gum to the beat of the music, seemed not to notice the catcalls. Martin watched as a large, muscle-jammed man, almost certainly the bouncer, stepped over to the table and spoke to the men sternly. One of the men handed the bouncer a bill that had been rolled into a small cylinder and patted him on his back as he unrolled it and tucked it into his pocket. As soon as the bouncer was out of sight, the men began making even more noise.
Martin might have finished the drink and left quietly, but the amphetamines had his teeth clenched, and something about the men at the table a few yards away made him angry, sickened him. Not overtly angry-quietly angry. It was a smoldering resentment that seemed almost comfortable to Martin. He needed to do something. Not that he minded that the girl on the stage was being used as a verbal punching bag by these men. Not that they were making lewd suggestions or that they were drunk. The thing that angered him was the fact that they thought their money was a shield. These were men who used their wallets to insulate themselves from their surroundings. They were slumming and felt they could do whatever they chose here. Martin realized that these men were looking down their noses at the girl, the bouncer, the surroundings, and at him. One of the men glanced at Martin and dismissed him with his porcine, intoxicated eyes. Martin was the man seated alone by the wall, dressed in a leisure suit and worn cowboy boots, with hair reminiscent of Elvis. A tourist disguise he had worn all day to wander the French Quarter.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he said to himself as he stood and made a show of finishing his drink and placing the glass on the table. He staggered a bit as he passed the men’s table, and as he lost his balance, he bumped the table, sending the drinking glasses horizontal and the contents cascading over the table’s surface and waterfalling into a man’s lap. The men stood as one, their faces reflecting horror that would give way to anger. Martin staggered again and fell into the largest of the men, then righted himself, apologized, and as the man cursed him loudly, made uncertainly for the door.
“You Hee Haw motherfucker,” the man called after him. “You dress like a goddamn pimp.”
The other two laughed.
At the door Martin turned to see the men taking over another table and raising their hands to get a fresh round.
Martin smiled as the man he had bumped into made a face of alarm, started to stand, and then fell over onto the floor and went into violent convulsions as his friends moved to offer aid. As he watched, Martin carefully slid the small knife from the sleeve of his jacket and put it back into the holster under his right armpit. He was satisfied that the man hadn’t even noticed the scratch of the blade in the excitement of the moment, the chill of the cold drink. Martin wasn’t a man easily impressed, but he was always impressed by the speed of the toxin that coated the tip of his blade.
Martin stepped out into the bright sunlight and slipped on his large sunglasses. Then he strode off down the street, cheerfully whistling a Patsy Cline standard.
15
Laura Masterson liked the adolescent german shepherd, Wolf. She had let Reid present the animal to Reb for his birthday. Even though he was hardly more than a puppy, he made her feel more secure, lying there on the floor of the ballroom while she painted. He lay with his face between his overlarge paws, watching her work as though he could judge the results. Big brown eyes and pointed ears that stood, when he listened, like raised wings.
Laura had started the day by getting Reb ready for school. It would be easier to herd ferrets through a chicken ranch than to get Reb to do anything. He had the annoying habit of becoming sidetracked. You could leave the room with him pulling on his pants and return thirty minutes later to find him drawing with his pants still half-on. Plus, he hadn’t looked well lately; in fact, he looked frail. She hoped it was just another phase, like bed-wetting. He ate so little. The doctor had said that he would eat what his body needed, so she wasn’t going to worry yet. No, he’d said, it is not an eating disorder, it’s a growth spurt readying itself for a go.
She thought about Paul as she painted. She remembered how handsome he had been and how she had fallen in love with him and decided she was going to marry him before they had spoken their first words. It was in a psychology class at Tulane. He had taken a seat two rows from her. He had traded looks with her-they had engaged in a game of eyeball cat and mouse for two weeks. She would turn to sneak a peek at him, and he would turn away as soon as she did, so that their eyes rarely met. It had been painfully obvious that he was shy and so was she. Finally he had stopped in the hallway to pick up the books she had dropped in front of his feet.
“You dropped these,” he had said as he’d handed them back to her. She had handed him a paper and said, “I believe this is yours.” Then she had turned and walked away, knowing he was watching her. She had been praying that he couldn’t see how red her face was.
The note that she had agonized over for days had said: “So, are you going to ask me out, or am I going to have to swallow my pride and ask you out? Laura Hillary, 382-6677.”
He had called that night and asked her father if he could speak to her.
“Laura?” he’d said, as if he had never heard of the girl he’d raised. “So who is this-Paul Masterson? You calling from Mount Olympus with all the other gods?”
“Daddy!” she’d yelled. She’d laughed but was embarrassed.
Then the old man had handed her the telephone. “Paul?” she’d said. “Excuse my father. He’s insane but utterly harmless, as far as we can tell.”
“So. I was just calling to see if you want to maybe go to a movie Saturday night?”
“A movie?”
“Yeah. Or dinner, if you’d rather.”
“A movie would be good. Which one?”
“You could pick it,” he’d said. “I like everything.”
“There’s a German film at the Prytania.”
“A German film. I don’t speak German.”
“It’s subtitled in English.”
“I was making a joke,” he’d said.
She’d laughed. “I see. Or we could see something in English.”
“The German thing sounds fine. We’ll see what you want. I’ll pick a restaurant.”
“Well, I’m not much for foreign films,” she’d said. “I was just trying to impress you, actually.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If we are going to have a relationship, I think we should start by being honest.”
“A relationship. That would be good.”
“So I’ll make a deal with you. Always level with me. Don’t tell white lies to make me feel better, because I hate that. If you have a date with someone else, just say so, and if it isn’t going to work, I mean, if the chemistry is wrong, tell me, and let’s not get all deep into something that one of us will be hurt over.”
“Okay,” he’d said. “I’ll do it if you will. No games.”
And there hadn’t been any games. They had married when the term had ended. After the first date they had been inseparable. He had kissed her on the second date, and they had made love on the fourth in her bed while her parents were out of town. It had been the first time for both of them, and neither could imagine wanting anything but each other. They had honeymooned in the cabin he owned in Clark’s Reward, Montana. They had planned to have children as soon as they could afford it and then decided that they would never be in that position and had Erin anyway. Then they had made Reb and planned to have at least one more. But before they could, Paul had been shot.
The bullet that had passed through Paul’s eye had killed them both. The doctors had assured her that the problem could be repaired. But he had changed. He just wasn’t the same person after he was shot. His career was over because he’d willed it over. One more successful bust, and he would have been appointed the deputy director of the DEA. But the shooting sucked his ambition.
His injury had given him epilepsy and blinded him in the right eye by destroying the socket. The operations had been painful, and he’d suffered unimaginably. Another operation and he would have looked close to normal, down to a smooth patch of skin where the horseshoe-shaped scar was. But he had refused, though as far as she could see, he’d had no reason to. The worst was behind him.
