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“How about those Saints?” Clete said to everyone in the room.
No one laughed.
* * *
IT WASN’T OVER. I followed Bobby and Shondell into the parking lot. The sky was blue, the live oak above us full of wind. It was a grand day and should have been one of celebration, but I knew a couple of cruisers were probably on their way and that I didn’t have long before someone else took over the situation. Shondell was already in the backseat, and Bobby Earl was getting behind the wheel. I opened the passenger door. Isolde Balangie looked up at me. Her cheeks were pooled with color, her whitish-blond hair sifting on her face. She made me think of an abandoned doll.
“Come with us, Isolde,” I said.
“I’m with Uncle Mark,” she replied.
“He’s not your uncle. He’s a pervert.”
Shondell leaned forward so that his head was right behind Isolde’s. His features looked like an inverted triangle, one that was full of hate. “Be gone, you evil man.”
“I’m going to get you, Shondell,” I said.
“Your career is over,” he said. “You’ve slept with this poor girl’s mother, and you accuse me of moral turpitude? I’m going to expose you for the trash you are.”
“Let’s go, Dave,” I heard Clete say behind me.
“No,” I said. I picked up Isolde’s hand and held it in mine. “I visited Johnny at the treatment center. He was wearing the digger’s hat. He played his guitar for me. He loves you, Isolde.”
Tears formed in her eyes. “I have to be with Uncle Mark,” she said.
“Your mother doesn’t want you to do this,” I said.
“She brought me here.”
“I’ll have a talk with her about that,” I said.
“Let go, Mr. Dave,” she said.
I felt Clete’s hand on my arm. I stepped back and closed the door. Bobby Earl scoured gravel out of the parking lot onto the highway, the dust and exhaust and stench of the tires drifting into our faces.
* * *
AT TWO P.M. that same day, Carroll LeBlanc called me into his office. I suspected I had put my badge in jeopardy again, and I prepared myself for another onslaught of LeBlanc’s disdain and sarcasm. But I was about to learn again that people are more complex than we think. “What started it?” he said.
“At Bon Creole?”
“Oh, yes, could it be that?”
“Mark Shondell is molesting a kid in plain sight,” I said. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“Yeah, it does, so sit down and shut up a minute.” He propped his foot on the trash can and looked out the window at the grotto dedicated to Jesus’ mother. He glanced at his ever-present legal pad. “You popped Shondell in the face?”
“I think that’s what happened. I had a blackout.”
“You were drunk?”
“I have blackouts without drinking. It keeps my bar tab down.”
“What’s the deal with the Balangie girl? Don’t tell me human trafficking, either.”
“That’s what this is about—human bondage.”
He rubbed his mouth. “Yeah, there’s predation involved, but it’s in-house stuff between the greaseballs. I just don’t get the trade-off.”
