Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“Helen’s not the problem. Magelli called. He says you busted up Lamont Woolsey.”

“Woolsey dimed me?”

“No, the neighbors saw you kick his face in.”

“Things got a little out of control. Magelli say anything about Ozone Eddy Mouton and a broad named Connie?”

“He said Eddy and a female employee were kidnapped.”

“It gets worse. On the five o’clock news, there was a story about a pair of bodies found in the trunk of a burned car in St. Bernard Parish. One victim was male, one female. No ID yet. I screwed up real bad on this one, Streak.”

“Maybe it’s somebody else.”

“A hit like that? Even the Giacanos didn’t kill like that. It’s Woolsey.” Clete coughed and wadded up a handful of toilet paper and pressed it to his mouth. Then he compressed the paper tightly in his hand and lowered it into the wastebasket and took a drink of eggnog and brandy from the jelly glass. I sat down on the bed and pulled the wastebasket toward me. “You coughing up blood?” I said.

“No, I had a nosebleed.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Woolsey went down hard. He got off a couple of good shots. I’m fine.”

“I’m taking you to Iberia General.”

“No, you’re not. Whatever is in my chest is going to stay in my chest. Listen to me, Dave. At a certain point in your life, you accept the consequences of your choices, and you play the hand out. I’m not going to have anybody cutting on me or sticking tubes down my throat or injecting radium into my bloodstream. If I catch the bus with an eggnog and Hennessy in my hand, that’s the way it flushes.”

“Hospitals are bad, and eggnog and booze are good. Do you know how dumb that sounds?”

“That’s the only way I know how to think.”

“It’s not funny.”

He got up from his chair and took a long-sleeve scarlet silk shirt off a hanger and put it on, then sat on the side of his bed and began pulling on his socks.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Taking you and Molly and Alafair to dinner. Enjoy the day, Dave. It’s all we’ve got.”

“I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”

“We’re running out of time, big mon. I’m talking about with the Duprees and Woolsey and this phony preacher and Varina and whoever the hell else they’re mixed up with. Look at what they did to Ozone Eddy and his broad. They hate our guts. Gretchen tore Pierre Dupree apart with a blackjack. You and I have been rubbing shit in their faces from the jump. It’s a matter of time before they get even. How about those locks of hair the old man keeps in his study?”

“You’re preaching to the choir, Cletus.”

“You’re not hearing me. Helen doesn’t listen. She thinks like an administrator. Administrators don’t believe in conspiracies. If they did, they’d have to resign their jobs. That’s the problem. In the meantime, we’re waiting for Bed-Check Charlie to come through our wire and park one in our ear, if not worse.”

“What are you suggesting?”

He didn’t answer right away. He poured more brandy into his glass, swirling it, watching the eggnog turn brown before he drank it. “Burn them out.”

“You and I? Like the White League?”

“They’re going to kill us, Dave.”

“No, they won’t.”

“They almost got us in the shootout on the bayou. I dream about it every second or third night. You know what’s worst about the dream? We were supposed to die there. That paddle wheeler was real. Both of us were supposed to be on it, and that son of a bitch is still out there, waiting for us in the fog. But this time they’re going to take everybody. You, me, Alafair, Molly, and Gretchen, all of us. That’s what I see in the dream.”

I could feel a cold wind on the back of my neck. I turned around to see if the door was open, but it wasn’t.