“I told you, I don’t know the person’s name,” she said.
“Goodbye, madam.”
I walked out of the building. A storm front had moved in from the Gulf, shadowing the bayou and City Park and East Main, blowing leaves and pine needles into the circular driveway where the grotto stood, candles flickering in the votive glasses at the foot of the statue. Then the clouds burst, and the rain pounded on my head and shoulders and ran down inside my shirt. I went back into the building. Wally was at the candy machine.
“Did you hear anything on LaForchette?” I said.
“Nutting, Dave.”
I waited for him to make another sarcastic or cynical remark.
“No comment?” I said.
“You want some paper towels? You look like a drowned cat.”
“No, thanks.”
Wally looked into space.
“You want to tell me something?” I asked.
“I always felt sorry about LaForchette,” he said. “I t’ought he got a bad deal, going to jail as a kid and all. What’s wit’ that woman?”
“Penelope Balangie?” I said.
“She was crying. You said somet’ing bad to her? That ain’t like you, Dave.”
The events that followed are hard to put into words. They’re the kind that make you wonder how you could have prevented a serious blot on your soul or changed a life or lifted someone from his despair with a gift as small as a smile, a gentle word, a touch on the cheek. Or, in my case, simply ignoring a bothersome knock on the door.
The sky remained dark that evening, the rain unrelenting, the oaks and pecan trees in the yard quaking like apparitions when lightning rippled through the clouds. I was eating a frozen dinner in the kitchen when I saw a vehicle turn off East Main and bounce into my driveway, the high beams on. I put aside my food and went into the living room. Someone’s pickup was parked behind mine, the windshield wipers slapping, the engine running. I opened the front door but could not see who was behind the wheel.
“Who’s that?” I hollered.
I waited, but there was no answer. It wasn’t unusual for lost tourists to pull into my driveway. I closed the door and went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The headlights in the driveway continued to burn through the front windows. Then I saw someone in a slicker and a flop hat run for the front steps; a moment later, a fist pounded violently on the door. I removed a five-round titanium .38 Special snub from the cutlery drawer and stuck it in the back of my belt, then went into the living room again and unbolted and opened the front door.
Marcel LaForchette glared at me from under his hat. “I need to confess.”
“See Father Julian.”
“This is about you, motherfucker.”
“I don’t like people swearing on my property or in my home. I’m also out of Purple Hearts. I’ll see you at the department tomorrow.”
“That’s what you t’ink.”
He stiff-armed me backward and stepped into the room. I had not realized how strong and solid his body was. His face was beaded with water and twisted in an angry knot. He smelled like leaves and earth and the sulfur of the storm.
“You’re a pro, Marcel,” I said. “Eighty-six the melodrama, will you?”
“Maybe I’ll bust your jaw.”
“I never jammed you.” I said. “I never ran you in with the lowlifes.”
“You always talked down to me. Just like you’re doing now.”
“Has Mark Shondell got a contract on you?”
“Open hit. I say fuck it. I been there before. You heard of Sammy the Bull?”
“Sure.”
“Sammy tole me I was the best.”
“But you got straight and you’re on the square now. I’ll fix us some coffee and you can tell me what’s on your mind. Okay?”
“No, not okay,” he said. He reached inside his raincoat and removed a Magnum-22 Ruger single-action revolver with white handles. He let it hang from his right hand, his slicker dripping on the rug. He tilted his head and grinned.
“Private joke?” I said.
“You ain’t never put it together, have you?”
“You lost me, podna.”
“I’m talking about you and me. You don’t see it? Look close. The hair, the eyes, maybe the nose a li’l bit.”
“We’re coon-asses,” I said. “Maybe distant cousins.”
“My mother tole me she got it on wit’ your old man, Big Aldous.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Big Aldous didn’t stick it to every woman on the bayou?”
“That was later in his life. When my mother was unfaithful.”
“You lying son of a bitch. He kept a whore in Abbeville. They had a son named Jimmie.”
“Why drag up all this grief? You were always stand-up. Are you going to let a bum like Shondell screw up your head?”
“It ain’t Shondell done it. It’s you. I didn’t have a father or mother. When you were seventeen, you went to SLI. When I was seventeen, I got my rectum tore out in St. John the Baptist Parish prison.” He shoved me again. “I want to hurt you, Dave. I want to kill your animals and burn your house. I want to do t’ings I ain’t never done to nobody else.”
“Your anger is with yourself, bub. Run your shuck on somebody else.”
“Big Aldous come to my house once. He was drunk. He had a Christmas tree tied on the roof of his car. He was taking it to y’all’s house. He didn’t bring nutting to mine.”
“I’m sorry all that happened, Marcel. But I can’t change it. Neither can you.”
“You got a gun on you, ain’t you?”
“No,” I said.
“You didn’t answer somebody beating on your door wit’out your piece? You’re a cop. Don’t be putting your hand behind you. I’ll dust you right here.”
“I’ve had a good life,” I said. “Do whatever you’re going to do.”
“Know why I use a twenty-two?”
“The round bounces around inside the skull. Unless you’re using hollow-points. Then it doesn’t matter.”
He lifted the barrel so it was pointed at my sternum. I had never seen his eyes so bright. They seemed about to shatter in the sockets. “You made fun of me when I said I might become a PI. ’Member that?”
“When I visited you at Huntsville? Yeah, I was kidding.”
“I ain’t,” he said.
He pressed the muzzle of the .22 into the soft flesh under his chin, pushing it deep as though he wanted to do double injury to himself. Then he pulled the trigger.
Close up, the report of a .22 Magnum is almost as loud as a .45 auto. It’s deafening. The round drove up through the roof of his mouth and into the brain, splattering my face with his blood. He collapsed under his hat and slicker as though he were dissolving into a pool of black ink, one hand locked on my shoe.
Chapter Twenty-four
The coroner, paramedics, uniformed deputies, and Carroll LeBlanc and another detective did not finish their work until almost two A.M. Most of the time I sat in the kitchen, watching each person methodically do his job so there would be no doubt about the integrity of the investigation. The blood on my hair and face was photographed before I was allowed to wash it off. I also had to give up my shirt in case it contained powder burns. I knew the questions that would be asked of me, but I did not fear them. The questions I had to ask myself were another matter.
Could I have twisted the pistol from Marcel’s hand when he pressed the muzzle under his chin? Maybe. What if I had distracted him and lied and told him my father had spoken fondly of him? What if I had told him I had some juice in Baton Rouge and could get him a pardon so he could work as a PI?
But the greater concern I had, the one that left me feeling empty and weak at heart and unable to think, was my attitude when I’d visited Marcel in Huntsville Prison. I’d treated him as I would have a gerbil, a genetic accident, a slug lifted from under a rock, at best a spiritually impaired man whose soul had been stolen at age seventeen. I’d treated him with the dignity I would have shown a germ.