Sometimes he wished he wasn’t dumb, but mostly he was happy being who he was. Grandmama said he wasn’t dumb, he was blessed. She said, too much thinking led to too much worrying. She said, too much thinking could puff up a person with pride, and pride was a lot worse than dumbness.
As for the powers that be, Grandmama said they were ignorant, and ignorant was also worse than dumb. A dumb person couldn’t learn some things no matter how hard he tried. An ignorant person was smart enough but was too lazy or too mean to learn, or too satisfied with himself. Being truly dumb is a condition, just like being tall or short, or beautiful. Being ignorant is a choice. Grandmama said there were very few truly dumb people in Hell but so many ignorant that you couldn’t count them all.
Nummy pretended not to notice how bad Mr. Lyss stank, but he noticed, all right.
Another problem with Mr. Lyss was that he was excitable.
In her last years, Grandmama spent a lot of time making sure Nummy knew what kind of people to stay away from after she was gone and not able to help him make decisions.
For instance, wicked people were those who would want him to do things he knew, in his heart, were wrong. Smart or not smart, we all know right and wrong in our hearts, Grandmama said. If someone tried to argue Nummy into doing something he knew in his heart was wrong, that person might or might not be ignorant, but that person was for sure wicked.
Excitable people might or might not be wicked, but mostly they were bad news, too. Excitable people couldn’t control their emotions. They might not mean to lead Nummy into wickedness or big trouble of one kind or another, but they’d do it anyway if he wasn’t careful.
Mr. Lyss was one of the most excitable people Nummy ever met. As Chief Jarmillo and Sergeant Rapp walked away and climbed the stairs at the end of the hall, Nummy sat on the lower bunk, but Mr. Lyss shouted after them, saying he wanted an attorney and he wanted one now. With both hands, he shook the cell door, making a racket. He stamped his feet. He spat out words that Nummy had never heard before but that he knew in his heart were words that it was wrong to say.
When the policemen were gone, Mr. Lyss turned to his cellmate. Nummy smiled, but Mr. Lyss did not.
The old man’s face was squinched and angry—or maybe that was just his usual look, a condition not a choice. Nummy had never seen him looking any other way. His short hair was standing out in all directions, the way cartoon animals’ fur and feathers stood out in all directions when they got an electric shock. His bared teeth were like lumps of charcoal after all the black has been burned out of them. His lips were so thin, his mouth looked like a slash.
“What the blazing hell did he mean, we’re livestock?” Mr. Lyss demanded.
Nummy said, “I don’t know that there word.”
“What word? Livestock? You live in Montana and you don’t know livestock? Why’re you jerking my chain?”
Nummy said what was only true: “You don’t have no chain, sir.”
Looming over Nummy, bony fists clenched, Mr. Lyss said, “You being smart with me, boy?”
“No, sir. I’m not smart, I’m blessed.”
Mr. Lyss stared hard at him. After a while, Nummy looked down at the floor. When he raised his eyes again, the old man was still staring at him.
At last, Mr. Lyss said, “You’re some kind of dummy.”
“Is there more kinds than one?”
“There’s a million kinds. There’s the kind who’re dumb about money. There’s others dumb about women. Some are so dumb they spend their whole lives with their heads up their butt.”
“Up whose butt, sir?”
“Up their own butt, whose butt do you think?”
“Can’t be done,” said Nummy. “Not your own head up your own.”
“It’s possible,” Mr. Lyss insisted.
“Even it could be possible, why would they?”
“Because they’re morons,” Mr. Lyss said. “It’s what they do.”
Still doubtful, Nummy said, “They must be way dumber than me.”
“Lots of people are dumber than you because they don’t realize they’re dumb. You realize it. That’s something, anyways.”
“I know my limits,” Nummy said.
“You’re a lucky man.”
“Yes, sir. That’s why they say what they say.”
Mr. Lyss scowled. “What do you mean, what do they say?”
“Dumb luck. They call it that ’cause it happens to dumb people. But it’s never luck, it’s God. God looks out for folks like me.”
“He does, huh? How do you know?”
“Grandmama told me, and Grandmama she never lied.”
“Everybody lies, boy.”
“I don’t,” said Nummy.
“Only because you’re too dumb to lie.”
“You said lots of people is dumber than me, so then lots of people don’t lie.”
Mr. Lyss spat on the floor. “I don’t like you, boy.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I like you—a little.”
“Right there’s a lie. You don’t like me at all.”
“No. I do. I really do. The littlest bit.”
Mr. Lyss’s right eye became larger than his left, as it would have if he put a magnifying glass to it, and he leaned forward as if studying a strange bug. “What’s to like about me?”
“You’re not boring, sir. You’re dangerous excitable, and that’s not good. But you’re what Grandmama called colorful. With no colorful people, the world would be dull as vanilla pudding.”
chapter 9
The instant the cold muzzle of the pistol pressed against the warm nape of her neck, Carson froze. Through clenched teeth, she called Chang a name that, back in the day, would have gotten her thrown off the New Orleans PD for gender, racial, and cultural insensitivity.
He called her a name that was a female anatomical term no doctor ever used, at least not in his professional capacity, and whispered, “Who are you?”
Before she could reply, the killer gasped in shock, as if a cold steel muzzle had been pressed to the warm nape of his neck, and from behind him, Michael said, “We’re cops. Drop the gun.”
Chang was silent, perhaps contemplating the mysteries and the synchronicities of a universe that suddenly seemed less random and more morally ordered than he had thought.
Then he said, “You’re not cops.” To Carson, he said, “You move a muscle, bitch, I’ll blow your brains out.”
The dark bay lapped gently at the hull of the boat, and Carson blinked beads of condensed fog from her eyelashes as she tried without success to blink images of Scout from her mind’s eye.
“Who are you?” Chang demanded again.
“Private investigators,” Michael said. “Plus I’m her husband. I’ve got more at stake here than you do. Think about it.”
“Husband,” Chang said, “you drop your gun.”
“Get real,” Michael said.
“You won’t shoot me,” Chang said.
“What else can I do?”
“You shoot me, I’ll shoot her.”
“Maybe you’ll be dead too fast to shoot.”
“Even dead, I’ll squeeze the trigger reflexively.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Michael said.
“Or your shot will pass through me, kill her, too.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Michael said.
“There could be another way,” Carson said.
Michael said, “I don’t see one, honey.”
“Let’s not be hasty, sweetheart.”
“At least there’s all that life insurance,” Michael said.
“They won’t pay it, dear.”
Chang said, “Don’t talk to each other. You talk to me.”
“All right,” Carson said. “Chang, explain to Michael that the insurance company won’t pay off with you and me dead—and only him alive. It’s just too suspicious.”
“Chang,” said Michael, “tell her that if you shoot her first and then I shoot you, the ballistic evidence will requ
ire the insurance company to pay off.”
“Shut up, shut up!” Chang commanded. “You’re making me very nervous.”
“Chang, you’re not a calming influence yourself,” Carson said.
Chang slid the muzzle of his pistol up from the nape of her neck to the back of her skull and dug it into her scalp. “With Beckmann dead, I have nothing to lose.”
Because she was at the front of the death line, Carson had no one to whose skull she could hold the muzzle of her pistol.
“We could make a deal,” Michael said.
“You have a gun to my head!” Chang complained bitterly.
It seemed to Carson that the killer was so obsessed with the weapon pressed to his head that he had all but forgotten that, like Michael, she was armed.
“Yes, I do,” said Michael, “I have a gun to your head, so I’ve got a negotiating advantage, but you’ve got some cards to play, too.”
Carson’s right arm hung at her side. She turned her hand and directed her pistol toward the deck immediately behind her.
“You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you,” said Chang with what sounded like a perilous degree of despair.
“You have every reason to trust us,” said Michael. “We’re nice people.”
As Carson squeezed off a shot, she dropped toward her knees, intending to fling herself flat on the deck.
Chang screamed in pain and fired a round the instant he was hit.
Maybe Carson didn’t really feel the bullet sizzle across her scalp, but there was muzzle flash, the smell of burnt hair.
She sprawled facedown, rolled on her back, sat up with the pistol in a two-hand grip, saw Chang flat and Michael on top of him with a knee in his back.
“My foot, my foot,” Chang screamed, and Carson said urgently, “Michael, is my hair on fire?” and Michael said, “No, his piece is on the deck, find it!”
Carson found the weapon—“Got it”—and Michael said he needed to vomit, which he had never done in his years as a cop, so Carson knelt beside Chang and put her pistol to his head, which she greatly enjoyed. Chang kept screaming about his wounded foot, and Michael leaned over the railing and spewed into the bay. In the distance a siren rose, and when Michael had purged his stomach, he announced that he had called 911 from the quay, and then he asked Carson if she needed to vomit, and she said she didn’t, but she was wrong, and she vomited on Chang.
chapter 10
Mr. Lyss pointed a finger at Nummy. His fingers were long. They were more bone than flesh. The nails were the color of chicken fat.
Squinting down his arm, along his finger, right into Nummy’s eyes, Mr. Lyss said, “You’re sitting on my bunk.”
“I figured this must be my bunk.”
“You figured wrong. You’ve got the top one.”
“Sorry, sir,” Nummy said, and he got to his feet.
They were eye to eye.
Mr. Lyss’s eyes were like the gas flames on the kitchen cooktop. Not just blue, because lots of nice things were blue, but blue and hot and dangerous.
“What’re you in here for?” Mr. Lyss asked.
“For just a little time.”
“Moron. I mean what’d you do to land here?”
“Mrs. Trudy LaPierre—she hired a man to break in her place and steal the best she’s got.”
“She hired her own damn burglar?” Mr. Lyss chewed his pale, peeling lips with his dead-charcoal teeth. “So it’s an insurance scam, huh?”
“Insurance what?”
“You’re not that dumb, boy, and the jury will know it. You knew why she hired you.”
Mr. Lyss’s breath smelled like tomatoes when you forget to pick them because you don’t like tomatoes, and then they rot on the vine.
Nummy moved away from Mr. Lyss and stood by the cell door. “No, she never done hired me. Who she hired is Mr. Bob Pine. She wanted Mr. Bob Pine to steal her best, then beat Poor Fred to death.”
“Who’s Fred?”
“Poor Fred. Grandmama always called him Poor Fred. He’s Mrs. Trudy LaPierre’s husband.”
“Why’s he Poor Fred?”
“He got a brain stroke years ago. Poor Fred can’t talk no more, and he gets around in his walker. They live next door.”
“So this Trudy wanted him killed, made to look like it happened during a burglary.”
“Mr. Bob Pine he was going to put stolen stuff in my house, I’d go to prison.”
Eyes pinched to slits, shoulders hunched, head thrust forward, like one of those birds that ate dead things on the highway, Mr. Lyss came close again. “Is that your story, boy?”
“It’s what almost happened, sir. But Mr. Bob Pine he got a cold in his feet.”
“In his feet?”
“Such a bad cold, he didn’t feel good enough to do the stealing and killing. So he goes to Chief Jarmillo, tells him all what Mrs. Trudy LaPierre hired him for.”
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday.”
“So why are you here?”
“Mrs. Trudy LaPierre she’s dangerous. Chief says she’s got a history of dangerous, and she’s all crazy-mad at me.”
“She hasn’t been arrested?”
“Nobody can find her.”
“Why would she be mad at you?”
“It’s silly,” said Nummy. “Mr. Bob Pine come to my place to see me before doing the stealing and killing. He wanted to cremate me.”
For no clear reason, Mr. Lyss got angry and shook his bony old fist in Nummy’s face. His knuckles were dirty. “Damn it, boy, don’t complicate dumb with stupid. I’m trying to get a simple truth out of you, and you snarl it up so I just about need a translator. Cremate? Burn you to ashes? If he’s going to pin the crime on you, he’s not going to cremate you first.”
Easing back toward the bunks, trying to escape his cellmate’s breath, which burned in the nose worse than gasoline fumes, Nummy tried harder to get the word right. “Creminate. No. Increminate.”
“Incriminate,” said Mr. Lyss. “Pine wanted to incriminate you, set you up for old Fred’s murder.”
“Poor Fred.”
“But he hadn’t stolen anything yet, he didn’t have anything to plant in your house.”
“No, what he come for was to get some stuff of mine he was going to put in Poor Fred’s house.”
“What stuff?”
“Stuff I didn’t know was stuff I even had. Deeanhay.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Deeanhay. Chief Jarmillo says like some of my hairs, my spit on a water glass.”
“D-N-A, you damn fool.”
“My fingers on the glass, my marks.”
“Your prints.”
“My fingers, my marks again, on a hammer handle. Chief Jarmillo says I wouldn’t have no idea I was giving this stuff away.”
Mr. Lyss followed Nummy to the bunks. “So what happened? Why didn’t Pine go through with it?”
“Mr. Bob Pine he comes, I’m making toast.”
After a moment, Mr. Lyss said, “And?”
“It’s just white-bread toast.”
Mr. Lyss shifted back and forth from foot to foot, back and forth, as if he might break into a little dance. He kept knocking his fists together, too, and his eyes bulged more than it seemed eyes could bulge yet not fall out of their sockets.
He was for sure an excitable person.
“Toast?” Mr. Lyss said as if the whole idea of toast disgusted him. “Toast? Toast? What does toast have to do with anything?”
“What it has to do with is Grandmama’s peach preserves,” Nummy said. He started to sit down to get away from the man’s sickening breath, but he popped up again before his butt touched Mr. Lyss’s bunk. “I made good toast for Mr. Bob Pine. He was crazy for the peach preserves, so I told about Grandmama, how she teached me everything I needed to live okay at home by myself after she went to God.”
Lyss said, “He liked the peach preserves.”
“Sir, he was crazy f
or them preserves.”
“Because he liked the peach preserves, he decided not to kill old Fred—”
“Poor Fred.”
“—decided not to pin the murder on you, and decided to turn the bitch Trudy over to the cops.”
“Mrs. Trudy LaPierre,” said Nummy. “She done a bad thing, which is never a good idea.”
Mr. Lyss rapped his knuckles against Nummy’s chest, the way he might knock on a door. “Let me tell you something, Peaches. If it was me you made toast for, there’s no preserves in the world good enough to keep me from earning Trudy’s blood money. I’d have killed old Fred—”
“Poor Fred.”
“—and I’d kill you to make it look like a remorseful suicide after you offed your neighbor. What do you think of that?”
“Don’t want to think of it, sir.”
Rapping on Nummy’s chest again, Mr. Lyss said, “What you want to do, Peaches, is treat me with respect at all times. I am worse for real than any nightmare you ever dreamed. You want to walk on tippytoe around me from morning to night and back around again. I am the scariest sonofabitch in the state of Montana. Say it.”
“Say what?” Nummy asked.
“Tell me I’m the scariest sonofabitch in Montana.”
Nummy shook his head. “I told you true how I can’t lie.”
“Won’t be a lie,” said Mr. Lyss. He spat on Nummy’s sweatshirt. “Say it, dimwit, or I’ll bite your nose off. I’ve done it to others.”
“But lots of folks is scarier than you,” Nummy said, wishing he could lie if it would save his nose.
“Name me one,” Mr. Lyss demanded.
Pointing through the bars they shared with the adjoining cell, Nummy O’Bannon said, “All them is scarier.”
As if he had not noticed them until now, Mr. Lyss turned to look at the nine people in the neighboring cell and at the ten in the cell beyond that one. “What’s so scary about them?”
“Just you watch, sir.”
“They look like they all volunteered to suck on a gas pipe, and they’ll wait real nice and quiet till they’re allowed to do it. Bunch of nimrods.”