Cajun Waltz (15 page)

“Don't start.”

“You're my ideal, I can't help it.”

“Oh?” That syllable sealed it. A sliver of need.

“'Cause I do like a plump girl. Smooth'n round, and all that softness everywhere.” He reached down and took hold of her wrist. “So relax.”

When you touch a flame, the reflex to pull away precedes the sensation of pain. That was the effect of Alvin's hand on her wrist. She wrenched it free before any parallel memory of the time with R.J. came back. She strode toward the exit until what felt like steel bands seized her in a bear-trap embrace.

Alvin kicked open the sauna door and shoved her to the wooden bench inside. Her mind screamed. He squatted on her chest and pinned her arms under his knees, his crotch inches from her face. When she tried to buck away he pressed his thumbs into the glands under her jaw. “I thought we was friends here.” The ceiling spun overhead. The sauna door swung shut like a coffin lid.

She inhaled through her nose, preparing a mighty scream.

As if reading her thoughts, he reached inside his blazer and withdrew a ring of keys clipped to a jackknife. He unclasped the blade and displayed it between his face and hers, turning it to catch the light from the bulb in the sauna room ceiling. “I never cut nothin' but a toenail with this before, but I will cut you if you interrupt me here.”

She nodded. His face was a blur beyond the glinting blade.

“Don't wanna hurt you. Don't wanna fuck you neither, not now, even if it did fire my mind the second I seen you today.” Sweat from his face dripped onto hers. He touched the knife to her windpipe. “You put that idea in my head, Ethel.”

The knife's point was like a bee sting or a sharp pencil. The pulse in her neck fluttered beneath it.

“Teasy cunt like you, what I'm s'posed to think? Tell me you sorry at least.”

Silence.

“Talk to me, girl.”

“Sorry.”

There was a pause as he gauged her sincerity. He tapped the knife against her throat like a pointer against a bulletin board. “I forgive you.” He climbed off her, closed the jackknife, brushed his pants clean. He warned her not to call the police. “I get hauled outta bed for this, I'll see to it you watch your pretty daughter die.” His tone was genial. “Go back to your room, go to bed, sleep late. I'll be long gone time you wake up.”

Silence.

“Let's hear it, Ethel. Say you'll be good.”

“I'll be good.”

When he delayed in responding, she thought for a moment she'd done something wrong. “That's nice,” he said. “No chance we can start over here, is there?”

She tensed as if electrocuted.

“Ah.” He sounded disappointed. “Got it.”

She tried to keep as still as roadside litter until he left, but a sob broke from her that to her horror made him turn around in the sauna doorway. Clamping shut her eyes, she felt him lean over her, his face looming close, his exhalations in her nostrils. With supreme courage no one was there to applaud she opened her eyes to confront what she expected would be his knife coming down in a scorpion strike. But instead he said gently, “I lied before, Ethel. I would never hurt you or your child. And my bad language before was plain gross. Just talked outta upset, you know?” His jaw muscles throbbed and he looked about to cry.

She nodded, more terrified now than ever.
Please go,
she prayed over and over.

He went. In the doorway his silhouette slumped at the shoulders as he gave a last heavy sigh.
“Dog.”

*   *   *

F
IONA.
S
HE HAD
to find Fiona.

Alvin's threat propelled Delly down the hallway. The room numbers blurred as she ran. Outside her door she got her key and turned the lock with iron calm. Fiona's bed was empty.

She went to the Meerses' suite. Their door was unlocked and the interior pitch dark. She entered. The felt presence of the room's unfamiliar furniture gave a sense of trip wires and booby traps.

She heard voices in the bedroom. A man's voice in low tones—then Fiona's voice giving timid replies to questions Delly barely heard but understood perfectly.

“You said.”

“I know.”

“At least do that, come on.”

A zipper unzipped. “I don't know.”

“You said no stopping.”

“Ssh.”

“Not gonna stop.”

“No. No stopping.”

“No?”

“No. I said no.”

Delly's foot grazed one of the lodge's kiln-fired jug doorstops. She knelt and took hold of its neck. A natural weapon, heavy as a log. She raised it over her head and went at Fiona's assailant with vengeance years in the making.

She slammed the jug down with all her power. It didn't shatter. It hit his skull with a thunk that dropped him to the floor like a dead man. The jug broke apart on her second swing, but its neck stayed intact in her grip. She swung down again, the damage done this time by a ceramic edge jagged as flint. And finally once more, when the last of it shattered and left only her fist to strike over and over.

Fiona was screaming somewhere. The man lay limp on the floor, his slime warm around Delly's fingers.

Voices sounded. Lights came on. Donald and Corinne, returning from their night out, ran to their son. Joey was curled in a ball with his arms over his face like a child found under a cave-in. Roused from bed in the adjacent room, Marjorie stumbled in with drowsy whimpers that turned to a screech. Fiona crawled across the room and huddled against the far wall. Blood streaked her face like war paint. She glared at her stepmother with hate in her eyes.

Delly realized whom she'd attacked by now, but didn't yet grasp that she'd made a terrible mistake. She'd distinctly heard Fiona say no. She was sure she'd heard Fiona say no.

*   *   *

C
HIEF
H
OLLIS
J
ENKS
of the Lake Charles Police Department had coordinated the search after R.J. jumped bail ahead of his trial in 1953. Failure to catch him hadn't hurt the Chief's reputation; people were satisfied that Richie Bainard's agony over the death of his wife was ample retribution for any crimes of his son. Chief Jenks took early retirement three years later with an engraved plaque and a surprisingly comfortable pension. He bought a big house in Lake Charles's tony Charpentier District and a bass boat for the lake. He always had cash for his grandchildren's birthdays and for the collection plate at church.

This good life was disturbed by a telephone call in January 1957. Jenks recognized the voice, its theatrical drawl, but couldn't match it to a face. As he and the man spoke, an image formed of the waddling fop who'd been R. J. Bainard's attorney. Like Jenks, Abe Percy had retired soon after R.J. fled, though without the nest egg Jenks had accumulated. He asked to meet Jenks somewhere out of the way. “My house no good?” the Chief asked.

“If that's an invitation, why thank you. But it's a little too posh for me.”

The comment, laden with what Jenks remembered was Percy's tiresome innuendo, put him on guard when they met at a roadside diner. Abe wore a linen suit that Jenks swore was one he'd sported three years ago, though now there was no chance of buttoning the jacket over his girth. Abe walked with a cane, his face swollen and veiny. “You look well,” Jenks said. “Stay active, do you?”

“I do not. It was all I could do to mobilize and drive here today. Coffee, Miss,” Abe said to the waitress. “And the brisket barbecue, greens on the side, with cornbread and a Coca-Cola.”

“It's ten o'clock in the mornin',” Jenks said.

“I rise at four. This is lunch.”

“Big meal, even so.”

“Eating brings me solace. My gluttony is a cry to heaven.”

The food arrived. Jenks sipped black coffee while Abe ate. In the weeks before R.J.'s trial they'd communicated regularly. Now they sat in separate silence like an old couple on New Year's Eve. “An early riser, you say?” Jenks asked.

“Devils hound my sleep. I'm sure you sympathize.” The lawyer wiped his mouth. “I had a visitor yesterday. Miss Adele Billodeau.”

“There's one from way back.”

“She came to my home. Which is to say, my one-room garret above Alderson's Bait Shop. You see,” Abe said, “I've yet to secure a retirement situation as pleasant as yours.” His eyes narrowed in their pouches. “And she had, did Miss Adele, the most extraordinary news.”

Jenks was impassive. This fruit is waltzing me, he thought.

Abe explained that Adele had encountered R. J. Bainard recently. “Our own dear boy, discovered at last.”

“Where?”

“Not far, not far. Yet off the beaten path.”

“Where?”

“I'm not going to tell you, Hollis. May I call you Hollis?”

“Fine.”

“Fine. But no, I'll not be telling you where.”

Chief Jenks sighed. His plan for today had been to buy a set of wrenches at Block's Home Supply, let his wife fix him lunch, assemble the tricycle he'd bought for his grandson—then dinner, TV, and bedtime with no lovelier dream than that tomorrow pass the same way.

“But honestly,” Abe went on, “R. J. Bainard does not interest me. We know he did something to that girl, or
with
her. And we know why.”

“'Cause his mother and Coach Billodeau.”

“His
step
mother, Hollis. Don't be gross.”

“Why she come to you? You were against her, those days.”

“I was always a gentleman to Adele. She knew I pitied her for her mistreatment.”

“Mistreatment? Charge was rape.”

“Verdict dubious.”

“We don't know that.”

“Nor do we care,” Abe said, his tone sharpening. “Do we, Hollis?”

“Gotta say, you're losin' me.”

Abe leaned forward. “You're on the payroll. R.J. is living free under everyone's nose. Bainard money makes it happen.”

“I'm retired, case you hadn't noticed.”

“As am I. Jobs equally well done, if not equally remunerated.”

“You're way off here. Way off.” Jenks was lying, of course—except in one respect. He indeed had been Richie Bainard's mole inside the hunt for R.J., keeping him informed of any developments that might lead to finding the fugitive. Where Abe's accusation was wrong was in Jenks's incentive. The money came second, a carrot to take the sting off the stick. The main thing that had made the Chief comply was Richie's threat to expose him for his part in Walter Dopsie's death almost thirty years ago. No matter that Jenks was a better man today, that he'd since renounced his youthful enthrallment with the Klan at any number of church testimonials. Such allegations from someone as admired as Richie Bainard would have ruined Jenks in this town where he'd been reborn.

It had taken Richie, on first meeting the Chief after R.J.'s arrest in 1953, about five seconds to recognize him from that ugly night in Pinefield. Jenks's globular head and cornmuffin face emerged from buried memory like a demon emerging from smoke. Still reeling from Seth and Angel's car crash, seeing the leader of the gang that had beat Walter to death standing before him in the uniform of the Lake Charles chief of police had overwhelmed Richie. He went dizzy and fell into the arms of Bonnie and the family chauffeur, Alvin Dupree. They got him some water. Like a madman's babbled last words, his breathless account of Jenks's terrible deed sounded nuts to Bonnie. But Alvin took it in thoughtfully. He leaned to Richie's ear and suggested he say nothing more, that the leverage against Jenks might be useful. Bonnie had been impressed.

Abe dabbed his lips with a napkin. “I want what you have, Hollis.”

Jenks summoned his blankest look.

“Money. From Richie Bainard. For my silence. About his son.” Abe was pleased how tough he sounded.

“You worked for him. Ask him yourself.”

“They fired me after all that. Richie out of longstanding spite, his daughter because she thought one country lawyer would never do for the great Block's corporation.”

“Guess you're outta luck.”

“Ten thousand dollars.” The number seemed not too small, not too big. “I expect a prompt reply. Otherwise it's not R.J. who'll suffer, Hollis. It's you.”

Jenks stayed to finish his coffee after Abe left. Before coming today, he'd had an inkling that the lawyer would accuse him of taking bribes and threaten to blow the whistle. It would have been unpleasant but still a penalty in keeping with Jenks's belief that we all pay for our sins eventually. His own disgrace he could handle, but to think of it touching his family, his grandkids, was more than a little annoying.

It had been a while. He hoped he could still reach his Bainard contact. A man named Alvin, it was—no last name. Jenks smiled, remembering the guy's mania about insulating the family from scandal. As if anyone cared that the mighty Bainards were as scummy as everyone else.

*   *   *

D
RIVING BACK INTO
town, Abe pictured couriers in trench coats leaving bags of cash at obscure drop points and shivered to think of participating in such hijinks. Adele Billodeau's visit yesterday had aroused similar excitement that he might yet find fulfillment by ruining Richie Bainard at last.

She'd looked a fright, unrecognizable as a onetime hot ticket. Her mad tale had poured out in a monotone. Imagine almost killing a teenage boy! Warped by depression and booze, she'd bludgeoned the kid to protect her stepdaughter—totally in error, it turned out. “No one knows I saw R. J. Bainard that afternoon,” she'd explained. “They think I'm just a time bomb that blew. I'm only telling you, Mr. Percy—”

“Abe, please. You're a grown woman now.”

“—because I don't trust the cops and because you were nice to me back then. About what R.J. did.” She looked at him straight. “People still don't believe me.”