John Miller - Upside Down

“Because these are your thoughts, Faith Ann. And they are important.”

“Im-por-tant? Oh, Mother, please.”

“Important because you wrote them. They reflect your life, your world. Someday they might be valuable because they are your words.”

“Yeah, right,” Faith Ann's voice said. “This is so gay.”

“It is not,” her mother countered. “It's precious.”

“That's the lawyer bitch,” Arturo said. “And that's her kid.”

“Just shut up, Arturo!” Marta snapped.

He shrugged. “Kid was in the office.”

“Someday you'll be so glad to have this tape,” the lawyer said.

“And you'll use it to humiliate me,” her daughter shot back.

“No, I won't. Cross my heart. Ready? First poem…”

“Okay, you'll start the music again when I wave my hand. Okay? Okay. The name of this poem is ‘A Penny for Your Thoughts.' I wrote it about everybody having opinions about everything, even stuff they know absolutely nothing about.” The soft strains of chamber music came up in the background.

“A penny for your thoughts, by me, Faith Ann Porter.

I think without stopping. all Spring through to Fall

If you get them for a penny they're worth nothing at all.”

Marta snapped the Stop button and hit fast forward.

“I want to hear the poem,” Arturo protested.

Marta let it run for several seconds, then she punched the Stop button. “You can listen to the poem after I hear the hits.” She pressed the Play button.

“-or maybe it's the fact that your breath is bad or your feet stink sometimes-”

Arturo laughed. “She's talking about her mother!”

Stop.

FF.

Stop.

Play.

“… but I never knew him, or if he really wanted a son, or if he liked baseball or basketball more…”

Stop.

Marta stared at the tape player, unable to speak. Anger enveloped her. Or maybe it was that she wasn't accustomed to being outsmarted, outstreeted by a kid.

“This is bullshit!” Marta snapped.

“This is maybe just stuff before Amber got there, that's all,” Arturo said.

FF.

Stop.

Play.

“-because like maybe you meant to fly a kite, but never had the right string for it. And-”

Stop.

FF.

“Her poems suck,” Arturo said.

Stop.

Play.

That fucking string music. Those stupid verses.

And so it went for almost the entire side of the tape.

“Turn it over,” Arturo said.

The other side was blank.

“That little monster!” Marta raged.

“There was no tape of me,” Arturo said. “Don't you see? This was what she took from the machine. This was the last tape in the machine. Her mother didn't turn it on for her.” He sniggered. “A bunch of silly girl-shit poems about stinky feet.”

Marta burned him with her best “of all the dumb shit I ever heard” glare. “The little bitch! I can't believe this.”

“Well. If there is one, where is it? I say there's no tape.”

“That little conniving shit!” Marta yelled. She shoved the cassette player off the console onto the floor at Arturo's feet, startling him. The cigarette fell from his open mouth. Marta's hand shot out. She snatched the butt in midfall, clenched it in her fist, and squeezed hard, extinguishing it. That done, she flung it through Arturo's open window. “She handed us a dummy tape! Damn her. Goddamn her!”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I know is how I know. She left this shit in that player, and she took the earphones because she knew it would take time to hear what was on it. She was playing for time. She knew that if we had the tape, we would be satisfied enough to lose our focus for a few minutes. And it worked!”

“She's just a little kid,” Arturo said. “No way she put that together. There is no tape, Marta.”

“She has it, Turo. I am telling you she does. I would bet my life on it. And she has those negatives too. This is not a child. This is a demon. She isn't running scared at all. And she is going to give them over to someone who will use them. And, when that happens, you are going to die. Bennett will kill you, or Suggs will kill you, or the state of Louisiana will kill you. I am going to find her and I am going to cut out her little black heart and feed it to a pig.”

“Take some deep breaths,” Arturo said.

Marta stared at him, just daring him to say another word. He shrank against the door.

She closed her eyes for fifteen, maybe twenty seconds.

“I only have one question,” he said finally.

She opened her eyes slowly, pinning him with her glare. “What?”

“Where you gonna get a pig from?”

Vehicles exiting the ferry went up the ramp, topped the levee, passed by a statue of Louis Armstrong, then descended into Algiers Point. Nicky had parked at the base of the levee in front of the Dry Dock Cafe and Bar, and, when Adams parked, he slipped into the backseat of Nicky's sedan.

“As far as I can tell, she didn't walk anywhere,” Nicky told them. “You sure she was on that ferry?”

“I'm as sure as I can be,” Winter said. “She'll call Rush again soon. I just talked to him. He said Faith Ann mentioned her mother was killed because of a something pond.”

“A pond?” Adams said.

“Wait a minute,” Nicky said. He got out of the car, went to the Stratus, opened the door and reached inside and came back carrying a newspaper. Inside again, he handed the paper up to Winter. “Look down there, under the picture of Kimberly.” Nicky leaned his cane against the passenger's door.

Winter scanned the article. “‘Kimberly Porter had most recently been working on several last-minute appeals for Horace Pond, convicted of the 1993 home-invasion double homicides of Superior Court Judge Arnold Toliver Williams and his wife, Beth, both sixty-three. Pond, who had been working as a handyman for the couple, was connected to the murders by physical evidence and a signed confession. Governor Lucas Morton, who was the Orleans Parish chief prosecutor during the Pond case, has steadfastly refused to consider clemency for any murderer convicted by “the good people of Louisiana.” One week ago Governor Morton released a statement that said, “If ever there was a poster boy for the death penalty, that person is Horace Pond. The Fifth Circuit has refused to grant a stay, so the execution will go on as scheduled.”' The execution is scheduled for ten o'clock tonight. If the woman who claimed to have evidence exonerating a client of Kimberly's was Amber Lee, and the client was Horace Pond, then maybe it isn't that big a stretch to imagine a cop was involved in the killings,” Winter said. “If the cops framed Pond somehow…”

“The governor prosecuted him,” Nicky said. “It might be politically embarrassing if his poster boy for crime was to be proved not guilty. Says in there that he's up for reelection.”

“I seriously doubt the governor had Pond's attorney murdered and risked being on death row himself just so he could be reelected.”

“Then you don't know Louisiana politics,” Nicky countered. “You're not a Southerner, are you?”

“Not hardly,” Adams said.

“Where are you from?”

“Pacific Northwest.”

“I wonder who the detectives on the Pond case were?” Winter mused. He was still looking at the paper.

“You thinking Tin Man and Doyle?” Adams asked.

Winter didn't reply. He picked up his phone and dialed. Manseur answered on the third ring.

“Yeah?”

“Got a second?”

“Can I call you back in a few? I'm in a meeting.”

“You with Suggs?”

“That's right.”

“I need to ask you couple of a quick questions. Yes or no's.”

“Okay, if I can.”