Creole Belle (30 page)

“
Reds
was Warren Beatty’s best movie, better even than
Bonnie and Clyde
,” she said. “Henry Miller did a cameo in there. Did you
know he stayed here in New Iberia at that place called the Shadows? You ever see
Shampoo
? Warren Beatty is one of my all-time favorite actors, second only to James Dean.”

T
HE REPORTS ON
the denouement of Chad Patin, whose name the witnesses did not know at the time, had begun coming in to a 911 dispatcher in St. Charles Parish at 4:18
A.M
. To whatever degree the abductors were lacking in sophistication, they compensated in terms of due diligence.

At a small settlement outside Des Allemands, down toward New Orleans, a woman called in a noise complaint. She said her neighbor, who lived in a garage apartment behind an abandoned stucco house encased in dead vines and banana stalks, was having a fight with a woman. When asked how she knew this, she answered that she could hear glass and furniture breaking and someone shrieking like a woman. At least that was her impression, she added.

At 4:23
A.M
. a different caller in the same community reported a burglary in progress at the garage apartment. From his window, he said he could see three men carrying a rolled carpet down the garage apartment stairs. He said a light was attached to the power pole by the apartment, and he was certain he was watching an invasion of his neighbor’s home. Then he realized he was not watching the theft of a carpet but a far more serious crime in progress. “They’re carrying a guy wrapped up with rope. It looks like something is stuffed in his mouth. I think maybe it’s a tennis ball.”

At 4:26
A.M
. the first caller reported in again. “They just drove a SUV t’rew my li’l garden. There’s still one man out there. He’s getting something out of the back of his car. When y’all coming?”

At 4:31
A.M
. the second caller made his next report on his cell phone. So far he had not identified himself, but he did not seem to consider that a problem. “This is me,” he said. “I’m in my car and following them guys up the dirt road. I’m gonna fix their ass, me.”

“Disengage from what you’re doing, sir,” the female dispatcher said. “Do not try to stop these men. Help is on the way.”

“What’s gonna happen to that po’ man?” the caller said.

At 4:33
A.M
. the woman caller was back on the line. “The man getting something out of the back of his car? What name they got for that? The thing he was getting, I mean. Soldiers wear it on their back. He walked right up to the garage apartment and pointed it just like you do a hose. There ain’t nothing left. Even the trees are burning. The leaves are coming down on my li’l house.”

“You’re not making sense, ma’am. Unless you’re talking about a flamethrower,” the dispatcher said.

The last 911 call on the tape was from the man who had followed the abductors in his car. “They got on a white boat just sout’ of Des Allemands,” he said. “I’m standing here on the dock. They’re headed down toward the Gulf. It was a tennis ball. It’s right here by my foot. A toot’ is stuck in it, and there’s blood on the toot’. Where was y’all?”

I
HAD REPORTED
my call from Chad Patin ten seconds after the intruders broke into his garage apartment, but my best efforts had not saved him. After Helen and I finished listening to the 911 recordings transmitted to us by the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Department, she stared out her office window, her thumbs hooked in her belt. Her back looked as hard as iron against her shirt. “The guy running this operation is named Angelle?”

“Or Angel.”

“And living on an island somewhere?”

“That’s what Chad Patin said.”

“And one of his guys has a flamethrower? This stuff is from outer space. What do you think it’s really about?”

“Money. A lot of it. Drugs, prostitutes, maybe stolen or forged paintings. At least those things are part of it.”

“The perps don’t pop cops over drugs and girls and stolen property,” she replied.

“I think it has some connection to neo-Nazis.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. That’s just crazy, Dave.”

“Okay, let’s look at another angle. What is the one subject around here that nobody brings up in a negative way, that no local journalist
goes near? A subject so sensitive that people will walk away from you if they sense the wrong words are about to come out of your mouth? What enterprise could that possibly be?”

“Tell me.”

“No, you tell me,” I said.

She manufactured an expression that was meant to be dismissive. I didn’t like to look at it. It made me feel embarrassed for Helen, and it caused me to think less of her, a person I had always admired.

“You’re too hard on people, bwana,” she said. “This is a poor state with a one-resource economy. Would you really like to go back to the good old days? I don’t think any of us would like living under the old lifestyle of ‘tote that barge and lift that bale.’”

“What’s the word we’re avoiding here? What is the sacred space that none of us track our irreverent shoes into?”

“The country wants cheap gasoline. They don’t care how they get it. So the state of Louisiana is everybody’s fuck. What else do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. You just said it all. You know what this case is about, so stop pretending you don’t.”

“You’re not going to talk to me like that,” she said.

“Ask yourself why this conversation offends you. Because I insulted you or I pissed on the sacred cow.”

“Get out, Dave.”

She had never spoken to me like that, at least not in that tone. I didn’t care. I was angrier than she was. No, that’s the wrong word. I was disappointed in Helen, and I felt let down in a way I couldn’t describe. I couldn’t shake the funk I was in for the rest of the day.

T
HAT SAME AFTERNOON
, Clete Purcel sat in his swivel chair in his office and through the back window watched the rain dimple the bayou and the fog puff in clouds from under the bridge and the lights of cars crossing the steel grid. His office was housed inside a nineteenth-century two-story building constructed of soft brick, with an iron colonnade over the sidewalk and a patio in back that he had decorated with potted banana plants and a bottlebrush tree and a spool table inset with a beach umbrella under which he often ate his lunch or read his mail in the morning.

The drizzle was unrelenting, and he was confined to his office and the endless flow of squalor and chicanery that went across his desk blotter, not to mention the worm’s-eye view of the world that was the operational raison d’être of almost every client who came through his door.

With an occasional exception.

Gretchen stepped inside his office and closed the door behind her. “Little Miss Muffet would like to see you. She’s got a guy with her who looks like he has a wig stapled to his scalp,” she said. “Want me to blow them off?”

He shut and opened his eyes. “I’m trying to translate what you just said.”

“The broad at the Dupree place with the broom up her ass. The
guy didn’t introduce himself. He’s got a Roman collar on. I can tell them they need to make an appointment.”

“Varina Leboeuf is out there?”

“Who’d you think I was talking about?”

“Send her in.”

Gretchen opened her mouth wide and put her finger in it, as though trying to vomit.

“Lose the attitude,” he said.

A moment later, Varina Leboeuf came into Clete’s office, followed by a man in a black suit and lavender collar whose thick silver hair was bobbed in the style of a nineteenth-century western rancher. He had a high, shiny forehead, and turquoise eyes that were recessed in the sockets, and hands like those of a farmer who might have broken hardpan prairie with a singletree plow. His eyes stayed glued on Clete.

“Hello, Mr. Purcel,” Varina said, extending her hand. “I want to apologize for my abruptness at my father-in-law’s house. I’d had an absolutely terrible day, and I’m afraid I took it out on you and your assistant. This is Reverend Amidee Broussard. He has advised me to hire a private investigator. I understand you’re pretty good at what you do.”

“Depends on what it is,” Clete said. He had risen when she entered the room and was standing awkwardly behind his desk, wishing he had put on his sport coat, his fingertips barely touching his desk blotter, his blue-black .38 strapped across his chest in its nylon holster. “If this is about divorce work, the expense sometimes outweighs the benefits. What we used to call immorality is so common today that it doesn’t have much bearing on the financial settlement. In other words, the dirt a PI can dig up on a spouse is of little value.”

“See, you’re an honest man,” she said.

Before Clete could reply, the minister said, “Mr. Purcel, may I sit down? I’m afraid I was running to get out of the rain and got a bit winded. Age is a peculiar kind of thief. It slips up on you and steps inside your skin and is so quiet and methodical in its work that you never realize it has stolen your youth until you look into the mirror one morning and see a man you don’t recognize.”

“Would y’all like some coffee?” Clete said.

“That would be very nice,” the minister said. When he sat down, a tinge of discomfort registered in his face, as though his weight were pressing his bones against the wood of the chair.

“Are you all right?” Clete said.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said, breathing through his mouth. “What a magnificent view you have. Did you know that during the War Between the States, a Union flotilla came up the bayou and moored right at the spot by the drawbridge? The troops were turned loose on the town, mostly upon Negro women. It was a deliberate act of terrorism, just like Sherman at the burning of Atlanta.”

“I didn’t know that,” Clete said.

“Unfortunately, history books are written by the victors.” The minister’s cheeks were soft and flecked with tiny blue and red capillaries, and his mouth formed a small oval when he pronounced his
o
’s. The cadences of his speech seemed to come from another era and were almost hypnotic. “Do you know who wrote those words?”

“Adolf Hitler did,” Clete replied.

“It’s very important that you help Ms. Leboeuf. Her husband is not what he seems. He’s a fraudulent and perhaps dangerous man. I think he may have had dealings with criminals in New Orleans, men who are involved in the sale of stolen paintings. I’m not sure, so I don’t want to treat the man unjustly, but I have no doubt he wants to make Ms. Leboeuf’s life miserable.”

Varina had sat down, smoothing her dress, her gaze fixed on the rain falling on the bayou. Every few seconds, her eyes settled on Clete’s, unembarrassed, taking his measure.

“What do you base that on?” Clete asked.

“I’m Ms. Leboeuf’s spiritual adviser.” The minister hesitated. “She’s confided certain aspects of his behavior to me that normally are difficult to talk about except in a confidential setting.”

“I can speak for myself, Amidee,” Varina said.

“No, no, this was my idea. Mr. Purcel, Pierre Dupree is a dependent and infantile man. In matters of marital congress, he has the appetites of a child. If the implication has unpleasant Freudian overtones, that’s my intention. Do you understand what I’m saying, sir?”

“I don’t think I need an audiovisual, Reverend,” Clete said. “Why is Dupree a threat to Ms. Leboeuf?”

“Because he has the business instincts of a simpleton and is teetering on bankruptcy. He sees Ms. Leboeuf as the source of all his troubles and believes she’s out to cause him financial ruin. He’s a weak and frightened man, and like most frightened men, he wishes to blame his failure on his wife. Last night she went out to the Dupree home to get her dog. Pierre told her he’d had it put down.”

“The dog named Vick?” Clete said to Varina.

“Pierre said Vick had distemper,” she said. “That’s a lie. You saw him. He was fine. Either Pierre or his grandfather did something to him, maybe hurt him in some way, then had him injected. I feel so bad about Vick, I want to cry. I hate Pierre and his hypocrisy and his arrogance and his two-thousand-dollar suits and his greasy smell. I can’t stand the thought that I let him kill my dog.”

“No good comes of blaming ourselves for what other people do,” Clete said. “I understand you’re filing a civil suit against the sheriff’s department over an incident at your father’s place. The incident involved Dave Robicheaux. That creates a conflict of interest for me, Ms. Leboeuf. I’d like to help you, but in this instance, I don’t think I can.”

“I’ve already dropped the suit. It’s not worth the trouble,” she replied.

Don’t do what you’re about to do
, a voice in Clete’s head told him.

“My husband is a pervert. I will not discuss the kinds of things he has asked me to participate in,” she said. “He wasn’t drunk when he did it, either. Frankly, I feel sick at the mention of this. The fact that he’s considered a great artist locally is laughable. He has no understanding of intimacy or mutual respect inside a relationship. That’s why he studied commercial art. It has no emotion. If he ever painted what was on his mind, he’d be put in a cage.” Her eyes were moist, her small fists knotted in her lap.