“Hang on,” Herman said.
He stepped outside and felt the wind blow on his face, drying the sheen of sweat on his forehead. The trees were rustling loudly, leaves drifting down on the brightness of the pool. He stared hard at a barrel-potted bottlebrush tree that in the shadows seemed fatter and denser than it should have been.
“I can’t take this anxiety,” Monroe said. “You all right, Herman? Tell me what’s happening, man.”
“Shut up, Monroe,” Herman said, staring at a silhouette that disconnected itself from the bottlebrush tree and now stood framed against the moonlight that shimmered like a white flame on the bayou.
“Herman? You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. There’s somebody by the pool.”
“Who?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Herman could hear a creaking sound in his ears, like water pressure at a great depth. “Monroe, stay wit’ me and call the cops on your cell. Don’t break the connection, you reading me on this?”
“I’m your cousin, man, I’m wit’ you all the way. You got anything in your house you shouldn’t have, get rid of it. Flush the bowl two or three times. Don’t use the drains, either.”
“Make the call and come over here, Monroe.”
“I’m coordinating everything from right here. It’s under control. I got your back, man. This is the command center.”
But Herman had removed the cordless from his ear and was no longer listening. “What are
Again there was no response.
“How about saying what you got to say so I can go back inside and get dressed, ’cause I ain’t comfortable walking around outdoors in my underwear talking to myself,” Herman said.
“Herman, who you talking to?” Monroe’s voice said.
But Herman was no longer thinking about Monroe or the cordless phone that hung uselessly from his hand. He wanted the children who had been playing tag in the dark to appear at his piked gate; he wanted someone from the lawn party to arrive by boat at the back of his property and invite him over; he wanted clothes on his body to take away the sense of nakedness and vulnerability that turned the backs of his legs to pudding.
He made a chugging sound when he cleared the clot in his throat. “Maybe it’s my accent that ain’t working here, ’cause you don’t seem to understand what the focus is in our sit’ation. See, the focus is getting everyt’ing out on the table so we can look at it and resolve it and so it don’t be a problem to nobody. But we cain’t do that when we get inside this silent-treatment groove and try to scare the shit out of everybody. See, that’s what John Wayne do in the movies, but in the real world, it gives everybody anxiety and the wrong idea about how t’ings are gonna work out.
“’Cause look, this ain’t funny no more. I ain’t saying I necessarily got a weak heart, but I wasn’t planning to get ’jacked in my own yard, I mean by my own pool, where I’m fixing to entertain these ladies that’s coming over. ’Cause you’re here to ’jack me, ain’t you? Not nothing else? You can have my stash and my cash, it ain’t a lot, but what more can I say, I ain’t in this world to argue or give nobody trouble. I was just telling my attorney, he’s on the line now if he ain’t already on his way over, I’m a bidnessman and put deals together and ain’t never been greedy about it and piece off the action and he’p as many people as I can if they want in on it, but I’m axing you not to point that t’ing at my face no more.
“Hey, I appreciate it. That’s better. We just got to be a li’l more serene on some of this shit. I ain’t no shrinking violet, but I t’ought my heart was gonna give out. No, wait a minute. No, no, hold on. There’s another way to do this. What do you want? Just tell me and you got it. I’m here to please. We can always- Hey, fuck me, I’ll get out of town, you want this place, it’s yours. Don’t do it. Please.”
Later, the pathologist would say the first entry wound, under the left armpit, probably occurred when Herman spun away from the shooter, raising his arm defensively across his face. Even though the exit hole was the size of a quarter, the pathologist would report that the wound in itself was not a mortal one. In fact, the blood pattern on the flagstones indicated that Herman had tried to walk toward the far side of his pool, where his white ironwork chairs were positioned around a table centered with a beach umbrella. His movements were probably slow and precise, like those of a man trying to walk on a wire strung over an abyss, his gold-ebony skin glowing in the electric aura that rose from the pool. But his profile probably had the vulnerability of a cartoon cutout pasted on a target. The second round struck him in the mouth and took away most of his jaw. When he fell into the pool, he floated high above the columns of light that lit the deep end, his arms straight out, as though he were searching for something he had lost and could not find.
I CAME IN late that night. A bank of thunderheads had moved in from the Gulf, and the beginnings of a downpour had started to sprinkle on the trees in the yard and the tin roof of our house. To me, the rain in Louisiana has always worked as a kind of baptism. It seems to have the same kind of restorative properties, washing the dust from trees and sidewalks, rinsing the pollutants out of our streams, giving new life to the grass and flowers, thickening the stalks of sugarcane in the fields. When it rains at night in Louisiana, I remember the world in which I grew up, one that came to us each morning with a resilience and clarity that was like a divine hand offering a person a freshly picked orange.
I hung my raincoat in the hall closet. Molly was reading a book under a lamp in the living room. “Catch any fish?” she asked.
“One or two that I put back.”
“Where’s Clete?”
“I went by myself.”
“Helen was trying to find you. You didn’t have your cell phone on?”
“I left it in the truck. What did she want?”
“Someone murdered Herman Stanga.”
I stared at her blankly. I could hear rain clicking against the window glass. “Stanga is dead?”
“At nine-thirty he was.” Her eyes didn’t leave my face. I could feel her trying to read my thoughts. “Helen asked where Clete was. I told her I thought he had gone fishing with you.”
“I rousted Stanga this afternoon. Helen thought we could turn some dials on him.”
“Why is she asking about Clete?”
“I’ll talk to her in the morning.”
“Does she think Clete-”
“No, that’s ridiculous.”
“How did you know what I was going to say?”
I didn’t have an answer. “Did Helen want me to call her?”
“She didn’t say. Dave, you never go off by yourself like that. Why tonight? Were you thinking about-”
“Drinking? Why would you think that?” I replied.
Her book was open on her lap, her reading glasses down on her nose. She took off her glasses and folded them and placed them in a case. Her face looked youthful and powdered with freckles under the lamp, her dark red hair touched with tiny lights. “I fixed some stuffed eggs and ham-and-onion sandwiches and a pitcher of sun tea,” she said. “I haven’t eaten yet. Did you eat at the landing?”
“No. You waited for me?”
“Alafair went out. I don’t like to eat alone.” Her eyes shifted off mine.
“She went out with Kermit Abelard?”
“They were going to a movie in Lafayette.”
“Was Robert Weingart along?”
“I didn’t look outside.”
“It’s all right. She has to work through it. Eventually she’ll come out on the other side.”
“Other side of what?”
“You want to know? You really want to know?”
“Dave, don’t get angry with me.”
