The words didn’t fit the scene. The wind was blowing through the branches overhead, the moss drifting in threads to the asphalt, votive candles flickering in the grotto.
“Say again?”
“She had a flat tire. Jimmy Nightingale talked her into having a drink and got her drunk.” He saw the expression in my eyes. “What?”
“People get themselves drunk,” I said. “Where is she?”
“At home.”
“Did she go to the hospital?”
“Our doctor came to the house. Why do you ask about a hospital?”
“Can she come to the department?”
“She doesn’t want to.”
“I can understand that, Levon. But we don’t do home calls. A female officer will interview her. The surroundings will be private.”
He looked around. “I don’t know what to do.”
I couldn’t be sure if he was talking to himself or to me. “Tell me what happened.”
“She was at the grocery last night. She came outside and saw she had a flat tire. Nightingale put her spare on. They went out to the highway and had a drink.”
I could already see what a defense lawyer would do with Rowena’s story.
“I’m sorry to hear about this,” I said.
“You don’t believe her?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“She trusts people when she shouldn’t,” he said. “She thinks y’all won’t believe her. She was doing work among the poor when I met her in Venezuela. She gave her paintings to the Indians, people no one cared about.”
He waited for me to reply. I hate to handle sexual assault and child molestation cases because the victims seldom get justice, and that’s just for starters. Adult victims are exposed to shame, embarrassment, and scorn. Often they are made to feel they warranted their fate. Defense attorneys tear them apart on the stand; judges hand out probation to men who should be shot. Sometimes the perpetrator is given bail without the court’s notifying the victim, and the victim ends up either dead or too frightened to testify. I’ve also known cops who take glee in a woman’s degradation, and it’s not coincidental that they work vice.
“I’m in the cookpot these days, Levon. I’ll do what I can for y’all.”
“You’re having some kind of trouble?”
“I’m a suspect in a homicide.”
His lips moved without sound.
“Yeah, it’s a bit unusual,” I said.
He looked up and down the street. “You don’t believe Rowena’s account, do you?”
“I don’t know all the circumstances.”
“She’s never been unfaithful,” he said.
The last statement was the kind no investigative cop ever wants to hear. “Has Jimmy tried to contact you or your wife?”
“Jimmy?”
“I’ve known him most of my life.”
“Yes, and you introduced him to us, and now we know him, too.”
Sometimes you just have to walk away. And that’s what I did.
“I apologize,” he said at my back.
The phone was ringing as I came through the front door. “Hello?” I said.
It was Alafair. “Clete called. He says you’re in trouble.”
“I’ll get out of it.”
“He said you were in the bag.”
“No,” I said. “I mean I’m not drinking now.”
“You stopped going to meetings?”
“I went last night.”
“What’s this about the guy who hit Molly’s car?”
“I was in a blackout. The guy was beaten to death out by Bayou Benoit. Maybe I did it.”
The phone went silent. In the backyard, the sun and the smoke from meat fires in the park looked like spun gold in the trees. In my mind’s eye, I saw Alafair at age five, after I pulled her from a submerged plane piloted by a Maryknoll priest who was helping illegals escape the death squads in Central America. I thought about the wonderful life we’d had on the bayou.
“You never hurt anyone except in defense of yourself or someone else,” she said. “I’m flying into New Orleans tomorrow.”
“That’s not necessary, Alfenheimer.”
“Don’t call me that stupid name.”
“How’s your screenplay coming?”
“I’m writing it for people who think William Shakespeare was too wordy. How do you think it’s coming?”
“What time does your flight come in?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll rent a car. Just hold tight till I get back to New Iberia.”
“I owned up at a meeting. I’m fine.”
“That’s when people slip, isn’t it? When they say they’re fine. Why’d you drink, Dave?”
“The same reason as everyone who goes out. I wanted to.” The line was silent. I felt my heart stop. “Alafair?”
“You don’t know how much it hurts when you say something like that.”
My ear felt as though it had been stung by a wasp.
Victor’s cafeteria on Main Street, right across from Clete’s office, opened at six A.M. every weekday. It was a grand place to eat and start the day, and usually crowded with businesspeople and tourists and cops and parish politicians. If there was any better food on earth, I hadn’t found it. Clete and I went in at seven on Tuesday, and Clete loaded up with his healthy breakfast of four biscuits, scrambled eggs sprinkled with grated cheese, green onions, and bacon bits, a pork chop smothered in milk gravy, orange juice, a bowl of stewed tomatoes, and multiple cups of coffee.
Helen was two tables from us; it was obvious she didn’t want to acknowledge us.
“What’s wrong with her?” Clete said.
“You didn’t talk to anyone in Jefferson Davis Parish about an incident there, did you?”
He stopped eating. “Involving you?”
“Involving a graduate of Raiford and Angola and Quentin we both know.”
“Something happened to Penny?”
“You could say that.”
He took his cell phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “I’ve got four missed calls from the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department.”
“Better answer them.”
“This isn’t funny, big mon.”
“Penny didn’t think so, either.”
He started eating again, then put down his knife and fork and drank his coffee cup empty. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To the park.”
“How about your office?”
“You know how many times I’ve been bugged?”
We walked to the drawbridge at Burke Street and crossed the bayou and went into City Park and sat in one of the picnic shelters by the water, a few feet from a row of camellia bushes, the petals still wet with dew. I told him everything.
“You almost drowned him in the toilet?”
“Yep.”
“He’ll come at you.”
“No, he won’t. He’s a gutless shit.”
“You’re letting your past distort your thinking, Streak. The people who hurt you and me as kids are nothing compared to Penny.”
“They’re all cut out of the same cloth.”
“My old man wasn’t. He was just a drunk who figured himself a failure and didn’t know where to put his anger.”
People make peace with themselves in different ways, sometimes being more generous than they should. But you don’t pull life preservers away from drowning people or deny an opiate or two to those who have taken up residence in the Garden of Gethsemane.
“Did you get enough to eat?” I asked.
“No.”
I looked at my watch. “We have time for a refill.”
Clete had alluded to my childhood experience with a man named Mack. I didn’t argue with him about the influence of Mack on my life. In fact, I don’t think about Mack anymore. Eventually, he turned into a specter who drifted off into the mist, a dirty smudge not worth remembering. But there was never a man I hated as much, and I carried my hatred to Indochina and put his face on many an enemy solider, none of whom deserved to be a surrogate for this evil man. For that reason alone I did not willingly discuss my experience in the Orient, or the deeds I committed there, or the ribbons and wounds I brought home. Evil is evil, and you don’t give the son of a bitch a second life.