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"Yes, suh, he work for Mr. Raphael. We live right up the bayou from the big house," he replied.
The little boy was many generations removed from antebellum days, but he still obeyed the same custom of referring to the main building on a plantation as "the big house," just as his antecedents had. Sister Molly asked him to go to her office and wait for her. "You've been a good helper, Tee Bleu. I'll drive you home in a little bit," she said.
"Why is he called 'Little Blue'?" I asked.
"His daddy says the umbilical cord was wrapped around his throat when he was born. I think he has some brain damage. But he's a sweet little guy. Why'd you ask?" Sister Molly said.
"I was just curious." But my answer was not an honest one. The little boy did not look like his father, the black man named Andre Bergeron. He was light-skinned, with high cheekbones, and liquid brown eyes and jet-black straight hair. He looked like Honoria Chalons.
"You asked me yesterday about a woman named Ida —" Sister Molly began.
"Ida Durbin," I said.
"Yes. Did something happen to her?"
"I think she may have been murdered many years ago."
"Was she a prostitute?"
"How did you know?" I asked.
"I didn't. But you said the Chalonses would like to forget about her. I think the Chalonses have secrets. I think one of their secrets is their involvement with prostitution. So I should have spoken up when you asked about this Durbin woman."
"What do you know about the Chalonses and prostitution, Sister?"
"Call me Molly. I grew up in Port Arthur. My father was career army and a policeman. He always said the brothels in Galveston were owned by the Chalons and Giacano families. Raphael Chalons is infamous for his sexual behavior." She stopped, obviously conflicted with herself and her own motivations. "I don't feel very comfortable with any of this, Detective Robicheaux. I think I've said too much."
"Call me Dave."
The field fell into shadow and the wind came up and wrinkled the bayou and flattened the uncut wildflowers in the field. She removed her cap and blew a wisp of hair out of one eye. Her face looked dilated in the heat. There were beads of field dirt around her neck and a throbbing insect bite on one cheek. She reminded me of a countrywoman of years ago. In a way, she reminded me of my mother.
"I think you've done a lot for poor people in this area, Sister Molly. I think you and your friends are what the Church is all about," I said, realizing I still could not bring myself to call her by her first name.
Her eyes fastened on mine and her mouth parted slightly. "Thank you," she said.
The silent moment that followed was one neither of us had chosen. I looked out at the bayou and the Spanish moss straightening in the trees along the banks. She fitted her cap back on her head and took the keys out of the ignition for no reason, then tried to reinsert them in the slot. They dropped from her fingers into the uncut grass below the tractor.
"I'm all thumbs some days," she said.
I found the keys for her and placed them in her hand, my fingertips touching the graininess of her skin and the wetness in the cup of her palm. On the way back to New Iberia, I tried to keep an empty place in the center of my mind and not think the thoughts I was thinking.
Question: What can dumb and fearful people always be counted on to do?
Answer: To try to control and manipulate everyone in their environment.
Question: What is the tactic used by these same dumb people as they try to control others?
Answer: They lie.
That night I got a call from a man out of my past, an anachronism from a more primitive time by the name of Robert Cobb, also known as Bad Texas Bob. Years ago in Louisiana, when a convict escaped from a work camp, the state police always assigned the recapture to Bad Texas Bob. Bob's lifetime record was eight for eight, all DOA. He thrived on gunsmoke and blood splatter, and if he ever experienced remorse for his deeds, I never saw any indication of it.
There used to be an all-night café in New Orleans where cops of all kinds hung out. Pimps, wiseguys, junkies, and jackrollers knew to take their business up the street. One night an out-of-town black man walked in, laid a .38 inside a folded newspaper on the counter, and told the cashier to empty the register. Bad Texas Bob climbed out a side window, waited at the entrance for the stickup man to emerge, and blew his brains all over the glass panels of the revolving door.
Over the phone Bob's voice sounded like wet sand sliding through a drainpipe. "Hear you're working a cold case on a whore gone missing," he said.
"Yeah, something like that," I said.
"Galveston, about 1958 or '59?"
