Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

I went outside and closed the screen door softly behind me and walked to the cruiser. I thought I heard her crying, but I had decided that Varina Leboeuf could not be helped by me or probably anyone else. I was glad that I was alive and that I owned my own soul and that I didn’t have to drink. To others, these might seem like minor victories, but when you are in the presence of the genuinely afflicted, you realize that the smallest gifts can be greater in value than the conquest of nations.

I WENT TO an A.A. meeting and to Mass that afternoon. Molly and I and Alafair had supper at home, and later, I drove to Clete’s cottage at the motor court. I knocked on the door, then realized he was down the slope, standing under the oaks by the bayou’s edge, fishing in an unlikely spot with a cane pole. I knew he had heard the sound of my pickup and that certainly he had heard me walk up behind him. But he continued to study his bobber floating on the edge of the current, the bronze glaze of the late sun flashing on the rippl

es. A mosquito was drawing blood from the back of his neck. I wiped it off his skin with my hand. “Got a reason for ignoring me?” I asked.

“I saw the news about Leboeuf, and I know what’s coming,” he replied.

“Where is Gretchen?”

“I haven’t seen her today.”

“I need to bring her in.”

“Then do it.”

“She got her mother loose from those guys in Florida?”

“Yeah, I told you.”

“How did she pull it off?”

“How do you think?” he said.

“She popped somebody?”

“Gretchen hasn’t done anything that we haven’t. We’ve probably done worse. Remember those Colombians? How about the time we went after Jimmie Lee Boggs? How about the way we nailed Louis Buchalter? Tell me you didn’t enjoy being under a black flag.”

I didn’t want to think about the years Clete and I had stayed high on booze and racetracks and the smell of cordite and, in my case, rage-induced blackouts that allowed me to do things I would never do in a rational state of mind. I did not want to say any more about his daughter; nonetheless, I did. “I think Gretchen may have been lying to you, Clete.”

He started to turn around but lifted his bobber out of the water and threw it and his sinker and hook farther out in the current. There was only a tiny thread of worm on the hook. “Lying about what?” he said.

“She claims she didn’t clip Waylon Grimes and Frankie Giacano. She told you she only clipped Bix Golightly, a guy who molested her and had it coming.”

“He didn’t just molest her. He forced his dick into her mouth.”

“I know that. But doesn’t it seem too convenient that Grimes and Frankie Gee get capped by somebody else? How about the abduction of her mother? Now the mother is free, and as soon as Gretchen is back in New Iberia, Jesse Leboeuf gets his eggs scrambled. In every situation, Gretchen is the victim.”

“Right or wrong, she’s my daughter. Of all people, you should understand that.”

“Alafair doesn’t do contract hits for the Mob.”

He broke his cane pole across his knee and flung both pieces into the bayou and watched them drift upstream and disappear inside the band of bronze sunlight still shimmering on the surface. He continued to stare at the sunset on the water, his huge back rising and falling in the shadows.

“You all right?” I said.

“You piss me off sometimes, Dave.”

“Jesse Leboeuf ate two rounds before he fell into Catin Segura’s bathtub. He said something to the shooter before he died. The shooter could have put one in his mouth or through his forehead but evidently decided not to. For whatever reason, the shooter showed mercy. If Gretchen popped him, maybe she had to. His piece was on the dresser. But she didn’t shoot him a third time, which is what a contract hitter would have done.”

“What did Leboeuf say?” Clete asked.

“Catin doesn’t speak French.”

“You think the shooter was Gretchen?”

“Who else?”

“Give her a chance. Let me talk to her before you bring her in.”