“We don’t have a phone, but it’s good to have a phone book anyway. Funny thing is, you don’t seem to be listed in the latest directory.” She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “Now, you can tell us what you really want.”
“I want a dog picked up, that’s all. Now if it’s a matter of price-”
“As I remember, the 1900 block of Florida is completely occupied on both sides by a cemetery.” Her gray eyes were as constant as facts, and he knew his lie had failed.
He looked over at the men, who were smiling smugly in admiration of their mother. The dog let out its tongue and panted, as if thirsty for the truth. “All right. I’m from New Orleans and-”
“And somewhere south of there before that,” she added. “We could hear New Orleans in your talk. But you still say those funny
“A place you never heard of, over by the Texas line.”
“ Lake Charles?”
“Troumal.”
Ralph snorted, then walked up to the table. “I know where it is.”
Sam gave him a quick look. “You been there? Nobody’s been there much. It’s just our families.”
“Your family-it’s still there, is it?” he asked.
Sam studied his face, then its hard features. “My family was killed off by outlaws.”
A brief flash flew through the man’s eyes. “I think I heard about it, long time ago.”
The woman suddenly tapped him on the shoulder with her spatula, and her face began to darken. “Are you some kind of law? At least tell that much of the truth.”
“No.”
She looked up at the denim-clad son. “Ralph, do you recognize him?”
“I didn’t at first, but now I do.”
Sam turned around. “How is it you know me?”
“We never been innerduced from the front,” Ralph said, showing a rack of yellow teeth.
A phantom pain rose in the back of Sam’s head, and he stood up. “You about killed me.”
“If I’d wanted you dead you’d of been that way.”
The woman moved a hand as if she were shooing a fly. “Look, sit down, Simoneaux, or whoever you are. Ralph, you and your brother do a walkaround, make sure he’s alone.”
Once they had left, he decided that he might as well ask her, and he did. “Why’d you take that little girl?”
She stood and tended the little stove, which smelled of kerosene. “What exactly are you doing out here? Somebody payin’ you?”
“I got my reasons.”
She adjusted the sickly flame under the skillet and stirred the contents slowly. “You don’t see a little girl around here, do you? Any sign of one?”
“I work with that child’s parents. They’re excursion-boat musicians, and they’re sick with worry about her.” He looked at the back of her head as if there might be a little window there that his thoughts could climb through. “You’re a mother. Can’t you think about how that lady must feel?”
“I’m seventy-some years old, too old to fall for crap like that.” She shook the skillet over the flame. “You know, sometimes people seem one way on the surface. But inside, they’re different.”
“What?”
“Musicians? Those fine parents might be musicians, all right, the drifter kind that think they’re better than everybody else just because they can read squiggles on a set of lines. You know what I’m talking about. Rummies in the vaudeville orchestra, whorehouse bands, saloon singers.”
“The Wellers aren’t like that.”
She turned her doubtful face on him. “You really know them?”
He blinked. “Well enough to know you been told wrong if you think they’re trash.”
“Still, where will they be in ten years? They’re music players. If they can’t keep up with the tunes, they’ll be as out of work as a broke talking machine.”
“Well.” He leaned back in the chair and looked through the screen into the weed-choked yard. “And where will your boys be in ten years?”
She bristled. “Ralph and Billsy’s already there, mister. And you don’t have to know exactly where, neither. We come over from Arkansas with nothing, and now we’re doin’ all right. That kid’s parents, if I had to guess, can’t give her a thing except how to grow up singin’ dirty songs to dancing drunks.”
“Look, I’m not the law.”
A half-smile formed over the sizzling skillet. “I was worried you might be one of those Chicago boys hired to make some law on the side, if you know what I mean. But you ain’t nothin’ but a coonass that learned all his words.”
Sam glared at her. “Just tell me what you did with the girl.”
“I don’t know what we’re talkin’ about.” She raised the lid on a pot that was chattering on another burner and stirred the rice. “There ain’t no little girl around here.”
The two men came back into the room and sat with him at the table, leaving Satan on the other side of the screen, his eyes like two hot coals caught in the mesh. “You got vittles yet?” Ralph asked.
“Watch this one off the property. He’s just leavin’,” the woman said.
Sam remained seated. “I might stay around to sample some of that rabbit.”
The one named Billsy ran a hand through his iron-colored hair and looked worriedly at the skillet. “What’s he want, anyways?”
The woman sighed. “Hush up.”
“If you won’t talk to me, I’ll go back to the excursion boat and saddle up the Wellers and bring them in for a little chat.”
“If you can sober them up, you mean.”
“They aren’t drunks. Somebody’s filled your head full of lies about those people. The same somebody that paid you to steal their girl.”
“If you send anybody back in here, after we deal with them, we’ll come after you.” The woman turned off the stove, and a kerosene stink began to fill the hot kitchen.
Sam folded his hands on the table. “If someone was hired to steal a child, I’d bet it was by strangers who rode up from nowhere with a good story.”
“Nobody came back in here.”
“It might be faraway strangers, too,” he continued.
“Why don’t you just get on, Frenchie,” Ralph said, arranging his knife and fork next to his plate.
“He talked better than you do,” Billsy said.
Quick as a snake his mother rapped him twice on the skull with her spatula. “You are a ringtailed dumbass if ever there was one.”
Billsy raised his forearms above his head. “I didn’t say nothing.”
Sam could see how scrambled his thoughts were by looking at his eyes. “What did this nice-talking man look like?”
Before his mother could hit him again, Billsy blurted out, “He just had a little mustache and talked about his wife a lot. Rode a horse in a suit.”
Sam made a face. “A horse in a suit?”
Ralph suddenly pulled a big sheath knife and banged it on the table boards. “You about ready to leave, ain’t ya?”
“What do you know about the killing in Troumal?”
“I’ll tell you about a killin’ right here in a minute. Now get out.”
Sam glanced at his eyes and stood up. “Can I get past that dog?”
“You can get past him goin’ out,” Ralph Skadlock told him. “But I wouldn’t try it comin’ back. He’ll eat you like a meat grinder.”
