His breath contained a stench like decomposition in a shallow burial or a body bag in a tropical country. “You.”
“You what?” I said.
“You want save . . .” His voice trailed off.
The neurologist had told me his hearing was destroyed. But maybe that wasn’t the case.
“Give it another try,” I said.
“Dartez . . . Seizure.”
I took a Kleenex from a box on the nightstand and wiped his spittle from my cheek. I eased my hand under his and held it. “If you can’t do it, Spade, you can’t do it. In your mind, just tell the Man Upstairs you’re sorry for the mistakes you made. Don’t worry about anything else.”
I thought his left eye had been blinded. But it looked straight into mine. His voice was hoarse and coated with phlegm, the words rising from his throat like bubbles of foul air. “Epilepsy . . . he was strangling . . . something was in his throat . . . you tried to save him.”
“Go on.”
I felt his hand go limp in mine. “Hang in there, Spade. Come on, bud. Don’t slip loose.”
If you have attended the dying, you know what their last moments are like. They anticipate the separation of themselves from the world of the living before you do, and they accept it with dignity and without complaint, and for just a moment they seem to recede from your vision and somehow become lighter, as though the soul has departed or perhaps because they have surrendered a burden they told no one of.
I had brought nothing to record his words, but I didn’t care. I owed Spade a debt and wanted to repay it. I removed my religious medal and silver chain from my neck and poured it into his palm and folded his fingers on it and placed his hand and arm on his chest.
I walked down the corridor and ran into the nurse by the elevator.
“Is everything all right, Detective Robicheaux?”
“Just fine,” I said.
“Is he resting all right? It’s time for his sponge bath. Then we’ll be transferring him to hospice.”
“I think Spade will be okay,” I said.
“I’m sure he appreciated your visit. The poor man. What a horrible fate. It’s funny the things they say to you, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“At the end, men usually ask for their mothers. But he asked for you. You must be very close.”
I drove home and fixed a cup of café au lait in a big mug and sat on the back steps. Snuggs flopped down on my lap, then sharpened his claws on the inside of my thigh. I set him down next to me, and like two old gentlemen, we watched a rainstorm march across the wetlands and let loose a torrent of hailstones that danced like mothballs all over the yard.
THE STORM CONTINUED through the night, filling our rain gutters with pine needles and leaves, flooding the yard and most of East Main. The Teche was high and yellow at dawn, lapping into the canebrakes and cypress knees along the banks, the sun pink and the sky strung with white clouds and patches of blue. The trees were dripping audibly and throbbing with birds. It was a grand way to start the day, in spite of all that had happened.
Helen caught me at 8:06 A.M. in the corridor outside her office. “Inside, bwana.”
“Tony Nine Ball is upset?”
“No, half of St. Mary Parish is.”
I walked ahead of her. She slammed the door behind us. “What the hell were you thinking?”
/> “He told Alafair she probably gave good head.”
Her face went dead. Her early days at NOPD were not easy. She was not only a woman, she was a bisexual woman. The cruelty and abuse by a detective named Nate Baxter set new standards. He ended up facedown in a plate of linguini in a family restaurant on Canal.
“I’d do it over if I had to,” I said. “Fire me if you want. Nemo is a bucket of shit who should have been poured down the honey hole a long time ago.”
She sat behind her desk and picked at a thumbnail.