Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“Yeah, we’re pretty stupid, all right, because neither Clete nor I had any idea what we stumbled into. Is my daughter alive?”

“Maybe. But I haven’t been downstairs, so I can’t say,” she replied.

“Downstairs?” I said.

“You asked for this. It’s all on you. Just the same, I feel sorry for y’all and your daughters,” she said.

“You think you can make us all disappear?” I said. “That nobody is going to know we came he

re?”

“Do you know how many convicts are buried in this yard?” she replied. “You see any monuments to them? Have you ever read any news accounts about their deaths?”

“Those men died over a hundred years ago,” I said.

“How about the eleven who died in the blowout? How about all the soldiers blown apart by IEDs so people can have cheap gas? You see a lot of national hand-wringing about them?” she said.

On the edge of my vision, I saw an erect figure walk out of the shadows. He was wearing a velvet smoking jacket and a Tyrolean hat and an immaculate white shirt. “Oh, welcome, welcome, welcome to our egalitarian heroes,” Alexis Dupree said. “I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your evening. Do you want to chat with your little friend Tee Jolie, Mr. Robicheaux? I know she’ll be happy to see you. Your daughter will be, too.”

“Get finished with this,” Varina said. She hugged her arms around herself. “I’m cold.”

The man with greased hair pushed the muzzle of his revolver into my ear. In the distance, I heard a freight train blowing down the line and thought I felt the heavy rumble of the freight and tanker cars through the earth. That was not what I felt at all. A ten-by-eight-foot square of lawn was lifting from the ground by the gazebo, like a doorway to a subterranean kingdom that even Dante could not imagine.

THE SUBSTRUCTURE OF the plantation home had been entirely reengineered. The ceiling was high and beamed with oak, the floor done with terrazzo and spread with throw rugs with Mediterranean colors and designs. But the walls were not walls; they were giant plasma screens that showed tropical sunsets and beaches dotted with palm trees and waves sliding onto beaches as white as granulated sugar. The main room contained conventional burgundy leather chairs and couches and a bar and a glass-topped table. There were other rooms in back, some with doors, some without. “Is my daughter back there?” I said.

“Perhaps,” Alexis said. “How do you like our visual display? Here, look in this side room. You seemed to admire my collection of wartime photography. Would you like to see some movie footage from the last century?”

He pushed open a door that gave onto an office. There were four separate screens on two walls, all of them showing black-and-white images of German troops razing a village, Stukas dive-bombing a city, Jewish shops being destroyed during Kristallnacht, families climbing down from boxcars, the children terrified, all of them being herded through a barbed-wire corridor into a prison camp.

“People know where we are,” I said.

“No, they don’t,” a voice said behind me.

Pierre Dupree had come out of a room in back and was combing his hair as he walked. “Friends of ours are within two feet of your wife,” he said. “One of them stole the cell phone out of her purse. You didn’t call her, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“Where’s Gretchen?” Clete said.

“Preparing herself,” Dupree said.

“For what?” Clete said.

“An excursion into the Middle Ages. We’re going to find out how much you know, Mr. Purcel, and the names of the people to whom you passed on information that isn’t your business. Believe me, before this is over, you’ll beg to give us information.”

“Get on with it, Pierre,” Varina said.

“I’ll make it easy for you. What do you want to know?” Clete said.

“Where are your files? Who have you told?” Pierre said.

“Told what?” Clete said.

“Unfortunately, that’s exactly the reaction we expected from you,” Pierre said. “Maybe you’re even telling the truth. But we have to be sure, and that’s not good news for Gretchen and Alafair.”

“You plan to kill them anyway, you motherfucker,” Clete said.

“Not necessarily. Things haven’t been that bad for Tee Jolie. Do you want to see her?” Pierre said.

“No, we don’t,” I said.