Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“I bet he will,” Gretchen said.

“You’re a nice lady,” the woman said.

And so are you, Gretchen thought, and your husband is a nice man, and your little boy has the loveliest smile on earth.

These are the things she thought, but she did not say them, nor did she steal the man and woman’s dignity by trying to give them money when she drove them to their house in a poor section of Lafayette. Inside herself, she felt cleansed in a way she could not explain, and worries about the sunrise and fear of her own memories seemed like silly pursuits that weren’t worth two seconds of her time.

Or was she fooling herself?

She wasn’t sure. But something had dramatically changed in her life. She just didn’t know why.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON DANA Magelli called me at the department. “Where’s Purcel?” he asked.

“Haven’t seen him. What’s up?” I replied.

“Last night somebody kicked the shit out of a guy named Lamont Woolsey. Know him?”

“An albino who talks like Elmer Fudd?”

“He’s missing a few teeth, so it’s hard to say who he sounds like. His face looks like a car tire ran over it. He says he doesn’t know who attacked him or why. The neighbors say a guy driving a Caddy convertible did it. A guy wearing a short-brim hat. Sound like anybody you know?”

“If I underst

and you correctly, the guy isn’t filing charges.”

“That doesn’t mean Purcel can come into New Orleans and wipe his feet on people’s faces any time he wants.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Yeah, somebody snatched Ozone Eddy Mouton and a female employee out of Eddy’s tanning parlor. Guess what. The people who saw Purcel stomp the albino’s face say a guy with orange hair was in the albino’s driveway earlier. Sound like coincidence to you?”

“Woolsey is mixed up in at least one homicide, Dana. Run him and you’ll find a blank. How many high rollers can stay off the computer?”

“You listen to me, Dave. If Ozone Eddy and his employee are found in a swamp, Clete Purcel is going to jail as a material witness, and this time I’ll make sure he stays there. By the way, when you see Purcel, tell him the Vietnamese girl was traumatized by what she saw.”

“What Vietnamese girl?”

“She works for Woolsey. Or did. Some Quaker women picked her up this morning. Her name is Maelee something.”

“That was the name of Clete’s girlfriend in Vietnam.”

“I’m not making the connection,” Dana said.

“She was a Eurasian girl who lived on a sampan. Clete wanted to marry her. The VC murdered her.”

There was silence on the phone.

“You there?” I said.

“I didn’t know that about Purcel. You think Woolsey is hooked up with intelligence people?”

“I think he has connections to corporations of some kind,” I said. “Maybe a drilling company. Maybe all of this is related to the oil blowout.”

“Keep Purcel out of the city. I’ll see what I can find out about Woolsey on this end. Why would a meltdown like Ozone Eddy be in Woolsey’s driveway?”

I didn’t have an answer. Dana was a good man who followed the rules and believed in a broken system and probably would never be recognized for the heroic and steadfast and decent police officer that he was. But dwelling on Dana’s decency would not help me with another problem I had been confronted with. Helen Soileau had just returned from Shreveport, where she had stayed almost constantly by the bedside of her half sister. I opened her office door and leaned inside. “It’s good to have you back,” I said.

She was standing behind her desk. “I want all your notes on the Jesse Leboeuf shooting,” she said.