Then they nailed him.
One shooter, a thick-bodied, truncated man, with knots o
f muscle through his back and skin-tight cutoffs rolled into his genitals, came over the riverbank in a breath-wheezing run, his rifle at port arms, and fired and fired until the breech locked open and shell casings littered the sand like broken gold teeth.
Sonny's Hawaiian shirt jumped and puffed as though carrion birds were pecking at it. His gait broke, his torso twisted momentarily, and he became a man ingesting a chunk of angle iron. But a long time ago, perhaps back in the Iberville welfare project, Sonny had learned the fate of those who go down in front of their adversaries' booted feet.
He seemed to right himself, his face concentrating with a fragile inner balance, forcing a composed and single thought in front of his eyes; then he stumbled toward the surf and the crumpled pier that rang with the cries of frightened birds.
He waded through the breakers, his destroyed shirt billowing out into the tide like wings. The shooters fired twice more, wide and high, the rounds toppling and skipping across the water. But Sonny had become his own denouement. He struggled forward into the undertow, staining the world of fish and crabs and eels and stingrays with his blood, then simply stepped off into the depths, his red hair floating briefly beneath a wave like a windblown flower.
“You handling this, Dave?” Helen said.
Sure.
“He always lived on the edge. It was his way.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. My voice seemed outside of my skin, my words spoken by someone else. After a while I said, “Who pulled the body out?”
“They didn't find it.” I could feel her eyes moving on the side of my face. “Forget it, Dave. He didn't make it. The Fed I talked to said the blood spore looked like dogs had been chewing on him.”
I felt my teeth scrape against one another. “What was he doing in Mississippi?”
“The beach is full of casinos and grease balls Maybe he was tying another knot on his string. The Fed I talked to got pretty vague when I asked him the same thing.”
I bounced my forehead on my thumbs, looked at the sky that was metallic and burned-looking and flickering with lights. Helen stood up with her car keys in her hand.
“He pissed you off, he dragged his shit into your life, but you took his fall, anyway. Don't you dare put this on your conscience,” she said. She aimed her index finger at me.
She walked toward her car, then stopped and turned.
“Did you hear me?” she said.
“Sure.”
Her eyes fixed on mine, then her breasts rose and she walked through the wet leaves and pools of water to the drive, her shoulders squared with a moral certitude that I could only envy.
I woke at four in the morning and sat on the edge of the bed. I couldn't remember the details of the dream I'd just had, but in the center of my mind was an ugly and inescapable thought, like an angry man walking toward you in a darkened, wood-floored hallway.
We'd had him in custody. Then Johnny Giacano had put out the word he didn't want Sonny bailed out.
Question: What was the best way to make sure I heard what Johnny wanted?
Answer: Feed the information to Clete Purcel.
Had Johnny sucked me in?
I didn't know.
I couldn't accept Sonny's death. People like Sonny didn't die. They stayed high on their own re bop heard Charlie Parker's riffs in the friction of the spheres, thrived without sunlight in the neon glaze of Canal and St. Charles, fashioned sonnets out of street language, and proved to the rest of us that you could live with the full-tilt boogie in your heart and glide above the murderous fastenings of triviality.
They didn't find a body, I told myself. The sea always gives back its dead, and they didn't find Sonny's body.
You're dead when they unzip the bag, pry your dog tag out of your teeth, and drain your fluids through a grate in the bottom of a stainless steel trough. That's dead.
I lay back on the pillow with my forearm across my eyes and fell asleep. I dreamed I saw Sonny rise like Triton from the sea, his body covered with fish scales, a wreathed horn in his hand, already transforming into a creature of air and spun light.
The next afternoon Batist answered the phone in the bait shop, then handed me the receiver. The weather was hot and muggy, and I pressed a sweating can of Dr. Pepper against my cheek and sat on a counter stool with the phone against my ear.