Authors: Lisa Sandlin
He admired the house for a while then cruised on to a Fertitta's grocery, bought some more coffee and four hangover nectarines. Ate them dripping over a fistful of napkins then washed his sticky hands in the restroom. Dialed Delpha from the phone outside.
“Be down there pretty soon. We get any calls?”
“Yeah, we did, good thing I stayed. We got a call for new
work, how about that? Some gentleman wanting us to find him.”
“Find
him
. Like he's invisible?”
“More or less. It's the less he's concerned about. I'll explain better when you come in. Caroleen Toups called. Asked if you could go over there. Ricky's home, and something's wrong. She's just beside herself. Says you're the only one that can help. And then somebody left a package wrapped in brown paper at our door. Kinda tall like a business ledger you write your accounts in.”
Phelan held the phone for a couple seconds.
Finally said, “The logbook. Plato must've put off his trip a while. Why'd he leave it with me? Him leaving it says it's still good for something.” Phelan was trying to pace but the phone cord kept jerking him back.
“All I can tell you, there was somebody on the stairs. Ran up, ran down. I'll unwrap it and see, you want.”
“No, hold onto it. There'll be prints on the paper, if that were to ever matter. Identify yours quick, any others belong to whoever left it, namely, one Plato Willis. What good's the damn thing now? The shouting's over. Whatâ¦no, it's OK, I'm talking to myself here. I'm going over to the Toups, then I'll be in. We'll figure this out.”
CAROLEEN TOUPS LOOKED like she'd smeared black shoe polish under her eyes and missed her last six meals. Right away, she pressed forty limp dollars on Phelan, who gritted his teeth and accepted. She hollered for Ricky. Then she fell into describing what was wrong with her son.
It was like gypsies had come and stolen the boy he was and left some kind of ghost that looked like Ricky. Used to do things for you without having to be told a hundred times. Now he was gone nights and slept days and when he was awake he acted deaf and scooped out empty.
“He's scared, Mr. Phelan. It scares me that he's so scared.” She called her son again and when nothing happened, hurried down a hall.
Phelan invited himself to sit down in the Toups' pine-paneled living room that opened onto a pine-paneled kitchen. Deeterman had roped Ricky in againâhad a hold on him, money or dirty hands or both. He slipped Ricky cash and dope, Ricky steered him boys. Too dumb to believe the son of a bitch would turn on him again, sure as the earth goes round. But he must know that now.
Wearing gray sweatpants and clutching an inhaler, Ricky Toups stumbled out into the living room, herded by his mother.
“I'd like to talk to your son alone, Mrs. Toups, you don't mind.”
“You go right on,” she said, and banished herself down the hall.
Skinnier, face hollower, bluish lips chapped and cracked. WeirdâPhelan saw what Mrs. Toups meant. Ricky was kind of drifting and shifting in place, as though he was avoiding certain air currents.
“Sit down.”
“Don't think I can,” the boy said faintly. He wafted to different spots in the living room, a recliner, a side-table, but none worked for him. He couldn't stay anywhere. The kid was trying to run away, inside his body.
Whatever hopes Phelan had had, curdled. “How many you bring him, Ricky, and what'd he do to them?”
The flittering gaze landed on Phelan. The boy gagged. His shoulders raised up and did not go back down.
“How many boys did you bring Dennis Deeterman? Besides Marvin. Need names. Cops'll want to talk to them.” Phelan got up and spoke right at the teenager, whose breathing was beginning to wheeze. That creaky sound, in and out.
“Look, you can be safe from him, never see the guy again. OK?”
Ricky put fists over his eyes, then his ears, nodding and wheezing.
“Use the inhaler.”
“You know, maybe I, you knowâ¦won't.”
“Use it. You're through with Dennis Deeterman, hear. Use the inhaler.”
Ricky hit his inhaler, and his jaw jittered sideways like his head was trying to screw off. His next wheeze sounded like “Wait.”
“Wait what?”
“We got hisâ¦diary.”
“Diary,” Phelan echoed.
The kid's eyes flicked like pinballs.
“Deeterman had a diary? Aw, shit, Georgia Fucking Watson, this'd be her play. And she's got it, too, doesn't she?”
Ricky's chapped lips parted. “She said we'd get money. But he found out where she lives.”
Phelan pushed him toward the kitchen. “Call her.”
The kid mumbled into a phone on the kitchen wall then hung his head listening. After a while, he slumped and the receiver fell to his side.
“Well, what? What's going on, Ricky?”
“Never mind, it's all OK now. Georgia's OK.”
“She give him the diary back?”
“She'd already took itâ¦to your office.”
Phelan's stomach lurched.
The boy slid down the wall, sucked the inhaler. Let his head fall back onto the wall. Georgia'd told Deeterman he could go get the diary where she'd left it, by the outer door of this private eye's office. The guy wouldn't be there. He had to be out working. She'd talked fast, peeking through a latched screen door with Phelan's card taped to the outside of it.
11:49 A.M. CLOSE enough to noon. Delpha wanted this call over with. She'd just picked up the phone when the downstairs door opened. She set the receiver back in the cradle and clicked her ballpoint. If it was Phelan, she could step out in a minute, use the phone by the library. She had Mrs. Robbins' number by heart.
Right decisions, she believed, were those when you knew, brain and body. This one she'd sifted as though laboring with handfuls of sand. To begin with, there was the sole, heaped side: the old man dead with no risk on Delpha's part. Blue sky.
But on the other side was Isaac. Anything his mother was punished for would punish him as well and for all his life. Isaac evened out the sides.
Whoever was downstairs was taking their timeâlast-minute calculating, maybe: did they really need a private investigator, could they pay for one?
Isaac was not solitary on his side. Add in common-sense reasoning: Delpha knew where that old man was, she'd never again set foot in his bait store. There were other spots to rent a boat when she wanted to drift out on the quiet brown channels under the green overhang of vine, willow, moss, Spanish bayonet, past the downed logs populated by sunning turtles, past cypresses towering from the water. Other bayous.
She never had to behold that one face, that scar again. Why pick the side with murder?
What he'd done to her. What he'd told his son, showed his son how to do, let him loose to do. Fourteen years that man had been living how he chose, and she not. His daughter. His two little granddaughters with their spelling hands.
But Isaac.
Delpha prepared to greet a client who'd decided on his need over his wallet. The ascending footsteps were not Phelan's light tread, not the running footfalls she'd heard earlier this morning. This was somebody heavy and in a hurry.
She had stood by her window at the New Rosemont, forehead propped in her hands, while the chaplain and the deacon had weighed in on her decision.
Harbor hate, you have hate. I visit the men on Death Row and I love and pray for them. You have to keep finding love
.
The decision set as she woke solitary in her bed. Bed that smelled like Isaac. She would not mar his future, would not take the chance. She knew that in her belly.
She would tell his mother to leave the old man alone. Let him be.
The office door opened forcefully and a bulky man barged in, cranking his head around. Politely, she asked how she could help him. His gaze passed through her to scan the room, lingered on the inner door to Phelan's office, partially open. Looking away from her, he said, “Girl left a book of mine here, and it's not layin' out by the door like she said.”
He was a head taller than her. Faded red ball cap, long-sleeve work shirt. Mustache.
“I heard her and found it. I brought it in here, Mr.â”
“Gimme it. I got somewhere to go.”
The man was still not looking toward her. Then he did. “Your boss not here, is he?”
Blood in her neck and chest thumped. Her head lightened. Her fingertips convulsed on the ballpoint pen and flicked it into her palm. They didn't have a letter opener, used their thumbs. Phelan had his gun with him. For a few seconds, the office remade itself into a flat picture, a poster of an office. She grasped hold by ordering herself:
you're here, you're the only one in this place
. The office fell back around her in its former depth. A flash of the brown-paper-wrapped book as she'd placed it in the bottom desk drawer, under the whiskey bottleâonly a few steps away.
“You wait right there. I'll bring it right out to you, and you can go.” Delpha crossed in front of the man to Phelan's office door.
“Your boss's out working.” The voice, lower than before, was closer behind her.
She threw a glance back. His mouth hung open so that teeth were visible beneath the thick mustache. A smudge on the cheek or a bruise, one. White around the dull black pupils that blended into the shadow beneath the cap. He slid his hands into the pockets of soiled khakis. She dropped her glance down. The front of his pants was raised. Wasn't lust, she knew that like she knew her name, it was him knowing she was alone. Couldn't remember his name, though she'd heard it countless times. Could not call that name. Didn't matter. She recognized the face, and not because she'd seen him before. She recognized
it
. Blank as a clock looking at you. Until it changed. And it would change.
There sat the phone on Phelan's desk. If she went for it, it'd all start then, fast, few choices. She didn't try for the phone. She walked around the side of the desk to the drawer,
said loud, clearly, “My boss, he's due any minute now.” She did not trust that saying this would help or even postpone anything, but it was the only thing to say. Her fingers released the flimsy ballpoint, which rolled away on the desk. Straight-backed, she bent from the knees as she pulled open the bottom drawer. She gripped the whiskey bottle, was lifting it off the book when he rounded the desk from the opposite side, stretched out a long arm and lunged to snatch the book from her hand.
Done. He had what he came for.
Leave now
.
Ripping. Brown paper was discarded onto the desk. A shove and Phelan's chair rolled away and banged into the wall.
Leave. Leave
.
She tracked him through her peripherals so as not to stare directly into his face. Stuffing the book into the back of his belt, he stepped closer. Pulled his zipper down and cupped, breathing harshly through his nose. He'd like it if she tried to beat him out the door.
All she saw to do was slide one foot a couple inches behind the other, center her weight, shift a little forward. Slow, so slow. To suddenly stand full height might set him off and wasting one ounce of effort on persuasion, no, no, no. To this kind, she wasn't a human being, she was an animal that moved. A body in reach. A means to liberate the core need, she understood that, understood also that any humanity the man owned was already sloughed.
His left hand surfaced from the pocket with a black knife handle, he flipped the blade out. Four, maybe five inches, not clean. Now she looked at him. His face was in a stage of altering, recomposing. The thing behind his eyes breaking through. The knife separated from his trunk, moved as part
of his arm, as his hand, weaved toward her and away, weaved closer toward her. Once he saw her following the blade, he began the threats. The voice that squeezed from him slammed the panic in her stomach up through her chest and into her throat, spread it over her skin. Over all her skin.
This, she hadn't foreseen, hadn't before even imaginedâa hissing, rhythmic, falsetto whine. He rubbed himself, working up to it, savoring. A knife with a mouth whining.
I'm going to cuttttttt youuuuuu. I'm going to kiiiiillllll youuuuuuu
.
He put the knife into his mouth and leisurely brought it out again.
A jab, and a spot on her ribs stung, prickled electrically, coldness entered and withdrew. She glanced down at the red leaf-shape on her blouse, up to see him lifting a red knife to his protruding tongue.
He had the face now. Not the clock one, the stretched one. The ecstatic eyes.
Phelan burned up I-10's fast lane, swerving around truckers balling for New Orleans. Took the off ramp at 50 per. But he climbed the stairs soft and worked the doorknob soundlessly, hoping Deeterman was somewhere ahead of the truckers on I-10, not sitting in Delpha's chair watching the knob turn. Phelan eased into the still office, .38 out.
Her chair was pushed back, not snugged to her desk like she usually left it. The box of letters was on the desk. The door to his office stood ajar. Quietly as he could, he crossed the floor. Once he was pressed against the jamb, Phelan pushed his door, swinging it open.
No one. The high-backed client chairs, his desk with some brown paper on it. Phelan's ribs constricted as he
confronted the thought that Deeterman had been here and forced her off somewhere. No, surely she would have yelled as soon as they got to street level. Surely he couldn't wrestle her along a public sidewalk to his pickup truck, no, Delpha Wade would not have gone docilely. Phelan stepped over the threshold into a curtain of bourbon fume and iron and silence. Glass crunched under his shoe.
A client chair drifted around. “I put that package away in your bottom drawer,” Delpha said. “Under the whiskey bottle.”
Phelan got a good look at her. He slid the gun onto his desk next to the wad of grocery-sack paper, sank down to her.
She stared off to the left of him, her pupils dilated. Her left hand hung behind the chair arm but her right shivered on a worn ledger in the middle of a shiny darkness at her waistband. Different-size spots stained her white blouse, spray and spatter, one red channel.
“I'd a carried it out to him. Told him that. Coulda been long gone from here. But he had to do one of those things they do. Those extras.”
Her gaze shifted to Phelan, and she shook her head. “They just can't resist.”
He'd seen the blood, the legs on the floor by now, the rest of the body blocked from view by the big metal desk. He needed to get E.E. here, get an ambulance first, but he couldn't reach the phone, couldn't get that motion happening because he was listening to her, hearing her tell how she was still holding the whiskey bottle when the man licked the knife and cut her and when he went to lick it again she broke the bottle on the edge of the desk and drove it up two-handed through his throat then she wrenched the book out from under him and she sat down while he died.
The half of her face he could see wore a sheen of sweat. He passed his fingers through the brown hair, soothed it back. “Delpha.”
A blood-smudged index finger riffled the ledger's pages. “God in heaven he's got a envelope of pictures in here, boys before and boys after, and the before's the most terrible thing there is.”
He could barely hear her. Skin at her temple cold. Phelan grabbed hold of the curly cord and crashed the phone off the desk onto the floor. Dialed, urging it to ring fast.