I would see colors rather than people or the environment around me. My words contained little meaning, as though they were written on water and not meant to be understood. My intentions, however, were obvious. Without warning, I would try to tear someone apart, and I mean break bones and teeth and sling blood onto the walls and leave the object of my rage with a reservoir of fear he would never forget.
I never used a drop, but I owned half a dozen of them, taken from pimps, jackrollers, and smash-and-grabbers who turned over pawnshops. The serial numbers were acid-burned or ground off on an emery wheel, sometimes the trigger and handles reverse-taped so latents couldn’t be lifted from the frame. They were a cop’s get-out-of-jail card. They could have another purpose also.
Tony never saw it coming. He looked up from his potato salad and started to smile, then realized who I was. The drop was a .22 revolver. The sight had been filed off; the metal was pitted; one wood handle was cracked in half. I held it behind my back, then shoved it into his mouth and cocked the hammer. I stared into his eyes without speaking. He was choking on his own saliva and the food he hadn’t swallowed. The people sitting around him stared in horror.
“Verbal abuse on the wrong young woman, Tony,” I said.
He gagged and tried to push away my arm. I
pulled the trigger. His eyes almost came out of his head. I screwed the barrel deeper into his mouth and cocked the hammer again. I snapped it on another empty chamber. His throat was gurgling, his jowls trembling. The blubber on his chest and stomach was shaking like whale sperm. A woman was screaming.
“Your odds are one in four, Tony. Unless I put two rounds in the cylinder instead of one. I can’t remember.”
I pulled the trigger a third time. In the silence, a terrible whimpering sound rose from his throat. I removed the pistol from his mouth. Blood and saliva ran down his chin. He fumbled for his oxygen mask. I flipped out the cylinder and showed it to him. “No bullets, Tony. Here, see for yourself.”
His gaze lifted to my face; he looked like a man who realized a sea change had just taken place in his life, in full view of others, and he would never be able to erase the moment.
I splashed the gun into his bowl of potato salad and walked back to my truck. I drove back down the highway and passed a trailer slum and crossed the Teche on a drawbridge and continued past another oak-shaded plantation within one hundred yards of the slum property by the bridge. The juxtaposition of the two images could have been extrapolated from a Marxist propaganda film. I felt strange driving through the twilight by myself, as though I had deliberately severed my connection with the rational world and given up all pretense of normalcy and, in so doing, had set myself free.
I WASN’T DONE. I went to Levon Broussard’s home on Loreauville Road. His wife’s car was in the garage, but his was not. I parked in front and waited. A few minutes later, his SUV turned off the road and came up the driveway. He got out and walked toward me, his engine still running. I could see Rowena watching from the gallery.
“You crazy fuck,” he said to me.
“Problem?”
“I saw it all. Approximately a hundred and fifty other people did, too.”
“My daughter took the screenwriting job because she respects you and your work. Her faith was repaid by Nemo’s insults and his attempt to degrade her. To my knowledge, you didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
“I didn’t know about it.”
“You do now.”
“I’m supposed to kick him off the set? He’s the goddamn producer.”
I could feel my anger returning, my palms tingling, a dryness in my mouth, a flame inching its way across the lining of my stomach. “What’s wrong with you, Levon? You’ve devoted your entire life to good causes. How could you hook up with a guy like Tony Nine Ball?”
“It’s what the situation demanded.”
“You want him to rig a jury for you? He’ll end up owning your soul.”
“I didn’t kill Kevin Penny. A lot of people believe I did. Some have even congratulated me.”
I stepped closer to him. I saw Rowena walk into the yard, a flowering tree in bloom behind her.
“Look me straight in the face and tell me you didn’t do it,” I said. “Your prints were on the drill only because you tried to save his life. Tell me that.”
“It’s as you say.” There was not a flutter of emotion in his face or his eyes.
“He raped your wife. He put his mouth all over her body. He put his seed in her.”
“You want me to knock you down?”
“You don’t like the imagery? What do you think your trial is going to be like?”
“Tell Alafair I’m sorry. Ask her to come back on the set.”
“Dream on.”