Clete and Alafair and I sat at a table by one of the clay fireplaces and rolled lettuce and tomato and shredded cheese and strips of steak inside tortillas and watched Desmond dance. The flames from the gas lamps painted his body with bands of yellow and orange like the reflections of an ancient fire on a cave wall. A tall, very thin woman with jet-black hair and milk-white skin and a dress slit to the top of the thigh tried to dance with him, her eyes fastened on his. But if she desired to make use of the moment and become a soul mate with Des, she had underestimated the challenge. He scooped her up, one arm under her rump, and waltzed in a circle, holding up the magnum bottle with his other hand, while everyone applauded and the thin woman tried to hide her surprise and embarrassment.
I felt a shadow fall across the side of my face. I turned and looked up at Antoine Butterworth.
“Good evening, all,” he said.
“Hello, Antoine,” Alafair said. She looked worriedly at me and then at Clete. “I thought you were holding down things in New Iberia.”
“I had enough of the mosquitoes and humidity for a while,” he said.
Alafair looked at me again, then back at Butterworth. “Would you like to join us?”
“I didn’t mean to crash in on you,” he said.
“Sit down,” I said to him.
“Change of attitude?” he said. “Saw a revelation in the sky, that kind of thing?”
“I’m suspended from the department,” I said. “You’re safe.”
He pulled up a chair and fingered his chin. The skin on his face and his shaved head looked as tight as latex on a mannequin. “Could I ask why?”
“The sheriff likes to flush out the place on occasion,” I said. “Kind of like a reverse affirmative-action program.”
“Nothing to do with us, the California infidels?” he said.
“No, it has everything to do with me,” Clete said. “I cut slack to an escaped convict. Dave didn’t report me, so he took my weight. Know who Hugo Tillinger is?”
“Saw his picture in the paper. Man who burned up his wife and daughter,” Butterworth said. “Charming fellow, I’m sure. You say you turned him loose?”
“That’s the kind of thing I do,” Clete said. He was on his fourth Heineken. “I screw up things. You ever do that? Screw up things?”
“We all have our special talents,” Butterworth said.
“See, what bugs me is Tillinger was buds with a former Aryan Brotherhood member named Travis Lebeau, a guy who got chain-dragged on Old Jeanerette Road,” Clete said. “See, the AB might have been mixed up with a bad sheriff’s deputy who was pimping off some local working girls that maybe some Hollywood guys would dig as a change of pace. Know what I’m saying?”
“That’s enough, Clete,” Alafair said.
“It’s okay, isn’t it, fellow?” Clete said to Butterworth. “You guys float in and take a dip in the local pond, then head back to Malibu. Splish-splash.”
“Cool your jets, Clete,” I said.
“My bad,” he said, still talking to Butterworth. “That’s an expression you guys started. Samuel Jackson says it in a film, then all the locals are saying it. You guys have a big influence on Hicksville, did you know that?”
“Let’s go, Alf,” I said, getting up.
“Don’t bother,” Butterworth said. “I’ll be running along. Oh, look. Des seems to have found another dancing partner. My, my, and yum, yum.”
Desmond and Bailey Ribbons were waltzing in a wide circle. All the other dancers had left the floor, maybe realizing, as I did, that Des and Bailey had become Henry Fonda and Cathy Downs waltzing in the exaggerated fashion of frontier people in My Darling Clementine. In fact, the band had gone into the song; I didn’t know if they had been told to do so. I felt as though I had stepped into the film, [[p158]]but not in a good way. I should have been witnessing a tribute to a seminal moment in the history of film and the American West, but instead, Desmond’s drunkenness, the inscrutability of his eyes, the rawness of his half-clothed body, were all like a violation of a sacred space, one that had been hollowed out of a vast burial ground.
Alafair pulled on my arm. “Come on, Dave. Finish your supper.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m just a little off my feed today.”
But the moment wasn’t over. Bailey and Desmond sat down with their friends, and someone fired up a fatty and passed it. When it was Bailey’s turn, she leaned forward and took a toke, then passed it on, laughing as she exhaled. I dropped my napkin on the table and went to my room.
Fifteen minutes later, Bailey was at my door.
“What’s the haps?” I said.
“I was going to talk with you, but you stormed off,” she replied.
“Long day. I’m on the bench.”
“May I come in, or should I just stand here in the hall?”
I stepped aside and let her in. I could smell her perfume as she passed me. I closed the door.
“What do you mean, ‘on the bench’?”
“Helen has me on suspension without pay.”
“For what?”
“Dereliction of duty, I suspect. I held back information to keep Clete Purcel out of trouble.”
“Why are you angry with me?”
“Who said I was?”
“You’re filling the room with it right now.”
“You were smoking weed.”
“Clete Purcel doesn’t?”
“He’s not a cop. If you show contempt for your shield, why should anyone else respect it?”
Her face was tight, her eyes burning with anger, the rim of her nostrils white. “I didn’t know I could give you such discomfort.”
“It’s not about me. You took an oath. We set the standard or we don’t. If we don’t, dirty cops like Axel Devereaux do.”
“I won’t be an embarrassment to you again.”
“Are you going to throw in with these guys?” I said.
“Throw in with them? I’m going to have a small part in the film: a union woman who was at the Ludlow Massacre. Why are you talking to me like this?”
I thought more of you. “I read the book. It’s not a small part. You become the lifelong companion of a Texas Ranger who put John Wesley Hardin in jail.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re ashamed of me.”
I went to the window and opened the curtains and gazed at the buttes in the distance. The heat lightning had died, and the heavens were bursting with stars. I was sure the trail that Henry Fonda had followed into the buttes was still there, stretching over the edge of the earth, teasing us into tomorrow and the chance to build the life we should have had. I felt the room tilt under my feet. When I turned around, Bailey Ribbons was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
I flew home in the morning on a commercial flight, although I could sorely afford the cost. The next day I called Helen and the head of Internal Affairs and left messages saying I was at their disposal. Then I sat in the silence of the kitchen and stared at the leaves dropping from the oaks in the backyard. It felt strange to be home alone in the middle of the workday, separated from my profession and all the symbols of my identity: my badge, the cruiser that was always available for me, the deference and respect that came from years of earning the trust of others. I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered whom I was about to become.