Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“Of course. I’m always proud of you, Alf.”

“You said you wouldn’t call me that anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“Call me whatever you want,” she said.

I WAS SERIOUS when I said Alafair should have been in law enforcement. At the onset of her last semester at Stanford, her professors released her from class and gave her credit for clerking at the Ninth District Court in Seattle. The judge with whom she worked, an appointee of President Carter, was a distinguished jurist, but Alafair had an opportunity to clerk at the United States Supreme Court and would have done so, except her meddling father didn’t want her living in D.C. Regardless, her career in the Justice Department was almost assured. Instead, she chose to return to New Iberia and become a novelist.

Her first book was a crime novel set in Portland, where she attended undergraduate school. Perhaps because she had an undergraduate degree in forensic psychology, she had extraordinary insight into aberrant behavior. She also knew how to use the Internet in ways that were virtually miraculous.

When she turned on her computer Tuesday morning, her Google news alert had posted four entries in her mailbox. “Better come in here, Dave,” she called from her bedroom.

The news stories originated with a small wire service in the Midwest. A man who owned rows of grain silos along railroad tracks throughout Kansas and Nebraska had died unexpectedly and left behind an eclectic collection of art that ranged from Picasso sketches done during the Blue Period to pretentious junk that the grain-elevator magnate probably bought at avant-garde salons in Paris and Rome. The heirs donated the entire collection to a university. Included in it were three Modigliani paintings. Or at least that was what they seemed to be. The curator at the university art museum said they were not only fakes, they were probably part of a hoax that had been perpetrated on private collectors for several decades.

The operational principle of the scam was the same used in all con games. The scammers would seek out a victim who either wanted something for nothing or was basically dishonest himself. The private collector would be told the Modigliani paintings were stolen and could be purchased for perhaps half of their real worth. The collector would also be told that he was not committing a crime, because the museum or private collection from which the paintings had been stolen had indirectly victimized either Modigliani or his inner circle, all of whom were poor and probably sold the paintings for next to nothing.

The scam worked because Modigliani’s paintings were in wide circulation, many of them having been used by the artist or his mistress to pay hotel and food bills, and were comparably easy to forge and difficult to authenticate.

“I think this is the connection between Bix Golightly and Pierre Dupree,” Alafair said. “Golightly was probably fencing Pierre’s forgeries as stolen property. If you look at Pierre’s paintings, you can see Modigliani’s influence on him. Remember when you looked at the photo of Pierre’s nude on the sofa? You said the figure in it was Tee Jolie, and I said the painting was generic and was like Gauguin’s work. The painting of Tee Jolie was like a famous nude by Modigliani. Here, look.”

She clicked the image of the Modigliani painting onto the screen. “The swanlike neck and the elongated eyes and the coiffured hair and the prim mouth and the warmth in the skin are all characteristics you see in Pierre’s paintings. Pierre isn’t a bad imitator. But I’d bet he’s both greedy and jealous. Not long ago Modigliani’s painting was auctioned off at Sotheby’s for almost seventy million.”

“I think you’re probably right,” I said. “Clete broke in to Golightly’s apartment the night he was killed and said there was evidence he was fencing stolen or forged artwork. When you think about it, it’s the perfect scam. All you need is a buyer with sorghum for brains and too much money in the bank. Even if the buyer discovers he’s been suckered, he can’t call the cops without admitting he thought he was buying stolen paintings rather than forged paintings.”

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“I’ll call the FBI in Baton Rouge today, but I usually don’t get very far with them.”

“Why not?”

“Clete and I are not considered reliable sources.”

“Fuck them,” she said.

“How about it on the language, Alafair? At least in the house.”

“Is it okay to use it in the yard? If not, how about on the sidewalk?”

Don’t buy into it, I heard a voice say. “Can you make me a promise about Varina?”

“Stay away from her?”

“No, that’s not it at all. Be aware of what she is. And her father. And Alexis and Pierre Dupree and what they represent.”

“Which is what?”

“They’re working for somebody else. Somebody who is even more powerful and dangerous than they are.”

“Why do you think that?”

“We’re minions down here, not players. Everything that happens here is orchestrated by outsiders or politicians on a pad. It’s a depressing conclusion to come to. But it’s the way things are. We take it on our knees for anybody who brings his checkbook.”

RHETORIC IS CHEAP stuff and about as useful as a thimbleful of water in the desert. When I was a boy and pitching American Legion baseball in the 1950s, a catcher from the old Evangeline League gave me some advice I never forgot, although I don’t necessarily recommend that other people follow it. The Evangeline League was as rough and raw as it got. Cows sometimes grazed in the outfield, and so many of the overhead lights were burned out that sometimes the fielders couldn’t find the ball in the grass. Players smoked in the dugout, threw Vaseline balls and spitters, and slung bats like helicopter blades at the pitcher. They also fist-fought with umpires and one another, came in with their spikes up, and frequented Margaret’s infamous brothel en masse in Opelousas, a practice that on the team bus was called “running up the box score.” My friend the bush-league catcher from New Iberia tried to keep things simple, however. His advice was “Always keep the ball hid in your glove or behind your leg. Don’t never let the batter see your fingers on the stitches. When they crowd the plate, float one so close to the guy’s twanger, he’ll think he was circumcised. Then t’row your slider on the outside of the plate. He’ll swing at it to show he ain’t a coward,

but he won’t hit it. Then t’row a changeup, ’cause he’ll be expecting the heater instead. If he gets mean and starts shaking his bat at you, don’t even take your windup. Dust him wit’ a forkball.”

The question was where and when to throw the forkball. At the office that morning, I saw an ad for an evangelical rally at the Cajundome in Lafayette. The centerpiece of the rally was none other than Amidee Broussard, the minister I had seen leaving the Dupree home through the side door.