“He said, ‘I’m calling for Dave Robicheaux,’” she said. “I told him I didn’t understand. Then he said it again, ‘I’m calling for Dave.’ So I said, ‘You mean you’re delivering a message for him?’”
“Then he knew he’d found the right school.”
“What?”
“He’s a slick guy.”
“I’m sorry if I handled it wrong,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. He’s probably a bill collector. They follow me around the country.” I smiled at her, but she didn’t buy it.
She set her iced tea on the porch railing and sat with her knees close together and her hands folded in her lap. She dropped her eyes, then looked up at me again.
“I’m probably being intrusive, but you’re in some trouble, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Who is this man?”
“I’m not sure. If he calls again, though, I’d appreciate your letting me know.”
“Is he a criminal?”
I looked at her face and eyes. I wondered how much of the truth she was able to take. I decided not to find out.
“Maybe,” I said.
She pinched her fingers together in her lap.
“Mr. Robicheaux, if he’s a threat to Alafair, we need to know that,” she said. “You have an obligation to tell us that, I think.”
“This guy didn’t have a Texas accent, did he?”
“No. He didn’t have an accent.”
“A couple of guys have a beef with me. Maybe he works for one of them. But their beef is with me. It’s not going to affect anything at your school.”
“I see,” she said, and her eyes went away into the sunlight on the yard.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound sharp,” I said.
“You weren’t. I’m sorry you’re having this trouble.” She stood up to go. “I think you should consider calling the police. Your daughter is a beautiful little girl.”
“There’s no law against a guy asking for somebody’s address.”
“You probably understand these things better than I, then. Thank you for the tea.”
“Wait a minute. I appreciate your help. I really do. And Alafair thinks the world of you. But I could start explaining my situation to you now and we’d still be talking tomorrow morning. It’s a mess, and it involves a bunch of bad people. I don’t have any answers for it, either. Sometimes cops can’t do you any good. That’s why as I get older I believe more and more in prayer. At least I feel like I’m dealing with somebody who’s got some real authority.” I smiled again, and this time it took.
“I’ll bet you handle it all right,” she said, and her eyes crinkled. She squeezed my hand and walked down the steps onto the sidewalk, out of the porch’s shadow, into the sunshine, her calves clicking with light in the bright air.
I went into the kitchen and fixed a bowl of Grape-Nuts for lunch. While I ate I stared out the window at the neighbor’s orange cat climbing up the roof of the garage out by the alley. Overhead, two doves sat on the telephone wires. Who had been the man on the telephone? I thought. Sally Dio’s mechanic out of Vegas? Or maybe somebody who worked with Harry Mapes. Why not? It would be a safe way for Mapes to keep me agitated and off-balance. He was a mailer of hypodermic needles and threats against a child. A telephone call to the school would be consistent with his past behavior. At least that’s what a police department psychologist would say.
Except for the fact that I was the defendant in an upcoming murder trial and Mapes was the prosecution witness. The apparatus of the law was on his side; he was the friend of the court, the chain-whipped victim of an alcoholic, burnt-out cop. Mapes didn’t need to shave the dice.
Which brought me back to my original speculation and Dan Nygurski’s warning, one I truly did not want to confront. A faceless button man whose only name was Charlie.
Call the police, she had said. Suffering God, I thought, why is it that in problematic situations almost everyone resorts to axioms and societal remedies that in actuality nobody believes in? Tess Regan was a good girl, and obviously I was being too hard on her in my frustration, but ask yourself, have you ever known anyone whose marriage was saved by a marriage counselor, whose drinking was cured by a psychiatrist, whose son was kept out of reform school by a social worker? In a badass, beer-glass brawl, would you rather have an academic liberal covering your back or a hobnailed redneck?