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heart-to-heart. He probably appreciated it."
Clete tried to make light of his encounter with Raphael Chalons, but he and I
had reached an age when cynicism and humor become poor surrogates for the rage
we feel when our lives are treated with disregard. I bought him lunch at
Victor's Cafeteria, then drove up the bayou to the home of Raphael Chalons.
I had always wanted to dismiss him as a vestigial reminder of the old
oligarchy  imperious, pragmatic, amoral when necessity demanded it, casual if
not cavalier regarding the hardship imposed by his society on the backs of
blacks and poor whites. He may have been partially all those things but I also
believed he was a far more complex man.
He was a strict traditionalist, even to the point of refusing to air-condition
his home. But during the Civil Rights era, when a group of black men entered
the clubhouse at the public golf course and were ignored by the waiters, who
were also black and feared for their jobs, Chalons sat at their table and told
the manager to put their drinks on his tab. After that one seminal incident,
black golfers never had trouble at our public links or clubhouse again.
He became the legal guardian of orphaned children and paid for their
education. I suspected he would not use profane language or be personally
abusive at gunpoint. In his own mind the estate he had inherited was a votive
trust, and those who would impose their way upon it risked his wrath.
Sometimes I wondered if Raphael Chalons heard the horns blowing along the road
to Roncevaux.
The rumors that he did business with the Giacanos were I'm sure true. To what
degree was up for debate. In the state of Louisiana, systemic venality is a
given. The state's culture, mind-set, religious attitudes, and economics are
no different from those of a Caribbean nation. The person who believes he can
rise to a position of wealth and power in the state of Louisiana and not do
business with the devil probably knows nothing about the devil and even less
about Louisiana. Chalons was an enigma, a protean creation bound more to the
past than the present, and in some ways a mirror of us all. But the best
description I ever heard of Chalons came from his own attorney, who once told
me, "Raphael hates lawyers, keeps all his records in his own head, and is a
ruthless sonofabitch. But by God he always keeps his word."
I parked my cruiser in the spangled shade of a live oak and was told by a
yardman that Raphael Chalons was in the back, down by the bayou, walking his
dog. I went around the side of the building, past slave quarters that were
used to store baled hay and a cistern that had caved into sticks on its brick
foundation. Down the slope, in the sunlight, I saw Raphael Chalons throwing a
stick for his pet Rottweiler to fetch. As I approached him, he snapped his
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fingers at the dog and clipped a leash onto its collar, then stepped on the
end of the leash with one foot.
He was a tall, ascetic-looking man, with shiny black hair and a scrolled and
waxed mustache, like the one worn by the legendary Confederate naval officer
Raphael Sims. His hands had the long, tapered quality of a surgeon's, deeply
tanned on the backs, corded with blue veins.
I told him I had been sent by the sheriff to investigate his complaint
regarding Clete Purcel. "Did he bother or threaten you in some way, sir?" I
asked.
"You're not patronizing me, are you, Mr. Robicheaux?"
"Sheriff Soileau doesn't want someone from our parish threatening people, if
in fact that was the case," I replied.
I saw the veiled challenge to his veracity register in his eyes. "If he had
threatened me, I would have run him off with a shotgun. Did he offend me? Yes,
he did. He made an insinuation an employee of mine put a contract on his life.
But I have the feeling you know this man."
"I do."
"So there's a personal agenda at work here?"
"No," I replied, my eyes shifting off his.
"My son thinks you're trying to extract information from my daughter about our
family. Is that your purpose, Mr. Robicheaux, besides looking out for your
friend's interests?"
His tone had become pointed, slightly heated, and I saw the dog raise its
head, a string of slobber hanging from the side of its mouth. The dog was
heavily muscled, its hair coarse, the same black, shiny color as Chalons's,
with tan markings around its rump and ears. Chalons snapped his fingers and
the dog got down flat on the ground and rested its head on its paws.
"There's a hit man in New Orleans by the name of Jericho Johnny Wineburger," I
said. "His specialty is one in the mouth, one in the forehead, and one in the
ear. He once told me, 'When I pop 'em, I shut all their motors down. Forget
life support. They're cold meat when they bounce off the pavement.' That's the
guy a cop by the name of Billy Joe Pitts was trying to sic on my friend Clete
Purcel."
I could see the offensive nature of my language and its implication climb into
his face. He studied the bayou and a powerboat splitting a long yellow trough
down its center. Then he bent over and unsnapped the leash from the dog's
collar. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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