“I like the crunch part,” Norah said.
“Me, too.”
“Crunch crunch,” said Norah.
Nell gave her a quick glance, saw nothing abnormal. “Been into town?” she said.
“Affirmative.”
“How was it?”
“No complaints.”
“Do anything interesting?”
“Just hung out.”
“With?”
“Joe Don.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Good.”
“Tell me a bit about him,” Nell said. “What’s he like?”
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“Nice,” Norah said. She tapped her spoon against her teeth, seemed lost in thought. “Real nice.”
Nell smiled. “Go on.”
Norah’s eyes shifted toward her, then away. The sense of stillness disappeared, and tension rose in Norah’s body, communicating itself to Nell. “Tell me something, Mom. Did you love my father?”
“Of course.”
“More than your present husband?”
“My present husband?” Now the happy-ending feeling vanished, too. “Why do you call him—”
“Less?” said Norah. “The same?”
“I don’t—”
“Come on, Mom—did you love him more, less or the same? It’s easy—multiple choice.” Norah’s voice rose, high and thin, toward hysteria; and now Nell noticed how red her eyes were, like she’d been crying. She reached out, touched Norah’s shoulder. Norah flinched away from her hand, jumped up.
“Norah, please. What’s happening to you? What’s going on?”
“You really don’t know? Read
Hamlet.
” Norah ran from the kitchen, banging the door closed.
Read
Hamlet
? What was she talking about? Nell went upstairs, knocked on Norah’s door.
“Don’t come in.”
“I loved your father,” Nell called through the door. “Of course I loved him. But comparing them—why is that so important to you?”
No response. This was unbearable. Nell turned the knob, pushed the door open. Norah was standing by the chest of drawers, throwing clothes in a suitcase.
“What are you doing?” Nell said.
“More, less, the same?” said Norah, not looking at her, camisole top, jeans, her cute little hat from Urban Outfitters, all missing the suitcase and spilling across the floor. “More, less, the same? More, less, the same?”
“Why do you want to know?” Nell said. “What difference does it make?”
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Norah faced her. She was shaking. “How can you ask that? Are you stupid?”
Now Nell was shaking, too. “Out with it,” she said. “Whatever’s on your mind, out with it. This can’t go on another moment.”
“What’s on my mind?” Norah said. “Who killed my father—that’s what’s on my mind. What’s on yours?”
“The same thing,” Nell said. “Of course, the same thing.”
“And?” Norah said. “Any ideas?”
“I—” Nell’s throat closed up; her body refused to let her name names.
“You’re despicable,” Norah said. She spun away, zipped up the suitcase, a silk sleeve hanging out, and strode toward the door.
“What are you doing?” Nell said. She stepped in front of Norah.
Norah kept moving, bumped right into her.
“Now comes a mother-daughter fistfight?” Norah said.
Even the idea should have been unimaginable. Nell stepped aside.
Norah passed by without further contact.
“Where are you going?” Nell called after her.
Already on the stairs, Norah said, “I’m not spending another night in this house.”
A minute later, Nell heard the Miata starting up. What could she do? Norah was nineteen, an adult. Her family was walking out on her, one at a time. Nell was left alone in her daughter’s room—alone and shaking—with the stuffed animals on the shelves, and the monkeys, swaying very slightly on the trapeze.
Plus all of Norah’s high school books. It took her just a few moments to find
Hamlet.
She leafed through the pages, and soon came to:
Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems.”
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother.
In the margin, Norah had written in red—tidy penmanship, the letters fat and somehow cheerful-looking:
What’s up with Hamlet’s
mom?
And below that, in some other student’s spikier hand:
She’s a
whore.
Night: a warm night with soft sounds in the air. Pirate, with his excellent hearing, didn’t miss any of them—a woman’s laugh, ice cubes in a glass, a passing plane, the kind that flew very high, on the way to Paris or Rio or some other place Pirate had never seen and had no desire to. He pressed record on Lee Ann’s digital recorder, said, “Twice as much as before,” and “she asses,” and listened to the sound of his voice. Then he tried gazing down at the bus stop, hoping the Indian woman would show up, wearing something skimpy. She did not. No buses came. He got restless and went for a walk, ending up at the Red Rooster.
“Kahlúa,” he said. “Rocks.”
“Coming right up,” said the waitress, a waitress he didn’t know, not pretty, no tits, barely registering on his consciousness. Despite his wealth—he was rich!—and freedom, he wasn’t in the best mood, which didn’t make sense. He found himself thinking of what he’d be doing at this hour up at Central State: lying on his bunk, most likely, fingering the gold tassel, at peace. Pirate glanced at the empty stage.
Music was what he needed.
“When’s the band start?” he said to the waitress when she brought his drink.
“No band tonight,” she said. “It’s Tuesday.”
“How come?”
“No band on Tuesdays.”
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His mood got a little worse. “Make it a double,” he said.
She glanced at his glass, looked confused; no reason for that, and it pissed him off more. “Turn this one into a double?” she said. “I don’t think we can do that.”
“What can you do?”
“I could bring you another one,” the waitress said.
“A double?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I want,” Pirate said.
He drank the single and the double. He stopped feeling pissed off, but the restlessness remained. Pirate went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face. There he was in the mirror: with the patch and now the earring, really looking like a pirate. He cheered up, paid his bill, leaving a big tip, and walked out of the Red Rooster, into the night.
Pirate headed nowhere particular, just wandered, a special kind of wandering that led him in the direction of Joe Don’s place. Too far to walk, of course, unless you had time, and he had lots. So what if he got there in the middle of the night? He wouldn’t disturb anyone.
The barn where Joe Don lived had a window at the back. He could just peek in. Would Norah be there? A possibility. Maybe they’d be sleeping. He could watch over them, like a guardian angel. Pirate liked that idea a lot. He was starting to pick up the pace when a car pulled over to the sidewalk and crept along beside him.
Not a car, but a pickup; it came up on his good side, so Pirate didn’t have to turn his head to see the passenger window sliding down. He heard a man’s voice: “Get in.”
The voice: slightly familiar but Pirate couldn’t place it. And the tiny weapon? Under the mattress. At that moment, he and the pickup entered the cone of light under a streetlamp. Pirate, still walking, not slowing down, peered through the open window and got a good look at the driver. Slightly familiar, all right: former detective, now chief of the Belle Ville police, dressed like any normal guy in jeans and T-shirt.
“Don’t think so,” Pirate said, and he kept moving.
“Thinking’s not your strong suit,” the chief said.
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A coplike thing to say. Pirate had never liked cops, not even before the whole—uh-oh. Something gleamed inside the pickup. Pirate spotted an automatic, held loosely in the chief’s left hand, half resting on his leg and pointed in Pirate’s general direction. Would anyone really think he could shoot a man down out in the open like this and get away with it? Yeah, this guy, this particular cop. Didn’t Pirate pretty much know that for a fact? He didn’t take another step. The car stopped. He got in. The window slid up. The door locks clicked shut. The pickup rolled forward, gained speed, turned a corner and entered a dark street, with nothing but rubble piles from the hurricane on both sides.
“We need to talk,” the chief said.
“What about?”
“Your plans.”
“Got none,” Pirate said. “Be at peace, that’s all.”
“Save that line for someone else.” Did the automatic twitch in the chief’s hand? Pirate thought so. He kept his mouth shut. The chief drove to the end of the street, circled an earthmover with tires as tall as man and stopped at the edge of some water—black and still, maybe the canal. Pirate glanced around—canal on one side, earthmover on the other: invisible. The chief lowered the windows, switched off the engine. It got quiet. Pirate heard tiny lapping sounds from the canal.
How deep was the water? Pirate couldn’t swim.
The chief shifted a little, facing him. “Your plans,” he said.
“Nothing special,” Pirate said. “Relax. Do some writing.”
A muscle moved in the chief’s face, casting a shadow on his skin.
“What kind of writing?”
Maybe not a good idea, bringing up the writing. But what if the chief already knew about this project with Lee Ann? Some inmates up at Central State bought into that old idea that cops never asked a question they didn’t know the answer to; not Pirate. On the other hand, there was such a thing as getting too cute. Pirate went back and forth in his mind. And then: “Songwriting,” he said. Came to him out of the blue, so sweet.
“Done much songwriting?”
“Workin’ on one now, matter of fact,” said Pirate. “‘Saw your
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face down the hall, nothin’ else matters at all.’ That one’s called—”
Whoa, boy: “Norah’s Song.” “Doesn’t have a name yet.”
“So your plan is to make it in the music business?” the chief said.
“Yeah,” said Pirate; that hadn’t been his plan, exactly, but why not?
“Not much of a music industry here in Belle Ville,” the chief said.
“Nope.”
“Leading to the obvious question.”
“What’s that?”
“Where are you going to go? Nashville? L.A.?”
Pirate shrugged. “I kind of like it here.”
The chief’s hand tightened on the gun. Pirate smelled an oily smell, rising off the canal. He could end up down on the bottom, and no one would ever know.
“Again, the thinking problem,” the chief said.
“No?” said Pirate. “I don’t like it here?” And at that moment, the moment of the thinking-problem accusation, Pirate remembered Lee Ann’s digital recorder, the one for recording anything that fleshed out the story. He felt its little presence in the right-hand front pocket of his pants. Sticking his hand in the pocket: out of the question, of course, but how about just casually sliding a finger over the material like so, maybe feeling that tiny record button? Yes. He pressed down.
“This isn’t the best place for you,” the chief said.
“How come?”
The chief gazed at him, his eyes just two pockets of shadow.
“Belle Ville’s not your lucky town,” he said. “That should be clear by now.”
“I’m at peace with it,” Pirate said, remembering, too late, about saving that line for someone else. Then, at the same instant as that memory coming too late, the automatic was in his ear, the muzzle pushing up inside, hurting him.
The chief spoke, his voice soft, asked a question as though really interested in the answer. “What did I tell you?”
“Save that line for someone else.”
The chief nodded. “I’ve known a lot of ex-cons,” he said. “Comes
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with the territory. You’ve got a big advantage over just about all of them. Know what that is?”
“I was innocent?”
The gun pressed in his ear, harder. Wrong answer—even though it seemed so right. Pirate couldn’t think of another; probably safer not to try any wild guesses.
“You tell me,” he said. “What’s my advantage?”
“Did you grow up rich?” the chief said.
“No.”
“Any reason to think you’d have been rich by now?”
There was: What if he’d actually hit the big time in Nashville or L.A.? But Pirate felt the rhythm of the conversation and fell in step.
“No,” he said.
“So how come you’re so casual about four hundred grand?” the chief said.
“That’s the answer,” said Pirate. “I got money and they don’t.”
“Now you’re talking,” the chief said. A common expression: Pirate had heard it many times before, but always with the word
now
sounding the most important; the chief’s way,
talking
came first.
“Much better,” he said, the gun pressure easing a bit, but still making him sick in the stomach, like an alien in his body. “Let’s try the writing question again.”
“The writing question?”
“What are these writing plans of yours?”
Pirate was about to run through the songwriting thing again, when he heard a click. This click sounded just like the cocking of a gun, but the chief hadn’t done that. Instead he’d made the sound in his mouth, a crisp, metallic click. How come that was scarier?
“My story,” Pirate said. “I was planning on writing a book about my story.”
“Which is?”
“You know,” said Pirate. Who’d know better? “What happened to me.”
The gun slid out of his ear. An animal squealed somewhere on the far side of the canal. “Written any books?” the chief said.
Pirate shook his head. A simple movement but he was free to do
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it, no gun in his ear. Had to be a good sign, a sign that he was going to live.
“Then how are you going to go about it?” the chief said.
“Still working on that.”
“Some people in your position might get a professional writer involved.”
“Yeah?”
“A reporter, for example,” the chief said. “Especially one who’d already been following the case.”