James Burke - Light of the World

“You don’t take prisoners, do you?”

Gretchen didn’t reply and stared out the side window into the darkness. She sniffed and dabbed her nose with her wrist.

“You’re my best friend,” Alafair said. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I’ll drive you to Clete’s car. But after that, you’re on your own.”

“I’ve always been on my own,” she said. “That’s what none of you have figured out. You don’t know shit about what’s in my head.”

They were silent while Alafair circled the block and pulled to the curb by the restaurant parking lot. Gretchen got out and walked to Clete’s convertible, her tote bag swinging from her shoulder. She stuck her spare key into the door lock and looked back at the street. Alafair cut her engine and walked into the parking lot. “I’ll make this brief,” she said. “I’ll always be your friend, no matter what you say or do. Dave and Molly will always be there for you, too. But if you ever speak to me like that again, I’m going to kick your butt around the block.”

Clete sat back down at the table and drank the melt in the bottom of his tumbler, crunching the cherries and orange slices between his molars. “I shot off my mouth,” he said.

“I don’t know if I’m up to this kind of evening,” Felicity said.

“Gretchen is a good kid. She just had the wrong idea. My body doesn’t process booze the way it used to.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t drink.”

“It doesn’t quite work like that.”

“You treat your daughter as if she’s a child. Mature people don’t throw temper tantrums in a restaurant.”

“I wasn’t there for her when she was growing up. She was surrounded by bad guys. I’m talking about johns and degenerates, one in particular.”

“You’re talking about a molester?”

“A guy who burned her all over with cigarettes when she was a toddler. He isn’t around anymore.” He felt her gaze rove over his face.

“What are you telling me?” she asked.

“I’m saying the guy who hurt my daughter isn’t going to hurt anybody else.”

“No, what are you trying to tell me about your daughter?”

“Not everybody grows up in a regular home. Gretchen’s mother was a hooker. Her old man was a drunk and on a pad for the Giacano crime family in New Orleans. The old man tried to set things right and took care of the guy who hurt her. But punching somebody’s ticket doesn’t give back the life a pervert stole from a little girl. That’s what I was trying to say.”

“Maybe you’re a better man than you think you are. When I said you shouldn’t drink, I wasn’t criticizing you. I thought maybe we would have a fine evening.”

“I’ve got King Midas’s touch in reverse. Whatever I touch turns to garbage. Excuse me, I got to go to the restroom.”

He went into the men’s room and relieved himself and washed his hands. The reflection he saw in the mirror could have been that of a profligate doppelgänger come to mock him. The skin around his eyes was green, his face dilated and oily with booze, the welted scar running through one eyebrow as red and swollen as an artery about to burst. There was a lipstick smear on his shirt pocket, where she had fallen against him when they were going out the door of the saloon. He washed his face in cold water, heaping it with both hands into his eyes and rubbing it on the back of his neck. He wiped his face with paper towels and combed his hair and returned to the table.

“We can cancel the order and maybe go somewhere else,” Felicity said.

“I think I’ve blown out my doors for tonight. I’ve got to square things with Gretchen. You’re a nice lady. I’ll help you in whatever way I can, but right now I’m done.”

She placed her hand on his knee. “Don’t let our evening end like this.”

“End like what? I’m tired. I’m running on the rims. I’m a fucking mess.”

“Don’t let situations and people control you, Clete. Our destiny isn’t in the stars, it’s in us. We can control the moment we have. That moment is now.” Her fingers lingered on his knee, as light as air, one finger idly brushing the fabric. “I really like you,” she said.

“Gretchen is a little girl in a woman’s body. I owe her. She’s my kid. She’ll always be my kid.”

Felicity lifted her hand and placed it on top of the table just as their food arrived. Clete stared out at the street, his jaw tightening.

“What is it?” Felicity said.

“My Caddy just went by. There it goes, down by the red light.”

“I don’t see it.”

“There’s a pickup behind it. Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Clete went through the bar and out the front door and looked at the parking lot. The Caddy was gone. He went back inside the bar. “Did you see a maroon Caddy convertible pull out of the lot?” he asked the bartender.

“Yeah. A guy at the bar did, too.”

“I don’t follow.”

“A guy went out the door without paying for his drinks and sandwich. I went outside after him. He got in his truck and took off after the convertible.”

“What kind of truck?”

“I don’t know.”

“You get the tag?”

“The guy said he was from Kansas. He made a crack at a girl who was in here. I didn’t get the tag number.”

“Which girl?”

“Good-looking, wearing jeans, long legs. That’s the crack he made. He said she had long legs. He had a face kind of like a shoe box.”

“Did he use a name?”

The bartender thought for a moment. “I heard him coming on to a college girl. He told her his name was Toto. What kind of name is that?”

Gretchen turned off the brick-paved street by the tracks and drove aimlessly through the downtown area, unable to sort out her thoughts, her palms dry and stiff and hard to close around the steering wheel, her anger and depression like a stone in her chest. She passed the Wilma Theater and crossed the Higgins Street Bridge. Raindrops and hail were clicking on the convertible’s top; down below she could see a park and a carousel and the Clark Fork boiling over the boulders along the riverbank, the flooded willows bending almost to the waterline. On the other side of the bridge, she turned onto an unlit street down by the river, the same neighborhood of brick bungalows and early-twentieth-century apartment buildings where Bill Pepper had lived.

A pickup truck that had been behind her on the bridge kept going and disappeared from her rearview mirror as soon as she turned off Higgins. She parked under a maple tree and cut the engine and dialed Alafair’s number on her cell phone. “Have a drink with me at Jaker’s,” she said.

“Are you there now?” Alafair said.

“No, I’m down by the river. I’m sorry for all those things I said to you. I feel really bad, Alafair.”

“It’s not your fault. I was lecturing you.”

“You always know how to handle things in an intelligent way. I don’t. Sometimes I wish I were you.”

“Is Clete all right?”

“He’s with the Louviere woman. Maybe I should go back there. At least return his car.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“It’s time to disengage and let Clete solve his own problems. Remember the story of Tom Sawyer’s fence? The best way to get people to do something is to tell them they can’t.”

“You always make me feel good, Alafair.”

“See you at Jaker’s. And stop worrying about everything. Leave a message on Clete’s cell and tell him where we are.”

Gretchen closed her phone and cracked the window, letting in the cold air and the smell of the trees and the river. The windshield was filmed with ice crystals, a streetlamp glowing like a yellow diamond inside the maples. She started the engine and glanced in her outside mirror. A pickup truck turned out of a side street and approached the Caddy from behind, the driver slowing. In the mirror she could see two silhouettes in the front seat. Was that the same truck she had seen earlier?