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“I noticed the religious chain and medal around your neck. Are you Catholic, Mr. Robicheaux?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Have you ever considered taking a Trappist vow of silence?” she asked.
I went inside the club to find Clete. He was standing at the far end of the bar, knocking back shots from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, chasing it with a can of Bud. The customers who had come back into the club were avoiding him, and so was the bartender.
“Pouring your own drinks these days?” I said.
“Yeah, suddenly I’m butt crust.”
“Did you see your girlfriend?”
“Alicia’s here?”
“Amerasian, likes to call county cops ‘swinging dicks’? I think that might be her.”
“She get in your face about something?”
“Let’s get you out of here before the feds arrive in force.”
“What’d Alicia say to you?”
“Nothing. I think you’re nuts, that’s all.”
“I get this from you every time I meet a new woman.”
“Yeah, I think that’s what Henry the Eighth said to his confessor once.”
“What?”
I saw a red smear on the back of Clete’s thumb. I wiped it off with a paper napkin and crumpled the napkin and dropped it on the floor. He looked dumbly at the spot I had cleaned. “He fell on top of his piece. I took it out of his hand so his weight wouldn’t discharge it,” he said.
“You did everything you had to do, Clete. You saved the girl’s life and probably Gribble’s, too. No matter how this plays out, you’re the best.”
But my words were probably too late and too few. He sat down on the bar stool like an elephant that has tired of its own performance and has decided to sit down on a small chair in the middle of the ring. I could almost hear a wheeze of air from his chest. His shot glass was half empty. There was a smear of salt on his lip from his beer chaser. His eyes looked scorched in the glow of the beer sign behind the bar. “You think the feds might use this to get me for the Sally Dio plane crash?”
“Who knows? They’ve got their own agenda. They don’t share knowledge of it with others. We brass it out.”
He pinched his temples and closed and opened his eyes. “Some life, huh?”
I cupped my hand on the back of his neck. It was as hot as a sunburn. “Going up or coming down, it’s only rock and roll,” I said.
But we both knew better.
CHAPTER 20
AT SUNRISE THE next day, Albert Hollister found his truck in his driveway but did not see J. D. Gribble. Nor did he find J.D. at his cabin on the other side of the ridge. At noon, while I was out in the yard, I saw Alicia Rosecrans drive past the arch over Albert’s driveway and turn in to the dirt lane that led to our cabin, north of the barn.
I wasn’t anxious to see her again. She and Clete had created a problematic personal relationship that could cause her to lose her career. Second, Clete knew that Gribble was probably a fugitive from the law and had not yet told her. Who said you should never go to bed with a woman who has more problems than you? Actually, it doesn’t matter who said it, because the admonition was not one I could have passed on to Clete. Why is that? Because I’ve never met a woman who had more problems than he did.
“Have you seen J. D. Gribble?” she said.
“No, I haven’t,” I replied.
“I called Mr. Hollister earlier. He said Gribble left his pickup in the driveway before dawn. He said he thinks Gribble may be in town.”
“Could be.”
