J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Now, Mr. Bourgeois,” Gene says, “it seems you’ve got yourself a problem. My colleague here is from the state of Texas, and you know how them folks get when us Louisiana boys start running roughshod over their rules.”

“This about my parole?”

“It ain’t about collecting for the Policeman’s Ball.”

He starts to rise. “Now, see, I got a paper somewheres-”

“Park it, brother, or I’ll park it for you.”

“It’s all cool, man. Stay chill.”

“You gotta let me finish. What I was saying was, you got a problem, and me, I’m the solution. I can’t have these cowboys coming over the state line thinking they can snatch up my people without so much as a by-your-leave. Only to make ’em go away, there has to be something in it for them. Am I making myself clear? You answer the nice man’s questions, and the nice man goes away. You don’t answer, and the nice man goes away, but he leaves me here to continue the conversation.” He smiles. “And I ain’t nice.”

Bourgeois glances toward the hallway where the kid disappeared. “I’m an open book, man. No secrets. You fire away and see if I’m lying.”

I walk over to the side of his chair. “Tell me everything you know about Donald Fauk.”

He looks up at me, confused, but all it takes is a shift of Gene’s weight and the knit eyebrows smooth away.

“Oh,” Bourgeois says, “you mean that guy.” Like there’d been some doubt. “What you wanna know about him?”

“Everything,” I say.

“Well, he’s pretty rich, I can tell you that. Doing time for stabbing his wife to death. He’s got a lot of muscle around him, too. You can’t hardly get near the man unless he invites you.”

“What did he want from you?”

“Me? He didn’t want nothing”-another movement from Gene-“although, come to think of it, there was something. When I got out, he needed something done for him on the outside, and as a favor I volunteered.”

“Were you compensated for this favor?” Gene asks.

“Compensated?” He turns the word over in his mind. “I guess you could say that. There was some money in it for me.”

“What did you have to do?”

“Nothing much,” he says. “He gimme some letters, is all. ‘Go to the post office and mail these,’ he told me, ‘and when they arrive you’ll get a letter of your own.’ And I give him my sister’s address to send it to. That’s the only reason I had to come here. I wasn’t breaking parole or anything. I just wasn’t thinking when I give it to him, is all.”

“Tell me more about the letters.”

He shrugs. “There was four or five of ’em. All sealed up and the address written on. Two of ’em was real thick, filled up with papers, and the others seemed like there was just one or two pages inside.”

“Where were they going to?”

“The thick ones went to people in Houston, I think. There was one in Florida. I’m not sure about the rest. All of them but the one were to places in Texas, though. I do remember that.”

“And the letter you got, where is that?”

He smiles. “That one was filled with cash.”

“That wasn’t what the man asked,” Gene says.

“Oh. You mean where is it? I done spent the money way back.”

“What about the envelope?”

“One of those big ones,” he says, drawing a box in the air. “Overnight.”

“Which service? FedEx, UPS-”

“I can show you. I still got it somewheres.”

“Well,” Gene says, “that’s more like it.”

Bourgeois hops out of his chair to go and fetch the envelope. Right then I see something in his eyes. Gene sees it too, putting a hand out to stop him. The ex-con ducks under the arm, though, springing straight into Gene. Pushing him off-balance. They lock up, staggering backward. Toward the exit.

Gene topples onto the ground. Bourgeois scrambles over him, bolting out through the open door. I kick it into gear.

As I try to cross over him, Gene rolls. My foot catches on the crook of his knee, nearly forcing me face-first into the walkway. But I regain my balance in time to see Bourgeois hoofing it across the boulevard.

“Go get him!”

I run after him. Over my shoulder I hear Gene struggling back to his feet.

“I’ll get the truck,” he calls out, a note of pain in his voice.

Bourgeois has a head start. And twenty years on me at least. At first it looks like he’s gonna leave me in the dust. I don’t even know why the boy’s running, but I run after him.

I can’t remember my last foot pursuit. My legs can’t, either.

Before long my chest is pounding and a wheezing sound is coming from my throat, and the distance between me and the ex-con keeps getting longer and longer. I expect the truck to roll up anytime, relieving me of the task, but I listen in vain for the roar of the engine.

Bourgeois pauses, then zigzags back across the boulevard, heading for the houses on the far side. He turns to see where I’m at. I pick up some speed. He loses his footing and sprawls onto the pavement.

I kick my legs harder, willing myself forward. As he gets up, I get a glimpse of his face under the streetlight, the features twisted with fear. Why is he running? He takes off down one of the driveways. As I reach the yard, I see him lifting himself over the back fence.

There’s no telling where Gene is, but I yell as loud as I can, hoping he can hear me.

“Fontenot! We’re going over the fence!”

It takes me two tries to grip the top of the fence. I hook my leg over and roll across, landing awkwardly on one foot. I hit the ground. When I pick myself up, my side is damp with mud. I keep running, then climb a second fence, cursing the fact that I didn’t bring a change of clothes with me. And all for nothing. I can’t even see him anymore.

I look around me and pause. I find myself standing at the end of a long row of aboveground sepulchers. The cemetery stretches out before me as far as the eye can see, pitted white marble crypts rising to eye level and higher, like an ancient city recessed into the mud.

Bourgeois lopes between them maybe fifty yards ahead, one hand clamped to his side. He’s in some pain, too. That gives me satisfaction, anyway. I start after him, but my limbs turn to lead. My toe catches on the edge of a cobble and I’m on the ground again, this time for good.

I lie there a second, breathing hard, then get up on one skinned knee. Gene is nowhere to be seen. Off in the distance, Bourgeois gives a cry of mingled pain and exhaustion. I’d yell back, but I can’t catch my breath.

The mausoleums crowd around, and the night grows quiet except for the sound of my breathing and the song of some far-off nocturnal bird.

I retrace my steps and find Gene leaning against the truck with one leg tucked against the other, his hand clutching his raised knee.

“I think I blew it out,” he says, panting.

“Why’d he take off like that?”

“I forgot to ask him on his way out.”

I start toward the house. “We should take a look inside.”

“Without a warrant?” he says, sneering through the pain.

“I’m concerned about that minor in there.”

“Yeah, right.”

The nephew is watching TV in his shoebox of a bedroom, knees tucked under his chin. I mutter a few reassurances, asking where his mother is, but the boy gives no reply. I pull the door shut. In the next bedroom, there’s a nude girl lying facedown on the bed, her outstretched wrist tied to the post with a knotted T-shirt. I crouch by her head, feeling her neck for a pulse. Her skin is feverishly warm to the touch.

“Are you okay?”

I switch on the bedside lamp, then lift her eyelid. Her pupil is just a pinprick. Her lips part and she whispers something.