Julia said, “I never said the man who paid you was black.”
(II)
MISS TERRY SUGGESTED a little walk down three blocks toward her church, because she was worried, she told Julia as soon as they were out the door, about being bugged. The white folks, she said, didn’t have much use for black folks who wouldn’t keep in their place, and they had bugged the hell out of poor Dr. King before they shot him.
“You really didn’t know he was black?” she said.
“Not till you told me, no.”
“Well, I should learn to keep my stupid mouth shut.”
The neighborhood knew Miss Terry, and respected her. Maybe they had been raised by mothers who shouted at them, because that was how she communicated with everybody except Julia, bellowing at the top of her lungs for them to cut it out! And her holler, surprisingly, was enough. When she scolded small children for throwing snowballs at cars, they stopped; and when she chased off the fourteen-year-old drug dealers, they hung their heads and went. You have to earn people’s respect, Miss Terry explained as they walked, her black plastic boots with fake fur lining swishing along the sidewalk. They have to know you’ll do what you say. Again she sounded like Byron Dennison, and it occurred to Julia that the secrets of power must be the same everywhere, and powerful people all knew them.
Julia said she agreed.
“And you’re really sure you want to get into this?” Miss Terry asked her as they turned down Third.
“Yes, Miss Terry.”
“Because of your daughter. You mentioned that.”
Julia sighed, weighing possible answers, and settled on the truth. “Yes. But that was only half true.” Miss Terry’s dark eyes questioned her. “The man who got killed out in the Landing. The professor. I, ah, I knew him. We were very close once. No. That isn’t even the real reason.” The churchwoman waited patiently. “It’s also for my own sake. I guess I’m the kind of person—all my life, I’ve let people just take care of me. Protect me from the world. For twenty years I’ve been safe. Now it’s time for me to pay back a little.”
They crossed another street, Miss Terry waiting patiently for the light to change and Julia therefore waiting too, although waiting was not in her nature. Miss Terry waved a hand at someone she knew, then took Julia’s arm. She pointed out a crackhouse. She pointed out a political party headquarters, staffed only during election season. She said, “Say you’re right about what happened, Julia. I’m not agreeing with you. But say you are. Say we dropped the lawsuit for money. Everybody in town was following that case, Julia. There were those riots. So if we kept quiet about getting a little money, we must have had an awful good reason.”
“I can see that, Miss Terry.”
“Not greed.”
“No, ma’am.”
They reached the church, a blocky building that had been a warehouse. Now, painted white and fitted with long vertical windows, it was the House of Faithful Holiness, the words emblazoned in fiery red letters four feet high, along with the identity of the founder, almost as large, and his name wasn’t Jesus. The ornate doors were shut tight, but Miss Terry led Julia through the large, nearly empty parking lot to a fire door set in the side. The interior was chilly, and Julia supposed they saved money by keeping the thermostat low during the week. The sanctuary had movable chairs rather than pews, and it looked to Julia as though it could seat, comfortably, close to a thousand people. She asked how many came.
“Most Sundays, four hundred. Five. Twice that Christmas and Easter.”
“I’m impressed,” said Julia, thinking of Lemaster’s stubborn Anglican congregation, which counted it a small victory to welcome fifty parishioners, and a major miracle to break one hundred.
“No reason to be. It’s the Lord’s work.”
“Uh-huh,” said Julia, fighting the urge to nibble at her cuticle, and wondering why in the world Miss Terry had brought her here.
Passing a couple of neatly groomed parishioners, who greeted Miss Terry with what looked to Julia like joy, they made their way down a back hallway—the place was enormous—and wound up in a Sunday-school classroom. On the walls were scenes from the Bible and quotations from both Testaments. An attendance calendar, the names of the children running down the side, was marked with checks and minuses. In the Bible scenes, everybody was black.
They sat on two child-height chairs, facing each other across a low table.
“DeShaun didn’t have a room like this to grow up in. This church didn’t exist back then. None of my children were raised here. But most of my grandchildren started out either here or someplace like it in another church. Me, I didn’t come to the Lord until I was advanced in my years, but most of the children from around here are raised in the church. They listen to the Lord’s words every Sunday, they sing the hymns, they get themselves baptized.”
Julia, about to say she agreed, decided not to interrupt.
“We have a ton of little children here, Julia. Most of the churches around here do, but this one especially. Their mothers bring them most of the time. Their fathers, I am sorry to say, are not very interested in what the Lord has to offer, although Heaven knows they need it. Most of them, well, they can’t be bothered to marry the mothers of their children. Used to be, a young lady got herself pregnant, well, her father and her brothers would be on the young man’s doorstep the next day looking to cause him some kind of trouble unless he did the right thing, and, a couple of months later, we’d have ourselves a wedding.”
Julia blushed and dropped her eyes, remembering afresh how Lemaster’s aunt had accused her of trapping him into marriage. Miss Terry didn’t notice. “Well, those were the old days,” she continued. “But, these days, Julia? We’d have to hunt around in the prisons or in the cemeteries. Or down on the corner. Most likely that’s where we’d find the father. That’s where we’d find the brothers. And they’d say, ‘Get outta my face.’”
Julia wished she possessed her husband’s gift for patience. She said, “Miss Terry, if we could just talk about DeShaun—”
“Julia, honey, that’s exactly who I am talking about. You have to understand what we are trying to do here. We are trying to keep these kids in the church, because the church is the only hope most of them have. They go to school, and they can dress any way they want and they never hear about God but they hear about sex and they hear about being themselves and doing their own thing. Well, maybe for the white folks in the suburbs, it’s okay to tell kids to do their own thing, to be themselves, whatever they learn out there. I wouldn’t know. I only know that for our kids, it’s a disaster, Julia. Just a disaster.
“Some stupid boy gets some silly girl pregnant, and the white folks say they don’t have to get married and it’s wrong to pressure them. We fall into line. We do what the white folks tell us. See, Julia, we’re still basically on a plantation here. The white folks get to set the rules. The white folks say no God in the schools, so there’s no God in the schools. The white folks say you can’t tell the kids not to have sex, so they have sex. The white folks say you can’t make them feel ashamed if they get in the family way, so nobody feels ashamed. Like I said, the white folks set the rules. And then they get to live in the big house. Down here in the fields? Nobody asks our opinion. So, we live on the street corner or we live in the Lord’s house. Down here, there isn’t any third choice.”
Every word stung. Every sentence presented a proposition against which Julia longed to argue. But she dared not offend Theresa Vinney, not now when she was so close. She had to focus. “And DeShuan—”
“DeShaun chose the corner, Julia, and that’s what killed him. He was wicked, Julia. From the day he came out of the womb, he wanted things his own way. He never took any telling, that boy. The night he died, I had told him already that I was putting him out of the house. The way it turned out, I didn’t get the chance. Now, you want justice?” She waved her hand around, encompassing the ornate church with its huge sanctuary and many classrooms. “This is our justice
, Julia. Not some fancy government program. This building. This building is all we have. And it’s all we need.”
Julia was about to object, but Miss Terry wasn’t finished. Out in the hall, somebody was singing, off-key, a snatch of sixties Motown, but a sharp voice told the artist to shut up.
“Listen to me, Julia. Yes, we filed that lawsuit. Yes, we dropped it. Now, I’m not saying why. But I’ll tell you this. God made a miracle here. We built this church. We built this school. We have some benefactors. They send a nice check every six months, and every penny goes to the church and the school. We’re growing every year. We’re trying to teach our kids what the white folks don’t want us to learn, like how much God loves them and the difference between right and wrong. We can’t pay much, so our teachers aren’t what you have out there in the suburbs, but we do the best we can.” For a silly moment Julia thought she read accusation in the hard eyes, as if DeShaun’s mother knew that her guest had once been a teacher, and was waiting for her to volunteer. But Miss Terry was only gathering her strength to resume the lecture. Her finger stabbed the air. “Now, DeShaun is dead, and if you go digging that up, well, no story in the newspapers is gonna bring him back. Putting some powerful white man in jail isn’t gonna bring him back. But with this school, Julia, with this church, maybe we can save a few of our kids from going down DeShaun’s path.” Her voice softened. “You used to be some kind of teacher, didn’t you?”
Julia bristled but kept her temper, the surface tension holding. “I taught in the public schools for—” She stopped, aware that she had missed the point. “How did you know I used to be a teacher? Kellen Zant told you, didn’t he? The professor who got killed. He came to see you to talk about your son.”
Theresa Vinney nodded. “This was, oh, last spring. Early summer, maybe. He asked me what you did, if some black man had paid me to drop the lawsuit.”
“He asked about a black man?”
“That’s what I said.”
So simple, Julia realized. She should have seen it. Kellen’s motivation was coming into sharper focus. Perhaps he was not, after all, just after money. Until today, Julia would not have guessed that the man who went around and sanitized the evidence after Gina died was black. Even now, she knew only because Theresa Vinney had let the fact slip. Kellen had the information before he arrived. Maybe he worked it out from the diary. Or maybe he knew because he heard it from—
“Miss Terry?”
“Yes, dear?”
“When Professor Zant asked you if the black man offered you money, what did you tell him?”
“That God had a plan for him.” She patted Julia’s knee. “Now, Julia, I am truly sorry about what your daughter is going through. I’ll ask everybody in the church to pray for her. But what I think you need to do is go home and count your blessings. You need to take care of your own children, Julia. Let us take care of ours.”
CHAPTER 46
TWO MORE MEETINGS
(I)
“I HAVE MOST of what you asked for,” said Bruce Vallely. “Not all. But most.”
Across the table, Julia Carlyle pulled a face. To Bruce she looked a little spoiled, or perhaps she had simply grown used to getting her way. He knew that Trevor Land had prodded her to talk to him. Julia, in turn, had offered to help him out, but insisted that they trade.
“Then we’ll go with what we’ve got,” said Julia. They were in Ruby Tuesday in the shopping mall up in Norport, and Bruce sensed the authority slipping from his fingers into hers. Not long ago, he had thought this woman weak and pampered, the prototypical Princess of the Gold Coast, the sort of whom, in college, his working-class crowd had made relentless fun. But there was steel beneath the softness. He remembered Marlon Thackery’s warning about not crossing Julia or her husband. “Tell me what you have so far,” she ordered, as if he worked for her.
Bruce almost smiled. “I couldn’t find out much,” he told her, sliding yet another envelope across the table for her collection. “As far as the public records are concerned, the Empyreals might not be bankrupt, but they’re close. They own a clubhouse in Brooklyn. There are about ten liens on it. They used to own a nice piece of property in the Hamptons, where they planned to build a very ritzy black-owned country club. Foreclosed twenty years ago. They had a hotel in Atlantic City back in the fifties and sixties, but now the land is part of a casino parking lot, and the Empyreals don’t own any of it. I don’t think they’re doing so well, Julia.”
“Hmmm.”
“May I ask why you wanted this information?”
“Yes.”
He waited, then frowned. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, Bruce, you may ask. But I’m not going to tell you.” She patted his hand, an instinct, because she used to be a dedicated toucher of other people, and found she connected better that way. “Thank you, though. I mean it. I called you because I couldn’t think of anybody else.”
“Does this have anything to do with your husband?”
“Sorry, Bruce. I’m not going to talk about it.”
“He’s an Empyreal, isn’t he?” Bruce leaned across the table, he hoped more imploring than threatening. “Julia?”
She shook her head firmly. “Don’t press me, Bruce.”
Something in her eyes bothered him, and perhaps she saw something in his, because she dropped her hand to the table. She started drumming.
“All right,” said Bruce. “Then it’s your turn to give me information.”
Except that she could not. No, she had not seen anybody or anything before stumbling across Kellen’s body. No, she had no idea where he might have been going the night he was shot, or what “Jamaica” meant.
Bruce said, “He was at the div school that night, wasn’t he?” A reasonable surmise after his conversation with Tony Tice, who had no doubt made the same guess. Bruce knew he was right when Julia, trying to suppress her reaction, reacted. “Why was he there, Julia? Did you leave something for him? Did he leave something for you?”
She shook her head, more in refusal than in denial.
He said, “And what about Gina Joule? Do you think it’s likely that Kellen Zant was looking into the death of Gina Joule? Because that’s the way it looks to me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Had he tracked the killing to somebody high up? Is that why he was shot?”
She spread her hands and offered her crooked smile. “Really, Bruce, I couldn’t possibly help.”
“You can’t do this without help,” he said, but Julia was too busy doing the math in order to split the check.
(II)
JULIA TRACKED DOWN JOE POYNTING in the student lounge, where he was struggling to craft a practice sermon for his homiletics course. She wanted to know the definition of “nonrivalrous consumption,” an economics term, and Joe was, once more, her muse.
“Consumption is rivalrous,” he said, “when my use of a thing leaves less for you. Look out the window. See the gulls? They’re fighting over a piece of food. When one of them eats it, his consumption is rivalrous to all the others, because they can’t eat it. See?”
Julia nodded.
“Consumption is nonrivalrous when my use does not affect your use. Look at the gulls again. See the sun glinting off their wings? The rainbow effect? It’s lovely to look at, and the fact that I’m looking at it does not reduce your ability to look at it. We can both consume it. Nonrivalrous. See?”
She saw. She thanked him.
The case was about nonrivalrous consumption, Kellen had told Mary, and sent her the photograph of Malcolm Whisted. Malcolm Whisted, who knew the family. It was beyond vicious to refer to a human being as being consumed, but perhaps that was what Kellen had in mind. If Gina had a single boyfriend, then the consumption was rivalrous. But if she had, say, more than one—then it was nonrivalrous.
That had to be what Kellen was trying to tell them. The two boys who picked Gina up that night in the Jag were planning to share her. Say Jock was the boyfriend. Maybe one of his room
mates was getting a little jealous of what Jock was getting. And Jock, the most fun-loving in a fun-loving bunch, said, Sure, next time she calls, come along. We’ll share her.
Share a human being, like a sex toy.
Nonrivalrous consumption.
Only Gina was not ready to be shared. Gina had fought back.
And lost.
She worried the problem around in her mind, and then, for the moment, forgot it. Inspiration had struck. The seagulls.
The sea gulls.
Kellen and his word games.
Julia pulled out the memo pad on which she had been scribbling hopeless anagrams of “Shari Larid,” the mysterious substitute teacher nobody could track down. Of course nobody could find her. She didn’t exist, except as a message for Julia’s own ear. By describing her as a substitute teacher, he was giving an instruction. A larid was a kind of seagull, and if you substituted “Gull” in place of “Larid,” you got “Shari Gull,” which was an anagram of…
CHAPTER 47
SUGAR HILL
(I)
ON SATURDAY, the mothers of the Harbor County chapter of Ladybugs gathered their smallest children—the Littlebugs—and decamped for Manhattan, where they lunched in the delightful space-age insanity of Mars 2112, then took in the matinee of The Lion King on Broadway. They went by car pool, and Julia, driving the Escalade, ferried Kimmer Madison and her son, Bentley, who was two years younger than Jeannie. Julia would have been grateful for the break from her worries, had the trip only been a break. But it was not. She had scheduled an unscheduled stop. She planned to spring it on her passengers on the way home.
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