by Jack Kerley
She flipped the empty glass into a trash can, snapped on a bright smile, and headed into the crowded room. My eyes kept following her derriere, but the room went dark.
Lucas arrived a half hour after the Channel 14 soiree had started, parking outside the Shrine Temple, slipping the used Subaru into the anonymous dark between streetlamps. He had been eating granola, spitting stale raisins out the window into the street. It had irritated him that a fucking health food store would sell granola with stale raisins and he’d considered returning to the store, grabbing the slacker clerk by his Bruce Cockburn T-shirt, dragging him down here, and making the bastard lick the raisins from the pavement.
“Those taste fresh to you? You little cocksucking son of a…”
He had caught himself. Taken several deep breaths, cleansing breaths. Listened to Dr. Rudolnick conjure up clouds.
“Settle into the clouds, Lucas. Let your anger drift away…”
Nothing much had happened while he waited, not that he’d expected anything. But he’d read about this soiree in a newspaper column and decided to rub elbows with the swells, even if it was a distant rubbing.
Sometimes things were revealed in small motions. Like the black stretch limo parked in the lot down the block, engine idling, keeping the air conditioning at a precise seventy-eight degrees, Maylene Kincannon’s preferred enviroment. Lucas had wanted to knock on the door of the limo, engage the driver in conversation. Maybe leave a warm ass-print in the leather seat, like a dog spraying its territory.
Common sense had prevailed. It wasn’t time yet.
After he’d been sitting for several more minutes, calm again, a woman slipped from the doors of the temple, a sexy woman in a blue dress, big casaba-melon hooters bobbing as she high-heeled down the sidewalk. She was weaving a bit, a sheet or two to the wind. She laughed, flicked her hand in the air, like a drummer tapping a cymbal. Then she hawked and spit onto the sidewalk, lit a cigarette, and crossed the street to climb into a battered red Corolla. It took two minutes of grinding the ignition before the engine kicked over and the car rattled away trailing a plume of exhaust.
The woman was suddenly more interesting to Lucas than a building he couldn’t safely enter, and his curiosity made him follow her, just for a lark.
CHAPTER 12
As I crossed the ballroom in the dark, a drink in each hand, the podium turned white with spotlight, signaling the business side of the affair. I returned to the table as the general manager took the dais. He droned industry jargon for twenty minutes: ratings points, targeted growth analysis, revenue streams, optimized asset utilization, and so forth. He was followed by three heads of something-or-other. Finally the GM reclaimed the microphone, burbled a few more comments, then swept his hand toward the Kincannon suburb.
“…cornerstones of our station and community, ladies and gentlemen, the Kincannons…”
The family members smiled and waved. Buck Kincannon elevated from his seat. A balcony spotlight centered on him, and I figured it had been aimed beforehand. The crowd applauded Kincannon like it had applauded everyone, solid, polite; then, after a few seconds, the applause started to wane.
A voice yelled, “Speech.”
Several men at a front table stood, hands clapping, calling for words from Kincannon. Folks at adjoining tables followed, checking side to side as they rose, concertgoers uncertain whether the music deserved a standing ovation, but everyone else seemed to think so. Applause thundered from the front table. They reminded me of cheerleaders in tuxedoes. Or, less politely, shills.
Dani stood and pounded her palms together. Kincannon took the dais with a laugh line, apologizing for disturbing “everyone’s reason for being here: free food and drinks,” then segued into more business-speak. To my untrained ear, it seemed fifty percent jargon, fifty percent bullshit; the trick, perhaps, to discern which was which. Or perhaps it didn’t matter.
After several minutes, Kincannon reverted to English.
“…nowhere is professionalism more evident than in the news department. No news team won more awards in Alabama last year than Channel 14 Action News…”
Applause from the audience at large.
“We’ve heard from some of those fine folks this evening, but there’s someone else who needs to say a few words. I’m talking about the hard-charging investigative spark of the team…”
“I didn’t expect this,” Dani said, touching at her hair. “How do I look, Carson?”
“Like you. Only dressier.”
“…gives me great pleasure to introduce a present star and future superstar of Clarity Broadcasting Corporation, a woman with more in her future than she knows…”
Dani grinned, shook her head.
“…I give you DeeDee Danbury.”
Kincannon lifted his arms wide, the Pope blessing St. Peter’s Square.
“Come on up, DeeDee.”
Applause rang out as Dani jogged to the dais. Buck Kincannon extended his arms and she walked into them, his wide hand rubbing her bare back. They traded smiles and a few words and Dani stepped to the microphone as Kincannon moved back a step, but still in her light.
She cleared her throat and mimed opening an envelope, blowing into it, reaching inside. The crowd went silent, wondering what she was doing.
Dani plucked an invisible card from the invisible envelope, held it distant as if to better see the words.
“And the winner in the category of best employer is…Clarity Broadcasting Network!”
The crowd laughed, applauded, whistled. I clapped hesitantly, fighting the notion that I’d seen her pander to the audience, to her employer. I felt embarrassment, but didn’t know for whom. Then I realized I was as naive to the ways of broadcasting as I was to the rental of formal wear. This is what they must do at these bashes, I thought. Kiss ass and march in rhythm. Relax.
Dani’s speech took two minutes. It was humorous. Smooth. Rich in praise to Clarity Broadcasting and the Kincannon family. Like her allusion to the Academy Awards, it seemed more act than sincerity.
Kincannon grabbed the mike, yelled, “Let’s hear it for our own beautiful DeeDee Danbury!” He waved his hands in a bring it on motion. Again led by the group at the front table, the audience jumped to its feet as if Dani were a figure skater who’d just completed a quintuple something-or-other.
The soiree broke up at eleven. Since Dani’s effusive blessing by ownership, she’d been surrounded by sudden friends. Outside, I waited as she chatted with others, enjoying the limelight. With little to do, I wandered in the warm night. I stepped around the corner and saw Racine and Nelson Kincannon and their wives waiting for transportation. It was a service entrance and I figured people like the Kincannons didn’t queue with the riffraff.
I leaned against a lamp a hundred feet distant and watched, just me and the Kincannons. No one in the family spoke to anyone else, their eyes flat and expressionless. It was like the show was over, everyone could turn off their faces and go home. Racine Kincannon was drinking, glasses in both hands.
Nelson said something. I couldn’t hear what. Racine spun, threw one of the drinks in his brother’s face. Racine threw the other drink on the ground, grabbed his brother’s lapels, pushed him away hard. The wives stepped a dozen feet away and looked into the night sky, bored. The two men seemed about to square off when I heard a voice like broken glass.
“Stop it, now!”
Maylene Kincannon exploded from the building like a rodeo bull from a gate, Buck Kincannon at her side. She thundered up, finger jabbing, tongue lashing. I heard the anger, but not the words. Her two squabbling sons looked at their feet. The wives remained turned away, like nothing was happening.
Then Buck Kincannon leaned toward his mother, said something. Whatever it was didn’t agree with her. She slapped his face so hard it sounded like a gunshot. No one else seemed to notice or care.
A black stretch limo rolled into view. The family grouped together as the chauffeur emerged to open the doors. The black beast pull
ed from the curb. I saw an impenetrably dark window roll down. A male face, contorted in anger, yelled, “Get a life, asshole.”
The curtain fell.
It was almost midnight when our driver returned us to Dani’s, the night drenched with haze and lit by moon glow, the air perfumed with dogwood and magnolia. Arms linked, we walked to the porch as a night bird sang from the eaves. She shook her keys free of her purse, opened the door. The cool, clean air felt good after sharing the exhalations of three hundred others for two hours. I looked at her phone, a red LED blinking.
“You’ve got a message.”
She went to the kitchen to rattle the lock at the back door, the habitual checks of a woman living alone. “Probably Laurel Hollings twitting me for the speech. He does that kind of thing when he’s had a few. Punch it on while I look out back.”
I heard the kitchen door open, the screen slam, as she went out to check the back porch door. I tossed my jacket into a chair, walked to the phone, pressed MESSAGE.
“It was great to see you this evening, dear DeeDee. I meant everything I said about the bright future. And by the way, that red dress was fantastic. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Four hours earlier I wouldn’t have recognized the voice. But now I did.
Buck Kincannon.
I closed my eyes and wondered what to do, then diddled with the reset button on the phone. Dani returned a minute later. I stood in front of the hall mirror, fiddling with the button on the vest.
“Crap,” I snarled.
“What?”
“The button’s snagged. Wrapped in a thread.”
She looked at the phone, the display blinking like it had never been touched.
“You didn’t check the phone?” she asked.
I glared at the button. “If I tear the damn button off they’ll probably charge me thirty bucks. There still scissors in the bathroom?”
She nodded and I hustled to the john, closed the door. I stood in the dark with my racing heart as she checked her message. My straining ears caught Buck Kincannon’s voice again roaming through Dani’s house.
It was a business call, I told myself; Buck Kincannon was the capo di tutti capo of the Kincannon family and Clarity Broadcasting. He probably called all the station’s speech givers, made them feel part of the team. It was just business.
I returned a couple minutes later, vest in hand. Dani was in the kitchen moving dishes from the dishwasher to her shelves.
“Can’t that wait until tomorrow?” I asked.
She shrugged; put on a smile. “Just felt like doing something. Excess energy or whatever.”
“The message, was it your jokester from the station?”
Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine; she turned and slid a dish into place, spoke into the cupboard. “Nothing important. A friend wanting to talk when I have a chance.”
That night we lay in her bed, but neither made motions toward making love. Lightning flashed at the windows and filled the room with shadows, but rain never came. Just past dawn I arose without waking her, penciled a note explaining that I had a busy day, and fled into a day already breathless with heat.
CHAPTER 13
Harry shoved aside a file of forms on his desktop, set a new stack in its place. He paused and stared at me.
“You all right, Cars?”
“Sure, Harry. Why?”
“You’ve said maybe three words since you got in this morning. How was the big kick-up for Channel 14? Dancing and prancing with the swells? That was this weekend, right?”
“It was fine.”
I realized if I didn’t go into detail, Harry’s antennae would register my distress. I gave a brief synopsis of the evening: impaired music, great eats, first-class beverages, lots of chatter in biz-speak.
“Plus I even got a look at upper-crust Mobile: a family called the Kincannons. They were so—”
Harry broke into my recitation. “You meet Buck?”
I stared at my partner like a plumed hat had appeared on his head.
“What?”
“Buck Kincannon. You get a chance to say hi?”
“How the hell do you know Buck Kincannon?”
“Back four or five years ago I was working with a civic group in north Mobile, by Pritchard. Maybe you remember?”
“I recall a couple months when all your nights seemed locked up. Weekends, too. Something about a ball league?”
He nodded. “The group’s big push was getting inner-city kids into sports, baseball. Kids from ten to fourteen years old. Keep ’em on a ball field, not the streets. We were beating our heads against the wall scratching up thirdhand equipment. We’d been trying to get the city to let us use an abandoned lot as a practice field, but they kept whining about liability. Mardy Baker, the director of a social services organization, sent letters to all the big civic and charitable organizations, trying to scratch up money. No go.”
Harry paused and smiled to himself, as if he were tasting a delicious memory.
“Where’d Kincannon fit in?” I asked.
“One of the letters had gone to the Kincannons’ family foundation. A philanthropic deal. Kincannon himself showed up at our next meeting, checkbook in hand.”
“Keep going,” I said.
“Suddenly our ragtag kids got Louisville Slugger bats, Rawlings gloves, uniforms. It wasn’t just money, it was influence. Like he walked into City Hall with a shopping list and said, ‘Here’s what I want.’ Two days later all permits are in order, insurance isn’t a problem, nothing’s a problem. The old field got resodded, sand and dirt trucked in to fill the baselines, build a pitcher’s mound. Stands went up so parents could sit and cheer for the kids.”
“So you sat around while Kincannon waved a magic wand?”
“The group was moms mainly, plus a couple of community-activist types. They made me designated hitter for dealing with Buck, me being a big, important cop and all. We went to lunch, him laying out plans, me nodding and going, ‘Sure, Buck, sounds good.’”
“What’d you think of him, Kincannon?” I sounded casual.
Harry flipped a thumbs-up. “From setting the city straight to setting the timetable, he took over. You don’t think of people with that kind of power and influence getting down in the gritty, and he’s cool in my book.”
I stopped listening, put my head on nod-and-grunt function as Harry continued enumerating the angelic feats of the Holy Buckster.
“…opened that field and you should have seen the kids’ eyes. Buck later said it was one of the highlights of his…”
Nod. Grunt. Nod. Grunt.
“…all the local politicos showed up like it was their idea, standing next to Buck and getting their pictures taken…”
Nod. Grunt.
“…guess you can do anything you got the money to do it….”
I was between grunt and nod when I remembered I wanted to call Warden Malone up at Holman and get a status report on Leland Harwood. I headed toward the small conference room to get some quiet, but Harry followed, still singing the glories of Buck Kincannon.
“Good-looking fella, too. Probably has to shovel the ladies out the door in the a.m….”
We went to the small conference room. I dialed the prison, ran the call through the teleconference device, a black plastic starfish in the center of the round table. Malone was on a minute later.
“Leland Harwood died two hours after he was stricken in the visitors’ room. Never regained consciousness.”
“Poison,” I said.
“A witches’ brew of toxins. Organophosphates, the report says. I’d never heard the term. Pesticide, herbicide, some industrial chemicals.” I heard paper rattling in Warden Malone’s hand as he read from the page.
“Where did all that stuff come from?” Harry asked.
“All available inside, Detective,” Malone said. “Cleaning supplies, rat poison, roach paste, paint thinner. They’re kept tucked away, but…”
“So someone squirts a bunch of stuff on Harwoo
d’s scrambled eggs and he drops dead later?”
“The docs say it took some mixing of compounds to get the right effect, the maximum bang for the buck, to be crass.”
“Harwood got banged hard,” I noted. “He have any enemies?”
“I’ve checked around and the answer is, not really. He was a smart-ass but managed to stay out of major confrontations. Wanting to appear angelic for the parole board will do that.”
“Got any poisoners up there?” Harry asked.
“Several. But we keep them real far from the pantry, so to speak. The docs said anyone with access to the right supplies could have mixed the brew…with a little help from someone with bad thoughts, the right formula, and high school chemistry.”
“Info that could have come from outside.”
Malone laughed without humor. “Imagine a couple guys in the visitors’ room. The one on the outside says, ‘Soak twenty roach tablets in alcohol, let sit two days, mix in…’”
“Got the point,” Harry said.
We asked Malone to keep us in the loop. Harry clicked the starfish off. He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“The next time I decide to race Logan to a scene, how about you strangle me.”
“I was just thinking that. Where from here?”
“Let’s check into Harwood some more, call up the man’s sheet. Talk to folks that knew the deceased. Maybe figure out Taneesha Franklin’s interest in a guy like Leland.”
I sat at the computer, pulled up overviews on the incident as Harry leaned over my shoulder, reading ahead.
“Bernard Rudolnick was Harwood’s victim,” Harry said, frowning at the computer screen. Doctor Bernard Rudolnick.”
“Killed in a bar, right?” I scrolled the screen to the correct info as Harry recited particulars.
“The Citadel Tavern. A low-life joint. Got into a scuffle at the bar, the men went outside. A gun goes bang in the night. The shooter lit out, but Mobile’s finest grabbed Harwood a few hours later.