“See, I was hitting the sauce as soon as I got to Lauderdale, then I really turned on the spigot down in Key West and got sapped by that cop who was probably working for Eddy Firpo. They dosed me up with purple acid, and I started having hallucinations about my childhood, and I imagined this guy in the hoodie was my father or something like that.”
“How do you explain the galleon out on the salt?”
“I told you, I had a dream about a galleon earlier.”
“Right, the same dream I had,” I said. “What are the chances of that?”
“Dave, think about it. You’re always talking about slave ships and the Middle Passage. How about that place on the bayou where you say Jean Lafitte used to moor his boat and sell slaves and loot to the locals? The mooring chains are still in the tree, right up the bayou from the old Burke house, right or wrong? How many times have you told me those stories about digging for Lafitte’s treasure when you were a kid?”
“You’re right,” I said.
“See?” he said, pointing his fork at me. “There’s always an answer to these things.”
“I’ve got another question for you,” I said. “How does a kid like Johnny Shondell run off the guy in the hoodie as well as the guy’s friends?”
“Maybe the guy in the hoodie was by himself. Maybe the guy is a freak and a meltdown and a sack of shit and didn’t want to cap Mark Shondell’s nephew and decided to get lost.”
I gave up. But in so doing, I knew what was coming next. “So what happened when I was gone?” he said, gazing at the cut on my lip and the scratch and bruise next to my eye.
“Nothing.”
“Penelope Balangie came to town?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
He stopped eating. “I don’t believe this. You’re telling me y’all got it on?”
“I don’t ask you questions like that. Why don’t you show me the same respect?”
“You plowed the wife of Adonis Balangie?”
“Why don’t you write it on the wall?”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“They’re not married. They’ve never had marital relations, either.” I could feel my voice starting to break. “Or at least that’s what she said. And I didn’t say I did anything.”
“Are you out of your mind? You cuckold a greaseball and he’ll come at you with a blowtorch. It doesn’t matter if the wife looks like the bride of Frankenstein.”
People were starting to look at us. “I’ll see you outside.”
“Sit down,” he said, lowering his voice. “Just tell me the truth. Your plunger took over your brain or it didn’t. It happens. Just don’t lie about it.”
“I’m not going to talk about her on that level,” I said.
“She says she lives with a gash hound like Adonis but she doesn’t come across? Dave, you’re not that stupid.”
“I believe what she said.”
“I’m going back to my office and see if I can get you admitted to the state asylum. I thought I had problems.”
“She had a flat in front of my house and an inadequate spare. She stayed over.”
“An inadequate spare? That’s great. Anything else inadequate? Did the neighbors get an eyeful?”
My scalp felt tight, my face hot. He got up and put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. “Don’t answer that. I didn’t mean to be hard on you. But you’ve gotten us into a pile of it, big mon, and you know it.”
He went out the door, the sunlight from outside splintering through the room, most of his breakfast uneaten.