Amaia accepted that. Under cover of the deeply disquieting darkness, she pushed further. “What do you think the boss is up to now? You should have seen him and Bull conspiring when they thought nobody was looking.”
“Assistant Inspector Salazar, there’s one thing you need to know about Dupree: he’s constantly thinking about the big picture. He’s one step ahead, maybe a whole day ahead. That’s why he always seems worried and distracted. He’s Atlas with the fucking world on his shoulders.”
“He doesn’t smile much,” Charbou acknowledged. “That’s for sure.”
“He’s the serious kind, but I will admit he’s been particularly remote since we got here.”
Amaia looked toward Charbou, still cloaked in darkness. “And you, Bill? Do you know what your partner’s up to? Maybe I’m wrong, but when they were introduced at the police station, I had the distinct impression they knew one another.”
“Oh, no, Assistant Inspector, don’t go there,” he said with a chuckle. “I, for one, sure know about being loyal.”
“I thought loyalty and sincerity went hand in hand,” she insisted. “Doesn’t it bother you that your partner’s hiding things?”
“We’re Bill and Bull, not Tom and Jerry. Loyalty doesn’t mean sharing everything. It means sharing whatever needs to be shared.”
Amaia gave Charbou a big, invisible smile. She’d never have done so if he could see her.
29
MAUDIT
Superdome, New Orleans
3:00 a.m., Monday, August 29, 2005
Nana hadn’t taken her sleeping pill. She’d been convinced that without it, she’d stay awake, but she dozed off anyhow. She roused to the constant murmur of ten thousand people breathing and whispering and the constant moan of the wind against the stadium’s dome. She looked up. They’d finally stopped broadcasting music through the PA system, and someone had dowsed the glaring stadium lights. Children who’d been playing on the track earlier in the day now lay across their parents’ laps or curled up like kittens on the ground.
Nana felt a distinctly uncomfortable pressure in her abdomen. She needed to pee. She’d gone to the bathroom before leaving home, but she hadn’t dared leave her seat, for fear someone would steal it. They’d taken the first two seats on the aisle, next to the passageway. Bobby had Seletha’s wheelchair parked in the aisle seat next to him.
More and more people had arrived throughout the afternoon, an ongoing human stream that let up only after the curfew was sounded.
It was hot inside. Nana had drunk all the water in the little bottle she’d received with dinner, and now her bladder was about to pop. She got to her feet, carefully supporting herself with her cane. She’d been sitting for a long time. She was expecting her rheumatic hip to give her trouble, but her knees were worse. Seletha was sleeping with her head dangling. Nana heard her friend’s rattling breath over the constant whine of the wind and the ongoing chatter of those still awake. Bobby was stretched out, his face muffled in the hood of his sweatshirt, hugging their knapsack to his chest. Nana tried to step across his legs, but she stumbled a bit. Bobby opened his eyes.
“Where you going, Nana? You need to stay with us!”
The man in the row behind them watched them without interest. He had three small children in two stadium seats and another asleep in his arms.
Nana blushed. Her kidneys hurt. She leaned over to whisper into Bobby’s ear. “Baby, I have to go to the bathroom.”
Bobby straightened up, alarmed, and looked from his sleeping mother to the passageway where a sign showed the direction to the restrooms. “My God, Nana! What am I gonna do? I can’t leave Seletha, and we can’t all three of us go, because people gonna take our places.”
“Of course not, baby. Don’t you worry, I can go by myself.”
It wasn’t her lucky day. The sign for the restrooms directed her to an entirely different section. Few people were in the passages; most folks had opted for the limited comfort of the stadium seats over the oven-like heat under the stands. The humid air in the tunnel moved sluggishly. There was a line outside the men’s room. She thanked the Lord when she saw there was no line outside the ladies’.
She started to enter, but a woman burst out and almost knocked her over. “Don’t go in there, ma’am!” the woman shouted over her shoulder and ran down the tunnel.
Nana turned to look after her. She didn’t doubt for a minute that there was a disgusting mess inside by now. Did it matter how bad it was? Her bladder was about to explode. This was an emergency, and she’d seen plenty of horrors in her life. She pushed the door open and went inside.
It didn’t stink, or at least not too bad. The place was deserted. Then she heard a panting, a stifled voice, a struggle, thrashing, and choking. She hobbled past the line of sinks, careful to avoid putting her cane in the wet spots on the floor, and she looked around the corner into the long room with stall doors to either side. At the back, in the last stall, two young men were standing in front of an open door. A woman’s long legs were stretched out on the floor, her feet in sandals with narrow red straps. For a moment, Nana thought she was giving birth and the sounds were those of a woman in labor—until she saw a man get up from between the girl’s long legs, hauling up his pants while the next man in line undid his belt buckle and dropped his trousers.
A wave of hot indignation struck her. Her breathing accelerated, and her eyes filled with tears of pure fury. “What you doing?!” she yelled as loud as she could.
The three men looked around, surprised at first and then amused. “Get your ass out of here, old woman,” one of them called with a sneer. He grabbed his crotch and shook it at her. “Or maybe you want some too?”
Nana shook violently. Without stopping to think, she advanced on them. Feeling her cane slipping and unsteady in her trembling hands, she still went for them, staggering and driven by a fury and hatred she’d felt only once before, during that other hurricane.
One of them came out, laughing and mocking, to receive her. He stretched out his arms as if to hug her. Nana clenched her right hand into a fist and threw it with all her strength at the man’s chest. He intercepted it, grabbed her wrists, and effortlessly moved her backward toward the sinks, almost as if leading her in a waltz. Nana wept her hatred. Her tears burned, poisoned by guilt and impotence as she struggled against him. He chuckled and pushed her back with delicate motions as if trying to avoid hurting her, which just humiliated her even more. Once he’d moved her all the way back to the door, as if to counteract his attitude, he said, “Get out of here, old lady, I don’t wanna hurt you. You remind me of my granny.”
Nana was spent. Her arms ached from the struggle, her legs shook with fright, his tight grip about her wrists had hurt her hands. From the back of the restroom, she heard the moans, twice as loud now, of the woman whose face she hadn’t even seen. Their sobs united them, sisters in misery. Nana could do no more. She hated her old woman’s body, her sluggish, useless body filled with rage and hatred. She looked up to see her assailant watching her with obvious indifference, maybe even a touch of sympathy. All that anger and resentment rose up and burst forth from her mouth with the force of a fury from hell. “Damn you! I curse you and those dogs, in the name of your grandmother, your mother, and in the names of all the women buried in your family graves!” she screamed, jabbing her finger at him. “May you be damned for eternity and never see the light, may your semen rot your guts, may you never find peace!”