enemy was in Vietnam. We got into night-trail firefights when Sir Charles was no more than five feet from us. Oddly, we had come to respect Sir Charles and his ability to live inside the greenery of a rain forest and suddenly materialize out of the mists, his uniform little more than black pajamas, his sandals cut from an automobile tire, his day’s ration a rice ball tied inside a sash around his hips.
Sir Charles could be incredibly cruel, as the VC demonstrated in the capture of Hué when they buried alive both civilians and prisoners of war. But Sir Charles was brave and had a cause, one that he saw as noble. Mark Shondell could lay no such claim. He sought revenge on others for his own failure, and helped inculcate racial hatred and fear in the electorate to divide us against ourselves. I had known his kind all my life. Except Shondell was not an ordinary man. Marcel LaForchette believed Shondell may have been in league with diabolical powers. I don’t know if there is any such thing. But I do believe there are people in our midst who wish to make a graveyard of the world, and their motivation may be no more complex than that of an angry child flinging scat because he was left with regularity in a dirty diaper.
The ribbon of green light on the southern horizon was creeping higher into the sky, the waves subsiding, the sailboat rising and falling with the rhythm of a rocking horse. I felt a drop of rain on the back of my neck, like a reminder of the earth’s resilience. Then I looked at Father Julian and felt the same sense about him. There are those among us who can walk through cannon smoke and grin about it while everyone else is going insane. That was Father Julian Hebert.
We were in the lee of the superstructure of which the bridge was part, but not at an angle where Bell could fire upon us. “How you doin’, Julian?” I said.
“Not bad,” he replied.
“You’re not a very good liar.”
“I’ll practice.”
“I’ve got to entertain Bell,” I said. “I hope to come back. If I don’t, try to get on board a lifeboat. Penelope is on the bridge. Maybe she can go with you.”
“You still have feelings for her?”
“None that are good.”
“Who’s the liar?” he said. But at least he smiled.
* * *
I WENT UP THE ladder. The bridge windows were broken, the jagged and burnt frames like empty eye sockets against the watery greenish band of light in the south. I saw no sign of Bell. He had told Clete he was in the First Cav. I suspected he was telling the truth. He didn’t silhouette, he didn’t give away his position; he made no sound at all.
“Dave Robicheaux here, Mr. Bell,” I said.
No answer.
“Is Penelope okay?”
“Go away, Dave,” she said.