Delusion

by Peter Abrahams

  And then Bobby Rice had said: You survived. Survive something like that, you’re a hero, plain and simple. She had no trouble remembering that, or how she’d gone on and on about Johnny’s swimming and everything about him, and the solemn way the two detectives had listened to every word.

  Nell’s eyes returned to the picture, as if drawn by an invisible force. She just couldn’t blend those faces.

  “Why are you shaking your head like that?” Clay said.

  Nell looked up, unaware that she’d shaken her head. She met Clay’s gaze. “I got it wrong,” she said.

  “I don’t think so,” Clay said. “But we’ll never know.”

  “We know,” Nell said. “I can’t tell you how I feel, getting it wrong for you, but we have to face it.”

  Clay grabbed the photograph, ripped it into tiny bits, tossed them away.

  It shocked her, like an act of violence. “Clay! What are you doing? That’s evidence.”

  He rose, the pulse pounding in his neck. “There’s nothing to face. It’s over.” He strode out of the room.

  Nell bent down, gathered all the pieces of the DuPree photo. She placed them on the butcher block, tried for a moment or two to fit them back together. Then she dropped them in the trash.

  Clay was already asleep when Nell went to bed; she could tell from the sound of his breathing. She knew his breathing, his gait, his facial expressions, the songs he sang in the shower, how he brushed his teeth too hard—everything about him.

  She lay down, not touching him, but feeling the presence of his body. Nell had slept with three men in her life: the first, her boyfriend junior year in college; Johnny; and Clay. Sex with the college boyfriend she hardly remembered: clumsy and unsatisfying, as though they’d been sent the wrong manual; sex with Johnny had been better—even much better—but sex with Clay had obliterated it, wiping out actual memories of Johnny in bed, leaving only summary impressions. The obliterating had not merely begun but had happened in total that very first time—about two months after the surf-casting date—when he’d taken her out on a little powerboat of Duke’s; rocking at anchor under a hot sun, the rhythm of the sea beneath them.

  At that moment, in bed with Clay, she remembered something Johnny had told her, explaining the forces that ran the universe. There were four, but the one that stuck in her mind was the strong force, the attraction that kept the nucleus of the atom together. She and Clay were subject to a strong force, too, a strong force with the power to see them through anything.

  Nell reached across the small space between them, touched his thigh. He shifted away.

  A first.

  She lay still, first not believing, then believing, then wide-awake. After a while, she heard the wrecker drive up outside, heard the front door open, and then Norah on the stairs; didn’t hear anything bad, like soft crying or a stumbling footstep.

  Nell closed her eyes. Right away, she had a mental image of Clay’s index finger, rising up and tapping down, a half inch above DuPree’s pictured head. Was it a memory or something else, rising from unknown and self-destructive depths? In this image, the photo lay not on the butcher block in her kitchen, but on a steel table.

  She sat up, went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face. The Bernardine smell was in the air. Nell closed all the windows and switched on the AC.

  CHAPTER 16

  Pirate awoke. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. Then he saw the foil-wrapped mint lying on the pillow beside him. He took off the foil and ate the mint, right there in bed, as free as it gets, in his suite at the Ambassador. A real good feeling, till he thought of his age.

  Knock on the door.

  Pirate rose, put on jeans and a T-shirt, both brand-new, and opened the door, remembering too late he wasn’t wearing the patch; he didn’t want his reporter-buddy slash other-possibilities to see him like this. But not Lee Ann, not a female of any kind: this was a big-bellied guy in a suit, and everything about him said cop.

  “Got a moment?” the cop said. His gaze flicked over to Pirate’s non-eye. Pirate remembered the tiny weapon, in the bathroom toothbrush holder. Then he had an amazing thought: the non-eye was a weapon all by itself.

  Pirate smiled and said, “Nope.”

  The cop smiled back. Kind of: the corners of his mouth turned up; his pale eyes stayed the same. “Might be worth your while,” he said.

  “Nothin’ with cops ever been worth my while.”

  The cop nodded. “That’s my point.”

  “You made it,” Pirate said. “Adios.”

  The cop kept smiling, like something funny was going on. “Always this hasty?” he said.

  Pirate thought about that. Long ago he’d been plenty hasty, oh yeah. Now was different—he’d learned to slow things down, way down. That was a big part of being at peace. “Say what you got to say,” he told the cop.

  “From out here?”

  “Yeah.”

  The cop glanced around. A maid was coming down the hall with a stack of fluffy towels, towels Pirate loved.

  “Thanks for the mint,” he said as she went by.

  “The?…oh, yes, you’re welcome sir. Enjoy.”

  The cop watched till she went around a corner. Pirate, with his hearing, could still pick up something jingling in her pocket. The cop lowered his voice. “You were away for a while.”

  “That’s what you come to tell me?”

  “Yeah,” said the cop. “What you’re maybe missing is developments out here. On this side of the wall, so to speak.”

  “Like?” said Pirate.

  “Want an example?” said the cop. He leaned a little closer. His breath was foul, as bad as any inmate breath Pirate had smelled in twenty years. “Remember the detective who put you away?”

  Pirate nodded.

  “Now he’s chief of police.”

  Pirate had already figured that out, down in the holding pen under the courthouse. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Now the smile on the cop’s face had nothing to do with fun, was just so many face muscles at work. Pirate started getting the squinting feeling in his non-eye, came close to actually seeing those face muscles strain under his skin. “How about the eyewitness who pointed you out?” the cop said. “Killer bod—remember her?”

  “What if I do?”

  “Do or don’t, maybe you want to chew on the fact that she married the detective not long after they put you away. Got a regular little model family for theirselves.”

  “So?” Pirate said; but something slipped inside.

  “Should be obvious,” the cop said. “How about I leave you with two words? Frame job.” The cop turned, started walking away, looked back over his shoulder. “Or maybe it’s just the one, with a whatchamacallit in between.”

  Pirate unlocked the minibar. Everything was back in place: peanuts, Twizzlers, Mars bar, Jujubes, Coke, OJ, plus the original supply of booze—beer, wine, whiskey, vodka, gin, Kahlúa. Every day he ate the snacks, drank the Coke and OJ, and every next day the minibar was full up again. How good was that? Even better than getting twice what he had before.

  At peace; at peace in the Ambassador Suites Hotel, except for this one disturbing visit: frame job. Pirate reached into the minibar, fished out the Kahlúa. He tried to read the label. Was it booze or not? He thought he made out the word alcohol, but was that enough to make it booze? He needed one of his lawyers to figure this out; the Jew would be best. Pirate unscrewed the cap, took a sniff. Booze? He didn’t think so; more like a liquid dessert. Pirate tipped the little bottle to his lips and drank it down.

  A pleasant coffee taste, sweet and syrupy, and as a bonus it had no effect at all, no high, nothing that would knock him off the rails. Pirate went to his desk, found Lee Ann’s card, gave her a call.

  “Hey,” she said, “I was just going to phone you.”

  “Yeah? What about?”

  “Thought maybe we’d go for a little outing. There’s a wake you might be interested in.”

&n
bsp; “Whose?”

  “Nappy Ferris’s. How does that sound?”

  How did that sound? Wakes were peaceful, right? That was the whole point—seeing one more guy off to his last reward. But even more important: he owed Nappy. “Big-time.”

  “What was that?”

  “Sounds okay,” Pirate said.

  He brushed his teeth, shaved and showered, put on the patch. The tiny weapon? Did he need it? No. He wrapped it in toilet paper and stuck it under the mattress.

  “Beignet?” said Lee Ann.

  Pirate ate the sugar-dusted beignet, licked the sweetness off his lips. “What’s the name of that little line?”

  “What little line?” Lee Ann said, pulling out of her parking space without looking.

  “Between two words sometimes.” Someone honked nearby. Pirate had been in a noncar world for a long time, long enough to have made him slow to see the obvious: Lee Ann was a bad driver. He buckled his seat belt tight.

  “Like in All-American?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hyphen. Why?”

  “Catching up on my education,” Pirate said.

  Lee Ann laughed. “I spoke to an editor in New York. She really likes the idea.”

  “Only a Test?”

  She stopped laughing, gave him a look he’d never seen from anyone before, so serious. “And the title—she positively loves it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re probably wondering what happens next.”

  Pirate wasn’t, not at all.

  “First thing,” she said, “I write an outline and a couple chapters.”

  Pirate noticed they were on Princess Street, wondered whether the Pink Passion Club was still there.

  “And somewhere along the way you and I are going to get something on paper.”

  On paper? What was she talking about? Now he was supposed to write books? “You want me to write the fuckin’ thing?”

  She glanced at him and laughed. Pirate joined in for a few moments. Then he decided he didn’t like the sound of them laughing together, especially if he himself was on the receiving end, and clamped his mouth shut. Outside, the Pink Passion Club went by. A sign on the door read: GRAND RE-OPENING TONIGHT!!! A good sign, right? Hey! Double meaning! Pirate started laughing again. Lee Ann was still sort of chuckling from before.

  “You’ve got a good sense of humor,” she said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

  Sure. All the COs, the Ocho Cincos, Esteban Malvi, all the rats in all the rat cages. This time Pirate just let the laughter die away.

  Red light. Lee Ann stopped. A Belle Ville cruiser pulled up beside them. “You don’t have to write a thing,” she said, “except for—”

  Pirate, taking a sidelong look at the cruiser, missed whatever that was all about. A uniformed cop was at the wheel; he glanced over—a real young kid—showed no reaction, drove off the moment the light turned green.

  “So how does that grab you?” Lee Ann said.

  Grab him? “Um, I didn’t…”

  “And of course you should have a lawyer check it over—in fact, I insist.”

  “Lawyer?” Wasn’t he all done with lawyers?

  “Maybe the Justice Project people can suggest someone.”

  “For what?”

  Behind those strange glasses, her eyes shifted toward him, smart eyes he didn’t like the look of all of a sudden. “To vet the contract—what I’ve just been telling you about.”

  The way he’d pried up Esteban Malvi’s eyelid and gently rubbed his eyeball? Now the thought of doing the same thing to Lee Ann appeared in the back of his mind, or maybe it had been lurking there the whole time.

  “Sorry,” he said. “A little slow today.”

  She laughed, patted his knee. “It’s routine with book proposals like this. We need a contract that gives me permission from you for exclusive rights to your story. In return you get a percentage of the royalties.”

  Royalties? That sounded good. So did settlement. When Pirate was a kid, he’d wanted a Mustang, one of those cool old ones, a rag-top pony. And now: why not? His knee tingled.

  “How much?” he said.

  “The royalties?” said Lee Ann. “Depends on how well the book does. But first there’ll be an advance to split—if they go for the proposal, that is.”

  “And I get a percentage?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like what?”

  “I was thinking of ten.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Split the difference? Fifteen?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Deal.”

  They were both laughing again. Freedom, money, rag-top ponies: pretty good. Then, from out of nowhere, came the worry that a one-eyed man might not qualify for a driver’s license. In Pirate’s mind, the rag-top pony went up in flames.

  Those eyes, real smart, were on him again. “You all right?” she said.

  He nodded. “Light’s turning red.”

  Lee Ann hit the brakes.

  A string of Mardi Gras beads hung over a sign reading: DE SOTO CAMPGROUND—ALL VISITORS REPORT TO OFFICE. Lee Ann turned into the entrance, fishtailing on the dirt track; Pirate felt weightless for a moment, like an astronaut, and didn’t like it.

  “Whee,” said Lee Ann.

  Pirate got a coffee-and-syrup buzz in his head, wanted to give her a smack, not hard. Instead he took a deep breath and tried to settle back into his peaceful groove. His fingers moved the way they did when feeling the gold tassel.

  Lee Ann drove past the office, a few cabins and trailers, and parked beside other cars. Through some trees, Pirate saw a pond and picnic tables with twenty or thirty people standing around, all black. Was this a good idea? Pirate looked at Lee Ann. She was sticking two twenty-dollar bills and her card into an envelope. On the front she wrote In Memory of Napoleon Ferris.

  “All set?” she said. “You can pay me back your sixteen percent later.”

  Sixteen percent? Of the forty? Is that what she meant? Was it a joke? Pirate didn’t know. They got out of the car, walked through trees, lots with snapped-off trunks. Pirate felt Lee Ann’s presence beside him, real small. He realized they were partners. He’d never had a partner before, had never even thought about having one. Pirate tried to calculate sixteen percent of forty but didn’t know how.

  All the black people heard them coming—or maybe sensed it—and turned at the same time. Lee Ann went right up to the nearest table and laid her envelope in a basket with some others. An old man sitting at the table nodded and said, “Bless.” Everyone else went back to what they’d been doing—cooking on a charcoal grill, eating, drinking. Beyond them lay a pond with scummy water; a skinny kid was skimming rocks across it. He was a real good rock skipper—one or two skipped clear across to the other side. Or maybe not: Pirate’s eye was tiring and things were starting to blur.

  A woman came toward them, dressed in black. She was thin, like the rock-skipping kid, with white hair and an unlined face.

  “Thank you folks for coming,” she said. “I’m Napoleon’s momma, Dinah Ferris.”

  “Condolences, ma’am,” said Lee Ann. “I’m Lee Ann Bonner of the Guardian. I was with—”

  “I know who you are,” said Dinah Ferris.

  “Very sorry,” said Lee Ann. “Sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” said Dinah Ferris.

  “And this is Alvin DuPree,” Lee Ann said.

  Dinah Ferris turned to him. She had small dark eyes, somehow hard and sad at the same time.

  Pirate thought of sticking out his hand; but maybe not. “Big-time,” he said. “I owe him big-time.”

  Dinah Ferris nodded. “We have refreshments.”

  “You’re very kind,” Lee Ann said. “I have one quick question.”

  Dinah watched her, showed no reaction.

  “Did your son ever discuss the tape with you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if he followed up in any way after he sent that tape in?” />
  Dinah shook her head.

  “You don’t know or he didn’t follow up?”

  “We never discussed nothin’ about the tape,” Dinah said. “No sense talkin’ ’bout it now—Napoleon was in the wrong place at the wrong time, is all.”

  “Do you mean back then or—”

  Dinah frowned; lines appeared all over her smooth face. “The wrong place at the wrong time. The sheriff told me himself.”

  “Solomon Lanier?”

  “That’s right. The sheriff.”

  Pirate caught the pride in her tone when she said that. He was ready to grab some of the refreshments and go. But not Lee Ann.

  “The sheriff has a good reputation,” she said.

  Dinah nodded.

  “So I was just wondering whether he asked why Nappy—why Napoleon—had been laying low the past while.”

  “Laying low?” said Dinah.

  “They were looking for him—Houston, Atlanta, everywhere. To verify the tape.”

  “There was a hurricane,” Dinah said, her voice soft.

  “Right—the refugees,” Lee Ann said. “But what about after—when the tape turned up?”

  “Don’t know about the tape,” Dinah said. “And no laying low, neither. Napoleon was livin’ right here, on the campground, ever since the storm come. Campground belongs to my cousin.”

  “So why did he leave, go up to Stonewall County?”

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” said Dinah.

  Lee Ann nodded. Her eyes shifted, like she had some thought, but all she said was, “Thank you, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”

  “Refreshments,” Dinah said. She waved them toward the grill.

  Pirate backed away. Smoke curled across the campground, bringing smells of chicken and shrimp. He was ready to eat.

  Lee Ann handed Dinah her card. “If you ever need me for anything,” she said.

  Dinah took the card, face showing nothing.

  “One last thing,” Lee Ann said. Dinah closed her eyes slowly, slowly opened them back up. Now the lines on her face were deep. Lee Ann was tough, or was that just part of being a reporter, putting lines on people’s faces? “How well did Napoleon know Bobby Rice?” she said.