“It’s done a lot of good, hasn’t it.”
“She was supposed to get on a flight from Lafayette to Los Angeles. She never boarded the plane.” Again the line went silent. “Did she talk to you about movie people?” I asked.
“She just said they’d he’p me.”
“Which people in particular?”
“She didn’t say. There was one local name she gave me, though. A bad cop. He runs whores and such.”
“What does the dirty cop have to do with getting you off death row?”
“Nothing. Miss Lucinda said she wanted to put him out of business because he preyed on black women. You recording this?”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think y’all cain’t find your asses with both hands.”
“It’s been good talking to you.”
“I’m fixing to make a statement, the kind a guy will remember, get my drift?”
“No, I don’t. I think talking to you is a waste of time.”
I hung up and waited. Five minutes later, he called back. “She left the airport with somebody she knew and trusted, somebody who was more important to her than the catering people or the boyfriend waiting to pick up her in Hollywood,” he said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“You’re an intelligent man.”
“I’m a dead man walking, and we both know it,” he said. “You know what the upside of that is?”
“You’ve got nothing to lose.”
“See? You’re a smart son of a buck yourself.”
An escapee from death row who didn’t use coarse language? This case was getting muddier by the day.
• • •
AT DAYBREAK ON Tuesday, Lou Wexler arrived in his Lamborghini to take Alafair to the private jet that would deliver them to Monument Valley, Arizona, in time for a late lunch. She gave me a card with the name and number and email address of the hotel where she would be staying. I asked her to step aside for a moment.
“What is it?” she said.
“I have to ask you something of a personal nature. I don’t want to offend you.”
She searched my face. “Don’t say it, Dave.”
“I have to.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“Do you have a single room?”
“You have no right to ask me that.”
“I don’t care. I’m your father. I don’t trust any of these guys.”
“That’s obvious. Goodbye. I’ll call you when we get there. Dave, you really know how to do it.”
As they backed out in the street, Wexler lifted his hat in a salute. I squinted one eye and cocked my thumb and aimed my index finger at him.