Delusion

by Peter Abrahams

  “Aren’t the police searching for him?” Nell said.

  “Looks like I got there first,” said Lee Ann.

  “How?”

  “Reporter’s weapon numero uno,” Lee Ann said. “Contacts.” She slowed behind a pickup with farmworkers in the back; they gazed down through the windshield of the convertible, eyes expressionless.

  “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “What if I said no?”

  Lee Ann laughed. “Everyone likes you—did you know that?”

  “Is that the question?”

  Lee Ann laughed again. “No. The question is did Johnny Blanton know you were pregnant?”

  No reason that question should have hit Nell so hard, but it did, the long-lost feeling of just starting out came welling up; the feeling of starting out on something new and grand.

  Lee Ann’s eyes shifted toward her, looked a little alarmed. “You don’t have to answer.”

  “No,” Nell said. “I’ll answer. Johnny—” Nell wasn’t a crier, but she felt tears building; and forced them back down. “Johnny knew,” she said. At that moment, she pictured his face with the clarity found in life, not memory—his exact face, so young and happy—when she told him the news. “We were going to get married.”

  “So when he stepped in front of you,” Lee Ann said, “he was actually protecting two people, you and Norah.”

  Nell had never considered that before. Lee Ann’s take seemed a little maudlin to her, even sensationalizing, the way material might be hyped by a—“Lee Ann? Are you planning to write a book about this?”

  Lee Ann’s eyes shifted. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “My God, you are planning a book.” Then it hit her. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “To answer that question, I’d have to know everything you know.”

  “Alvin DuPree murdered Johnny. Clay caught him and put him away. Now there’s some crazy talk about a tape, but it won’t add up to anything and DuPree will spend the rest of his life in jail. That’s what I know. So I’ll ask again—do you know more?”

  “No,” said Lee Ann.

  “End of story,” said Nell.

  “One more thing,” Lee Ann said. “When did the romance start?”

  “With Johnny?”

  Lee Ann shook her head. “With Clay.”

  “No precise date,” Nell said. “He called me about a year after…after it was all over. We had coffee.”

  “So you hadn’t met him before.”

  “Before when?”

  “The murder.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Did you know the Bastien brothers back then?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  Lee Ann shrugged. “Your husband’s close to them, isn’t he?”

  “He’s close to Duke,” Nell said. “I wouldn’t say he’s close to Kirk. What are you getting at?”

  “Just accumulating facts,” Lee Ann said. She went by a fireworks stand and slowed down, peering at the woods to her left. After a few hundred yards a narrow road appeared. Lee Ann turned on to it. “This should be Pond Road,” she said. “Did you catch a sign?”

  “No.”

  Lee Ann kept going. The road was paved at first, soon full of potholes, and finally gravel. They went up a slope, then down a long curve, the trees—mostly pine and sycamore—growing denser, some pockmarked with bullet holes.

  “Watch for a track on the right,” Lee Ann said.

  “That might have been one,” said Nell.

  “We’re getting to be like a comedy team,” said Lee Ann, backing up. Branches scraped the bodywork. The car bumped up onto the track, two reddish ruts with a strip of stunted brown grass in the middle. A few squashed beer cans passed under them, and then one that still hadn’t been run over. “I think we’re close,” she said.

  The track entered a hollow with a small pond in the middle, and came to an end at the edge of the water. Lee Ann looked around. “See anything?”

  “What kind of anything?”

  “A cabin, maybe. Some sign of people. I can’t stand nature.”

  Nell saw trees, a pocket of yellow wildflowers, a sudden rippling in the pond.

  “I’m thinking gators,” said Lee Ann. “I’m thinking snakes.”

  “Come on,” Nell said. She got out of the car and immediately smelled smoke. “We’ll just follow the smell.”

  “What smell?” said Lee Ann.

  Nell started walking around the pond, the earth moist and giving under her feet. More of those yellow flowers grew by the bank; a bullfrog croaked, but she couldn’t spot it. The smoky smell seemed stronger. Not far ahead something glinted at the base of a tree. Nell walked over, picked it up: an empty pint of Knob Creek, an expensive bourbon she’d seen in the liquor cabinet on Little Parrot Cay, a surprising find in a place like this. Then she remembered that Nappy Ferris was—or had been until Bernardine—a liquor store owner. She looked down and saw a sneaker footprint, pointing into the woods.

  “Over here,” she said.

  Lee Ann took a few steps, then stopped and said, “Christ almighty.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Goddamn mud took my shoe.”

  She bent forward, her bare foot sticking up in the air; for a moment she could have been some girlish character in a screwball comedy. Nell was starting to like her. Lee Ann rinsed her shoe in the pond and came over, a mud streak on her face.

  “This way,” Nell said.

  “What way?”

  Nell pushed a branch aside, revealing a faint path heading away from the pond.

  “Natty Bumppo,” said Lee Ann.

  They took the path, Nell in the lead. The smoky smell was now stronger still and she found herself speeding up. Behind her, Lee Ann’s breathing grew labored.

  “You’re in shape,” Lee Ann said. “How come?”

  “Because of—” Nell began, cutting herself off when a clearing came in sight, not far ahead. A small cabin stood at the back of the clearing, smoke drifting from a stovepipe that slanted at a forty-five degree angle through the roof. A rusted-out car with running boards and tiny windows lay partly sunken in the ground, vines curling up through the grille.

  “This must be it,” said Lee Ann.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lee Ann whispered, and then repeated it at normal volume. “I’m not sure.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  They were both laughing as they crossed the clearing. The cabin was weather-beaten and crooked, the two front windows grimy and cracked. A sticker on the door read: NO SOLICITORS, NO PEDDLERS, NO TRESPASSING. Lee Ann stepped up and knocked.

  No response from inside. Lee Ann knocked again, harder this time. “Mr. Ferris? You there? It’s Lee Ann Bonner, from the Guardian.” She was about to knock again when a voice spoke behind them.

  “What you want?”

  Nell and Lee Ann whirled around. A man stood about fifteen feet away, somehow having come so close without making a sound. He was tall and thin, with big liquid eyes and a bony face: resembled an El Greco saint, except Nell didn’t recall any with café au lait–colored skin. One other nonconforming detail: the snub-nosed handgun held loosely in his long, tapering fingers, not pointing at them but not really pointing away either. Nell felt no fear until she realized that this was the second time in her life she’d been confronted by an armed man. Then her heart began to pound.

  “Mr. Ferris? I’m Lee Ann Bonner of the Guardian.”

  The man licked his lips; his tongue was cracked and yellow. “Prove it.”

  “I’ve got a card,” Lee Ann said, taking her bag off her shoulder, starting to open it.

  The gun came up, pointed right at the center of Lee Ann’s forehead. “Uh-uh,” said the man. “Toss it over.”

  “But the card’s just inside the—”

  The man made a dismissive gesture with the gun. “Don’t wanna argue,�
�� he said.

  Lee Ann tossed her bag to him. He caught it with his free hand—the gun back in that loose grip, pointing nowhere special—raised the bag to his mouth and unzipped it with his teeth. Then he squatted down, laid the bag on the ground, and fished around in it, his eyes on Nell and Lee Ann.

  “The card’s in that compartment at the side,” Lee Ann said. “With the Velcro snap.”

  The man’s hand went still. “Well, well,” he said, and withdrew his hand, now holding another handgun, the same silver color as his but smaller and with a pearly pink grip. “This what we’re callin’ a Velcro snap?”

  Nell gazed at Lee Ann in surprise. Lee Ann ignored her. “The card’s in the compartment,” she said.

  “Your reporter card?”

  “Yes.”

  “Reporters in the habit of totin’ these around?” he said, waving Lee Ann’s little gun.

  “In Belle Ville they are,” Lee Ann said.

  The man stared at her for a moment: soulful El Greco eyes, but bloodshot, too. Then he laughed, a light, musical laugh, close to a giggle. “Say the truth,” he said. He tucked Lee Ann’s gun in the pocket of his jeans—torn and grease-stained—fished around some more and came up with the card. “‘Lee Ann Bonner,’” he read, rising. “‘Reporter, Belle Ville Guardian, the True Voice of the Gulf.’” He smiled. “‘True Voice of the Gulf’—so righteous. Tell me, Sister True Voice, how you’re finding me?”

  “It was mostly luck, Mr. Ferris,” Lee Ann said.

  “Yeah? You feelin’ lucky today?” Before Lee Ann could answer, he swung his gun toward Nell. “Who we got here?”

  “This is my friend,” Lee Ann said. “Please don’t point that at her.”

  He kept pointing it at Nell just the same. “Friend got a name?”

  “Nell,” Lee Ann said.

  “She dumb or somethin’? Can’t do no talkin’ for herself?”

  “Nell,” Nell said.

  “Nell,” he said. “Nice name. And nice voice, beside. Nicer ’n hers.” He checked the card. “Lee Ann’s more kind of harsh, hear what I’m sayin’? Nell’s more sweet.” The gun shifted back to Lee Ann.

  “Now that introductions are out of the way, Mr. Ferris,” Lee Ann said, “maybe we could get down to business.”

  “Nobody call me Ferris,” he said.

  “No?”

  He took a step closer, prodding Lee Ann’s bag forward with his toe. He wore snakeskin boots, old and worn, the skin torn here and there. Nell smelled booze. “That Ferris—a slave name,” he said. “Everybody call me Nappy.”

  “Okay, Nappy,” Lee Ann said. “Maybe we can go inside and talk.”

  “Outside the best,” Nappy said. “The great outside.”

  Lee Ann nodded. “I’d like to hear about the tape.”

  “Don’t know about no tape.”

  “I’m talking about the tape you made twenty years ago at your liquor store on Bigard Street,” Lee Ann said. “The tape that—”

  “Flood took my store,” Nappy said.

  Nell had a thought. “Maybe—” she began, and then stopped; this was Lee Ann’s show.

  “Maybe what?” said Lee Ann.

  Nell gazed at Nappy, saw what should have been obvious: he was drunk. “Maybe you don’t know that people are looking for you.”

  He took a quick scan of the clearing. There was nothing to see but a blue butterfly hovering over one of those yellow flowers. Nappy’s index finger slid off the trigger guard, onto the trigger.

  “Not to harm you,” Lee Ann said. “They’ve been looking in Houston, Atlanta, all the places the refugees went.”

  “I ain’t no refugee.”

  “You’re not?” Lee Ann said.

  “Didn’t flee no hurricane.”

  Lee Ann glanced around. “You’re saying this is where you were living, even before the hurricane?”

  “Not sayin’ nothin’.”

  Nell had another thought. “Are you here for some other reason?”

  His finger left the trigger, moved back to the guard. Was it just because he preferred the sound of her voice? “Like what reason?” he said.

  Nell couldn’t think of any. Lee Ann said, “Getting back to the tape, what was your motivation in sending it? Were you friends with Alvin DuPree? And who did you actually send it to, by the way?”

  Nappy waved his free hand in front of his face, as though brushing away flies. “Lot of questions,” he said.

  “Why don’t we go inside?” Lee Ann said. “Take them one at a time.”

  “Etiquette,” Nappy said.

  “Etiquette?” said Lee Ann.

  “Etiquette is why,” Nappy said. “Meanin’ manners. My place, so my place to hand out invitations. Or not.”

  “My apologies,” said Lee Ann.

  The sarcasm was plain in her tone, but Nappy must have missed it, because he nodded in an apology-accepting way and said, “Manners don’t cost nothin’, but they worth many treasures.” He took a bottle from his back pocket—Knob Creek—pulled the stopper with his teeth, spat it out, tilted the bottle to his lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed. He held the bottle out to Nell. “Drink, Nellie?”

  “Thanks, but it’s a little earl—”

  His voice rose. “Many treasures.”

  Nell took the bottle. She didn’t like bourbon, not even premium bourbon, and it was too early for her, plus she hadn’t drunk straight from the bottle since high school, and didn’t much like the idea of putting her lips where his had been; but she drank.

  Nappy watched closely. “Sweet,” he said. “Now pass it around the circle.”

  Nell passed the bottle to Lee Ann. Lee Ann wiped the rim on her sleeve—Why didn’t I have the nerve to do that? Nell thought—and took a real slug. That brought the little giggle from Nappy.

  “We havin’ fun?” he said. Lee Ann gave him the bottle. He did an elaborate imitation of how she’d wiped the rim, then took an even deeper slug. It made him shudder.

  “Getting back to the tape,” Lee Ann said.

  “Somethin’ else,” said Nappy.

  “It’ll all come out anyway,” Lee Ann said. “When you testify at the hearing.”

  “Don’ know nothin’ about no hearing.”

  “That’s because they can’t find you,” Lee Ann said. “The hearing’s to free Alvin DuPree, based on the security-camera tape and the note that went with it, the one that said they had the wrong man. The tape turned up in a file cabinet that belonged to Bobby Rice.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “Why?” said Lee Ann.

  “Why not?” Nappy said.

  “Can you elaborate a little?” Lee Ann said. “Why is the tape turning up in Bobby Rice’s file cabinet fucked up?”

  “Whyn’t you aks him?”

  “Impossible,” said Lee Ann. “Bobby Rice drowned in the flood.”

  Nappy shook his head, a little too hard, like a child warding off something he didn’t want to hear. “Strong sober man like Bobby? No way.”

  “It’s true,” Lee Ann said.

  Nappy’s eyes seemed to get redder. “Make you think who the hell runnin’ things.”

  “In Belle Ville?” Lee Ann said.

  Nappy took a long, long drink, head way back, then raised his hands high, bottle in one hand, gun in the other, as if to indicate: things everywhere.

  “Were you friends with Alvin DuPree?” Lee Ann said.

  “Al DuPree? Thief, bully, coward, snake.”

  “Then why did you send the tape? Why did you write the note?”

  Nappy gave Lee Ann a pitying look, arms still raised high. Nell wondered about the wisdom of making a grab for the gun, or maybe just asking him to put it away. “Ever heard of justice?” Nappy said.

  “In the interest of justice,” Lee Ann said. “I understand. But then, when nothing happened with the tape, why didn’t you follow up?”

  “Know what I don’ like about you? You look so smart, but it turns out the other.”

  “Then
walk me through it,” Lee Ann said.

  “Walk you through it,” Nappy said, mimicking her. He started to lower his arms. “You still don’ even realize the obvious fac’—I was inside of the store when Al was poundin’ away on the—” At that moment, he stopped speaking and toppled over.

  “Christ,” said Lee Ann, “he passed out.”

  Bourbon gurgled out of the bottle, onto the grass. Nell and Lee Ann knelt beside Nappy. Twenty or thirty seconds passed before they realized he’d been shot in the head. In fairness to them, the entry wound was small and partly hidden by his hair. Only when they turned him over, revealing the other side of his head with the exit-wound crater, was the truth plain.

  CHAPTER 8

  Clay hurried across the clearing, followed by his driver and, farther behind, Sergeant Bowman, oldest detective on the Belle Ville force. He saw Nell and picked up the pace, was almost running when he reached her. He put his hands on her shoulders, looked into her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He embraced her, just for a second, and squeezed. She squeezed back. Then he let her go and turned to Solomon Lanier, first black sheriff of Stonewall County.

  “Big Sol,” he said. “Thanks for calling.”

  “Don’t even mention it, Chief,” Lanier said.

  They shook hands; not many men made Clay seem small, but Sheriff Lanier was one. Clay glanced around, took in the cops moving in the woods; the stretcher on the ground, a sheet covering the body, EMTs standing by; a spray-painted human form in front of the cabin with a small spray-painted circle a few yards away; and Lee Ann, writing in a notebook. She looked up, met his gaze, nodded. Clay turned to the sheriff, not acknowledging Lee Ann at all.

  “What have we got, Sol?”

  “Shooting victim,” the sheriff said. “Makes five in the county so far since January, down a tick from last year.”

  They walked over to the stretcher. An EMT pulled back the sheet, down to Nappy Ferris’s chin. From this angle, Nell couldn’t see the exit wound, but the cliché that the dead man could have been sleeping did not apply: one of his eyes was open, the other closed. Nell wished someone would do something about that.

  “Name of Napoleon Ferris,” said the sheriff. “Subject of interest down your way?”