“Hey, man, no hard feelings, but I don’t think you know nothing about beautiful women.”
Bertrand got up from the step and went back in the house. He wondered if he had managed to conceal the fact he had made Ronald as one of the men who had kidnapped Eddy. When he looked back through the screen, Ronald was turning his car around in the yard, one tire mashing over a tomato plant in his grandmother’s garden. The shape of his head reminded Bertrand of a question mark. Then Ronald’s eyes locked on Bertrand’s. The expression on Ronald’s face made Bertrand step back from the screen.
A FEW MINUTES LATER Bertrand drove down to the grocery store in Loreauville and bought a chocolate drink from the soda machine. He drank it in the car, in the parking lot, across from a Catholic church, and tried to think. This dude with a head and face that reminded him of the curved head of a long-reach toothbrush was lying. He was one of the dudes who had grabbed and tortured Eddy. Which meant he was one of the dudes working for Sidney Kovick. But why didn’t they just grab Bertrand, too? They knew where he lived. They knew his movements. They knew who his grandmother was. Bertrand should have been dog food by now.
Because the guy was working his own deal? Because the guy was going to stiff Sidney Kovick?
That was it. Kovick’s hired geek had got off his leash and was going to make his own score, at Kovick’s expense.
Maybe it was time to mess with a couple of people’s heads as well as set things straight with somebody who thinks it’s all right to pop other people in the face, Bertrand thought.
He changed the last five dollars of the money his grandmother had given him into silver and used the pay phone on the front of the grocery store to call long-distance information. “Yeah, Kovick’s Flowers in Algiers, that’s it, you got it,” he said. “Snap it up, too, okay? This is an emergency situation.”
He looked at his watch. It was 4:56. Come on, come on, he thought. “Hey, ain’t y’all heard of computers? What’s the holdup?” he danced up and down on the balls of his feet. “All right, say it again.” he wrote the number on the grocery store wall. “Tell your supervisor to give you a raise. Tell her Bertrand Melancon give her the green light on that.”
He punched the number into the pay phone, his ulcers singing, his head light as a balloon with the adrenaline pumping through his system.
Be there, be there, be there, he prayed, because he knew if he didn’t connect with Kovick now, his courage would wane and fail him later, as it always had.
After the eighth ring, Bertrand almost gave up. Then someone picked up the receiver and said, “Kovick’s Flowers. Could I help you?”
The voice at the other end of the connection made Bertrand’s bowels turn to water.
“Could I help you?” the voice repeated.
“No, you can help yourself, motherfucker.”
There was a pause, more of fatigue than surprise. “Is this who I think it is?”
“Yeah, Bertrand Melancon, the brother of Eddy Melancon, if that name mean anything to you. Know a cracker drives a blue Merc, looks like somebody beat on his face wit’ an ugly stick when he was a kid?”
“No.”
“Think hard. Carries a PI badge. Thinks the niggers are gonna start tap-dancing and spitting watermelon seeds when he rolls the gold on them?”
“You seem to be a slow learner, kid. Why don’t you drop by and let’s have a talk?”
“No, this time you listen to me. Your man was here with a fat envelope full of dead presidents. Guess what he was doing. Cutting his own deal for them blood stones and selling your sorry ass down the drain. Maybe you ought to hire a higher class of circus freaks to do your dirty work.”
“Where can I get in touch with this guy?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I called for another reason. Maybe I deserved what you done to me. Maybe I went there axing to get bitch-slapped and kicked in the ass in front of people. But I learned something there you ain’t gonna understand. I learned I ain’t no killer. I couldn’t cap you, no matter what you done to me and Eddy. So I come out of this wit’ something you didn’t figure on. I know I ain’t like you, a killer done cut off a man’s legs, and that’s worth more to me than them blood stones.”
The line was silent.
“You there?” Bertrand said.
“Where are you?” the voice said.
“In your head, just like you been in mine. But not no more,” Bertrand said, and hung up.
Wow, he thought, his skin tingling like he’d just walked out of an igloo. Chapter 25
T HE WHITE FLICKER of lightning in the trees surrounding her house made Melanie Baylor think of the summer storms she had known as a child growing up north of Chicago. The family had lived on Lake Michigan, in a neighborhood of hardwood trees and elevated lawns and sailboats tacking in the wind against a background of azure water that seemed as large as the sea. The storms could tear at the lake’s surface and torment the trees, but the big two-story house she had lived in was a safe place, one where her father, a stockbroker, smoked a pipe in front of the fireplace and was always full of good cheer. Even during the winter, when the boathouse was locked up and the lake plated with ice, the house and the small town where they shopped were safe places, far from wars and urban unrest. Melanie knew she would marry and move away one day, perhaps to the East Coast, but she would always remain a midwesterner and her real home would always be located inside chestnut and beech and maple trees on the shores of Lake Michigan.
That was before her father had a massive coronary in the bed of his mistress in Naperville. That was before the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated his brokerage service. That was before his creditors sued the estate and took every cent the family had, including the home on Lake Michigan.
Melanie lifted the bottle of bourbon from the cupboard shelf and poured an inch into her glass. Then she poured again and got ice from the refrigerator and placed three cubes in the glass and added water. She could hear rain on the roof now and the trees in the backyard were wet and dark green when the lightning flickered in the clouds. Otis and Thelma were still at the