Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

“I don’t think I know him. What’s the deal?”

“Any pontoon planes land around here?” Clete said.

“Some Hollywood guys flew in for the weekend. They left this morning.”

“You know about the guy who got dragged down the Eastside Highway?” Clete asked.

“Who doesn’t?”

“We’re looking for the guy who did it.”

The bartender looked past us at Gretchen and Alafair. “I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t think you guys are cops, and I don’t know why you’re asking me questions.”

I opened my shield. “My name is Dave Robicheaux. I’m a sheriff’s detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. This is Clete Purcel. He’s a private investigator there. This is my daughter, Alafair, and her friend Gretchen. We’d appreciate any information you can give us.”

There are two pieces of advice I’ve received in my life that I have never forgotten. The first came from a line sergeant who had been at Heartbreak Ridge. My third day in Vietnam, I was ordered to go down a night trail deep inside Indian country and set up an ambush. It was a night trail that was probably salted with Chinese toe-poppers or 105 duds strung with trip wires. The sergeant read the fear and uncertainty in my face the way you read contour lines on a topography map. “Here’s the key, Loot,” he said. “You never think or talk about it before you do it, and you don’t think or talk about it after it’s over.”

The other piece of advice came from a corrupt and thoroughly worthless Teamster official in Baton Rouge, a man whose voice box had been eaten away by cigarettes and whiskey. He said, “It ain’t about money, Robicheaux. It’s about respect. That’s what every workingman and -woman on this planet wants. Anybody don’t know that should have a telephone pole kicked up his ass.”

I gazed up the slope at the orchards blowing in the wind and the two-story house constructed of yellowish-gray stone slabs and the mechanic’s shed and several concrete trailer pads that seemed to be no longer in use.

“Who lives in the stone house?” I asked.

“A lady from Malibu,” the bartender said. “Or she did own it. She used to come in here and stay late, know what I mean?”

“Where is she now?”

“I heard she went back to her husband or something. A lot of California people come out here but don’t stay. We call it the Banana Belt of Montana, but ten-below weather is a hard sell.”

“This isn’t ten-below weather,” Clete said.

“The lady had problems. She’d go off with guys I wouldn’t want to hang with.”

“Which guys?”

“Guys on the make, guys trolling for older women,” he said. “Anybody who’s in a bar at two A.M. has a problem. Know what the problem is?”

“He doesn’t have a home or family to go to,” I said.

Outside the window, I could see the moths fluttering in the electric glow of the light poles and dropping into the water, their paperlike wings dissolving in the black shine of the waves. I could feel my energies draining, my concentration slipping.

“Can I fix you guys something?” the bartender said.

“Do you ever have any revivals or outdoor prayer meetings hereabouts?” I said.

“Funny you ask,” he said. “Some of the migrants have gatherings at that old trailer park there.”

“They’re Hispanic?” I said.

“Maybe the ones who have Saturday-night vespers are. But there’s a bluegrass bunch that really rocks. In winter, I play in a band in La Jolla. I’d like to take a couple of those guys with me.”

I waited, giving him no lead, avoiding any hint of what I wanted to hear him say. I heard Alafair and Gretchen step closer to the counter. “They’re pretty good, huh?” I said.

“When they sing ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’ it’d make an atheist weep.”

I nodded.

“You know the old union song ‘A Miner’s Life Is Like a Sailor’s’?”