“As long as you’re not hurting anyone but yourself I don’t care what you do or where you get your shit. I’m here because Brigitte hired me to find Corinne.”
His face set in ugly lines again. “Get out.”
I didn’t move.
“I said get out!” He raised his voice to a bellow.
“Just because I mentioned Brigitte’s name?”
“Just because if you’re pally with that broad, you’re a snake by definition.”
“I’m not pally with her. I met her yesterday. She’s paying me to find her sister.” It took an effort not to yell back at him.
“Corinne’s better off without her,” he growled, turning the back of his head to me again.
I didn’t say anything, just stood there. Five minutes passed. Finally he jeered, without looking at me. “Did the sweet little martyr tell you I broke her arm?”
“She mentioned it, yes.”
“She tell you how that happened?”
“Please don’t tell me how badly she misunderstood you. I don’t want to throw up my breakfast.”
At that he swung his gigantic face around toward me again. “Com’ere.”
When I didn’t move, he sighed and patted the bed rail. “I’m not going to slug you, honest. If we’re going to talk, you gotta get close enough for me to see your face.”
I went over to the bed and straddled the chair, resting my arms on its back. Jade studied me in silence, then grunted as if to say I’d passed some minimal test.
“I won’t tell you Brigitte didn’t understand me. Broad had my number from day one. I didn’t break her arm, though: that was B. B. Wilder. Old Gunshot. Thought he was my best friend on the club, but it turned out he was Brigitte’s. And then, when I come home early from a hunting trip and found her in bed with him, we all got carried away. She loved the excitement of big men fighting. It’s what made her a football groupie to begin with down in Alabama.”
I tried to imagine ice-cold Brigitte flushed with excitement while the Bears’ right tackle and defensive end fought over her. It didn’t seem impossible.
“So B. B. broke her arm but I agreed to take the rap. Her little old modeling career was just getting off the ground and she didn’t want her good name sullied. And besides that, she kept hoping for a reconciliation with her folks, at least with their wad, and they’d never fork over if she got herself some ugly publicity committing violent adultery. And me, I was just the baddest boy the Bears ever fielded; one more mark didn’t make that much difference to me.” The jeering note returned to his voice.
“She told me it was when you retired that things deteriorated between you.”
“Things deteriorated-what a way to put it. Look, detective what did you say your name was? V. I., that’s a hell of a name for a girl. What did your mamma call you?”
“ Victoria,” I said grudgingly. “And no one calls me Vicki, so don’t even think about it.” I prefer not to be called a girl, either, much less a broad, but Jade didn’t seem like the person to discuss that particular issue with.
“ Victoria, huh? Things deteriorated, yeah, like they was a picnic starting out. I was born dumb and I didn’t get smarter for making five hundred big ones a year. But I wouldn’t hit a broad, even one like Brigitte who could get me going just looking at me. I broke a lot of furniture, though, and that got on her nerves.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, I can see that. It’d bother me, too.”
He gave a grudging smile. “See, the trouble is, I grew up poor. I mean, dirt poor. I used to go to the projects here with some of the black guys on the squad, you know, Christmas appearances, shit like that. Those kids live in squalor, but I didn’t own a pair of shorts to cover my ass until the county social worker come ’round to see why I wasn’t in school.”
“So you broke furniture because you grew up without it and didn’t know what else to do with it?”
“Don’t be a wiseass, Victoria. I’m sure your mamma wouldn’t like it.”
I made a face-he was right about that.
“You know the LeBlancs, right? Oh, you’re a Yankee, Yankees don’t know shit if they haven’t stepped in it themselves. LeBlanc Gas, they’re one of the biggest names on the Gulf Coast. They’re a long, long way from the Pierces of Florette.
“I muscled my way into college, played football for Old Bear Bryant, met Brigitte. She liked raw meat, and mine was just about the rawest in the South, so she latched on to me. When she decided to marry me she took me down to Mobile for Christmas. There I was, the Hulk, in Miz Effie’s lace and crystal palace. They hated me, knew I was trash, told Brigitte they’d cut her out of everything if she married me. She figured she could sweet-talk her daddy into anything. We got married and it didn’t work, not even when I was a national superstar. To them I was still the dirt I used to wipe my ass with.”
“So she divorced you to get back in their will?”
He shrugged, a movement that set a tidal wave going down the mountain. “Oh, that had something to do with it, sure, it had something. But I was a wreck and I was hell to live with. Even if she’d been halfway normal to begin with, it would have gone bust, ’cause I didn’t know how to live with losing football. I just didn’t care about anyone or anything.”
“Not even the Daytona,” I couldn’t help saying.
His black eyes disappeared into tiny dots. “Don’t you go lecturing me just when we’re starting to get on. I’m not asking you to cry over my sad jock story. I’m just trying to give you a little different look at sweet, beautiful Brigitte.”
“Sorry. It’s just… I’ll never do anything to be able to afford a Ferrari Daytona. It pisses me to see someone throw one away.”
He snorted. “If I’d known you five years ago I’d of given it to you. Too late now. Anyway, Brigitte waited too long to jump ship. She was still in negotiations with old man LeBlanc when he and Miz Effie dropped into the Gulf of Mexico with the remains of their little Cessna. Everything that wasn’t tied down went to Corinne. Brigitte, being her guardian, gets a chunk for looking after her, but you ask me, if Corinne’s gone missing it’s the best thing she could do. I’ll bet you… well, I don’t have anything left to bet. I’ll hack off my big toe and give it to you if Brigitte’s after anything but the money.”
He thought for a minute. “No. She probably likes Corinne some. Or would like her if she’d lose thirty pounds, dress like a Mobile debutante and hang around with a crowd of snot-noses. I’ll hack off my toe if the money ain’t number one in her heart, that’s all.”
I eyed him steadily, wondering how much of his story to believe. It’s why I stay away from domestic crime: everyone has a story, and it wears you out trying to match all the different pieces together. I could check the LeBlancs’ will to see if they’d left their fortune the way Jade reported it. Or if they had a fortune at all. Maybe he was making it all up.
“Did Corinne talk to you before she took off on Monday?”
His black eyes darted around the room. “I haven’t laid eyes on her in months. She used to come around, but Brigitte got a peace bond on me, I get arrested if I’m within thirty feet of Corinne.”
“I believe you, Jade,” I said steadily. “I believe you haven’t seen her. But did she talk to you? Like on the phone, maybe.”
The ugly look returned to his face, then the mountain shook again as he laughed. “You don’t miss many signals, do you, Victoria? You oughta run a training camp. Yeah, Corinne calls me Monday morning. ‘Why don’t you have your cute little ass in school?’ I says. ‘Even with all your family dough that’s the only way to get ahead-they’ll ream you six ways from Sunday if you don’t get your education so you can check out what all your advisers are up to.’”
He shook his head broodingly. “I know what I’m talking about, believe me. The lawyers and agents and financial advisers, they all made out like hogs at feeding time when I was in the money, but come trouble, it wasn’t them, it was me hung out like a slab of pork belly to dry on my own.”