He scratched his forearms with both hands, like a man with hives. “I got to score, straighten out the kinks,” he said. “I’ll make good on my word.”
“You’re an addict?”
“No, I’m Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road.”
“Can’t help you, partner.”
I turned to go.
“Maybe I exaggerated a little,” he said.
“About what?”
“Tillinger. He creeped me out.”
“In what way?”
“The way sex between men bothered him. He had a crazy look in his eyes when he’d hear a couple of guys getting it on. You ever know a guy like that who probably wasn’t queer himself? Sometimes he’d burn himself with matches. He talked about casting out our demons and raising the dead.”
“Would he hurt Lucinda Arceneaux?”
He shook his head slowly, as though he couldn’t make a decision. “I don’t know, man. I can’t go in somebody’s head.”
“In reality, you don’t have anything to sell, do you.”
He didn’t know what to say. I started up the slope.
“Two hunnerd,” he said at my back.
I kept walking. He caught up with me and pulled on my shirt. “You don’t understand. They’ll use a blowtorch. I saw them do it in a riot.”
“Sorry.”
“Maybe the chocolate drop led him on. Maybe Tillinger lost it. Come on, man, I got to get out of town.”
“You need to take your hand off my arm.”
“Come on, man. I’m hurting.”
“Life’s a bitch.”
His face made me think of a piece of blank paper crumpling on hot coals. Cruelty comes in all forms. It’s least attractive when you discover it in yourself.
• • •
I WALKED HOME FOR lunch. A cherry-red Lamborghini was parked in the driveway. Alafair was eating at the kitchen table with a middle-aged man I had never seen. A plate of deviled eggs and two avocado-and-shrimp sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper and a glass of iced tea with mint leaves in it had obviously been set for me. But she had not waited upon my arrival before she and her friend started eating.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hey, Dave,” she said. “This is Lou Wexler. He has to get to the airport, so we started without you.”
Wexler was a tall, thick-bodied man with a tan that went to the bone and blond hair sun-bleached on the tips. He was ruggedly handsome, with intelligent eyes and large hands and the kind of confidence that sometimes signals aggression. He wiped his fingers with a napkin before rising and shaking hands. “It’s an honor.”
“How do you do, sir?” I said, sitting down, glancing out the window at the bayou. My manner was not gracious. But no father, no matter how charitable, trusts another man with his daughter upon first introduction. If he tells you he does, he is either lying or a worthless parent.
“Lou is a screenwriter and producer,” Alafair said. “He works with Desmond.”
“Actually, I don’t work with Desmond,” he said. “I help produce his films. Nobody ‘works’ with Desmond. He’s his own man. In the best way, of course.”