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Passion looked at him silently, her rump resting against the tin wash bin behind her.
“You wondering why I’m here? I don’t want to see a good woman die. It’s that simple. But y’all gotta hep me and give me something I can use,” he said.
“How?” Passion asked.
“That story y’all told the jury didn’t do nothing but leave skid marks on the bowl. There wasn’t no evidence Carmouche ever molested anybody else. It’s hard to believe after all those years your sister would suddenly decide to take the man apart with a mattock. Like she was bored and it just come to mind as the thing to do.”
“Would you like me to describe what he did to me and Letty?”
“Lord, it’s hot in here. Why don’t you fix your air conditioner? No, I don’t want you to describe it. I suspect the man was everything you say he was. That’s why I want you to find somebody who can support your story. Round up a mess of black people, talk to ’em, you hear what I’m saying, sometimes folks shut out bad memories, you gotta remind them of what happened. They call it ‘recovered memory.’ People get rich suing over it.”
“You want me to get some black people to lie for us?”
“Girl, please don’t use that word. And I don’t care if they’re white or black. I’ll get state investigators down here to take their deposition. But y’all gotta understand my situation. I cain’t give clemency to a woman ’cause I like the way she plays the piano. People in the last election was already calling me the Silver Zipper.”
“Letty wo
n’t go along with it.”
“You better hear what I’m saying, Miss Passion, or it’s gonna be on y’all’s own self. Them sonsofbitches in Baton Rouge is serious.”
“You want a refill, Governor?”
His face was tired and poached-looking in the warm gloom of the bar. He pulled his shirt out from his chest with his fingers and shook the cloth, his mouth down-turned at the corners. “Damn if I can ever find the right words to use to people anymore,” he said, and pushed his Stetson on his head and walked back out of the club, the electric fan by the door flapping back his coat just before he stepped into the heated whiteness of the day outside.
Passion walked to the door.
“I’ll tell her,” she said as his car scoured dust out of the parking lot.
But Belmont did not hear her.
“Maybe Belmont’s a little corrupt, but he’s got his hand on it,” I said.
“Meaning?” she said, her face in a pout.
“Nobody bought y’all’s story. Vachel Carmouche had been gone from here for years. The very night he returned, your sister killed him. Over deeds done to her as a child?”
“You came out here to put this in my face?”
“No. Little Face Dautrieve inasmuch told me she was there that night. But that’s all she’ll say. What happened that night? Is Little Face protecting somebody?”
“Ax her.”
“You want it this way?” I said.
“Pardon?”
“That I be your adversary? The guy you don’t trust, the guy who makes a nuisance of himself?”
“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” she said.
“Give me a Dr Pepper, will you?”
“There isn’t no way out for us, Dave. My sister’s gonna die. Somebody got to pay for that nasty old piece of white trash.”
She walked on the duckboards to the end of the bar, her back turned toward me so I couldn’t see her face. Her large body was framed against the white glare of the parking lot, her smoke-colored hair wispy with light. She picked a rose out of a green bottle on the liquor counter and stared at it dumbly. The petals were dead, the color of a bruise, and they fell off the stem of their own weight and drifted downward onto the duckboards.
8
