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“How?”
“I’ve had the same dream.”
I felt like he had kicked me in the stomach.
Chapter Seven
IT WAS STILL raining hard when we drove into Mississippi the next morning. The house that Clete’s musician friend had told him about was a sun-faded pink art deco place stuck back in a cove where a desiccated shrimp boat lay on its side in a slough overgrown with vines and palm and persimmon trees. A half-dozen vehicles were parked in the driveway or partially on the grass. I thought I could hear music playing.
Clete parked the Caddy and cut the engine, the rain hitting like drops of lead on the convertible’s top. Out of a clear sky on the southern horizon, jagged bolts of lightning struck the water without making a sound. “Something keeps eating on me,” Clete said.
“We got ourselves in the cook pot,” I said. “What’s new about that?”
“This is different. Everything we’re doing. The way the world looks. Like we’re going in and out of time.”
Somehow I knew what he meant, although the right words wouldn’t form in my mouth and the right image wouldn’t come clear in my mind. The rain, the defused light, the storm debris in the waves, our visits to the homes of the Balangie and Shondell families, vicious deeds out of the past, the rip-sawed bodies packed in an oil barrel, all these things seemed part of a fantasy but one that had become real. Let me put it differently. It was like waking from a bad dream as a child only to find, as the sunlight crept into the room and drove away the shadows, that your nocturnal fears were justified and that the creatures you couldn’t flee in your sleep waited for you in the blooming of the day.
“We’ve seen the worst of the worst, Clete,” I said. “Let’s get on it.”
“I got it.”
“Got what?”
“The feeling I couldn’t explain. When I woke up this morning, it was like I’d walked off a cliff and was standing on air. What’s a dream like that mean?”
“It means take it easy on the flak juice.”
“I wish I had all the answers,” he said. “Like knowing the mind of God. I’d love to get in on that.”
I made a mental note to write that one down.
We ran splashing across the yard to the front door and rang the bell, the wind blowing the rain in our faces. A thin, deeply tanned man in a white linen suit and a black silk shirt unbuttoned at the collar opened the door. His hair was copper-colored and streaked with gray and worn like a matador’s, pulled back in a pigtail; a gold cross and chain gleamed on his chest hair. “What can I do for you fellows?”
“We’re looking for Johnny and Isolde,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder, then back at us. People were drinking at a wet bar, and a couple of long-haired young guys with pipe-cleaner arms covered with all-blue tats were tuning their guitars on a platform. All of them looked half-wrecked. The house had a cathedral ceiling, the blond wood in the walls glowing against the darkness outside.
“Sorry, but who are you?” the man said.
“Friends,” I said.
“This is kind of a private gig, fellows.”
“We’re friends of Adonis Balangie,” I said.
“That’s cool. But that don’t cut no ice here. You got an invitation from one of the musicians?”
“Yeah,” Clete said.
“So who invited you?” the man said. He tried to smile.
“Guy who plays on Bourbon Street,” Clete said.
“The guy with no name on Bourbon?” the man in the white suit said. “Know him well. Come see us another time.”
A girl in a bikini leaned down and sniffed a line off the bar. The man with the pigtail followed my eyes. He started to shut the door.
Then I saw Isolde. She was wearing jeans low on her hips and flowers in her hair and a halter top over her breasts. The roses and orchids tattooed on her shoulder looked real rather than made of ink, as though they had been pressed flat and pasted on her skin. Her mouth opened with surprise when she saw me. She had changed since I’d seen her on the pier in a way I couldn’t explain. Her complexion glowed; her whitish-blond hair seemed thicker, her mouth waiting to be kissed. She walked over to us. “Let him in, Eddy,” she said. “That’s Mr. Robicheaux. He’s a friend of ours.”
