Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“All of us would be dead if it wasn’t for Clete.”

“You can be his friend without making the same kinds of choices he does. You’ve never learned that.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t,” she said.

She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her and turned the lock.

I PUT ON my raincoat and hat and drove to Clete’s motor court down the Teche. His cottage was the last one on a driveway that dead-ended in a grove of live oaks by the bayou. His Caddy was parked by the trees, the rain clicking loudly on the starched top. The cottage was dark, and pine needles had clotted in the rain gutters, and water was running down the walls. I knocked, then knocked again harder, with the flat of my fist. A lamp went on inside, and Clete opened the door in his skivvies, the unventilated room sour with the smell of weed and beer sweat and unchanged bed linens. “Hey, Dave, what’s the haps?” he said.

“You ever hear of opening a window?” I said, going inside.

“I nodded out. Is it morning?”

“No. Molly said you called.”

“Yeah?” he said, rubbing his hand over his face, moving toward the breakfast table, where a manila folder lay open. “I forgot why I called. I was drinking doubles at Clementine’s, and a switch went off in my head. It’s not morning?”

“It’s not even ten P.M.”

“I guess I was having some kind of crazy dream,” he said. He closed the folder and moved it aside, as though straightening things so we could have a cup of coffee. His nylon shoulder holster and blue-black snub-nosed .38 were hanging on the back of a chair. A huge old-style blackjack, one teardropped in shape and stitched with a leather cover and mounted on a spring and wood handle, lay by the manila folder. “I dreamed some kids were chasing me through the Irish Channel. They had bricks in their hands. What a funny dream to have.”

“Why don’t you take a shower, and then we’ll talk.”

“About what?”

“Why you called me.”

“I think it was about Frankie Giacano. He called me up and begged me to help him.”

“Frankie Gee begged?”

“He was about to shit his pants. He thinks he’s going to get capped like Bix Golightly and Waylon Grimes.”

“Why?”

“He won’t say.”

“Why does he think you can get him off the hook?”

“He mentioned your name. He said, ‘You and Robicheaux won’t let this thing die.’”

“What’s he talking about?” I asked.

“Who knows? Did you roust him or something?”

“I went to Pierre Dupree’s office on South Rampart yesterday. I talked with the grandfather. He lied to me about the safe. What’s in the manila folder?”

“Nothing.”

“You want to level with me, or should I leave?”

“It’s a file on a kid in Fort Lauderdale. I got it from a friend in the state attorney’s office in Tallahassee.”

“Who’s the kid?”

“Just a kid. One who was abused.”