“Corina is Desmond’s mother?”
“She said, ‘Milk through the wrong fence, carry the pail home by your own self.’ She was drunk and throwing things. Maybe clap got to her brain.”
“If she didn’t want Desmond, why would she want to raise another woman’s child?”
“I thought maybe we could get back together. Shows you the kind of fool I was.” He pointed at the bicycle on the wall. “I bought that for Desmond and tried to give it to his grandparents. They told me to begone. Anyone ever say that to you?”
“No, sir,” I replied. “Mr. Patout, there’s something missing from your account. Why did Desmond’s mother bear you such hostility? Why would the grandparents be angry with you when you were trying to do the right thing? The same with the black woman who had your child.”
“You got to ask them.”
“Did you force yourself on the black woman?”
He folded his hands, then squeezed one hand with the other. “A man has needs.”
“You raped her?”
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“And you did the same with Desmond’s mother?”
“That’s what she told others. But it was a goddamn lie.” He took a blue bandana out of his overalls and blew his nose on it. “I don’t want to talk no more.”
“What happened to your little girl?”
“Church people took her.”
“What happened to the mother?”
“Killed herself.”
He stared at his steel-toed shoes, his fingers spread like banana peels on his thighs. I pulled the mechanic’s chair close to him and sat down. “You owned up. Over the years you did what you could. Tell the Man on High you’re sorry, then fuck the rest of it.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d leave,” he said, the words deep in his throat.
“Who are the church people, Mr. Patout?”
“I heard she ended up with a colored preacher and his wife in Cade, just outside New Iberia.”
“What’s the name of the preacher?”
“I never got his name.”
“You’ve been forthcoming. Don’t ruin it by lying.”
“Arceneaux. Her name was Lucinda Arceneaux.”
He raised his eyes to mine. If there’s a hell, I believe I could have reached out and touched its heat on his cheek.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The next day was Saturday. I woke in the blueness of the dawn to a sound that I thought came from a dream. In the dream, Negro convicts of years ago were laying track on a railroad line outside Angola Farm. They were wearing ankle chains and driving steel spikes through the rails into the railroad bed, their hammers ringing in three-four time.
I sat up and looked out the back window. Lou Wexler, stripped to the waist, his shirt hanging on a camellia bush, was tossing horseshoes at a steel spike he had obviously driven into the ground without asking. I put on my khakis and a sweatshirt and went outside. “Do you invite yourself into everyone’s backyard at six in the morning, or are we just lucky?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m supposed to pick up Alafair at six-fifteen and I arrived a little early. She didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“We’re having breakfast at Victor’s.”
“What does that have to do with waking up other people? I don’t want a horseshoe pit in my yard, either.”
“Felicitously noted, sir.”
“Felicitously?”
He turned his head sideways, grinning. “We’re filming a plane crash at Lake Martin later in the day. Exciting stuff. Why not come out?”
“Thank you. All booked up.”
“At heart I think you’re one of us.”
“Say again?”
He offered me a stick of gum. I shook my head. He stuck one into his mouth as though we had all the time in the world. He seemed to wear sensuality like a uniform. His body had the same smooth tone and flat stomach and small nipples as Desmond’s; his armpits were shaved, his upper arms swollen like those of a gymnast. Mon Tee Coon and Snuggs stared down at us from an oak limb overhead.
“You said I’m like one of you.”
“Oh,” he said. “You obviously love movies. The same with Mr. Purcel. We’re not a bad lot. Give us a chance. We’re making this area rich.”
“I don’t see that.”
“We blew the budget out the window. One hundred and twenty million dollars, and the meter is still running. Desmond is broke. By the way, on the subject of Des, you sure got to him.”
“In what way?” I said.
“Something to do with his background, I guess. Des is full of secrets. I don’t probe them.”
“Any discussion I had with him was about a series of homicides. Nothing else.”
“I’m sure that’s the case, Mr. Robicheaux. Sir, it’s not my intention to offend. The culture I live in is garish and abrasive by nature. We spend our time diddling each other to keep our minds off other things.”
“What would those others things be?”
“Growing old. Watching our looks dissolve. Pretending we can reclaim our youth. Is there any fool like an old fool, sir?” he said.
“Who are you talking about, podna?”
“Me. Who else?” He picked up a horseshoe and flipped it thirty feet onto the steel pin, his movements as fluid as water. “Bingo! Is Alafair up?”
Thirty minutes after they were gone, the phone rang on the kitchen counter. I looked at the caller ID. The caller’s number was blocked, but I answered anyway. “Dave Robicheaux. Who is this?”
“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” a mewing voice said.
“Smiley?”
“I’m glad you called me that. Because that’s what all my friends call me.”
“I saw what you did to those guys in Morgan City. You’re a piece of work.”
“I watched you.”
“Say again?”
“I watched you through binoculars. You and the pretty lady you work with. I can read lips. Y’all were very nice to the lady who sells herself.”
I felt dizzy. I pulled up a chair and sat down. “Let me explain something to you. You’re a hired assassin. I’m a sheriff’s detective. People like me put people like you in institutions. Sometimes we send them to the injection table. People like you don’t call up people like me to pass the time of day.”
“You don’t have to get smart-alecky about it.”
“Those two guys were hitters out of Florida, right?”
“Now they’re not anything.”
“Why’d you kill them?”
“They did mean things to me.” I could hear his breath increasing. “One of them used a stick.”
“That makes you a target now, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“You fry two mobbed-up guys and you’re not a target?”
“The bad people who come after me are the target. They need to be protected from me, Detective Robicheaux.”
“You’re one in a million, Smiley.” I looked at my watch. Trying to trace his call was a waste of time. He used an ingenious relay system and seemed to know an enormous amount about technology. The same with ordnance and ballistics. “Why’d you call?”
“Tell Mr. Purcel I’m sorry about the detective lady who died at the casino in New Or-yuns.”
“She didn’t ‘die.’ She was killed.”
“By somebody else’s bullet. It was not from my gun.”
“You started a gun battle in a public place. Other people paid the price.”
“You’re talking bad to me. You stop it.”
“That’s because you’re starting to make me mad, Smiley.”
“My tummy hurts. You’re upsetting me”
“I don’t mean to. An evil man broke up my family when I was a kid. I went to Vietnam and got even. Understand what I’m saying?”
“You killed people?”
I felt my throat closing. “To be honest, I don’t feel like talking about it.”