“Sure.”
“Because I think I want to sleep and then do something awful. Did you ever feel that way? You know, to sleep and maybe die inside and then get up and hunt down someone and punish them for everything that’s wrong in the world? I felt that way when my father was sucked away by the storm. I feel that way now. I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well. I’d like to borrow your gun and shoot someone.”
I didn’t know what to say. Nor did I want to hear the way she was talking. “We don’t let the bad guys get to us.”
“You said ‘guys’ instead of ‘fellow.’?”
“My agent sold my novel,” I said.
Her mouth opened. “When?”
“I got the telegram yesterday. I’ll receive a thousand-dollar advance, less the agent’s ten percent. We’re going to get your house repaired.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I saw you with Devos. I forgot.”
She pulled open my shirt and pressed her face into my chest again, then began kicking my leg with her tennis shoe.
“What are you doing?” I asked. She said something against my chest I couldn’t understand. “Say that again?”
Either she didn’t hear me or simply refused to repeat herself. She wiped her face on my chest and stood on my shoes and put her arms deep inside my shirt and wouldn’t let go.
* * *
LATER, WHEN SHE went to the store to buy more cleanser, I used her phone to call Wade Benbow. I told him about my suspicion regarding Henri Devos.
“You really think the guy’s that bad? He’d rub his shit all over her house?”
“He might if that would put blame on someone else.”
“I guess it’s possible.”
“It’s possible? That’s it?” I said.
“You know how many open homicides I have on my desk? Plus other matters, like why you were pumping me about the availability of brown tar around Trinidad.”
“Somebody told me to expect it.”
“Who’s this somebody?” he asked.
“What’s your attitude toward snitches?” I asked.
“I don’t have one.”
“You think of them as lowlifes. That’s why you call them ‘confidential informants.’ Are you smoking a cigarette now?”
“You’re about to tell me the tobacco industry does more harm than dope mules, right? You know what you can do with that?”
He was right about me. I didn’t want to be an informer. Who does? Jo Anne’s car was coming up the road. The sun was in the west, the sky purple, snow and rain blowing in her headlights.
“Don’t mess with me on this,” he said.
“Maybe it was just talk.”
“I know you better than you know yourself, partner. You have a conscience. This is going to eat your lunch.”
“I don’t have any more to say on the matter,” I said.