Lucy was shaking her head. “He has an image of himself, he wears medals. The man likes to be seen.”
“That’s the impression I have. So he’d have to fake something and come up with a story, how he was ripped off. Sandinistas in New Orleans or some other guys, like Jerry Boylan. He stops somewhere this side of Gulfport, shoots a few holes in his new car, and calls Wally… I don’t know. I think he’d have to do something like that. Only now, if he actually does get ripped off and it’s somewhere past Gulfport, he’d have to give it serious thought before he calls Wally. On the other hand, if for some reason he does recognize us, I think the only person he’d call would be you. Then we’d have a problem.”
Lucy said, “Wait a minute. Why wouldn’t he recognize us? He knows who we are.”
“Yeah, but he won’t really see us. You know that book you loaned me, Nicaragua, with the pictures of the young hotshot Sandinistas in their baseball caps and sport shirts? They’re all wearing masks, bandanas, or scarves over their faces with eye holes. If you don’t want to be identified, and we definitely do not, then that’s what you have to do.”
Lucy said, “But I want him to see me. That’s part of it.”
“Why would you?”
“He has to realize, he isn’t simply being robbed, that it’s an act of retribution.”
“If we cover our faces,” Jack said, “it’s a stickup. If we don’t, it’s something else and we’re the good guys.”
She said, “Look, you can do whatever you want. But he has to know who I am. If he doesn’t, I’ll tell him.”
“How come you never mentioned this before?”
“I thought it was understood.”
“You tell Roy?”
“Did we talk about it? No.”
“Roy was gonna look for Mardi Gras masks. He likes the idea of black faces, so the colonel’d think we’re colored guys.”
She said, “Jack, I’m very serious about this. It’s important to me.”
“Well, it’s up to you. But if you tell Roy, I’m pretty sure he’ll walk out.”
“Why?”
“Come on-what’ve we been talking about? You could get picked up, the only one he identifies. The first question the cops ask is who was with you. Then they tell you what kind of a sentence you’re looking at at some women’s correctional. Then they lighten up, offer you a deal, and ask you again who was with you.”
“You think I’d tell?”
“Roy wouldn’t take the chance.”
“I’m asking you,” Lucy said. “Do you think I’d tell?”
“We had all week to talk about it. Now all of a sudden… it’s a different kind of thing.”
She said, “Jack? Do you think I’d tell?”
She stared at him, waiting, and he said, “I think they could pull your fingernails out, you wouldn’t say a word. But you’d have to convince Roy.”
“If it should happen,” Lucy said. “But if you trust me, isn’t that enough?”
Putting him on the spot-sitting here with a blue bandana in his coat pocket and a Beretta automatic shoved into his waist, ready to go. He said, “Maybe it is.” They were this far. He said, “Do you know how you’re gonna get the money down there?”
“Through the motherhouse,” Lucy said. “Transfer it to the bank in León, where the sisters have an account.”
“Are you going back?”
“To Nicaragua? I’m thinking about it.”
“I didn’t mean back in the order.”
“I’m not sure what I am, but I’m no longer a Sister of Saint Francis…”
“Of the Stigmata,” Jack said.
She seemed to smile, remembering. “When I was nineteen I’d say the word stigmata, whisper it, and get the chills and thrills.” Looking at him, but within herself too.
She said she used to pray for a vision, an honest-to-God mystical experience, and believed, when she was nineteen, it would happen unexpectedly but soon. She said she had never told anyone before, that she used to concentrate, imagine herself weightless and then slowly raise her arms and go up on her toes trying to levitate like Saint Francis and be suspended by divine love. She said she would try to imagine what an ecstatic experience would be like and would think, if it isn’t in the mind then it must be experienced through the senses, the body. Then she would wonder, if it’s physical, would it be anything like physical love, making love to a man? The way she was looking at him now he knew what she was going to say. “But I don’t know what that’s like. It’s something I have to find out.”
Quietly telling him this in a room in the St. Louis Hotel at one-thirty in the morning, her eyes on him, waiting.
He said, “Lucy…”
He got up and stood looking down at her, it seemed like a long time before he offered his hands and brought her from the chair into his arms with a tender feeling, a good feeling. He said, “I’ll hold you. Let me just hold you.”
Close to him she said, “Can we lie down?”
ROY WAS ASLEEPin the back seat of Lucy’s Mercedes, in the underground garage of the Royal Sonesta Hotel. He came wide awake and asked what time it was as Jack opened the door and slipped into the front seat.
“Quarter to eight. Where’s their car?”
“Up past the second post and about six in. You can just see it. I moved this one,” Roy said, “so we’ll be pointing the right way. What’re the banana pickers doing?”
“Nothing, yet.”
“The broads stay all night?”
“No, they left. You could hear ’em.”
“Jesus, quarter of eight already. Fucking stakeout, I never thought I’d be doing it again.”
“You were sound asleep. It must not’ve been too bad.”
“What would you know about it? Nothing.”
“Where’s Cullen?”
“Beats the shit out of me. I went up to Darla’s hootch and banged on the door. No answer. He either had a heart attack in the saddle and she had to take him to Charity, or he pulled out.”
“He doesn’t have anyplace to go.”
“He’s a grown boy,” Roy said. “He’s dumb as a fucking stump, but he’s still a grown boy. I took him to meet Darla, I said, ‘Here you go, sweetie, see if you can fuck the old man’s socks off.’ She says, ‘You don’t have to use that kind of language.’ I said, ‘Yes, I do, ’cause you don’t know shit.’ How ’bout yourself? You and the sister have a nice time up there, Jesus Christ, while I’m down in the garage? Where is she?”
“Getting coffee.”
“Well, I hope to Christ she brings me some.”
“That’s what she’s doing, getting us coffee.”
“You go over and listen at their door?”
“Since five this morning. They’re sleeping in.”
“I can believe it.”
“The banana boat leaves sometime this morning,” Jack said. “Even if they’re not gonna be on it they have to make a move pretty soon, for show.”
Roy was looking past Jack toward the Bienville Street exit, a square of sunlight against the ground floor of the St. Louis Hotel, across the street. A parking attendant sat on a high stool to one side of the garage opening. “I think they already have the cash,” Roy said, “and I think we should do it here. Hitting ’em out on the highway somewhere is a bunch of shit and you know it.”
“You get the masks.”
“Fuck the masks.”
“That means you forgot.”
“I’m not gonna wear a fucking mask. If I don’t do it for Carnival I’m not gonna get one for this. The guy doesn’t know who I am. Tie a hanky around your face if you want and we’ll keep Lucy in the car. She isn’t gonna do us any good anyway. This’s the place, shit, right here. I think they stashed it in their car. I had a tire iron we could find out in two minutes.”
“Nobody’d be that dumb, leave it in the car.”
“Nobody’d think they’re that dumb. That’s why it could be there.”
“You look in the windows?”
“Yes, I did, Delaney. But I didn’t look in the fucking trunk, ’cause the fucking trunk doesn’t have a window.”