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“Hey, I appreciate it. That’s better. We just got to be a li’l more serene on some of this shit. I ain’t no shrinking violet, but I t’ought my heart was gonna give out. No, wait a minute. No, no, hold on. There’s another way to do this. What do you want? Just tell me and you got it. I’m here to please. We can always— Hey, fuck me, I’ll get out of town, you want this place, it’s yours. Don’t do it. Please.”
Later, the pathologist would say the first entry wound, under the left armpit, probably occurred when Herman spun away from the shooter, raising his arm defensively across his face. Even though the exit hole was the size of a quarter, the pathologist would report that the wound in itself was not a mortal one. In fact, the blood pattern on the flagstones indicated that Herman had tried to walk toward the far side of his pool, where his white ironwork chairs were positioned around a table centered with a beach umbrella. His movements were probably slow and precise, like those of a man trying to walk on a wire strung over an abyss, his gold-ebony skin glowing in the electric aura that rose from the pool. But his profile probably had the vulnerability of a cartoon cutout pasted on a target. The second round struck him in the mouth and took away most of his jaw. When he fell into the pool, he floated high above the columns of light that lit the deep end, his arms straight out, as though he were searching for something he had lost and could not find.
I CAME IN late that night. A bank of thunderheads had moved in from the Gulf, and the beginnings of a downpour had started to sprinkle on the trees in the yard and the tin roof of our house. To me, the rain in Louisiana has always worked as a kind of baptism. It seems to have the same kind of restorative properties, washing the dust from trees and sidewalks, rinsing the pollutants out of our streams, giving new life to the grass and flowers, thickening the stalks of sugarcane in the fields. When it rains at night in Louisiana, I remember the world in which I grew up, one that came to us each morning with a resilience and clarity that was like a divine hand offering a person a freshly picked orange.
I hung my raincoat in the hall closet. Molly was reading a book under a lamp in the living room. “Catch any fish?” she asked.
“One or two that I put back.”
“Where’s Clete?”
“I went by myself.”
“Helen was trying to find you. You didn’t have your cell phone on?”
“I left it in the truck. What did she want?”
“Someone murdered Herman Stanga.”
I stared at her blankly. I could hear rain clicking against the window glass. “Stanga is dead?”
“At nine-thirty he was.” Her eyes didn’t leave my face. I could feel her trying to read my thoughts. “Helen asked where Clete was. I told her I thought he had gone fishing with you.”
“I rousted Stanga this afternoon. Helen thought we could turn some dials on him.”
“Why is she asking about Clete?”
“I’ll talk to her in the morning.”
“Does she think Clete—”
“No, that’s ridiculous.”
“How did you know what I was going to say?”
I didn’t have an answer. “Did Helen want me to call her?”
“She didn’t say. Dave, you never go off by yourself like that. Why tonight? Were you thinking about—”
“Drinking? Why would you think that?” I replied.
Her book was open on her lap, her reading glasses down on her nose. She took off her glasses and folded them and placed them in a case. Her face looked youthful and powdered with freckles under the lamp, her dark red hair touched with tiny lights. “I fixed some stuffed eggs and ham-and-onion sandwiches and a pitcher of sun tea,” she said. “I haven’t eaten yet. Did you eat at the landing?”
“No. You waited for me?”
“Alafair went out. I don’t like to eat alone.” Her eyes shifted off mine.
“She went out with Kermit Abelard?”
“They were going to a movie in Lafayette.”
“Was Robert Weingart along?”
“I didn’t look outside.”
“It’s all right. She has to work through it. Eventually she’ll come out on the other side.”
“Other side of what?”
