“Can we come in?” I said.
“No, you tell me where my boy is,” he replied.
“There’s been a shooting out by the Boom Boom Room,” I said. “We don’t have a positive ID yet, but Tony’s wallet and driver’s license and credit cards were on the body. We’re very sorry to tell you this, but we’re pretty sure the victim is your son.” Then I waited.
He set the bowl of ice cream on a stand by the door. “You get the fucking collard greens out of your mouth. What do you mean you found his wallet but you ain’t sure about a positive ID?”
Bugs were swimming in the yellow glow of the porch light. The breeze had died and my clothes felt like damp burlap on my skin.
“The victim was killed with a shotgun. Positive ID will have to be made with fingerprints,” I said.
I could see his face crinkling up, his bottom lip trembling. The girl rose from the sofa and placed her hand on his shoulder. She was slim and attractive, not more than twenty, with a narrow face, like a model’s, and shiny chestnut hair that hung to her shou
lders. “Maybe you ought to ask them to come in, Mr. Bello,” she said.
Instead, he knotted my shirt in his fist. “It was that nigger, wasn’t it? Tell me the troot, or I’ll knock your fucking head into the driveway,” he said.
“You’ll release me or go to jail,” I said.
But he twisted the fabric of my shirt tighter in his hand, at the same time pushing me out into the darkness. “That nigger killed my boy. You motherfuckers wouldn’t do anything about him, and now he’s killed my boy,” he said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Helen gesture at the two uniformed deputies. They were both big men who had been roughnecks on offshore oil rigs before they became police officers. But it took all of us, including Helen, to cuff Bello and get him in the backseat of a cruiser. When we closed the door on him, he broke out the window with his head and spit on me.
Helen took a section of paper towel from a roll on the seat of her cruiser and cleaned the spittle off my sleeve and wrist and back. She crumpled the towel and threw it in Bello’s face. Then she stared down at him through the broken window, her hands on her hips, her fingers touching her slapjack. “We all grieve for your loss, Mr. Lujan, but everybody here is fed up with your abuse. You either act like a sensible human being or I’ll pull the cuffs off you myself and beat the living shit out of you. Look into my face and tell me I won’t do it.”
He glared up at her, rheumy-eyed, his jaws unshaved, his face aged by ten years in the last ten minutes. “Y’all ain’t understood me. The nigger called. He set my boy up.”
“What?” Helen said.
“Ax Lydia up there on the porch. The nigger talked to her. He drove away to meet him.”
“Who drove away?” I said.
“Tony. My son drove away to meet that nigger, Monarch Little.”
Helen and I looked at each other. I walked back under the porch light. “You’re Lydia?” I said to the girl standing there.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Let’s go inside.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“I didn’t say you had. Who else is here?”
“Mrs. Lujan. She’s upstairs.”
I left the door slightly ajar, so it wouldn’t lock Helen out. Although I had been in the Lujan home briefly once before, I hadn’t taken adequate note of its design and decor and the contradictions they suggested. The floors were maple that glowed with a honeylike radiance, the molding and window frames done with fine-grained recovered cypress that was probably two hundred years old. The rugs were an immaculate white, the couches made of soft leather that was the color of elephant hide. A lighted crystal chandelier hung over a mahogany table in the dining room, a silver bowl filled with water and floating camellias in the center. It was hard to believe that this was the home of Bello Lujan.
“A black guy called here earlier?” I said.
“Yes, sir, he said he was Monarch Little.”
“You talked to him? You, yourself?”
“Yeah, I mean yes, sir. I was talking with him when Tony came home from UL. Tony was, like, a little drunk and maybe a little stoned, too. Then he drove off.”
“Let’s have a seat,” I said, and took a notebook and pen from my shirt pocket. “What’s your last name, Lydia?”