The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

staring at the back of the cell as though the answer to a mystery lay inside the shadows cast by the lights in the corridor.
    On the way out of the annex, I saw Emma Poche in a small side office, reading her book. “Your friend quiet down?” she said.
    “I’m not sure. Call me again if there’s any more trouble.”
    “Will do.”
    “What are you reading?”
    She held up the cover so I could see it. “ The Green Cage by Robert Weingart,” she said. “He’s an ex-con who supposedly works with some kind of self-help group around here. What do they call it? He’s hooked up with a rich guy in St. Mary Parish.”
    “The local rich guy is Kermit Abelard.”
    “Good book,” Emma said.
    “Yeah, if you like to get into lockstep with the herd, it’ll do the trick,” I replied.
    “You’re a joy, Streak,” she said, and resumed reading.
    B Y NOON THE next day Clete had been charged with destroying private property, resisting arrest, and felony assault. I went his bond for twenty-five thousand dollars and drove him back to the motor court on East Main in New Iberia, where he lived in a tan stucco cottage, under spreading oaks, no more than thirty yards from Bayou Teche. He showered and shaved and put on fresh slacks and a crisp shirt, and I drove him to Victor’s cafeteria and bought him a huge lunch and a pitcher of iced tea. He ate with a fork in one hand and a piece of bread in the other, his hat tilted forward, his skin lustrous with the energies that burned inside him.
    “How you feel?” I asked.
    “Fine. Why shouldn’t I?” he replied. “I need to rent a car and get back to my office and talk to my insurance man.”
    “Why is it I think you’re not going to do that at all? Why is it I think you’ve got Herman Stanga in your bombsights?”
    The cafeteria was crowded and noisy, the sound rising up to the high nineteenth-century stamped-tin ceiling. Clete finished chewing a mouthful of fried pork chop and mashed potatoes and swallowed. He spoke without looking at me, his eyes intense with thought. “Stanga set me up and I took the bait. He’ll be filing civil suit by the end of the day,” he said. “I’m going to take Stanga down with or without you, Dave.”
    I paused before I spoke again. I could leave Clete to his own devices and let him try to resolve his troubles on his own. But you don’t let your friends down when they’re in need, and you don’t abandon a man who once carried you down a fire escape with two bullets in his back.
    “Robert Weingart may be hooked up with this St. Jude Project,” I said. “At least that’s the impression I got from Emma Poche.”
    “Weingart works with Stanga?”
    “I’m not sure of that,” I said.
    Clete wiped his mouth with his napkin and drank from his iced tea, pushing his half-eaten lunch away. “Does the St. Jude Project have an office hereabouts?”
    “Not exactly. Want to take a little trip back into ‘the good old days’?” I said.
    S T . M ARY P ARISH had a long history as a fiefdom run by a small oligarchy that had possessed power and enormous fortunes, actually hundreds of millions of dollars, at a time when the great majority of people in the parish had possessed virtually nothing. The availability of the ancient cypress trees, the alluvial soil that was among the most fertile in the world, the untapped oil and natural-gas domes that had waited aeons for the penetration of the diamond-crusted Hughes drill bit, and, most important, the low cost of black and poor-white labor seemed like the ultimate fulfillment of a corporate dream that only a divine hand could have fashioned. Even the curds of white smoke rising from the mills into the hard blue Louisiana sky could easily be interpreted as a votive offering to a benevolent capitalist deity.
    To my knowledge, no members of the Abelard family had held rank of consequence in the Confederate army, nor had they participated in great battles, nor had their home been burned or vandalized by