In the early A.M., he woke to an odor that made no sense: mayonnaise and ham and tomatoes and onions and bread. Was he dreaming? He sat up in bed, an erection dying inside his shorts. In the red glow of the clock on the nightstand, a man was eating a sandwich, the juice running down his chin. He was wearing cotton gloves and a baseball cap. His limbs looked composed of sourdough. His smile made Spade think of an open wound.
“Hi. My name is Chester,” the man said.
Spade pushed himself up on his elbows. “How’d you get in here?”
“You invited me.”
“I invited you when? Who are you?”
“When people do bad things, they invite me in. I just told you who I am.”
“Is that a gun?”
“A .357.”
“You’re the cleaner, aren’t you.”
Chester didn’t answer.
“I’m not tied up with anybody,” Spade said. “You got no beef with me.”
“You’ve done bad things.”
“Who sent you? Just tell me. I’ll square it.”
“You sent me.”
“You’re talking in riddles. I didn’t do anything to anybody. You’re operating on wrong information.”
Chester set his sandwich on the nightstand with a napkin or magazine under it. “These index cards have drawings on them. They show what you made the colored ladies do.”
“What colored ladies?” Spade said.
“The ones you were cruel to.”
“Somebody’s been lying. Look, we’ve got to talk this out.”
“I have to give you the chance.”
“Chance for what?”
“To say you’re sorry.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“So you don’t want to say you’re sorry?”
“I’m ready to work with you on that. Don’t point that at me, man. Come on, you got the wrong guy. I get along with black people. I was undercover in Liberty City.”
“You made one of the ladies put her baby in the freezer. You left him in there till she agreed to do that bad thing.”
“I never did any such thing. Put down the piece.”
“You’re sure about that? Think hard. Don’t make a mistake.”
“I smoked some skunk with angel dust on it. It makes you crazy. Don’t cock that. Please.”
“Take the pillowcase off the pillow.”
“Do what?”
“Put the pillowcase over your head.”
“I’m forgetting this ever happened. I’m leaving town. I already made up my mind before you came in. Nobody will ever see me again.”
“I’m going to shoot you in the stomach unless you do what you’re told,” Chester said.
“I got a feeling you had a bad childhood, kind of like me. I grew up in the Iberville. That’s in New Orleans. My old man was a guard with the Big Stripes in Angola. He was meaner than hell to us kids.”
“I was born in New Or-yuns. The boys in the Iberville made fun of me.”
“That’s not me. I wasn’t like that.”
“I know all the things you’re going to say. They won’t change anything.”
Chester stood up and aimed. The shot was deafening inside the room. Matting flew from the hole in the mattress just below Spade’s genitalia.
Spade’s bowels melted. He had to force the bile back down his throat to speak. “I got the pillowcase. I’m putting it on. Where we going? My cuffs are on the dresser. You want to hook me up?”
“On the dresser? I don’t see them.”
“I’ll show you. Can I take off the pillowcase?”
There was no answer. Spade could hear himself breathing, smell the sourness of his breath, feel two wet lines running from his eyes. He’d never thought he could be this afraid. “Say something. Please.”
But there was no reply.
“I got some cash and gold cuff links. I took them off a guy in the Medellín Cartel. Anything you want here is yours. Take my watch, too.” Then he realized what his tormentor was doing. “You’re eating a fucking sandwich?”
“Not now. I’m finished.”
Spade remembered a prayer from his childhood. How did it go? He always said it before he went to bed. Somehow it removed the sounds of his father yelling, his mother laughing even when he hit her, a baby crying in the other room. Now I lay me down to sleep. Was that how it went? It was too simple. He needed something heavier, a magical or metaphysical way to block off what was about to happen. Where were the words? Why were they denied him?
“Chester?” he said.
“What?”
“I used to say a prayer called ‘Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’ when I was a kid.”
“But you’ve been very bad, haven’t you?” Chester said.
“Yes, I’ve been a bad man.”
“Do you feel better now?”
Spade could feel the last drops of his self-respect sliding from his armpits. “You creepy little snerd, who do you think you are?”
Spade reached for the top of the pillowcase. Then the world became a snow-covered mountain slope cracking loose from its fastenings, grinding up trees and rocks in its path, boulders as big as cars bouncing over his head, the sky an immaculate blue, the air pristine, the flecks of ice on his skin as cool and gentle as a lover’s fingers. He closed his eyes and extended his arms by his sides and waited for the roar to engulf him, to lift him into a place where rage and fear and need were but rags ripped away in the wind, the soul as bright as a burnished shield, the landscape down below one of blue and green waters and coral reefs and sea horses that frolicked in the waves.
Then he realized he was already there. Safe. The book written. The covers closed.
Chapter 31
Helen called at 3:16 Sunday morning. “I’m in Lafayette. We got a shots-fired at Spade Labiche’s house. Can you get over there?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was barefoot and in my skivvies in the kitchen. “Who called it in?”
“A guy walking across the bridge. He heard a pop and saw a flash through the upstairs window. A patrolman just kicked open the door. He says it’s a mess. We ROA there.”
“Labiche is dead?”
“His place is a fortress. I don’t know how anyone could get in. Maybe he ate his gun.”
I rubbed water on my face and brushed my teeth, put on a pair of khakis, and hung my badge around my neck and hooked my nine-millimeter on my belt.
“Where you going?” Alafair said from her bedroom door.
“It’s Spade Labiche.”
“Somebody caught up with him?”
“Maybe.”
I felt her studying my face. “I’ll lock you in,” I said. “Maybe this guy Smiley is back in town.”
“That’s not what’s on your mind. Labiche is the only guy who knows what happened the night T. J. Dartez died.”
“That sums it up.”
I drove down East Main and turned onto the side street that led to Labiche’s house. Someone had turned on the lights inside. A cruiser was parked in front. There had been a six-car pileup on the four-lane, and the paramedics had not arrived. I went through the broken door and up the stairs. A red-haired, barrel-chested patrolman nicknamed Top met me at the entrance to the bedroom. “I left everything alone. The pillowcase was half off his face when I got here.”
There was blood splatter on the headboard, the wall, and the window glass. There were three bullet holes in the headboard and a tear in a sheet with powder burns around it and a long bloody swath down the side of the mattress and the bed frame that dead-ended at the body on the floor.
Through the French doors, I saw the lights of emergency vehicles turning off Main. I knelt on one knee and lifted up the edge of the pillowcase with my ballpoint. There was an entry wound high up on Labiche’s left cheek, a graze that had taken off most of one ear, and another entry wound on his neck. His left eye had turned to milk. Half of his body was painted with blood. I let the pillowcase drop and looked around the floor, then shook out the sheets and a bedcover on the foot of the bed.