Crusader's Cross

"We need to dial it down, my man. I need to get inside, too, if you'll step aside."

"I'm a sheriff's detective, Mr. Kale. You're a pimp. You want a trip down to the bag, that can be arranged. But regardless of what happens here, you keep your ass out of New Iberia, and you keep a lot of gone between you and Clete Purcel. You reading me on this, Mr. Kale?"

He removed his cigarette from his mouth and tipped his ashes away from his person so they didn't blow back on his coat. "The name is Coyne, Lou Coyne. And you got the wrong dude, buddy."

He went through the revolving door into the motel. It had rained that morning, and the breeze under the porte cochere smelled of wet flowers and leaves and the lichen that was crusted on the massive limbs of the live oaks. I didn't want to get any deeper into the world of Ida Durbin and Lou Kale, no more than you want to immerse yourself in the effluent that backs up from a sewage pipe. But I knew a predator when I saw one. Lou Kale and Ida Durbin were no longer symbols or milestones out of Jimmie's and my adolescent experience. Nor were they simply foils to the i

Want to find out who the closet boozers are in your neighborhood? Ask the garbage man. Want to check out the local politics? Talk with the barber. Want to find out what your neighbors are really like? Ask a kid. Want to find out who's washing money at the track, fencing stolen property, ru

During the morning I talked with a retired DEA agent while he drove golf balls on a practice range; an ex-Air American pilot who flew nine years inside the Golden Triangle; an old-time Washington, D.C., hooker who operated a bar in North Lafayette; and a pharmaceutically addicted city Vice cop who had done two tours in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. They all shared one commonality – they had been witnesses to events of historical importance that few people knew about and they had seen forms of human behavior about which they never spoke. The latter quality alone, to my mind, made them exceptional human beings.

For generations all the vice in Louisiana had been run by a few individuals in New Orleans. Even when I was a beat cop, no one opened a brothel, set up a slot machine, or sold one lid of Afghan skunk without first kissing the ring of Didoni Giacano. But Didi Gee was pushing up mushrooms, gambling was a state-sponsored industry, and narcotics had become part of the culture. Louisiana, once a closed fiefdom operated by the appointees of Frank Costello, was now wide open to the entrepreneurial spirit. Drug mules hammered down Interstate 10, from both Houston and Miami, loaded with weed, meth, and coke. Pimps had their pick of crack whores, whose managerial costs were minimal.

But none of my friends had ever heard of Lou Kale or Ida Durbin. Nor had they heard of anyone going by the names of Co

Or was I being romantic and foolish about people who had invested their lives in the use of others?

I drove back to New Iberia, unable to think straight. Helen had left a Post-it on my door. SEE ME, it said.

"Where have you been?" she asked, looking up from her desk.

"I took some personal time in Lafayette. I called Wally before eight," I replied.

"What kind of 'personal time'?"

"I saw Ida Durbin."

"I have to meet this woman."

"What is it, Helen?"

"Raphael Chalons wants to see you."

"Why?"

"You got me. Unless he thinks you're a priest." She looked at her watch. "It sounded to me like he was already on the bus."

I have heard both hospice perso

"I tried to bring you flowers earlier, Mr. Raphael. But the nurse felt my visit wasn't an appropriate one," I said.

My words and their banality were obviously of no interest to him. His eyes were as black as a raven's wing, his facial skin oily, spiked with whiskers, furrowed around the mouth. One hand lay palm-up on top of the sheet. He crooked his fingers at me.

I did not want to approach him. I did not want to inhale his breath. I did not want his words to put talons in my breast. I did not want to be held captive by another dying man.

But I leaned over him just the same. His fingers rose up and tapped my chest, as though he could convey meaning through my skin to compensate for the failure of his vocal cords. His lips moved, but his words were only pinpricks of spittle on my face.

"I can't understand you, sir," I said.

A flame burned in his cheeks and his eyes rolled up at mine, as a dependent lover's might. A clot broke in his throat. "Not his fault," he said.

"Sir?" I said.

His lingers tore a button on my shirt. His breath was dank, earth-smelling, like dirt spaded from a tree-covered grave. "The fault is mine. All my fault. Everything," he whispered. "Please stop my son."

"From doing what, Mr. Raphael?"

But his hand released my shirt and his gaze receded from mine, as though he were sinking into a black well and I was now only a marginal figure on its perimeter.

The nurse came in and closed the blinds. It was only then I noticed that my flowers were on the windowsill. "Don't worry, he's only sleeping," she said. "He has bursts of energy, then he falls asleep. He liked your flowers."

"Has he talked about his son?" I asked.

"No, not at all," she replied. She nodded toward the door, indicating she wanted to finish the conversation in the corridor. "May I be frank? I was very disturbed by something I saw take place here. It was very distressing."

"Go ahead," I said.

"Mr. Val came into the room with two lawyers. They tried to get Mr. Raphael to dictate a will. But he wouldn't do it. Mr. Val was quite upset. No, the better term is irate."

"Thank you for telling me this," I said.

"You and Mr. Raphael must be very close."

"Why do you think that?"

"He only asked to see one other person. Someone named Ida. Fortunately, she showed up here about an hour ago. I saw her stroking his hair on the pillow. She seemed a very elegant person. Do you know her, Detective Robicheaux?"

At three that afternoon a nurse's aide found Raphael Chalons half out of his bed, his sightless eyes staring out of his head as though he had looked into a camera's flash. The blanket and sheet had cascaded over his shoulders, like the mantle a medieval lord might wear as he walked toward a blade of light on the earth's rim.