“That’s not convincing, Dave.”
“I thought this was my only chance,” I said.
“To do what?”
“To prove he was human.”
“Because you think that may not be the case?”
“Yes,” I said.
He wiped at his chin with his thumb. “I think you did the best you could.”
“What are you not saying?” I asked.
“I’m troubled about this hooded man who has shown up in your life and Clete’s.”
“You think he’s actually an evil spirit?”
“I prefer not to,” he replied.
“Prefer?”
“Superstition has its origins in fear. Ultimately, all our problems have their origins in fear.”
“I saw the guy’s face. It looked reptilian.”
“I think this man Richetti is linked with evil forces. But they’re human, not cartoon characters out of a fable.” He held his eyes on mine. But there was a quiver in his throat.
“Thanks for listening to me,” I said.
“Don’t let them undo you. For the love of God, don’t do that.”
“Who is ‘them’?” I said.
“Take your choice,” he replied.
My next stop was at a dirt-smudged two-story stucco house with a Spanish-tile roof on the ragged end of West Main, where Carroll LeBlanc lived in solitude except when an occasional woman or two moved in and then moved out. LeBlanc was long removed from his role as an NOPD vice cop, but I always had the sense that he kept one appendage or another in the game. He answered the door bare-chested and barefoot and wearing blue jeans. Behind him, on the sunporch, I could see a young blond woman in tight white shorts and a pink blouse chewing gum and rolling a Ping-Pong ball around on a paddle.
“It’s Saturday, Robo,” LeBlanc said. “I hope this isn’t about work.”
“Yeah, it is about work. I’m dropping the dime on myself.”
“Great. Write it up. Mail it to me. Or stick it under my office door Monday morning.”
“I need to talk to you now.”
“I’m in the middle of a Ping-Pong game.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You’re bridging the generation gap?”
“That’s my daughter,” he said.
I felt my face flush. “Sorry. I’ve got to talk to you, Carroll.”
“So talk.”
“I may have shot a child.”
“The fuck you say?” His face had drained. The string of moles under his eye looked as stark as dirt on his skin.
“May I come in?” I said.
“Yeah, just keep it down. I don’t believe what you just said.”
“Believe it.”
He looked sick. I had never seen LeBlanc like this. He talked to his daughter, then motioned me into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. I gave him every detail about my confrontation with Gideon Richetti in the swamp. By the time I was finished, he was trembling.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be all right?”
“You look like you’re about to hit the deck.”
“I shot a black kid in the Desire Project when I was a rookie,” he said. “He was nine years old. That’s how I ended up in vice after I made plainclothes. Nobody wanted to partner with me.”
I looked away from the shame in his eyes. “Everybody makes mistakes.”
“Yeah, try to sell that when you’re in the barrel,” he said. “So we’re talking about blood on a stump and a piece of cloth?”
“That’s it.”
“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’? We’re going out there.”
“What for?”
“Because I don’t believe this shit.”
“What shit?” I said.
“This fucking guy from outer space or whatever.”
“Your agitation isn’t about Richetti,” I said. “What are you keeping from me, Carroll?”
“Mark Shondell has a hard-on for you. You slapped his face in public.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“I was a juicer and taking freebies and collecting for a shylock and had to find another job. Shondell smoothed the way for me. Here in New Iberia.”
“Why the favor?” I said.
He clenched his teeth and breathed through his mouth before he spoke. “The Balangie family was starting to slip. Crack was replacing all the other drugs on the street. A handful of black pukes were taking over the projects. Shondell wanted to make a move. I helped him.”
“Shondell is involved with narcotics?” I said.
“I think it was personal with him. He wanted to screw up Adonis Balangie any way he could.”
“Why are you telling me this, Carroll?”
“I wanted to help people and be a good cop. I saw a kid on a fire escape with a gun. I swear he pointed it at me. I let off three rounds. One went through a window and hit the nine-year-old in his bed. The kid on the fire escape had a BB gun.”
“You want my badge?” I said.
“No, we’re going to Henderson Swamp. You weren’t drinking, were you?”
“No.”
“I want you to UA at Iberia General.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Know why I’m going along with this stuff you just told me?”
“No.”
“I’m a loser. Just like you. Know what losers have in common? They tell the truth because they don’t have anything to lose.”
I gave a urine specimen to the lab at Iberia General, then hitched up my boat trailer and met Carroll LeBlanc two hours later at the swamp.
The sky was clear and blue and bright as silk when the bow of my boat clunked against the tupelo stump. The strip of cloth was gone, but the blood had dried in the grainy wood.
“You’re sure this is it?” LeBlanc said.
“No doubt about it,” I replied.
“There’s stumps all over here. A bird could have smacked into this one. The cloth looked like it was from the girl’s dress?”
“Yes,” I said, my stomach hollow.
“Nope, this is a scam, Robo. Somebody is trying to mess up your head.”
“I saw what I saw.”
He stood up in the boat and used his pocketknife to cut a piece of the bloodied wood from the stump. He placed it in a Ziploc bag. “We’ll check it out at the lab. I could use something to eat. You hungry?”
“You’re an okay guy, Carroll,” I said.
“Say again?”
“You’re on the square.”
“If I were, I’d hang Shondell out to dry. But I want my job.”
“He’ll burn his own kite,” I said.
“Good luck on that.”
We drove to the levee and ate crab burgers and gumbo on the dock and watched a black kid fly a kite that resembled a quivering drop of bright red blood in an otherwise immaculate sky.
Chapter Twenty
Clete had just gotten back from New Orleans and asked me to meet him on Sunday morning by the recreation building in City Park. I went to an early Mass at St. Edward’s, then drove across the drawbridge at Burke Street onto the oak-shaded serpentine lane that led to the playground and the swing sets and the jungle gyms in the park.
Clete was sitting at a picnic table, dressed as though for church, his porkpie hat crown down on the table, except he was not headed for church and was drinking from a long-neck, even though it was barely ten A.M. I sat down across from him. There were gin roses in his cheeks.
“Why’d you want to meet me here?” I asked.
“Somebody tried to creep my cottage and my office. I got to do a sweep.”
“Who’d want to bug your cottage and office?”
“For openers, that pus head Shondell.” His fingers were curled around the label on the beer bottle, his gaze unsteady, his knuckles as rough as barnacles.
“Hitting it pretty early today, aren’t you?” I said.
“It’s afternoon somewhere. I think you’re about to go in the skillet, Streak.”