Pirate went to the desk, found a sheet of paper, wrote a note.
Hey.
Heres the recording thing. Digital. Check out this inturvue with the
cheif!! Sory about your door. Mistake. I’ll pay. A. DuPree.
He took the recorder from his pocket and laid it on the note. Then he peeled $320
off the roll he’d started carrying in his pocket—an amount that came to him out of the blue—and set it on the note, beside the recorder. He circled
I’ll pay
and drew an arrow from there to the money.
D E LU S I O N
251
Now what? Kahlúa sounded good. Did Lee Ann have any? Pirate went to the bar, opened the cupboard: two bottles of white wine, a bottle of vodka. Vodka and wine—booze, no question about it.
Was it true what they said about vodka, that it had no smell? Pirate couldn’t remember. He twisted off the cap—not to drink, only for a smell test—and had his nose to the opening, taking a deep, scientific sniff, when he heard a moan.
Pirate froze.
Froze
was the word, all right: he felt a strange iciness on the back of his neck, something brand-new. A moan, without a doubt, but how could that be? He was alone inside Lee Ann’s place.
“Lee Ann?” he said, but very softly, too soft for anyone to hear.
Pirate put down the vodka bottle, moved toward the bedroom, all movements slow and silent. He looked in the bedroom, saw nothing he hadn’t seen the first time. Was it possible she lay under the rumpled covers on the unmade bed? No; but he pulled them back anyway, revealing a red plastic hair clip, nothing more. He picked up the hair clip, sniffed it, too, smelled something nice. At that moment, he got the squinting feeling in his non-eye, as though it was getting ready to see through the surface of something. Why wouldn’t it? That was where God kept his secret power.
But what surface was he supposed to see through, what insight was waiting to be discovered? Pirate glanced around the room and noticed what he’d missed before, a tiny glint on the dark rug. He went over, bent down, and picked up a pair of glasses: those strange glasses Lee Ann had, the glasses that made her look so smart and at the same time uglier than in real life. They were twisted out of shape, maybe like she’d stepped on them. Pirate could picture that happening. Lee Ann probably couldn’t see well without the glasses, so after she dropped them it would be easy to—
Another moan.
Unmistakable. A woman’s moan, and it came from the closet—at least, Pirate had assumed it was a closet, with one of those wood-slatted doors, so air could get in. Was she in there with loverboy, after all? Should have checked it the first time. Pirate went over and checked it now, flinging the door open.
This was a closet? It was like another room, extending way back,
252
PETER ABRAHAMS
lined with lots of clothes hanging on both sides. The only light came from a ceiling window. It fell on rows and rows of gleaming shoes, a distracting sight that kept Pirate from noticing what lay at the rear of the closet.
Lee Ann, on her back. She had her skirt hiked way up and her legs spread, but there was no loverboy. Great legs, it turned out, and she wore a tiny black thong, also a surprise. A surprise and another distraction. Pirate didn’t notice what had happened to her face until he’d taken another step or two.
“Oh.”
Bad things. Her face was not the same, looked like one of those modern artists had got hold of it, all bashed in here and bulging there. Her spiky hair was bloody and her eyes were closed, one of them closed like a normal eye, but the other eye, the left, was ruined, a puffball leaking a jellylike glob between the lashes. Pirate got the squinting feeling in his non-eye. An insight was coming after all. His partner: someone had killed her, bashed in her head. But Pirate was expecting more of an insight than that. He was still waiting for its arrival when she moaned.
Pirate jumped back. “Lee Ann?” He forced himself to go closer, bend over her. “Lee Ann?”
Nothing.
He bent a little more, reached down to take her wrist, feel for a pulse, and at that moment noticed a gun on the floor, a foot or so from her hand: a little revolver with a grip that looked like pink pearl.
Had she been shot, too? He didn’t see any bullet-wound signs. Maybe if he rolled her over and—but Pirate didn’t want to do that. In fact, all he wanted was to get the hell—
Lee Ann’s good eye opened. It shifted, found him. Her lips moved, very slightly. She said something, all gurgly. He didn’t catch it.
“What happened?” he said. “Who did this to you?”
She spoke again, just one word. It sounded like “bastard.” Blood trickled from between her lips.
“Goddamn right,” he said. “We’ll get the bastard.” And he meant it: whoever had done this was going to pay.
Was she trying to shake her head? Pirate couldn’t tell. And her
D E LU S I O N
253
eye might have been trying to communicate something as well, but he didn’t know what. Maybe he should touch her shoulder, make some reassuring move. He was wondering about that when she said,
“Book.”
Very clear. Book, not bastards. But just to be sure, he said:
“Book?”
Lee Ann moaned again, very softly, mostly from the pain or agony or whatever it was, but maybe a little bit too from frustration, at him, for being slow on the uptake. That pissed him off, but just as he was about to say something, he got it: “The address book?”
The expression in her eye changed, told him
yes.
They really were partners.
Pirate rose, hurried to the kitchen: fruit bowl with peaches; coffee mug now empty; address book with
University of Texas
on the cover.
“Got it,” he called, and hurried back through the bedroom and into the closet. “What am I supposed to do with the thing?”
No answer.
He went a little closer. Her eye was very clear in the light from the ceiling window. There was no life in it now, none at all. Pirate stuck the address book in his pocket, knelt and felt Lee Ann’s wrist. No pulse; and the skin itself was different, more like an imitation of skin meant to fool the eye but not the touch. Pirate, real gentle—although he was reminded of doing something similar, less gentle, to Esteban Malvi—closed Lee Ann’s eye. Then he tugged at the material of her skirt, trying to cover her legs, make what was left of her more modest. Tugging the skirt down involved moving her legs closer together.
Pirate was still busy with all that, at the same time trying to find some proper words to say, maybe from Job, when he heard a footstep, soft on the bedroom rug, behind him.
He whirled around, reaching without thought for the pink-handled gun. There, not ten feet away, stood the in-shape, tan one, his enemy: Nell Jarreau. She looked past him, at Lee Ann, took in everything.
Her hands rose, as though to cover her mouth or face, some womanly gesture, but she stopped them—he saw the effort it took.
“She’s dead,” he told her. But it must have been obvious: he began noticing blood he’d missed before, blood all over the closet.
254
PETER ABRAHAMS
Nell’s face went pale, practically white. But her eyes, nostrils, mouth, were dark, like black holes. Something about that black-and-white look scared him. She said, “You are a murderer after all.”
“Me?” Was it possible she thought that he was the—? Oh, God.
“We were partners.” His voice rose. “Some bastard did it.” Nell’s face didn’t change. It took a few moments for Pirate to feel the truth sinking in.
This was happening again?
Not even to Job. The happening-again thing sank in, sank in deep, and when it did, when it pierced all the way down to the core—she was going to frame him for the second time!—Pirate boiled over like some steaming gusher.
“Frame me again? You want murder?” He sprang, lashing at her face with the barrel of Lee Ann’s pink-handled gun. Somehow he missed—she turned out to be quick, twisting away; but not quick enough to avoid the barrel completely. It caught her on the shoulder, good and hard, and she cried out, and the sound was right. An eye for an eye: the truth of that was confirmed forever in his heart. The only problem, which he missed at first, was that the force of the blow, so strong, knocked the gun from his hand. He heard it fall, bounce off the rug onto the hardwood floor, and then it was on his blind side and so was she; just for an instant, but as he turned, bringing everything in view again, he saw her rolling on the floor, into the corner. Pirate lunged. Too late: she sat up, pointed the gun right at his chest, like she knew how to use it, no surprise for a cop’s wife. He took another step, bent forward, hands extended like claws.
“Don’t,” she said. Just one word, but something about the way she said it—scared yes, hysterical no—plus the black holes of her eyes, and the hardness he knew to be in her from what she’d done to him already, convinced him that she was not one of those women who could never shoot someone. He raised his hands. But shooting someone with his hands up as he backed out of a room? A different matter. That took a little more than she had going for her, in Pirate’s judgment. He started backing out of the room, hands up. The barrel swung, following him: a bad moment. Then he was out of the line of fire.
And gone.
Nell got off the floor. Pain shot up and down her left arm, from the shoulder to the wrist. But she could raise the arm, lower it, move it side to side. No damage; not worth another thought.
So why this shaking?
Nell went in the closet, knelt beside Lee Ann. She took Lee Ann’s wrist—cold skin, as though Lee Ann had spent a subzero day outdoors—and felt for a pulse. Nothing; but maybe she was doing it wrong. Nell put her ear to Lee Ann’s chest. Silence. She’d seen a murder victim—and been this close—once before. Maybe that experience down at the Parish Street Pier, the worst of her life, steeled her, kept her from crying. Or maybe it was the realization that the two murders were connected, a realization that got her mind working at once; no time for self-indulgence. Two connected murders, yes: but how?
Nell became aware of Lee Ann’s gun, still in her hand. She had never fired a gun in her life, although Clay had invited her out on the police academy range several times. Could she have fired it at DuPree? Yes, if he’d taken one more step.
Nell went into Lee Ann’s bedroom, found her purse on the floor, took out her cell phone, tried Clay’s number at One Marigot. Nothing appeared on the cell-phone screen; no lights shone on the keypad.
The phone was broken.
Raising the gun to waist level, Nell left the bedroom, walked down
256
PETER ABRAHAMS
the little hall, looked around: fruit bowl; reproduction of
Guernica
hanging on the wall; splintered front door. He was gone. She went to the window. The painter who’d let her in downstairs had been on his way out; she saw no sign of his van.
Nell moved into Lee Ann’s office alcove, picked up the desk phone, tried Clay’s number again.
“Jarreau,” he said, answering on the first ring.
“Clay?” Her tone betrayed her, wobbling a bit.
“Yes?” he said; his tone was reserved, emotionless.
Nell tried to make hers that way, too. “You’d better come here.”
“Where?”
“He . . . he beat her to death.”
“What are you talking about?”
She started to tell her story, a badly organized jumble she was only halfway through when he interrupted.
His tone changed. “Lock yourself in the bathroom. I’m on my way.”
“There’s no—”
Click.
Locking herself in the bathroom? That sounded scarier than not.
Nell decided to stay where she was, by the phone. A second or two later, her gaze fell on a small digital recorder, about three inches by two; some money; a handwritten note.
Hey. Heres the recording thing. Digital. Check out this inturvue
with the cheif!!
Nell picked up the recorder, her hand unsteady. She pressed play.
Clay spoke: “Shh,” he said. From the tiny speaker, came a faint splash. Right there and then in Lee Ann’s air-conditioned apartment, Nell’s nostrils filled with the Bernardine stink. “Who’d be on this interview list?” Clay said.
DuPree spoke. Nell jumped at the sound of his voice. “Don’t know,” he said.
Clay: “How about me—would I be on it?”
DuPree: “Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
Clay: “No inconvenience. Want to interview me? How’s right now?”
DuPree: “I’m not, um, prepared.”
D E LU S I O N
257
Clay: “Don’t be shy. What’s the worst that can happen?”
DuPree: “Thanks for the offer. How about a rain check?”
Clay: “Your call. But I’m pretty sure you’ve got to be more aggres -
sive to make it in the writing game.”
DuPree: “I’ll try.”
Clay laughed, a laugh so unlike him it terrified her. “This is a funny situation.”
DuPree: “Yeah?”
Clay: “Here I am telling you how to write your own book. When all along I’m perfectly aware that you’re off to a flying start.”
DuPree: “I am?”
Clay: “Sure. Take your interview—that’s what it was, I get it now—your interview with my wife.”
DuPree: “Interview with your wife? I don’t know what you’re—”
Then came a thud, followed by a cry of pain. A heavy thud: Nell knew for certain Clay had his gun out, had struck DuPree as DuPree had struck her. And she, too, had a gun in her hand. The civilized world was speeding away.
Clay: “Careful, now. The interview.”
DuPree: “You can call it an interview.” Now his voice was pinched by pain. “But she came to me.”
Clay: “And?”
DuPree: “She was sorry about what happened. I told her not to worry about it.”
Clay: “How did you put that? The exact words.”
DuPree: “Just like I said—don’t worry about it. I forgive you.”