“You going in the field tomorrow, Ladice. It ain’t gonna hep you to sass me about it, either,” he said.
She started to speak, but he placed his thumb on her mouth.
. . .
W hat did Legion do to her?” I asked Batist’s sister. She was a heavy woman, with a big head and wide shoulders and knees that looked like hubcaps. She sat in an overstuffed chair in a gloomy corner of her living room, her large hands squeezing each other in the cone of light from a floor lamp.
“Did Ladice have a child by Mr. Julian?” I asked.
“I ain’t said that,” she answered.
“Why won’t you tell me the rest of the story? Mr. Julian and his wife are both dead,” I said.
Batist’s sister was silent a moment.
“He still out there. Maybe in St. Mary Parish. Maybe down by New Orleans. Some of the old people say he killed a man in Morgan City,” she said.
“Who?” I said.
“Legion. He out there, in the dark. He don’t like the sun. His face is pale, like it don’t have no blood. I seen him once. It was Legion,” she said.
She looked at the tops of her folded hands and would not raise her eyes to mine.
It was late when I got home and Bootsie was asleep. I ate a ham and onion sandwich in the kitchen, then brushed my teeth and lay down by her side and stared at the ceiling in the darkness. I could hear the cries of nutrias out in the swamp, an alligator rolling its tail in the flooded trees, the echo of distant thunder that gave no rain. The moon was up and Bootsie’s hair was the color of honey on the pillow. She was the only woman I had ever known who had a natural fragrance, like night-blooming gardenias. Her eyes opened and she smiled and turned on her side and put her arm across my chest, one knee over my leg. Her body had the curvature and undulations of a classical Greek sculpture, but her skin was always smooth and soft under my hand, virtually without a wrinkle, as though age had decided to pass her by.
“Anything wrong?” she said.
“No.”
“You can’t sleep?”
“I’m fine. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She touched me under the sheet. “It’s all right,” she said.
I awoke at dawn and made coffee on the stove. The light was gray in the trees, the Spanish moss motionless in the silence. “Did you ever hear of an overseer at Poinciana Island by the name of Legion?” I asked Bootsie.
“No, why?”
“When I was twelve, my brother, Jimmie, and I had a bad encounter with some low-rent people in City Park. A man opened a knife on us. One of the women with him called him Legion.”
“Why do you ask about him now?”
“His name came up when I was checking out some background material on Tee Bobby. It may not be important.”
“By the way, Perry LaSalle came by last night,” she said.
“Perry is becoming a pain in the ass,” I said.
“He told me you’d say that.”
Before I went to the office I drove out to Ladice Hulin’s house on Poinciana Island and asked her about the overseer named Legion and the death of Mrs. LaSalle in the fire.
“Mind your own bidness. No, I take that back. Get out of my life altogether,” she said, and closed the door in my face.
The next day Perry was at my office door. Before he could speak, I said, “Why were you at my house the other night?” “One of Barbara Shanahan’s colleagues got drunk and shot off his mouth at the country club. Barbara and the D.A. think you’re not a team player. I’m calling you as a witness for the defense, Dave. I thought I ought to warn you in advance,” he replied.
I went back to the paperwork on my desk and tried to pretend he was not there.