Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

The cabin was not over twenty yards ahead of us. It had been built of cypress planks and chinked with a mixture of mud and moss before the War Between the States, then restored and reroofed with corrugated tin and outfitted with an air conditioner for the guests of Croix du Sud. I had often wondered if the guests had any idea of the deprivation that characterized the lives of the historical occupants. I had the feeling they did not dwell upon questions of that sort and probably would be bored and offended if they were ever questioned on the subject.

Then a strange occurrence took place, maybe one that was the result of a cerebral accident inside my head. Or maybe I experienced one of the occasions when we glimpse through the dimension and see the people to whom we thought we had said good-bye forever. Inside an envelope of cool fire, right on the bank of the bayou, like the flame of a giant votive candle, I saw my mother, Alafair Mae Guillory, and my father, Big Aldous Robicheaux, looking at me. She wore the pale blue suit and the pillbox hat with the stiff veil she had always been so proud of, and Big Aldous was wearing his tin hat and hobnailed work boots and freshly laundered and starched PayDay overalls, his arms covered with hair as thick as a simian’s. At first I thought my parents were smiling at me, but they weren’t. Both were waving in a cautionary way, their mouths opening and closing without making any sound, their faces stretched out of shape with alarm.

That was when I saw Pierre Dupree walk straight at me from behind a tree, either a .32 or .25 semi-auto in his left hand, aiming into my face, his chin lifted in the air, as though even in killing someone, he could not give up the arrogant demeanor that seemed to be his birthright.

“At three o’clock, Dave!” I heard Clete shout.

I lifted the shotgun and fired, but I was too late. I saw the muzzle flash of the semi-auto like jagged fire leaping off a spark plug, but I didn’t hear the report. Instead, I felt a pain high up on my cheek, similar to a heavy-handed slap that comes out of nowhere.

The burst from my shotgun had not only gone wild; there had been dirt in the muzzle, and the barrel had exploded, splitting the steel all the way down to the pump. The buckshot in the load had ripped through the canopy, scattering leaves down upon us. I fell sideways, one arm extended like a man looking for a wall to lean against. Then I crashed to the ground.

Through a red haze, I saw Clete firing at Pierre Dupree, walking toward him, the ejected nine-millimeter casings flying into the darkness, shooting one bullet after another into Dupree’s chest and head and neck, then shooting him again at almost point-blank range as he lay dead and spread-eagled against the trunk of a live oak.

I sat up in the leaves and pushed myself against a tree trunk and tried to clear my vision and stop the ringing in my ears. Clete was squatted down in front of me, staring into my eyes, holding up my chin with one hand, his mouth moving, his words like the muted sounds of submerged rocks bumping together in a streambed.

I saw Gretchen moving toward me, then Alafair kneeling by my side, holding my head against her breast, saying something inaudible.

“I don’t know what anyone is saying,” I said.

I felt her hands touching the side of my head and stroking my eyes. Her breath was cold on my skin, and her hair smelled like leaves and pine needles. “What are you saying, Alafair? I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”

She moved in front of me so I could see her mouth. “Can you hear me now?”

“Yes.”

“I think the bullet went out the side of your cheek. I think it’s a flesh wound,” she said.

“Where are Tee Jolie and Helen?”

“We left them in the coulee,” she said. “Some guys have got the driveway blocked. There aren’t many of them left.”

For reasons I couldn’t explain, her words seemed unrelated to what was happening around us, perhaps because the eye sometimes registers danger before the brain does. Regardless, I knew that something had gone terribly wrong.

“Where’s your gun?” I said to Gretchen.

“I dropped it in the dark when I was carrying the sheriff outside,” she said.

I stared at Clete and at the gun in his hand and realized our situation had changed dramatically and unfairly, as though the fates had conspired to cheat us of what was ours and deny us the fruits of victory. The backup magazine I had given Clete had not been fully loaded, and the bolt on the Beretta was locked open, the chamber empty. I was of no help to anyone. My head was throbbing, and blood was draining down the side of my face. The trees started to spin around me, and I turned aside and vomited into the leaves.

r /> Like an ugly black-and-white film strip out of control on the projector, our collective bête noire was in our midst. He had stepped out of the slave cabin, the Prussian imperious aristocrat confronting the mongrel mix, a Walther P38 with checkered brown grips in his right hand. I can’t say that he had an amused expression, but it’s safe to say it was at least one of puzzlement. He gazed at us as he would at a collection of creatures behind a wire fence on a game farm. He glanced at the dead body of the man who may or may not have been both his son and his grandson, then back at us.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

I could hear the trees creaking in the wind and the grinding of the starter on the pontoon plane. The propeller caught for a moment, then died. The four of us stared back at him woodenly, still unsure how we had become powerless and at the mercy of a man who not only had no mercy but who took pride in his cruelty. “I see Pierre gave you a tap, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said.

“The only score that counts is the one at the bottom of the ninth,” I said. “It looks to me like your grandson or son or whatever he is had a bad night. I think he’s going to be dead for a long time.”

“Did you do that, Mr. Purcel?” Dupree said.

“I feel bad about it, actually,” Clete said. “Kind of like picking on a cerebral palsy victim.”

“Where does that leave us? Let me think,” Dupree said. “Is it true our little Jewish assassin here is your illegitimate daughter? Years ago I would have found a place for her. We spared many who were half Aryan. Did you know there were whorehouses at every one of the camps? I think that might have made a nice fit for you, Ms. Horowitz.”

Dupree was looking intently at Gretchen, a shaft of moonlight striking half of his face, the skin under one eye wrinkling. “Would you be willing to fly away with me in order to see your life spared?”

“I guess it depends on what you have in mind. Did you ever see The Mummy?” Gretchen said. “It starred Boris Karloff. If there’s a remake, I think you could do a better job than Boris. But wearing that mummy wrap on the set all day might be a problem. You seem to have a bulge around your ass. Do you have to wear adult diapers? I bet carrying around a couple of crab cakes all day is pretty uncomfortable.”

“Where’s Varina Leboeuf?” I said, trying to distract Dupree. It was not an easy task. Gretchen had gotten to him. “Is Varina on the plane?” I said. “She hates your guts, Mr. Dupree. I bet she’s going to be a loose cannon.”