Unconsciously I touched my brow.
"I had blackouts back then, Karyn. I lost whole days. If you say something happened, then—"
"Blackouts?"
"I'd get loaded at night on Beam and try to sober up in the morning with vodka."
"How lovely. What if I told you I had an abortion?"
The skin of my face flexed against the bone. I could feel a weakness, a sinking in my chest, as though weevil worms were feeding at my heart.
"I didn't. I was just late. But no thanks to you, you bastard . . . Don't just look at me," she said.
"I'm going now."
"Oh no, you're not." She rose from the chair and stood in front of me. "My husband has some peculiar flaws, but he's still the best chance this state has and I'm not letting you destroy it."
"Somebody tried to open me up with a machete. I think it had to do with Aaron Crown. I think I don't want to ever see you again, Karyn."
"Is that right?" she said. The tops of her breasts were swollen and hard, veined with blue lines. I could smell whiskey on her breath, perfume from behind her ears, the heat she seemed to excrete from her sun-browned skin. She struck me full across the face with the flat of her hand.
I touched my cheek, felt a smear of blood where her fingernail had torn the skin.
"I apologize again for having come to your home," I said.
I walked stiffly through the house, through the kitchen to the backyard and my parked pickup truck. When I turned the ignition, I looked through the windshield and saw her watching me through the back screen, biting the corner of her lip as though her next option was just now presenting itself.
CHAPTER 6
It rained all that night. At false dawn a white ground fog rolled out of the swamp, and the cypress trees on the far bank of the bayou looked as black and hard as carved stone. Deep inside the fog you could hear bass flopping back in the bays. When the sun broke above the horizon, like a red diamond splintering apart between the tree trunks, Batist and I were still bailing out the rental boats with coffee cans. Then we heard a car on the road, and when we looked up we saw a purple Lincoln Continental, with Sabelle Crown in the passenger's seat, stop and back up by our concrete boat ramp.
It wasn't hard to figure out which American industry the driver served. He seemed to consciously dress and look the part—elk hide halftop boots, pleated khakis, a baggy cotton shirt that was probably tailored on Rodeo Drive, tinted rimless glasses, his brown hair tied in a pony tail.
As he walked down the ramp toward me, the wind-burned face, the cleft chin, the Roman profile, become more familiar, like images rising from the pages of People or Newsweek magazine or any number of television programs that featured film celebrities.
His forearms and wrists were thick and corded with veins, the handshake disarmingly gentle.
"My name's Lonnie Felton, Mr. Robicheaux," he said.
"You're a movie director."
"That's right."
"How you do, sir?"
"I wonder if we could go inside and talk a few minutes."
"I'm afraid I have another job to go to when I finish this one."
Sabelle stood by the fender of the Lincoln, brushing her hair, putting on makeup from her purse.
"Some people are giving Aaron Crown a rough time up at the pen," he said.
"It's a bad place. It was designed as one."
"You know what the BGLA is?"
"The Black Guerrilla Liberation Army?"