I chewed a mouthful of Grape-Nuts and kept my face empty.
“Alafair’s still asleep. You want to go back inside for a little while?”
“You bet.”
A few minutes later we lay on top of the sheets in our bedroom. The curtains were gauzy and white with small roses printed on them, and they puffed in the breeze that blew through the azaleas and pecan trees in the side yard. Bootsie kissed like no woman I ever knew. Her face would come close to mine, her mouth parting, then she would angle her head slightly and touch her lips dryly against mine, remove them, her eyes never leaving mine; then she’d brush my lips with hers one more time, her fingernails making a slow circle in the back of my hair, her right hand moving down my stomach while her tongue slid across my teeth.
She made love without inhibition or self-consciousness, and never with stint or a harbored resentment. She sat on top of me, took me in her hand, and placed me deep inside her, her thighs widening, a wet murmur breaking from her throat. Then she propped herself on both arms so that her breasts hung close to my face, her breath coming faster now, her skin bright with a thin sheen of sweat. I felt her heat spreading into my loins, as though it were she who was controlling the moment for both of us. She leaned closer, gathering herself around me, her feet under my thighs, her face flushed and growing smaller and turning inward now, her hair damp against her skin like swirls of honey. In my mind’s eye I saw a great hard-bodied tarpon, thick and stiff with life, glide through tunnels of pink coral and waving sea fans, then burst through a wave in strings of foam and light.
Afterward, she lay inside my arm and touched what seemed to me all the marks of my mortality and growing age — the white patch of hair on the side of my head, my mustache, now flecked with silver, the puckered indentation from a .38 round below my left collarbone, the gray scar, like a flattened earthworm, from a pun gi stick, on my stomach, and the spray of arrow-shaped welts on my thigh where steel shards from a Bouncing Betty still lay embedded. Then she rolled against me and kissed me on the cheek.
“What’s that for?” I said.
“Because you’re the best, cher”
“You, too, Boots.”
“But you’re not telling me something.”
“I have a bad feeling about this one.”
She raised up on one elbow and looked into my face. Her bare hip looked sculpted, like pink marble, against the light outside.
“These two murders,” I said. “We’re not dealing with local dimwits.”
“So?”
“It’s an old problem, Boots. They come from places they’ve already ruined, and then it’s our turn. By the time we figure out we’re dealing with major leaguers, they’ve been through the clock shop with baseball bats.”
“That’s why we hire cops like you,” she said, and tried to smile. When I didn’t answer, she said, “We can’t remove south Louisiana from the rest of the world, Dave.”
“Maybe we should give it a try.”
She lay against me and placed her hand on my heart. She smelled of shampoo and flowers and the milky heat in her skin. Outside, I could hear crows cawing angrily in a tree as the sun broke out of the clouds like a heliograph.
Chapter 7
It’s probably safe to say the majority of them are self-deluded, uneducated, fearful of women, and defective physically. Their political knowledge, usually gathered from paramilitary magazines, has the moral dimensions of comic books. Some of them have been kicked out of the service on bad conduct and dishonorable discharges; others have neither the physical nor mental capacity to successfully complete traditional basic training in the U.S. Army. After they pay large sums of money to slap mosquitoes at a mere training camp in the piney woods of north Florida, they have themselves tattooed with death heads and grandiloquently toast one another, usually in pecker wood accents, with the classic Legionnaire’s paean to spiritual nihilism, “Vive la guerre, vive la mort.”
Miami is full of them.
If you want to connect with them in the New Orleans area, you cross the river over to Algiers into a neighborhood of pawnshops and Vietnamese-owned grocery stores and low-rent bars, and visit Tommy Carrol’s Gun & Surplus.
It was Sunday evening, and Helen Soileau and I were off the clock and out of our jurisdiction. Tommy Carrol, whom I had never met, was locking up his glass gun cases and about to close. He wore baggy camouflage trousers, polished combat boots, and a wide-necked bright yellow T-shirt, like body builders wear. His shaved head reminded me of an alabaster bowling ball. He chewed and snapped his gum maniacally, his eyes flicking back and forth from his work to Helen and me as we walked in file between the stacks of survival gear, ammunition, inflatable rafts, knife display cases, and chained racks of bolt-action military rifles.
“So I’m stuck again with me goddamn kids, that’s what you’re saying?” Helen said over her shoulder to me. She wore tan slacks, lacquered straw sandals, and a flowered shirt hanging outside her belt. She sipped from a can of beer that was wrapped in a brown bag.
“Did I say that? Did I say that?” I said at her back.
“You need something?” Tommy Carrol said.
“Yeah, a couple of Excedrin,” I said.
“Is there a problem here?” Tommy Carrol asked.
“I’m looking for Sonny Boy Marsallus,” I said.
“Don’t tell us the herpes outpatient clinic, either. We already been there,” Helen said.
“Shut up, Helen,” I said.
“Did I marry Mr. Goodwrench or not?” she said.
“What’s going on?” Tommy asked, his gum snapping in his jaw.
“Doesn’t Sonny hang in here?” I said.
“Sometimes. I mean he used to. Not anymore.”
“Helen, why don’t you go sit in the car?” I said.
“Because I don’t feel like changing diapers on your goddamn kids.”
“I’ve been out of the loop,” I said to Tommy. “I’d like to get back to work.”
“Doing what?”
“Peace Corps. Isn’t this the sign-up place?” I said.
He arched his eyebrows and looked sideways. Then he made a tent on his chest with the fingers of one hand. His eyes were like blue marbles.
“It makes you feel better to jerk my Johnson, be my guest,” he said. “But I’m closing up, I don’t have any contact with Sonny, and I got nothing to do with other people’s family troubles.” He widened his eyes for emphasis.
“This is the guy knows all the meres?” Helen said, and brayed at her own irony. She upended her beer can until it was empty. “I’m driving down to the store on the corner. If you’re not there in five minutes, you can ride the goddamn bus home.”
She let the glass door slam behind her. Tommy stared after her. “For real, that’s your wife?” he said, chewing his gum.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your experience? Maybe I can help.”
“One tour in “Nam. Some diddle-shit stuff with the tomato pickers.”
He pushed a pencil and pad across the glass countertop.
“Write your name and number down there. I’ll see what I can come up with.”
“You can’t hook me up with Sonny?”
“Like I say, I don’t see him around, you know what I mean?” His eyes were as bright as blue silk, locked on mine, a lump of cartilage working in his jaw.
“He’s out of town and nobody’s missing him?” I smiled at him.
“You summed it up.”
“How about two guys who look like Mutt and Jeff?”
He began shaking his head noncommittally. “The short guy’s got a fire hydrant for a neck. Maybe he did some work for Idi Amin. Maybe Sonny Boy popped a cap on his brother,” I said.
His eyes stayed fixed on mine, but I saw his hand tic on the countertop, heard his heavy ring click on the glass. He picked up the notepad from the countertop and tossed it on a littered desk behind him.