James Burke: Burning Angel

“Is there some reason I should have been expecting you?” he said.

“Patsy Dap.”

“Who?”

“I kicked a two-by-four up his butt yesterday. I think he might try to square a beef with Johnny by going through you.”

“You have problems with your conscience, sir?”

“Not over you.”

“A matter of principle, that sort of thing?”

“I’ve said what I had to say.”

“You loathed us long before any of this began.”

“Your friends murdered Sonny Boy Marsallus. Either you or Julia ran down and killed a child. One of these days the bill’s going to come due, Moleen.”

I walked back toward my truck. Through the lighted windows I could see Julia, in a yellow dress, a drink in her hand, talking brightly on the phone.

I heard Moleen behind me, felt his hand bite into my arm with surprising strength.

“Do you think I wanted any of this to happen? Do you know what it’s like to wake up every morning with your whole—” He waved his arm vaguely at the air, as a drunk man might. Then he blanched, as though he were watching himself from outside his own skin.

“I don’t think you’re well, Moleen. Get some help. Go into the witness protection program.”

“What do you suggest about Ruthie Jean?”

“If that’s her choice, she can go with you.”

“You have no idea how naive you are, sir,” he said.

He wore a stained white shirt and a pair of baggy seersucker slacks with no belt. For just a moment, in the deepening shadows, with the splayed cane rake propped in his hand, a drop of sweat hanging on his chin, he no longer looked like the man whom I had resented most of my life.

“Is there anything I can do?” I said.

“No, but thank you, anyway, Dave. Good night.”

I held out my business card. He hesitated, then took it, smiling wanly, and inserted it in his watch pocket.

“Good night, Moleen,” I said.

I woke early Saturday morning and went to Red’s Gym in Lafayette and worked out hard on the speed and heavy bag, did three miles on the outdoor track, then drove back home and helped Alafair and Batist fix lunch for the fishermen who returned to the dock during the midday heat. But I couldn’t rid myself of a nameless, undefined red-black energy that made my palms ring, the pulse beat in my wrists. The only feeling I’d had like it was on benders of years ago when my whiskey supply was cut off, or in Vietnam, when we were moved into a free-fire zone only to learn that the enemy had gone.

I called Moleen’s house.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed him,” Julia said. “Would you have him call me when he comes back?”

“I’ve just hired an auctioneer to get rid of his things. Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to come out before the sale and pick up a bargain or two?”

“There’s a New Orleans grease ball in town named Patsy Dapolito.”

“I’m supposed to be on the first tee by one o’clock. Otherwise, I’d love to chat. You’re always so interesting, Dave.”

“We can put a cruiser by your house. There’s still time for alternatives, Julia.”

“You’re such a dear. Bye-bye now.”

Later, Alafair went to a picture show in town and Bootsie and I fixed deviled eggs and ham and onion sandwiches and ate them on the kitchen table in front of the floor fan.

“You want to go to Mass this afternoon instead of in the morning?” she said.

“Sure.”

She swallowed a small bite from her sandwich and fixed her eyes on my face. Her hair moved in the breeze from the fan. She started to speak.

“I’ve made my peace about Sonny,” I said. “He was brave, he was stand-up, he never compromised his principles. That’s not a bad recommendation to take into the next world.”

“You’re special, Streak.”

“So are you, kiddo.”

After we did the dishes she walked down to the vegetable garden at the end of the coulee, with the portable phone in her hand in case I was down at the dock when Alafair called from the show.

A blue Plymouth turned into the drive, and a moment later I saw Terry Serrett walk across the grass toward the gallery. She was dressed in loose-fitting pink-striped shorts, a white blouse, and red sandals; her drawstring beach bag swung against her thigh. Before she mounted the steps, she paused, looked back at the road and down at the dock.

I came to the screen door before she knocked. Her sunglasses were black in the shade; her mouth, which was bright red with lipstick, opened in surprise.

“Oh, there you are!” she said.

“Can I help you?”

“Maybe, if I could come in a minute.”

I looked at my watch and tried to smile. “What’s up?” I said. But I didn’t open the screen.

She looked awkward, uncomfortable, her shoulders stiffening, an embarrassed grin breaking on the corner of her mouth.

“I’m sorry to ask you this, but I have to use your rest room.”

I opened the door and she walked past me into the living room, her eyes seeming to adjust or focus behind her glasses, as though she were examining the furniture in the room or perhaps in the hallway or in the kitchen.

“It’s down the hall,” I said.

A moment later I heard the toilet flush and the water in the lavatory running.

She walked back into the living room.

“That’s better,” she said. She examined the room, listening. “It’s so quiet. Are you Saturday house-sitting?”

“Oh, I’ll be going down to work at the dock in a little while.”

She was absolutely immobile, as though she were caught between two antithetical thoughts, her thickly made-up face as white and as impossible to penetrate as a Kabuki mask.

The phone rang on the table by the couch.

“Excuse me a minute,” I said, and sat down and picked up the receiver from the hook. Through the front screen I saw Batist walking from the dock, up the slope toward the house.

“Dave?” the voice said through the receiver.

“Hey, Clete, what’s happening?” I said.

“You remember Helen gave me a Xerox of Sonny’s diary? All this time I had it under my car seat. This morning I brought it in and told Terry to stick it in the safe. A little while later I check, guess what, it’s gone and so is she. I’m sitting at the desk by the safe, feeling like a stupid fuck, and I look down at the notepad there, you know, the one I took directions to Pogue’s place on, and I realize the top sheet’s clean. I’m sure I haven’t used that pad since Pogue called.

Somebody tore off the page that had my pencil impressions on it...

“You there?”

She pointed the Ruger .22 caliber automatic at my stomach.

“So you’re Charlie,” I said.

She didn’t answer. Her body was framed against the light through the window, as though crystal splinters were breaking over her shoulders. She looked out the window at Batist walking through the shade trees toward the gallery.

“Tell him you’re busy, you’ll be down at the dock later,” she said. “Use those exact words.”

“None of this serves your cause.”

She picked up a pillow from a stuffed chair.

“You need to get rid of the black man,” she said.

I rose to my feet. She backed against the front wall, the pillow folded across the top of the Ruger. Her mouth was parted slightly, as though she used air only in teaspoons. I stood in the door and called through the screen: “I’ll be down at the dock later, Batist.”

“The air pump gone out on the shiner tank,” he said.

I hesitated, opened and closed my hands at my sides, felt the trees, the yard, the fractured blue of the sky almost pulling me through the screen. The woman named Terry raised the Ruger level with the side of my head, whispered dryly: “He won’t make three steps after I do you.”