Delusion

by Peter Abrahams

  “Norah? Hi, it’s Mom. Everything good? Give me a call. When you get a chance.”

  Clay came out of the bedroom. He’d changed out of his dark suit, wore shorts, flip-flops, a polo shirt. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

  “A walk?” Nell said. They never went for walks; on the beach at Little Parrot Cay, maybe, but not at home.

  “It’s nice out,” Clay said.

  They went outside. It didn’t seem that nice to Nell. A wind blew from the north, driving a line of clouds across the sky, and the temperature was falling. Clay took her hand as they walked around the circle at the end of the street and followed Sandhill Way’s gentle downward slope. His hand was so much bigger than hers; she thought of her father walking her up to the diving board at the Y, long ago. The neighborhood was quiet, parents at work, kids at school; a dog barked in someone’s backyard, and a gardener leaned on his rake, touching the buttons on a handheld device with a toothpick.

  “Haven’t got much to tell you yet,” Clay said.

  “But this tape,” Nell said, “or picture, or whatever it is—it has to be a fake.” A statement, but her voice rose a little at the end, on its own.

  “Goes without saying. But how it happened, who made it—I’m not getting anywhere on that. All we know is some FEMA worker found the tape in a locked file cabinet that got sprung open, or that somebody sprung open, in a basement storage room at One Marigot. From there it gets to these justice people, by steps unknown.”

  Nell gave her head a little shake, as though that might unscramble things, restore order. “Anybody could have made the tape,” she said. “Anybody with the right kind of know-how.”

  Clay glanced down at her, looked away. “It’s not just the tape,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a note along with it.”

  “What kind of note?”

  They came to the cross street, Blue Heron Road, turned right. The mail truck appeared, the driver waving as she went by. “Purports to be from the guy who sent the tape, Napoleon Ferris, owner of the liquor store.”

  “What did it say?”

  Clay took a deep breath, let it out slowly. When he spoke his voice was so low she could hardly make out the words. “Something to the effect of ‘You’ve got the wrong guy.’”

  Nell squeezed his hand. They passed the tennis club, all the courts deserted. A small lizard lay on the baseline on court one, flicking its tongue. “Does this man, Napoleon, does he have some grudge against…” She left the sentence unfinished, having no idea how a grudge might explain what was going on. Was this some kind of conspiracy? Her mind didn’t work well in areas like that.

  “Be nice to know what he was up to,” Clay said. The wind rose. “First we have to find him.”

  A raindrop struck Nell’s face. “I don’t understand.”

  “Looks like he’s a refugee.” There were hundreds of Bernardine refugees, gone to Houston and Atlanta, and many of them hadn’t returned. “No one’s seen him since the hurricane and vandals tore his store apart.”

  “Are you looking for him?”

  “Oh, yeah. There’s no way they’ll hold the hearing till we find him.”

  “Hearing?”

  “On DuPree’s status. Whether or not to free him.”

  “That won’t happen, will it?”

  “Freeing him?” Clay shook his head.

  Rain started falling, light at first. The lizard had vanished. Nell and Clay headed for home. The rain fell harder. They sped up, and soon were running, no longer holding hands. They’d been surprised by sudden squalls and ended up running like this before, but all the other times had led to lots of laughter, and feeling younger than they were. Thunder boomed in the north, and the full torrent, icy cold, caught them just as they reached the driveway. They hurried to the side door, sheltered from the rain under the breezeway roof. Clay unlocked the door, turned to her, water streaming down his face.

  “One other thing,” he said. “That locker belonged to Bobby Rice.”

  “Bobby?” she said. Bobby Rice had been Clay’s partner, back in his detective days, back when Johnny got murdered. “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Clay said. “But the envelope the tape came in is postmarked a month before the trial.” He went inside.

  A month before the trial? Meaning it had sat, undisclosed, in Bobby Rice’s file cabinet for twenty years? How was that possible? Or, if it was all a conspiracy, someone had made it look like the tape had been there all that time. These new facts, if they were facts, refused to line up in her mind, form a narrative. And there’d be no explanation from Bobby: he’d drowned in the flood, rescuing a baby from a rooftop in Lower Town, and lay in the Old Cemetery, integrated at last, not far from the town’s Confederate heroes.

  Nell stood in the breezeway, rain pouring down on both sides, splashing on the stone walkways. One of the first things she’d noticed about Clay, in those days after the murder when she began noticing things again, was how well he got along with Bobby. With Belle Ville’s racial history the way it was, that nice, easy, respectful way they had with each other caught her attention. A full year had passed before she spent even a moment with Clay that didn’t relate to the case, but what had come later, what they had now, had probably started then.

  The detective introduced himself and his partner, but Nellie, sitting in the family room at her parents’ house, didn’t catch the names. She couldn’t stop shaking and all the colors in the room were wrong, every tone darkened down.

  “Ma’am?” said the detective, turning to Nellie’s mother. “Maybe she’d like a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Nellie’s mom, and she hurried away.

  “I want this animal caught,” said Nellie’s father, his voice much too loud, loud and ragged. “Caught and lethally injected.”

  In dinner-table conversations, he’d always been an opponent of capital punishment. Nellie started crying.

  “Perhaps, sir,” said the detective, “we could have just a few moments alone with your daughter.”

  “Get us out of here much quicker,” said the partner.

  “I’m her father. I’m also a physician. Can’t you see she’s in a state of—”

  “It’s all right, Dad.” She pulled herself together, at least to the extent of stopping the tears.

  Her father left the room, half closing the door. She could hear him pacing in the hall.

  “Mind if we sit down?” the detective said. Nellie noticed his voice—maybe because of the contrast to the way her father had been talking—deep but gentle.

  “Please,” Nellie said.

  The detective pulled up her father’s brass-studded leather footstool; the partner sat on the couch beside her, leaving plenty of space. They didn’t speak, just sat there, almost like churchgoers waiting for the service to begin.

  “I was so slow,” Nellie said.

  “Not sure I’m following,” said the detective.

  “If I’d been quicker, maybe—” She began crying again.

  “One thing you can’t do right now,” the detective said, “now or ever, is blame yourself for anything.”

  “You survived,” said the partner. “Survive something like that, you’re a hero, plain and simple.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Nellie said. “We’re swimmers. We could have swum away. We could have swum all the way down the bayou.”

  “Swimmers?”

  And she began telling them about the swimming, how she’d been on the UNC team, how Johnny, as an undergraduate at Texas a few years before, had put up the third-fastest one hundred butterfly time in the nation, how they’d met in the pool. She went on and on, all this irrelevant stuff about Johnny and her, but suddenly there was nothing more important than getting it on the record. Nellie sat on the sofa in the old family room, blood on her T-shirt, and saw that everything about Johnny and her was made official. She probably would have even included the fact that she was pregnant,
but she didn’t learn that until a few weeks later, and by then the case was solved.

  “What is it you want?” Johnny said, backing away, left arm around Nellie, turning slightly to shield her.

  Behind the bandanna, the man’s lips moved. “Money,” he said.

  “All right,” said Johnny. “You can have my money.” With his free hand, he reached into his right front pocket, where he kept his billfold.

  That left him with no free hands, and his chest exposed. The man stepped forward. Moonlight flashed on a long blade. Then came a horrible sound of steel on bone, in bone, through bone, and Johnny staggered.

  Nellie caught him. The knife slid free of Johnny’s body, still in the man’s hand; Nellie heard a faint hiss of air leaking from Johnny’s chest. But no blood, thank God. The man raised the knife. Nellie kicked out at him, an instinctive movement, but with all her strength. She hit him right on the knee. He grunted in pain. His leg buckled. He twisted around, and at that moment the bandanna slid partway down and she caught her glimpse of his face, at least the upper half: a white face, possibly round and fleshy, with pale blue eyes, almost colorless. Then headlights shone way down Sunshine Road, and the man raised the bandanna and ran, at first with a limp and then not, over to Parish Street and into the woods.

  “Johnny?” He was still leaning against her, but now started slipping down her body. She lowered him onto the path. “Are you all right?” she said, kneeling beside him, cradling his head.

  “I think so,” he said. That was when the blood came.

  CHAPTER 5

  Pirate opened his Bible, read the following passage several times. His lips moved as he read and a whispery sound came from his mouth. He already knew these words by heart; this was more like harmonizing than reading.

  And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He also had seven sons and three daughters.

  Turned the captivity: Pirate had determined long ago that this was a way of saying God set Job free. He remembered a line from somewhere: A test. This is only a test. Was it from Job? He thought not, but couldn’t be sure. Pirate hadn’t been quite sure of things since that visit from the lawyer woman with the beautiful skin, her name now forgotten. If it hadn’t been for her beautiful skin, Pirate might have decided that he’d imagined the whole meeting; but his imagination wasn’t good enough to picture skin like that. Also, there were rumors in the prison, rumors about him. Fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels: he knew that was crazy. And the she asses, whatever those were, gave him bad thoughts.

  He reread the entire Book of Job, fondling the gold tassel while he searched without success for: A test. This is only a test. That carried him all the way to exercise period.

  Pirate had a tiny weapon he preferred to take with him to exercise period. It was probably too small—just a spear-point-tipped razorblade fragment with a safe edge on one side for gripping, an edge he’d made from hardened chewing gum—for actual killing, useful only for cutting and slashing. Not that he’d ever cut and slashed with it: Pirate was at peace with the other inmates. But after what had happened to him at exercise period one day in his second year, he’d fallen into the habit of being prepared.

  Pirate was concealing his weapon just as he heard the click that meant his door was about to slide open. A tiny weapon, wrapped in a tiny bit of cloth: Pirate raised his patch, folded up his eyelid—he still had an eyelid, the way whales still had bones for feet, a fact he’d read somewhere—and placed the weapon in his socket, where it fit, but barely, if he got the angle just so. Pirate folded his eyelid back down, lowered the patch, and went to exercise period.

  Exercise period took place in a big, open-roofed cage with a dirt yard and a basketball hoop at one end. For some reason, Pirate arrived a minute or two early. There was only one other inmate on the yard, sitting slumped against the fence as though ill, and as Pirate went closer he saw that this lone inmate was Esteban Malvi. He and Esteban Malvi went way back. Pirate’s heart started beating fast, despite how at peace he was with everything. His heart beat fast and he felt the tiny weapon in his eye.

  Year two. In those days, the exercise yard was bigger and uncaged, on the other side of C-block, bounded by the walls themselves. C-block was the oldest part of the prison, and there were a few odd corners in the old yard, hard to see from the towers. Guards patrolled the yard, so those blind spots shouldn’t have mattered, but they did on the morning that Esteban Malvi decided that Pirate—still called Al at the time—had disrespected him.

  Pirate was a much bigger man than Esteban Malvi, and at that stage of his life still jacked and ripped besides. The catch was Malvi’s position: his father headed a Central American drug gang, the Ocho Cincos or something like that, a gang unknown to Pirate until too late. They lured him into one of those blind spots in the yard with an offer of a cigarette. For a moment, everything looked friendly, Malvi sitting on a bench, eating yogurt with a plastic spoon, other inmates lounging around: one of those misleading first impressions. The other inmates turned out to be Ocho Cincos. The next minute Pirate lay helpless on the ground and Malvi was scooping out his right eye with the plastic spoon. Impossible to do that with a plastic spoon, of course. The eating part snapped off right away, but what remained had a sharp point, and Malvi finished the job with that. A minute later, Pirate was alone and the guards were on their way. No witnesses stepped forward, and Pirate, now more experienced, knew enough to keep his mouth shut.

  And here, slumped against the fence in the new yard, was Esteban Malvi, all pale and clammy, looking ill, and for a moment or two they would be alone. Pirate went closer. Esteban recognized him, understood the situation instantly, tried to squirm away. But he was weak, and there was nowhere to go. Pirate crouched beside him. Esteban’s eyes shifted here and there, maybe searching for help. But Pirate knew there would be no help. Everything was lined up right.

  “What’s the matter, Esteban?” he said. “Got AIDS?”

  “A little bit,” Esteban said.

  Pirate put a hand on Esteban’s shoulder. His hand looked huge and strong, Esteban’s shoulder weak and pitiful. The tiny weapon in Pirate’s eye itched to get out.

  Esteban pushed against the fence, as though his body could flow through the holes. “What—what can I do for you?” he said. “Maybe make things easier?”

  “Things couldn’t be any easier,” Pirate said. “I’m easy.”

  “Oh, right, I hear you’re getting out. Be a shame to ruin that.”

  Pirate shrugged. “Do I care?” he said. A funny question: he didn’t know the answer himself. He let go of Esteban, raised his eyepatch, folded back the eyelid, produced the weapon. Esteban’s eyes got very big. They suddenly began exerting magnetic force, and the weapon was steel. What else could it do?

  “Oh, God,” said Esteban.

  And at that moment, Pirate understood the story of Job, but completely, the last bit of meaning falling into rightful place: he knew what it felt like, not just to be Job, but to be God as well. Had he ever felt happier in his life? Pirate laughed out loud. For some reason that scared Esteban even more. Yellow liquid pooled in the dirt between his legs. Pirate wrapped the tiny weapon in its tiny scrap of cotton and put it back where it belonged. He rose.

  “This is your lucky day, Esteban,” he said.

  Esteban gazed up at him.

  “But don’t push it too far—I’m not going to cure your AIDS.”

  Esteban’s face turned unpleasant; he let his
natural meanness get the best of him. “You nuts?” he said.

  Pirate froze for a second. Then he bent over and patted Esteban’s clammy head. After that, more to demonstrate God’s unpredictability than anything else—how could you spend time with Job without learning of God’s unpredictability?—Pirate thumbed up one of Esteban’s eyelids, licked the tip of the index finger of his other hand, just to be sanitary, and stroked Esteban’s eyeball, stroked it lightly, the way he’d stroke a kitten. Well, maybe a little harder than that. Then came some sort of cry on Esteban’s part, not too loud. Pirate gave a brief explanation: “This is only a test.” He walked away. Other inmates were arriving, plus a few guards. Pirate spoke to one of them.

  “Esteban’s AIDS is giving him a hard time today.”

  The guard glanced over at Esteban, slumped against the fence. “Christ,” he said, and reached for his surgical gloves.

  Pirate lay on his bunk, fingers on the gold tassel. Time passed. He was at peace. Footsteps sounded outside: light, with a slight offbeat rhythm—recognized by Pirate from his guitar-playing days—as though whoever was coming had a song on the brain. Pirate already knew: it was the CO with the modified dreds, a big man but soft on his feet.

  “Pirate?” he said. “Visitor.”

  Pirate didn’t feel like a visitor—he was having a nice quiet time—but he didn’t argue. Keys jingled. He went through the steps: raised arms, spreading, dropped pants, bending. Then Pirate and the guard walked past all the caged rats.

  “Lots of talk about you these days, Pirate,” the guard said.

  “Don’t pay attention to gossip, myself,” said Pirate.

  They went into the visiting room. The woman with the glowing skin was waiting on the other side of the glass. Pirate sat in the middle chair, like last time, and picked up the phone.

  The woman smiled. “Hello, Mr. DuPree,” she said. “Holding up all right?”

  Holding up all right? Pirate wasn’t sure he understood the question. At the same time, since he’d forgotten her name, he couldn’t politely reply, Hello, Miss whatever the name happened to be. He ended up saying nothing.