The Sonniers don't trust other people. But I have to try to do what I can.'
'Of course you do, Dave. Nobody said otherwise.' And she looked off at the periwinkles blowing in the shade next to the coulee. The light in her eyes was as private as a solcandle burning in a church.
'We'll take Alafair to Possum's for gtoufge before we go to the track,' I said. 'Or maybe we can just come home and rent a movie.'
'That would be wonderful.'
'The sandwiches were really good. It's sure nice to come home and have lunch with you, Boots. Maybe after I close the drawer on this case, I might take leave of the department. We're doing pretty well at the dock.'
'Don't fool yourself. You'll never stop being a cop, Dave.'
I looked into her eyes again, and they were suddenly clear, as though the breeze had blown a dark object away from her line of vision.
I squeezed her hand, rose from the wood bench, and went around behind her and kissed her hair and hugged her against me. I could feel her heart beating under my arms.
At the office I gave the sheriff the envelope containing the two thousand dollars and the unsigned letter.
'It must be a cheap outfit,' he said. 'You'd think they'd pay a little more to get a cop on the pad.'
He had run a dry-cleaning business before he became sheriff. He was also a Boy Scout master and belonged to the Lions Club, not for political reasons but because he thoroughly enjoyed being a Scoutmaster and belonging to the Lions Club. He was a thoughtful and considerate man, and I always hated to correct him or to suggest that his career as an elected police officer would probably always consist of on-the-job training.
'Seduction usually comes a teaspoon at a time,' I said. 'Sometimes a cop who won't take fifty grand will take two. Then one day you find yourself way down the road and you don't remember where you made a hard left turn.'
He wore large rimless glasses, and his stomach swelled over his gunbelt. Through the window behind his desk I could see two black trusties from the parish jail washing patrol cars in the parking lot. He scratched the blue and red veins in his soft cheek with his fingernail.
'Who do you think it came from?' he asked.
'Somebody with long-range plans, somebody who's always looking around to buy a cop. Probably the mob or somebody in it.'
'Not from Bobby Earl?'
'His kind only pay out money when you catch them sodomizing sheep. I'm pretty sure we're dealing with the wiseguys now.'
'What do you think they'll do next?'
'If I stay out of New Orleans, there will probably be another envelope. Then they'll offer me a job providing security in one of their nightclubs or in a counting room at the track.'
He put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and rotated it with his fingers.
'I've got a bad feeling about all this,' he said. 'I surely do.'
'Why?'
'Don't underestimate Bobby Earl's potential. I met him a couple of times ten or twelve years ago, when he was still appearing in Klan robes. This guy could make the ovens sing and grin while he was doing it.'
'Maybe. But I never met one of those guys who wasn't a physical and moral coward.'
'I saw Garrett's body before the autopsy. It was hard to look at, and I was in Korea. Watch your butt, Dave.'
His eyes were unblinking over his rimless glasses.
By two Pm. it was ninety-five degrees outside; the sunlight off the cement was as bright as a white flame; the palm trees looked dry and desiccated in the hot wind; and my own day was just warming up.
I called Drew again and this time she answered. I was ready to argue with her, to lecture her about her and Weldon's lack of cooperation in the case, even blame her for my difficulties with Bootsie at lunch. In fact, my opening statement was 'Who was this guy in your kitchen, Drew, and why didn't you report it?'
I could hear her breathing in the receiver.
'Lyle told you?' she said.
'As well as Lyle can tell me anything, without trying to sell glow-in-the-dark Bibles at the same time. I'll tell you I've pretty well had it with your family's attitude. I don't want to be unkind, but the three of you behave like y'all have been shooting up with liquid Drano.'
She was quiet again, then I heard her begin to weep.
'Drew?'
But she continued to cry without answering, the kind of unrelieved and subdued sobbing that comes from deep down in the breast.
'Drew, I apologize. I've had some bad concerns on my mind and I was taking them out on you. I'm truly sorry for what I said. It was thoughtless and stupid.'
I squeezed my temples with my thumb and forefinger.
'Drew?'
I heard her swallow and take a deep breath.
'Sometimes I'm not very smart,' I said. 'You know I've always admired you. You have more political courage than anybody I've ever known.'
'I don't know what to do. I've always had choices before. Now I don't. I can't deal with that.'
'I don't understand.'
'Sometimes you get caught. Sometimes there's no way out. I've never let that happen to me.'
'Do you want to come into the office? Do you want me to come out there? Tell me what you want to do.'
'I don't know what I want to do.'
'I'm going to come over there now. Is that all right?'
'I have to take the maid home, and I promised to stop by the market with her. Can you come out about four?'
'Sure.'
'You don't mind?'
'No, of course not.'
'It doesn't make you uncomfortable?'
'No, not at all. That's silly. Don't think that way.'
After I had hung up the phone, I looked wanly at the damp imprint of my hand on the receiver. Were her tears for her brother or herself, I wondered. But then what right had I to be judgmental?
Oh Lord, I thought.
I was almost out the door when the dispatcher caught me in the hallway.
'Pick up your line,' he said. 'A sergeant in the First District in New Orleans has been holding for you.'
'Take a message. I'll call him back.'
'You'd better get it, Dave. He says somebody stomped the shit out of Cletus Purcel.'
After I had finished talking with the sergeant in New Orleans, who had not been the investigative officer and who couldn't tell me much other than Clete's room number in the hospital off St. Charles and the fact that Clete wanted to see me, that somebody had worked him over bad with a piece of pipe, I told the dispatcher to send a uniformed deputy out to Drew's house and to call Bootsie and tell her that I would be home late and would call her from New Orleans. The wind was hot through my truck windows as I drove across the causeway over the Atchafalaya marsh. The air tasted like brass, like it was full of ozone, and I could smell dead fish on the banks of the willow islands and the odor of brine off the Gulf. The willows looked wilted in the heat, and the few fishermen who were out had pulled their boats into the warm shade of the oil platforms that dotted the bays.
I thought of an event, a low moment in my life, that had occurred almost fifteen years ago. I had been sent to Las Vegas to pick up a prisoner at the county jail and escort him back to New Orleans. But the paperwork and the court clearance had taken almost two days, and I walked in disgust from the courthouse down a palm-lined boulevard in 115-degree heat to a casino and cool bar, where I began drinking a series of vodka collinses as though they were soda pop. Then I had a blackout and seven hours disappeared from my day. I woke up in a rented car out on the desert about 10 PM., my head and body as numb and devoid of feeling and connection with the day as if
