"Told who, Patrick?"
He closed his eyes and grimaced as the pain returned to his legs. The muscles were still raw and the cramping had begun. He gently rolled again and rested on his back. He pulled the sheet down to his waist. "Look, Sandy," he said, waving his hand across the two nasty burns on his chest. "Here's the proof."
Sandy leaned a bit closer and inspected the evidence -the red sores surrounded by shaved skin. "Who did this?" he asked again.
"I don't know. A bunch of people. There was a whole room full of them."
"Where?"
Patrick felt sorry for his friend. He was so eager to know what had happened, and not just about the torture. Sandy, as well as the rest of the world, wanted the irresistible details. It was indeed a wonderful story, but he wasn't sure how much he could tell. No one knew the details of the car crash that burned John Doe. But he could tell his lawyer and friend about his seizure and torture. He shifted his weight again and pulled the sheet up to his neck. Drug free for two days now, he was coping with the pain and trying mightily to avoid more injections. "Pull that chair closer and take a seat, Sandy. And turn off that switch. The light bothers me."
Sandy hurriedly followed orders. He sat as close to the bed as possible. "This is what they did to me, Sandy," Patrick said in the semidarkness. He started in Ponta Pora, with the jogging and the small car with a flat tire, and told the entire story of how they grabbed him.
ASHLEY NICOLE was twenty-five months old when her father was buried. She was too young to remember Patrick. Lance was the only man who lived in the house, the only man she'd ever seen with her mom.
He took her to school occasionally. They sometimes ate dinner as a family.
After the funeral, Trudy hid all photos and other evidence of her life with Patrick. Ashley Nicole had never heard his name mentioned.
But after three days of reporters camping on their street, the child naturally was asking questions. Her mother was acting strange. There was so much tension around the house that even a six-year-old could feel it. Trudy waited until Lance left for a visit with the lawyer, then she sat her daughter on her bed for a little chat.
She began by admitting that she had been married before. Actually, she had been married twice before, but she figured Ashley Nicole wouldn't need to know about the first husband until she was much older. The second husband was the issue for the moment.
"Patrick and I were married for four years, and then he did a very bad thing."
"What?" Ashley Nicole asked, wide-eyed and absorbing more than Trudy wanted.
"He killed a man, and he made it look like, well, there was a big car wreck, you see, a big fire, and it was Patrick's car, and the police found a body inside the car, once the fire was out, and the police figured it was Patrick. Everybody did. Patrick was gone, burned up in his car, and I was very sad. He was my husband. I loved him dearly, and he was suddenly gone. We buried him in the cemetery. Now, four years later, they found Patrick off hiding on the other side of the world. He ran away and hid."
"'Why?"
"Because he stole a bunch of money from his friends, and since he's a very bad man he wanted to keep all of this money for himself." "He killed a man and he stole money." "That's right, honey. Patrick is not a nice person." "I'm sorry you were married to him, Mommy." "Yes. But look, honey, there's something you need to understand. You were born when Patrick and I were married." She let the words drift through the air, and watched the little eyes to see if she caught the message. Evidently not. She squeezed Ashley Nicole's hand and said "Patrick is your father."
She looked blankly at her mother, the wheels turning rapidly in her head. "But I don't want him to be-"
"I'm sorry, honey. I was gonna tell you when you were much older, but Patrick is about to come back now, and it's important for you to know." "What about Lance? Isn't he my father?" "No. Lance and I are just together, that's all." Trudy had never allowed her to refer to Lance as her father. And Lance, for his part, had never shown the slightest interest in approaching the arena of fatherhood. Trudy was a single mom. Ashley Nicole had no father. This was perfectly common and acceptable.
"Lance and I have been friends for a long time," Trudy said, keeping the initiative and trying to prevent a thousand questions. "Very close friends. He loves you very much, but he is not your father. Not your real father anyway. Patrick, I'm afraid, is your real father, but I don't want you to worry about him." "Does he want to see me?"
"I don't know, but I'll fight forever to keep him away from you. He is a very bad person, honey. He left you when you were two years old. He left me. He stole a bunch of money and disappeared. He didn't care about us then, and he doesn't care about us now. He wouldn't be coming back if they hadn't caught him. We would never have seen him again. So don't worry about Patrick and what he might do."
Ashley Nicole crawled across the end of the bed and cuddled in her mother's lap. Trudy squeezed and patted her. "It's going to be all right, honey. I promise. I hated to tell you this, but with all those reporters out there and all the stuff on television, well, I just thought it best."
"Why are those people out there?" she asked, clutching her mother's arms.
"I don't know. I wish they would leave."
"What do they want?"
"Pictures of you. Pictures of me. Pictures they can put in the newspapers when they talk about Patrick and all die bad things he's done."
"So they're out there because of Patrick?"
"Yes, honey."
She turned and looked at Trudy square in the eyes, and said, "I hate Patrick."
Trudy shook her head as if the child were naughty, then she clutched her tightly, and smiled.
LANCE WAS BORN and raised on Point Cadet, an old fishing community on a small peninsula jutting into the Bay of Biloxi. The Point was a working neighborhood where the immigrants landed and the shrimpers lived. He grew up in the streets on the Point, and still had many friends there, one of whom was Cap. It was Cap who had been behind the wheel of the van loaded with marijuana when the narcs stopped them. They had awakened Lance, who'd been asleep with his shotgun amid the thick blocks of can-nabis. Cap and Lance had used the same lawyer, received the same sentence, and at nineteen been sent away together.
Cap ran a pub and loan-sharked money to cannery workers. Lance met him for a drink in the rear of the pub, something they tried to do at least once a month, though Cap saw less and less of Lance now that Trudy had become wealthy and they had flioved to Mobile. His friend was troubled. Cap had read the papers, had in fact been waiting for Lance to appear with a long face, looking for a sympathetic ear.
They caught up on the gossip over beer-who had won how much at the casinos, where the newest crack source was, who was being shadowed by the DEA- the usual idle chitchat of small-time Coast crooks still dreaming of riches.
Cap despised Trudy, and in the past he had often laughed at Lance for trailing behind her wherever she might go. "So how's the whore?" he asked.
"She's fine. Worried, you know, since they've caught him."
"She oughta be worried. How much life insurance did she collect?"
"Coupla mill."
"Paper said two point five. Way that bitch spends it, though, I'm sure there ain't much left."
"It's safe."
"Safe my ass. Paper said she's already been sued by the life insurance company."