Creole Belle Read Online Free

New Orleans to Vietnam and to the brothels of Bangkok and Cherry Alley in Tokyo and back home to New Orleans. In Clete’s mind, hewas not worthy of a good woman’s love; nor did he ever measure up in the eyes of his alcoholic father, a milkman who took out his anger and low self-esteem on his confused and suffering firstborn son.
    His two visitors had parked their car on Decatur and walked up Pirates Alley, past the small bookshop that once was the apartment of William Faulkner, then had mounted the stairs of Clete’s building, where one of them banged loudly on the door with the flat of his fist.
    It was evening, and Clete had just showered after an hour of lifting barbells by the stone well in his courtyard. The sky was mauve-colored and filled with birds, the banana plants in his courtyard rattling in the breeze that blew from Lake Pontchartrain. He had just dressed in new slacks and white socks and Roman sandals and a Hawaiian shirt, his skin still glowing with the warmth of the shower, his hair wet-combed, all the time whistling a tune and looking forward to sitting down at his table over a bowl of crawfish gumbo and loaf of hot buttered French bread. It was the kind of timeless evening in Louisiana when spring and fall and winter and summer come together in a perfect equinox, so exquisite and lovely that the dying of the light seems a violation of a divine ordinance. It was an evening that was wonderful in every way possible. Street musicians were playing in Jackson Square; the air smelled of beignets baking in Café du Monde; the clouds were ribbed like strips of fire above a blue band of light that still clung to the bottom of the sky. Maybe there was even a possibility of turning around in a café and unexpectedly seeing a beautiful woman’s smile. It was an evening that would have been good for anything except an unannounced visit by Bix Golightly and a pimple-faced part-time killer and full-time punk named Waylon Grimes.
    Clete opened the door. “I’m closed for the day. You got business with me, call the office tomorrow and make an appointment,” he said.
    Bix Golightly still had the sloping shoulders and flat chest and vascular forearms and scar tissue around his eyes that had defined him when he boxed at Angola, breaking noses, busting lips and teeth, and knocking his opponents’ mouthpieces over the ropes into the crowd on the green. His face was all bone, the bridge of his nose crooked, his haircut tight, his mouth a mirthless slit. Some people said Bix shotmeth. Others said he didn’t have to; Bix had come out of his mother’s womb with a hard-on and had been in overdrive ever since.
    Three tiny green teardrops were tattooed at the corner of his right eye. A red star was tattooed on his throat, right under the jawbone. “I’m glad to see you looking so good,” Bix said. “I heard you and your buddy Robicheaux got shot up. I also heard you capped a woman. Or was it Robicheaux who did the broad?”
    “It was me. What are you doing here, Bix?”
    “Frankie Gee told you about me acquiring your marker?” he said.
    “Yeah, I know all about it. With respect, this business about a marker is bogus,” Clete said. “I think Frankie took you over the hurdles. I hope you didn’t get burned too bad.”
    “If it’s bogus, why is your name signed on it?” Bix asked.
    “Because I used to play bourré with the Figorelli brothers. I lost some money in a pot, but I covered it the following week. How that marker ended up in Didi Gee’s safe, I don’t know.”
    “Maybe because you were stoned out of your head.”
    “That’s a possibility. But I don’t know and I don’t remember and I don’t care.”
    “Purcel, ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I don’t care’ don’t flush.”
    “It’d better, because that’s as good as it’s going to get. What’s Waylon doing here?” Clete said.
    “He works for me. Why do you ask?”
    “He killed a four-year-old child, is why,” Clete replied.
    “That was