It was something the way she could get different looks in those brown eyes, from sparkly to sad to a kind of soulful light, one right after another, her eyes working him over, softening him up.
“But you still blame me, don’t you?”
“I never did. It was that showboat lawyer you worked for.”
“That’s what you say. No matter what else, Jack, you’re polite.” She kept the soulful light burning low as she said, “Would you call me sometime?”
He smiled. It was all right to let himself be softened up as long as-there, telling him by her smile-she realized he knew what she was doing. Helene was fun. He said, yes, he’d call her.
And walked back to the table.
Lucy looked up. Boylan was still talking, telling her there was more to revolution than storming the palace, putting your boots up on the king’s table, drinking his wine. He paused, glancing at Jack as he sat down. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Then turned to Lucy again, saying, “That’s the glory part. Then comes the work of changing attitudes steeped in tatty, worn-out traditions. With your permission, Sister, consider a people raised to believe it’s all right with just cause to blow a woman’s legs off, but a mortal sin to spread them.”
Lucy said, “You haven’t stormed the palace yet.”
Boylan sat back and, for the first time, seemed tired. “It will come.”
“You’ll keep trying.”
“It’s become a ritualized game, Sister. I play it or what?… Sweep rubbish and empty bins.” For several moments he stared at the table in silence, finally looked up and said, “Jack, I’ll visit the lavat’ry if you’ll point the direction.”
“By the front entrance.”
He watched Boylan push up with an effort and walk off. Then turned to Lucy, her quiet expression. She was staring at him and it surprised him.
“Well, what do you think?”
“You had a gun last night. Boylan said, ‘You don’t have a pistol in your hand this time.’ ”
“Yeah, I had to find out who he was.”
“You carried a gun with you?”
“No, it was the colonel’s. I put it back.” Jack paused. “But when we do it, we’re not just gonna ask the guy for his money and he hands it to us. You understand, we’ll have to have guns. There’s no other way to do it.”
She seemed to think about it before saying, very quietly, “No, there isn’t, is there?”
Franklin de Dios, standing inside the entrance of the restaurant, watched Boylan push through the door to the Men’s room.
He had followed Boylan here from the hotel, watched him sit down at a table, and watched the man and woman he remembered from the funeral coach at the gasoline station in St. Gabriel come in and sit with him at the table. The man in the dark suit he remembered well, talking to him in the funeral place, the man offering him beer. He had wondered if this was the same man that night, one of the police, who put them in the trunk of the car and left them until two more police in uniforms let them out, listened with patience to Crispin and then told him to have a nice evening. But how could this one be a police the same night? No-except he had a feeling he was one of those first two police, who were like the police of Miami, Florida. Or, as Crispin now believed, those first two weren’t police at all. Then the one could be the man from the funeral place. He had said to Crispin he didn’t understand any of this, who was who. Crispin had said to him, “You don’t have to think or know everything. Do what you’re told.”
Okay. But he would continue to think.
Franklin de Dios unbuttoned his jacket as he walked toward the Men’s room in Ralph & Kacoo’s.
Lucy was hunched over the table. She said, “When you robbed hotel rooms, did you carry a gun?”
Jack was about to get up, his hands on the edge of the table. “Never, ever. Somebody happened to wake up, you don’t think I was gonna shoot ’em.”
She was nodding, thoughtful. “But this is different. We’ll need guns.”
“It’s a much higher-class criminal offense, armed robbery. If you want to look at it that way. And if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the bathroom.”
He saw her startled expression as he got up.
She said, “We’re not planning a robbery, Jack.” Sounding honestly surprised.
“What do you call it?”
“We’re not bandits.”
“Tell me what we are. When I come back.”
Franklin de Dios walked up behind Jerry Boylan standing at the urinal. He extended the Beretta to place the muzzle in the center of the gray herringbone tweed, pushed it in to feel the man’s spine, the man’s head turning to look over his shoulder, the man saying, “What?…” and shot him. As the man’s body jerked and then became loose and began to sag against the urinal, Franklin de Dios raised the pistol to the base of the man’s skull, placed the muzzle in that hollow spot, and shot him again and stepped away now, turning away, with no desire to look at the wall smeared red or the man falling dead to the floor.
Franklin de Dios worked the Beretta into the waist of his pants close to his left hip, buttoned his jacket and pulled it down straight. He could hear a ringing in his ears but no sounds from beyond the door, in the restaurant. In the war they searched the ones they killed, if there was time; find a few cordobas if they were lucky. This one could have money or not, it was hard to tell from his appearance; but there wasn’t time to see. Crispin had said to kill him because “He wants to steal money that’s for your people, the contras.” Franklin de Dios had said, “They’re not my people.” And Crispin had said, “Do it or we’ll send you back.” There was no way to leave the war.
He said to himself, Now walk.
He pulled open the door. He stepped out of the Men’s room. He saw the man in the dark suit from the funeral home coming toward him, the man’s eyes on him. So he touched the front of his jacket to unbutton it and the man from the funeral home stopped, two strides from him.
Franklin de Dios said, “How you doing?” The man didn’t answer him or move. So Franklin de Dios walked away from the man, out of the restaurant to join the tourists on their way to see Jackson Square and the Cabildo and the St. Louis Cathedral.
JACK INTRODUCED ROY HICKS, expecting some kind of reaction from Lucy. Finally, the man she was so anxious to meet. But she seemed to hold back, cautious, quieter than times before. A different Lucy this evening-with Boylan shot dead that afternoon. Boylan had touched her.
All four of them were quiet at first.
Jack watched Roy sit down with a drink and in silence, without comment, look over the sun parlor; he’d save his remarks for later. Cullen eased into a deep-cushioned chair, stretched his legs over a matching ottoman, and picked up a magazine. Vogue. He’d told Jack the maid had left. No, not because of him. Gone to Algiers for the rest of the week, to visit her sister.
Jack placed his drink and a sherry for Lucy on the coffee table and sat down with her on the sofa. He put his hand over hers and asked her if she was okay. He could feel Roy watching. She nodded, smoking a cigarette, staying within herself. He could feel Roy waiting to take charge, ask questions, become once again a cop interrogating witnesses.
Jack said, “I looked in, that’s all. I didn’t go in all the way.”
“But you were the first one.”
“I was standing there holding the door open, a waiter went in past me. He took one look and turned around.”
“He say anything to you?”
“Not to me. But people were coming over and I heard him say, ‘Don’t go in there. A man’s been killed.’ ”
“How’d he know Boylan was dead if he went in and turned right around?”
“I guess all the blood.”
“What else did he say?”
“I didn’t hang around to hear any more. We left.”