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"That's what I thought," he said. His body was deep in a leather chair. He smiled crookedly at me.
But my strange afternoon at Tony C.'s was not over. When Clete and I walked out to my truck, I noticed that my wallet was gone. I looked in the guest cottage and out by the pool, then realized that it had probably fallen out of my pocket when I was sitting in the library. The black man let me in the side of the house again. This time the sliding door of the library that gave onto the sun porch was open, and I saw Tony dressing a little boy in the wheelchair surrounded by a litter of toys. He did not see me, not at first. The little boy might have been seven or eight. His face was handsome and bright, but his head rested on his shoulders as though he had no neck, his legs were too short for his truncated body, and his back was deformed terribly. His hair was brown and wet, and Tony Cardo parted and combed it and leaned over and kissed him on the brow. Then his eyes glanced up into my face.
"I'm sorry. I dropped my wallet in the chair," I said.
He walked to the door and slid it shut.
That night it rained. It ran off the roof, the gutters, the balconies, clattered on the palm fronds and banana trees, spun like a vortex of wet light inside the courtyard. Lightning cracked across the sky and rattled the windows, and I slept with a pillow crimped across my head. I did not hear the lock pick in the door nor the handle turn when the bolt clicked free of the jamb. Instead, I felt a drop in the room's temperature, and smelled leaves and rain. I raised up on one elbow and looked into the face of Tony Cardo, who leaned forward on a straight-backed chair by the side of my bed. One of his gatemen stood behind him, dripping water on the floor.
"How scared you ever been?" he said. His narrow, elongated face looked white in the glow of the electric light that shone through the window from the courtyard.
"What?" My hand went toward the drawer of the nightstand.
"No," he said, took my wrist, and pushed my arm back on the bed.
"What are you—"
"How scared you ever been?" he repeated. His eyes were absolutely black and glazed with light, as though they had no pupils.
I was sitting straight up now. The front door was halfway open, and leaves and mist were blowing inside the living room.
"Listen, Tony—"
"It was after you got hit, wasn't it? When you had to lie in the dark by yourself and think about it."
I couldn't smell alcohol on him. Then I looked again at his eyes, the lidless intensity, the heat that was like a match burning inside of black glass.
"Admit it," he said.
"I was scared every minute I was over there. Who cares? You're speeding, Tony."
Then I saw him raise the revolver from between his tights.
"You know how you overcome it?" he said.
I looked at the gateman. His face was empty of expression, beaded with raindrops.
"You confront the dragon," Tony said.
"Ease up, partner. This isn't your style."
"What the fuck you know about my style?"
"I didn't do it to you. I don't have anything to do with your life. You're taking it to the wrong guy."
"You're the right guy. You know you're the right guy."
"Everybody was afraid over there. It's just human. What's the matter with you?"
"You buy that? I say fuck you. You stare it in the face. Can you stare it in the face?"
His mouth looked purple in the glow from the window. His ears were like tiny white cauliflowers pressed against his scalp.
"I think you're loaded, Tony. I think we're talking black beauties here. I'm not going to help you with this bullshit. Go fuck yourself."
I could see his thin nostrils quiver as he breathed. He rested the revolver on the top of his right thigh. Then he said, "This is how you do it, my man."
He flipped out the cylinder from the frame and ejected six .38 cartridges into his palm. He clinked them all into his coat pocket except one. He fitted it into a chamber and snapped the cylinder back into place.
