Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“Take it to the lab,” she said.

“Want me to check in with the locals?”

“In St. Mary Parish?” she said.

“I may make a stop before I head back.”

“Stop where?”

“Maybe the shooter was on an errand and McVane messed up his plan.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Jimmy Nightingale’s place is just down the road. Maybe he was a target.”

“Why?”

“Jimmy’s predecessors are Huey Long and George Wallace. I think he’ll come to the same end.”

“It’s your case. Talk to you later,” she said.

* * *

EVEN AFTER JIMMY had told me about the bombing of the Indian village, I did not want to believe he was an evil man. Even though I had concluded in my report that he’d attacked Rowena Broussard, I believed his mind had been addled by booze and hash and driven more by desire than by sadistic intent. Why did I not want to believe these things? Like most of us who subscribe to the egalitarian traditions of Jefferson and Lincoln, I did not want to believe that a basically likable man could, with indifference and without provocation, commit deeds that were not only wicked but destroyed the lives of defenseless people. I also reminded myself that Jimmy was haunted by guilt, which is not the trademark of the unredeemable.

As I pulled up to the Nightingale mansion on the bayou, I did not realize I was about to see a drama that could have come from the stage of the Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames. I heard shouting on the patio and walked around the side of the house and saw Bobby Earl and Emmeline Nightingale four feet apart, red-faced and hurling invective at each other. Down the slope, Jimmy was calmly whocking golf balls high into the sky, watching them drop into the bayou. His chauffeur, the peroxided one with the steroid-puffed physique and caved-in face, stood by his side, waiting to put a fresh tee and ball on the grass. None of them saw me.

Earl’s face was trembling. “He denounced me on national television. Do you know what this has done to me? I went to prison for our cause.”

“You went to prison for tax evasion,” Emmeline said.

“I gave him my constituency.”

“You don’t have one. Now get off our property.”

“You’re a poisonous creature, Emmeline. The Great Whore of Babylon in the making.”

“And you’re a self-important public fool. Good God, I don’t know how Jimmy stands you.”

“Hello?” I said.

They both looked at me as though awakening from a dream.

“What do you want, Mr. Robicheaux?” Emmeline asked.

“A word with you and Jimmy,” I said. “Bobby doesn’t need to hang around.”

Earl’s face was full of hurt, like a child’s. This was the same man who had inflamed the passions of the great unwashed, then disavowed their actions when they burned and bombed and lynched. But I realized that, instead of the devil, I was looking at a moth batting its wings around a light that had grown cold.

He had a pot stomach, like a balloon filled with water; his face was lined, his eyes tired. There was a pout on his mouth. “You remember that time you hit me?”

“I do,” I replied.

“It was a sucker punch. I had no chance to defend myself.”

“You asked for it, and you were looking me straight in the face.”

His eyes were wet. “The Nightingales wouldn’t let you clean their bathroom, Dave.”