watched me suspiciously as his people nodded hello. I said, "Good-looking dog."
The man said, "Thanks."
Lucy and I stood silently until they were gone, vanishing gently in the humid dark.
We looked at each other. "This is the second time you've fed me. Thanks again."
"It's an ugly job, but somebody's gotta do it."
We both grinned. I said, "Oh, man. Dueling comedians."
She looked at me carefully and said, "I have a good time with you."
I nodded. "Me, too."
Then she said, "Oh, damn." She leaned forward, kissed me, then pulled away. "I've just kissed a man who ate dog. Yuck."
She ran back into her house.
I guess there are lines, but sometimes lines bend.
CHAPTER 13
T he night canopy above the Atchafalaya Basin was velvet black as I drove through the sugar cane and the sweet potato fields and the living earth back to Ville Platte. A woman I had known for approximately four days had given me what was maybe the world's shortest kiss, and I could not stop smiling about it. A lawyer, no less.
I folded up the grin and put it away and rolled down the window and breathed. Come to your senses, Cole. The air was warm and rich and alive with the smells of water and loam soil and blossoming plants. The sky was a cascade of stars. I started singing. I stopped singing and glanced in the mirror. Smiling, again. I let the smile stay and drove on. To hell with senses.
When I got back to Ville Platte there was a message from Jimmie Ray on the motel's voice mail system, his voice tight and sounding scared. "This is Jimmie Ray Rebenack and you really put me in a world of hurt, podnuh." You could hear him breathing into the phone. The breathing was strained. "It's twenty after six right now, and I need to talk to ya. I'm at home." He said the number and hung up.
It was now ten fifty-two, and there were no other messages in the voice mail.
I dialed his number and got a busy signal. I took off my shirt, then went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. I dialed his number again and again got a busy signal. I dialed his office, got his answering machine, and hung up without leaving a message. I redialed his home. Busy. I called the operator. "I need an emergency break-in."
"Number, please?"
I gave her the number. She went away for a little bit and then she came back. "I'm sorry, sir, but that number seems to be off the hook."
"He's not on the line?"
"No, sir. The phone's probably just off the hook. It happens all the time."
I put my shirt back on and drove once more to Jimmie Ray's house. A couple of houses on his street were still bright with life, but most of the street was dark and still. Jimmie Ray's Mustang was parked at the curb in a dapple of moonshadows, and the front upstairs window of his duplex was lighted. The bedroom. Probably with a woman. They had probably been thrashing around and had knocked the phone out of its cradle. I left my car on the street, went to his front door, and rang the bell. I could hear the buzzer go off inside, but that was it. No giggles. No people scrambling for their clothes. I rang the bell twice more, then went around the side of the house and let myself in through the back exactly as I had twelve hours ago.
The ground floor was dark, and the kitchen still smelled of fried food, but now there was a sharp, ugly smell beneath it. I moved across the kitchen and stood in the darkness, listening. Light from the upstairs filtered down the stairwell and put a faint yellow glow in Jimmie Ray Rebenack's bachelor-pad living room. I said, "Oh, Jimmie. You goof."
The imitation zebra skin couch was tipped over on its back and Jimmie Ray Rebenack was lying across it, head down and arms out, Joey Buttafucco boots pointing toward the ceiling. The living room phone had been knocked off its hook when the couch went over. I took out the Dan Wesson, held it along my thigh, and went past Jimmie Ray to the stairs and listened again. Nothing. I went back to Jimmie Ray and looked without touching him. His neck was bent at a profound and unnatural angle, as if the vertebrae there had been separated by some tremendous force. His neck didn't