“No need. They cater to a rough trade,” I said. “You know how Louisiana is.”
“Try a couple of ports in West Africa,” he said.
“That’s right, you and Butterworth were mercenaries,” I said.
“I was a security contractor. Butterworth was a degenerate fop.”
“You like war, Mr. Wexler?”
“No, I hate it. I also bloody well hate those who profit from it.”
“Security contractors don’t?” I said.
“With respect, sir, we saved the lives of thousands who would have been massacred in their villages.”
“That’s a noble endeavor,” I said. “Top of the evening to you.”
I got into my truck and fired up the engine. Alafair walked to my window. The belt on the fan was squealing, the gearshift knob throbbing in my palm. Wexler remained on the gallery. “You either end this attitude or I won’t be back,” she said to me.
“Security contractor, my ass,” I said.
“I mean it, Dave.”
My heart was a lump of ice.
I drove to the blues bar on the bayou. The night was sliding into the hours when the psychological metabolism in certain people shifts into reverse and the worst in them comes out and they feed fires that warp and reconfigure who they are. The sky was black, the air dry and full of dust, the parking lot lined with gas-guzzlers. A man and woman were arguing by the entrance. The woman hit him and stormed away. He grinned at her, grabbed his package, and said, “Bite.”
I went inside and sat in the shadows at the end of the bar. The singer who called herself a Mississippi nigger was playing an instrumental with two Creole men who wore porkpie hats and firehouse suspenders and puff-sleeved pink dress shirts that looked as fresh as roses. My bartender friend with the waxed mahogany knob for a head drummed his fingers in front of me. “What’ll it be, chief?”
“I look like I have feathers in my hair?” I said.
“Same question. You want some ribs? You want a beer? What d’you want?”
“I made a crack about a mop and pail and Stepin Fetchit.”
“I was all busted up about that.”
“I apologize.”
“I ain’t got all night.”
“Give me a diet Dr Pepper.”
“This ain’t a soda fountain.”
“Give me a Dr Pepper and give the lady on the bandstand whatever she’s having.”
“She drinks double Scotches and milk.”
“Then give her that. One other thing?”
“What?”
“Has Hilary Bienville been in?”
“The working girl? I hear she not taking any friction, get my meaning?”
“What’s your name?”
“Lloyd.”
“You’re a charmer, Lloyd.”
“You need to see a psychiatrist, man.”
“You’re probably right. Give me a plate of ribs and dirty rice,” I said, pushing a twenty at him.
Ten minutes later, the singer with the scar like a snake wrapped around her neck sat down next to me, the double Scotch in one hand, a glass of milk in the other. She wore a black skirt and a cowboy vest and a brocaded maroon shirt and enough jewelry to rattle. She sipped from the Scotch, her eyes fixed on me. “Thanks, baby. Where you been?”
“Hanging around.”
She touched my can of Dr Pepper. “You drink that?”
“That’s what I’m drinking tonight.”
“You go to meetings?”
“For quite a while. I’m not a good example, though.”
“Church and all that jazz?”
“I figure it beats blowing my brains out.”
“What are you doin’ in here, baby?”
“I need to know who Hilary Bienville’s manager is.”
“Ax her.”
“She doesn’t want acid in her face?”
“Don’t be shopping around for information ain’t nobody gonna give you,” she said.
“You never told me your name.”
“Bella.”
“Bella what?”
“Delahoussaye.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
She rattled her jewelry. “Know what that sound is?”
I shook my head.
“Same sound you make when you walk,” she said. “You dragging a chain, honey-bunny, just like me.”
“You read minds?”
“I can read yours.”
“I owe a debt to some people who have no voice,” I said. “That’s because they’re in the cemetery. Or buried in a body bag in a rain forest on the other side of the world.”
“You won’t do them no good by joining them.”
I pushed my plate toward her. “Want some ribs?”
“You think you’re too old?”
“Old for what?”
“Me.”
“My wife was killed in a car wreck three years ago. I spend most of my time alone.”
She looked into space. “The dead don’t care. The world is for the living. You got to take your shot.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” I said.
She poured her Scotch into her milk; it swirled like caramel against the glass. She drank the glass empty, her eyes closed, the lids covered with blue eye shadow. She got up from the bar stool. “I get off at two. Hang around.”
“You don’t know me. I could be a dangerous man.”
“But you ain’t.”
As I went out the door, I heard her singing a song written by Big Mama Thornton and made famous by Janis Joplin. It was one of despair and loss and unrelieved misery, one that maybe only a black woman of Thornton’s era could adequately understand. The song was “Ball and Chain.”
At two a.m. I pulled up to the side door of the club.
Bella Delahoussaye stared at me in the headlights, then got in and closed the door without speaking.
“Where’s your guitar?” I asked.
“Locked up. What’s that you got?”
“A bouquet and a box of chocolates.”
“Everything is closed.”
“Not Walmart.” I started the engine. “Where do you live?”
“In St. Martinville.”
“First I want to take you somewhere else,” I said.
“I ain’t choicey. Except about my men.” She touched my thigh.
I drove to a cemetery in St. Martin Parish, not far from a large lake and a wetlands area that bled into the Atchafalaya Swamp. The moon was down, the sky black and swirling with dust from the fields. Oddly, the lake glowed with a luminosity that seemed to radiate from beneath the water. When I was a child, we believed the loup-garou lived under the lake and was responsible for the disappearance of both animals and people.
I cut the engine and took a second bouquet from behind the seat and walked to the passenger side of the truck and opened Bella’s door.
“What are we doing?” she said.
“Need to show you something.”
She stepped onto the ground, a little off balance. I fitted my hand around her upper arm. I could feel the muscle twitch, see a glint of fear in the corner of her eye. She pulled away from me. I took a penlight from my pocket and clicked it on. “That yonder is my wife’s crypt.”
“Why you showing it to me?”
“Her name was Molly. She was a Maryknoll nun in El Salvador and Guatemala. Friends of hers were murdered there. Our government abandoned them, even covered up for their killers.”
“Why you telling me this?”
“I want you to understand what I mean when I say I owe the dead a debt. My wife spent her life helping others. A bad man T-boned her with his truck at high speed. There were no witnesses. The bad man put the blame on her and got away with it. He’s dead now. I didn’t kill him, but I wanted to.”
Bella pushed her hair into a curl behind her neck. Her eyes were elongated, more like an Asian’s than a black woman’s; they seemed to take on a wet sheen, like the darkness in the lake. “I don’t want to be disrespectful, hon, but I ain’t up for this kind of gig.”