“You got me,” he said.
“If you really want to make people mad, tell them you’ve decided which flags they can fly and which icons they can see in public places,” I said. “You’re a smart kid, Johnny. Whom do you think this benefits?”
“Right-wing dipshits in general?”
“That says it all, partner.”
He looked wanly at the ceiling. It was plated with stamped tin and had been there since the nineteenth century. “Can I say something else?” he asked.
“I’m listening.”
“Isolde’s mother has got it in for you. The only thing stopping Adonis Balangie from hurting you has been Miss Penelope.”
“I hope you and Isolde have great careers,” I said.
“Don’t shine me on, Mr. Dave. You’ve seen Gideon recently, haven’t you? Up so close you couldn’t lie to yourself about who or what he is?”
I felt the air go out of my lungs. “How do you know that?”
“It’s in your eyes. You’ve seen things other people won’t believe. So you’ve stopped talking about them.”
“I stopped talking about them after I came back from Vietnam, Johnny.”
“Yeah? Well, the Shondells and the Balangies stopped jerking themselves around over four hundred years ago. That’s why Adonis Balangie’s eyes are dead. That’s why I accept the fact that my uncle Mark might be a monster. The world is a fucking zoo.”
“Don’t use language of that kind, Johnny,” I said.
“I got to ask you something.”
“What?” I said, knowing what was coming next.
“Did you sleep with Miss Penelope?”
I crimped my lips and didn’t answer.
“I didn’t think you were that kind of guy, Mr. Dave,” he replied. “She’s a sweet lady. I think that blows.”
Try going home and falling asleep with words like those in your head.
Chapter Thirty-one
That night the sky was sealed with clouds that resembled the swollen bellies of whales, and when lightning split the heavens, hailstones thundered down all over Iberia Parish, particularly out on the four-lane, where a slender man wearing a tall-crown hat and a three-piece suit and spit-shined pointy-nose cowboy boots entered a truck stop café and sat down in a booth and ordered a piece of pecan pie and a glass of chocolate milk.
The storm was so severe that most truckers traveling the four-lane had parked under the overpasses to protect their windshields and windows. As a consequence, the man in the Stetson was the only customer in the café. The only waitress on duty, Emily Thibodaux, said she never believed that one day a man in a café would cause her to lose control of her bladder and pee a pool of urine around her shoes.
Carroll LeBlanc and I arrived at the café at a quarter past midnight, just after the first ambulance and fire truck had gotten there. The Thibodaux woman was sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette, her lipstick smeared on the cigarette butt, her hand shaking as violently as her teeth were chattering. A blanket was wrapped around her. She looked like a frightened Eskimo.
“He had silver hair?” Carroll said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Wit’ yellow in it, like dirty soap was ironed into it. His voice was way down inside himself. I don’t t’ink he’s from around here.”
“He had a foreign accent?” I said.
“No, suh. Maybe Texas or Mississippi.” She looked toward the service window in the kitchen. There was a sorrow in her face that I’ve seen only among civilians in war zones or in the aftermath of fatal accidents or natural catastrophes.
“Start over,” Carroll said.
“He come in and sat down and left his hat on. His eyes didn’t have no color.”
“What do you mean, no color?” Carroll said.
“Like cataracts. I brought him his pie and chocolate milk, and he called me back and said did I know Clete Purcel. I tole him Mr. Clete comes in late at night, but he ain’t come in tonight, maybe ’cause of the storm and all. He axed me what time he comes in when he comes in. I tole him I wasn’t sure.”
“That’s what got him jacked up?” Carroll said.
“No, suh,” she said. “I was walking away and he said, ‘This pie tastes like dog turds.’ I tole him that wasn’t a nice way to talk. He said, ‘Talk to me like that again, you cunt, and I’ll put somet’ing in your mout’ ain’t gonna be pie.’ ”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her wrist.
“Go on,” I said.
“I went in the kitchen and got a fresh piece of apple pie and give it to him.” She drew in on her cigarette and exhaled slowly, staring into the smoke as though she wanted to hide in it.
“Tell us about the homeless man,” Carroll said.
“He come in off the road dragging a suitcase, wit’ ice in his hair, coughing in his hand somet’ing awful. He wanted a cup of coffee, but he only had fifty cents. I tole him I’d make up the difference, me, but I couldn’t give him no food. Troot’ is, I’d get in trouble for letting him stay inside.”
“Go on,” I said.
“The man in the hat tole me I’d better get that pile of stink away from him. I went into the kitchen and got the homeless man a piece of apple pie and tole Tee Boy, that’s the cook, I knowed I was stealing from the café, but I cain’t let nobody starve. I said, ‘At least I’m serving him pie ain’t got no germs on it.’ Tee Boy axed what I meant, and I tole him I spit in the apple pie I give Mr. White Trash for calling other people names.”
She looked for a place to put her cigarette. Carroll took it from her and got up from his chair and flicked it out the door. I waited for him to come back. “What’s the rest of it, Miss Emily?” I said.
“The service window was open,” she said. She looked into space, as though her words were written on air and she would have to look at them the rest of her life. She started to cry.
“This isn’t your fault, Miss Emily,” I said. “This man who came in here is evil. Don’t let him hurt you any more than he has.”
“Tee Boy got seven children.”
Tee Boy was black and must have been six and a half feet tall. I had not looked at the body yet. And I didn’t want to. Through the window, I could see uniformed deputies stringing crime-scene tape around the parking lot and the building. More emergency vehicles were coming down the four-lane, flashers rippling in the rain.
“What happened then?” Carroll said.
“I went back out and started wiping off the tables, like we do before we close, even though we wasn’t closing. I seen a shadow cover my shoulder and arm and hand and then the table, like the shadow was alive. I turned around and he was standing right behind me.”
“How was he dressed?” Carroll said.
“He had on a blue suit and a gray vest that didn’t look like they belonged together. Everyt’ing about him was like that. He had a funny smell, like bedclothes when a man and woman has been lying on them and doing t’ings.”
“Where was the homeless man all this time?” I said.
“In the bat’room,” she said. “If Mr. Fontenot finds out he was in there, I’m gonna lose my job.”
“I’ll talk to your boss,” Carroll said. “Just tell us what happened, Miss Emily.”
“The man said—”
“Said what?” I asked.
“I don’t like using these words. I know his kind. They beat up on women, yeah.”
“What did he say, Miss Emily?” I asked.
“He said, ‘I want you to sit down and watch this, bitch. Then I’m gonna light you up. Oh, am I gonna light you up.’ That’s when I wet myself. The homeless man come out the bat’room door, and the man in the suit shot him t’rew the face. Then he went after Tee Boy.”