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“It happens all the time,” I said. “People change their minds. If anyone tries to build a case against you, you keep an attorney at your side and you turn to stone. You think you can do that?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to put my arms around her shoulders. I wanted to press her against me and touch her hair.
“Will you be okay?” I asked.
“Yes, I believe I’ll be fine.”
“Call Weldon.”
“I will.”
“Drew?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t mess with Gouza anymore. You’re too good a person to get involved with lowlife people.”
She kept closing and unclosing her good hand. Her knuckles were white and as tight against her skin as a row of nickels.
“You liked me, didn’t you?” she said.
“What?”
“Before you went away to Vietnam. You liked me, didn’t you?”
“A woman like you makes me wish I could be more than one person and have more than one life, Drew.”
I saw the sunlight bead in her eyes.
A few minutes earlier she had asked me whose side I was on. I felt I knew the answer now. The truth was that I served a vast, insensate legal authority that seemed determined to further impair the lives of the feckless and vulnerable while the long-ball hitters toasted each other safely at home plate.
THAT NIGHT THE sheriff called me at home and told me that Joey Gouza was being moved from the hospital back to a jail cell. He also said that in light of the evidence I had found at Drew Sonnier’s, the prosecutor’s office would probably drop charges against Gouza in the morning.
When I got to the jail on East Main early the next morning, the sun was yellow and hazy through the moss-hung canopy of oak trees over the street, and the sidewalks were streaked with dew. I left my seersucker coat on when I went inside and stopped in the men’s room. I took my .45 out of the holster, pulled the clip out of the magazine, ejected the round in the chamber, and slipped the pistol and the clip in the back of my belt under my coat. Then I unclipped the holster from my belt and dropped it in my coat pocket.
I waited for the guard to open the barred door that gave onto the row of cells where Joey Gouza was housed.
“You want to check your weapon, Dave?” he asked.
“They’ve got it upfront.”
“Somebody said he might walk. Is that true?”
“Yep.”
“How the hell’d that happen?”
“Long story.”
“The sonofabitch is eating his soft-boiled eggs now. Can you beat that? Fucking soft-boiled eggs for a piece of shit like that.”
He opened the door, then walked with me down the corridor to Gouza’s cell and turned the key in the lock.
“You sure you want inside with this guy?” he asked. “He won’t shower. He thinks somebody’s gonna shank him if he leaves his cell.”
“It’s all right. I’ll yell when I’m ready,” I said.
