Suitcase City

by Watson, Sterling

  He nodded to her, smiled. She watched him carefully as he stopped for coffee, then went on down the hall. Halfway to his door, Teach realized that the building was unnaturally quiet. He could actually hear air whispering in the vents.

  Inside, he stood before the desk of his secretary. Amelia Corso, an intelligent woman capable of more loyalty to her boss than to the company (an essential trait in a secretary), raised her head from the memo she was pretending to read. “Well, hello there, tough guy. Let me see those hands.”

  Teach held out his hands for inspection.

  “Don’t see any cuts. You use brass knuckles on that poor, innocent kid?”

  Teach shrugged, feeling the ache in his elbow. “No, I used my elbow and only once. It still hurts.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go complaining about the parts of you that hurt, not today anyway.”

  Teach nodded. It was good advice. Good old Amelia. An Italian transplant from the Bronx. Her husband, an ex-cop on a twenty-year pension, taught martial arts in his own karate dojo in a Carrolwood strip mall. Amelia’s bluntness had saved Teach from more than one dumb mistake.

  She handed him a While You Were Out message. Bama Boyd had called. There was an X in the Please Return Call box. Teach winced, folded it, closed his eyes, and tried to form a few words of his apology to Bama. Not much there. Amelia made her brown eyes big and said, “He wants to see you, ASAP. Called first thing this morning.”

  He was Meador. First thing could only mean the worst. Meador spent the first half hour of every working day reading the Bible at his desk. It was an ancient leather-bound book, as scuffed as an old boot. He liked to tell people it recorded a hundred years of Meador family births and deaths. Teach wondered if he wrote the names of sacked executives and the dates of their departures in it too.

  His stomach rolled like a fish dying in a bucket. He gave Amelia his brave-fellow-marches-to-the-fight smile and walked to Meador’s suite.

  After Teach was announced by Meador’s secretary, Martha Grimes, Mabry Meador let him cool his heels for five minutes with nothing to look at but Martha’s stumpy ankles. Teach figured Meador was searching his Bible for a verse to guide him in his trouble with Teach. Finally, a light blinked on Martha’s desk. “Mr. Teach, Mr. Meador will see you now.”

  Teach got up and squared his lapels again. “Thank you, Martha, and, may I say, you look particularly fresh this morning in that cheery spring frock.”

  Actually, the dress was a shroud of Mother Hubbard design. Martha owned multiple copies in colors running the gamut from mud-brown to soot-black. Teach always complimented her appearance, and she always responded with a tightening at the corners of her mouth.

  When Teach walked in, Mabry Meador undid his collar button and leaned forward in his chair. The Bible rested on a copy of the morning paper. Jesus, Teach thought, the subtlety. Meador was a fair-skinned man of sixty who had the body of a thirty-year-old pole vaulter. When he leaned forward and placed his hands on his blotter, Teach could see his biceps jump in his white shirt. No one knew what kept Meador in such good shape. No one had ever seen him exercise, or heard him talk about the delights of rowing or cycling. Yet he was hard, supple in his movements, and never winded. Teach’s theory was that rectitude taken to extremes was a fat burner. He took the chair opposite Meador’s desk and waited. Best to let the boss begin.

  Meador looked at him for a long time. Finally, he pressed his lips together until they whitened, and shook his head. “Jim, do you know how I found out about this?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but Teach answered anyway. “You read the paper?”

  Meador frowned.

  Teach tried again. “One of my good friends from the company called and suggested you read the paper?”

  Meador was not a man to suspect comedy in others; nor was he equipped to deal with it. He simply shook his head. “She called me. At home. This woman . . .” Stabbing a forefinger at the newspaper. “This Marlie Turkel. She called Saturday morning at ten o’clock to ask me what I thought about you getting into a fistfight in a bar with some—”

  “It wasn’t a fistfight, Mabry. If you read the article, you know I said the boy was trying to stick up two men in a restroom. I was in that bar having a perfectly cordial drink and—”

  “Having it on my time,” Meador said.

  Four o’clock on a Friday afternoon was no man’s time, but Teach decided to let that pass. Ownership of that hour depended on what you’d accomplished, and Teach had had a good week. Maybe he should point that out to his boss.

  Meador waved an impatient hand and leaned forward. His tight little eyes and wiry, short-cropped hair were the same color, a corroded gray. “Jim, I’m putting you on sick leave until we have some sort of disposition of this thing.”

  Meador waited, but Teach did not know what to say. Disposition? He tried to recall the company’s sick-leave policy. What were you entitled to? Jesus, a salary? Had the time come for Teach to negotiate, or was he supposed to throw himself on the majesty of Meador’s generosity and get the hell out of here? He took a deep breath.

  “Mabry, I didn’t expect this. It seems a little . . . extreme to me. I don’t see why you think it’s—”

  “Jim, I know Thurman Battles, and I know what he’s capable of doing if he gets a bee in his bonnet about this thing.”

  Teach thinking, Jesus, a bee in his bonnet. It occurred to him that he knew nothing about Thurman Battles except what he had been told by a white policeman, a golfing lawyer named Walter Demarest, and now this man, a Baptist druggist. None of what he’d heard was reassuring, but maybe there was more, or less, to this Battles character than people thought. The more, Teach hoped, might be the milk of human kindness. The less might be something Teach could use against him.

  “While you’re on leave and we, ah, we see how this thing works out, I want you to consider some counseling. Dan Boyle can recommend somebody, I’m sure.”

  Teach sat there numb and nodding. Dan Boyle was director of HR, a reformed alcoholic who gave speeches at the retreats on subjects ranging from “Courtesy in the Workplace” to “Substance Abuse and What It Costs Your Employer.” Teach had wondered at first why Meador tolerated Boyle, a dullard who had no particular gift for handling personnel. He had finally concluded that Meador loved nothing more than the sinner who had grasped the lifeline. Boyle was the company’s chief sinner. Maybe that was what Meador wanted from Teach now. A vice president who could talk about “How Counseling Helped Me Overcome the Demons of Alcohol-Related Violence” or “How I Learned to Stop Quitting Work an Hour Early on Friday Afternoons.” James Teach: Assistant Chief Sinner. Teach shook his head, sighed. Maybe there was room for a repositioning here.

  “Look, Mabry, I realize how you feel about this. It hurts the company, and it offends you personally, but I have to insist that I told the truth about what happened in that bar. I went into the restroom, the kid came in and demanded money or else, and I decked him. Mabry . . .” Teach heard the note of anger in his own voice, “I saved my own ass and the other guy’s. And he, by the way, did nothing but stand there with his dick in his hand and let the thing happen.”

  Meador leaned back, shook his head again, his mouth as tight as a line of small print in a severance agreement. Teach knew he shouldn’t have said ass, and certainly not dick. As far as he knew, Baptists did not acknowledge the existence of such parts.

  “Jim, you know I don’t like that kind of talk from people who work for me. We run a family company here.”

  “Mabry, the family’s not here right now. It’s just you and me, and I’m telling you this kid is a scumbag.”

  Meador frowned, then leaned forward and began writing in his ledger. Meador’s notebook was famous. He took notes on all conversations. He wrote while people talked to him, giving the impression that he was far more interested than he really was in what they were saying. Sometimes, like now, he waited until the conversation was finished and took notes while you sat there trying to remember
what the hell you’d just said, wondering if Meador was getting it down right and how he would use it later.

  When Meador finished writing, he opened his desk drawer and took out a bottle of pills in a plastic wrapper. It was the kind of sample kit drug salesmen took to doctors’ offices. “Here, Jim, I want you to try this. It’s a new antidepressant that just came in from Israel. They’ve got high hopes for it in the American market. The preliminary reports indicate a significant elimination of mood swings and elevated feelings of optimism and well-being. Take a few of these while you’re out, ah, resting, and let me know what you think of them.”

  Jesus, thought Teach, Jesus Halcyon Christ. Meador had a medical degree now. He was diagnosing Teach as a manic-depressive and prescribing medication. Teach reached across the desk—across the newspaper, the Meador family Bible, and the man’s doomsday notebook—and accepted the pills. “Thanks, Mabry. Uh, listen, can you tell me how long . . . you think I’m going to be out on leave?”

  Meador got up, walked around, and extended the small, strong hand that Teach had shaken often, but never without surprise at its temperature: cold. “Let’s just play it by ear, Jim. See how this thing goes. The important thing right now is for you to get your life back in order. Okay?”

  Teach followed the script as his boss had written it. “Okay,” he said, “uh, thanks, Mabry. I take it you’ll call me when . . .”

  Meador smiled, concerned but finished. “I’ll call you.”

  THIRTEEN

  When Teach departed Meador Pharmaceuticals, there was nowhere to go but home and, once there, nothing to do but pour himself a bourbon. He downed the first one, neat, before removing his coat and tie. He tossed the coat across a chair, put some ice in a tumbler, and poured a second sipping drink. He sat at the kitchen table, first in a brooding numbness, then feeling the whiskey trickle into his brain, knitting the severed ends of his optimism far better than any new drug from Israel or any therapist provided by Dan Boyle, Chief Sinner.

  The phone rang.

  Teach looked at it with dread, then said to himself, Things cannot get worse. I can answer this phone with impunity.

  “Hello, old buddy.”

  “Walter? How you doing? Listen, uh, how come you didn’t call me at work?”

  “I did call you at work, and—”

  “They told you?”

  “In a roundabout way. You are at home recovering. You aren’t expected to be back for a while.”

  “How long before I am expected to be back, Walter?”

  “They wouldn’t say. I should say, she wouldn’t. Your secretary. Seems like a good sport. They’ve got her fielding the questions. She implies that you have worked so long and faithfully for Meador that you need a rest.”

  Teach raised the glass and drank until the ice rattled against his front teeth. “Walter, you didn’t call to tell me what my secretary is saying.”

  Walter’s voice kept playing that smooth legal note. “No, I didn’t. I called to say that there are, reportedly, big doings over at the law firm of Battles, Brainard, and Doohan. They’re preparing a civil action against you. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Teach closed his eyes. Lord, was there no end to this? Was he to be hounded to hell for a mishap in a men’s room, a moment’s impulse lacking all malice? “Jesus,” he moaned.

  Walter said, “Exactly.”

  After a pause, while Teach tried to think, Walter continued, “Have you considered my offer? I can give you the name of an attorney. The guy is good and not too pricey.”

  Teach knew he’d be a fool not to take the name, but the idea of going to some stranger about this, letting another pair of eyes and ears, two more raised eyebrows, another fucking attitude, into this thing, was repugnant to him. “Walter, are you sure you won’t consider representing me? I’m not a pauper, you know.”

  If he had to, Teach could sell the condominium in New Smyrna Beach that Paige had inherited from her parents. The property was valued at three hundred thousand dollars.

  Walter said, “No, Jim, I don’t think that would be best for either of us. I can explain if you like, but—”

  “No, Walter, that’s all right. Let’s leave it where it is.” Teach thinking Walter might tell him exactly how much this thing could cost. Then, hearing the phone hit the floor as Teach went into cardiac arrest, Walter could dial 911. Or, in some ways worse, Teach might learn why it would not be professionally advantageous for Walter to take on Thurman Battles. Hell, maybe the two attorneys were in bed together.

  Walter said, “Well, I thought you’d want to know.”

  “I did and I didn’t.” Teach poured himself another large one.

  Walter said, “Let’s play a round soon. Nothing like golf to take your mind off your troubles.”

  Teach said, “Sure, let’s do that,” with as much cheer as he could muster. He was thinking about the Terra Ceia Golf and Country Club. Did the club have a ceremony for drumming scumbags out of their ranks? Did they march you down a gauntlet of golf bags, striping your bare ass with lob wedges?

  “See you then,” Walter said, impatient to get off. His time was billed at some outrageous rate by ten-minute slices. He had just spent money on his friend Teach.

  “Right, see you. And Walter. Thanks for calling. It was good of you.”

  “Fairways and greens, buddy.” Walter hung up.

  Teach knew what he had to do now, had known it for a while, in some part of his mind. It was knowledge he had been avoiding. It was like the swollen, discolored lump you find in your armpit. You have to see the doctor, you know it, but you don’t call and make the appointment. You live in fantasy and dread while the cancer grows.

  Teach was going to see Thurman Battles. Today. Right now. He was going to announce himself to the man’s receptionist and say he’d wait until Mr. Battles could see him. Say he’d wait all day if he had to. Come back the next day and wait again. He had to talk to the guy, see if they could be men about this, work out some compromise so that this air strike on Teach’s life might be called off.

  FOURTEEN

  Teach told the receptionist he needed to see Thurman Battles about a very important matter, had no appointment, and would wait. She was a pretty young black woman with kind, somber eyes and red fingernails so long that when she touched the phone to announce him, she had to flatten her hand against the keypad. Teach imagined her trying to type, then surmised that her job was only to look professional in a simple black blazer and white silk blouse, to communicate good taste, and answer the phone.

  Holding the phone to her ear with a padded shoulder, she said, “Mr. James Teach for Mr. Battles,” then she listened, frowned, listened, smiled. “If you’d like to have a seat, Mr. Teach, Mr. Battles will be with you in a moment.”

  Teach, who had expected resistance, expected to have to use charm and salesmanship to get inside, was surprised. It took him a second to pull a polite smile to his lips and say, “Thank you.”

  He turned to the green leather sofa, but he couldn’t sit: he was too full of energy. He clasped his hands behind his newest blue Brooks Brothers suit and made a slow circle of the room, inspecting the certificates and diplomas and framed memberships on the walls. Thurman Battles had more than enough of them, and they were more than extraordinary. Getting in to see the guy might be a good sign. It might mean Battles wasn’t going to play lawyerly delaying games, didn’t want him out here stewing in his own vitriol, coming in angry or reduced to a web of frazzled nerves so he’d give ground. It meant, Teach hoped, that the man would treat him fairly, talk to him—one decent, well-meaning soul to another.

  The phone rang and the pretty receptionist said, “Mr. Battles will see you now. Through that door and all the way back to the last suite.” Teach thanked her and walked.

  Halfway down the hallway with the plush carpet and the framed charcoal studies of sprinting racehorses, he realized that his knees had a little rubber in them and his mouth a little lint. Come on, man, relax. You’ve do
ne this before, the corridors of corporate power, the big meeting. But most of his experience was selling, and this wasn’t selling. This was something else.

  Teach tried to take himself back to football, those tense huddles of long ago when a first down wasn’t enough. You needed seven points to win and you knelt and looked up at the circle of tired, battered faces, the steam of their breathing rising like they were cattle at a cold morning trough, ten strong young men whose eyes, undefeated, looked at you saying, Lead us. Teach drew strength from the memory as he opened the door with the brass nameplate: Thurman Battles, Esq.

  Inside the suite, a better grade of carpet, more framed history, another pretty black woman (older, no paint on her nails, redolent of education and irony), and another closed door. The woman’s smile was warm and small. “Right on through, Mr. Teach.”

  Teach, who had called the play in his mind, nodded, smiled, and kept walking. He planned to explain what had happened without embellishment and admit that the boy’s actions and words were open to interpretation. He’d say he was sorry, not for what he had done, but for the way things had turned out, sorry because this whole thing was, apparently, a misunderstanding. He’d offer to pay Tyrone Battles’s medical bills, but insist that this was not to be taken as an admission of guilt. He’d say he was willing to consider any other reasonable restitution (including an apology, private or public) if this thing could stop here, now.

  Thurman Battles stood with his back to Teach gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Tampa skyline. It was a corner office on the thirty-sixth floor of the Barnett Bank building, facing south toward Tampa Bay and east toward Ybor City. The high blue sky was bisected by the towering, deep-purple column of a thunderstorm marching up the bay toward the city. Out across the tall apartment buildings along Bayshore Boulevard, Teach could see the derricks and warehouses of the port of Tampa, and, farther out, a phosphate carrier plowing the roadstead, the diesel smoke from its stack sucked toward the horizon by the undertow of the coming storm.