Delusion Read online

  Delusion

  Peter Abrahams

  TO LAURA GERINGER

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  The man they called Pirate heard a guard coming down…

  Chapter 2

  Light slanted down through the gently heaving water in sunny…

  Chapter 3

  The seaplane rose in a long semicircle. At first Little…

  Chapter 4

  A little ghost brother, going round and round?” said Nellie.

  Chapter 5

  Pirate opened his Bible, read the following passage several times.

  Chapter 6

  Lee Ann was on the phone. “Any chance of getting…

  Chapter 7

  Lee Ann drove fast, hunched over the wheel. She swung…

  Chapter 8

  Clay hurried across the clearing, followed by his driver and,…

  Chapter 9

  Scuff, scuff, scuff. Pirate, on his bunk, picked up the…

  Chapter 10

  Pirate dreamed about God. God thundereth marvellously with his voice.

  Chapter 11

  You went to the hearing?” Clay said. “I don’t understand.”

  Chapter 12

  Norah?”

  Chapter 13

  That night Nell fixed a nice dinner—roast pork with orange…

  Chapter 14

  Pirate unlocked the minibar. “Just lookin’,” he said aloud. Nice…

  Chapter 15

  The Guardian landed with a thump in the driveway. Nell,…

  Chapter 16

  Pirate awoke. For a moment, he didn’t know where he…

  Chapter 17

  And what about the live lineup, the one that came…

  Chapter 18

  Nell wasn’t a gambler, had never made any kind of…

  Chapter 19

  Am I disturbing you?”

  Chapter 20

  Clay and Nell drove home from the airstrip east of…

  Chapter 21

  The Yeller’s Autobody wrecker was just pulling away from the…

  Chapter 22

  Pirate opened the door. Yes, her: the tanned, in-shape one,…

  Chapter 23

  Was it possible?

  Chapter 24

  This was nice, to play a little music in Joe…

  Chapter 25

  Nell?”

  Chapter 26

  Night: a warm night with soft sounds in the air.

  Chapter 27

  Alone in her house all night: Nell hardly slept. And…

  Chapter 28

  Nell left Foodie and Company and drove home. As she…

  Chapter 29

  Beauregard Street had changed, or else Pirate was remembering wrong.

  Chapter 30

  Nell got off the floor. Pain shot up and down…

  Chapter 31

  Timmy drove Nell home. His uniform was crisply ironed and…

  Chapter 32

  Pirate poked his head around a corner, got a partial…

  Chapter 33

  Nell gazed out the window. Rain pounded down on the…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Peter Abrahams

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  The man they called Pirate heard a guard coming down the cell block. Pirate had excellent hearing. He could identify the guards just from the sound of their footsteps on the cement floor. This one—Hispanic, bushy salt-and-pepper mustache, dark depressions under his eyes—had a tread that was somehow muffled and heavy at the same time, and once in a while he dragged a heel in a way that made a little scuffing sound Pirate found pleasant.

  Scuff, scuff, and then the footsteps stopped. “Hey,” the guard said.

  Pirate, lying on his bunk, facing the wall—a featureless wall, but he’d grown to like it—turned his head. The Hispanic guard with the mustache and tired eyes—Pirate no longer bothered to learn their names—stood outside the bars, keys in hand.

  “Wakie wakie,” the guard said.

  Pirate hadn’t been sleeping, but he didn’t argue. He just lay there, head turned so he could see, body curled comfortably, one hand resting on his Bible. Pirate hardly even opened it anymore—the one section that interested him now pretty much committed to memory—but he liked the feel of it, especially that gold tassel for marking your place.

  “Come on,” the guard said. “Shake a leg.”

  Shake a leg? Pirate didn’t understand. It wasn’t chow time, and besides, weren’t they in lockdown? Hadn’t they been in lockdown the past two or three days, for reasons Pirate had forgotten, or never known? He didn’t understand, but didn’t argue, instead getting off the bunk and moving toward the bars. Keys jingled. The guard opened up, made a little motion with his chin, a quick tilt. Pirate raised his arms, spread his legs, got patted down. The guard grunted. Pirate turned, lowered his pants, bent over. The guard grunted again. Pirate straightened, zipped up. The guard made another chin motion, this one sideways. Pirate stepped outside.

  They walked down the corridor, the guard on Pirate’s right. On the right was bad, his blind side, made him uncomfortable. But there was nothing he could do.

  “You got a visitor,” the guard said.

  A visitor? Pirate hadn’t had a visitor in a long time, years and years. They went down the row of cells, Pirate’s good eye, his only eye, registering all the familiar faces, each one more or less wrong in its own way; and around the corner, more cells, four tiers, on and on. It reminded him, when he thought of it at all, of an experiment he’d seen in a movie, one with rats. The difference was he’d felt sorry for the rats. Pirate didn’t feel sorry for anyone in here, himself included. That part—no longer feeling sorry for himself—was his greatest accomplishment. He was at peace, in harmony with passing time. That was the message of the gold tassel.

  “Who?” he said.

  “Who what?” said the guard.

  “The visitor.”

  “Your lawyer, maybe?”

  Pirate didn’t have a lawyer. He’d had a lawyer long ago, Mr. Rollins, but hadn’t heard from him in years.

  They came to a gate. Pirate’s guard handed over a slip of paper. Another guard opened the gate. They went down a short walkway, through an unlocked door, into the visiting room.

  There were no other inmates in the visiting room. The guard took a seat at the back, picked a newspaper off the floor. On the far side of the glass, by one of the phones, sat a young woman Pirate had never seen. She smiled—smiled at him, Pirate. No doubt about it—besides, there was no one else around, no one she could have been smiling at. Except the guard, maybe; but the guard, opening his newspaper, wasn’t paying any attention to the woman. A big photograph of a man with his arms raised in triumph was on the front page. Pirate didn’t recognize him.

  “Ten minutes,” said the guard.

  Pirate moved toward the glass wall, a thick, shatterproof glass wall with three steel chairs in front, bolted to the floor. He sat in the middle one, facing the young woman. Her skin transfixed him. No one inside—inmates or guards—had skin like this, smooth, glowing, so alive. And her eyes: the whites of them, so clear, like alabaster, a word he’d come across in his reading and now grasped.

  She raised a hand, small and finely shaped, with polished nails and a gold wedding band. He followed its movements like a dog; as a boy, he’d had a very smart dog named Snappy, capable of following silent commands. Some time passed—his mind on Snappy—before he realized what she wanted him to do: pick up the phone.

  He picked up the phone. She spoke into hers.

  “Hello, Mr. DuPree.”

  His real name: When had he last heard it? “
Hello,” he said; and then, remembering his manners, added, “ma’am.”

  She smiled again, her teeth—more of that alabaster, like works of art, having nothing to do with biting, sparkling even through the dusty, smeary glass—distracted him, so he almost missed what came next. “Oh,” she said, “just call me Susannah. Susannah Upton.”

  “Susannah Upton?”

  She spelled both names for him. “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Yeah?” said Pirate. “Are you from Mr. Rollins?”

  “Mr. Rollins?” she said.

  “My lawyer,” said Pirate. “At the trial.”

  Susannah Upton frowned. That meant one tiny furrow appeared on her brow, somehow making her look even younger. “I believe…” she began, and opened a leather briefcase, taking a sheet of paper from a folder with Pirate’s full name written in red on the front: Alvin Mack DuPree. “…yes,” Susannah continued, “he passed away.”

  “Died?”

  Susannah nodded. “Almost ten years ago now.”

  At that moment, Pirate felt a strange feeling that came from time to time, a squinting in the socket where his right eye had been; like he was trying to see better, get things in focus. “What of?” Pirate said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Mr. Rollins. What did he die of?”

  “It doesn’t say.”

  Pirate tried to picture Mr. Rollins, estimate his age back then. He’d had graying hair, but that didn’t necessarily mean…

  “But my visit has nothing to do with Mr. Rollins,” Susannah went on. “Are you familiar with the Justice Project, Mr. DuPree?”

  Although he couldn’t form an image of Mr. Rollins’s face, Pirate had a clear memory of Mr. Rollins’s breath in the courtroom, boozy little rising clouds, almost visible. Was it the booze that killed him? Pirate was about to ask, when Susannah spoke.

  “Mr. DuPree? The Justice Project?”

  He shook his head, although he thought he remembered a band by that name. Pirate had played guitar at one time, traveled with a bar band that covered country hits, and once, at the Red Rooster, even backed up a singer who was going to be the next Delbert McClinton. The chords on “You Win Again” went E, B7, E, A.

  “We’re a nonprofit legal advocacy group,” Susannah said, “dedicated to freeing the innocent.”

  “No innocents in here,” Pirate said.

  Susannah blinked. “But you, Mr. DuPree, you’re in here.”

  “Yup.”

  Susannah gazed at him for a moment, then cradling the phone between her shoulder and chin, she leafed through the folder with his name on the cover; a thick folder.

  “I don’t have any money,” Pirate said.

  “Money?”

  “For lawyers.”

  “No money needed,” Susannah said. “We’re funded by private donors. All expenses associated with your case will be taken care of.”

  “My case?”

  “That’s what brings me here,” Susannah said. “There’ve been some exciting developments—all on account of Bernardine, which is the weird part.”

  “Bernardine?” Pirate knew no one of that name, never had.

  “The hurricane, Mr. DuPree. In September.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Pirate, trying to recall the details. Bernardine had passed over the prison—a hundred miles inland, maybe more—at night; he hadn’t heard a thing.

  “You’re aware of the extent of the damage?” Susannah said.

  “Damage?”

  “Down in Belle Ville. Half the town got flooded, including Lower Town and the whole business district.”

  “Yeah?” Pirate said. “Princess Street, too?”

  “I think so,” Susannah said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I had a job on Princess Street once,” said Pirate. Bouncer at the Pink Passion Club, a good job, possibly the best job he’d ever had, partly because of the tips the girls gave him, never less than twenty dollars, but more because of the good feeling he got protecting them. Pirate had been jacked in those days, ripped. He was still big, but the jacked, ripped part was gone.

  “What kind of job?” Susannah said.

  “Just a job.”

  Susannah nodded. “In answer to your question, Princess Street got flooded, too. Everything south of Marigot was under six feet of water for days and days, including the courthouse, police headquarters and the state offices. The cleanup’s still going on, but FEMA found something—we’re still not sure exactly when—that pertains to your case. And that’s putting it mildly.”

  Pertains meant…? Pirate had no clue. “Something from when I worked at the Pink Passion Club?” he said.

  Susannah shook her head. “This goes back to the night of the murder.”

  “What murder?”

  “The murder of Johnny Blanton,” said Susannah. For a moment her voice faded, the connection going bad even though they were in touching distance. All calls were recorded; Pirate knew that, had temporarily forgotten. “Why you’re here,” Susannah added.

  Pirate no longer denied he’d killed Johnny Blanton. Not that he confessed, or made any kind of admission; he just no longer denied it. What was the point? That way lay turmoil; he was at peace.

  Susannah shuffled through her papers. “Do you remember why you didn’t take the stand at your trial?”

  Mr. Rollins’s orders: something about how his criminal record—including a robbery where no one got hurt but resembled the Johnny Blanton case in other ways—made it a poor idea. Pirate shook his head. His memories from that period were blurry; long ago, and he’d been coming off two or three years of booze and drugs. The only really clear trial memory he had was the length of time the jury had been out—twenty-three minutes. “Just long enough to polish off the doughnuts,” someone, maybe a reporter, had said as they’d led Pirate away.

  “Tell me about your alibi,” Susannah said.

  Pirate didn’t feel like doing that. “Why?”

  “Since you didn’t take the stand,” Susannah said, “your alibi entered the record only in the state’s direct examination of the detective—what was his name?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Pirate said. He yawned; normally this was nap time.

  “And evidently Mr. Rollins didn’t see fit to cross,” Susannah said, “meaning it was never presented in its best light.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “Your alibi.”

  Why all this talk about his alibi? It was a piss-poor alibi; Pirate had known that from the start. “No one to back it up,” he said. “No witnesses.”

  Susannah smiled again, a quick little smile. “Run through it for me anyway.”

  Pirate shrugged. He ran through it, his puny alibi, a night alone in his apartment, drinking, drugging, watching TV, passing out till the middle of the next day. When they’d asked him what he’d watched on TV, he hadn’t remembered a single show. The man he’d been was puny, too. He was much better now.

  “This was your apartment at 2145 Bigard Street? Number four A?”

  Pirate nodded, although he’d forgotten the apartment number and the address, too; only a memory of the building itself remained, brick, with an odd yellow stain down the front.

  “Approximately two blocks north of Nappy’s Fine Liquors at the corner of Charles?” Susannah said.

  Pirate nodded. He remembered Nappy’s all right, with its tiny slit windows, like a fort.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” Susannah said. She reached into the folder, took out a blown-up photograph, held it to the glass.

  Pirate gazed at the photograph, a close-up of a young man, midchest to the top of his head. The young man looked angry about something, his mouth open like he might have been shouting. In fact, he was a mean-looking son of a bitch, with hostile eyes and a snake tattoo wound around one of his huge biceps. Pirate had a tattoo just like that, now faded by the passage of so much…

  And then it hit him, who this was. He glanced at—what was her name again?—Susannah; he glanced at her, saw ho
w she was watching him, the way you watch someone unwrapping a present when you know what’s inside, and then looked back at this picture of himself, his much-younger, two-eyed self. He gazed at that pale blue right eye—an angry eye, the pupil dilated as though he’d been on something, but there, intact, whole.

  Pirate’s eye, his only eye, shifted back to Susannah.

  “Well,” she said, “do you see?”

  “See what?” Pirate said.

  “What this means.”

  Pirate stared at the picture. He noticed that this younger self of his was holding up something, a card or…a driver’s license. His driver’s license: he could just make out the tiny picture of himself, a still-younger version, last year of high school.

  “No,” Pirate said. “I don’t know what it means.”

  “Check the bottom right-hand corner.”

  Pirate checked the bottom right-hand corner. He saw one of those time codes, in computer-style lettering: 12:41 AM July 23. And then the year, twenty years before. All these numbers swam around in his mind, then clicked together in a way that made his steady, plodding heartbeat speed up a little. He was looking at a photograph from the night of Johnny Blanton’s murder. Pirate turned slowly to Susannah.

  “It’s a still taken from a security video camera over the front door at Nappy’s Fine Liquors,” she said. “The store was closed at that hour, of course, but you wanted in. You even showed proof of age.”

  “I…I don’t remember.”

  “The way we figure it, you woke up in the night, perhaps not very sober, went out for more to drink, came back home, blacked out.”

  “I just don’t…”

  “That’s the beauty part,” Susannah said. “It doesn’t matter whether you remember or not. According to the trial testimony, Johnny Blanton was murdered between twelve-thirty and twelve forty-five. It might even have happened at that exact same minute, twelve forty-one.”