A man in a beige-and-brown uniform who looked like the sheriff walked in soon after me, and the dog trotted in on the sheriff’s heels, tongue lolling in triumph. The dog headed for a back room, as if he knew his way around.
The sheriff scanned the room, and the only thing out of place was me.
The sheriff was the only white man in sight. He was about my age, his graying hair cut low beneath a brown cowboy hat. His tin star was so big that it looked like a movie prop. He had a friendly face, but his eyes were like blowtorches. He looked alert and fit enough for me to wonder what he was doing in Mercy instead of a bigger police department. Hometown boy done good, I thought. The back of his neck was leathery and brown from the sun.
He was never out of my sight, and I was never out of his. After he floated around backslapping, ordering a beer from the bar counter, he drifted back toward me with his bottle of Miller Lite. On sight, I’m bothered by a cop in a cowboy hat. Maybe it’s the Native American in me; Cherokee on my father’s side, Seminole on my mother’s. I don’t like armed cowboys. Especially when they’re drinking beer.
The sheriff stood above my table. “What brings you here?” he said.
His accent was thick; “brings” came out “brangs.” Nothing confrontational in his voice, but he was making more than small talk. He might already have decided he didn’t like me, the way I didn’t like his hat. If so, my visit to Mercy was off to a shitty start. The deputy’s name-tag said SHERIFF J. KELLY.
“Here for the game, Sheriff.” I had a different cover in mind for Rubens, but I hoped I could brush the sheriff off faster as a football fan. I was wrong.
“If you’re for Texas, keep it to yourself.” Sheriff Kelly didn’t sound like he was joking.
“No problem. I’m a Bobcat.”
“What year?”
“Never graduated,” I said, trying to minimize my lies. “Dumbest mistake of my life. I try not to miss homecoming. I met my wife in school.” The truth, whether ugly or beautiful, is a living thing. A fine lie, on the other hand, is a mosaic of selective, plausible details.
“So where’s your wife now?” The question surprised me. The sheriff was digging deeper in my business than casual necessity would demand. Maybe I’d tacked on one detail too many.
“Not a football fan,” I said. “Left her home.”
“Where’s home?” He sounded less and less like he was making conversation. I needed a spritz of Cop-B-Gone. For some reason, badges always sniff me out.
My home address was on my driver’s license, so I decided to tell the truth in case he manufactured a reason to pull me over on my way back to the hotel. “Los Angeles.”
“When the cat’s away…” He knocked on my tabletop, as if for luck. “Try the babyback special. You be good, now.”
He was only missing the word boy at the end, but I tried to be more amused than pissed off. OK, I get it. This is how it works in Mercy. I was glad I didn’t live there.
“Know where I could find Wallace Rubens?” I said to the sheriff casually as he turned to leave. If Rubens had trouble with the law, the sheriff was a good place to start.
The sheriff faced me squarely again. “What for?”
“My dad told me how he played back in ’67. Thought I’d like to meet him.”
For half a second, the sheriff studied my eyes like he was seeing me for the first time. “If you’re in Mercy long enough, you’ll meet Bear sooner or later,” he said, motioning to the waitress waiting behind him. “Janiece—bring this man some ribs.”
The fair-skinned waitress was just shy of plump, with a healthy bust, overly greasy curls and a face that needed a smile. Her frown diminished her face, which was slightly acne-scarred. Janiece barely met my eyes, shy in my presence. I guessed that she was nearly thirty—old enough to look silly in her low-cut uniform dress: parading pink pigs wielding spatulas.
“What’s he having?” Janiece asked the sheriff, as if I wasn’t there.
“Babyback special,” he said.
I’m not in the habit of letting other men order my food for me. It’s especially irritating from a cop with a cowboy hat and an accent straight out of Deliverance.
“I don’t like pork,” I said. “I’ll have beef ribs and chicken.”
Sheriff Kelly winked at me, not smiling. “Suit yourself. Enjoy your stay.”
I hoped he’d scratched whatever was itching. I slipped on the phony wedding band in my pocket. Then I pulled out the newspaper I’d been reading on the plane and propped it open in my hands. Every once in a while, a woman buzzed close to my table, pretending she wasn’t trying to be noticed, and I pretended I didn’t. Some of those women were tasty, but I wasn’t hunting, so I never met their eyes. My ring sat on my finger, in plain sight.
Pig’n-a-Poke was a good-mood kind of place, filled with smiles. I watched as an overweight man wearing a dark blue jumpsuit from Minit Auto Repair was led by the hand toward the jukebox by one of the finest women in the room. The woman seemed out of his league—about twenty-two, in cherry-colored stilettos, with sturdy calves and a face I might have found in any agent’s waiting room. Although the man pulled her close to sway to B.B.’s music, the way they avoided each other’s eyes made me wonder if they had ever met before that night. For thirty seconds, I couldn’t figure out the energy.
Then it hit me: The woman was a prostitute, and the mechanic was a potential john. Another scan of the room, and I spotted two other working girls. But the sheriff, who had taken his place at a card game on the far side of the restaurant, didn’t glance in their direction. I chuckled, shaking my head. Way to police the room, Gomer, I thought.
Then I got it: Pig and a Poke. Part restaurant, part cathouse? That was nervy. Was the sheriff dumb as a bag of rocks, or was he bent? I guessed the latter.
I heard competing music from another open doorway off to the side, beyond the bar counter. Live blues, from the sound of it, but not professional; a jam session. Since my food hadn’t arrived yet, I left my jacket on my chair and walked past the cluster of patrons at the bar to the doorway of the adjoining room, which was crammed with listeners in front of a stage. I couldn’t see the musicians because everyone was standing.
The drummer’s beats were loud and sloppy, and I wasn’t impressed by the sour guitar. Still, I was impressed to hear live blues in a town the size of Mercy. I wished my ears were working better. Between the jukebox, the band, and the noise from the crowd, I heard mostly murmurs and babbles.
My waitress, Janiece, surprised me from my left side. She was holding a platter of chicken, ribs, and corn bread that looked big enough to feed a village and smelled like paradise. She leaned close to my ear.
“Bearzintherejamminrightnow,” she said. She was a mumbler.
“Sorry, darlin’—what’s that?” I said, leaning down with my good ear.
She only pursed her lips and shook her head, as if she was irritated. I followed her back to my table, where she set my plate of food down without a word. She wasn’t from the school of Can-I-get-you-anything-else and Have-a-nice-day. She was gone before I could order a drink.
But the food made me forgot the bad service. The sauce was sassy and rich, the beef so tender that the bones offered only token resistance. I decided I would eat there for lunch the next day if I could, and pick up a bottle or two of sauce to take home to Dad and Chela.
As I sat at Pig’n-a-Poke eating my first good barbecue dinner in a long time, I had no idea how close it was to my last.
TWENTY-FOUR
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31
Daylight only confirmed how tiny Mercy was. The road between my hotel and downtown Mercy was surrounded by fields, some ripe with fluffy white cotton plants I’d never seen up close. The few homes I saw had cows, goats, horses, and chickens penned in their yards. The dirt beneath everything was dark orange clay, like the jack-o’-lanterns on every porch.
Downtown was larger than I’d thought, with stop signs to supplement the streetlight at McCormack Way. Driving a
way from the railroad tracks, turning left instead of right at the Handi Mart, I saw a row of more upscale business: an attorney, an accountant, and a large feed and tack. Several large colonial-style houses had been refurbished into businesses, which gave downtown a homey quality. There were a few blocks of grand older homes with verandas and tire swings; some brick, but mostly wood-frame.
On the other side of town, the area around Pig’n-a-Poke was clearly poorer, with smaller homes, mounted junk cars, and patchier lawns. The clapboard houses were built so close together that they looked stacked. I imagined it must have been especially lonely to have so little in a town that didn’t offer much to look at. Only First Baptist Church of Mercy shone like a pearl.
I saw three boys running barefoot near a junk pile, and it reminded me of Soweto. South Africa had its work cut out for it, but there was work to do at home, too. I wondered what difference a teacher like April would make in a town like Mercy.
So much for Plan A: I wasn’t going to see Rubens taking his morning constitutional.
I programmed my navigator and headed toward the apartment building he owned in the nearby town of Quincy. The building manager could narrow down my search.
Instead of taking the 10, my navigator concocted a maze of smaller roads to steer me toward Quincy, most of them more gravel than asphalt. The road turned muddy, and I noticed water gleaming through the tall stalks of crabgrass on both sides of my car. Grass grew defiantly in the center of the roadway, thwapping my undercarriage. A white-tailed deer bobbed up its head as I approached, and went back to grazing when I drove past.
April was right. I was in a swamp.
I’d also just driven into the charcoal drawing I’d seen at the Pig’n-a-Poke: Ahead, an old tobacco barn loomed beside the road, casting a shadow across the lanes. The drawing hadn’t captured the sheer height of this barn, which was more a large ornament than a real barn. It was so old that a quarter of its planks were missing. I saw another barn in the distance, closer to the woodland, and it looked timeworn, too.
Tobacco money makes me queasy; it’s one of the reasons I’ve never smoked. Turns out I’m not too fond of old tobacco land either. Even the pine trees looked stripped, as if they were recovering from a storm. No crops grew nearby, and the area looked desolate and empty. I saw a raccoon’s upturned carcass by the side of the road, feet frozen high in rigor mortis. Not far beyond, a wooden cross lashed with string marked an accident victim’s unlucky spot.
This is no place to die. I’m no psychic, but I’m almost sure that was my exact thought.
I noted the road from the sign: A-66. I decided I would take another route back.
Quincy was a welcome relief from the wilderness. It was much bigger than Mercy, with a Wal-Mart and CVS to herald civilization. Pat Thomas Parkway was lined with neon-lighted chains.
The address led me to an attractive apartment compound called Quincy Gardens. There were twelve cottage-style units, more attractive than any apartments I’d seen in Mercy. The cottages were shaded by old oak trees that made them look rustic. There were bright pink bougainvillea bushes growing in splendor between the cottages. It looked like a good investment.
A black man in his midtwenties was just leaving the office as I walked in. I thought he was a tenant, dressed in a long Jacksonville Jaguars sweatshirt, but he wore a ring of keys around his neck. “Shit, you scared me,” he said, leaping backward. His brow creased with irritation. His country accent was thick, too.
“Who’d you think I was?”
He didn’t answer, giving me a wary stare. I can’t prove it, but I got the feeling that he worked for a boss with a temper. He wore round-frame glasses, his hair in short twists. “No vacancies until January. Waitin’ list’s pretty long,” he said.
“I’m here to lease, not rent,” I said. “My mother lives out this way, and I’ve got a Popeye’s franchise back home in Philly. Who would I talk to about the adjoining parcel?” There was plenty of land on both sides of the apartments; I figured Rubens owned an adjoining tract, too.
“Wish it was me,” the man said, and waved me into his small, tidy office. On the wall, I saw plaques from the Quincy City Council and Better Business Bureau. He had a nameplate reading JAMAL JONES II.
“It’s zoned mixed-use, so you could do a Popeye’s, no problem. You’d do big business. But the man you want to talk to is Wallace Rubens.” He went to his desk to grab a Post-it. “Just give me a name and number, or an email address, and he’ll hit you back.”
The young man was efficient and well-informed. By the modest size of the apartment complex, I guessed that Jamal Jones II didn’t spend his whole day at Quincy Gardens. He might manage Rubens’s Tallahassee properties, too, or some of them. I gave him my email address, explaining that my cell phone didn’t get reception in the area.
“How’s the market?” I said, angling for small talk.
I hit a vein. The kid was a salesman. “Better’n you’d think. Quincy’s almost a bedroom community of Tallahassee now, and town infrastructure can’t keep up with the growth. Bring in a restaurant, and you’ll print paper. If I was you, I’d do Applebee’s, a sit-down kind of family place. The town’s got fast food—just not enough food.”
“So your boss is doing all right here.”
“My boss is doing more than all right. My boss is the wealthiest black man in three counties,” Jamal said, fierce loyalty blazing in his eyes. “He opened this little place because his daughter wanted to live in Quincy, so she asked him to build something nice. But do not judge Wallace Rubens by Quincy Gardens.”
“Looks good to me. Is he from around here?”
“Reared in his grandmother’s shack over in Mercy.”
A daughter and grandmother. Rubens might own a house and other property under relatives’ names, I realized. Maybe I could find his home address with some research. I didn’t want it to come to that, but it would be good to know where Wallace Rubens lived.
“I respect a man with a sense of community,” I said.
“Mister, Wallace Rubens helped pay for my MBA,” Jamal said. “Me and another honor student from Stephens County High. Everybody else is out for themselves, but Wallace Rubens remembers where he came from.” He wanted to go on, but he stopped himself. His lips twitched, reeling a story back in.
I wanted to ask about the Sunshine Bowl, but instinct told me not to. Take it slow. “Now I’m really eager to talk to the man,” I said. “But I’m only in town today.”
I wanted Jamal to volunteer Rubens’s telephone number, but it had to be his idea. If Wallace Rubens got a whiff that someone suspicious was asking for his number, I would never find him. Jamal seemed like a legit businessman—and I hoped he was—but if he worked for Rubens both underground and above ground, he was too smart for me to risk stupid mistakes.
Jamal shrugged. “It’s his fishing day, so his cell phone’s off. Don’t know if he’ll check in today or not. I just saw Mr. Rubens last night, too. He plays guitar at the barbecue place over in Mercy. Blues Jam Wednesday.”
Shit. Rubens had been on the stage only twenty yards from me!
“Pig’n-a-Poke?” I said. “You’re kidding. I just ate there last night.”
The man smiled. “Then you just had the best ribs in the Panhandle. And you truly can appreciate the meaning of the saying, ‘They can’t kick you off your own stage.’”
“He owns Pig’n-a-Poke, too?” I wondered why the sheriff hadn’t mentioned that when I asked about Rubens at the restaurant. Which of us had he been running interference for? I longed to ask Jamal about the working girls I thought I’d seen at the barbecue place, but I didn’t.
“Yeah, yeah. A chain. One in Mercy, one in Midway. He’s religious about fishing every other Friday, but Wallace Rubens is a businessman.”
“I hope I get the chance to do some business with him.” I threw in a frustrated sigh.
Jamal checked his watch, and I checked mine. It was eleven. “Hey, it’s a long shot,” he said, “but sw
ing by the Mercy Pig’n-a-Poke in about an hour. If he’s done fishin’ and it’s time to eat, that’s where Mr. Rubens is fixin’ to be.”
Instead of taking the back roads, I hopped on the interstate back to Mercy. That route took ten minutes longer than the shortcut, but I’d seen swamp enough for a lifetime.
While I drove along the well-paved, tree-lined highway, I admitted to myself that the emerging portrait of Wallace Rubens didn’t look much like a killer. He was tight with the local police, and his businesses seemed respected even if they weren’t completely aboveboard.
Why would Rubens risk flying all the way to L.A. to commit acts of violence? The Wallace Rubens I thought might have killed T.D. Jackson didn’t fit the Wallace Rubens who lived in Mercy. They were like two different people—or a personality split straight down the middle. I had no case. What the fuck am I doing here?
I thought about driving straight past Mercy’s exit to go to the airport. I was so eager to be back at home that my leg bounced anxiously beneath the steering wheel.
MERCY—NEXT EXIT, a highway signed warned. Like I said, I’m no psychic, but I could feel myself resisting the whole idea. But my intuition was in hyperdrive, and intuition was all I had to go on:
If I wanted to know what had happened to T.D. Jackson, I had to see Wallace Rubens.
Go in and find him. If you don’t get a vibe from him, drive straight to the airport.
But seeing Wallace Rubens would be a dangerous thing to do. I knew it, somehow.
I signaled and took the Mercy exit.
Pig’n-a-Poke was waiting.
The barbecue joint looked worse in daylight than it had in the dark. Outside, the walls looked like flimsy corrugated tin, caked with red clay dust. Without the aid of the darkened neon sign above, the building looked more like an abandoned warehouse.
At noon, the parking lot was nearly empty. My car was the sixth one in.
The same gray-colored German shepherd trotted past me to come outside when I opened the door. He appeared so fast, I gave a start. It was a big dog. But he only sniffed the legs of my jeans and moved on.
In the Night of the Heat Page 32