In the moonlight, the house still looked like what it had been. When I got closer, I saw some of the windows were broken and part of the roof had fallen in. Halfway up the drive I walked the gelding across the ruined lawn and hitched him good to an apple tree. Then I went back to the drive and up to the house.
The horse and buggy stood at the foot of the crumbling steps; the front door was open. I went up the steps with the Smith & Wesson in my hand; beautiful Minnie was a killer, and I was through taking chances. Light came from a big room off the darkened main hallway. I was close to the arch that led into the lighted room when I heard a woman’s voice. I stopped and listened. She was still where I couldn’t see her, but the talking went on. I waited for someone to answer, and nobody did. Nothing that was being said made any sense to me; it was English, but the words ran together. Then she started to laugh.
“Don’t move, Minnie,” I said coming into the light, the .45 cocked and ready. “I’ll kill you.”
Minnie lay on a big sofa heaped with dirty pillows, waving her arms and laughing. I told her again, and she stopped laughing. The gun in my hand didn’t scare her; it started her laughing again. She clapped her hands together like a child, then held them against the sides of her face, again like a child expecting a treat.
“Put them behind your head,” I said. “Then stand up and keep them there.”
Her eyes were crazy, and the laughing didn’t stop. But she got up, and I went over to her. “A gentleman come to call,” she said. “And we haven’t even been properly introduced.”
“Stand still,” I warned her.
“Still as a statue. Quiet as a church mouse. Soft as a summer breeze,” my friend Minnie said. “Hey, what’s your name?”
Minnie was crazy or doing a good job of pretending. I didn’t search her: I ripped the low-necked green dress from breasts to crotch. No guns, no knives fell out of it, and there was no place to hide anything else: All she wore was the dress.
The torn dress fell around her ankles. She giggled. “That wasn’t gallant, sir,” she said, stepping out of it.
I was tired of her act. A stiff-handed slap jerked her head to one side; no pain showed in the crazy eyes. “The hand is quicker than the thigh,” she said. “Listen, honestly, you want to know why Jefferson Davis wore red suspenders? You give up? I’ll tell you—to keep his shoulders down.”
“Where’s the eleven thousand dollars?”
“Oh, that. Why it’s over there in that leather bag. You want some? Hey, are you a robber? No, you don’t look like a robber. Don’t tell me— you’re taking up a collection for the new school-house.”
I looked in the leather bag and found the money. It looked like some of it was gone. “Look under the money, and you’ll find some white envelopes,” Minnie said. “Pass one of them over, there’s a nice man. A girl has to take her medicine.”
I guess I was dumb. “Medicine?” I said.
Minnie wasn’t laughing now and her eyes were getting dull. I think she was beginning to remember who I was. “Medicine for me,” she said. “Cocaine. Lovely white powder.”
I should have figured something like that but, well, I was just an old country bank robber. Basso hadn’t figured it either, or if he did he didn’t tell me. The kind of people I knew used whiskey to go crazy; cocaine was something I didn’t know about, didn’t think about. I knew there were people used it in the cities, that once you started snuffing it up your nose you couldn’t stop, that it drove you crazy if you took enough of it.
“Give it here, you son of a bitch,” Minnie screamed. She started at me with her claws raised. The gun didn’t stop her, and I had to use my fist. The punch knocked her back on the sofa, and she sprawled there, screaming and shaking, begging for it.
That was the big trouble with nose candy, as the clickers called it. The effects wore off after a very short time. Minnie had been snuffing before I got to the house; that explained the talking and laughing.
“Please,” she said. She knew me now. “Please, Carmody. Let me have some, then you can kill me.”
“No deal,” I said. “First you talk. Then you write out a confession and sign. How you killed Gertie, and why—everything. Somehow or other, you started taking this stuff. But there was no money here, so you went to New Orleans. Nothing you could work at, supposing you wanted to work, would bring in enough money to buy your poison. So you became a house girl at Gertie’s. You were drugged all the time, so Gertie decided to make a freak out of you. After that you were Minnie Haha, the cold fish that couldn’t be caught, but you didn’t give a damn as long as there was money for snuff. Gertie kept you supplied, but maybe she held out sometimes to keep you in line. Nails came from St. Phail, and you could have known him.”
Minnie’s eyes were dull, so was her voice. “I knew him,” she said. “We had the same mother.”
I showed her one of the little white envelopes. “What about your father?” The thing about being Nails’ half-sister took me by surprise. It explained the dark skin.
Minnie showed her hate. “My father was a doctor. The Nails family cropped for us. He raised me and my brother as white, but I never believed his story that he had been married to a Creole girl from New Orleans. I didn’t find out for sure until a couple of years ago. That’s why I started using cocaine. My father was dead, but there was a lot of it left in his office. I used it to forget I was a black. Later I didn’t give a damn.”
“Not yet,” I said. I wanted to get it all straight. “Nails tried to protect you—hated Gertie for a lot of reasons. But mostly because of you. Half-sister or not, you were sleeping with Nails. The only place you could go was the Hotel La Hache. Maybe Gertie got wind of it—I don’t know. Anyway, when the chance to kill Gertie, blame somebody else, and steal eleven thousand dollars came along, you grabbed it. Only Nails got killed and I didn’t run.”
“I could buy all the cocaine in the world with eleven thousand dollars,” Minnie said dully. “It would be there whenever I wanted it. Nobody telling me what to do. How much I could take. I didn’t care what I had to do to get it.”
The room was warm, but Minnie shivered. She looked at the envelope in my hand while she talked. “Please,” she whispered.
“Be a brave girl,” I said, remembering all that had happened. It was all coming together at last. “You did the planning, Nails the killing. You panicked and ran when you saw me, saw Nails was dead. You ran to the La Hache. You couldn’t take your medicine in the street. Your brother, desperate for money, tracked you there. Or maybe he knew. He tried to grab some of the money, and you stabbed him. I know everything else. Where’s the knife, Minnie?”
“I threw it away,” she said. “I didn’t want to kill George.” Her voice rose to a scream. “But, Jesus, he tried to take my money. You understand—I didn’t want to kill anybody. I just wanted the money.”
“A clear case of self defense,” I told her sourly. “Now, Minnie, you’re going to write it all down. After that you get the cocaine.”
“I won’t do it,” she said.
“I’ll make a fire of it,” I said. Keeping the gun on her, I looked in the drawer of a broken writing desk and found some yellowed notepaper. The inkwell was dry, but I found a pencil. I took the pencil and paper over to Minnie, and said, “Write what I tell you.”
“What’ll happen to me?” she wanted to know.
I stuck the pencil in her hand. “We’ll get to that later,” I said. “You want the snuff, or not?”
“I’d like to kill you,” she screamed. A slap stopped the screaming, but the shaking went on.
“Address it to the Chief of Police, New Orleans,” I said.
Minnie began to write. The pencil scratched across the paper, and I made her begin at the beginning and go on from there. The way her hand shook, it took some time before it was finished.
“Sign it,” I said.
She signed it, and held out her hand for the envelope. When the envelope was torn open she creased it, held back her head,
and snuffed the powder up her nose. That was how they did it all right. Having her drugged might make it easier to rope her to a chair, lay the confession beside her, then ride off and send word to the Leesville sheriff from the first town I came to.
This was one time I was ready to give the law a helping hand.
The cocaine acted right away. It must be powerful stuff, the way it calmed Minnie, put the shine back in her eyes. Lying back on the sofa, bare and brown, she whispered more to herself than to me—”So peaceful.”
Peaceful was how I wanted her. “That’s fine,” I said. “Just stand up and you’ll be fine.” It looked like George Verrier had fed and slept in the same room. All kinds of junk piled up beside the fireplace; there was a coiled rope lying on top of a worn saddle. I got the rope, and when I came back with it Minnie hadn’t moved.
“Up,” I said, starting to lift her into a straight-backed chair. One of her hands was buried in the cushions and came up holding a knife. In a second she turned into a screaming stabbing maniac. The double-edged knife laid open my face before I grabbed her wrist, but the drug made her strong as a man, and I couldn’t make her let it go. Kicking and screaming, she sank her teeth into my wrist and the knife stabbed at my heart. I grabbed it again and turned it, and still Minnie wouldn’t let go.
Now the knife was between us, the point inches from her chest. I didn’t want to kill her, but suddenly the fight went out of her and she jerked the knife forward. The thin blade went into her, and her lips opened wide and then started to glaze. I didn’t try to pull out the knife. It wouldn’t have done any good. Minnie— Miss Frances Verrier—was beyond cocaine, beyond the hangman, beyond everything.
I made a neat job of it before I left. After I stretched her out on the couch, I put her hand around the shaft of the knife, the confession on a chair beside her. The cocaine was explained in the confession, and I left it in the leather bag where the law would find it later.
I didn’t bother to count my money before I went outside and stowed it in the saddlebag. All in all, it had been one hell of a visit to New Orleans. Come morning, maybe before, the law would be on its way; it was time to get out of there. I had set out to prove I didn’t kill Gertie, to get back my eleven thousand, and now I wanted to get as far away as that stolen horse would take me.
The Texas line was some place west of where I was—and I headed that way.
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