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“That’s not me. I wasn’t like that.”
“I know all the things you’re going to say. They won’t change anything.”
Chester stood up and aimed. The shot was deafening inside the room. Matting flew from the hole in the mattress just below Spade’s genitalia.
Spade’s bowels melted. He had to force the bile back down his throat to speak. “I got the pillowcase. I’m putting it on. Where we going? My cuffs are on the dresser. You want to hook me up?”
“On the dresser? I don’t see them.”
“I’ll show you. Can I take off the pillowcase?”
There was no answer. Spade could hear himself breathing, smell the sourness of his breath, feel two wet lines running from his eyes. He’d never thought he could be this afraid. “Say something. Please.”
But there was no reply.
“I got some cash and gold cuff links. I took them off a guy in the Medellín Cartel. Anything you want here is yours. Take my watch, too.” Then he realized what his tormentor was doing. “You’re eating a fucking sandwich?”
“Not now. I’m finished.”
Spade remembered a prayer from his childhood. How did it go? He always said it before he went to bed. Somehow it removed the sounds of his father yelling, his mother laughing even when he hit her, a baby crying in the other room. Now I lay me down to sleep. Was that how it went? It was too simple. He needed something heavier, a magical or metaphysical way to block off what was about to happen. Where were the words? Why were they denied him?
“Chester?” he said.
“What?”
“I used to say a prayer called ‘Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’ when I was a kid.”
“But you’ve been very bad, haven’t you?” Chester said.
“Yes, I’ve been a bad man.”
“Do you feel better now?”
Spade could feel the last drops of his self-respect sliding from his armpits. “You creepy little snerd, who do you think you are?”
Spade reached for the top of the pillowcase. Then the world became a snow-covered mountain slope cracking loose from its fastenings, grinding up trees and rocks in its path, boulders as big as cars bouncing over his head, the sky an immaculate blue, the air pristine, the flecks of ice on his skin as cool and gentle as a lover’s fingers. He closed his eyes and extended his arms by his sides and waited for the roar to engulf him, to lift him into a place where rage and fear and need were but rags ripped away in the wind, the soul as bright as a burnished shield, the landscape down below one of blue and green waters and coral reefs and sea horses that frolicked in the waves.
Then he realized he was already there. Safe. The book written. The covers closed.
HELEN CALLED AT 3:16 Sunday morning. “I’m in Lafayette. We got a shots-fired at Spade Labiche’s house. Can you get over there?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was barefoot and in my skivvies in the kitchen. “Who called it in?”
“A guy walking across the bridge. He heard a pop and saw a flash through the upstairs window. A patrolman just kicked open the door. He says it’s a mess. We ROA there.”
“Labiche is dead?”
“His place is a fortress. I don’t know how anyone could get in. Maybe he ate his gun.”
I rubbed water on my face and brushed my teeth, put on a pair of khakis, and hung my badge around my neck and hooked my nine-millimeter on my belt.
“Where you going?” Alafair said from her bedroom door.
“It’s Spade Labiche.”
“Somebody caught up with him?”
“Maybe.”
