He said to himself, Now walk.
He pulled open the door. He stepped out of the Men’s room. He saw the man in the dark suit from the funeral home coming toward him, the man’s eyes on him. So he touched the front of his jacket to unbutton it and the man from the funeral home stopped, two strides from him.
Franklin de Dios said, “How you doing?” The man didn’t answer him or move. So Franklin de Dios walked away from the man, out of the restaurant to join the tourists on their way to see Jackson Square and the Cabildo and the St. Louis Cathedral.
JACK INTRODUCED ROY HICKS, expecting some kind of reaction from Lucy. Finally, the man she was so anxious to meet. But she seemed to hold back, cautious, quieter than times before. A different Lucy this evening-with Boylan shot dead that afternoon. Boylan had touched her.
All four of them were quiet at first.
Jack watched Roy sit down with a drink and in silence, without comment, look over the sun parlor; he’d save his remarks for later. Cullen eased into a deep-cushioned chair, stretched his legs over a matching ottoman, and picked up a magazine. Vogue. He’d told Jack the maid had left. No, not because of him. Gone to Algiers for the rest of the week, to visit her sister.
Jack placed his drink and a sherry for Lucy on the coffee table and sat down with her on the sofa. He put his hand over hers and asked her if she was okay. He could feel Roy watching. She nodded, smoking a cigarette, staying within herself. He could feel Roy waiting to take charge, ask questions, become once again a cop interrogating witnesses.
Jack said, “I looked in, that’s all. I didn’t go in all the way.”
“But you were the first one.”
“I was standing there holding the door open, a waiter went in past me. He took one look and turned around.”
“He say anything to you?”
“Not to me. But people were coming over and I heard him say, ‘Don’t go in there. A man’s been killed.’ ”
“How’d he know Boylan was dead if he went in and turned right around?”
“I guess all the blood.”
“What else did he say?”
“I didn’t hang around to hear any more. We left.”
“You talk to anybody?”
“Not a soul.”
“The waiter know you?”
“I don’t think so, not that particular one.”
“You hope not.”
“Nobody was interested in me, I’ll tell you.” Jack picked up his drink. He’d need another one in about two and a half minutes.
Roy sat facing them across the coffee table. In front of Lucy, on the table, were pages torn from news magazines, a pad of writing paper, a pen, several letters in envelopes, and the glass of sherry, untouched. Roy said to Lucy, “You hear the shots?”
She shook her head.
Jack heard her say no; it was almost a whisper. He said to Roy, “By the time I got back to the table people were standing up, everybody looking toward the front. We got up, we walked out. No one paid any attention to us.”
Roy said, “You could pick the guy out of a show-up? This Nicaraguan?”
“I told you who it was. Franklin de Dios, the one suppose to be an Indian but looks like a colored guy.”
“What I’m getting at,” Roy said, “he could pick you out, too. Isn’t that right? You were fairly close?”
“Of course he could pick me out. He knows me, for Christ sake. We talked, at the funeral home. I asked him what he carried the gun for. Well, now I know. He said, if he has to use it, and the guy wasn’t kidding. He’d know you, Roy, from the other night, the way you pulled him out of the car. Man, I’m telling you, this guy… He came out of the Men’s, as soon as he saw me he made a move like he was gonna put his hand inside his coat. We stood there… You know what he said? He said, ‘How you doing?’ ”
Cullen looked up from his magazine. “The guy said that? No kidding.”
“Then he walked out. By the time we got outside he was gone. Not that we were looking for him.”
Roy said, “He came there to do Boylan, so he must’ve made the three of you at the table, before. Have you thought, if Boylan hadn’t gone to the can the guy might’ve come over to the table?” Roy said, “I want to know if you feel you should identify the guy. For your own protection. But once you become a star witness this deal here is out the window. You understand that? Homicide gets you into it they’ll bring her in, too.” Roy was looking at Lucy now. When she didn’t say anything he asked her directly, “You feel you should go to the police?”
Lucy said, “No, I don’t.”
“Since you know Boylan? Since you know the nigger Indin and the nigger Indin knows you?”
Lucy was lighting another cigarette. She stared at him, then shook her head.
Roy stared back at her and Jack said to him, “Roy, what’re you doing?”
“Don’t worry about what I’m doing,” Roy said. “What’s the Indin doing? Has he run? I don’t think so. You can place him at the scene, but not with a smoking gun. The Indin could say he walked in, Boylan was laying there dead as another guy ran out nobody saw but him. Okay, they did Boylan ’cause they knew who he was and what he was after. They’d have no idea you’re after it, too. But you’re getting in their way and they may want to take you out of it. You understand? Now I’d like to know if she has a problem with that. She does, we can forget the whole thing.”
Lucy said, “You want to know if I have a problem?”
The phone rang. One that Lucy had brought in and plugged into a jack on the front wall of the room, away from where they were seated. She got up and walked around the sofa.
Jack hunched closer to the coffee table, looking at Roy. He waited until the ringing stopped and knew she had picked up the phone.
“Roy?… When I went back to the table to get her… Cully, listen to this. I said, ‘We have to get out of here.’ That’s all. She didn’t say a word. Everybody’s looking toward the Men’s room-what’s going on? She got up, didn’t say a word till we’re outside, in fact till we’re walking up Chartres toward Canal and I told her what happened. She said, ‘Who was it?’ And didn’t say another word after that till we were in the car. You want to know if she can handle this? Roy, she’s seen more people shot and killed than you have-people in her hospital hacked to death with machetes, people she was taking care of…”
He saw Roy look up. Lucy came around to the front of the sofa and sat down again.
“That was my mother. She can’t decide whether to go with Claude Montana or de la Renta. I said, ‘That’s a tough one, Mom. Let me think about it and call you back.’ ”
Jack kept his eyes on Roy. Do you get it, you dick? You see it? He could tell Roy wanted to say something, stay in control, not wanting to be outclassed by some girl who used to be a nun. Roy took a big sip of his drink, rattled the ice, and took another sip, giving himself time. Jack said to Lucy, “I guess everybody’s got problems, huh?” And looked at Roy again. “How about you, Roy?”
Roy said, “You mean outside of how we’re gonna pull this off? Outside of they know who you are, but I still don’t know who in the hell they are, or what side we’re on?”
Lucy leaned over the coffee table, began to go through her papers and clippings as Cullen said, “The money don’t care, Roy, what side it’s on. You want to know how much the colonel’s got so far?”
Roy said, “I want to know, for my own information, which are the good guys and which are the bad guys.”
Lucy pushed the pile of pages torn from magazines toward Roy. “Read the quote from the contra’s chief military strategist, Enrique Bermúdez. ‘We’ve learned the hard way that good guys do not win wars.’ Alfonso Robelo, another of their leaders, says, Well, atrocities always occur in a civil war. Look at the photo in there of a man lying in a grave, alive, his eyes open, while a contra rams a knife into his throat. Look at it.” She opened one of the letters then. “From a sister I worked with in Nicaragua. Listen to this.” Her eyes moved down the page, stopped. “ ‘The contras ambushed a truck with thirty people going to pick coffee. Those who weren’t killed by grenades were shot or burned alive on the truck. Including a five-year-old boy and four women… And we are to give thanks they’re fighting for democracy, fighting the antireligious Communists… They kill coffee pickers, telephone line workers, farmers on cooperatives. Who pays them? It comes from our government. Now I hear it’s from private corporations in the U.S. There is so much death. I have never seen so much death in my life.’ “ Lucy continued to read in silence. When she looked up from the page she said to Roy, “Would you like to hear more? Concepcion Sanchez was four months pregnant. They put a gun in her mouth and shot her, then used a bayonet to slice open her stomach. Paco Sevilla was tortured in front of his wife and seven children. They cut off his ears and tongue and made him eat them. They cut off his penis and finally they killed him… More?”