Fat Tuesday (24 page)

Errol swallowed hard and raised his meaty shoulders to his earlobes.

"They were priests."

"Don't tell me they were priests," Pinkie said, speaking in a voice so soft it was sinister."Hasn't it penetrated that lump of shit that passes for your brain that these two men weren't who they claimed to be?"

Seemingly impervious to the insult, Errol said, "All I know is, they were the same two men who came to the house a few days ago."

"What do they look like?"

"Pr" He was about to say priests when he saw Pinkie's eyes narrow.

"Like I told you before, Mr. Duvall, Father Gregory is young and good looking. Slender. Dark hair and eyes. Faggy. The guy never shuts up. Father Kevin doesn't talk much, but he's the one in charge. No question.uv "What's he like?"

"Smart and shifty. Right off, I didn't trust him. He's the one I caught ... uh ..."

"What?"

Errol nervously glanced at Bardo. He wet his lips. He rubbed his hands up and down his thighs.

"He's the one you caught doing what?" Pinkie asked, enunciating each word.

"I, uh, was on my way to the bathroom. The one there by the front door?

And I ... I caught Father Kevin on the stairs. He was coming down."

"He'd been upstairs? He was upstairs at my house and you didn't mention it to me?"

Bardo whistled softly through his teeth.

"He said he used the bathroom up there cause the other one was out of toilet paper. I checked. The thingamajig was empty."

"You're a regular detective," Bardo remarked with a snort."You and Nancy Drew."

"Shut up," Duvall snapped."What does this son of a bitch look like?

Physically."

Errol described a man who was taller than average height, slim but strong, regular features, no visible scars or distinguishing marks, no facial hair.

"Eyes?"

"Hard to tell. He wears glasses."

"Hair?"

"Dark. Combed straight back."

The description fit a hundred men in Pinkie's wide circle of acquaintances, friends, and enemies."Whoever he is, he's not going to live long."

Nobody took something belonging to Pinkie Duvall and got away with it.

And this bastard had taken his most prized possession. If he touched her ... If he laid so much as a finger on her ... He relished the thought of killing this unnamed man with his bare hands.

Bardo interrupted Pinkie's murderous fantasy."Doesn't make sense, two priests, one of them a fag, kidnapping a woman. What do they want with her?"

"It's not Remy they want. It's me."

Pinkie had no proof of that, nor any viable reason on which to base that conclusion. But he knew it with certainty.

"Push, damn it."

"I am pushing."

Gregory was as useless at ditching a van in a bayou as he was at everything else. Burke admonished him to try harder. The two men attacked it again, putting all their strength into pushing the vehicle across the spongy ground. Finally, it rolled forward several yards.

Burke thought they had it licked. But then it became stuck in the silt on the bottom of the muddy creek and rested there only half submerged.

"Now what?"

"We leave it," Burke said curtly."They'll find it eventually. But by that time, Duvall will know who has his wife."

Burke ignored Gregory's whining as they tramped through the swampy terrain back to Dredd's pickup. He'd driven it to this remote spot, Gregory following in the van. During the drive, Burke had kept a watchful eye on the rearview mirror. Every time he went around a bend in the road, he slowed down until the van's headlights were once again in sight. He expected Gregory to crack at any moment. There was no way to predict what the young man might do when he did.

Docilely enough, he climbed into the pickup for the drive back.

Burke followed a winding road, flanked on both sides by swamp. The knees of cypress trees protruded above the surface of the water within a few feet of the road. Overhead was a canopy of low-hanging tree branches hosting Spanish moss. By day they resembled the lacedraped arms of a belle caught in a curtsy. At night they took on the eerie appearance of a zombie's skeletal arms trailing his torn shroud.

Occasionally his headlights picked up the glowing eyes of a nocturnal creature that scurried out of their path or slithered back into the swamp.

Burke drove safely but fast. He was worried about the patient.

Dredd had anesthetized her with one of his home-brewed potions concocted of God only knew what. But whatever the ingredients, it had worked. She'd slept through Dredd's careful removal of the shotgun pellets, which had sprayed her back and shoulder on the left side.

He'd also removed a few splinters of glass.

The small wounds had bled profusely, but Dredd had cleansed them thoroughly, then treated them with a salve that he claimed would heal them and help considerably with her pain. Burke had hovered close throughout the entire procedure, making Dredd even more irascible than usual.

He had practically pushed Burke from the room, reminding him that if he didn't ditch that van, all of southern Louisiana could be swarming Dredd's Mercantile in the morning."Nothing hurts a business worse than cop cars parked out front."

So Burke had left, grudgingly, but knowing that his friend was right about the timely disposal of the van. Now that it had been taken care of, he was eager to get back and check on Mrs. Duvall.

"You used me."

"What?" Gregory repeated his petulant statement. Burke replied, "You accepted the terms of the deal, Gregory."

"When you were making that deal, you didn't tell me that the terms involved guns and kidnapping."

"When we picked up Remy Duvall today, what did you think was going to happen?"

"I thought you would get her to contribute a lot of money to this phony charity. I thought that you would swindle Pinkie Duvall, pull a con, like in The Sting. I never counted on you doing something like kidnapping his wife."

"It's your fault that you're involved in a kidnapping. If you hadn't flirted with that redneck, you'd have been dumped at the Crossroads.

That was my plan, to shake you and Errol there. But no, you went and got romantic. So pout all you want, but don't expect any sympathy from me.

It's on account of your perversion that Mrs. Duvall got shot and that all of us barely escaped with our lives."

"I got hurt, too," he sobbed.

"Too bad. If I hadn't been otherwise occupied, for what you did, I would have throttled you myself. Now shut up, or I still might."

"You're mean, Basile. Mean."

Burke uttered a harsh laugh."Gregory, you haven't seen my mean side yet."

The younger man hiccupped another sob, and Burke felt a twinge of pity.

Gregory was in over his head. What at first had seemed like a movie script to him had quickly turned into a living nightmare. Burke planned to have him safely transported back into the city tomorrow. If he kept a low profile for a while, long enough for his face to heal, he would be fine. No one knew his true identity. He would never assume the Father Gregory role again. No one would suspect the third son of a prominent family of taking part in a daring kidnap. Besidess Duvall would be after him, not Gregory. Gregory would be fine.

He continued to sulk and mumble miserably until he fell asleep.

Burke shook him awake when they reached Dredd's place."Want Dredd to do something for your face?"

"Are you serious? I wouldn't let that troll touch me." He glanced toward the structure at the end of the pier and shuddered delicately "Suit yourself," Burke said, getting out."There's a recliner in the front room. I suggest you get some rest."

Gregory was slow getting down from the cab, Burke noticed. Despite his refusal of help, he would ask Dredd to give Gregory something to relieve his discomfort. He found their host still at Mrs. Duvall's bedside.

"How is she?"

"Sleeping like a baby."

Burke winced, the word reminding him of her confession and the baby she lost. Dredd had turned off the electric light, but a single candle flickered on the unpainted bureau. She was lying on her stomach, one cheek turned up, the other buried in the pillow. Her hair had been smoothed away from her face, positioned on the pillow just so. Dredd was good at what he did.

The wounds had stopped bleeding. For all the pain they'd given her, they were superficial. Burke wondered, though, if they would leave scars. That would be a pity, because her skin was unblemished and looked almost translucent. He thought back to the first night he'd seen her in the gazebo. She didn't look any more real to him now than she had then.

"C'est une belle femme."

"Yes, she is."

"Does this vision have a name?"

Burke turned and looked into Dredd's wizened face."Mrs. Pinkie Duvall."

There was no outcry regarding Burke's sanity, no exclamation of disbelief, no barrage of questions or demands for an explanation.

He merely stared long and hard at Burke, then nodded."There's a bottle of whiskey in that cabinet. Help yourself." He headed for the door.

"The man out there is in pain."

Dredd waved, indicating he'd heard, but he didn't turn around.

Burke availed himself of Dredd's whiskey, grateful to see that it was a brand name and not rotgut out of a jug. The only chair in the room had rickety wooden legs and a rush seat, which had been snacked on by rodents, but Burke pulled it near the bed and gingerly lowered himself into it.

He hadn't eaten since breakfast almost twenty-four hours earlier.

He should forage in Dredd's kitchen for something, but he was so tired he talked himself out of it. For a time, he just sat there, watching the woman sleep, watching the gentle rise and fall of her back with each breath and feeling like a creep because he was thinking about her breasts mashed flat beneath her.

He'd undressed her with chivalry and reasonable detachment.

Reasonable detachment. That didn't mean he didn't notice. God, how could he not? A guy has an opportunity to see the object of his fantasies naked, he's gonna look. He's gonna check out her breasts and note that the nipples are firm but very pale. Who could expect him not to notice thigh-high stockings? Get real. And panties so sheer she might just as well not have bothered?

He drank two shots of whiskey in quick succession. They hit his empty stomach like fireballs.

Her right arm was lying along her side, her hand palm up. He saw the red impressions the key ring had made in her skin when he squeezed her hand around it. He couldn't resist reaching out and tracing the cruel marks with his fingertip. Her fingers responded reflexively and curled in toward her palm. Guiltily, he snatched his hand back.

The third shot went down without burning so badly.

His gaze moved back up to her face. Her eyelids were perfectly still.

Her lips were relaxed and slightly parted. Saliva had trickled from one corner of her mouth, and it was tinged pink with blood from the cut on her lip. He touched it as he had before with his little finger, then left the moisture there on the tip of his finger to dry naturally.

He took another swig from the whiskey bottle.

Well, he'd done it. He had committed a felony, a federal offense.

He witfe was irrevocably changed. If he were to return Mrs. Duvall to her husband tomorrow, Burke Basile couldn't resume he witfe where it had left off. There was no turning back now. All escape hatches were nailed shut.

He supposed he should feel more guilty, ashamed, and scared than he did Maybe the whiskey was making him drunk. Maybe he was just too plain stupid to fear the consequences that lay in store for him. But as he fell asleep listening to Remy Duvall's soft breathing, he felt pretty damn good.

What do you mean he's gone?"

After only a few hours of sleep sitting up in Dredd's uncomfortable chair, Burke's neck was stiff, his back felt like an army had marched across it, the whiskey had left him with a dull headache, and daylight had focused the cold light of reality on the fact that he had crossed the line between enforcing the law and breaking it.

"Don't yell at me," Dredd snapped. He used a long fork to turn a piece of meat frying in an iron skillet."He's your priest, not mine."

"He's not a priest."

"You don't say?"

Burke, massaging his temple, frowned at the other man's sarcasm.

"He wname is Gregory James and he's an unemployed actor. Among other things."

"Whatever else he is," Dredd grumbled, "he's a goddamn thief. He snuck off in my best pirogue."

Burke lowered his hand."Are you saying he left by way of the swamp?"

The idea of Gregory James poling through the hostile environment of the swamp was unthinkable."The closest he'd ever come to the swamp.was last night when we tried to sink the van. He'll never survive out there alone."

"Probably not," Dredd said with a shake of his long gray ponytail.

Impervious to the season, he was wearing ragged denim cutoffs. No shirt and no shoes. His callused feet looked as tough as hooves as they shuffled across the buckled linoleum floor. He would have turned heads on a downtown city boulevard, but his odd appearance suited the environment he had created for himself. A ragged, faded Union Jack served as a window curtain. The unvented cook stove stood at the end of the counter where he rang up sales for tobacco, beer, and live bait, and within sight of where he did his taxidermy. It was a health inspector's worst nightmare, but Dredd' witmited clientele wouldn't be fussy about such things.

He was philosophical about Gregory's chances for survival."I just hope that when the food chain catches up with him, my boat will drift back.

You ready for breakfast?"

"What is it?"

"Are you hungry or particular?"

"Hungry," Burke replied reluctantly.

Dredd dished up the fried meat and ladled over it a gravy he had made with the meat drippings, a handful of flour, and a little milk. He served it with plain white bread and strong New Orleans-style coffee with chicory.

"While you were washing up, I checked on Remy," Dredd mumbled through a mouthful.