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“My attorney is filing a civil suit against your department and the female deputy Catin Whatever. I wanted to tell you that in person, since y’all have a way of assigning secret plots to everyone who doesn’t go along with your agenda.”
“Suing us for what?” Helen asked.
“Harassment of my father. Knocking him against the side of a cruiser. Falsely accusing him of whatever you can think up. You know what your problem is, Dave?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“You’re intelligent, but you work for people who aren’t. I think that creates a daily struggle for you.”
“Out, Ms. Leboeuf,” Helen said.
“I’m glad to see my tax money being used so wisely,” Varina said. “Yuck.”
She went back out the door and did not close it behind her. I followed her down the stairs and out the side exit. She was walking fast, her eyes flashing. “You’re not going to get off that easy, Varina.”
“Say whatever it is you’re going to say. I’m late.”
“For what?”
“To meet with my father’s cardiologist. He keeled over this morning.”
“Why didn’t you say that upstairs?”
“You’ll hear a lot more in court.”
“After that guy almost killed me in front of your apartment, you cleaned the blood and glass off my face and were genuinely concerned about my welfare. You said there were millions of dollars involved in the case I was pursuing. You also indicated that the people who had tried to kill me had no boundaries. You said I should not be such a foolish man.”
“That has nothing to do with the ill treatment of my father.”
“I think it does. I think your father is a brutal and violent man who is capable of doing anything he believes he can get away with. I think this civil suit is meant to be a distraction.”
“My father was raised in poverty in a different era. Do you think it’s fair to look back from the present and judge people who never traveled outside the state of Louisiana in their entire life?”
“I always admired you, Varina. I hate to see you hurt the female deputy. She didn’t treat your father unjustly. That civil suit will bankrupt her and probably ruin her life and the lives of her children. You want that on your conscience?”
The top was down on her convertible. She placed her palm on the door, then removed it when she realized how hot the metal had grown in the sun. Her face was pinched, her eyes full of injury.
“I have to ask you a question,” I said. “I’ve known you since you were a kid and always thought you were a big winner. Someone told me you shot a possum out at the gun range when you were fifteen. The possum was carrying babies.”
“That’s a damn lie.”
“Maybe you didn’t mean to. Maybe you saw some leaves moving and meant to hit a branch. Kids do things like that. I did. I shot a big coon like that once, and it still bothers me.”
“I never shot an animal in my life, and you tell the liar who told you that, who I’m sure is Ms. Bull Dyko of 1969, Helen Soileau, she had better keep her lying mouth shut, because sheriff or no sheriff, I’m going to catch her in public and slap her cross-eyed.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that.”
The sun went behind a cloud, dropping the bayou and City Hall and the oak trees and the long curved driveway into shadow. Then I saw the heat go out of Varina’s face. “None of this has to happen, Dave. Don’t you see? We live our lives the best we can. The people who make the decisions don’t care about us one way or another. Why give up your life for no reason? When all this is over, nobody will even remember our names.”
“We’ll remember who we were or who we weren’t,” I replied. “The box score at the end of the game doesn’t change.”
I expected her to drive away. That wasn’t what she did. She clenched my left hand in hers and shook it roughly, her little nails biting into my palm, almost like an act of desperation. Then she got in her car and drove away, smoothing her hair, her radio playing as she passed the religious grotto, a single column of sunlight splitting her face as though she were two different people created by a painter who could not decide whom he was creating.
THAT EVENING AT twilight, I saw Clete’s Caddy pull to the curb in front of our house, a woman behind the wheel. Clete got out on the passenger side and walked up to the gallery. The
woman pulled away into the traffic and turned the corner just beyond the Shadows, the blue-dot taillights on the Caddy winking in the gloom. I met Clete on the steps. “Was that your temp?” I asked.
“She went to get some aspirin. She got sunburned this morning. I just heard about this guy Patin getting shot outside a club in Lafayette. He’s the guy who tried to pop you with the cut-down?”
