I got a manilla envelope from the reference librarian and began slipping the printouts of the photos inside it. Then a detail in the last photo caught my eye and made me pull it back out. The photo was far less dramatic than the others and showed eight or nine convicts in denims, not stripes, plowing under cane stubble with mules in a sugarcane field that sloped down to a bayou.
An obese white man in a straw hat, with a dough like face and a shotgun propped on his thigh, was watching them from atop his horse. Junior was staring up at the gun bull a hoe at an odd angle over his shoulder, his face puzzled, as though he had just been told something that made no sense. It was wintertime and the bayou was low, the roots of the cypress trees exposed along the banks. A stump fire was burning on the edge of the field, the smoke drifting like a dirty smudge across the sun. Across the bayou, on the edge of the picture, was the back of a Victorian home that had obviously been built to resemble a steamboat.
The home of Castille Lejeune.
A half hour later I rang the bell on his front porch, without having called or gone through his corporate office in Lafayette. "I thought you might be interested in this photo. According to the cut line on it, it was taken in 1953," I said when he opened the door.
His eyes dropped to the photo briefly but he did not take it from my hand. "Mr. Robicheaux, how nice of you to drop by," he said.
"That's Junior Crudup in the picture, Mr. Lejeune. That's your house in the background."
He wore slacks and a tie and a blue sweater with buttons on it. His eyes fixed on mine, twinkling. "I'm sure what you say is true. But the burning issue here seems to escape me."
"You said you had no memory of getting Crudup off the levee gang. But here he is, harrowing your sugarcane field across the bayou from your house."
He tried to suppress a laugh. "Let's see if I understand. You've driven out here to talk to me about a photo taken of convicts almost fifty years ago?"
"Did you rent convict labor back then, Mr. Lejeune?"
"The people who ran my family's agricultural interests might have. I don't remember." He looked at his wristwatch and raised his eyebrows. "Oh heavens, I'm supposed to leave for New Orleans shortly."
His patrician insouciance, his disingenuousness and contempt for the truth were part of a lifelong attitude on which there were no handles. I could feel words breaking loose in my throat that I didn't want to say. "You received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Harry Truman, did you?"
"Do you wish me to confirm what you already know, or do you wish to ask me a meaningful question?" he said, his eyes gazing benignly out on the flowers and palm and oak trees in his yard.
I could feel my left hand opening and closing against my thigh, the veins tightening in the side of my head. Don't get into this, I heard a voice say in the back of my mind. "I met Audie Murphy once. It was a great honor," I said.
"I'm happy to hear that," he said.
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Lejeune," I said.
He made no reply. Even though I had managed to control my anger I felt like a fool, one of that great army of salaried public servants who were treated by the very rich as doormen and security guards. I got in my cruiser and began backing down the long, shaded driveway to the state road, the sun flashing through the canopy like the reflection off a heliograph. When I reached the entrance to the state road I had to wait for a long line of cane trucks to pass, the wagon beds swaying heavily with the enormous loads they carried. In the meantime Castille Lejeune had gotten into his Oldsmobile and was driving toward me.
I got out of the cruiser and walked to his car, then waited for him to roll down the window. "I'm sorry, I forgot to leave you a business card," I said, and placed it on his dashboard. "I think something real bad happened to Junior Crudup. Please be advised there's no statute of limitation on murder in the state of Louisiana, Mr. Lejeune. By the way, it was an honor to meet Audie Murphy because he seemed to be both a patriot and a straight-up guy who didn't try to get by on bullshit."
On Tuesday morning Helen called me into her office. "I just got off the phone with Castille Lejeune's attorney. He says you made a nasty accusation yesterday at Lejeune's house," she said.
"News to me."
"You think you can jam a guy like Castille Lejeune?"
"He's lying about Junior Crudup."
"The R&B convict again?"
"Right."
"How about we concentrate on crimes in this century? Starting with the homicide at the daiquiri store."
"No matter what avenue we take, I think it's going to lead back to Lejeune."
"Maybe because you want it to."
"Say again?"
"You hate rich people, Dave. You can't wait to get into it with them."
"No, I just don't like liars."
"Can you do me a favor?"
"What?"
"Go somewhere else. Now."
That afternoon Father Jimmie Dolan was at a basketball practice in a Catholic high school gymnasium not far from his church, when his cell phone rang inside his gym bag. "Father Dolan," he said into the receiver.
"I need only a quick word. Don't be hanging up on me now," the caller said.
"How did you get this number?"
"Told the secretary at the rectory I was your grandfather. I need something from you."
"What could I possibly have that you want?"
"I was paid to take out this fellow Ardoin. But I'm not going to do it."
"You didn't answer my question. What is it you want?"
"There's an open contract on me, Father. That means I'm anybody's fuck. But they messed with the wrong fellow, you get my drift?"
"No, and I don't want to."
"I'm going to loosen some people's earthly ties."
Father Jimmie stared listlessly across the gym at the boys who were taking turns laying up shots under the basket. He had a sore throat and fever and wanted nothing else in life at that moment except a glass of whiskey and a warm bed to lie down in.
"You know what I'm asking from you, don't you?" Max Coll said.
"I think you want absolution for your sins, Max. But you can't have it. Not over the phone, certainly. And perhaps never, not unless you give up your violent ways."
The cell phone was silent.
"Did you hear me?" Father Jimmie said.
"I think I've misjudged you. Under it all you're a hard-nosed bastard of a kind I remember only too well, one whose cassock and collar come before his humanity. Shite if you're not a disappointment to me."
The transmission went dead. Father Jimmie's cheek stung as though it had been slapped.
CHAPTER 9
That evening I fixed a bowl of milk for a stray cat and watched him drink it on the gallery. He was a hard-bodied, short-haired, un-neutered white cat with chewed ears and pink claw scars inside his coat. His tail was as thick as a broom handle. When I petted him he looked at me blankly, then went back to his milk.
Theodosha Flannigan pulled her Lexus into the driveway and parked under the pecan tree by the side of the house. A guitar in an expensive case was propped up in the backseat. She wore loafers and a blue terry cloth blouse and jeans low on her hips so they exposed her stomach. The wind gusted and leaves swirled around her, and a single band of dusky sunlight cut across her face.
"What's the name of your little friend?" she asked, sitting down on a step next to the cat.
"He didn't say," I replied.
She picked the cat up in her arms and kissed him on top of his head. Then she flipped him on his back and set him in the crevice formed by her thighs and straightened his body by pulling his tail as though it were a strap on a piece of luggage. She scratched him between his ears and under his chin. "We're going to call him Mr. Adorable. No, we're going to call him Snuggs," she said.