“It better not be about Lizard Man.”
“He may be looking for you, Leslie Rosenberg says.”
“If you see him before I do, tell him to get lost.”
“Maybe he wants your forgiveness.”
“Tell him I’ll meet him on Mars in about five hundred years or so. Dave, I still feel like we’re inside a nightmare of some kind.”
“How’s your weather?” I said.
“What’s the name of that song you like by John Fogerty?”
“ ‘Bad Moon Rising’?”
“That’s the weather in Terrebonne Parish.”
The first person I saw the next morning at the department was Carroll LeBlanc. “Where you going in such a hurry, Robo?”
“Taking a ride over to Terrebonne.”
“Need some help?”
I waited while two uniformed deputies walked past us, then said, “Mark Shondell is making a move.”
“Yeah?” LeBlanc said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“How do you know?”
“Clete Purcel told me.”
“Purcel should know.”
“Say again?”
“He’s paid a lot of dues. He’s been around.”
I started to walk away.
“A move how?” Carroll said.
“I’m not sure.”
“I do something wrong?” he asked.
“No.”
“Because you don’t sound eager to have me along.”
“I’m going to talk to Helen right now. Why don’t you join us?”
“Thanks,” he said. “Sorry again for yesterday. I mean that pity-pot stuff. You know how—”
We were at the stairwell. “After you,” I said.
We went into Helen’s office. She was looking out the window. The sky had turned yellow, and birds were rising from the trees in the park. I told her about Clete’s phone call and his belief that Mark Shondell might be holding Johnny and Isolde.
“That’s for the FBI, Pops,” she said.
“I bet they’d love getting in on this,” I replied. “Want me to tell them we’re dealing with a guy from the year 1600? Or the possibility that Mark Shondell is in league with evil forces?”
“You lay off that voodoo dog shit, Dave,” she said.
“Helen, we can’t rule anything out,” Carroll said. “There’s something weird going on. Look at the sky. It’s like hurricane season in August.”
“End of discussion,” she said. “How long do you need to be in Terrebonne?”
“Two or three days, maybe,” I said.
“The media better not hear any of this,” she said. “You copy?”
I didn’t reply.
“Yes, ma’am, we copy,” Carroll said.
She waited for me to answer. “Dave?”
“Yeah?” I said.
She was fiddling with some papers on her desk, her head down. She looked up, obviously tired. “I get on your case because I can’t begin to guess what we’re dealing with. Don’t get mad at me. And don’t get hurt in Terrebonne.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
I have to pause at this juncture and say something of a personal nature. Death’s a motherfucker. We already know that. However, I was about to learn it comes in many forms, and that one’s own transition might not happen at a specific time but instead may take place at several different stops on one’s journey; in effect, there are no parallel lines, only the swirling vortex of which we’re a tiny part. I was also about to learn that time and historical sequence are relative, and that those who deny the existence of an aperture in the dimension are a fond and foolish group. Call it madness, but I believe the sulfurous sky we witnessed that day was the backdrop of a drama about good and evil, just as the wine-dark waves at the amusement pier in Texas were the same as those Homer described three thousand years ago.
The rain began falling as I turned south at Houma and drove down to the salt. Carroll had dozed off, his head on his chest. He looked older, tired, the line of moles blacker under his left eye. His body shook suddenly, and he made a sound down in his throat but didn’t open his eyes. In my career I’ve known three cops who ate their gun. Others did it a day at a time with pills and booze. Carroll had all the signs of a cop about to burn his kite.
We drove down a cracked stretch of asphalt road through miles of wetlands and sawgrass and palmettos and a swamp in which the algae was so thick it undulated with the tide like a milky-green blanket. In the distance I could see a crossroads and a small motel and a café and slips that had been cut for both sailboats and cabin cruisers, but much of the coastline had been eroded by saline intrusion, and the docks and shelters and wooden walks had been abandoned.
I went over a rise in the road and hit a pothole. Carroll’s head jerked up. “We there?”
“This is it,” I said.
He rubbed his face. “I had a dream. Did I say something?”
“No.”
“I was climbing this ladder up to a real high place. I had my daughter with me and a dog I had when I was a kid. I had to drop one of them.”
“Your daughter is going to be okay, Carroll.”
“She never had a mother. That’s the problem.”
“There’s Clete’s motel,” I said.
“He’s quite a guy, huh? The Navy Cross and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam?”
“Something like that. He doesn’t talk about it.”
“Be honest with me on something. Were you or Purcel ever tempted to take juice at NOPD?”
“I’m going to let that one slide, Carroll.”
“I didn’t mean to rumple your threads. Geez.”
I could see a few houses on stilts out on the bay. Waves full of sand were sliding into the sawgrass. In a few years most of this area would be washed away.
“When we get back to New Iberia, you and I need to have a talk,” I said.
I pulled up to the motel just as Clete stepped out of a room, his Caddy parked by the door. He was wearing a suit and tie and his porkpie hat. “Big mon,” he said.
The three of us sat in an isolated booth at the back of the motel café. Clete and I ordered coffee. Carroll ordered a beer. Clete’s eyes met mine, then he looked out the window at four brown pelicans flying in formation just above the surf.
“Here’s what I got,” Clete said. “Shondell has a fuck pad on stilts about a mile down the levee. A pontoon plane has been there a couple of times. Shondell has some muscle on a tugboat close by. My insider guy thinks he saw Johnny Shondell.”
“Who’s your insider guy?” I asked.
Clete glanced at Carroll. “A guy who owes me some favors.”
Carroll caught it. “You don’t trust me?” he said, trying to smile.
“A guy who does airboat rides,” Clete said.
“You saw Adonis and Penelope in a restaurant in Houma?” I said.
“They ignored me. Maybe they didn’t even notice me,” Clete said. He scratched his forehead and looked around. “I mentioned the muscle on the tugboat. I had my binoculars on it. I saw a couple of women. I also saw a guy who worked with Delmer Pickins. The guy’s a sadist. Maybe that fuck pad is more than just a fuck pad.”
“Maybe your imagination is running away with you,” Carroll said.
Clete’s eyes locked on Carroll’s. “Could be.”
“You think Isolde is in there?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Clete said.
“How long you been scoping the place?” Carroll said. He took a sip from his beer.
“What difference does it make?” Clete said.
“I was just asking,” Carroll said.
“I got to take a drain,” Clete said. He looked at me. “See you outside, Dave.”
A few minutes later, I asked Carroll to take our unmarked car up the road, where he could get cell phone service, and check in with Helen. “Sure,” he said. “Sorry about ordering that beer. It helps calm my stomach.”