Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“I didn’t know Levon would show up every morning unshaven with booze on his breath and crazy changes in the script.”

“Maybe it’s time to cut loose from these guys,” I said.

“I don’t want to lose my work.”

“Then don’t worry about it.”

“Levon claims he didn’t kill Kevin Penny. I think he’s capable of it. I also think he’s capable of doing Jimmy Nightingale harm.”

“You’re suggesting Levon might want to kill him?”

“Levon says Nightingale airdropped explosives on an Indian village in South America and killed women and children. That’s not true, is it?”

“I’m afraid it is, Alf. Jimmy told me about it.”

She couldn’t hide the look on her face. At age five she had survived an army massacre of her Salvadoran village. The soldiers had used machetes to hack open the bodies of pregnant Indian women.

“Why doesn’t the media say something about it?” she said.

“If people don’t care about eight poor women murdered in Jefferson Davis Parish, why would they care about some oilmen bombing Indians in Latin America?”

“Maybe Nightingale deserves a bullet in the face,” she said.

“I think he’s remorseful.”

“After the fact,” she said. “What a piece of shit.”

“Have another diet Doc with me,” I said.

“At least I had one laugh this morning.”

“At what?” I said, glad that we were through with the subject of Jimmy Nightingale and Tony Nemo and Levon Broussard.

“This cute little man was behind the cordon when we were filming a scene in St. Martinville. He had on a pale blue baseball cap and clothes out of the box from Penny’s. The tags were still on. He looked like a big ceramic doll. He’d read two of my novels.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, my interest fading.

“He was eating a fudge bar. He made me think of Truman Capote without the blubber.”

Mon Tee Coon was waddling through the backyard, side by side with our old warrior cat, Snuggs.

“Are you listening?” Alafair asked.

“Sure.”

“I’d love to use him as a character. He was such a cuddly little guy. He said his nickname was Smiley.”

“Cuddly?” I popped a Dr Pepper and went outside.

* * *

CHESTER DROVE A compact he had stolen down the bayou road, until he saw the refurbished antebellum home of the Nightingales. He passed the driveway and the tunnel of oaks that led to the spacious porch and the second-story balconies and dormers and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave the main house the look of a baroque paddle wheeler on the Mississippi. He crossed a drawbridge and parked by a canebrake and lifted the sniper rifle from the trunk and entered an empty boathouse that had a walkway built along one wall. Across the Teche, he could see the sloping green yard of the Nightingale home and a swimming pool and a bathhouse spangled with sunlight sifting like spiritual grace through the oak limbs and Spanish moss.

Chester also carried a hand-crafted leather folder with pockets and braided borders and a bucking horse and cowboy rider stenciled on it. The folder had been given to him years ago by a friend he’d met at a state mental hygiene clinic. The friend had told Chester he’d murdered three people while hitchhiking across the country; the friend had considered Chester a man who would understand.

“You shouldn’t hurt people who give you a free car ride,” Chester had said.

“I needed their car,” the friend had said.