“You want your shoes shined?” Moleen said, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“I think a remark like that is unworthy of you,” I said.
“I wasn’t being humorous. His great-grandfather and mine were the same gentleman. If you think he’s an eyeful, you should meet his mother. Hang around. She comes in about seven.”
“I can’t stop you from fucking up your life, Moleen, but as a law officer, I want you to hand over your piece.”
“Take it. I’ve never fired a shot in anger, anyway.”
I slipped it from inside his belt, cracked open the breech below the lip of the bar.
“It’s empty,” I said,
“Oh, yeah,” he said absently, and took two steel-jacketed rounds from his coat pocket and dropped them in my palm. “They’re going to take your friend Marsallus out.”
“Who?”
He tilted the glass to his mouth. His eyes were red along the rims, his face unshaved and shiny with a damp sweat.
“What’s the worst thing you saw in Vietnam, Dave?” he asked.
“It’s yesterday’s box score.”
“You ever leave your own people behind, sell them out, scratch their names off a list at a peace conference, lie to their families?”
“Quit sticking thumbtacks in your head. Go public with it.”
“It is public, for God’s sakes. Nobody cares.”
“Why do these guys want to kill Sonny?”
“He’s a one-man firing squad. He gets them in his sights and they tend to dissolve in a red mist.”
“A good woman cares for you, Moleen. A guy could have worse problems,” I said.
“Which woman?”
“See you around, partner. Don’t let them get behind you.” I started to get up.
“You’re always the wise guy Dave. Try this. Ruthie Jean got her Aunt Bertie to file suit against the plantation. They retained a little sawed-off ACLU lawyer from New Orleans who can tie us up in court for years.”
“Sounds like a smart move.”
“Glad you think so. I know some gentlemen who probably won’t agree with you. After they take Marsallus off the board, you may get to meet a few of them.”
“I already have. They’re just not that impressive a crowd,” I said, got up off the stool, and collided into the deformed man. His wood shoe-shine box tumbled out of his hands; brushes, cans of wax and saddle soap, bottles of liquid polish clattered and rolled across the floor. His eyes had the panicked, veined intensity of hard-boiled eggs. He slobbered and made a moaning sound in his throat as he tried to pick up a cracked bottle of liquid polish that was bleeding into a black pool in the wood. But his torso was top-heavy, his arms too short and uncoordinated, and he stared helplessly at the dripping polish on his fingers as the bottle rolled farther from his grasp and left a trail of black curlicues across the floor.
I got down on my knees and began putting his things back in the box.
“I’m sorry, partner. We’ll go down to the store and replace whatever I broke here. It’s going to be okay,” I said.
His expression was opaque, his tongue thick as a wet biscuit on his teeth. He tried to make words, but they had no more definition than a man clearing a phlegmy obstruction from his throat.
I saw Moleen grinning at me.
“Racial empathy can be a sticky business, can’t it, laddie?” he said.
I wanted to wipe him off the stool.
The anger, the inability to accept, would not go out of Bootsie’s words. There were pale discolorations like melted pieces of ice in her cheeks. I couldn’t blame her.
“Dave, she’s only thirteen years old. She could have killed someone,” she said.
“But she didn’t. She didn’t chamber the round, either,” I said.
“That seems poor consolation.”
“I’ll lock up all the guns,” I said.
It was eleven Friday night and we were in the kitchen. I had turned on the floodlight in the mimosa tree in the backyard. Alafair was in her room with the door closed.
I took another run at it.
“I know it’s my fault. I left the Beretta where she could find it,” I said. “But what if this guy had tried to come through the door or window?”
She washed a cup in hot water with her hands. Her skin was red under the tap. Her back looked stiff and hard against her shirt.
“You want to install a burglar alarm system?” I said.
“Yes!”
“I’ll call somebody in the morning,” I said, and went into the backyard, where I sat for a long time at the picnic table and stared listlessly at the shadows of the mimosa tree shifting back and forth on the grass. It was not a good night to be locked up with your own thoughts, but I knew of nowhere else to take them.
In the morning I drove to New Iberia with Alafair to pick up an outboard engine from the freight agent at the train depot.
“You shouldn’t have messed with the gun, Alf,” I said.
“I’d already called 911. What was I supposed to do next? Wait for him to kick the door in?” She looked straight ahead, her eyes dancing.
“I couldn’t find any footprints.”
“I don’t care. I saw him. He was out there in the trees. Tripod got scared and started running on his chain.”
“It wasn’t the guy who got Tripod out of the coulee?”
“He was thinner. A car went by and his skin looked real white.”
“Did he have red hair?”
“I don’t know. It was only a second.”
“Maybe it’s time we learn how to use a pistol properly,” I said.
“Why’s everybody mad at me? It’s not fair, Dave.”
“I’m not mad at you, little guy... Sorry... Bootsie isn’t, either. It’s just—”
“Yes, she is. Don’t lie about it. It makes it worse.”
“That’s pretty strong, Alf.”
“Why’d y’all leave me alone, then? What am I supposed to do if bad people come around the house?” Her voice grew in intensity, then it broke like a stick snapping and she began to cry.
We were on East Main in front of the Shadows. I pulled into the shade of the oaks, behind a charter bus full of elderly tourists. The bus’s diesel engine throbbed off the cement.
“I screwed up. I won’t do it again,” I said.
But she kept crying, with both of her hands over her face.
“Look, maybe I won’t go back with the department. I’m tired of being a punching bag for other people. I’m tired of the family taking my fall, too.”
She took her hands from her face and looked out the side window for a long time. She kept sniffing and touching at her eyes with the backs of her wrists. When she turned straight in the seat again, her eyes were round and dry, as though someone had popped a flashbulb in front of them.
“It’s not true,” she said.
“What isn’t?”
“You’ll always be a cop, Dave. Always.”
Her voice was older than her years, removed from both of us, prescient with a joyless knowledge about the nature of adult promises.
By Sunday morning I still hadn’t put the matter to rest. I woke early and tapped on Alafair’s door.
“Yes?”
“It’s Dave. You got a second?”
“Wait.” I heard her bare feet on the floor. “Okay.”
Her shelves were filled with stuffed animals, the walls covered with posters featuring cats of all kinds. Alafair had propped a pillow behind her head and pulled up her knees so that they made a tent under the sheet. The curtains puffed in the breeze and the screen hung loose from the latch.
I sat in the chair by her homework desk.
“I was upset for another reason yesterday, one that’s hard to explain,”