The wind was blowing hard, straightening the palm fronds on the sides of the road, driving the waves against the blocks of broken concrete that had been dropped into the shallows to prevent the erosion of the bank. Up ahead I saw Antoine Butterworth jogging along the road in a sweatshirt and orange running shorts, his skin the metallic tone of a new penny. A cabin cruiser close in to the shore seemed to be pacing him. A man in shades and the blue coat and white trousers and white hat of a yachtsman was standing on the bow. He yelled something to Butterworth through his cupped hands, then waved goodbye.
The cabin cruiser motored away, twin exhaust pipes gurgling. I pulled abreast of Butterworth and rolled down the passenger window. “Want a lift?”
“I’m pretty sweaty,” he replied, not slowing.
“Suit yourself.”
I drove on to Desmond’s place and parked by his porte cochere and got out. My coat was whipping in the wind, sand and seaweed rilling in waves that burst against the shore and filled the air with spray and the smell of salt. Butterworth ran up the drive and picked up a towel that hung on an outdoor shower, then wiped his armpits and the insides of his thighs. “Where’s your lovely lass?”
“I didn’t get that,” I said. “Must be the wind.”
“I said ‘lass.’ Detective Ribbons.”
“I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
“I hope you’re not here for me.”
“Is Desmond home?”
“Fixing breakfast. Will you join us?”
“Who was the guy on the boat?”
“A tarpon fisherman out of Tampa. Why?”
“No reason. A fine-looking boat.”
“You’re always a man of mystery,” he said.
I wondered how he had lived as long as he had. I went up the wooden steps and knocked on the front door. Desmond answered shirtless and in a pair of cargo pants, staring expectantly over my shoulder. “Hi, Dave. Bailey’s not with you?”
This story started with Desmond, and as I stood in his living room, I believed it would end with Desmond. I must make a confession here. Like many, I was drawn to Desmond for reasons hard to admit. He was one of us, born poor, hardly able to speak English the first day he got on the school bus, rejected for either his race or his heritage or his culture, forbidden to speak French on the school grounds. But unlike the rest of us, he had a vision, one greater than he or the world in which he was born, and he painted it as big as a sunset on the Mojave Desert.
When Ben Jonson said Shakespeare belonged to the ages, I think he was also talking about people like Desmond. Des was staring at me with a spatula in his hand, quizzical, the framed still shots from My Darling Clementine behind him. “You’re looking at me in a peculiar fashion, Dave.”
“Didn’t mean to. I need to talk to you about a few things. Finances, mostly.”
“No more gloom and doom. It’s too fine a day. Say, how did you like the concert last night?”
“I didn’t see you there,” I said.
“I was in the back. Saw you with Bailey. You two aren’t an item, are you?”
“How about minding your own business?”
“Sorry. I have the highest respect for you both.”
Desmond was a good director but not a good actor. He was breathing through his mouth, his jaw hooked, his profile like a Roman gladiator’s, his eyes pieces of stone.
“You don’t approve of my being with her?” I asked.
“I don’t impose my way on others,” he said.
“Right. That’s why you’re a film director,” I said.
“Let’s have some breakfast. Or at least have coffee. I really admire and like you, Dave. Why won’t you accept that?”
I guess his charm was another reason we envied Desmond. He wore the world like a loose cloak and could dine with paupers or kings and accept insult and acclaim with a diffidence that unsettled both his admirers and detractors. I never knew another man, either rich or poor, who achieved his degree of personal freedom.
“How about it? Some eggs and bacon?” he said.
“If you can answer a question or two,” I said.
“I’ll give it my best.”
I followed him into the kitchen. Butterworth was on the deck, performing some kind of ridiculous martial arts exercise.
“Evidently you’re in serious debt,” I said.
“Hollywood runs on other people’s money,” he replied.
“You owe major amounts to some bad guys.”
“Money is money. It’s not good or bad. The issue is how you use it.”
“Your big creditors are out of Jersey and Florida.”
“Walt Whitman is buried in one state and Marjorie Rawlins in the other.”
“Pull your head out of your ass,” I said.
“Would you like two strips of bacon or three?”
I was determined not to let him shine me on. I went into his bathroom to wash my hands. There was a hypodermic in an open felt case on the lavatory. I went back into the kitchen. “I hope the needle belongs to Butterworth.”
“It doesn’t belong to me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“A juju woman told me I was wearing a ball and chain. She’s probably right. But I think you’re in the same club, Des.”
“You know your real problem, Dave? You smear your guilt on anyone you can.”
Then I said something I had not intended to say. “Bailey and I interviewed your father.”
His face tightened like the skin on a shrunken head. His knuckles were white on the handle of the spatula. “Say that again?”
“His name is Ennis Patout. He owns a wrecker service outside Opelousas.”
He resumed scraping eggs out of the skillet. “I never had a father. Someone may say he’s my father, but he’s not. Are we clear on that?”
“He seemed to have remorse about your childhood. He said you were a good little boy.”
“You’d better get out of my life, Dave.”
“My father was a drunk and a barroom fighter and an adulterer. But he wasn’t capable of being anything else. Accept people for what they are.”
Desmond turned off the stove, then pulled open the sliding doors that gave onto the deck. The wind was whistling, the waves bursting on the shoreline. “Come in, Antoine. Dave is heading back to New Iberia. Help me eat this lovely breakfast.”
He was a foot from my face. I tried to hold his stare, but it was hard. His eyes seemed sightless, like none I had seen except in the faces of the dead. There was no twitch in his mouth or cheek or flutter in his throat or sign that he possessed any emotion other than hatred of the world and specifically me.
“You scare me, Des.”
“I’m glad. Now get out of my house.”
That evening, fall was in the air, and I wanted to rid myself of stories about the evil that men do and the duplicitous enterprises that govern much of our daily lives. Piled leaves were burning in the gutters along East Main, the wind puffing them alight and scudding serpentine lines of fire along the asphalt. I could smell the cold autumnal odor of gas and pine needles and ponded water and lichen on stone and candles burning inside carved pumpkins. Alafair and Bailey and I ate a fine dinner on the redwood picnic table in the backyard, then went to a late movie and came home and ate bowls of ice cream and blackberries in the living room. I had almost forgotten how wonderful the life of family could be.
After Bailey was gone, Alafair said, “You and Bailey seem to be hitting it off pretty well these days.”
“That’s a fact.”
She smiled with her eyes. I looked through the window at the sparks spiraling off the ashes of a leaf fire. “She’s a nice lady,” I added.