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“I owned up at a meeting. I’m fine.”
“That’s when people slip, isn’t it? When they say they’re fine. Why’d you drink, Dave?”
“The same reason as everyone who goes out. I wanted to.” The line was silent. I felt my heart stop. “Alafair?”
“You don’t know how much it hurts when you say something like that.”
My ear felt as though it had been stung by a wasp.
* * *
VICTOR’S CAFETERIA ON Main Street, right across from Clete’s office, opened at six A.M. every weekday. It was a grand place to eat and start the day, and usually crowded with businesspeople and tourists and cops and parish politicians. If there was any better food on earth, I hadn’t found it. Clete and I went in at seven on Tuesday, and Clete loaded up with his healthy breakfast of four biscuits, scrambled eggs sprinkled with grated cheese, green onions, and bacon bits, a pork chop smothered in milk gravy, orange juice, a bowl of stewed tomatoes, and multiple cups of coffee.
Helen was two tables from us; it was obvious she didn’t want to acknowledge us.
“What’s wrong with her?” Clete said.
“You didn’t talk to anyone in Jefferson Davis Parish about an incident there, did you?”
He stopped eating. “Involving you?”
“Involving a graduate of Raiford and Angola and Quentin we both know.”
“Something happened to Penny?”
“You could say that.”
He took his cell phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “I’ve got four missed calls from the Jeff Davis Sheriff’s Department.”
“Better answer them.”
“This isn’t funny, big mon.”
“Penny didn’t think so, either.”
He started eating again, then put down his knife and fork and drank his coffee cup empty. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To the park.”
“How about your office?”
“You know how many times I’ve been bugged?”
We walked to the drawbridge at Burke Street and crossed the bayou and went into City Park and sat in one of the picnic shelters by the water, a few feet from a row of camellia bushes, the petals still wet with dew. I told him everything.
“You almost drowned him in the toilet?”
“Yep.”
“He’ll come at you.”
“No, he won’t. He’s a gutless shit.”
“You’re letting your past distort your thinking, Streak. The people who hurt you and me as kids are nothing compared to Penny.”
“They’re all cut out of the same cloth.”
