“Kind of,” I said. “Still British, Mac?”
“There’ll always be an England.”
“Shut up and get here,” I said. “We’re going to have a little chat.”
“You and me, Jack?”
“We’re two of the three,” I said, and all I got back was “Oh.”
MacDonald arrived, sat. “Nikki,” I said. “Get someone else to take the counter and come over here.”
“Jack, I can’t just—”
“Do it,” I said. The old platoon commander in me was talking again. And it worked. She sat, moved her chair oddly close to MacDonald’s.
“Now, old buddy,” MacDonald said. “Before we get into—”
“We are into it, Mac.”
He looked at me, looked away. Nikki looked at Mac, got nothing back.
“Nikki, that was Mac you called the morning you were…”
She breathed, looked me in the eye. “I figured you knew.”
“I’m slow on the uptake,” I said. “But I get it sooner or later.”
MacDonald sighed, exchanged a glance with Nikki. “We’ve been…seeing one another.”
“‘Seeing’?” I said. “Is that what they’re calling it now—”
Mac shook his head. “We’re…”
“We’re just friends,” Nikki said, and there wasn’t a hint of defensiveness.
“Fact is, Jack, I never had a girl—”
“Woman,” Nikki corrected, and he smiled. “I’m trying to convince this Neanderthal that some women possess grey matter beyond a brain stem and a set of nasty bits,” she said.
“So you two have been talking, what—books?”
“Yes,” said Mac with a touch of genuine indignation. “Literature and shit.”
“I see,” I said, hoping I was projecting a faint amusement. I felt my smile vanish as I added, “I’d like to talk about the ‘and shit.’”
MacDonald breathed. Nikki breathed. I didn’t.
Mac was about to speak, but Nikki broke the silence. “Jig’s up, Mac.”
“You. Nikki. You’re the reason Nikki was…”
Nikki’s face said, for the first time in days, she still felt the pain.
“Yes,” MacDonald said. “My fault. Best I can figure was, this guy wanted to hurt me by hurting someone…close to me. Figure he’d seen us out somewhere, some restaurant—”
“We like Chinese,” Nikki chimed in.
“New Nam King?” I asked.
“Ain’t the best place, but it’s…”
“Handy,” she said, looking at him, turning back to me. “You know—for conversation…”
“And shit,” I said.
“There isn’t any of that, Jack,” said Mac. “Not that it’d be your business.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and it occurred: It wasn’t my business.
“So who hit you?” I asked Nikki.
Mac filled it in. “We don’t know. Got a half-assed description—”
“I gave you a very good description,” Nikki intruded.
“Description, is all,” Mac added, touching the back of Nikki’s hand.
“Has to do with this whole ‘commission’ crap, doesn’t it,” I said. It wasn’t a question, and MacDonald’s silence said it needn’t have been.
“We don’t know who it was,” Mac said, and Nikki shrugged.
The next move was mine. “I think I do.”
I stuck to my word. Can’t lie to a lady. Barbara Jean McCorkle had asked for my discretion, and I honoured that.
Somehow, MacDonald knew better than to ask.
21.
31 July, dusk
Collierville
I’d been following Clayton McCorkle steadily for three days now. A time or two to his real estate office, a few more times to the Crescent Club. Twice way along Summer Avenue—once to what turned out to be some stand-around cocktail thing at Rhodes College. The other time, I lost him not far from the Paris Cinema, where he turned off on a side street and I missed him, dumb enough to be in the wrong lane. But I knew who lived on that street.
I kept squeezing MacDonald for whatever I could. I didn’t believe it all, and it was clear he was holding back. But still, he was far more forthcoming than usual. The ‘commission,’ of course, was bogus. Or half so. It was all off the books. “Personal,” MacDonald said, between him and Mayor Wharton. Seems Wharton wasn’t sure who he could count on, but he trusted Mac. Someone, Wharton knew, was dirty. Wharton had known Mac’s family from back when, and that still counts for a lot in Memphis. Why Mac had said anything at all to me, given all this hush-hush, about his ‘commission,’ his ‘task force,’ was a mystery I’d get to later. Right now, I was sitting on Clayton McCorkle and His Eminence, drinking tepid Styrofoam coffee in the car, outside a Collierville restaurant I couldn’t afford to walk into, let alone dine at.
When they came out, it was His Eminence I decided to follow. I wasn’t sure, but I thought McCorkle glanced my way not once, but twice.
22.
04 August, just after sunset
Collierville
There are things you don’t forget from infantry training. Whenever else you might sleep, it’s a hundred per cent stand-to for a half hour before and after dawn, a half hour before and after sunset. The sky’s still bright, but the ground is dark. It’s hard to pick out movement on the ground. Prime time for planned attack, prime time for ambush.
I’d got over a low stretch of wall surrounding the McCorkle residence, though not without a rip in the thigh of a pair of pants too good to rip. Damn things never tear on a seam, always someplace you’ll see the repair. Lynette had never believed in repairing things, though I was still darning socks when I met her. “You replace them,” she’d said.
I’d talked to Mac that afternoon. He’d called me. Unusually forthcoming, he simply announced, “We got ‘im.”
“Who?”
“Booking sheet says ‘Martavius Hooton.’”
“His Eminence?”
“Yup. A little less eminent than before.”
“Guess he won’t be delivering his Sunday sermon.”
“Guess not.”
“Hit the news yet, Mac? It’s gonna be all over town.”
“Ain’t gonna, Jack. Not for a coupla days.”
“You got him on ice?”
“Busy as our beleaguered police force is, Jack, it seems some paperwork has momentarily been misplaced, and the Right Reverend Hooton is currently residing with us in what you might call a…secure location.”
“Not 201 Poplar, I take it.”
“Oh, no, Jack. The commission has security arrangements of its own. Thanks to the cooperation of, shall we say, a not-so-nearby county.”
“And the charges?”
“I suspect you know, Jack.”
“I have an hypothesis or two.”
“‘An’ hypothesis, Jack? Isn’t that a little too English teacher, even for you?”
“Touché. Importing those Mexicans?”
“Yeah,” he said, squeezing a shrug through the phone. “And then some.”
“You mean sex trafficking. Girls from China, Phillipines.”
“Figured you knew,” he said.
“Figured you knew I knew.”
“I think what you don’t know is…three dead girls.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“You know, somehow, Jack, in all this fuss, I neglected to stick a GPS on your ass. Where you at?”
“About five minutes from Starbucks.”
“Jack, when aren’t you five minutes from Starbucks?”
“Fair point,” I said.
“And where will you be tonight?”
“Actually, I have no particular plans for this evening, Mac. What do you have in mind?”
“It’s not an invitation, Kemosabe. And you do most certainly have plans for tonight.”
“I do indeed.” And that’s all I gave him.
I don’t know why, but I kept playing the conversation over in m
y head as I squatted in one of the more unkempt hedges in this corner of the McCorkle property. Dusk gave way to dark, waiting to boredom. And boredom gave way to a set of earbuds and some Steely Dan. That oddly listenable Fagen whine. Aja…when all my dime dancin’ is through…
The beginning of a headache. Eyes wanting to close. A figure, leaving the house. Maybe—too tired to be certain.
I wished Mac had stuck me with a GPS. The next thing I knew was: First light. Massive swelling on the right side of my face. Me, on my side, my whole left side covered in mud and leaves. Grinding pain. And a light, sweet drizzle in the brightening dawn.
23.
18 August, early afternoon
Breaking News
“Can you come down to my office?” MacDonald.
“Well, I could…”
“You must,” he said.
“I would if I knew where your fricking office was, MacDonald.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant to call, I really did. But Jack—”
“You see this thing on the news?”
“What thing?”
Sounded to me like: Yeah, I know. So I called him on it.
A sigh filled the phone.
“I replaced him, Jack. So now I reckon you know where my God damn office is.”
Not fifteen minutes before, Channel 5 had cut into whatever afternoon girl-TV I’d been watching. A cop, a major, Harold Formley, removed from his job in a big way. Press conference from Chief Larry, another from Mayor A.C. Wharton. Formley had been found with child porn on his office computer, of all things. Tucked away, he thought, behind some super-secret security wall. But he hadn’t figured on a new secretary with a masters in computing science she hadn’t mentioned on the job app. After the warrant, they found worse on his home computer. And pictures, printed, tucked in a briefcase he’d forgotten to take with him at the end of his shift. He’d been running protection for what had been called “parties.” For “gentlemen.” Gentlemen, that is, who didn’t prefer blondes, didn’t prefer the local pros, liked them exotic, liked them young. And, sometimes, liked it rough. Half a dozen cops on protection outside these parties—none, beyond Formley, named. Two lawyers, a couple of investment guys, and a lower-court judge, were the rumours, the TV said. No names there, either. Nothing known, they said, about the location of these parties. Except, vaguely, “the eastern part of the metro area.”
The major having been marched out, the Union Avenue precinct needed a new boss. “Just interim,” Mac said when I got there. “But still…”
“Sad,” I said. “Friend of yours?”
“Met him,” Mac said. “But friend? No. Still, one of our own…”
“Thank God for guys like you,” I said. His face said the line had come across a little flat.
“Gets worse,” he said.
“How much worse?”
“Wish I could tell you, Jack,” he said. “You don’t know how much I wish I could tell you.”
“Lunch?” I said. “Might ease the pain.”
“Sure, but…”
“What?”
“Um…I’m a bit embarrassed, but…they hauled me in here so fast…I forgot my wallet.”
I shot him a Johnny Carson deadpan.
“I swear, Jack, I swear, I will make this up to you.”
“Oh, you will,” I said. “You will. Now. You like upscale places, don’t you, Major MacDonald. Don’t you?”
“I do indeed.”
“Lovely. There’s that Chick-Fil-A right across the street.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
We settled on the Pho Saigon, and took my car. Mac threw his briefcase in the back seat. It was clear MacDonald wanted the conversation kept light, and had a whole lot, anyway, that he couldn’t and wouldn’t tell me. So light I kept it.
Back at the Union Avenue precinct, I pulled up by the front door. Mac hopped out, a perfunctory thanks, not much else to say. He jerked the handle on the back door. “Sorry!” I said, and rocked the lock button to open. He reached in for his briefcase.
“Christ,” he said. “Christ almighty.”
I put the car in park, turned. If a guy as brown as MacDonald can look pale, he did.
“This,” he said.
He held up a copy of a copy. Eight by ten. I’d scooped one of the pictures Barbara Jean McCorkle had shown me, scooped it without her seeing. Made my own Xerox to tuck in a file. My file had spilled over the seat as I’d turned back onto Union. The little Filipina girl. The dress. So pretty.
“Park right here,” he said. “You’ll need to come into the office.”
I did, querulous, clueless, following Mac as he and his briefcase and my file preceded.
“This hasn’t hit the news yet,” he said.
“What?”
“Dead,” he said. “State Line Road, this morning.”
He showed me the crime scene shots. Nothing pretty at all. Whoever had done this had wanted more than a dead girl. He’d wanted to send a message.
“How the hell did you get her picture? And where? And from whom?”
24.
04 November, late morning
The Guest Inn
Winter begins on Summer Avenue.
The Admiral Benbow Inn went under. Twice.
Once, late September. I popped home at noon, uncharacteristically, for a file I’d forgotten. Stuck my key card in the door. No green light, no nothing. But the door creaked open, just from my touch. “What?” a voice said, half a dozen doors down, as a woman I hadn’t seen before made the same discovery on stepping up, card in hand, to her room.
The woman was as surprised as I. All I could manage was a dull I don’t know. My stuff was all there, untouched. I went inside, to the office, looking for Mrs. Patel. Admiral Benbow is closed, said a hand-scrawled sign taped to the window of the cashier’s cage. Call owner. And a number with an area code I didn’t recognize. It was disconnected anyway. I packed up and loaded my car—an hour, still hot, tore my pants on a nail in the door jamb. Went to some anonymous place in that clutch of fading motels of the 240 at Sycamore View, and bought a week, in cash. I stayed two, went to some other place. Never really unloaded the car—just the clothes I needed, a few favourite books, and my stamp albums. Neither one of the places had the feel of home—not like the Benbow.
Second time, late October. Driving by, hadn’t been that way in a week or more. The Benbow had gone under again—literally, this time. Buildings razed, plowed under, all bulldozed, even the pavement of the lot. Couple of gigantic dumpsters. Most of the lot remained barren, plantless, save for a lone, idiot tree in a last remaining flowerbed, just inside the iron fence. Where the pool had been, though, grass had grown, unusually lush and green.
The sign still stood, near where the lobby had been. The name was gone, but the powerless neon outline of the admiral’s tricorn hat remained. And, on the marquee below, some last, imperfect act by the last employee to leave, one of the stick-on letters having fallen, a misbegotten but apt attempt at a past participle:
losed.
My last prescription of Thorazine ran out. I’m not sure how long ago. Weeks, anyway. An embarrassed moment at the Kroger pharmacy—No, no, check again, I’m sure there’s one more refill…I left after quite a little hissy-fit. Stayed up all night watching a marathon run of those programs—extreme asses killing themselves jumping off roofs on rollerblades, that kind of crap. Played with my stamps till dawn.
I know Doctor Nigeria would have written me another scrip. But I just—what with one thing and another—never did ask. He smiled, said he liked the fact I’d taken in my belt a notch.
I’ve moved again. Back on Summer. The other side of the 240, the east side, quite a bit closer to Eileen’s office, where I seem to be spending rather more time, now, on rather more cases.
The Guest Inn—such a generic-sounding name—has a somewhat nicer lobby. Coffee’s decent. Big cups. Sir sticks. All the Splenda you could want. They put out apples and bananas. Milk, too. I�
�ve become quite a milk drinker—I like a nice cold glass after my morning walk, right before I hit the AA meeting in the old Korean Baptist Church. Make-your-own waffles, too. But I’ve learned to leave them alone.
They have a sufficient variety of insect life, the Guest Inn—enough to amuse an entomologist or a twelve-year-old. And they also feature hot and cold running hookers. But most of both are confined to the other wing, the old and not so nice wing, far side of the pool. Which, incidentally, is blue. Or clear. Depending on how you look at it. And, now well past the season, closed. I was out there, mind you, the other night, poolside, lying in a chaise longue, alternating between reading the star map by flashlight in the centrefold of the November Sky and Telescope and trying to find the Orion nebula through binoculars and the soup that Memphis calls a sky. New binoculars, incidentally. A gift from MacDonald. Biggies, too—eighty mil, ten-to-twenty zoom. Zeiss, no less. He’s on this German kick, now.
Bucks is still there, way down Summer. And Nikki, too. Lippy as ever, visibly ticked at the days I don’t come in. She had no end of smartass comments about my face—as long as the bruising showed. And an act or two of kindness, as well.
One morning, I stopped in at the Union Avenue Starbucks, stood in line after setting up my laptop at the community table. A voice behind me said, “Will you let me buy your coffee, Mr. Minyard?” Unmistakable. I’d seen him a few times here before, met him once, years ago. I was sure he wouldn’t remember. Not only did Mayor Wharton buy, but he sat with me. Briefly, at least. He said little—just pleasantries. He smiled, slid an envelope across the table, and took his leave. “Thanks,” he said from the door. I opened the envelope: three thousand dollars—cash.
I got a one-up on MacDonald—he hadn’t caught on to Clayton McCorkle. But he had excuses, as usual. “Geez, Jack,” he’d said. “It was a one-man investigation.”
“One and a half,” I’d said back quietly. But I filled him in. The trouble: McCorkle was missing, and there was no credit card trail.
Friday last, I had that date with Jackie. Quite unexpected. Her idea, too. Out of the blue. Early movie and a quiet dinner out. Separate cars—we met at Starbucks and picked the movie out of the paper. She showed up in black spandex jeans, white blouse, a black blazer, and a smile. “The jeans are Eileen’s idea,” she said. “Haven’t had them out in years, but she said you’d like the look.” Just a hug when we left the restaurant—no big thing. But we’d talked a long time, longer than either of us knew, and I learned she liked Scrabble and had once belonged to the Memphis Astronomical Society and hoped to finish her BA—in English. She liked wearing those jeans, she said, liked the way they made her feel. She kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “I have these in two more colours. Free next Friday?”
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