“I’m assuming you told her.”
He looked at me again. “That’s what I get for telling her the truth, I guess. All through the years, I’ve kept bad news away from her as much as I could. She just goes all to hell. She’s a nervous type anyway.” He took his cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “You’re not thinking of handcuffing me or anything, are you? Because if you are, you’re going to find yourself in a fight.”
“That’d probably cheer your wife up, seeing you and me trying to punch each other out.”
“Goddammit, McCain, at least let me have a little dignity. I don’t want people in town to see me in handcuffs.”
The wailing was loud again now. It had that lonely sound of wolves on winter nights.
“You’re getting worked up for nothing, DePaul. You brought up handcuffs, I didn’t. I don’t even have any handcuffs.” He was letting paranoia take him. He was worried about his dignity. Even in a small city jail like Cliffie’s, the cell would take his dignity away in a way he’d never experienced before.
“C’mon, McCain. Let’s get out of here before Nina comes back. I couldn’t face her now. Later-but not now.”
I’d just backed to the end of the driveway when Nina opened the front door and watched us leave. She didn’t wave or call out. She just watched. Once we were in the street and ready to head downtown, I waved to her. She didn’t wave back. DePaul kept his head down, pretending not to see her.
“You can look up now, DePaul. We’re a block past your house.”
“My wife’ll hate me the rest of her life.”
“Maybe not. You can’t judge her right after you’ve told her what you’ve done. Even if you didn’t mention going to prison, she can figure it out for herself.”
“The same with Nina, Nina’ll probably hate me the rest of her life too.”
He just might have been right in that particular judgment. Nina just might hate him all her life. She just well might.
24
Clifford Sykes, Jr. sat on the edge of his desk as I told him everything I knew about David Raines and Ralph DePaul. I detected a certain pleasure in his eyes when I was talking about Raines. Raines had never made his contempt for “the hillbilly” a secret. But the pleasure became sadness when I told him about his friend DePaul. His jaw muscle worked and he smoked in a chain.
We’d been at it for half an hour. He’d told Marjorie he wouldn’t be taking any calls, and he yelled at anybody foolish enough to knock on his door.
“Lou and Ralph. They were my friends.”
He slid off the desk and rubbed his butt. Apparently it had gone to sleep. Then he walked behind his desk and sat down. The news had shocked him into humility. He hadn’t yet called me a shithead or an asswipe, two of his more recent names for me. But then I hadn’t insulted him either.
“Lou helped build this town. He employed a hell of a lot of people and he was always behind making things better. He had that foundation and it donated a lot of money. Hell, Lou built that swimming pool for those colored kids just last year.” He was talking to himself. He was still trying to convince himself that this was real. “And poor Ralph’s wife. She’s real high-strung and she’s had a lot of health problems. This sure won’t be good for her. This is the kind of thing that can kill people.” I remembered her scream as I stood on the DePaul drive earlier. The terrible grief of it. “Him and that damned gambling. I warned him about it. He used to sneak off to the Quad Cities. Friend of mine spotted him over there several times. I brought it up to Ralph, and he promised me he wouldn’t do it any more. He lied. And he just got in deeper.”
He leaned back in his chair. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, and then he said: “If all this is true, McCain-and it probably is-that still leaves us with two murders.” Despite the air conditioning, his tan khaki shirt was spotted with sweat. “Somebody who wanted to pay them back for being involved in that fire.”
“That’s how I read it.”
“You got any ideas?”
I swallowed a smile. I imagined Judge Whitney’s face when I told her that he’d actually asked my opinion. The old judge would have ordered up a bottle of the best. The new judge would just sip her ginger ale.
I lied, because I felt as if I’d done all the work so far and I wanted to finish it off myself. “Not really. Just possibilities.”
“What kind of possibilities?”
“Just ideas that I still need to think through.”
The way he looked at me, I knew he would soon be calling me names again. “You’re hiding something.”
“I’m really not, Chief. I just need time to think my ideas through.”
“That’s the trouble with you, McCain. All talk and no action.”
Let’s see, I’d brought him Raines and DePaul while he’d brought nobody. Most of the time I would have defended myself, but now all I wanted was to leave. “I’m just trying to take my time with things.”
“What’ll they do to Ralph?”
“If he cooperates right now, that’ll help. Hell, Chief, your cousin’s the district attorney. You can put in a good word for Ralph.”
“Yeah, he’s my cousin all right, but we had this family reunion out to the park last weekend and I guess I kind of called him a cheat. You know, at cards? I had a few too many beers, I’ll admit that, and he was whopping me every hand, so I shot my mouth off. My wife, she made me call him the next day and apologize. The jerk.”
“He wouldn’t accept your apology?”
“He called me a clown.”
“That’s too bad.”
“‘Clown’ is worse than ‘cheat,’ isn’t it?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. “I guess I can always ask my dad to talk to him about Ralph. He’s scared of Dad just like everybody else.”
He was so damned dopey, I sort of liked him for a fleeting moment. I used his funk to say, “I need to be going, Chief.”
He waved me off. “I suppose Raines’ll bring in some hotshot from Chicago for his lawyer.”
“Probably.”
And then he brought me back to reality. He smiled like a plump idiot baby and said, “Nobody’d want some dipshit lawyer like you, that’s for sure.”
All the way down the hall, as I headed for the front door, I could hear him laughing.
As soon as I opened the outer door to my office, I heard their voices. Jamie and Wendy. I got myself a Pepsi from the machine I shared with the store up front and then strolled into my office. I say strolled because the heat had started to slow me down considerably. I didn’t mind the moisture in my shorts all that much, but the sweat on the bottoms of my feet bothered me. I felt as if I was walking on sponges.
I walked over and kissed Wendy on the top of her head; then I went to my desk, dropped into my chair, and let the rumbling window air conditioner work its noisy miracle. I rolled the Pepsi bottle back and forth over my forehead.
“You look tired, Mr. C.”
All I could manage was a grunt in response.
“Jamie and I were just saying you work too hard.”
Another grunt.
“That’s why I stopped in, Sam. How about grilling some shrimp and eating some potato salad I made? That’s my specialty. Then a relaxing evening on my veranda, where it’s cool as soon as the sun starts to go down.”
“He’ll never be able to say no to that, Mrs. Bennett.”
“Oh, you never know about Sam, Jamie. He might tell me that he’s too busy.”
“But Mr. C needs some time off and this sounds really good.”
“You and I know it sounds good, but does he know it sounds good?” Wendy looked like a coed in a light-blue blouse, dark-blue culottes, and white tennis shoes.
