Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou (11 page)

“What you need?”

“I want to hire Valsin to take me over to some camp in Duck
Lake in the morning. On the other side of Six Mile Lake.”

“Where to? Cocodrie Slough?”

Cocodrie Slough! I shivered. Alligator Slough. That sure
didn’t sound inviting. With a shrug, I replied, “If that’s the only
one on Duck Lake.”

The head bobbed. “Come on up, you. We talk in the house.”

By now, the lights had cleared the myriad reptiles from the
pier.

Clerville was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He greeted
me like a long-lost relative and ushered me into the house. I hesitated, spotting old Rouly at the table, a lopsided smile on his
weathered face.

“Hey, Boudreaux.”

“Mr. Rouly.”

Naquin gestured to a chair at the kitchen table that was cov ered by a red-and-white-checkered oilcloth. “Sit.” He glanced
at his wife. “Coffee, Zozette” He slid in at the table. “Me and
Rouly here was just visiting and enjoying our coffee.”

By now the three Naquin sons, wearing shorts and sagging
T-shirts, had filed through the door and stood staring at me
curiously.

`Hi.”1f>

They muttered a greeting.

Zozette set a small demitasse of thick black coffee before me
with a small spoon and a bowl of sugar. Clerville smiled up at
his wife and laid a scarred hand on hers. “Vous remercier, mon
doux.” Thank you, my sweet.

I sipped the coffee and smacked my lips. “Just like I get back
home in Church Point.” I turned to Clerville. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I? I can come back.”

Rouly spoke up. “No, no. Me, I come drink coffee and try to
out-lie old Clerville here. Been trying for thirty years now and
still ain’t done it.”

We all laughed.

“So,” Clerville said. “What’s this about Valsin?”

I glanced at the three men standing in the doorway. “Well,
Mr. Naquin, I-”

He shook his head. “Me, I be Clerville to my friends.”

A warm feeling washed over me. “All right, Clerville. I need to
find a man over at Cocodrie Slough. I don’t know how to get there.
I figured Valsin or one of your boys could show me the way.”

The small man frowned. “Who this one you be looking for?”

It is never a good idea to reveal all you know about a case,
but I had no choice if I wanted help. “Name’s Percher, Lester
Percher. He-”

Rouly interrupted. “He be the one what be friends with old
Theriot what robbed the jewels in New Orleans.” He looked at
Clerville. “You remember that?”

“Oui, I remember.”

The two remained silent, staring at each other. Then, as one,
they looked back at me.

I explained. “That’s right. I want to see what he knows about the jewels. I talked to the sheriff, and he told me about the murders in the last few weeks.”

Rouly nodded. “Oui. You talk about Charley Primeaux and
Dudley Vitale.”

“Yeah”

Clerville grunted. “At least old Benoit, he got somebody to
play bourre with now.”

Bourre was Cajun poker, cutthroat to the end. Everyone played
it, but as the old saying goes, to play bourre, you had to learn the
hard way, by standing in your crib. “What do you mean?”

Rouly answered for him. “Vitale and Primeaux, they was
Benoit’s card-playing partners. Why, those three, they played
ever’ Friday night since I can remember. The loup-garou, he get
them before Benoit, he come back from prison. He mighty sad
when he hear about them.”

“Oh. Well, like I told the sheriff, maybe this last one, Benoit,
found out about the jewels in prison, and someone either shut
him up or killed him when they tried to find out what he knew.”

Rouly spoke up. “No. Like me, I tell you, that be the loupgarou what kill old Benoit, just like it kill Vitale and Primeaux.”

“No disrespect intended, Mr. Rouly, but whoever killed those
three was human, just like us”

His eyes blazing, he stared at me for several moments, then
pushed back from the chair. “Me, I know what I know. It be the
loup-garou.” He pointed a bent and gnarled finger at me. “You
see. You see. That one, he be out in the swamp right now, watching, blinking them red eyes of his up and down, up and down.”

Without another word, he turned on his heel and left.

I smiled apologetically at Clerville. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to
upset him.”

The older man sighed in resignation. “Old Rouly, he got a
temper, that one. Don’t you worry none about it. Anyways, talking about them two, Charley and Dudley, they not only played
cards with Benoit, but they be town drunks along with him too”

I filed that little piece of information away in the back of my
head. Three drinking buddies? Three bourre partners? Few
secrets there. Chances were, I told myself, Benoit told those two what he knew. “Tell me something, Clerville. Would you
happen to know if Primeaux or Vitale ever paid Benoit a visit
while he was in prison?”

A frown creased the wiry Chitimacha Indian’s face. He looked
at his sons.

Valsin grunted. “Primeaux, he go up to the prison by himself
just before Christmas one year, maybe more. Me, I ain’t certain.”
He pursed his lips. “Why you ask?”

“Just curious,” I replied. “Just curious.” What I didn’t tell him
was that he had just handed me a dandy motive for the murder
of Charley Primeaux and Dudley Vitale.

Clerville spoke to Valsin. “You hear what Tony say about
Duck Lake? He need someone to take him to Cocodrie Slough.
Your brothers got to run crab lines tomorrow morning before
dragging for shrimp.”

Hastily, I put in, “Naturally, I’ll pay you for taking me, whatever the going rate is.”

He grinned, his white teeth a brilliant contrast to his darkcomplexioned skin. He waved as if to say forget it. “I show you
the way. No problem.”

“No,” I refused. “Fifty bucks. That’s what I’ll pay you. It
shouldn’t take more than a few hours, huh?”

Valsin glanced at his father, who nodded almost imperceptibly. With a slight shrug, the tall, lean Chitimacha said, “Oui.
Fifty dollars. But we go tonight.”

“Tonight?” I stared at him in disbelief. “You mean in the dark?
Through the swamp? Across the lake?”

His younger brother, August, explained, “It not be dark. There
be stars.”

“Oui. And the moon, it comes up in a couple hours,” added
the middle brother, Dolzin.

“Besides,” Valsin put in, “me, I got work to do tomorrow.”

I looked back at Clerville. He indicated his older son. “That
one, he find his way though the swamp with his eyes closed.”

I stared out the window in the direction of the swamps. Those
sprawling watery forests were forbidding enough during daylight. But at night-all I could think of were those eerie flicker ing lights, even though I knew they were probably just fireflies
or even nighttime fishermen. Besides, I had planned on paying
a visit to the Sparkle Paradise.

Valsin slapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Tony. It be seven
thirty. We get there by nine.”

Dolzin spoke up. “If it be all right with you, Mr. Boudreaux,
I’d just as soon go along for the ride.” He stuck his tongue out at
his younger brother, August. “This one, he not much good at
Wii Golf. Besides, I know some of the boys at Cocodrie.”

August punched Dolzin on the shoulder playfully. “Look who
be talking. Me, I win the last three games. You best stay here
and practice. I’ll go. I know the same old boys you know. I say
hi for you.”

Valsin settled the argument. “We all know them. Come on if
you want.”

Five minutes later, we pushed away from the dock, with Valsin
behind the wheel of the Mako, me beside him on the bench, and
the two brothers in front. Dolzin cradled a pint jar of potent moonshine between his legs. We ran about a hundred yards upriver,
where Valsin took a starboard turn into the forbidding swamp.
Starlight filtered down through the canopy of cypress needles,
laying out undulating strips of bluish light on the dark water.

Even though we were moving at only a moderate speed, I
clutched the console for dear life. Peering into the almost absolute darkness, I managed to croak out, “I’ve got a spotlight if
you want to use it.”

“Don’t you now be worrying, Tony. The light, it blinds me. I
come this way so much, I know it by heart. Just relax, you. Look
at Dolzin up there. Me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was sleeping
like a baby.”

I didn’t bother to look, for I was too busy clinging to the console. Every moment, I expected the jarring impact and screeching rip as we ran upon an immovable cypress knee.

His eyes on the invisible trail ahead of him, Valsin said, “This
Percher. Me, I know the man. He shrimps Six Mile Lake and
the bayous.”

I looked up. “His own boat?”

“Oui.”

I didn’t think much more of his remark, figuring he was speaing of one of the smaller eighteen- to twenty-foot boats most of
the small shrimpers used.

Other than the purr of the engine and the bow slicing through
the dark waters, the only sounds were the cry of loons, the harrumphing of bullfrogs, and the bellowing of alligators. The
first two I didn’t concern myself with, but the last one worried
me.

Even the two younger brothers remained silent.

After thirty minutes of praying, sweating, and cursing, I sighed
with relief when we emerged from the swamp onto the black
expanse of Six Mile Lake. To the east, a few dim lights glittered
in the darkness, a welcome beacon.

Dolzin broke out the jar to celebrate.

We skirted the shores of Six Mile Lake and found the entrance to Duck Lake. The cold, dim lights of Cocodrie Slough
winked on the far shore. It was not yet nine.
– - - — - — — - — - - — -

Valsin chuckled, his white teeth standing out in the starlight.
Back to the east, the waning moon rose over a forest of tenfoot-tall cane. “We make good time, Tony. We be at Cocodrie
Slough in fifteen minutes.”

Although I hadn’t invited August and Dolzin to make the trip
with us, when I spotted the small village squatting on a rickety
sprawl of ancient docks and piers a few feet above the water of
Duck Lake, I was glad they’d come along.

I knew from experience the inhabitants of these isolated
villages were a breed apart from even those who lived on the
fringes of civilization back across the lake.

As we drew closer, the hum of generators rolled across the water. At one end of the village, where the bayou deepened, a dozen
boats of all sizes lay at anchor. Tiny bateaux, or johnboats, were
tied at the base of piers supporting the structures of the village.
Rickety ladders descended from the wooden walkways down to
the boats.

One of the clapboard structures had a string of Christmas
lights dangling from the front eaves. Rollicking accordion and
fiddle music mixed with raucous laughter rolled out the open
windows and spilled across the bayou. The local honky-tonk.

Val sin pulled up a few houses away from the saloon. “Me, I
think we find Percher in there,” he announced, taking a drink
before clambering up the ladder to the walkway overhead.

Dolzin offered me the jar, but I declined. My stomach was a
pit of butterflies. I didn’t want any false courage getting me into
a jam I couldn’t get out of. I hurried up the ladder.

While he and I waited for his brothers to climb up, he pointed
out a ninety-foot freezer shrimp boat moored at a dock farther
up the bayou. “That be Percher’s boat,” he said.

I whistled softly. That was a two-hundred-thousand-dollar
boat. “Not bad,” I replied.

In a furtive tone, Valsin said, “There be talk at the time how
that one, he come up with the money. He was always the clochard, the bum what never had nothing but what he begged.”
He paused and then continued. “One day, he the clochard; he
got nothing. The next-” He held the palm of his hand out toward the boat and, his voice heavy with sarcasm, added, “Then,
alors, comme un miracle. There it be, the shrimp boat.”

I surveyed the boat, my suspicions growing by the second.
That was big money for a dirt-poor Cajun boy. How had he come
up with it? I had an idea, and it wasn’t the Louisiana lottery. “He
must make big hauls in that. Where does he sell them?”

“Down to Morgan City and around,” Valsin replied.

Dolzin’s clambering up the ladder pulled me back to the present. I handed Valsin several twenties. “If Percher’s in there, buy
drinks for the house. I’ll get him aside.”

The red and green Christmas lights glittered on the amused
gleam in his eyes. “Me, I think I like you, Boudreaux.”

There were a dozen or so fishermen and a handful of women
inside. Everything grew silent when we entered, even the fiddle
and accordion. We stopped and looked around, and then Valsin
raised his hand and called out, “Bernard! Moise! How you old
boys be?”

As soon as the bar patrons recognized the Naquin brothers,
the celebration began again. I sort of slipped up to the bar with
the brothers, trying to lose myself in their midst.