"Best let us do our job, Robicheaux," he replied.
"What's the beef? "I said.
"Impersonating a police officer," he replied.
"That's bogus. He never claimed to be a police officer."
"Work it out at the jail. We just deliver the freight," he said.
It should have all ended there, a routine roust to appease a rich man, a discussion down at the sheriff's department, maybe a few hours in a holding cell, at worst an appearance in morning court where the charge would be kicked.
But one of the white deputies, an angry man with corded veins in his neck who had been fired in another parish for abusing a prisoner, had pushed Clete into a search position against the hood of the cruiser and was running his hands down Clete's left leg.
"Ease up, my man," Clete said.
"Close your mouth," the deputy said.
"That's a slapjack in my right hand pocket. I'm not carrying," Clete said, twisting around.
"I told you to shut up," the deputy said, and slapped Clete's utility cap off his head.
Clete ripped his elbow into the deputy's face, breaking his nose, then caught him in the jaw with a right hook that lifted him off the ground and knocked him the full length of the cruiser.
"Ouch," he said, trying to shake the pain out of his hand, trying to step back from his own misdeed.
Then they were on him.
CHAPTER 25
It rained at sunrise and kept raining through the morning. Clete was in jail and Father Jimmie had not returned to the house. Because it was Saturday Helen was at home. I called her and told her how it had gone south at Castille Lejeune's golf and tennis club.
"What did you plan to accomplish over there?" she said.
"Not sure."
"I am. You wanted to provoke a confrontation and blow pieces of Castille Lejeune all over the golf tee."
"That's a little strong."
I thought she was going to give it to me but she didn't. "As far as you know, Guillot didn't try to call Lejeune after you went to Guillot's house?" she said.
"When we went to Lejeune's house, the man cleaning up said nobody had called except his wife. She wanted him to pick up a loaf of bread."
"Maybe Lejeune is not the guy we should be after."
"He's the guy."
"I think I'm going to do something more rewarding today, like have a conversation with a pile of bricks," she said.
"Did you just hear something on the line?"
"Hear what?"
"A friend in New Orleans said I probably have a federal tap on my phone."
"Have a nice weekend, Dave."
Clete was in serious trouble and would not be able to bond out of jail until he was arraigned Monday morning. The impersonation beef was a gray area. A person does not have to specifically claim to be a police officer in order to be guilty of impersonating one. He simply has to give the impression of being one. But Clete had licensed PI. status and ironically, as an employee of a bail bond service, possessed legal powers that no law officer did, namely, he could cross state lines and even break into residences without a warrant to arrest a bail skip who was a fugitive from a court proceeding.
The assault-and-battery beef was another matter. With luck and some finesse, an expensive, politically connected lawyer could probably get the charge kicked down to resisting. But it wasn't going to be easy. Clete's reputation for violence, destruction of property, and general anarchy was scorched into the landscape all the way across southern Louisiana. His enemies had longed for the day he would load the gun for them. Now I had helped him do it.
I went to Baron's Health Club, worked out with free weights, then sat for a half hour in the steam room. When I came back outside it was still raining, harder than before, litter floating in the ditches that bordered the streets. I went to an afternoon AA. meeting above the Methodist church by the railroad tracks and listened to a man talk about nightmares he still had from the Vietnam War. His face was seamed, unshaved, his body flaccid, his clothes mismatched. He had been eighty-sixed out of every bar in the parish and he had been put out of two V.A. alcoholic treatment programs. He began to talk about a massacre of innocent persons inside a free-fire zone.
I couldn't listen to it. I left the meeting and drove home. When I pulled into the driveway my yard was flooded halfway to the gallery and Theodosha Flannigan was waiting for me by the door, a rain-spotted scarf tied on her head, her face filled with consternation. Snuggs was turning in circles around her ankles.
"I know all about last night," she said.
"Not a good day for it, Theo," I said, unlocking the door.
I went in the house without inviting her inside, but she followed me anyway, Snuggs racing past us toward the food bowl in the kitchen.
"My father didn't molest me. It was a black man. That's why I was seeing Dr. Bernstine," she said.
"Don't do this, Theo."
"When I was a little girl a black convict got in our house and hurt me. He was killed running down toward the bayou."
"Killed by whom?"
"A prison guard. He worked at the labor camp. He and the other guards buried him in back. I saw the bones when the fish pond was dug. They were sticking out of the dirt in a front-end loader."
"You've been fed a lie."
"It's the truth. I went over every detail of it with my father."
"Bernstine told you your father raped or molested you, didn't he?"
"It doesn't matter. I know what happened."
"When you first told me about Bernstine's death, you said you thought you had something to do with it."
"I was confused. I know the truth now."
I gave up. Through the kitchen window I could see steam rising off the bayou in the rain. Theodosha picked up Snuggs, set him on the counter, and rubbed her hand down his back. "Merchie is leaving me," she said.
"That's too bad."
"We're not good for each other. We never were. I'm too messed up and he's too ambitious."
"I have some things to do today, Theo."
I could hear an oak branch slapping against the side of the house, water rushing out of a gutter into the drive.
"We had fun together, didn't we?" she said.
"Yeah, sure," I replied.
"Know why we're alike?"
"No."
"We both live in the cities of the dead. We don't belong with other people."
"That's not true. Why did you use that term?" I said, my heart quickening.
But she didn't answer. She lifted up Snuggs and set him back down on the floor, then touched me on both cheeks and kissed me on the mouth. "So long, baby. I never told you this, but you're the only man I ever slept with and dreamed about later," she said.
She went out the front door, letting the screen slam behind her, then ran for her car. I had to force myself not to go after her.
I lay down on my bedspread, with my arm across my eyes, and listened to the rain on the roof. I drifted off to sleep and suddenly saw an image out of my past, one that had no catalyst other than perhaps the story told by the war veteran at the noon AA. meeting.-I saw the members of my platoon marching at night through a rain forest that had been denuded by napalm. Their faces and uniforms and steel pots, even the green sweat towels draped over their heads like monk's cowls, were gray with ash. They cast no shadows and made no sound as they marched and their eyes were all possessed by the strange non-human look that soldiers call the thousand-yard stare.
I sat straight up in my bed, my throat choking.
The phone was ringing in the kitchen. I went to the counter and picked it up, the dream still more real than the world around me. "Hello?" I said.
"Is Father Dolan there?"
"Coll?"
"Sorry to be a nuisance, Mr. Robicheaux. I just wanted to pass on something to Father Dolan."