The conversation around us died as though someone had pulled the plug on a record player. I looked over at Clete and was never prouder of him.
But our moment with Clay Mason wasn't over. Outside, we saw him walk from under the blue canvas awning at the front entrance of the restaurant toward a waiting limo, Karyn LaRose at his side, leaning on his cane, negotiating the peaked sidewalk where the roots of oak trees had wedged up the concrete. A small misshaped black and brown mongrel dog, with raised hair like pig bristles, came out of nowhere and began barking at Mason, its teeth bared and its nails clicking on the pavement, advancing and retreating as fear and hostility moved it. Mason continued toward the limo, his gaze fixed ahead of him. Then, without missing a step, he suddenly raised his cane in the air and whipped it across the dog's back with such force that the animal ran yipping in pain through the traffic as though its spine had been broken.
The next evening, at sunset, I drove my truck up the state road that paralleled Bayou Teche and parked in a grove across the water from Buford's plantation. Through my Japanese field glasses I could see the current flowing under his dock and boathouse, the arched iron shutters on the smithy, the horses in his fields, the poplars that flattened in the wind against the side of his house. Then I moved the field glasses along the bank, where I had thrown the oar lock tied with my handkerchief. The oar lock was gone, and someone had beveled out a plateau on the slope and had poured a concrete pad and begun construction of a gazebo there.
I propped my elbows on the hood of my truck and moved the glasses through the trees, and in the sun's afterglow, which was like firelight on the trunks, I saw first one state trooper, then a second, then a third, all of them with scoped and leather-slung bolt-action rifles. Each trooper sat on a chair in the shadows, much like hunters positioning themselves in a deer stand.
I heard a boot crack a twig behind me.
"Hep you with something?" a trooper asked.
He was big and gray, close to retirement age, his stomach protruding like a sack of gravel over his belt.
I opened my badge holder.
"On the job," I said.
"Still ain't too good to be here. Know what I mean?" he said.
"I don't."
"This morning they found work boot prints on the mudbank. Like boots a convict might wear."
"I see."
"If he comes in, they don't want him spooked out," the trooper said. We looked at each other in the silence. There was a smile in his eyes.
"It looks like they know their work," I said.
"Put it like you want. Crown comes here, he's gonna have to kill his next nigger down in hell."
The backyard was dim with mist when I fixed breakfast in the kitchen the next morning. I heard Bootsie walk into the kitchen behind me. The window over the sink was open halfway and the radio was playing on the windowsill.
"Are you listening to the radio?" she said.
"Yeah, I just clicked it on."
"Alafair's still asleep."
"I wasn't thinki
ng. I'll turn it off."
"No, just turn it down."
"All right," I said. I walked to the sink and turned down the volume knob. I looked out the window at the yard until I was sure my face was empty of expression, then I sat down again and we ate in silence.
We were both happy when the phone rang on the wall.
"You have the news on?" the sheriff asked.
"No."
"I wouldn't call so early but I thought it'd be better if you heard it from me . . ."
"What is it, skipper?"
"Short Boy Jerry. NOPD found his car by the Desire welfare project a half hour ago . . . He was beaten to death . . ."