Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“We’re both going to end up in Angola.”

“That’s what I mean. Fuck it. Everybody gets to the barn,” I said.

“My liver is screaming. I got to have a beer with a couple of raw eggs in it. A couple of shots of Jack wouldn’t hurt, either.”

“Molly wants some ice cream.”

“Clementine’s sells sorbet to go. ‘Let it play out.’ I totally dig that. I think that also includes seriously stomping some ass and taking names. ‘Let it play out.’ Fuckin’ A.” He began churning his big fists as though hitting a speed bag, his teeth like tombstones when he grinned.

He had sucked me in again.

NO ONE LIKES to be afraid. Fear is the enemy of love and faith and robs us of all serenity. It steals both our sleep and our sunrise and makes us treacherous and venal and dishonorable. It fills our glands with toxins and effaces our identity and gives flight to any vestige of self-respect. If you have ever been afraid, truly afraid, in a way that makes your hair soggy with sweat and turns your skin gray and fouls your blood and spiritually eviscerates you to the point where you cannot pray lest your prayers be a concession to your conviction that you’re about to die, you know what I am talking about. This kind of fear has no remedy except motion, no matter what kind. Every person who has experienced war or natural catastrophe or man-made calamity knows this. The adrenaline surge is so great that you can pick up an automobile with your bare hands, plunge through glass windows in flaming buildings, or attack an enemy whose numbers and weaponry are far superior to yours. No fear of self-injury is as great as the fear that turns your insides to gelatin and shrivels your soul to the size of an amoeba.

If you do not have the option of either fleeing or attacking your adversary, the result is quite different. Your level of fear will grow to the point where you feel like your skin is being stripped off your bones. The degree of torm

ent and hopelessness and, ultimately, despair you will experience is probably as great as it gets this side of the grave.

Seven hours after I had said good night to Clete, I heard dry thunder in the clouds and, in my sleep, thought I saw flashes of heat lightning inside our bedroom. Then I realized I had forgotten to turn off my cell phone and it was vibrating on top of the dresser. I picked it up and walked into the kitchen. The caller ID was blocked. I sat down in a chair at the breakfast table and stared down the back slope at the bayou, where the surface of the water was wrinkling like curdled milk, the flooded elephant ears along the banks bending in the wind. “Who is this?” I said.

At first I heard only a deep breathing sound, like that of a man who was either in pain or whose anxiety was so intense that blood was starting to pop on his brow. “You Dave Robicheaux?” a male voice said.

“That’s right. It’s four in the morning. Who is this, and what do you want?”

“I’m Chad Patin. Ronnie Earl was my brother.”

I thought the caller planned to make an accusation against me, but that was not the case. He must have been using a landline, because his voice was rasping against a larger surface than a cell phone’s. I heard him take a gulp of air, like a man whose head had been held for a long time underwater.

“You still with me, bub?” I said.

“It was me who tried to take you out,” he replied.

“How’d you get my number?”

“They got a file on you. Everything about you is in there.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

I waited and heard liquid being poured into a glass. I heard him drinking from the glass, swallowing sloppily, a man who didn’t care whether Johnnie Walker or brake fluid was sliding down his throat. “I’m jumping out into space on this one,” he said.

“You were the shooter? Not your brother?”

“I agreed to do it. I wish I hadn’t.”

“You agreed? Can you translate that?”

“They were gonna send Ronnie Earl back inside. They weren’t gonna give me any more gigs. I got to make a living.”

“We ran you through the NCIC computer. You don’t have a sheet.”

“I was a transporter, girls and sometimes a little skag. I drove the girls up from Mexico. I wasn’t full-time on any of this. One night on the border, I did something. Some people were crowded too tight into the back of the truck. When it went into the ditch, I ran away. The back was locked. It was over a hundred degrees, even at night. Maybe you read about it.”

“No, I didn’t. Why did you call me?”

“I need to get out of the country.”

“And you want me to help you?”

“I got a few hundred dollars, but it’s not enough. I need at least five t’ousand.”