Creole Belle Read Online Free PDF Page B

be sinking, or you may have Formosan termites eating through the concrete. There’s a possibility here of structural collapse.”
    “The roof is caving in? People will be plunging through the floors?” Clete said.
    “I don’t know if it would be that bad, but who knows?” Benoit said. He was smiling, his pate shiny in the sunlight. He seemed to be clenching his back teeth to prevent himself from swallowing. “Have you seen any buckling in the floors?”
    “This building has been here for over a hundred and fifty years,” Clete said. “I renovated it after Katrina, too.”
    “Yeah, it’s old and storm-damaged. That’s why it’s falling apart,” Grimes said.
    “Get out of here,” Clete said.
    “It don’t work that way, Purcel,” Grimes said. “Under Louisiana law, that marker is the same as a loan agreement signed at a bank. You fucked yourself. Don’t blame other people.”
    “Watch your language,” Clete said.
    “You worried about the bride of Frankenstein, here? She’s heard it before. You killed a woman. Who are you to go around lecturing other people about respect? I heard you blew her head off in that shootout on the bayou.”
    Clete never blinked, but his face felt tight and small and cold in the wind. There was a tremolo in his chest, like a tuning fork that was out of control. He thought he heard the downdraft of helicopters and a sound like tank treads clanking to life and grinding over banyan trees and bamboo and a railed pen inside which hogs were screaming in panic. He smelled an odor that was like flaming kerosene arching out of a gun turret. His arms hung limply at his sides, and his palms felt as stiff and dry as cardboard when he opened and closed his hands. His shirt and tie and sport coat were too tight on his neck and shoulders and chest; he took a deep breath, as though he had swallowed a chunk of angle iron. “I killed two,” he said.
    “Say again?” Grimes asked.
    “I killed two women, not just one.”
    Waylon Grimes glanced at his wristwatch. “That’s impressive. But we’re on a schedule, here.”
    “Yes, we should be going,” the appraiser added.
    “The other woman was a mamasan,” Clete said. “She was trying to hide in a spider hole while we were trashing her ville. I rolled a frag down the hole. There were kids in there, too. What do you think about that, Waylon?”
    Grimes massaged the back of his neck with one hand, his expression benign. Then a short burst of air escaped his mouth, as though he were genuinely bemused. “Sounds like you got issues, huh?” he said.
    “Is that a question?”
    “No. I wasn’t in the service. I don’t know about those kinds of issues. What I was saying is we’re done here.”
    “Then why did you make it sound like a question?”
    “I was trying to be polite.”
    “The mamasan lives on my fire escape now. Sometimes I leave a cup of tea on the windowsill for her. Look right over your head. There’s her teacup. Are you laughing at me, Waylon?”
    “No.”
    “If you’re not laughing at me, who are you laughing at?”
    “I’m laughing because I get tired of hearing you guys talk about the war. If it was so fucking bad, why did you go over there? Give it a rest, man. I read about a guy at the My Lai massacre who told a Vietnamese woman he was gonna kill her baby unless she gave him a blow job. Maybe that was you, and that’s why your head is fucked up. The truth is, I don’t care. Pay your marker or lose your building. Can you fit that into your head? You killed a mamasan? Good for you. You killed her kids, too? Get over it.”
    Clete could feel a constriction in one side of his face that was not unlike an electric shock, one that robbed his left eye of sight and replaced it with a white flash of light that seemed to explode like crystal breaking. He knew he had hit Waylon Grimes, but he wasn’t sure where or exactly how many times. He saw Grimes crash through the fronds of a windmill palm and try to crawl away from