Fat Tuesday (26 page)

In the third, a woman cowered from them in terror and began a lament in loud, rapid Spanish. Bardo backhanded her across the mouth.

"Shut up, bitch," he ordered in a nasty whisper. She shut up and clutched several hungry-looking children against her to keep them from crying.

The fourth and last room was also unoccupied. But on the bed a white envelope was propped against the pillows, and on that envelope was printed Pinkie Duvall's name.

He snatched it up and ripped it open. A single sheet of paper drifted from it onto the grimy rug. He retrieved the paper and read the typewritten message.

Then he uttered a roar of rage that shook the windowpanes.

Bardo took the note from him. He cursed when he read the message.

"They wouldn't dare."

Pinkie rushed from the room and bounded down the stairs, Bardo on his heels. Bardo's men were ordered to follow. They piled into the second car and raced to catch up as he sped away.

Pinkie could barely contain his fury. His eyes were hot and murderous.

"I'm going to kill them. They are dead men. Dead."

"But who are they?" Bardo asked, as he swerved to avoid hitting a delivery truck."Who would do that to Remy?"

Remy. His Remy. His property. Snatched from him. Whoever these motherfuckers were, they had nerve, he'd give them that. Too bad such courage was squandered on someone who was going to die so soon. And they would die. Slowly. Painfully. Begging for mercy, then pleading for death. For taking from him what was his, what he had created, they would die.

When they reached Lafayette Cemetery, the two cars screeched to a halt and disgorged six men. Duvall and Bardo were in the lead as they entered through the tall iron gates. Pinkie didn't wait for Bardo or the other men. He went in search of the row specified in the note, weaving his way through the avenues of tombs until he reached the one he was looking for. He ran along the path, the crushed-shell gravel crunching beneath his shoes, his breath fogging in front of him.

What he would find he couldn't guess. Remy's remains zipped into a body bag and dumped here? A recently opened tomb, her blood sprinkled on an altar of stones? A shoe box with ashes inside? A voodoo sacrifice?

Once he'd ordered Bardo to cut off a woman's face and deliver it in a pizza box to her husband who had ignored previous, more subtle warnings.

Pinkie expected this message to him to be just as jolting.

No longer would he underestimate this unnamed enemy. The man was smart, devious, and he knew Pinkie Duvall well enough to know the right buttons to push. He'd sent Pinkie on this macabre treasure hunt that would end with his finding what?

His feet skidded in the gravel as he came to a sudden stop, recognizing it the instant he spotted it.

It wasn't a body or blood he found, but the message was just as bold.

Temples throbbing, hands balling into fists, he read the name engraved on the tomb. It was the resting place of Kevin Michael Stuart.

"Is he going to kill me?"

J Dredd spooned soup into Remy's mouth and, when he dribbled some, made a fuss of blotting her lips with a paper napkin. He muttered self-deprecations about his clumsiness, but he didn't respond to her question.

"Stop pretending you didn't hear me, Dredd," she said, stilling his hand when he tried to ladle another spoonful of soup from the bowl.

"I won't panic. I'd just like to know. Is he going to kill me?"

"No."

Reading nothing in his expression to cause doubt, she relaxed once again against the cushions he'd placed behind her back so he could feed her more easily. She had claimed she could feed herself, but he'd insisted on doing it, and now she was glad she had consented. The wounds on her back weren't as painful as before, but her head was muzzy from her long, drugged sleep. She would have lacked the energy to lift more than a few spoonfuls to her mouth, and she was surprisingly hungry.

The soup, court-bouillon according to Dredd, had been made with a fish stock to which tomatoes, onions, and rice had been added. It was hot and flavorful.

"Is it ransom he's after?"

"No, cher'. Basile doesn't care overmuch for worldly goods." He glanced around the room, which had been furnished and decorated out of a junkyard. Winking at her, he added, "He and I are alike that way."

"Then why?"

"You know about Basile's friend, Wayne Bardo's trial, all that?"

"Revenge?"

The old man answered in Cajun French, but his eloquent shrug spoke volumes.

"My husband will kill him."

"He knows that."

She looked at him inquisitively.

"Basile doesn't care if he dies, so long as he takes Duvall with him.

I tried to talk sense into him this morning, but he wouldn't listen.

Devils are driving him."

Hoping that she might enlist Dredd's help, she reached for his hand and clutched it tightly."Please call the authorities. Do this, Dredd, not just for me, but for Mr. Basile. It's not too late for him to turn himself in. Or forget the authorities. Call my husband. Basile can disappear before Pinkie gets here. I'll persuade Pinkie not to press charges against him. Please, Dredd."

"I'd purely love to help you, Remy, but Burke Basile is my friend.

I would never betray his trust."

"Even if it was for his own good?"

"He wouldn't see it-that way, cher'." Gently, he pulled his hand free.

"To Basile this is a ... a mission. He made a covenant with himself to avenge Kev Stuart's death. Nobody could talk him out of it now."

"You know him very well."

"As well as anybody, I guess. He's not an easy man to know."

'"What kind of man is he?"

Dredd thoughtfully scratched his chin through his dense gray beard.

"This ol' boy up in Rawlins used to beat his wife and three kids. I mean, he really worked them over whenever he was drunk, which was most of the time. But his white-trash family and friends finagled him out of jail every time he was arrested.

"One night, nine-one-one gets a domestic disturbance call from a neighbor, says he must be killing them all this time because you could hear the kids screaming all over the neighborhood. The first cop on the scene doesn't wait for backup, because the kids're in danger, and besides, he doesn't figure he'll need help containing one mean drunk.

He goes in alone.

"Well, when all the shouting is over, the wife-beater is dead on his kitchen floor, and his wife and kids are enjoying the first peace they've ever known. But the officer who shot the son of a bitch is being investigated by Internal Affairs.

"See, some of the desk jockeys in the department wondered if maybe that cop was so sick and tired of this turkey using his wife and kids as punching bags that he popped him when he had a chance, and only claimed it was self-defense.

"The drunk came at the cop with a butcher knife long as his arm,but the facts didn't matter to I.A. It's bad p.r. when a suspect is killed by an arresting officer. N.O.P.D gets nailed in the press. Everybody gets on this kick about police brutality. Anyhow, nobody sided with the cop.

"Nobody except Basile. Basile stood by him when no one else would even speak to him. The other cops didn't want to be seen associating with an officer under investigation, you see, but Basile made a point of befriending him when he needed a friend most and none were to be had."

Having finished his story, Dredd removed the tray from her lap and carried it to a bureau across the room."What happened to the officer?" Remy asked.

"He resigned under pressure."

"And established Dredd's Mercantile?"

He turned around to face her."That was eight years ago. Haven't shaved since." His beard split to show a brief grin.

"Was it self-defense?"

"Yes, but that's not the point. The point is that Basile gave Officer Dredd Michoud the benefit of the doubt. Basile had no rank, but he sided with me and made no secret of it, even though it was the unpopular and unpolitick thing to do."

When he returned to her bedside, he brought with him a cobalt blue bottle. Uncorking it, he poured a drop of the substance into a cup of tea, which had been steeping on the shipping crate that served as a nightstand.

"Here, now, drink this, cher'. I've worn you out with all this jabbering. It's time you went back to sleep."

"What are you giving me?" she asked.

"You wouldn't recognize the name if I told you."

"I think it's Bayer dissolved in water." Remy glanced up to see the topic of their conversation standing in the open doorway. He added drolly, "But the mysterious-looking bottle is a nice touch, Dredd.

Makes you look like a genuine alchemist."

Dredd scowled."Shows how much you know. A shot of this would knock you on your smart ass and keep you there for about a week."

The room was already crowded with Dredd's junk collection, but it seemed to shrink even smaller when Basile wedged himself between the bureau and the foot of the bed.

"How is she?"

"Why don't you ask her?"

Actually Remy was glad Basile hadn't spoken directly to her. She'd rather ignore him."Where did you learn your nursing skills, Dredd?"

"From my grandmother. Ever hear of a traiteur?"

"A treater?"

"You know French?"

That from Basile, who sounded surprised."And Spanish," she replied evenly, then addressed Dredd again."The Cajun dialect is different from classroom French, isn't it?"

"You could say so," he cackled."When we're talking among ourselves, other folks can't tell a word we're saying. And that's the way we like it."

"What was your grandmother like?"

"Scary as all get-out. She was already old when I was born to her youngest son. For some reason I never could figure, the old lady took a shine to me. Used to take me with her into the swamp where she'd gather the natural ingredients for her potions. She had dozens of them.

People would come to her to cure everything from jaundice to jealousy."

"She sounds like a fascinating woman."

He nodded his grizzly head."Treaters have been around for as long as there've been Cajuns. Some think of them as witches practicing black magic. Actually they're women with a special healing touch and a knowledge of herbs."

"Women?"

"For the most part. I'm rare," he said, almost as a boast."I didn't learn all that Granny Michoud knew, not by a long shot, but once I moved out here, I started mixing up some of her less complicated elixirs." Basile said, "One of these days you're going to poison somebody."

"Well, not tonight," Dredd retorted. Then, making a point of snubbing Basile, he pressed the cup of tea to Remy's lips."Drink up, cher'."

Basile could be right. The tea could be toxic and she would sleep so deeply she would never wake up. But she felt an instinctual trust for Dredd, so she drank until the cup was empty. He added it to the supper tray and carried it as far as the door, where he paused and growled to Basile, "Don't bother her."

Once they were alone, Remy avoided looking at him. He seemed more menacing than the alligator skull atop the bureau behind him or the six-foot snake skin tacked to the newspapered wall. Actually she favored being alone with Dredd's macabre decorations to being alone with Basile.

A welcome drowsiness was already stealing over her, but she felt vulnerable lying there with her eyes closed while he stared at her.

Above the hem of the dingy sheet, her shoulders were bare. She didn't remember how she had come to be undressed. She didn't want to remember.

"If I really thought he could poison you, I wouldn't have brought you to him."

He spoke quietly, but in the small room his voice seemed unnaturally loud, the sound waves palpable. More likely, Dredd's homemade sleeping potion had dulled her mind but sharpened her senses.

She fought the impulse to look at him, but her eyes were inexorably drawn to the foot of the bed. His hands were folded around the' iron railing of the footboard. He appeared to have a very tight grip on it, and he was leaning into it, bearing down, as though he feared it might begin to levitate.

"If you hadn't brought me here, Mr. Basile, what would you have done with me? Dumped me on the side of the road?"

"I never intended for you to get hurt."

"Well I did." He remained stubbornly silent, but it didn't surprise her that no apology was forthcoming."Your disguise was very good."

"Thanks."

"Is Father Gregory genuine?"

"No. He's an actor I bullied into helping me pull this off. It's his fault you got hurt. You and I were supposed to leave the Crossroads alone."

"What have you done with him?"

"I haven't done anything with him," he snapped."When I woke up this morning, he was gone. He took off sometime before dawn."

She didn't know whether or not to believe him, but she supposed that if he had wanted to dispose of Father Gregory permanently, he would have done so yesterday when he was so angry with him."You'll never get away with this, Mr. Basile."

"I don't expect to."

"Then what do you hope to gain?"

"Peace of mind."

"That's all?"

'"That's a lot." She gave him a long look, but his expression was unreadable."What about me?"

"You'll live to tell about it."

"Pinkie will kill you."

He stepped around the footboard and moved to the side of the bed.

His hand, still bearing the four vicious scratches her nails had made, reached toward her.

"No!" she cried. Despite her lassitude, she grabbed his wrist."Let go."

"What are you going to do? Don't hurt me."

"Let go," he repeated.

She dropped her hand, because she didn't have the strength to fight him. Her eyes fearfully followed his hand as it moved to the side of her head. His fingers touched her hair.

Then he pulled his hand back and she saw it, being twirled between his thumb and finger, a feather white, downy, curling upon itself, an escapee from Dredd' wmusty-smelling pillow.

"Are you frightened of me?"

Her eyes were fixed on the slowly swirling feather as though it were a hypnotic talisman. Slowly, she looked away from it and up at him.