A Private Cathedral

by James Lee Burke

  I saw the cautionary look on Clete’s face. “Mr. Shondell, we’re taking up too much of your time. We just need to get that girl’s situation behind us. Do you know where she is?”

  “No, I do not,” Shondell replied. “Frankly, I don’t appreciate your tone or implication, either.”

  “How about your nephew, the rock-and-roll singer?” Clete said. “Is he here’bouts?”

  “No, he is not.”

  “I heard he lived with you?” Clete said.

  “He does. I raised him.” Shondell’s gaze went away from us, then came back, as though he had gotten control of his emotions and refocused his thoughts. His profile was as sharp as tin. He poured orange juice into two glasses, then added brandy in both and handed me one, his chest rising and falling. “Please help yourself, Mr. Purcel. Cheers, Dave. You were always a good fellow. You whipped the best of the best in the Golden Gloves.”

  I wasn’t sure if he knew I was trying to live a sober life or not. Maybe he was one of those who thought alcoholics sought control of their drinking rather than abstinence. However, there was no question about his anger toward Clete. Nor was there doubt about how Mark Shondell dealt with his enemies. I set down the glass. “Mr. Shondell, I can’t believe you don’t know where your nephew is. I also can’t believe you’re not disturbed by the disappearance of the Balangie girl, particularly if she was being delivered to you.”

  He drank his glass empty and wiped his mouth with a white napkin, then dropped it on the cart. His face was gray, his eyes furious. “Have you talked to the Balangie family? Please tell me you have.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I see. You were honoring me by coming to me first about the ‘delivery’ of a seventeen-year-old girl? To me personally.” His voice started to climb. “To my home.”

  “I didn’t mention her age,” I said. “But you’re correct. She’s seventeen. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

  His jaw tightened. He paused as though counting to three in his head. He cleared his throat. “It was good of you to come by. Johnny and I had an argument. I want him to attend Tulane and study to be a physician. He wants to gyrate on a stage. So he went off in a huff. I think he has a flirtation with the Balangie girl. That’s all I know about any of this.”

  His explanation seemed plausible. Or at least that was what I wanted to believe. I was about to write off our visit when the gardener got to his feet from the flower bed and turned around. He removed his straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, then saw me staring at him and grinned. Shondell followed my gaze. “You know Marcel?”

  “Who does not know Marcel LaForchette in New Iberia?” I said.

  “The man needed a job and a little help with the parole board,” Shondell said.

  The room was quiet. Shondell looked at Clete. “Sir, do you have a reason for staring at me?”

  “LaForchette is a button man,” Clete said.

  “He’s a what?” Shondell said.

  Clete picked up the orange juice and brandy I had set down, then widened his eyes and said, “Bombs away,” and drank the glass to the bottom, letting the ice slide down his throat, his cheeks filling with color. He suppressed a burp. “I’ll be out in the car, Dave. Mr. Shondell, you’ve got quite a place here. It puts me in mind of an Erector Set. In the best way.”

  He went out the door. Shondell let his eyes rest on mine. “You need to leave my home, Dave.”

  “Sir?”

  “I won’t suffer your rudeness or your bringing that man in my home.”

  “I had a problem of conscience about the girl. That shouldn’t be hard for you to understand.”

  “Get out.”

  I rose from the leather softness of the sofa I was sitting on. Maybe I had reached an age when I was tired of restraint and being deferential to people I secretly loathed. If you have not lived in a hierarchal culture, one that reeks of hypocrisy and arrogance and entitlement, you will probably not understand a society in which you daily give homage to people whose ancestors kept your ancestors poor, uneducated, and terrified.

  “Marcel LaForchette worked for the Balangie family, who are supposedly your enemies,” I said. “Why would you bring him across the moat and into the castle? You’re too smart a man for that.”

  “Do you want me to take a quirt to you?” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  “I believe you,” I replied. “See you around. You put your foot in it, sir.”

  Inside the darkness of his eyes, I saw a flare like the ignition of a kitchen match.

  Chapter Five

  CLETE HAD A PI office in both New Iberia and the French Quarter. We drove in his pink Caddy to the motor court on East Main where he stayed when he was in New Iberia. If you wonder why we didn’t ask the Balangie family first about Isolde’s safety rather than Shondell, I’ll try to explain. The Balangies were people you didn’t get involved with, not on any level, no more than you would wish to submerge your arm in a saltwater tank loaded with jellyfish.

  Governor Huey Long, the prototype for all American demagogues, past and present, literally gave the state of Louisiana to Frank Costello. In turn, Costello gave the management of our statewide vice to an immigrant leg-breaker named Pietro Balangie, who put slot machines in every drugstore, grocery, nightclub, and saloon in South Louisiana. Did anyone object? In South Louisiana? Are you kidding?

  Some suspected that Pietro was involved in the murder of John Kennedy. His level of rage toward the Kennedys was legendary, and Robert in particular made life miserable for him. But Pietro was old-school and took his secrets to the grave.

  Clete sat on the bed in his cottage and gazed out the window at a dredge boat working its way up the bayou. “Want to take a drive?”

  “To see Adonis Balangie?” That was the son of Pietro Balangie. He was also somebody I didn’t want in my life or my head or anywhere in my vicinity.

  “We should have slipped the punch with these guys,” Clete said. “But we’re stuck with the situation now. Or at least I am.”

  “I’m not?”

  “All right, we’re both in it,” he said. “Adonis isn’t such a bad guy. I mean in terms of greaseball standards. He went to college. He doesn’t blow his nose on his napkins or anything like that.”

  Did Clete know how to say it?

  But secretly, I wondered if I was afraid of Adonis. I don’t mean in a physical way. He bothered me for other reasons. I never knew who Adonis really was. Nobody did. He had qualities. He had been a champion swimmer in high school and college and a paratrooper in the service. Like most mobsters, he was a womanizer, but he never used profanity or was vulgar or lowered himself to the level of his enemies. It was the unreadability of his eyes and his lack of emotion that gave him power. Adonis didn’t rattle.

  * * *

  THE GROUNDS OF the Balangie estate were comparatively enormous for an urban area, particularly on Lake Pontchartrain, and surrounded by brick walls and piked gates. The grass was chemical-green and without shade trees, spiked with artless statuary that had no visual unity or theme, the mansion itself a parody of Greek revival that could have been transported from Disney World. The concrete pillars on the porch were swollen in the center and resembled giant beer kegs painted with strings of English ivy. The veranda contained a refrigerator and an exercise cycle and a bed frame with a rubber-encased mattress, where the father used to lie in the afternoon with a glass of lemonade propped on his stomach, his body hair oily and slick against his sun-bronzed skin.

  The most attractive aspect of the compound was the view of the lake and the yacht club to the south and the sailboats tacking in the chop, and I wondered if Pietro, the Balangie patriarch, believed he was part of it, reborn in the New Country, safe from poverty, forgiven for the sins he committed out of necessity in the service of a capitalistic God.

  I had Adonis’s unlisted number from years ago, and I had called before we arrived. Adonis walked out on the porch before we could exit the car, wearing white slacks and sanda
ls and a long-sleeve black shirt with red flowers on it. His hair was the color of dark mahogany, combed straight back, his complexion as smooth and flawless as the skin on an olive. “Please come in,” he said.

  “What’s the haps?” Clete said.

  I thought I saw a flicker of goodwill in Adonis’s expression, but I suspected I was erring on the side of charity. Adonis weaponized silence, and this moment was not an exception. At the entranceway, Clete removed his hat and offered to take off his shoes.

  “No,” Adonis said. “Come in as you are.”

  “How have you been, Adonis?” I said.

  “My home is yours,” he said, stepping aside, letting my question hang.

  The upholstery and curtains and wallpaper were a mixture of lavender and pink and pale green, a combination I would normally associate with seasickness, all of it printed with flowers, creating the affect of a villa in southern Italy. An oil painting of Pietro Balangie and his wife hung over the mantelpiece. She wore a royal-purple brocaded coat with a white brooch on the chest and had beautiful gray-swept hair and a placid expression that could be interpreted as one of either fortitude or acceptance. Pietro wore a three-piece suit and a boutonniere and a plum-colored tie, his neck like a stump protruding from his shirt, his hair combed neatly. Pietro might have had the body of a hod carrier, but in the painting and in real life, there was no denying the regal aspect in his classical Roman features and the quiet confidence that could make ordinary businessmen tremble.

  Three bear rugs lay in a semicircle around a stone fireplace, their mouths propped open, their glass eyes staring as though in anticipation of the gas logs igniting. A half-dozen cats were lying or walking on the furniture.

  “You giving my home the once-over?” Adonis said.

  “Sorry?” I replied.

  “The decor in my home. It doesn’t meet your standards? Or maybe you don’t like cats?”

  “It’s a fine place,” I said.

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  “You asked me a question and I’m answering it,” I said. “It’s a fine home.”

  His eyes held mine. “My mother and father were proud of it. So am I. That’s why I don’t change anything about it, or invite just anybody inside it.”

  I let my eyes slip off his.

  “We appreciate your invitation,” Clete said, breaking the silence. “See, we heard maybe your daughter is missing, and we tried to help out. A couple of guys who work for Mark Shondell started a beef with us, and I ended up in the hospital. We thought you could give us a little information.”

  “Isolde is my stepdaughter,” he said. “Her father died on a mercy mission to Rwanda.”

  “Whatever,” Clete said. “She told Dave on this amusement pier over in Texas that she was being delivered to the Shondells. That’s a little weird, right? I mean the word ‘delivered.’ That’s what I would call deeply weird.”

  Adonis’s gaze was focused in neutral space. His eyes seemed to change color, as though either a great sadness or a great darkness were having its way with his soul. “Why do you feel compelled to speak of things like this to me? Are you telling me I’m irresponsible as a parent? That’s why you’ve come into my home?”

  “We treated your father with respect when we were at NOPD, Adonis,” I said. “We wouldn’t disrespect either you or your family.”

  There was a pause, a silence in which I could only guess at his thoughts, the kind of moment you remember from high school when you stepped on the wrong kid’s foot and you felt an elevator drop to the bottom of your stomach.

  “Walk with me,” he said. “I have to feed my animals. Do you know my wife?”

  “No,” I said, letting out my breath. “We need to get the issue of your stepdaughter out of the way, Adonis.”

  “You don’t wish to meet my wife?” he said.

  Clete signaled me with his eyes. “Yes, sir, I’d love to meet Ms. Balangie,” I said.

  “Call her ‘Mrs.’ She’s a little traditional. That stuff about my stepdaughter? I don’t want to hear about it. Not on any level. Are we understood?”

  I should have known better than to come to his house. Involvement in the arcane culture of the Shondell and Balangie families was like walking through cobwebs. You never got it off your skin.

  “We came here out of goodwill,” I said. “I think we need to have an understanding about that.”

  He paused again, his eyes searching my face, as though I were an object of idle curiosity. “All the courtesies of my home will be extended to you, but after you leave, I ask that you not interfere in my family’s affairs again.”

  I didn’t answer. He opened the French doors onto a patio and looked back at me. “I asked you if we’re clear on that.”

  “No, we’re not clear on anything,” I said. “Not at all.”

  He stepped out on the flagstones. The patio was canopied by a grape trellis thick with vines. Adonis’s face was patched with sunshine and shadow. “My wife insisted that she meet both of you. After I introduce her to you, our visit will be over.”

  I stepped toward him. “I’ll take one more run at it, Adonis. If somebody tried to do to my daughter what someone is doing to your stepdaughter, I’d blow him out of his socks. That means I can’t wait to get out of here. That also means I will not be rude to your wife. Would you like me to write that out in longhand? Or would you like to walk off in a more private place where we can raise the ante, got my drift?”

  “Wait here,” he said. He turned his back on me and walked down a gravel path and entered through another set of French doors.

  “Why don’t you spit in the punch bowl, Streak?” Clete said.

  “I can’t take that bastard,” I said.

  “Gee, you could have fooled me.”

  The wind shifted and a cloud moved across the sun, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. I smelled the salt spray from the lake and heard a sail flapping. A boat with two black sails was in trouble, the captain trying to gather up one that had torn from the mast.

  “Think that guy is all right?” Clete asked.

  “The lake isn’t that deep there,” I replied.

  “You ever see a boat with black sails?”

  “Not that I remember,” I said.

  I was bothered by the black sails, although I didn’t know why. Have you ever seen van Gogh’s last painting, the one in which the crows invade the perfection of the wheat field, the one that he was painting when he either shot himself or was shot accidentally by boys playing with a pistol? The boat with the black sails tipping in the wind gave me the same sense of desolation. “You okay, Dave?” Clete said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I heard footsteps behind me.

  “This is Penelope, gentlemen,” Adonis said.

  When I turned around, I saw the woman I’d heard about but never seen. She was less than medium height and kept her chin tilted up the way short people do. Her eyes were warm and attentive; a strand of auburn hair lay on her cheek. She wore a white mantilla on her head and gripped a rosary with scarlet glass beads in her pale hand. Her mouth made me think of a small purple rose, with a black mole next to it.

  I tried to remember what I had read about her. Her maiden name was Di Betto. She was from Sicily or Corsica; her family owned farmland and canneries and fishing fleets, things associated with the earth and sea. She was one of those women a photographer aches to get inside his lens, because no matter when or where he clicks the shutter, he knows he’s captured an artwork.

  She extended her hand when Adonis introduced us. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said. “Adonis says you’re among his oldest friends.”

  That was a stretch.

  “Yeah, we go back,” Clete said. “I mean to the old days.”

  “I know what it means, Mr. Purcel,” she said.

  “Sure,” he said. “I meant… I don’t know what I meant.”

  “Adonis says you’re a kind man.”

  “Me?” Clete said.

  “A
nd Mr. Robicheaux, too,” she said.

  I nodded uncommittedly and then took a chance, one I knew would cause Adonis to veil his eyes, lest we see the wrath that was the Balangie family heirloom. “We’re a bit concerned about Isolde.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “We were under the impression that she disappeared,” I said.

  “Isolde is on a trip. I spoke to her on the telephone today.”

  “I see.” I kept my gaze on her to the point of being rude. Her hand tightened on her rosary. “I guess our worries are misplaced.”

  “I hope I have set you at ease,” she said.

  “You have a chapel inside?” I said.

  “How would you know that?”

  “The mantilla,” I said, knowing I was getting too personal, turning dials on Adonis that were better left alone.

  “Penelope and I are expected in Baton Rouge,” he said. “I’m afraid we have to say goodbye.”

  “I thought the Church got rid of head-covering a long time ago,” Clete said.

  “I didn’t,” she said. She smiled, then looked up into my face, not Clete’s. “I’m very pleased to have met both of you.”

  “We’re running late,” Adonis said, his words flat, his eyes lowered. “Y’all don’t mind walking around the side of the house, do you?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “One more thing?”

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Did you know Marcel LaForchette was working for Mark Shondell?” I asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “LaForchette just got out of Huntsville. Shondell got his parole transferred to Louisiana. Actually, I was going to do that, but Shondell beat me to it.”

  “What’s your point?” Adonis said.

  “I always thought LaForchette worked for the Balangie family. Why would he go to work for the Shondells?”

  “Because LaForchette is for sale,” Adonis replied.

  “Marcel is lots of things, but a rat isn’t among them,” I said.