Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“They’ll get cut to pieces.”

“I got to ask you something,” Clete said.

“Go ahead.”

“Who’s more messed up, my daughter or kids like those two out there?”

“I don’t know, Clete. What does it matter? Young people make mistakes. Some come out of it, some don’t. Stop beating up on yourself.”

“I want your promise on something. You don’t jam Gretchen. She deserves a better life than the one I left her with. You cut her some slack or we go our separate ways. I want your word.”

He had never spoken like that to me in all the years I had known him.

“I was never big on loyalty oaths,” I said.

“I want your word, Dave.”

“I can’t give it to you.”

I saw a great sadness come into his eyes. “All right, let’s get those two down here and see what they have to say. Blow the shit out of those fish first. Yeah, lock and load, Dave, paint the fucking wall.”

When we went back outside, the sky was a bright metallic gray, the wind blowing a dirty chop on the cove where we had set down, the plane rocking in the swells that swirled across the pilings of a submerged jetty. I could see Julie Ardoin in the cabin. I waved at her to indicate we would be along in a few minutes. Sybil and Rick were squatting on the sand, rolling up their tent. Rick had a joint between his lips.

“I fixed y’all sandwiches from our wieners,” Sybil said. “They’re a little bit sandy, though.”

“That’s nice of you, but I want y’all to come into the house and check out a room we found,” I said.

“Is someone home there?” she replied. “I don’t know if we should go in there if nobody’s home.”

“Have you been in that house before, Miss Sybil?” I asked.

“No, sir,” she replied.

I continued to look directly into her face.

“Maybe once,” she said.

“Who’d you see in there?” I asked.

“Just that old man. He was nice. He said I looked like a model, somebody named Twiggy.”

“Did y’all meet somebody named Angel or Angelle?” I said.

“That last one, I heard that name.”

“You heard the name Angelle?” I said.

“Yeah, I think I did, but with all kinds of shit happening, I mean, you can’t always be sure.”

“I’m not reading you, Miss Sybil. What kind of shit?”

“We were inside the house once, talking to the old dude,” Rick said, his pupils dilated into big drops of black ink. “Then somebody started screaming. The old guy said it was a crazy person he was taking care of. We hauled ass. I mean, fuck, man, who wants to have lunch with crazy people screaming and probably throwing food and shit at the table? We didn’t come all the way out here for that.”

“So why’d y’all come back?” I said.

“He gave us some crystal,” Sybil said.

“That’s why you had a swastika tattooed on your arm?” I said. “You wanted to score meth from the old man?”