AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I need you to look at some photos, Herman.”
“Them girls over in Jeff Davis Parish that got themselves killed?”
“Why would you think that?”
“’Cause you always looking for a way to jam me up. ’Cause y’all ain’t got nobody else to put it on.”
“Nobody else has talked to you?”
“There ain’t been no ink on those girls in four months. What’s that tell you?”
“You have to explain it to me. I’m not that smart.”
“Give me them pictures,” he said, ignoring my statement, his hand upturned.
This time it was I who ignored Herman. I laid the photos one by one on the glass tabletop. He waited patiently, an amused light playing in his face.
“Do I know them? No. Have I ever seen them? No. Would they be of interest to me? No. Why’s that, you ax? ’Cause they’re country girls with a serious case of ugly. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Who do you think might have murdered them?”
“It ain’t a pimp. A pimp don’t murder his stable. Check out their families. They probably been killing each other.” He glanced at his watch. It was gold and had a black face inset with tiny red stones. “I got people coming over. We t’rew wit’ this?”
The underwater lights in his swimming pool had just clicked on, creating a sky-blue clarity in the water that was so pristine I could see the silvery glint of a dime at the bottom of the deep end. Banana trees and a magnificent magnolia tree hung over the spiked fence that surrounded the pool. Potted plants bursting with flowers shaded his deck chairs and filled the air with a fragrance that was heavier than perfume.
“Your home is a study in contradictions. Your yard is carpeted with dog shit, and your house is being eaten to the foundation by termites. But your pool area is snipped right out of Southern Living. I don’t get it.”
“The uptown nigger who built this place wanted to be a character in Gone Wit’ the Wind. Except Whitey on the bayou don’t got no need for niggers pretending they’re white people. So I give them a real nigger to weep and moan about. I own t’ree rentals, a condo in Lake Charles, and a beach house in Panama City, but I use this house to wipe my ass on. Every day I’m here, the value of my neighbors’ property goes down. Guess who they gonna end up selling their houses to? That is, if I’m in the market for more houses.
“Know why there ain’t been no media coverage on them girls for four months? Nobody cares. This is still Lou’sana, Robo Man. Black or white, it don’t matter—if you got money, people will take your ten-inch on their knees. If you ain’t got money, they’ll cut it off.”
“I think I’ll let myself out.”
“Yeah, fuck you, too, man.”
“Say again?”
“Everyt’ing I tole you is true. But you cain’t deal wit’ it. And that’s your problem, motherfucker. It ain’t mine.”
I LIVED WITH my wife, Molly, who was a former Catholic nun, in a modest frame house with a peaked tin roof among live oaks and pecan trees and slash pines and windmill palms on East Main, a half block from the famous plantation home known as The Shadows. There was rust on the roof and in the rain gutters, and it turned orange and purple in the late-afternoon sunset. Our lot was one acre in size and part of a historical alluvial floodplain that sloped down to Bayou Teche. The topographical contour of the land along the bayou had never been altered, and as a consequence, even though we were located close to the water, the houses in our neighborhood never flooded, even during the worst of hurricanes. Equally important for one who lives in the tropics, our house stayed in deep shade most of the day, and by the front walk, where we got full sun, our camellias and hibiscus stayed in bloom almost year-round, and in the spring our azaleas powdered the lawn with petals that looked like pink confetti.
It was a fine house in which to live, cool in the summer and warm in the winter, the ceiling-high windows outfitted with ventilated storm shutters, our new veranda a grand place to sit in wood rockers among our potted plants and house pets.
Alafair, our adopted daughter, had graduated from Reed College with a degree in psychology, and now had taken off one semester from Stanford Law School to rewrite a novel she had been working on for three years. She had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed and was carrying a 3.9 GPA at Stanford. She was a good writer, too. I had no doubts about the level of professional success that awaited her, regardless of the field she entered. My concern for Alafair’s well-being was much more immediate and without any solution that I could see. In this case, the specific name of the concern was Kermit Abelard, the first man I believed Alafair was actually serious about.
“He’s coming over here? Now?” I said.
I had just come home from work and had parked my pickup under the porte cochere. She was sitting in the rocker on the veranda, wearing a flowery sundress and white shoes, her skin dark with tan, her Indian-black hair burned brown on the tips. “What do you have against him, Dave?”
“He’s too old for you.”
“He’s thirty-three. He calls it his crucifixion year.”
“I forgot. He’s also grandiose.”
“Give it a rest, big guy.”
“Is the convict coming with him?”
