His voice sounded as though he were waking from sleep, or as, though he had been disturbed during copulation. It was in slow motion, with a click to it, deep in his throat, that was both phlegmy and dry at the same time.
'It doesn't have to be bad between us.'
'What doesn't?'
'You, me, your wife. Y'all could be part of us.'
'Buchalter, you've got to understand this. I can't wave a wand over the gulf and bring up a depth-charged sub. I think you're a sick man. But if I get you in my sights, I'm going to take you off at the neck.'
Again, I heard a wet, clicking sound, like his tongue sticking to the insides of his cheeks.
'I like you,' he said.
'You like me?'
'Yes. A great deal.'
I waited before I spoke again.
'What do you think is going to happen the next time I see you?' I said.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'You'll come around to our way. It's a matter of time.'
My palm was squeezed damply on the receiver.
'Listen, every cop in Iberia Parish knows what you look like. They know what you've done, they're not big on procedure. Don't make the mistake of coming back here. I'm telling you this as a favor.'
&nbs
p; 'We can give you power.'
You're learning nothing. Change the subject.
'I know where you've been in New Orleans,' I said. 'You talked too much about music. You left a trail, Buchalter.'
'I could have hurt you the other night, in ways you can't dream about, but I didn't,' he said. 'Do you want to hear how they reach a point where they beg, what they sound like when they beg?'
'Will you meet with me?'
I heard him drinking from a glass, deeply, swallowing like a man who had walked out of a great, dry heat.
'Because I'm different, you shouldn't treat me as though I'm psychotic. I'm not. Good night,' he said. 'Tell your wife I remember our moment with fondness. She's a beautiful specimen of her gender.'
He hung up the receiver as gently as a man completing a yawn.
My heart was racing inside my chest. My pistol was still clipped to my belt. I unsnapped the holster, slipped the .45 out of the leather, which I had rubbed with saddle soap, and ran my fingers along the coolness of the metal. The balls of my fingers left delicate prints in the thin sheen of oil. I released the magazine from the butt, rubbed my thumb over the brass casing of the top round, pulled the slide back and forth, then shoved the magazine back into the butt. The grips felt hard and stiff inside my hand.
I looked through the window into the dark. I wanted Buchalter to be out there, perhaps parking his car behind a grove of trees, working his way across the fields, confident that this time he could pull it off, could invade my house and life with impunity. And this time—
I put the .45 on the nightstand in our bedroom and undressed in the dark. My own skin felt as dry and hot as a heated lamp shade. Bootsie was still asleep when I moved on top of her, between her legs, without invitation or consent, a rough beast who could have been hewn out of desert stone.
I made love to her as a starving man might. I put my tongue deep in her mouth and tasted the whiskey and candied cherries and sliced oranges deep in her wet recesses. I plummeted into her fecund warmth, I inhaled the alcohol out of her breath, I robbed her of the golden and liquid heat that had been aged in oak and presented mistakenly as a gift to her heart's blood rather than to mine.
* * *