“I don’t understand,” she said.
“We were under the impression that she disappeared,” I said.
“Isolde is on a trip. I spoke to her on the telephone today.”
“I see.” I kept my gaze on her to the point of being rude. Her hand tightened on her rosary. “I guess our worries are misplaced.”
“I hope I have set you at ease,” she said.
“You have a chapel inside?” I said.
“How would you know that?”
“The mantilla,” I said, knowing I was getting too personal, turning dials on Adonis that were better left alone.
“Penelope and I are expected in Baton Rouge,” he said. “I’m afraid we have to say goodbye.”
“I thought the Church got rid of head-covering a long time ago,” Clete said.
“I didn’t,” she said. She smiled, then looked up into my face, not Clete’s. “I’m very pleased to have met both of you.”
“We’re running late,” Adonis said, his words flat, his eyes lowered. “Y’all don’t mind walking around the side of the house, do you?”
“Not at all,” I said. “One more thing?”
“Yes?” he said.
“Did you know Marcel LaForchette was working for Mark Shondell?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“LaForchette just got out of Huntsville. Shondell got his parole transferred to Louisiana. Actually, I was going to do that, but Shondell beat me to it.”
“What’s your point?” Adonis said.
“I always thought LaForchette worked for the Balangie family. Why would he go to work for the Shondells?”
“Because LaForchette is for sale,” Adonis replied.
“Marcel is lots of things, but a rat isn’t among them,” I said.
Adonis puckered his mouth. “Don’t trip on the hose. The things that hurt us are usually lying in the weeds, where we can’t see them. That’s an old Sicilian proverb.”
We drove to the French Quarter and parked Clete’s Caddy at his office and ate an early dinner at the Acme Oyster House on Iberville. We had spoken little after leaving the Balangie estate, in part because of anger and shame, whether we were willing to admit it or not. People whose wealth came from narcotics, prostitution, pornography, loan sharking, labor racketeering, and murder had eighty-sixed us as though we were low-rent ignorant flatfeet unworthy to be in their home.
The other problem we had was figuring out Penelope Balangie’s attitude about the missing girl. I had no doubt Isolde was her daughter; they had the same mysterious eyes, and they both seemed to float on their own wind stream.
While we waited for our oysters on the half shell, Clete kept tearing off bits of French bread and dropping them in a saucer of oil and vinegar.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
“Penelope Balangie’s tom-toms. For a minute or two I thought my magic twanger was shifting into overdrive.”
“Will you stop that?”
“No normal guy can see a set of bongos like that without his pole going on autopilot, so stop pretending. Before it’s over, she’ll have Adonis sticking a gun in his mouth. She’s the kind that promises you a ride, then ties your schlong to a car bumper.”
“Do you have to say everything through a bullhorn?”
“Adonis isn’t going to let anything happen to the girl. Time for us to bow out.”
“You’re right.”
He raised his eyebrows, surprised at my reaction, and adjusted the sling on his left arm. He bit his lip.
“You still have pain?” I said.
“No,” he said, obviously lying. “By the way, you got to Adonis when you told him LaForchette was working for Shondell.”
“I don’t feel too good about that,” I said.
“Quit it. He treated us like shit. What I don’t get is why a broad with money and education and tatas like that would marry a greaseball notorious for following his stiff one-eye.”
“Earlier you said he wasn’t a greaseball.”
“I said he went to college. You’re always twisting things around. You know your problem? I mean your real problem?”
“No, tell me.”
“You think you can save people from themselves. That’s why you went to see LaForchette in Huntsville.”
“That’s not why I went to see him.”
“So why did you?”
“I’ll tell you one day,” I said.
He put a chunk of bread in his mouth and chewed. “Know what?”
“What?”
“The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide are forever.”
“Until one of us gets shot.”
“So don’t make the wrong choices with the wrong broad and get us into trouble. Face it, big mon. If I wasn’t around, your life would be a toilet. Am I right or wrong? It’s not an easy job, either. Show a little gratitude.”
When we got back to the Caddy, all four tires were slashed, the taillights in the fins broken by a brick that lay on the asphalt. A note under the windshield wiper read, “This is for openers, queer-bait. I hope your arm hurts like a motherfucker. If you need a wrecker service this time of day, dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT.”
“Shondell’s PIs? I said.
“Who else?” Clete said. He crushed the note in his palm and tossed it at a sewer grate. “I should have popped both of them. How’d we get into this?”
I pretended not to hear him.
I was exhausted when I got home. My daughter, Alafair, was away, and the house creaked with wind and emptiness when I opened the bedroom window and lay down in the dark. I could hear tree frogs singing on the bayou and see the lights of the sugar mill reflected in the clouds. I closed my eyes and was soon asleep, hoping that in the morning I would free myself of the Shondells and the Balangies. But rather than find a degree of nocturnal peace, I dreamed of a dark sea on which galleons with either black or white sails slid down waves twenty feet high, the oars manned by half-naked convicts chained to the handles, foam exploding on the bows. The ships pitched with such ferocity that sometimes the oar blades struck in empty air. The expressions on the faces of the convicts could have been taken from paintings depicting the souls of the damned.
I was awakened by the phone on the kitchen counter at 2:14 A.M. I put on my slippers and went into the kitchen without turning on the light; I looked at the caller ID. I didn’t recognize the number. I answered anyway. “Hello?”
“Mr. Robicheaux?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good man. I could see it in your face.”
There was no mistaking the voice and accent. There was also no mistaking a thread of manipulation. “Ms. Balangie?”
“I’m sorry to call. I need your help to get my daughter back.”
I don’t know if my next question showed more concern for her or for me. “Are you at home?”
“No. I’m at a—”
“I don’t need to know.” I was so tired I thought my knees were about to give out. I sat in a chair and took a pencil and notepad from a drawer. “Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Give me a number I can call tomorrow.”
“You’re not going to contact Adonis, are you?”
I thought again of the dream I’d just had. What did it mean? I had no idea. “No promises about anything, Ms. Balangie. Not about your daughter. Not about you. Not about your husband. Not about anything.”
Chapter Six
My call to her at midmorning went immediately to voicemail. I left the following message: “Miss Penelope, regarding your daughter’s situation, my advice is you contact the FBI. You should also contact the state police and the sheriff’s department in New Orleans. I don’t believe I can be of any other service to you.”
I was sitting in the backyard with my cell phone, which I believed symbolized humankind’s latest attempt to control our lives and our fate. But I didn’t feel any control at all. The leaves were turning gold and red in the oak trees, rustling each time the wind scudded across the bayou’s surface. Robins that had just arrived from the north pecked in the grass, and the Teche was flowing at high tide through the pilings of the drawbridge at Burke Street. It was one of those Indian summer days in South Louisiana that is cold and warm simultaneously and makes you feel that the earth will abide forever. But on this day I felt there was a hole in my life I would never fill, an ache that had no source. Death is not a transitory or incremental presence. It swallows you whole.