Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“Forget about the time.”

“What’s going on, Gretch? What’s that in your hand?”

She lifted the .22 above the level of the mattress. “This is the piece I used to clip Bix Golightly. On my sixth birthday, he asked me to come into the kitchen and help him make lemonade. My mother had just left for the grocery to buy a cake. He unzipped his pants and pushed my face against his cock. He squeezed my head so tight, I thought he would crush my skull. He told me if I was a bad girl and told my mother what we’d done, that’s how he put it, what we’d done, he’d come back to Miami and bury me in my backyard. I never knew his f

ull name or where he was from. Earlier this year he was at the track in Hialeah with some other gumballs. They told him I did button work for the Mob. He never made the connection between me and the little girl he sodomized. It took me a long time to catch up with him, but I did. What do you think of that, Clete?”

Clete fingered the sheet that covered his loins, his mouth gray, his lips dry-looking. “I don’t think it’s a big deal.”

“Popping a guy?”

“No, popping a guy who makes a little girl perform oral sex on him on her birthday and threatens to murder her. What are you going to do with that piece?”

“Use it.”

“On who?” he asked.

“The field is wide open.”

He sat up on the side of the couch. He took the .22 from her hand. The magazine was not in the frame. He pulled back the receiver. The chamber was empty. “Did you take down Frankie Giacano or Waylon Grimes?”

“No, I didn’t. Golightly and Grimes and Giacano were all supposed to catch the bus. I did Golightly, but I didn’t take money for it. I don’t know who clipped the others.”

“Do you know who I am?” Clete asked.

“A guy who smells like he’s been drinking for twenty-four hours?”

He unscrewed the suppressor from the .22 and handed both the gun and the suppressor back to her. “What else is in that hatbox?”

“A Beretta nine and a gun-cleaning kit and several extra magazines and boxes of ammo.”

“I’m your old man. That’s who I am,” he said.

“Meaning like my boyfriend?”

“I’m your father.”

She felt a sharp pain in her heart that spread through her chest and seemed to squeeze the air out of her lungs. Her brow twitched once, like a rubber band snapping, then something shut down the flow of light into her eyes. “Don’t play around with me.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

“My father died in Desert Storm.”

“You went to juvie when you were fifteen, then to foster care. Your mother was in the Miami-Dade stockade. I had a blood test done on you. There was no doubt I was your dad. But you ran away from foster care before I could process the custody application. I tried to find you twice on my own, and later, I hired a PI in Lauderdale, but the trail stopped at the track in Hialeah. You were a hot walker there, right?”

“Yeah, and a groom and I worked at the concession stand,” she said.

“You feel like I’ve deceived you?”

“I don’t know what to call it. I can’t begin to describe what I feel right now,” she said.

“I saw you smoke Golightly. I called in the shots-fired, but I didn’t dime you. After you brought me my cigarette lighter, I figured you’d run away if I told you I was in Algiers the night Golightly and Grimes got it. If you ran away again, I knew I would never find you. You got a rotten break as a kid, Gretchen. In my view, you’re not responsible for any of the things you did. If anybody is responsible, it’s me. I was a drunk and a pill addict working Vice. I took juice from the Mob, and I took advantage of your mother. Candy was mainlining when she was nineteen, and instead of helping her, I made her pregnant. If you told me you didn’t want a son of a bitch like me for a father, I’d understand.”

“You’re not a son of a bitch. Don’t say that.”

He reached down on the floor and picked up his trousers, then stood up from the couch with his back to her and put them on. “Why are you crying?” he said.

“I’m not. I don’t ever cry.”