Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux #21)

by James Lee Burke

I thought of Hitler’s arrivals, the deliberate delay, the trimotor silver-sided Junkers droning in the distance from afar and then appearing in the searchlights like a mythic winged creature descending from Olympus.

like Plotinian emanations of each other.

Plotinus's most important concept is "The One," a supreme, transcendent entity that is the source of all reality. It is described as beyond being, indivisible, and the ultimate good. According to Plotinus, everything that exists emanates from "The One" in a hierarchical manner. First, there is the Intellect, which contains the Forms (archetypes of all things). Then comes the Soul, which animates the material world.

Was he race-baiting or appealing to the xenophobia and nativism that goes back to the Irish immigration of the 1840s? Not in the mind of his audience. Jimmy was telling it like it is.

His adherents wore baseball caps and T-shirts and tennis shoes and dresses made in Thailand. They were the bravest people on earth, bar none. They got incinerated in oil-well blowouts, crippled by tongs and chains on the drill floor, and hit by lightning laying pipe in a swamp in the middle of an electric storm, and they did it all without complaint. If you wanted to win a revolution, this was the bunch to get on your side. The same could be said if you wanted to throw the Constitution into the trash can.

MAGAts

The shots were rapid, two pops, then nothing. One blew apart a vase full of flowers by Jimmy’s foot; the other hit the staff of an American flag, cutting it in half, toppling the flag on a plastic bush. Hundreds of people ducked under the seats; some ran. Jimmy didn’t move. Instead, he detached the microphone from the stand and raised his left hand in calming fashion. “It’s all right, friends. Do not panic. I’m fine. Look at me. They can’t stop us. Do you hear me? Sit down. We’re the people. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come can separate us from the love of God.” The response was thunderous, on the level of an earthquake, an exorcism of fear and even mortality itself, an affirmation that the man they had chosen was indeed the apotheosis of all that was good. I opened my badge and held it high above my head and, with Clete behind me, began working my way up the stairs on the far side of the building. The entire audience was on its feet and shouting incoherently. Down below, the spotlights glowed on Jimmy’s white suit with an iridescence just this side of ethereal.

Jesus, this was prophetic. Written in 2017, published in 2018.

Jimmy Fratianno.

Then he realized he was already there. Safe. The book written. The covers closed.

The time of day was equally wrong for big-mouth bass and sacalait and goggle-eye perch and bream, but catching fish wasn’t the issue for Clete. He had become Homer’s father, and I didn’t want to think about the travail and injury that awaited both of them.

I looked at Homer and tried to shake the train from my mind. He had put on weight, the right kind. His hair was long and straight, mahogany-colored like an Indian’s, his skin coppery, his eyes blue. I had the feeling he would be a tall boy, maybe a soldier, an underwater welder, a chopper pilot flying out to the rigs, but something out of the ordinary, something that required courage and paying dues. The restoration of his life was due to one man only, and that was Clete Purcel.

Imaginary or not, the evening had become a tribute to a moment in history that would not come aborning again.

“What can I say?” “The truth.” “White Doves at Morning is one of my best books and one of the least read. I wanted to see it on the screen. Nemo obtained the funding. If I had gotten it myself, I would have ended up dealing with the same Hollywood people he deals with. When you get off the phone with them, you want to clean your ear with baby wipes.”

He’s a fascist who’s lying to all these poor people who think he’s going to make their lives better. But you’re worried about justice for the guy who raped my wife and maybe killed some of the Jeff Davis Eight.”

THAT NIGHT THE rain came again, mixed with hail and bursts of tree-lashing wind. Clete ordered in a pizza, and he and Homer watched My Darling Clementine on Clete’s television set. At the end of the film, when Henry Fonda leaves the woman by the side of the road and rides away into the Arizona wastelands, Homer’s eyes turned wet, and he looked at Clete for an explanation, either for the film or for his emotions. “See, it’s about the fact that a guy like Wyatt Earp wouldn’t ever be able to enjoy a normal life,” Clete said. “Clementine is so beautiful,” Homer said. “You can see the love in her eyes. It’s not right to leave her just standing by the road.” “See, John Ford directed that film, Homer. He was always experimenting with light and shadow. The story is about good and evil. Even though all the Clantons are killed, Wyatt knows more of them are waiting out there in the wastelands. He’s the guy who has to keep the rest of us safe.” “So maybe he’ll come back and see Clementine again?” “You never can tell.”

Wrong choice. Three things about Clete Purcel: Since I’d first met him, he’d never once used God’s name in vain; referred to a woman in a profane way; or criticized a woman who’d dumped him, unless you counted the postcard he sent me from El Sal when he skipped the country on a murder beef and asked me to tell his ex, who’d cheated on him, that he wanted her to have the toothbrush he’d left in the bathroom.

Clete waited for Swede to thank him. It didn’t happen. “You don’t have a conflict with your chauffeur job?” “The Nightingales are flexible. Sorry, I got to boogie.” “Yeah, the sky’s about to fall. Look at me.” “Like I said—” Swede began. “No, you didn’t say anything. Your eyes are going everywhere except my face. In the meantime, you’re blowing me off. It’s called rude.” “Thanks for what you did. I got a ton of things to do. Nice seeing you.” Clete stepped in his way. “Don’t talk shit to me, Swede.” Swede looked like an animal with a limb caught in a trap. “Did you know fear smells like soiled cat litter?” Clete said. Swede almost ran through the door.

Thoughts like these are probably a form of alcoholic insanity. But on that particular Monday morning, I preferred my own madness to what I had begun to feel, as Helen and Clete did—namely, that an inchoate sickness was in our midst, and it was as palpable in the hot wetness of the dawn as the smell of lions in the street at high noon.

“Why would either Clete or I dime you, Detective?” I said. “Because I told him we’re not right for each other. It was fun and now we move on. It was nothing personal. I thought he was a sweet guy.” “Rejection is not personal. That’s wonderful.” “You’d better stay out of my life and my career,” she said. “Be assured I will.”

Clete wondered how the buried images of the Indians dying in the explosions of the satchel charges did not crack through the perfection of Nightingale’s perfect egg-shaped face, and leave it like pieces of porcelain at his feet. “Somebody tried to blow up my shit,” Clete said. “I didn’t know about that.” “If he’d pulled it off, he would have killed a young boy I take care of. That’s a big problem for me.” “Let me know if I can help. A little influence never hurts.” “The authorities usually see me as the problem. They’re often right. See, I’m going to square this on my own.” “Give ’em heck,” Nightingale said. “I love that kind of language. ‘Give ’em heck.’ ‘You betcha.’ It’s folksy.” “Let me take him out of here, Mr. Nightingale,” Wooster said. “I want to be your friend, Clete,” Nightingale said. “You know that old expression ‘I don’t have an enemy in the world’? As long as I’m alive, you’ll always have one.” Nightingale laughed. “God, you’ve got the guts of a beer-glass brawl, Purcel. Come work for me.”

Fifteen minutes passed. A line of black clouds veined with lightning had formed on the southern horizon. The chauffeur came out on the deck and propped his arms on the rail, his unbuttoned shirt swelling around him. Chester sighted and pulled the trigger. The chauffeur seemed to stiffen as though someone had touched him unexpectedly between the shoulder blades. A red flower bloomed against his shirt. He turned in a circle, his fingers splayed across his breastbone, and walked with the concentration of a tightrope performer toward the sliding door. Chester picked up the ejected shell and drove to the camp and knocked on the door. The carbine hung from his hand. Emmeline pulled the door open. Her mouth was twitching, her fingers slick with blood that was as thick as paint. “What have you done?” “Could I have a sandwich, please? I didn’t eat lunch. I need to pee-pee, too.”

FOR FIVE DAYS in August 2005, the Superdome had been shelter for more than thirty thousand people during and after Hurricane Katrina. Do not let the term “shelter” mislead you. The Dome became an introduction to hell on earth. The storm stripped off huge chunks of the roof; the power and water supply failed; toilets and urinals overflowed and layered the floors with feces. The food in the refrigerators rotted. The heat and humidity and stench caused television reporters to gag on-camera. Every inch of concrete surrounding the Dome was covered with garbage, clothing, and people sweltering under a white sun. Black people who tried to leave the area by crossing the Danziger Bridge were shot by police officers. One of those who died was a mentally disabled man.

But our excursion into the Garden of Gethsemane had slipped into history, the incompetence and cynicism and villainy of its perpetrators largely unpunished, the bravery and self-sacrifice of its heroes, such as the United States Coast Guard, largely unremembered.

The purple and green columns of light surrounding the Dome were an ode to the ancient world, a pagan display presided over by a rotund and garlanded and sybaritic man who understood his constituency’s love of shared power and empire and blood sports and the opportunity to participate and glory in them.

Prophetic again

Jimmy lifted a microphone from a stand. “Many of us take different roads in our struggle to keep our country free and pure and unsullied by the millions crossing our borders. Bobby Earl loves his country and the traditions for which our brave fighting men and woman have shed their blood. We help the poor, the immigrant who honors our laws, the destitute and downtrodden, but we do not let others rob us of our heritage and birthright. Bobby Earl devoted his life to an honorable cause, and we will not be party to the political correctness that condemns a man because he speaks his mind and practices the freedoms guaranteed him by the First Amendment.

Fascists. Happening right now.

The man used people as he would a suppository. Clete wanted to print him on a wall. But this was a fantasy, and he knew it.

Albion

Amid the meretricious decor of the casino, Nightingale’s face was suffused with the soft buttery glow of a gold coin.

I visit Molly’s grave, and I try to financially help the widow of T. J. Dartez. I sleep little, welcome each dawn, and bring Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon into the house and feed them no matter how muddy they are.