Chapter Nine

August 12, 2016—New Orleans, Louisiana

Raymond groaned and sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His new alarm clock could double for an ambulance siren on its day off. Its puke-green digital readout said it was 7 a.m. Wonder if I can get away with a couple more hours? He sat for a while, his phone in one hand, ready to text LeBlanc some excuse.

No. You already missed too much work.

He got up and went to the kitchen, where he made coffee and drank a cup, pouring the rest of the pot into his silver thermos. Then he showered, brushed his teeth and tongue, and got dressed. No need to shave. Given all the pulp fiction and film noir most people had consumed, his customers would look with suspicion or outright distrust on any private detective without a five o’clock shadow. Besides, even one more task seemed like too much. Maybe it’s depression. I hear that makes you feel tired all the time. I wonder if it makes you feel old, too. Raymond Turner was only forty-one years old but felt twice that age, like a man who has outlived his family and most of his friends.

That goddam picture.

He had found the photo in his office desk while cleaning out a drawer a few weeks back, and it had hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes—a years-younger Raymond and Marie standing in front of the old capitol building in Baton Rouge. Seeing it somehow underscored his loneliness in a way even the empty house did not. Back then, they had still believed they would have children, three or four at least. So much hope in the photograph, two lives stretching out and intertwining, hope that had survived the discovery that Raymond was sterile, that local adoption agencies disapproved of his transient and dangerous profession. He had seen them all in that photo—Marie and the children who never were—felt the vacuum of their absence, and then he had made some piss-poor excuse to LeBlanc and left, dropping the photo, not even thinking about where it might land or who might see it. On the way home, he bought a case of Shiner Bock and felt only mild surprise when LeBlanc was waiting on his porch. The big man had unfolded himself from the swing and stood with his hands in his pockets as Raymond hesitated, afraid to take out the beer, afraid not to.

Might as well bring it on in, LeBlanc said. Using the spare key Raymond kept under the welcome mat, he let himself in.

Raymond followed him, carrying the beer and wondering if he would weep when LeBlanc resigned from the agency and left.

This about that picture I found on the floor this afternoon? LeBlanc said.

Yeah.

LeBlanc sighed. I get it, but we’re not doin all that shit again. Hand it over.

I wish Betsy McDowell was here. She always made Raymond feel better, just like she did with the clients.

LeBlanc poured the beer down the sink and stayed until bedtime. But Raymond had awakened from dreaming of the bridge every night since.

Now, he locked up the house and got in his car. Then he looked at his left hand and saw his ring finger was naked. He got back out and went inside. In his bedroom, the ring lay on his nightstand, where he had left it before taking his shower. It was a silk-fit gold ring filigreed with palm leaves and tiny doves—Marie’s idea, to remind him of the inner peace everyone should seek. He picked it up and slipped it on, as he had done every day for sixteen years, thinking, as he always did, of the words ’til death do us part.

He intended to do better than that.