My office was on the second floor of the building on the Teche. I loved walking down East Main to work, in the shadows of the massive oaks up and down the street, and picking up my mail and pouring a big cup of coffee and taking the stairs to my office and sitting behind my desk, and gazing out the window at the camellias blooming on the far side of the bayou and the urban forest that comprised City Park.
Clete had gone back to New Orleans to take care of his office on St. Louis Street in the Quarter, and I tried to concentrate on the good things in my life and let go of the things I couldn’t control. Our recent election of a sheriff was still in chaos, but in the state of Louisiana, chaos is more the norm than an anomaly. In the meantime, we were stuck with a pro tem sheriff. Guess who that was?
Carroll LeBlanc came into my office on a sun-spangled morning when God seemed in His heaven and all was right with the world. “Tell me your secret,” he said.
“About what?”
“Uptown cooze on the hoof.”
“Sorry, that went right past me.”
“This particular uptown cooze drives a maroon Ferrari. My hat is off to you, Robo, but I don’t want you dragging your private shit into the department.”
I tilted back in my chair and swiveled it so I could gaze at the bayou and the park and not look at LeBlanc. “It’s a bluebird day,” I said. “You could strike a match on the sky.”
“Do you have a hearing problem?”
“Nope, I hear just fine.”
He walked behind my desk and interdicted my line of sight. “I’m talking about Penelope Balangie, who happens to be the wife of Adonis Balangie.”
“What’s the news on Ms. Balangie?”
“She was here yesterday afternoon. Looking for you.”
That one got to me. But I kept my face empty. “You took a message?”
“I don’t take messages. I’m the sheriff.”
“I don’t know what to tell you about Penelope Balangie, Carroll. Why don’t you talk to her? Talk to Mark Shondell also. The issue is human trafficking.”
“You got something going with that bitch?”
I stood up and looked down on the bayou and the sun’s reflection wobbling under the surface. “You got a problem, bub.”
“What did you call me?”
I looked him in the face. The line of moles under his left eye resembled a string of black insects; there was dried mucus at the corner of his mouth. I could smell his deodorant. “You have sex on the brain,” I said. “Either get your ass out of my sight or get your ashes hauled. I don’t care which.”
“I can have you up on insubordination.”
“Do it.”
He wore a polyester navy blue suit that looked like it had grease in it, and a gold tie and a white dress shirt with tiny silver fleurs-de-lis. His right hand was clenching at his side. “Maybe I should pop you right here.”
“I like your shirt,” I said. “What was that about popping me?”
“I gave you a break because you’re a recovering drunk and twice a widower. When the wife of a notorious mobster comes into my department and asks about one of my detectives, I get curious.”
“I can’t blame you, Carroll. I don’t know what Ms. Balangie wants.”
“This isn’t the first time. You were seen walking with her at the Shadows.”
“You’re following me around?”
“Right or wrong, you were at the Shadows with her?”
“Yes.”
He tapped his finger on the air. “When I was in vice, I never took juice. But you hang with Clete Purcel, a guy who made a living out of it. Tell me who has the problem. I catch you playing sticky finger while you’re on the job, I’ll have you cleaning toilets.”
“You’re a heck of a guy, Carroll,” I said.
After he left the room, my head was a Mixmaster. Yes, Carroll LeBlanc was a misogynist, a homophobe, and a racist, but he saw a weakness in me that I could not deny. The mention of Penelope Balangie had caused a quickening in my heart, the kind every man remembers from his youth. For me it happened when I was seventeen and I pitched a perfect game against Lafayette in the American Legion finals at the old Brahman Bull Stadium. Fans and players alike were jumping up and down and pounding me on the back as we walked off the field, the electric lights iridescent in the sunset. But the only person in my ken was a girl from Spanish Lake waiting for me by the dugout, her heart-shaped face glowing with the lights of love and adoration, her mouth aching to be kissed.
A moment of that kind never goes away. You take it to the grave. Tell me I’m blowing smoke.
Chapter Fourteen
That same day, at 6:47 exactly, I returned to my house from Winn-Dixie and saw a Ferrari by the curb, the left rear tire on the rim, Penelope Balangie struggling with the spare. I pulled in behind her. She dropped the tire and dusted off her hands. Her face looked hot, her hair damp on her cheek. “I just discovered you have no Triple A,” she said.
“We’re purists in that regard,” I said. “As few services as possible. Let’s see if I can help.”
It seemed too much of a coincidence that her tire would go completely flat in front of my home. The air loss was the kind you associate with a sliced valve. I squatted down and ran my hand over the casing. A two-inch piece of angle iron, its edges knife-sharp, was embedded in one of the grooves.
“I had to special-order the spare,” she said. “I just noticed it’s smaller than the others. Is that going to be a problem?”
Yeah, it is. In more ways than one.
“There’s a guy in Lafayette who sells used Ferraris,” I said. “You can give him a call.”
“I can’t get service on my cell phone here.”
“Yeah, that’s another problem we have,” I said. “Miss Penelope...”
“What?” she said.
“A very nasty plainclothes named Carroll LeBlanc says you were looking for me at the department. LeBlanc would like to take my skin off. I wish you wouldn’t help him do that.”
“Would you please explain how I’m impairing your career?”
“You’re the wife of a notorious gangster. Your father-in-law may have been involved with the assassination of John Kennedy.”
“These things are not true.”
“The Balangies made their money peddling bananas?”
“There are many things you think you know about me, Mr. Robicheaux. Most of them are wrong.”
“You want me to put on your spare?”
The light was dying in the trees. Down the street, flocks of swallows were descending on the Shadows.
“If you would be so kind,” she said.
Her lipstick was purple, the mole by her mouth sensuous in a way I didn’t understand. I wanted to reach out and touch it.
“After I change your tire, I have to be somewhere else,” I said.
“As you like.”
I saw the disappointment in her face. I did not think it was feigned. “What is it you want to talk to me about?”
“Everything. That is, everything I am and everything I am not. But if you’re busy, I understand.”
Fifteen minutes later, I had the spare tire on. Because of the spare’s small size, the Ferrari was canted on one side. Our best hotels and motels were out by the four-lane, several miles away. The Ferrari would probably have problems all the way there.