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“Why’s there a fire out there?”
“Dry lightning probably hit a tree during the night,” I said. “It’ll burn itself out.”
“Can we go buy some strawberries for dessert?”
“I have to go by the office a few minutes. Maybe we’ll go to town for some ice cream after supper. How’s that?”
“Dave, did the doctor say something bad about Bootsie?”
“No, she’s going to be fine. Why do you think that?”
“Why did she do that with those, what d’you call them, those things the doctor gives her?”
“Her prescriptions?”
“Yeah. I saw her dump her purse all over her bed. Then she wadded up all those ’scriptions. When she saw me she put them all back in her purse and went into the bathroom. She kept running the water a long time. I had to go to the bathroom and she wouldn’t let me in.”
“Bootsie’s sick, little guy. But she’ll get better. You just got to do it a day at a time. Hey, hop on my back and let’s check up on Batist, then I have to go.”
She walked up on the steps and then climbed like a frog onto my shoulders, and we galloped like horse and rider down to the dock. But it was hard to feign joy or confidence in the moment or the day.
The wind changed, and I could smell the scorched, hot reek of burnt cypress in the marsh.
I DROVE TO the office, talked briefly with the sheriff about my visit to New Orleans, my search through biker bars for Eddy Raintree, and my conversation with Joey Gouza.
“You think he’s pulling the strings on this one?” the sheriff said.
“He’s involved one way or another. I’m just not sure how. He controls all the action in that part of Orleans Parish. The guys who beat up Clete wouldn’t have done it without Gouza’s orders or permission.”
“Dave, I don’t want you putting a stick in Gouza’s cage again. If we nail him, we’ll do it with a warrant and we’ll work through New Orleans P.D. He’s a dangerous and unpredictable man.”
“The New Orleans families don’t go after cops, sheriff. It’s an old tradition.”
“Tell that to Garrett.”
“Garrett stumbled into it. In 1890 the Black Hand murdered the New Orleans police chief. A mob broke eleven of them out of the parish prison, hanged two from street lamps, and clubbed and shot the other nine to death. So cops like me get bribe offers and guys like Clete get brass knuckles.”
“Don’t start a new precedent.”
I went to check my mailbox next to the dispatcher’s office. It was five-fifteen. All I had to do was glance at my mail and thumb through my telephone messages and make one phone call, and I was sure that when Drew picked up the phone she would be calm, perhaps even apologetic for her distraught behavior of yesterday, and I would be on my way home to dinner.
Wrong.
The dispatcher had written Drew’s message in blue ink across the first pink slip on the stack: Dave, don’t you give a damn?
Her house was only two blocks from the drawbridge that I would cross on my way home, I told myself. I would give myself fifteen minutes there. Friendship and the past required a certain degree of obligation, even if it was only a ritualistic act of assurance or kindness, and it had nothing to do with marital fidelity. Nothing, I told myself.
She was barbecuing in the backyard. She was barefoot, and she wore white tennis shorts and a striped blue cotton shirt. Her face looked hot in the smoke, and the back of her tan neck was beaded with perspiration. The picnic table was covered with a flowered tablecloth, and in the middle of it was a washtub filled with crushed ice and long-neck bottles of Jax. The oaks and myrtle trees in the yard were full of fireflies, and through the gray trunks of the cypresses along the bank I could see some kids water-skiing behind a motorboat on Bayou Teche.
“Maybe I dropped by at the wrong time,” I said.
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m glad you’re here,” she said, waving the smoke away from her face. “Weldon and Bama are coming over at eight. Stay for supper if you like.”
“Thanks. I have to be getting on in a minute. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you, but I had to go to New Orleans. Did a uniformed deputy come out yesterday?”
“Yes, he read magazines in my living room for three hours.”
She picked up an opened bottle of beer from the table and drank out of it. The bottle was beaded with moisture, and I watched the foam run down inside the neck into her mouth.
