It read:
Dear Alafair,
I had a harsh conversation with your father. But he has tried to destroy our friendship and has also been asking people about my private life, about things that are none of his business.
At first I could not believe your words when you said you couldn't see me again. Did you really mean that? I would never betray you. Would you do that to me? I already know what the answer is.
Remember all our secret meeting places? Just be at any one of them and I'll find you. You're the best person I've ever known, Alafair. We're like the soldier and the girl on the vase. Even though they lived long ago and have probably moldered in the grave, they're still alive inside the arbor on the vase. Death can be beautiful, just like art, and once you're inside either of them, you stay young forever and your love never dies. See you soon.
As ever, Your loyal friend, Johnny
I walked up the slope to the house and went into the bedroom with the letter and showed it to Bootsie.
"My God," she said.
"I'm at a loss on this one."
"Where is she?"
"Still asleep. I'd like to-"
"What?" Bootsie said. She was still in her nightgown, propped on one elbow.
"Nothing," I said.
She sat up and took both my hands in hers. "We can't solve all our problems with violence. Remeta's a sick person," she said.
"It sounds like we're talking about last night instead of Remeta."
She lay back down on the pillow, then turned her head and looked out the window at the pecan and oak trees in the yard, as though fearing that whatever she said next would be wrong.
"You know why I don't believe in capital punishment?" she said. "It empowers the people we execute. We allow them to remake us in their image."
"Gables a degenerate. You didn't see him. I hope I ruptured his spleen."
"I can't take this shit. I can't, I can't, I can't," she said, and sat on the side of the bed, her back stiff with anger.
I FOUND Clete that afternoon, drinking beer, half in the bag, in a St. Martinville bar. The bar had lath walls and a high, stamped ceiling, and because it was raining outside, someone had opened the back door to let in the cool air, and I could see the rain dripping on a banana tree that grew by a brick wall. A group of bikers and their girlfriends were shooting pool in back, yelling each time one of them made a difficult shot, slamming the butts of their cues on the floor.
"Passion tell you I was here?" Clete said. His lap and the area around his stool were littered with popcorn.
"Yeah. Y'all on the outs?"
"She's wrapped up in her own head all the time. I'm tired of guessing at what's going on. I mean who needs it, right?"
"If I wanted to have somebody capped, who would I call?"
"A couple of the asswipes at that pool table would do it for a hand job."
"I'm serious."
"The major talent is still out of Miami. You're actually talking about having somebody smoked? You must have had a bad day, Streak."
"It's getting worse, too."
"What's that mean?"
"Nothing. I want to throw a steel net over Johnny Remeta. Most button men know each other."
"I already tried. A stone killer in Little Havana, a guy who goes back to the days of Johnny Roselli? He hung up on me as soon as I mentioned Remeta's name. What's Remeta done now?"
"He's got a death wish. I think he wants to take Alafair with him."
Clete's face was flushed and he wiped the heat and oil out of his eyes with a paper napkin. The pool players yelled at another extraordinary shot.
"How about putting it under a glass bell, Jack?" Clete said to them, then looked back at me, a half-smile on his face, his eyes slightly out of focus. "Say all that again?"
"I'll catch you another time, Cletus."
He removed a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and stared at it.
"What's scareoderm mean? I couldn't find it in the dictionary," he said.
"I don't know. Why?"
"I took Passion to the doctor yesterday. I heard the nurses talking about her. I wrote that word down."
"You mean scleroderma?" I asked.
"That's it. That's what she has. What is it?"
His mouth was parted expectantly, his green eyes bleary with alcohol, while he waited for me to reply.
It continued TO rain through the afternoon into the night. Little Face Dautrieve put her baby to bed in his crib and watched television until midnight in the front room of her cabin in the Loreauville Quarters. Then she undressed and put on a pajama top and lay down on top of her bed under the fan and listened to the rain on the tin roof. The wind was blowing hard against the slat walls and she knew the storm would be a long one. The occasional headlights on the state road looked like spi-derwebs flaring on the windowpane.
From the edges of sleep she heard a raw scraping sound, like a rat clawing inside the walls. When she raised her head from the pillow, she saw the dead bolt on the back door rotating in its socket, then sliding free of the door frame.
The man other people called Johnny Remeta stepped into the room, water sliding off his hat and black raincoat, a metal nail file glinting in his right hand.
"I t'ought you was my auntie. She fixing to be here any minute," Little Face said.
"Long drive from Lake Charles. Because that's where she moved to."
Remeta sat down in a chair next to the bed and leaned forward on his hands, his hatted profile in silhouette against the lightning that leaped above the trees on the bayou.
"Can I take off my things? They're wet," he said.
"We ain't got nothing you want, Rain Man. My baby's got the croup. I melted Vicks in hot water. That's how come the room smell like it do. You stay here, you get sick."
He removed his hat and set it crown-down on the floor, then pulled his raincoat off his shoulders and let it hang wet side out on the back of the chair. His eyes settled on her face and mouth and she saw his throat swallow. She pulled the sheet up to her stomach.
"I ain't in that life no more," she said.
He opened and closed his hands on top of his thighs, his veins cording under the skin.
"You've been with white men?" he asked.
"Down South the color line never got drawn when it come to the bedroom."
Then he said something that was lost in the thunder or the thickness that caused his words to bind in his throat.
"I cain't hear you," she said.
"What difference does one more make?"
"I ain't want your money. I ain't want you, Rain Man. You got to go back where you come from."
"Don't talk to me like that," he said. The rain clattered on the roof and sluiced down over the windows. Little Face could feel her heart beating inside the thinness of her pajama top. The elastic of her nylon panties cut into her skin, but she knew she should not move in order to make herself more comfortable, although she could not explain why she knew this.
Remeta's breath came out in a ragged exhalation before he spoke.
"I've used a trick to scare people so I wouldn't have to hurt them. I'll show you," he said.
He slipped a blue-black snub-nosed revolver from a holster that was attached to his ankle with a Velcro strap. He flipped the cylinder out of the frame and ejected all six rounds into his palm. They were thick and brass-cased and seemed too large for the size of the revolver. He inserted one back into a chamber and spun the cylinder, then flipped the cylinder back into the frame without looking at where the loaded chamber had landed.
"Ever read about Doc Holliday? His edge was everybody knew he didn't care if he lived or died. So I do this sometimes and it makes people dump in their drawers," Remeta said.
He cocked the revolver, pressed the barrel against the side of his head, and pulled the trigger.