A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux 23)

“What are you doing, Johnny?” Father Julian asked.

“Getting up,” Johnny said. “Ending this.”

“Your uncle is going to kill anyone who comes through that hatch,” Clete said.

“That’s the point,” Johnny said. “Then you can shoot him.”

Julian stepped in front of him. “It’s time I have a talk with your uncle.”

“No, he hates you, Father,” Johnny said.

“Then I must have done something right in my life,” Julian said. He looked at me. “Keep Johnny here, Dave.”

I knew we had only minutes, if that. Shondell’s people would soon have us surrounded. Julian was about to give his life so I could get a clear shot at Shondell. Arguing with him would not change his mind. If I didn’t act, his sacrifice would be for nothing. “I’ll be behind you,” I said.

But I had forgotten about Carroll LeBlanc. “Give me back the knife,” he said to Clete.

“What for?” Clete said.

“It’s my knife.”

I looked at Clete and shook my head. But he ignored me. “It’s LeBlanc’s decision,” he said. He let Carroll take the knife from his hand.

Carroll grinned at me, his face sweaty and bloodless, looking like a deathly ill man burning with fever, the string of moles below his eye as dry as baked dirt. “Let’s do it, Robo.”

He went up the ladder, his grin like a half-moon slit in a muskmelon. Clete and I went behind him. I had the .25 semi-auto in my right hand. Then Carroll turned briefly and stared into my face. “Sorry I let you guys down. I hope this makes it right.”

“It’s okay,” I said. Then I stumbled. The semi-auto caught on the rail and fell from my hand and tumbled into the darkness.

Carroll never faltered. He went through the hatch and took a burst from the Kalashnikov in the chest and the face. Shondell was sitting down, his back propped against the console; his mouth resembled a horizontal keyhole where he had bitten off half of his upper lip, exposing his teeth. Carroll went down on his face and I knew I was next. I saw the glee in Shondell’s eyes as he raised the muzzle of his weapon. I had no defense, no moat or castle behind which to hide. This time it was for real: In two seconds I would be spaghetti on the bulkhead, and Clete would catch the next burst and tumble on top of me, and the weapon that couldn’t get us in Vietnam would have gotten even at last.

But that’s not what happened. Shondell pulled the trigger and the firing pin snapped on a dud. I had never seen a man look so surprised and so afraid. In the corner of my eye, I saw Penelope getting to her feet. “Run, Dave,” she said.

I didn’t have time. Clete almost knocked me down. He kicked the Kalashnikov from Shondell’s hands and pulled him to his feet and slammed his face on a glass-covered chart table. I had not seen the emergency flare he was carrying in his side pocket, but there it was. He tore off the cap and banged the striker on the tip. There was a spark, then the flare was aflame, hissing like a snake. Clete shoved it over Shondell’s teeth and down his throat.

I tried to pull Clete away from Shondell but to no avail. I knew he had gone back in time and was walking with the Jewish woman and her three daughters to a gas chamber at Auschwitz. I stepped back and did not try to intervene.

He grabbed Shondell by the neck and began beating his head on the chart table. The glass did not break, but Shondell’s head did. It broke the way a flower pot full of dirt does, and then it came apart, a sanguine mist rising from Shondell’s hair. Clete couldn’t or wouldn’t stop. He knotted the neck of Shondell’s shirt and coat in his fists and hammered the remnants of Shondell’s head against the edge of the glass until Clete’s hands slipped loose and Shondell slid to the deck, his neck a stump.

Clete stared down at Shondell’s body as though he did not know where it had come from. Penelope was pressed against the bulkhead, her skin and purple dress freckled with blood and brain matter. There was no fear in her face, only dismay and perhaps disappointment.

“What did you expect, Penelope?” I said. “Where did you think this would end?”

“Look!” she said, pointing at the sailboat as it crossed in front of the yacht. “There’s Isolde on the deck with Adonis. If you had just listened to me and waited.”

“Can I ask you a question, Miss Penelope?” Clete said.

“What?”

“Do you know where I could put together a pitcher of Jack on shaved ice with a few mint leaves on top and a lime slice or two? I’d be in your debt.”

Small hailstones began clicking on the ceiling of the bridge, then grew in size and volume and velocity until they were bouncing like Ping-Pong balls all over our ship, their cool white purity shutting out the world, chastening the wind, denting the waves and swells, creating an operatic clanging of ice and steel that Beethoven’s Fifth couldn’t match.

But it wasn’t over. I’ll try to explain. See, it’s got everything to do with Clete Purcel. As Clete would say, I’ll give you the straight gen, Ben. I wouldn’t give you a shuck, Chuck.

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Epilogue