“Why would Cisco be interested in seeing you?”
“A friend of hers is dying. I want to tell her that.”
“What friend?” he asked.
“What do you care? Try not being a shit all the time, Grady. Do a good deed.”
He tried to grab me by the shirt. “You listen—”
“Touch me again and I’ll rip your hand off and shove it down your throat,” I said.
Behind him, I could see a girl standing at the top of the stairs. She was barefoot and in a slip, and I could see only her knees. Her skin was brown, her knees puckered. Even though I could not see the rest of her, I felt that somehow she was innocent and out of place in Grady’s home. “Go back to bed,” he shouted at her.
“Who’s the girl?” I said.
“You’re always asking questions. A friend. It’s not Cisco, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I knew that,” I said.
He gave me a look. His breath was sour, the whites of his eyes filled with broken capillaries. “Come in. I want to ask you something.”
“About what?”
“Vick Atlas.”
“I don’t want to talk about Vick Atlas.”
“Help me, I’ll help you,” he said.
I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me, the crystal droplets on the chandelier jingling. I followed him to the kitchen. I had a hard time believing he had asked me in. I had taken his girl and hit him in the face and was convinced he bore me nothing but ill will. “I’m sorry about your father,” I said to his back.
“He had the last laugh.”
“Pardon?”
“My old man put everything in a trust. I get a subsistence allowance until I’m forty. It’s like having someone will you a box of diapers. Sit down.” He poured water into a coffeepot and dumped the grinds in the water and set the pot on a burner. “Did Vick sic those hoods on Valerie so he could show up and be a hero?”
“Ask him,” I replied.
“He swears he had nothing to do with it. I don’t know what to believe. The Atlas family is a bunch of psychopaths. They lie when they don’t have to lie. I don’t even know what country they’re from. They look like they’re glued together from other people’s body parts. My father said they brag on murders they didn’t commit.”
“So why’d you get mixed up with them?”
“Money is money. You either have it or you don’t. If you don’t, you get to cut other people’s lawns. You’re a smart guy. You believe the shit you read in the newspaper? Those guys write what they’re told to write. Same thing with business and politics. It’s a stage play put on for the little people.”
He took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and a box of cereal from a cabinet. I began to get the feeling that he hadn’t asked me inside to talk about the Atlas family.
“Tell me the truth about something, Broussard. You and Bledsoe stole my convertible, didn’t you? If you did, I don’t blame you. I gave you guys a bad time.”
“I don’t steal cars.”
“Bledsoe did it?”
“I’m not my brother’s keeper.”
He poured milk into the cereal and sat down. “You want some?”
“No. Who’s the girl upstairs?”