The Devil's Interval

by Linda Peterson

  I protested, “It’s not ‘my magazine.’ I’m the editor, and it’s still a fairly new job for me. It’s a grand title, but mostly what I do is sit in meetings and shepherd the staff into staying on schedule and budget. I’m making this up as I go along.”

  Ivory didn’t say anything. I tried to imagine how it would feel to have a son on Death Row. I could imagine someone’s son, just not one of mine. I felt myself take three careful steps away from the idea. “Tell me some more about Travis,” I said, buying time.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about his relationships with women,” I replied. “What about this Limousine Lothario business?”

  She got up from the piano bench and walked around the bar. She shook out a towel, and picked up a glass from the rack to dry. “Travis and women. I’ll tell you, from the time that boy was ten years old, he had a way with the ladies. He’d flirt with any girl, any age, any place. When he was in junior high school, he could ditch school and never get caught, because the old biddies in the attendance office would cover for him. By the time he was in high school, he knew enough to try to get all his classes with female teachers, because he could get away with murder.”

  The word hung in the air.

  “I get your drift,” I said.

  Ivory picked up another glass. “I know a lot of men flirt,” she says. “But Travis has some kind of gift.”

  “Where’d he get it?” I asked. “From his dad?”

  “Who can remember? Mr. Wonderful hightailed it out of town when Travis was three. We haven’t heard from him since. We stayed here partly because I couldn’t go back to my family on Cape Cod. I’d burned almost all those bridges. And partly because I wanted Trav’s father to be able to find him, if he ever came looking. But he never did.”

  “So, just the two of you, all these years?”

  “Just the two of us,” said Ivory. “Not that there aren’t occasional gentlemen callers. I haven’t led the life of a nun. But there wasn’t anybody permanent.” She hesitated, “Still isn’t, at least not really. So Travis and I had a pretty tight relationship. And frankly, lots of guys were chased away by how tight the two of us are. Men don’t like playing second fiddle.”

  Now or never, I thought. “So, you two talked a lot? Confided in each other?”

  “You mean, did I know about Mrs. Plummer?”

  I nodded. Ivory shrugged, “I didn’t know much about her. I did notice that Travis seemed to look forward to his assignments driving for her.”

  “Did you ever meet her?”

  “No. Travis would bring his lady friends to the bar occasionally, but he was private when he was seeing someone he shouldn’t be seeing—like a married woman.”

  “And there were others?”

  “That’s what I read in the papers,” said Ivory matter-of-factly. “The Limousine Lothario.”

  “What’s your theory about that? About Travis getting involved with all those married women?”

  “My theory? You fish where the fish are. He met plenty of bored and neglected wives. It’s not as if he grew up with a lot of evidence that marriage vows were all that sacred. Or permanent.”

  “And he was…irresistible?”

  Ivory smiled. “You have a son?”

  I nodded, “Two.”

  “Then you know how I’d answer that. All mothers think their boys are irresistible. But, what I think isn’t that important, is it? It’s what all those women thought.”

  I flashed on Travis’s careful reading of my discarded poetry book.

  “He pays a rare kind of attention to women,” I observed.

  Ivory’s mobile face went very still. “Of course,” she said, “how could I forget? You’ve met Travis.”

  More silence.

  “You want to know what I think?” I prodded.

  “I guess I do.”

  For an instant, I saw Travis’s hand again, darkened with the black-inked lines of poetry, opening in front of me. “It was the oddest thing,” I said. “He made me think about Rudolf Nureyev.”

  Ivory smiled. “He moves like a dancer,” she said. “Elegant, very controlled.”

  We sat without speaking for a long moment. “It’s not the best of circumstances, meeting someone at San Quentin,” I temporized.

  “Just talk to me,” said Ivory. “I don’t have much to lose at this point.”

  “Okay,” I said. “He’s charming, all right. He’s smart, and frankly, that charm makes him a little scary. But what got me here was the way he talked about you.”

  “We’ll need more than that,” Ivory said flatly. “Death Row is full of murderers who love their mothers.”

  “I know,” I said. “But there was something very unsentimental, respectful about the way he talks about you. Which makes all this…”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry to ask you about this,” I began.

  Ivory put down the towel and the glass and leaned on the bar. “Don’t apologize. Ask anything you want. I don’t give one flying fuck. All I care about right now is getting help for Travis, however I can.”

  “Okay, what about the S&M business with Mrs. Plummer?”

  “We were close,” said Ivory, “but I’m his mother. It’s not as if he ever talked about that stuff with me. But, I do know there was a dark side to Travis, and I can’t say it surprises me.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Look, I think what people do with each other sexually is their business. I’ve got my own little quirks and “she broke off, and looked me up and down. “I bet you’ve got a couple yourself.”

  I felt my face go warm, remembering the last session with Dr. Mephisto.

  She held up her hand. “I’m not interested in yours and you’re not interested in mine. We’re only interested in Travis’s tastes because one of his women ended up dead.”

  “You’re something else,” I said.

  “No, I’m not,” she shot back. “I’ve got a son on Death Row. You can’t imagine how that enables you to cut through the nicey-nice stuff and get right down to it.” She sighed. “I didn’t know much about Mrs. Plummer, and I didn’t know about the rough sex. But I know Travis, I know him down to my bones. He likes to have fun, he likes to take things as far as they can go. But I read the description of how they found that woman. And I cannot believe Travis would do something like that to anyone.”

  Neither of us spoke. I looked down at the bar, and Ivory’s good hand, the one she was leaning on, was trembling. Suddenly, the door behind the bar flew open, and a burly guy pushing a hand truck loaded with cases of beer maneuvered it to Ivory’s side and put his arm around her. She stiffened, then leaned into him. With his free hand, he tore off the black and orange Giants cap he was wearing and dropped it on the bar.

  “Hi, babe,” he said. “This was at the back door, thought I’d move it in for you.” He looked at me. “Did I bust up something?”

  Ivory shook her head. “No, just talking about Travis’s appeal. Maggie Fiori, meet Augustus Reeves III, also known as Uncle Gus.” Reeves, who had a shaved head under that cap and a nose that looked as if it had been broken and not repaired exactly the way it should have been, stuck out his hand. We shook.

  “You another lawyer?” he asked. “That sounds expensive.”

  “Hardly,” I said. “I work for a magazine.”

  “Oh, yeah? Anything I’d ever heard of? Biker Mama, say?” He barked a laugh, and hugged Ivory close to him again.

  She put her hand on his impressive chest, and gently pushed him away.

  “Ever the joker, Uncle Gus,” she said.

  “Hey,” I said lightly, “I wouldn’t mind an assignment for Biker Mama once in a while. But they never call.”

  Uncle Gus narrowed his eyes, as if he couldn’t quite figure out if I was joking. That was okay; I couldn’t figure him out either. He seemed too close to Ivory’s age to be her uncle.

  “You work here, Gus?” I asked.

  “Not
exactly,” he said. “I’m a fan of Ivory’s, so I try to be useful from time to time. Keep a hand truck in my van, just to help my favorite proprietrix move things around. So, what’d I interrupt? You two seemed pretty intense.”

  Ivory gave me a quick, sideways glance. “Travis’s lawyer thought Maggie might be able to help. Find some things out. Turn over a few of those high-society rocks the cops couldn’t get to. I was just making my last-ditch mother-to-mother appeal to her.”

  “So, what’s the verdict?” asked Gus. He seemed suddenly serious, done joking around.

  Ivory came around the bar and sat down next to me again. “Are you in or are you out?”

  I looked at Ivory and I saw she’d pulled rank on me. No longer just a piano player, a bar-owner, a woman who’d been disappointed in love. She was a mother. And she was in the kind of trouble I couldn’t even begin to imagine. Isabella was sure he was innocent—and for no good reason on earth, I believed her. If one of my boys…I stopped that train of thought cold in its tracks by opening my mouth.

  “I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Tuesday mornings were all-hands editorial meetings at Small Town. Like most monthly magazines, we worked on three issues at once. We had one in final production, one in development—writing and layout—and one in planning.

  Hoyt Lee, the managing editor we’d hired to take Glen’s place, ran the meeting. A graduate of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), he sounded as if he’d been raised on a gentleman’s diet of fast horses, good bourbon, and lazy afternoons on a veranda. He never lost his temper or his fine manners, and was unfailingly polite to everyone from me (who regularly offended him whenever I let a swear word slip) to our youngest, greenest interns. The truth of the matter was that he was a first-generation college graduate, son of hardscrabble soybean farmers, but he’d learned how to behave like a gentleman and found it was better armor and ammunition than the money and land his more privileged, nitwit fraternity brothers brought to the party.

  It took nearly a year before he’d call me “Maggie,” and he still insisted on calling my assistant, Gertie, “Miz Davis,” out of deference to her age.

  “For heaven’s sake, Maggie,” she complained, “he makes me feel like someone’s mother.”

  “You are someone’s mother,” I pointed out. “You’ve got those two handsome, grownup sons. Indulge Hoyt,” I added. “He needs to think somebody around here is a lady.”

  Despite his courtly manner, Hoyt ran a tight meeting. We worked off agendas and flow charts, checking in on last-minute production issues for the current issue, progress and snags on the issue under development, identified opportunities for the online content, and then subjected the current issue’s plans to rigorous scrutiny.

  “Remember our readers,” Hoyt always admonished. “Will they find this interesting?” So, when we came to the future issue-planning chart, Hoyt gave me a chance to pitch a few angles on the Limousine Lothario story.

  I sketched out the death-penalty appeal background, gave a summary of Travis Gifford’s arrest, trial, and conviction, mentioned The Devil’s Interval, and waited. Puck Morris, our infamous music critic, known in band circles for his vicious reviews (with fair warning given by advance distribution to the unfortunate and untalented of “Pucked by Morris” T-shirts), laughed.

  “I know that spot, Maggie. It’s for oldsters. San Francisco used to be a great jazz town. Now it sucks. That place of Ivory’s feels like a museum.”

  Hoyt cleared his throat. “Say a little more, Puck.”

  Puck glared at him. “Holy shit, Hoyt. That’s what shrinks say.” He deepened his voice and affected a German accent, “Say a little more about vhy you find drowning kittens and masturbating to Strauss waltzes so pleasurable, Herr Morris.”

  Hoyt was not amused. “Let’s remember there are ladies present, Mr. Morris,” he said. “I repeat, why isn’t San Francisco ‘a jazz town’ anymore?”

  Puck sighed and shrugged off his beat-up leather jacket. “Anybody but me hot in here? That menopause stuff contagious, Gertie, or what?”

  Gertie regarded him with contempt. “Oh, grow up, Puck.”

  “Why isn’t San Francisco a jazz town? Couple reasons,” said Puck. “First, we’re small potatoes. You need a critical mass of appreciators to keep a club open. There just aren’t enough people who listen to jazz anymore. And the people who still do are getting old. They like to sit at home and caress their vintage Monk and Bird LPs on the comfort of their own sofa. And drink their own booze while they listen. Clubs are a young person’s scene.”

  “What about the new SFJazz Center?” I protested.

  Puck shook his head. “We’ll see. It’s hot, it’s new. But sooner or later, it will be out there trolling for old people, too.”

  “Jazz was just a sidebar,” I said. “To provide a little color. I think the main story could be about death-penalty appeals—who does what and how long it takes and the whole Innocence Project thing.”

  Silence in the room. “Maggie,” prodded Hoyt, “we already did a story on your Gasworks Gang ladies. More death-penalty appeal coverage hardly seems like a story our readers would find compelling.”

  “Okay, what would our readers find compelling?” I protested.

  Puck began shredding his empty coffee cup. “They’d find the murdered broad interesting,” he offered. “She was a player on the social scene, wasn’t she?”

  “That’s good,” I said. “Death of a Socialite.”

  Hoyt began to nod, “That’s got possibilities, Maggie. Although it seems a little odd to do it two years after her murder.”

  I had an answer. “Now it’s news again, because her alleged murderer is on Death Row and his attorneys are filing appeals. Let’s go back and see if we can do a story that tells our readers how Grace Plummer went from glamorous socialite to dead body in the back of a limousine.”

  “Cool beans,” volunteered Linda Quoc, Small Town’s art director. “We can do a black-and-white photo essay—from the Black & White Ball to the back seat of a black limo. Very graphic.” I thought about the photos again and swallowed. Too graphic, maybe.

  “It sounds a little too investigative journalism for us,” said Hoyt, “but I like the concept.”

  “Well, let’s see if we’ve got the chops to do it,” I said. I remembered something one of the Gasworks Gang said to me. “We’ve got entree to the world Grace Plummer moved in. If anybody could do the story, we could.”

  Hoyt caught me in the hall after the meeting. “I feel bamboozled, Maggie,” he said. “We were going to do that story, come heck or high water.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hoyt,” I said. “It’s hell or high water. Who are you going to give it to?”

  “Besides you?” asked Hoyt. “I know you’ll be riding shotgun on this piece, invited or not.”

  “Hey,” I said, “I’m the media mogul, I’m the one who can get next to the rich and famous.”

  He sighed. “I wouldn’t be overestimatin’ my clout if I were you,” he said. “I’m putting Andrea on it. She’s got the pedigree.” Starchy Storch, who did both features and film reviews for Small Town, brought her daddy’s signet ring, and a kind of rock-ribbed Northeast breeding to the magazine. Recently, she and Small Town’s favorite arty freelance photographer, Calvin Bright, had become a romantic item. Just two crazy preppy kids in love, one of whom happened to be African-American. “If Calvin ran the United Negro College Fund,” Michael once mused, “their motto would be ‘A Burberry is a terrible thing to waste.’”

  “Perfect,” I said. I walked back to my office and picked up the phone. “Isabella,” I said. “It’s Maggie Fiori. I went to see Ivory Gifford.”

  I heard her sharp intake of breath. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “You win. Well, you and Ivory win. We’re doing a piece.”

  “Dios mio,” she said softly. “Thank you, Maggie.”

  “Now would be a good time to tell me why you and Eleanor gave each o
ther a peculiar look in Eleanor’s living room the other day.”

  “Ivory,” she said. “I’ve always thought we didn’t have the whole story on Ivory. That is one tight mother-son relationship, and it weirds me out a little.”

  I thought about my own boys, about how I kept a permanent, long-running tape in my head about every moment of their lives. In an instant, I could recall the way Zach burrowed into the crook of my arm when he nursed, as if he were embedding himself back into my body. Or how, when Josh was three, every summer night he’d want to lie outside on the front lawn with Michael, and try to find Orion, which he pronounced Orizon, and how I loved that he saw a “horizon” in the sky—all the meaning I poured into that one boy and his use of that one word.

  “What do you mean tight?” I said, trying to keep the defensiveness out of my voice. “Her son’s on Death Row, of course she’s obsessing about him.”

  Isabella was silent. “Maggie, I’m a mother, too. I know what it means to be protective. I’m not talking about why she’s fighting for Travis now. I just keep wondering if she decided she didn’t like Grace for any number of reasons…”

  “And killed her?” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I know, it seems unlikely. But, you asked me what the look was about—and I’ve got to be straight with you. There’s always been something about that relationship that bothers me. Can you imagine trying to get between Travis and his mother?”

  I didn’t answer. “No,” I said reluctantly. “I can’t.”

  “And that stroke,” said Isabella. “I know it was real. You can’t fake a cerebral event. But it sure didn’t advance anybody’s cause that Ivory can’t remember much about a critical time in the case.”

  “She had an alibi,” I said. “That’s what it said in the file. She was at a late movie with a friend until nearly midnight. They must have had stubs or something.”

  “Better than stubs,” said Isabella. “An off-duty cop from the homicide squad saw them at the movies. He noticed Ivory because he thought she was, and I quote, ‘a silver fox.’”

  “So, she seems like a dead end.”

  “I know, I know,” said Isabella. “But still.”