“The prosecutor’s office is a bit upset.”
“Because they’ll have to drop charges against Nightingale?”
I didn’t answer.
“That’s their problem.” He took a windup and fired the ball into the center of the wooden box, putting his shoulder and hip into it, whipping his wrist just before releasing his fingers.
“You and Jimmy have a lot in common.”
“No, we do
n’t.”
“You both played ball, and you both went to military school.”
“I didn’t know that. You know why boys get sent to military school? Their parents don’t want them.”
“Are you going in on a movie deal with Tony Nemo?”
“If Alafair does the adaptation.”
“What you do with Fat Tony is your business. But I don’t want you dragging my daughter into it.”
He tossed a baseball up and down in his hand, then let it fall to the grass. “Alafair is my friend. You think I’d hurt her?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Then give me some credit.”
“Nemo is an evil man. Don’t darken your life with this guy.”
“Nightingale knows how to place his thumb on the pulse of an unhappy electorate. Individuals don’t change history. History finds the individual. John Steinbeck said that.”
“So let the electorate fall in their own shit.”
“I don’t doubt Nemo got me sprung. If Alafair will do the first draft, I’m going to make a movie with him. I’ll tell you the reason why. My best novel is the least popular of my books. Maybe this is vanity on my part, but I believe we owe the dead a debt. We have to give them breath and voice, even though their mouths are stopped with dirt. If we don’t, they allow us no rest. I think they’re out there in the mist. Sometimes I see them.”
I felt a wind blow through my chest, as though he had pirated my thoughts.
“How’s your wife doing?” I asked.
“Not good.”
“Can I ask you something straight up, off the record?”
“Shoot.”
“Is it fair to say you’re still hanging on to the events in Wichita?”
“Events?”
“The rape of your wife by the two black guys.”
“No, I let go of that a long time ago.”
“I don’t believe you. People’s emotions don’t work like that.”
He slid the wine bottle out of the ice and uncorked it and took a drink from the bottle. “One of them was knifed to death in the Alabama state pen. A store owner shot and killed the other one during a robbery. They got what they had coming.”