“Did T.D. ever hurt his kids?” I said. If the death of his daughter wasn’t motive enough for Hankins to have T.D. killed, perhaps concern for his grandchildren was.
“The way he talked to Maya sometimes was shameful. She told Retta he called her a ‘little bitch.’” I felt my own surge of anger. No girl deserved that from her father, much less a child as young as Maya. “Reminded him of Chantelle, I guess. They fought like cats and dogs.”
“What about physically?”
“Maya’s denied it, but I wonder,” he said. “Probably just a matter of time.”
“No danger of that happening now.”
He gave a dour chuckle. “Damn right there isn’t.”
“Senator, there’s just one thing…If T.D. Jackson was a sociopath—and I think there’s a good chance he was—why would he kill himself? You said they don’t feel guilt.”
Hankins laughed. “Guilt? You still don’t get it, my man. T.D. was about to lose everything he owned in the civil trial. He knew that, and T.D. Jackson couldn’t stand to lose his shit. That’s why he killed Chantelle. That’s why he blew his brains out. He was a greedy motherfucker.” Donald Hankins was sounding less like California’s future governor and more like a buddy from the corner bar around the way.
“How could he be sure he would lose the civil trial?”
“Mazzoni’s office fucked up the criminal prosecution, but lightning doesn’t strike twice.”
I raised my bottle. “What the system can’t fix…God can. Or someone can, anyway.”
A glimmer of enlightenment across the senator’s face. He had just decided not to underestimate me either. He took another swig, with a lopsided smile. “I know a couple things about you, son,” he said.
I didn’t answer, waiting.
“You’re Preach Hardwick’s boy, ain’t you?” he went on. I had never heard anyone call my father Preach except his men at Hollywood division. “Keeping up the family tradition.”
“What tradition is that, Senator?”
“Trying to crawl up my ass with a flashlight.” He winked. “I guarantee you, there’s nothing worth finding up there. The man shot himself. Melanie’s blind as a bat where T.D. is concerned—I’m sure you’ve seen that by now. I won’t judge Emory and Evangeline, because I’ve been where they are. Take them for all you can, I guess, but have some decency about it.”
“I take it you and your wife were at home Sunday night,” I said as casually as I could.
“Sometimes I don’t get any sleep in Sacramento. So when I’m at home, I make it a point to be in bed by ten thirty. Retta was right beside me. She’s a gracious lady, but there are limits…so you’ll have to permit me to speak for both of us.”
His grin was gone, replaced by solemn earnestness. He was definitely an actor, too, as all good politicians are. So far, everyone had a spouse or bedmate willing to vouch for them. It was hard to prove, but it was harder to disprove.
“The kids were here, too?”
Hankins chuckled. “You’re reaching, son.”
“Just curious, Senator.”
“Of course they were here. They live here.” Sharpness crept into his voice.
With a custody dispute looming, I cursed myself for bringing up T.D.’s children. It was too late to salvage casual conversation, but I backed off to give it a try.
“What position did you play?” I said. “Back at SoCal?”
Hankins’s face calcified, and he suddenly looked like a man who had never cracked a smile. My hindbrain noticed that a cutlery rack and a carving knife were within his arm’s reach. He reverted quickly, but for a flash his face had been frightening.
“Receiver.” His voice was tight.
“Judge Jackson played, too. Were you on the same team?”
“A year or two,” he said, and he calmly turned back to his frying pan. “Mr. Hardwick, food’s ready. It’s time for me and my wife to enjoy our meal—and a toast to the departed. If you’ll excuse me.” Over his shoulder, he gave me a last grin.
Melanie and the kids were ready and waiting in the foyer. Tommy Jackson was wearing a 49ers baseball cap, and he never raised his head high enough for me to see his eyes. He held Melanie’s hand, his feet shuffling listlessly. Maya reminded me of Chela again, her ears fused to an iPod as if the world and its offenses did not exist.
Melanie’s eyes asked me if I had gotten what I came for, and I nodded. I had something—I just wasn’t sure what.
Retta Hankins tried a last, worn smile at the door. “Pleasure to meet you,” she lied, her smile fading before she’d fully turned her face away. Donald Hankins never emerged from the kitchen to wish us good-bye at the door. The food smelled great, but the fumes in that house were toxic. I was glad to go back outside.
Maya helped us unload boxes from the backseat to make room for two passengers, although Melanie’s trunk was stuffed with files already. For someone as work-focused as Melanie, it would be a huge adjustment if she decided to raise those two kids full-time. I had Dad to help me, and I was still struggling with one kid. Maybe even failing.
As Melanie drove, Maya’s eyes watched me in the rearview mirror from the backseat, where she sat beside her brother. I wanted to ask her about her father, but Melanie tapped my knee as soon as she caught me gazing at Maya’s reflection: Forget it.
“When’s Simon coming home?” Maya said. She hadn’t spoken since we left the house.
“Tomorrow,” Melanie said. “Why do you keep asking about Simon?”
Maya didn’t answer, her eyes still on me. That kid gave me a chill, between her fledgling psychic abilities and the utter lack of sorrow in her eyes. If she hadn’t been at her grandparents’ house the night T.D. died, Maya Jackson might have made it to my list of suspects. Not that a thirteen-year-old could stage a suicide. Could she?
Maya’s gum snapped again, a defiant sound. I looked away from her untroubled eyes.
Evangeline Jackson was waiting under the bright porch light on her front stoop. Both children rushed out of the car to run to her outstretched arms. Maya’s long legs pumped as she climbed the yard’s incline, running hard. Tommy was sobbing when he reached their grandmother, and she hugged him, shushing him until she was crying, too. Mrs. Jackson hurried them inside, closing the door. In the car, Melanie and I sat feeling sorry for all of them.
“Well?” Melanie said. “What did you get from him?”
“Not sure yet. You never told me that Hankins and your uncle played for the Spartans together,” I said. Evangeline Jackson had told me the two families were close, but no one had mentioned that the men’s ties went back forty years.
Melanie shrugged. “I didn’t think of it. That’s when they first met, back in the sixties. Their team won a bowl game. Why?”
“Seemed like a sore subject.”
“Those two aren’t speaking since Chantelle died, unless they have to. I’m sure he didn’t like hearing Uncle Em’s name come up.”
Sounded reasonable, but my instincts knew better. A man who valued complete control over his facial expressions had faltered when I brought up his glory days. Judge Jackson had changed the subject when I asked him about his football days, too. The football players I know aren’t shy about reminiscing, and winning a bowl game usually means bragging rights for life.
I opened my notebook and wrote SPARTAN TEAM—1960s. JACKSON. HANKINS. I had a hundred other leads to follow up on, but I underlined it twice.
“Will I see you at the funeral Sunday?” Melanie said.
“My best chance to find the Heat, I hope,” I said. “Think Carlyle will be there?”
“If not”—she stared at her lap, her profile heartbreaking—“something’s wrong.”
Something was already wrong. I wanted to say more, but silence seemed wiser. With her fiancé coming home the next day and a funeral on Sunday, Melanie had enough on her mind.
“Keep an eye on Maya,” I said. “She’s pissed off at her dad. It has to go somewhere.”
Melanie
nodded. “I know. We’ve already got them both in therapy. I wish T.D. had gotten therapy when he was a kid.”
“Why?”
Melanie sighed. “Did you see how Aunt Evie just hugged the kids? I almost never saw her hug T.D. like that. She just corrected him: ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’ She’s much better with her grandkids, but T.D. never felt like he could make her happy. Between that and Uncle Em’s expectations, he always felt like a failure. Never good enough.”
Hankins was right: When it came to her cousin, Melanie was blind. Sooner or later, Melanie would have to let go of her memory of T.D. as a child and accept his misdeeds as a man.
“Hankins thinks T.D. might have started hitting the kids,” I said.
Melanie shook her head, irritated at the suggestion. “Never.”
“But you know he called Maya names? Cursed at her?”
Reluctantly, Melanie nodded. “At the end, I finally convinced T.D. he wasn’t fit to be a father by himself. He wasn’t willing to give up his traveling, his bad habits. And, yes, sometimes he crossed the line. He and Maya…” She sighed. “Maya and Chantelle were so close—plus, Maya was old enough to read the newspapers after her mother died. She knew what her friends and their parents were saying. One day she decided the stories were true, and it was never the same with her and T.D. He asked me to move the kids in with me and Simon, and Simon had already agreed. We were going to do it after Christmas. T.D. knew that Donald and Retta were poisoning his children against him. That hurt him so much.”
“Why did Hankins get custody instead of T.D.’s parents?”
“Please,” Melanie said. “T.D. was under arrest, Ten. Then the trial? The custody hearing was a kangaroo court. His parents had no chance. Even with his will, I don’t know what a judge will say now…” Her eyes shimmered with tears, but no tears fell. “I’m so tired of this. I just want this nightmare to go away.”
Any assurance to Melanie that night would have been an outright lie.
SEVENTEEN
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24
While Marcela was out with Dad at his physical therapy, and Chela was at school, I spent hours at home Friday making telephone calls and doing research as I tried to find Carlyle. Not a trace. I tried hotel operators, asking for Carlyle and his friends by name. I tried calling my old sources in hotel security offices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but many of the personnel I had known from my bodyguard days had moved on. Even tabloids like TMZ hadn’t sniffed out Carlyle, whose appearance in the wake of T.D.’s death would have excited the paparazzi. Either Carlyle and his friends were trying not to be found, or I was wasting my time. Or both.
Melanie checked in on me every two hours, and she sounded more disappointed every time I gave her my report. No news. The reserve in her voice reminded me that Simon was probably back home. I hoped Simon was giving her a place to rest her head.
While I waited for returned calls, I was nagged by the memory of the way Donald Hankins’s face had changed when I asked about his football years. The internet is a curious man’s best friend, so I hit my computer.
As a former SoCal student, what I learned during a cursory Google surprised me: SoCal State’s appearance at the Sunshine Bowl in 1967 had been a major event in college football—not only mentioned extensively on the university’s website, but described on dozens of hard-core college football fan sites. The matchup between Southern California State and Florida University in Tallahassee had been dubbed The Stomp in the Swamp by SoCal’s student newspaper. A New York Times sports columnist, reminiscing about the game as recently as five years before, said “that one January day embodied the spirit of the social change in the 1960s, demonstrating to a nation that segregation’s stranglehold on America would not endure.”
The Florida team had been all-white, a vestige of the days of segregated education in the South. SoCal State’s team had featured an integrated roster—and many of the key plays had come at the hands of black players who, the New York Times columnist observed, “played four quarters beyond their abilities in the heart of the South, as if Dr. King’s dream relied upon it.”
Had Judge Jackson or Donald Hankins played on that team?
My answer came on SoCal’s football website—touting “Our Glorious Heritage” in purple and white—which featured a large photograph of the game-winning reception from the 1967 Sunshine Bowl. The catch looked as graceful as any footage of T.D. Jackson, a long body leaping into the air to catch a ball that should have been out of reach. The photo showed the back of the player’s jersey: Number 9. HANKINS, the name read.
I checked the caption to be sure: The player was identified as Donald Hankins, a senior.
The article didn’t mention all of the players’ names, but it singled out twelve: Among the standout players were Emory Jackson and Donald Hankins. I printed out the article and wrote out the other names, none of which was familiar, but I Googled them all. The team’s quarterback, a white player named Frank Blythewood, had gone on to play for the Miami Dolphins for a few seasons under Bob Griese’s shadow, but none of the other names had withstood history. Not for football, anyway.
Five of the names were so common that they were useless—like David Smith—so I lost their internet trail. Another name, Wallace Rubens, turned up on property records in Florida, but I had no idea if he was the same player listed from the game. But I found two players who were still local: A former SoCal offensive linesman, Dominic Micelletto, who owned a car dealership in Thousand Oaks, and a former running back, Randolph Dwyer, who was listed on an Ojai High School website as a division-winning varsity football coach. Dwyer’s name was accompanied by a photo of a bespectacled black man with a shaved head and a pleasant smile. In his sixties, but he looked very fit. His bio confirmed that he had played for Southern California State, although it neglected to mention the Sunshine Bowl.
I underlined his name. Dwyer had no doubt been tight with Jackson and Hankins. From the sound of it, the black SoCal players who went to Tallahassee had a day to remember.
Except that none of them went out of their way to talk about it—or even mentioned it anywhere on the internet. Given the rancor between the Jackson and Hankins families, I could understand why they didn’t want to stroll down memory lane with me, but both men were prominent, and they never mentioned the Sunshine Bowl, period.
A Los Angeles Times profile of Hankins the year before Chantelle’s death described him as “remarkably modest” about his SoCal football years, mentioning the bowl game only in passing. Scores of newspapers, magazines and blogs credited Judge Jackson’s football history for inspiring T.D.’s love of the game. But Judge Jackson had rarely offered direct quotes or reminiscences. What had Judge Jackson said to me in his study? We thought we were doin’ something.
That went beyond modesty, I realized. It was outright evasion.
By contrast, SoCal’s white quarterback had been featured on a “Where Are They Now?” segment HBO Sports had taped as recently as 1997, on the game’s thirtieth anniversary. And Micelletto’s car dealership ads billed him as “A Former SoCal Football Star.”
Why the silence from the team’s black players? Had their standout performances in the game simply been overlooked…or had that game been too much like a war? Growing up with Dad had taught me that veterans often don’t like to talk about their battles.
Whatever it was, my gut told me that I couldn’t afford to ignore it.
I wrote down 1967 and underlined it twice.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25
Marcela didn’t come on weekends unless it was to force Dad to go to a movie, so we were on our own for two days. No buffers, and it was 8 A.M. Time to check on Dad. He had been tired after physical therapy Friday, as he often was, and gone straight to bed after dinner.
Downstairs, his bedroom door was closed. I gave it two quick taps.
“You up? How you doing?” He only grunted in response.
“I…got it,” he said, but he sounded out of breath. He was trying to m
ake his way from his bed to his wheelchair to his bathroom, always an awkward task for Dad, but he would only ask for my help as a last resort. I listened to him straining for a while, waiting.
There was a small crash from the room. Something had fallen. I heard Dad curse. “Ten?” he called. His voice was small and anxious.
I went in. One leg had made it to the wheelchair’s footrest, but the chair had rolled clear of the bed, a wheel caught on the night table. Dad was splayed between his chair and the bed, clinging to the headboard for balance. The room smelled heavily of urine-dampened sheets, but any stains were hidden under his bedspread.
“Damn…chair,” Dad said.
“Just hold on,” I told him, hooking one arm around him. When I was a kid, Dad had weighed about 220 pounds; now, he might not be 160. His arms looked scrawny in his undershirt, and I hated to glimpse his legs, which were shriveling to nothing but knobby knees and bones. Marcela took him to physical therapy three times a week, but she had confided to me that it might be a lost cause. His leg muscles were more atrophied each day. Dad’s main goal in life was to turn in his wheelchair for a walker—modest wishes by any standard—but even that might be beyond his reach.
A couple of hardcover books had fallen from Dad’s night table, so I picked them up and put them back. One was his old King James Bible; the other was Nathan McCall’s novel Them. Dad had a special relationship with Amazon, with new deliveries every other day, it seemed.
As soon as he was in his chair, Dad practically slapped my hand away.
“Okay…got it,” he said. He hid his eyes from me, wheeling to the bathroom.
The bathroom was narrower than I liked, but it was the only full bathroom on the ground floor.
Dad closed the bathroom door behind him.
“Breakfast?” I said to the closed door.
“Pancakes,” he said. “Twenty…minutes.”
Dad had cut pork out of his diet, so he cooked turkey sausage patties while I cooked the pancake recipe Dad had passed on to me from Mom: a cup of self-rising flour, two eggs, just under half a cup of sugar, a dash of vanilla, and enough milk to give the batter the consistency of yogurt. Quick and easy, with no need for syrup. Heaven. Thanks, Mom.
In the Night of the Heat Page 21