South, America by Rod Davis

Author:Rod Davis [Davis, Rod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rod Davis, Louisiana, New Orleans, mystery, French Quarter, Jack Prine, Mafia, hitmen
ISBN: 9781603063166
Publisher: NewSouth Inc.
Published: 2014-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

17

The highway dumped into another outside Simmesport, in the old plantation country where blacks outnumbered whites in huge numbers and had suffered proportional repressions. In some places, the faces were as bright and happy as at a Caribbean market; in others there was a density of alienation that could not be penetrated by mere human sight.

She had not cried while nailing down her newfound history, as she had over her brother’s death. It wasn’t really a crying kind of thing now.

I found a classical station on the radio, a Beethoven violin concerto.

“I like that,” she said, finally.

“We’re quite a pair.”

“Did you take another Vicodin?”

“I’m trying not to.”

“You can if you want. No need to suffer.”

“I know. But I need to be clear.”

“Well, yeah.”

“It’s a lot to take in, all that.”

“I guess I was really going on.”

“Not really.”

A short, explosive sound like a laugh came out.

We drove a few miles in silence. “It’s the first time any of this started to make sense,” I said.

“What?”

“I mean how it blew up with Trey and your brother. It makes more sense now.”

“Jesus, Jack.”

“What?”

“What sense does it make that Young Henry is dead? Does it help you to think there was some kind of rational reason? Does that make it okay?” Her face filled with blood again. Her teeth flashed.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Then what, what ‘sense’?”

I leaned back against the headrest. “Nothing. I said it wrong. I’ve just been trying, you know, to figure things out.”

She took a few deep breaths, and her fingers went up along the wheel, as if to signal a truce. “I know. Forget it.”

“We can’t take this out on each other.”

“I should know that more than you. It’s what I get paid to know.”

“Nobody gets paid to know this.”

“If they did, we’d be rich.”

We both smiled, wanly. No cash-out for us.

“I mean, do you have any idea what happens after we get this painting, if we can get it? Does that mean Trey leaves us alone? Does that mean he gets away with murdering my brother? I mean, murdering . . . his own brother. If you wanted to see it that way.” She paused. “And I do.”

I saw the speedometer moving up past eighty again. I reached across to touch her arm, from comfort. I might have been touching a steel girder.

“I just mean that things are going to play out. Trey isn’t going to get away with anything.”

She faintly smiled again, but more like a cobra. I realized she must have been wondering if her new pal, her rib-sore road warrior, would bail. And I didn’t blame her. Human relations very abruptly had become dramatically unglued in her life. But she was now the love of my life and I would never leave her.

So I told her that. She reached across with her free hand, took mine, and placed it on her breast, over her heart.

We were in Baton Rouge by early afternoon. I wanted to eat again, so we exited near LSU and found a Vietnamese place near the campus.

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