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and, more disturbing, they had no connection to the world as we know it or the physical sciences on which we daily rely to explain our origins. It was like waking up one day and speculating that the spirits haunting the massive forests of pre-Christian Europe were indeed real and the Druids who hung ornaments on trees to seek their favor were not superstitious after all.
I feared for Clete more than for myself. The pain of his childhood, his memories of an accidental killing in Vietnam, the loss of his career as a detective were the invisible crown of thorns that sat always on his forehead. He already had enough weight on his shoulders without having to hump my pack.
Tuesday morning I went into Carroll LeBlanc’s office and told him I was going to New Orleans.
“To do what?” he said.
“Investigate the dismemberment of the two guys in the barrel.”
“That’s Vermilion Parish’s case.”
“That’s where they were dumped,” I said. “The homicide started here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Cut it out, Carroll. Mark Shondell had somebody put a meat saw to those poor bastards, and you know it.”
He had both feet on his desk. He picked up the yellow legal tablet from his blotter and stared at it. “I just got a call from Dana Magelli. He said Isolde Balangie showed up in a homeless shelter on Airline Highway, stoned out of her head.”
“Where is she now?”
“At her house. With Penelope and Adonis Balangie.”
I thought about the implications of that simple statement. LeBlanc caught it. “Yeah, exactly,” he said. “Mark Shondell just got his nose rubbed in it. You’re not going to New Orleans about the two guys in the barrel, are you?”
“No.”
“So why are you going?”
“A woman named Leslie Rosenberg.”
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“You know her?”
“She was a stripper on Bourbon,” he said. “I heard she hooked up with Adonis Balangie.”
“Past tense,” I said.
He let his feet drop to the floor. “What does Leslie Rosenberg have to do with anything?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” I said.
“Try.”
“Mark Shondell wants her disemboweled.”
He rubbed his face.
“What is it?” I said.
“That spot where you found the slave marbles? I heard that was part of a barracoon owned by the Shondell family. You know, one of those slave pens? I heard awful things got done there.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Probably coincidence?” he said, his face lowered, one hand twitching on his thigh.
“Yeah,” I said.
