Lucy was hunched over the table. She said, “When you robbed hotel rooms, did you carry a gun?”
Jack was about to get up, his hands on the edge of the table. “Never, ever. Somebody happened to wake up, you don’t think I was gonna shoot ’em.”
She was nodding, thoughtful. “But this is different. We’ll need guns.”
“It’s a much higher-class criminal offense, armed robbery. If you want to look at it that way. And if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the bathroom.”
He saw her startled expression as he got up.
She said, “We’re not planning a robbery, Jack.” Sounding honestly surprised.
“What do you call it?”
“We’re not bandits.”
“Tell me what we are. When I come back.”
Franklin de Dios walked up behind Jerry Boylan standing at the urinal. He extended the Beretta to place the muzzle in the center of the gray herringbone tweed, pushed it in to feel the man’s spine, the man’s head turning to look over his shoulder, the man saying, “What?…” and shot him. As the man’s body jerked and then became loose and began to sag against the urinal, Franklin de Dios raised the pistol to the base of the man’s skull, placed the muzzle in that hollow spot, and shot him again and stepped away now, turning away, with no desire to look at the wall smeared red or the man falling dead to the floor.
Franklin de Dios worked the Beretta into the waist of his pants close to his left hip, buttoned his jacket and pulled it down straight. He could hear a ringing in his ears but no sounds from beyond the door, in the restaurant. In the war they searched the ones they killed, if there was time; find a few cordobas if they were lucky. This one could have money or not, it was hard to tell from his appearance; but there wasn’t time to see. Crispin had said to kill him because “He wants to steal money that’s for your people, the contras.” Franklin de Dios had said, “They’re not my people.” And Crispin had said, “Do it or we’ll send you back.” There was no way to leave the war.
He said to himself, Now walk.
He pulled open the door. He stepped out of the Men’s room. He saw the man in the dark suit from the funeral home coming toward him, the man’s eyes on him. So he touched the front of his jacket to unbutton it and the man from the funeral home stopped, two strides from him.
Franklin de Dios said, “How you doing?” The man didn’t answer him or move. So Franklin de Dios walked away from the man, out of the restaurant to join the tourists on their way to see Jackson Square and the Cabildo and the St. Louis Cathedral.
JACK INTRODUCED ROY HICKS, expecting some kind of reaction from Lucy. Finally, the man she was so anxious to meet. But she seemed to hold back, cautious, quieter than times before. A different Lucy this evening-with Boylan shot dead that afternoon. Boylan had touched her.
All four of them were quiet at first.
Jack watched Roy sit down with a drink and in silence, without comment, look over the sun parlor; he’d save his remarks for later. Cullen eased into a deep-cushioned chair, stretched his legs over a matching ottoman, and picked up a magazine. Vogue. He’d told Jack the maid had left. No, not because of him. Gone to Algiers for the rest of the week, to visit her sister.
Jack placed his drink and a sherry for Lucy on the coffee table and sat down with her on the sofa. He put his hand over hers and asked her if she was okay. He could feel Roy watching. She nodded, smoking a cigarette, staying within herself. He could feel Roy waiting to take charge, ask questions, become once again a cop interrogating witnesses.
Jack said, “I looked in, that’s all. I didn’t go in all the way.”
“But you were the first one.”
“I was standing there holding the door open, a waiter went in past me. He took one look and turned around.”
“He say anything to you?”
“Not to me. But people were coming over and I heard him say, ‘Don’t go in there. A man’s been killed.’ ”
“How’d he know Boylan was dead if he went in and turned right around?”
“I guess all the blood.”
“What else did he say?”
“I didn’t hang around to hear any more. We left.”
“You talk to anybody?”
“Not a soul.”
“The waiter know you?”
“I don’t think so, not that particular one.”
“You hope not.”
“Nobody was interested in me, I’ll tell you.” Jack picked up his drink. He’d need another one in about two and a half minutes.
Roy sat facing them across the coffee table. In front of Lucy, on the table, were pages torn from news magazines, a pad of writing paper, a pen, several letters in envelopes, and the glass of sherry, untouched. Roy said to Lucy, “You hear the shots?”
She shook her head.
Jack heard her say no; it was almost a whisper. He said to Roy, “By the time I got back to the table people were standing up, everybody looking toward the front. We got up, we walked out. No one paid any attention to us.”
Roy said, “You could pick the guy out of a show-up? This Nicaraguan?”
“I told you who it was. Franklin de Dios, the one suppose to be an Indian but looks like a colored guy.”
“What I’m getting at,” Roy said, “he could pick you out, too. Isn’t that right? You were fairly close?”
“Of course he could pick me out. He knows me, for Christ sake. We talked, at the funeral home. I asked him what he carried the gun for. Well, now I know. He said, if he has to use it, and the guy wasn’t kidding. He’d know you, Roy, from the other night, the way you pulled him out of the car. Man, I’m telling you, this guy… He came out of the Men’s, as soon as he saw me he made a move like he was gonna put his hand inside his coat. We stood there… You know what he said? He said, ‘How you doing?’ ”
Cullen looked up from his magazine. “The guy said that? No kidding.”
“Then he walked out. By the time we got outside he was gone. Not that we were looking for him.”
Roy said, “He came there to do Boylan, so he must’ve made the three of you at the table, before. Have you thought, if Boylan hadn’t gone to the can the guy might’ve come over to the table?” Roy said, “I want to know if you feel you should identify the guy. For your own protection. But once you become a star witness this deal here is out the window. You understand that? Homicide gets you into it they’ll bring her in, too.” Roy was looking at Lucy now. When she didn’t say anything he asked her directly, “You feel you should go to the police?”
Lucy said, “No, I don’t.”
“Since you know Boylan? Since you know the nigger Indin and the nigger Indin knows you?”
Lucy was lighting another cigarette. She stared at him, then shook her head.
Roy stared back at her and Jack said to him, “Roy, what’re you doing?”
“Don’t worry about what I’m doing,” Roy said. “What’s the Indin doing? Has he run? I don’t think so. You can place him at the scene, but not with a smoking gun. The Indin could say he walked in, Boylan was laying there dead as another guy ran out nobody saw but him. Okay, they did Boylan ’cause they knew who he was and what he was after. They’d have no idea you’re after it, too. But you’re getting in their way and they may want to take you out of it. You understand? Now I’d like to know if she has a problem with that. She does, we can forget the whole thing.”
Lucy said, “You want to know if I have a problem?”
The phone rang. One that Lucy had brought in and plugged into a jack on the front wall of the room, away from where they were seated. She got up and walked around the sofa.
Jack hunched closer to the coffee table, looking at Roy. He waited until the ringing stopped and knew she had picked up the phone.
“Roy?… When I went back to the table to get her… Cully, listen to this. I said, ‘We have to get out of here.’ That’s all. She didn’t say a word. Everybody’s looking toward the Men’s room-what’s going on? She got up, didn’t say a word till we’re outside, in fact till we’re walking up Chartres toward Canal and I told her what happened. She said, ‘Who was it?’ And didn’t say another word after that till we were in the car. You want to know if she can handle this? Roy, she’s seen more people shot and killed than you have-people in her hospital hacked to death with machetes, people she was taking care of…”