Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

I looked at my watch. Clete's arraignment was at 11:00 A.M. I wrote a note for Donna Parks, included my cell phone number on it, and stuck the note inside the grill on the front screen. Eventually I

would have to deal with her, but it would be easier to do by phone than in person. I put Snuggs on the back porch, slipped my checkbook in my pocket, and started out the door, just as Merchie Flannigan pulled into the driveway, blocking my truck. He worked his way around the puddles in the yard and stepped up on the gallery, raking back his long, white-gold hair with his fingers.

"Hang on, old buddy. Need to clear up my remarks to you when you came by the house," he said.

"I'm in a hurry, Merchie," I said.

"Let's face it. I was jealous. Theo and I haven't had the best marriage. You said I was out of line. You were right." He extended his hand, his jaw square, like an imitation of an athletic, educated, country club millionaire, one he had probably seen on a movie screen as a child and had spent a lifetime trying to become.

I didn't take his hand. "I think you're here covering your wife's ass. Will Guillot got popped and the cops are going to be taking a hard look at his enterprises. I believe Theo is part of a porn operation in New Orleans," I said.

The smile died on his face. "You're actually serious? You believe Theo is involved with pornography?" he said.

"The word is she wrote scripts for Fat Sammy Figorelli. Where was she the night the daiquiri store operator got shot?"

He slipped his hands into his pockets and looked at the rain falling through the live oaks onto the street, as though any conversation with me was useless and the problem was mine, not his. "Theo and I are taking a cruise to the Islands. I came by here to do the right thing. But I can see it was a mistake."

"Where'd it go wrong for you, partner?"

"Wrong about what?" he said.

"You were Jumpin' Merchie Flannigan, a stand-up kid from the Iberville who did the crime and stacked the time. Why'd you become a hump for a bum like Castille Lejeune?"

The skin of his face seemed to crinkle, like a sheet of yellow paper held against a hot light bulb. He raked his hair back over his head again and started to speak, his eyes tangled with thoughts I could only guess at, then stepped off the gallery and walked through a water puddle to his Mercedes.

I headed down the four-lane toward Franklin and five miles outside New Iberia felt a front tire on my pickup go soft and begin to wobble. I pulled to the shoulder and changed the tire in the rain. It was almost 11:30 when I got to the St. Mary Parish Courthouse. Across the street I saw the restored pink Cadillac I had seen in City Park the previous night. A curious black man holding an umbrella was bent down by the driver's window, admiring the interior.

"Do you know who owns this?" I asked.

"A man who got a lot of money," he replied.

I went inside the courthouse and peeled off my raincoat in front of a coffee stand run by a blind man. I had no way of knowing the amount of Clete's bail, but obviously it would be high, and the 10 percent bondsman's fee would probably clean out my checking account and part of my savings. Of course, my paying a bondsman's fee was predicated on the assumption a local bondsman would be willing to write a bond on Clete, whose past record included fleeing the United States on a murder warrant.

"You want a cup of coffee, Dave?" the blind man behind the counter said.

"Yeah, sure, Walter," I said, distracted by a brown-haired little girl, no older than six or seven, sitting on a bench by the courtroom entrance. A small teddy bear, a red ribbon with a silver bell on it tied around the neck, was perched on her lap. Where had I seen her before? Then I remembered, with a rush of shame. It had been at Gunner Ardoin's house, on the morning I had rousted him last fall, chambering a round in the .45, sticking it in his face, causing him to soil himself while his little girl watched.

I walked up to her, my raincoat slung over my arm. "Is your daddy here?" I asked.

"He's inside the big room," she replied.

"What's he doin'there?"

"Helping Clete."

"You remember me?" I asked.

"You're the man who pointed a gun at my daddy."

I went inside the courtroom just as the morning's proceedings were breaking up. Clete was talking to a local attorney while a deputy put cuffs on him for his trip back to jail. The judge left the room for his chambers, and among the people filing out in the corridor I saw Gunner Ardoin.

"Clete's going back to lock-up?" I said.

"Just till he bonds out," Gunner said.

"How much is his bond?"

"Fifty grand," he said.