Delusion

by Peter Abrahams

  That tiny frown furrow appeared on the woman’s brow, adding to her beauty. “This waiting must be hard,” she said.

  Pirate shrugged. He was an expert at waiting.

  “The hearing has been postponed,” the woman said, “while they track down Napoleon Ferris.”

  “Nappy.”

  “Yes, Nappy. The liquor-store owner.”

  “I didn’t like him.”

  “No?”

  “He wanted nine ninety-nine for a pint of Popov.”

  “That’s a kind of vodka?”

  “Barely.”

  The woman laughed. He’d cracked a joke. It felt good, and seeing her laugh was even better. He remembered her name.

  “Barely, Susannah,” he said. “But I don’t drink anymore.”

  Her eyes shifted slightly. He took that to mean of course not, you’re in prison, and for a second or two—but no more—she wasn’t quite so beautiful.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said, looking serious, and back to her old beautiful self. “In the meantime, we were wondering—”

  “What meantime?”

  Susannah blinked. “While the search goes on for Nappy.”

  “Nappy, Nappy, Nappy.”

  “Mr. DuPree?”

  “Why all this talk about Nappy?”

  “We need his testimony to fill in the gaps.”

  “Gaps?”

  “In the whole story of the tape—when it was sent, why, why not pursued.” Her answer led to confusion in Pirate’s mind, but before he could speak she went on: “We’ll have a much better chance with the judge.”

  “What judge?”

  “We don’t know who it will be yet, but I’m talking about the judge at your hearing,” Susannah said. “The hearing to free you.”

  “Turn the captivity,” said Pirate.

  “I’m sorry?” she said.

  Pirate bowed his head, remained silent.

  “In the meantime,” she said, “we wondered whether you’ve given any thought to what you might want to do if we’re successful.”

  Pirate looked up. “Successful?”

  “At the hearing.”

  “Oh,” said Pirate. His mind was a blank.

  “Have you kept in touch with any relatives or friends?”

  In touch: Pirate thought of the slightly damp, surprisingly hard surface of Esteban Malvi’s eye. He shook his head.

  “Is there anyone on the outside you’d like us to contact?”

  “Besides Nappy, you mean?”

  Susannah paused for a moment, then laughed. He’d cracked another joke. “Yes,” she said, “besides Nappy.”

  “Nope,” said Pirate.

  She gazed at him. “There’ll be plenty of time to figure this all out later.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is there anything we can help you with for now?” she said. “Anything you need?”

  “An earring of gold.”

  She laughed right away, catching on to his sense of humor. But this time he hadn’t been joking. “It’s good to see you holding up so well, Mr. DuPree—and I think you have every right to be cautiously optimistic.”

  Cautiously optimistic! What a great expression! That was him in a nutshell. “Okay,” he said.

  “I’ll be in touch. Bye, Mr. DuPree.” She hung up.

  “I’m going to have twice what I had before,” Pirate said.

  She picked up the phone. “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Drive safe,” said Pirate.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lee Ann was on the phone. “Any chance of getting together today?” she said. “I’ve got a few things I’d like to go over with you.”

  “What kind of things?” Nell said. She was in the middle of writing an e-mail to Norah: I’ve left a couple messages, sweetheart.

  Everything ok? If you’ve lost your phone again, don’t wor—

  “Concerning Alvin DuPree,” Lee Ann said.

  “Lee Ann, please. I’ve got nothing to say. This is a mistake and it’s going to get cleared up.”

  “Even if it is,” Lee Ann said, “that’s a story, too. How a mistake like this could happen, the role of Bernardine and the flood, what it says about the whole town.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Nell said. “But I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “I don’t understand that question,” Nell said; she heard her tone sharpening. “It’s can’t of course. This tape is a fake of some kind, but other than that, I have no information at all.”

  “Has it been definitely identified as a fake?”

  “I don’t know,” Nell said. “Why don’t you call Clay?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He had no comment.”

  “Then neither do I.”

  “But—”

  In fact, this was sneaky: Lee Ann was trying to get her to talk behind Clay’s back. “Sorry, Lee Ann, I’ve got to go.”

  “But there’s—”

  Nell hung up. She went back to her e-mail, fingers not quite steady…. don’t worry—just get another one and put it on the debit card. Talk to you soon, I hope. Love, Mom.

  The phone rang just as she deleted I hope and hit send. Nell let it ring. The answering machine took the call. Lee Ann said, “Nell? You there? I was about to mention something I probably should have figured out long ago but didn’t. I’ve been going over the timeline, and there doesn’t seem to be any way for Clay to have been Norah’s father. Am I right on this? And if—”

  Nell grabbed the phone. “What the hell are you doing?” she said.

  “Working on a story.”

  “My private life has nothing to do with your story.” Nell slammed down the phone.

  Her first instinct was to pick it right back up and call Clay. But why add to his burden? Nell took a deep breath and called Lee Ann instead.

  “Are you planning to put it in the paper?” she said. “About Clay?”

  “No,” Lee Ann said. “I have no plans to do that.”

  “Good,” said Nell. “Because it’s not a secret. Clay filed adoption papers.” And had tried his best—and Clay’s best meant a very high standard—to be a good father to Norah and even more than that, loved her as his own daughter; Nell left all that unsaid.

  “Sorry,” Lee Ann said. “I should have checked that.”

  “But why? Why are you doing any of this? This is my personal business.”

  “I’m only trying to understand,” Lee Ann said, “to get all the pieces straight in my head before the hearing.”

  “But the hearing will be the end of it,” Nell said. “The tape is a fake. How many times do I have to say it? I saw the killing happen with my own eyes.”

  “I know,” Lee Ann said, her tone softening. After a short pause, she said, “What if I picked you up and went over there, would you be willing to talk me through the whole thing?”

  “Over where?” said Nell.

  “Parish Street,” Lee Ann said. “Down where the pier used to be. This is for background only, as I said, but also…”

  “Also what?”

  “I know we were never really close, but—also as a friend.”

  “That’s very nice,” Nell said, actually meaning it. “But no.”

  “Your call, no problem,” said Lee Ann. “Just one last thing—I’ve got an idea or two about the tape.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’d prefer to do that in person,” Lee Ann said.

  Lee Ann picked Nell up about ten minutes later. She drove a small convertible, with the “service engine” light on, clutter everywhere but the passenger seat and the AC running full blast even though it was pleasant outside, the real heat still two or three months away.

  “Got you a latte,” Lee Ann said, handing her a paper cup. “Hey, nice ring.” She gazed at the premature anniversary ring. “What is that—garnet?”

  “Ruby,” said Nell, sticking the latte in the drink
holder and leaving it there. “What are your ideas about the tape?”

  “We’ll get to that,” Lee Ann said, driving down Sandhill Way and taking a left turn at the bottom, a little too fast. “First, what can you tell me about your husband’s relationship with Bobby Rice?”

  “They had a great relationship.”

  Behind her strange glasses, Lee Ann’s eyes narrowed. “Racial tension in the Belle Ville PD has been well documented.”

  “It never affected Clay and Bobby,” Nell said. “They were friends. They coached Pop Warner together.”

  “How long were they partners?”

  “For years, right up until when Clay first ran for chief.”

  “What was Bobby’s reaction to that?”

  “To Clay becoming chief? He was happy.”

  “No resentments?”

  “He raised funds for Clay in the black community,” Nell said. “What are you getting at?”

  Lee Ann drove past the zoo, now open again, although one tiger and all the former inhabitants of the reptile house had still not been found, and turned on to North Sunshine Road. “There’s a lot of anger in Lower Town about what went on after Bernardine.”

  Nell didn’t say anything. The gates to Magnolia Glade went by on their left, a guard sitting in the booth, face blank.

  “Anger directed at the town government in general,” Lee Ann said, “and the police department in particular.”

  Nell knew that. She also knew how hard Clay had worked, forty-eight hours at a stretch, including a frenzied twenty-four straight on the Canal Street sandbag line before the gates, the pumps, everything, finally failed completely and the storm surge flooded in. “The police did their best,” Nell said. “Everybody just got overwhelmed.”

  “Not everybody,” said Lee Ann. “Not equally.”

  No arguing that. “But I don’t see what this has to do with the tape,” Nell said.

  “Some of the anger comes from the fact that the only cop who died in the flood was black.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “I’m talking about the motive,” Lee Ann said.

  “For what?” said Nell. “Some…some conspirators to get together and rig up a tape making DuPree look innocent? How does that do anything for the black community? Bobby was black and DuPree is white.”

  Lee Ann came to Parish Street, headed toward the bayou. The old Creole elite had lived on Parish Street until thirty or forty years before, their pastel houses shaded by huge cypress trees, many overhung with Spanish moss. But Bernardine had swept the trees away, and now the houses looked shabby. “There are other interpretations,” Lee Ann said.

  Parish Street dead-ended at the bayou. Lee Ann parked by the side of the towpath.

  “Like what?” said Nell as they got out of the car.

  Lee Ann gazed at her over the roof, the sun glaring off her glasses. “How about making the whole department look bad?” she said.

  “Seems a little far-fetched.”

  “Maybe to someone like you,” Lee Ann said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “No offense,” said Lee Ann. “Just the opposite. The world’s full of people very unlike you, people with nasty imaginations and lots of misplaced energy.”

  They walked onto the towpath. Nell hadn’t been here in twenty years, accompanied that last time by Clay, Bobby, and an evidence-gathering team. Her memory of that day—of so many days after the murder—was blurred and streaky, like images on a failing screen, but she didn’t think much evidence had been found; certainly not the knife, which never turned up. She stared down into the bayou; the rickety pier was gone, as Lee Ann had said, but she saw other things in there: floating garbage, two or three cars submerged to their roofs, a refrigerator door, oil slicks, trees ripped out by the roots, dead birds, dead fish, a dead dog, dead and eyeless, his collar caught on a root on the far bank.

  “This is terrible,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lee Ann. “If it’s too painful, we can—”

  “It’s not that,” Nell said. “I’m talking about—” She gestured down at the bayou.

  “It’s worse lower down,” Lee Ann said. She took a few steps along the towpath. “I can’t quite make out the old levee from here,” she said. “Is that where you were coming from?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the assailant was waiting on the pier?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Nell told her story, the kind of story Lee Ann must have heard many times: a robbery gone bad.

  “So you got a good look at him?”

  “There was a full moon.”

  “And how long was it before you made the identification?”

  “A couple weeks or so. I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Was it a photo array or a lineup?”

  “Both, I think.”

  “Both?”

  “First came the photos.”

  “How many?”

  Nell thought back. She’d sat at a desk, Clay on the other side, turning up photos and sliding them toward her, one at a time. “A lot.”

  “Like?”

  “I’m not sure.” Her clearest memory of the photo-array episode was Clay’s calming presence, and the careful way his hands moved, sympathetic somehow.

  “And then they brought DuPree in?”

  “I’m not sure. He might have been in custody already, for something else.”

  “But you’re certain you picked him out of a lineup as well.”

  “Yes.” Nell closed her eyes, tried to summon the memory of standing before the one-way glass. All she could picture was the number card in DuPree’s hands: 3.

  “How hard was that?”

  “In what way?”

  “Did you have doubts, or did it seem like he was the one, right off?”

  “He was the one,” Nell said; there was no seeming about it.

  Lee Ann gazed at her, eyes unreadable behind those intelligence-magnifying lenses.

  “Where did you get the glasses?” Nell said.

  “You like them?”

  Before Nell could answer, a big black car came speeding down Parish Street, braking hard on the other side of the towpath. The car was still rocking on its suspension when a rear door opened and a big man jumped out, followed by a small man and a woman, all of them wearing business suits. Nell knew the big man: Kirk Bastien, Duke’s younger brother, former all-SEC linebacker at Georgia Tech and now mayor of Belle Ville. He strode right past Nell and Lee Ann without a glance—the small man and the woman hurrying after him—and glared down from the edge of the bayou, sunshine glinting on his swept-back hair.

  “God damn,” he said, swinging around, “this is a disgrace. Why the hell didn’t I know about it?”

  The small man and the woman glanced at each other, said nothing.

  “You’re fired,” Kirk Bastien said, voice rising. Nell had heard he had a bad temper, had never before seen a demonstration. “The both of you. Get out of my sight.” At that moment, Kirk Bastien noticed her.

  “Nell?” he said, lowering his voice and putting on his sunglasses. His face was bright red.

  “Hi, Kirk.”

  “What are you doing here?” he said. He turned toward Lee Ann and frowned.

  “Hello, Mayor,” Lee Ann said. “We were just out for a spin.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Kirk said. “You’re doing a story on this?”

  “Looks like a story to me,” Lee Ann said.

  “Aw, come on now,” Kirk said. He approached Lee Ann, buttoning his jacket. Nell hadn’t seen him in a while, noticed how much weight he’d put on; hurricane stress had had the opposite effect on Clay, dulling his appetite, reducing him. “How’s that going to help morale?”

  Lee Ann looked up at him. “That’s not our job.”

  “I know that, Lee Ann. But everyone’s so worn out. How about we make ourselves a deal?”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “This mess is a
ll cleaned up by nightfall,” Kirk said. “You write a nice story about something else.”

  He waited, towering over her. There was no threat or anything like that, but still Nell admired the way Lee Ann stood her ground and waited a long time before saying, “It’s a deal, but I’ll need some pictures just in case.”

  “Knock yourself out,” Kirk said, stepping aside.

  Lee Ann dug a small camera from her bag, moved closer to the bayou, took pictures from different angles. Then she turned to Nell. “All set?”

  “Bye, Kirk,” Nell said.

  “That husband of yours is doing a fabulous job,” Kirk said. “You say hi, now.”

  Nell and Lee Ann got in the car. They heard Kirk’s voice rising again. “You two familiar with that expression?” he said; the jobless assistants hadn’t moved. “Nightfall?”

  “So they’re not fired?” Nell said as Lee Ann did a U-turn and drove back down Parish Street.

  “Not till tomorrow,” Lee Ann said. “And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”

  Nell laughed. She reached for her latte, took a sip. It was cold.

  “That woman staffer has a law degree from Tulane,” Lee Ann said. “What the hell she’s doing—” Lee Ann’s cell phone rang. She picked it up. “Hello?” Her hand tightened on the receiver; the knuckles went white, almost as though they were piercing her skin. “Got it,” she said, and clicked off. All of a sudden Nell could smell her.

  Lee Ann slowed down, glanced over. “I’m not sure what to do about you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Nell said.

  “Drop you off or bring you along.” Lee Ann bit her lip. “Bringing you along might be better, but…”

  “Bringing me along where?” said Nell.

  “To meet Nappy Ferris,” Lee Ann said; then, after a little pause, she stepped on the gas.

  CHAPTER 7

  Lee Ann drove fast, hunched over the wheel. She swung north on Stonewall Road, passing the DK Industries yard, where Nell caught a glimpse of Duke Bastien striding somewhere in a hard hat. Then came strip malls, used-car lots, gun shops, the town line, and they crossed into Stonewall County, rural and piney, where all the faces were black.