‘I ain’t gonna eat it, man,’ said their tormentor. ‘Never know what I might catch from you.’
‘Burn, Rod!’ said one of his buddies, and they high-fived.
Rod tossed the fry on the ground, then turned his attention to Angel and Louis, who were watching them without expression.
‘What you looking at?’ said Rod. ‘You faggots too?’
‘No,’ said Angel. ‘I’m an undercover heterosexual.’
‘And I’m really white,’ said Louis.
‘He is really white,’ I confirmed. ‘Takes him hours to put on his makeup before he can leave the house.’
Rod looked confused. His face fell into the appropriate expression without too much effort, so it probably wasn’t the first time.
‘So I’m just like you,’ continued Louis, ‘because you’re not really black either. Here’s something for you to think about: all those bands on your shirts, they only tolerate you because you put money in their pockets. They’re hardcore, and they’re talking to, and about, black people. In an ideal world, they wouldn’t need you, and you’d just have to go back to listening to Bread, or Coldplay, or some other maudlin shit that white boys are humming to these days. But, for now, those guys will take your money, and if you ever wander into any of the ’hoods they emerged from, you’ll get stomped and someone will take the rest of your money as well, and maybe your sneakers too. You want me to, I can draw you a map, and you can go express your solidarity with them, see how that works out for you. Otherwise, you run along, and take Curly and Larry there with you. Go on, now: bust a move, or whatever it is you homeboys do to help you perambulate.’
‘Bread?’ I said. ‘You’re a little out of touch with popular culture, aren’t you?’
‘All that shit sounds the same,’ said Louis. ‘I’m down with the kids.’
‘Yeah, the kids from the nineteenth century.’
‘I could kick your ass,’ said Rod, feeling the urge to contribute something to the conversation. He might have been dumb enough to believe it, but the two guys behind him were smarter, which wasn’t exactly something worth putting on their business cards. Already they were trying to move Rod along.
‘Yes, you could,’ said Louis. ‘Feel better now?’
‘By the way,’ said Angel, ‘I lied. I’m not really heterosexual, although he still really isn’t black.’
I looked at Angel in surprise. ‘Hey, you never told me you were gay. I knew that, I’d never have let you adopt those children.’
‘Too late now,’ said Angel. ‘The girls are all wearing comfortable shoes, and the boys are singing show tunes.’
‘Oh, you gays and your cunning ways. You could run the world if you weren’t so busy just making things prettier.’
Rod seemed about to say something else when Louis moved. He didn’t get up from his chair, and there was nothing obviously threatening about what he did, but it was the equivalent of a dozing rattlesnake adjusting its coils in preparation for a strike, or a spider tensing in the corner of its web as it watches the fly alight. Even through his fog of alcohol and stupidity, Rod glimpsed the possibility of serious suffering at some point in the near future: not here, perhaps, on a busy street with cop cars cruising by, but later, maybe in a bar, or a restroom, or a parking lot, and it would mark him for the rest of his life.
Without another word, the three young men slipped away, and they did not look back.
‘Nicely done,’ I said to Louis. ‘What are you going to do for an encore: scowl at a puppy?’
‘Might steal a toy from a kitten,’ said Louis. ‘Put it on a high shelf.’
‘Well, you struck a blow for something there. I’m just not sure what it was.’
‘Quality of life,’ said Louis.
‘I guess.’ Beside us, the two men abandoned their burgers, left a twenty and ten on the table, and hurried away without saying a word. ‘You even frighten your own people. You probably convinced that guy to vote yes on Prop One just in case you decide to move here.’
‘With that in mind, remind us why we’re here again,’ said Angel. They had arrived barely an hour before, and their bags were still in the trunk of their car. Louis and Angel only took planes when it was absolutely necessary to do so, as airlines tended to frown on the tools of their trade. I told them everything, from my first meeting with Bennett Patchett, through the discovery of the tracking device on my car, and finished with my conversation with Ronald Straydeer and the sending of the photographs from Damien Patchett’s funeral.
‘So they know that you haven’t dropped the case?’ said Angel.
‘If the GPS tracker was working, yes. They also know that I visited Karen Emory, which may not be good for her.’
‘You warn her?’
‘I left a message on her cell phone. Another call in person might just have compounded the problem.’
‘You think they’ll come at you again?’ asked Louis.
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I’d have killed you the first time,’ said Louis. ‘If they figured you for the kind of guy who walks away after some amateur waterboarding, they got you all wrong.’
‘Straydeer said that they’d started out with the intention of helping wounded soldiers. It may be that killing is a last resort. The one who interrogated me said that nobody was going to be hurt by what they were doing.’
‘But he made an exception for you. Funny how folk do that where you’re concerned.’
‘Which brings us back to why you’re here.’
‘And why we’re meeting in public, on a bright summer evening. If they’re watching, you want them to know that you’re not alone.’
‘I need a couple of days. If I can get them to keep their distance, it will make life that much easier.’
‘And if they don’t keep their distance?’
‘Then you can hurt them,’ I said.
Louis raised his glass, and drank.
‘Well, here’s to not keeping one’s distance,’ he said.
We paid our check, and headed to the Grill Room on Exchange for steak, for the prospect of hurting someone always made Louis hungry.