“Everything.”
“Tell you what, I’m outta here. Keep a good thought. Buy yourself a condo in Crazy Town. I also take back my apology for calling you asshole and fuckball.”
He spun off the stool and walked away in the crowd. My left hand was on the cup. I felt its coldness seeping into my fingers. For a drunk, a moment like this produces the same sensation as coitus interruptus. I raised the cup, then put it down again. I had never wanted to drink so badly in my life, even when I was on the grog full-time and would wake with a thirst so great I would have committed a serious crime to quench it.
I got off the stool and worked my way through the crowd onto the porch and then into the parking lot. In the distance I could see the lights of the sugar mill, the smoke from the stacks an electrified white against a black sky. I wanted to be on a cane wagon in the year 1945, safe with my parents, far removed from the metabolic addiction that had been my undoing since I was sixteen. I heard someone walk on the gravel behind me.
“You have trouble with that guy, Dave?” Sean said.
“It was a misunderstanding.”
“You don’t look right.”
“I’m off my feed. I’m okay.”
“You want me to drive you home?”
“I think Bella Delahoussaye is in danger.”
“The lady in the band?”
“I think she may be a target of the guy who killed Lucinda Arceneaux.”
“Oh, man,” he said. “Bring your truck around. I’ll tell my friends.”
It’s funny how a simple kid like Sean McClain can make you proud to be an American.
It began to rain as we rolled into the black district of St. Martinville. The streets were wet and shiny, the streetlamps oily inside the mist. Up ahead I could see yellow pools of lightning in the clouds high above the town square.
“I got to ask you something,” Sean said. “Hit me upside the head, if you want.”
“What is it?”
“Was you drinking back there at the club?”
“I took a swig out of a drink I didn’t order.”
He stared through the wipers on the windshield. A streetlight cast shadows that looked like rainwater on his face.
“You don’t believe me?” I said.
“It’s kind of like saying you didn’t know what the food was on your plate.” He looked at me to see how I would take it, then looked away.
“You carrying?” I asked.
“On my ankle. I didn’t mean no offense.”
“I know that, Sean. You’re a good guy.”
Yes, he was, and I wished I had not brought him along. Think back on your life. How many major decisions did you actually make? Or better put, how many decisions did you make that at the time seemed inconsequential but down the track had enormous influence on either you or others?
I pulled to the curb in front of Bella’s cottage. A solitary lamp shone behind a window curtain. Her roof gutters were clogged with pine needles and Spanish moss and spilling over on the walls and windows. I heard Sean unstrap the Velcro holster on his ankle.
“Stick it in the back of your belt,” I said.
“Think I’m a hothead?”
I cut the engine. “In the right circumstances, everyone’s a hothead.”
We got out in the rain. I had put on a hat. The rain ticked on the brim and blew in my face. Sean wiped his eyes. “Want me to head around back?”
“Stay behind me.”
“Somebody give you a tip on this, Dave?”
“No. No one. It’s just a feeling.”
“Say that again?”
I walked ahead of him. I had clipped my nine-millimeter on my belt. I tapped on the screen door and waited. There was no movement inside the house. Through the curtains I could see a lamp on a table by one end of the couch. I thought I could make out a shadowy figure at the far end, but I couldn’t be sure. The buildings on both side of Bella’s cottage were dark, the thick banana plants under her eaves impossible to see through. A bolt of lightning popped on the bayou, illuminating the yard like a flashbulb: The banana plants were as yellow as old teeth and streaked with black mold. Then the yard was dark again. I opened the screen and knocked hard on the inside door.
“I’m going around back,” Sean said.
“No,” I said.
“Barricaded suspect.”
“No,” I repeated.
“That’s the protocol.”
I reached for his arm. “Give it a minute. Don’t do anything you don’t need to do.”
He pulled away from me. “You’re wrong on this, Dave. I’m going around back.”
How do you convince a kid in the middle of an electrical storm that an unannounced nocturnal police visit to a neighborhood, particularly a black one, produces fear, and that fear gets people killed?
He looked over his shoulder to assure me. “I got this covered.” He stepped into the middle of the yard, his hand tucked around the butt of the hideaway resting inside the back of his belt, the rain beading on his face. The clouds flared again, and a man who had been hiding in the banana plants bolted for the street. It made no sense. If the man feared us, why didn’t he run for the alley? Then I remembered that access to the alley was sealed off by a wood fence between Bella’s cottage and the neighbor’s house.
“Police officer! Halt!” Sean said. He pulled his piece from his belt and pointed it in front of him with both hands. It was a .22 semi-auto.
“Hold on, Sean!”
“Son of a bitch has a gun.”
“Let him go, let him go, let him go.”
“The motherfucker has a gun. I saw it.”
“Lower your weapon!” I shouted at Sean.
The figure turned in the middle of the street; I don’t know why. Maybe he was trying to surrender. But he held his right arm straight out in front of him. Perhaps he was trying to show that he had a gun and was going to set it down. How do you put yourself inside the head of an armed faceless man who can park a pill in the middle of your face with a cat’s-whisker pull on the trigger?
“Drop it! You hear me? Drop it!” Sean shouted. “Don’t think about it! Do it! Do it! Do it!”
I saw the man’s wrist start to turn downward. Maybe he was going to set his weapon slowly on asphalt so it wouldn’t discharge. I had my badge out and was holding it so it reflected the streetlamp. I felt the situation begin to correct itself. “Just lower your weapon slowly and set it down and step away from it. We’ll all go home safe.”
I thought I saw the man’s knees start to bend. I thought I saw a smile of recognition on his face. But I also saw the barrel of the Luger tilt upward as he started to squat down.
Sean starting shooting, pop-pop-pop-pop, four or five or maybe seven rounds, I couldn’t count them. The bolt on his .22 semi-auto locked open on an empty chamber.
The man with the Luger went straight down like a puppet released from its strings.
“Fuck!” Sean said.
I stepped off the curb. A car was coming down the street, its headlights sweeping across us. Hugo Tillinger was on his back, wearing a suit coat over a T-shirt, his face unshaved. His body looked like a broken question mark. There were two entry wounds in his throat, one in his chest, and one above his ear. His hand fluttered at his throat. A large red bubble issued from his mouth. The Luger lay by his side. I pushed it away with my foot and squatted down, my knees aching.
“Where’s Bella?” I said.
His eyes closed and opened.
“Answer me. What did you do to her?”
He shook his head. His teeth were red. A guttural word was trying to climb out of his voice box.
Sean was standing beside me. “Dave, I didn’t want to do it.”
I pulled him away from Tillinger. “Now’s not the time for it.”
“I begged him to drop it. I never drew down on anybody.”