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'That's a good idea.' He opened two long-necked beers from the cooler and gave one to the woman, who sat in a chair by a table, rubbing the towels back over her long hair. 'I guess we better hit the road. I didn't know it was already afternoon.'
They went out the screen door, then I saw Tommy stop in the shade, tap one fist on top of another, turn in a circle, then stop again. He looked back through the screen at me and raised his fists momentarily in a boxer's position, as though he wanted to spar. He reminded me of a mental patient spinning about in a bare room.
I walked outside. It was breezy and cool in the shade, and the sun was bright, like yellow needles, on the water.
'What's on your mind, podna?' I said.
He craned a crick out of his neck and pumped his shoulders. The cords in his neck flexed like snakes. Then he shook my hand without speaking. His palm felt like the hide on a roughened baseball.
'You got to understand something, Dave. You mind if I call you Dave?'
'You always have, Tommy.'
'I go by the rules. I don't break rules, not the big ones, anyway. The greaseballs got theirs, cops got 'em, guys like me, micks who've made good from the Channel I'm talking about, we got ours, too. So when somebody breaks the rules, I got no comment. But I don't want to get hurt by it, either. You understand what I'm saying here?'
'No.'
'I never hurt anybody who didn't try to do a Roto-Rooter on me first.'
'A hit's going down that you don't like?'
'I said that? Must be a ventriloquist around here.'
'What's the game, Tommy?'
'No game. I got to do certain things to survive. You hold that against me? But that doesn't mean I wasn't on the square about Hippo. He was once my friend. I ain't trying to job you on that one.'
I watched him walk up the dock toward his car, his head turned sideways into the breeze, the red scab on his nose like an angry flag, his blue eyes hard as a carrion bird's, as though hidden adversaries waited for him on the wind.
I decided that it would take a cryptographer to understand the nuances of Tommy Lonighan.
I walked around the side of the house to the backyard and turned on the soak hose in my vegetable garden. The bamboo and periwinkles along the coulee ruffled in the breeze. Beyond my duck pond, the sugarcane in my neighbor's field flickered with a cool purple and gold light.
Bootsie had gone shopping in New Iberia, and Alafair was fixing sandwiches at the drain board when I walked into the kitchen. From the front of the house I heard the flat, tinny tones of a 1920s jazz orchestra, then the unmistakable bell-like sound of Bunk Johnson's coronet rising out of the mire of C-melody saxophones.
'What's going on, Alf?' I said.
She turned from the counter and looked at me quizzically. I could see the outlines of her training bra under her yellow T-shirt.
'Who put one of my old seventy-eights on the machine?' I said.
'I thought you did,' she said.
The record ended, then the mechanical arm swung back automatically and started again. I walked quickly into the living room. The front door was open, and the curtains were swelling with wind. I opened the screen door and went out on the gallery. The yard and drive were empty and blown with dead leaves. Out on the dirt road black kids on bicycles, with fishing gear propped across their handlebars, were pedaling past the dock. I went back inside, lifted the arm off the record, and turned off the machine. The paper jacket for the record lay on the couch. The record itself was free from any finger smudges; it had been placed on the spindle with professional care.
'Alf, it's all right if you wanted to play the record,' I said in the kitchen. 'But it's important you tell me whether or not you did it.'
'I already told you, Dave.'
'You're sure?'
'You think I'm lying?'
'No, I didn't mean that. How long has it been playing?'
'I don't know. I was outside.'
'Did Bootsie put it on before she left?'
