ooked more like a man than a woman. She sat down in the chair the minister had occupied and stared into space.
“I’d never deliberately hurt you,” Clete said.
“If you want to be a dildo, go be a dildo. Don’t let on like you’re a man, though.”
“Gretchen, I’ve been with a lot of women. I liked them all, but there was only one I really loved. What I’m saying is I feel a special kind of affection for you. We’re kindred spirits, know what I mean? Let me take you to dinner.”
“Who was the one you loved?”
“She was a Eurasian girl. She lived on a sampan on the edge of the South China Sea.”
“What happened to her?”
“The VC killed her because she was sleeping with the enemy. Come on, let’s go down to Bojangles.”
Gretchen wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. “Call up your new douchebag and ask her. She’s more your style.”
FRIDAY EVENING MOLLY and I had people over for a crab boil in the backyard. The sky had turned from gold and purple to green as the sun descended into a bank of thunderheads in the west. The breeze smelled of rain falling from clouds that had drawn water out of the Gulf and fish eggs out of the wetlands; it smelled of newly mowed grass and sprinklers striking warm concrete and charcoal starter flaring on a grill; it smelled of chrysanthemums blooming in gardens dark with shadow, telling us that the season was not yet done, that life was still a party and should not be surrendered prematurely to the coming of night. Molly had strung Japanese lanterns through the live oaks and set the redwood table with bowls of potato salad and dirty rice and chopped-up fruit and corn on the cob, and I had lit the butane burner under the crab boiler, right next to an apple crate crawling with blue crabs. Across the bayou in City Park, the electric lights were blazing above the baseball diamond, where boys who had refused to accept the passing of summer were chasing line drives smacked by a coach at home plate. It was the kind of evening that people of my generation associate with a more predictable era, one that may have been unjust in many ways but possessed a far greater level of civility and trust and shared sense of virtue that, for good or bad, seemed to define who we were. It wasn’t a bad way to be, having drinks in one’s backyard, watching the sunset or a paddle wheeler passing on the bayou, couples dancing to a band on the upper deck. At a certain time in one’s life, the ebb and flow of a tidal stream and the setting of the sun are not insignificant events.
As our guests began arriving, I looked around for Alafair, who I had assumed was joining us.
“Alafair is going to a movie with a new friend she’s made,” Molly said, apparently reading my thoughts.
“She has a date?” I asked.
“Clete has a new assistant. Alafair just met her this morning. They must have hit it off.”
“Where is Alafair?” I said.
“She was looking for her car keys a minute ago. You don’t want her to go?”
I went inside, then saw Alafair getting into her used Honda out front. I went through the front door, waving at her to stop, trying at the same time to be polite to the guests coming up the walk. In the meantime, Alafair pulled away from the curb. I walked down the street, still waving my arms. Her brake lights went on, and she turned out of the traffic and parked by the Shadows. She leaned down so she could see me through the passenger window. “Didn’t Molly tell you where I was going?” she said.
I got in the front seat and closed the door. “You’re seeing a movie with Gretchen Horowitz?”
“Yeah, I kind of had an argument with her this morning at Clete’s office. But she turned out to be a nice person. I asked her to go to a show. Is there something wrong?”
“That’s hard to say. I haven’t met her. I have the sense she comes from a pretty rough background. Maybe she knew some bad guys in Miami.”
“Which bad guys?”
“Mobbed-up Cubans, for openers.”
“She works for Clete. He must think she’s okay.”
“Alafair, I’m not sure who this girl is. Clete believes she’s his daughter. What he doesn’t want to believe is that she may be a contract killer, one who’s known in the life as Caruso. She might have capped two or three members of the old Giacano crowd, two in New Orleans, one in the Baton Rouge bus depot.”
“This can’t be the same person.”
“Yeah, it can,” I said.
Alafair stared straight ahead at the deepening shade under the live oaks. The wind was blowing off the Gulf, and the wall of bamboo that grew in front of the Shadows rattled against the piked fence. “Are you certain about any of this?” she said.
“No, I only know what Clete has told me.”
“Does Helen Soileau know?”
“More or less.”