He clapped me so hard between the shoulder blades that I almost lost my balance.
24
We sat down in a dining room with hardwood furniture and a view of the gray lake. A serving bowl filled with some sort of orange stew steamed between two place settings, perfuming the air with squash, onion, spices, and meat: the smell of the West Indies, as I imagined it.
Kellam motioned for me to sit across from him while Vaneese disappeared into the kitchen. It gave me an opportunity to study his face up close. He looked decidedly older than the last time I’d seen him. His pink skin bore the divot scars of many dermatological surgeries.
“You ever have Haitian food before, Mike? I’m guessing not. This is joumou. Pumpkin soup, basically. It usually has beef in it, but Vaneese makes it with moose meat. I shot a big bull last fall, half a ton, dressed. How’s that for fusion cuisine? Port-au-Prince meets Presque Isle.”
The remark about the hunting trip made me realize that the décor of the former sporting camp was utterly devoid of taxidermy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ventured into one of these historic lodges and not confronted a dusty moose head staring down with glass eyeballs from over the fireplace. Instead, bright paintings of turquoise seas and multicolor shanty towns decorated the walls.
The woman reappeared with a bottle of Corona and a glass for me. Kellam already had a beer in hand.
Ferox, meanwhile, curled up on the floor beside his master. I couldn’t see the war dog from where I was seated—the table was between us—but I was very aware that he had an unobstructed line of attack should he choose to bite me in the crotch.
“I can see from your expression that you don’t know which question to start with,” said Kellam, dishing me up a bowl of stew. “I’ll make it easy for you. It was Nick Francis who told me you were coming.”
I came very close to spitting out my beer. “He did?”
“Said you wanted to talk with me about the St. Ignace shit show. I was pretty damned surprised to hear from him. That Indian never made an effort to hide the fact he hated my guts. I admired his forthrightness in that regard. Backstabbers are the worst.”
Stunned that Nick had given me away, I felt a need to play my cards even closer now. “I didn’t get that impression, that he hates you.”
“There’s no need to sugarcoat things with me, Mike. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know—and I won’t even ask why you’re digging this up. All I ask is that you respect me enough to shoot straight in return.”
“Deal.”
He wiped beer foam from his faint lips. “How’s that joumou?”
Vaneese had reappeared with her place setting. She arranged herself beside Kellam and sat down. Somewhere in her travels back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen, she had acquired a pair of glasses that made her look bookish but no less attractive.
“It’s delicious,” I said to Vaneese. “What are the spices I’m tasting?”
“Clove and allspice, mainly,” she said. “Joumou is our national dish. Before the revolution, the slave masters forbade us from eating it. I am speaking about my ancestors, you understand.”
“I take it you’ve already talked with Charley about what happened in St. Ignace,” Kellam said, oblivious to our culinary conversation. “He was as much in the loop as anyone.”
“You know details about the operation that he doesn’t.”
“That’s true. How are Charley and Ora?”
I had thought that Charley must have visited Kellam ahead of me, but from the sounds of things, it didn’t seem as if they had spoken in ages.
“Good.”
“Weren’t you engaged to one of their daughters?” the lieutenant asked.
“Not quite.”
“Show Mike your ring, Vaneese.”
She extended an elegant arm across the table to show me the diamond.
“Congratulations,” I said. “When’s the wedding?”
“This fall,” said Kellam. “My belief is that when you find a good woman, marry her. Of course, this will be my third trip down the aisle. One of my sons has already threatened not to show, the ungrateful prick, which means three of my grandkids won’t be there either. Families!”
“But you think he will relent, yes?” said Vaneese.
“He damn well better if he wants to stay in my will,” Kellam said. “I can’t think of a sadder discovery than to learn a boy of yours has become a bigot.”
“I don’t think that’s the reason, cher.”
“It’s one reason. That and his being older than you. And you also being a world-class fox.”
The stew was in fact delicious, and I looked up from my empty bowl. “How did you two meet, if you don’t mind my asking?”
He leaned his heavy forearms on the table. The hair on them was so blond it reminded me of down on a baby’s head. “I’m sure there’s a rumor going around the Warden Service. Stan ‘the Man’ Kellam bought himself a mail-order Nubian princess. We actually met in college, Vaneese and I.”
The war-painted Indian logo on his T-shirt suddenly made sense. “I’d heard that you’d gone back to school.”
“You stop learning, you die. That’s my motto. After I retired, I decided to go get my Ph.D. I’ve always been interested in criminology—the hard science behind policing—and FSU has an excellent program. Plus, of course, I would be in Tallahassee and could spend my off-hours bass fishing. The university must have a quota requiring it to admit one ornery old redneck from Maine each year. God love affirmative action.”
“What does ornery mean?” Vaneese asked in her charming accent.
“It means I’m a grouchy son of a bitch who thinks he knows more than
