Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

I shared none of these thoughts with Clete. Instead, when I returned to New Iberia and my shotgun house on the bayou a short distance from the Shadows, I called Jimmy Nightingale’s home in Franklin. A female secretary answered and took a message. Did you ever have a conversation with a professional ice cube?

“Do you know where Mr. Nightingale is?” I asked.

“He didn’t say.”

“Is he in New Orleans?”

“I’m sure he’ll return your call very soon, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“It’s Detective Robicheaux.”

“Thank you for your call, Detective Robicheaux. Is your call in reference to an official matter?”

“I really don’t know how to define it.”

“I’ll tell him that. Good-bye.”

The line went dead.

I lit the gas stove in the kitchen and warmed a bowl of frozen crawfish gumbo. The windows were open, the curtains swelling with wind, the house creaking. The light was failing in the oak and pecan trees in my backyard. On the far side of the bayou, a man of color was sitting on a wooden chair, fishing with a cane pole and bobber among the reeds, the late sun splintering on the water. Since my wife’s accident, this had become my worst time of day. My home was cavernous with silence and emptiness. My wife was gone, and so were my pets and most of my relatives. With each day that passed, I felt as though the world I had known was being airbrushed out of a painting.

I took the gumbo off the stove and sat down at the breakfast table with a spoon and a chunk of dry French bread and started to eat. I heard a car turn in to my gravel drive, the tires clicking, and come to a stop at the porte cochere.

“Dave?” someone called.

I walked through the hallway into the living room. Jimmy Nightingale stood at the screen, panama hat in hand, trying to see inside. He was wearing beige slacks and a maroon shirt and a windbreaker with a pair of aviator glasses sticking out of the breast pocket. “How you doin’, copper?” he said.

“Come in,” I said, pushing open the door.

“My secretary called me on the cell.” He shook hands, his eyes sweeping through the house, then brightening when they came back to mine. “You look good.”

“You, too, Jimmy.”

But Jimmy always looked good. He followed me into the kitchen.

“I have some gumbo on the stove,” I said. “Or would you like a cold drink?”

“I just ate at Clementine’s. You have such a nice place here. The park is right across the bayou, huh? Tell me the truth, did my secretary give you the impression she was blowing you off? She’s like that. But she’s a class act, believe me.”

I had forgotten that Jimmy often spoke in paragraphs rather than sentences. “She was fine,” I said.

“Always the gentleman,” he said, soft-punching me on the arm. “I bet you were calling about Clete Purcel.”

“Clete’s sorry about the encounter at the casino.”

“Sprinkling his head with ashes? Using a flagellum on his back, that sort of thing?”

“Clete doesn’t mean half the things he says.”

“Finish your supper while I explain something. Come on, sit down.”

That he was inviting me to sit down in my own house didn’t seem to cross his mind. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed and opened his eyes as though fatigued. “I flew a biplane today and got a little sunburned. Ever go up in one?”

I shook my head.

“I wish I could have been in the Lafayette Escadrille. Dancing around the skies of France and Belgium, giving the Red Baron a tap or two with the Vickers.”

“War is usually interesting only to people who haven’t been to one.”