by Lisa Sandlin
“Shut up, Glen.” Georgia wrenched away from him and shot Phelan the bird. The door slammed.
Cussing this clueless little bitch he’d failed to terrify, Phelan drove back to the office, called Mrs. Toups. No Ricky yet.
Friday night, close to eight o’clock, his professional deck was cleared, but his brain was still zipping around. Tried to leave the phone alone. Night’s second failure. He called E.E. at home and reported that “Once bitten, twice shy” did not apply to his former client. The teenagers were back in business. The office was hollow without Delpha there, his footsteps loud. Heedlessly, he asked that E.E. call him if he heard anything about Deeterman.
“Call you. Like you was a cop. Mr. Hawaii-Five-O. Mr. Mannix.” E.E. read him the sorry-nephew code for a minute, finishing with, “You’re family but don’t mess in police business, you hear?”
“All right. But you have cases you can’t let go of?”
“One or two.”
“Me too.”
E.E.’s shout of a laugh tripped over itself making more laughing. Bounced like a trampoline for ten seconds. “Thank you, Tom, bless your heart, I needed that. Oh, my. Get over yourself, boy. How long you been in business? All we know, this your summer job.”
Phelan sat down, face heated. He hung up before E.E. could bust out laughing again.
Dug the bottle of whiskey from his bottom drawer and was about to pour a glass, but then—hold up, have a Technicolor life here, Tom—he tucked it back. Switched off the fan and the straining AC units. Tugged his tie loose, tossed it onto his desk, locked the door and walked down the stairs.
Twenty minutes and two shots later, he was bossing some emotional leeway. Owning some perspective. He’d bypassed Crockett’s outdoor street fair and chosen the relative quiet of a bar, heels hooked over the rung of a bar stool. He was letting his vision blur out on neon, savoring the wide sweep of breeze from a big ass ceiling fan. The bartender had just rescued his loyal constituents from Top Forty and delivered them into the deft hands of a KJET jockey spinning this week’s Jet Set of Soul Sounds. Phelan was ready to sip properly from a Jack on the rocks with a twist.
“You Tom Phelan?”
He angled his stool around to see a twentyish blonde in a yellow tank top. “My friend,” she pointed her cigarette over her shoulder, “she told me your helicopter crashed in Viet Nam. What was that like?”
Phelan looked past her to a table where two other young women sat with fresh drinks, empty glasses, and a full ashtray, one of them…yes, indeed, Debbie from State National. She scrunched up her face in contrition, mouthed “Sor-ry.” He angled back to the vision of yellow. A snub-nosed girl riding into the night on her mother’s opinion that she was pretty, who hadn’t learned yet that she was just bright-acting.
The silence between them paid out until she began to question her mother’s opinion and her face turned a color he liked: rose. All rose over the cheeks and the neck. He didn’t like that she was uncomfortable, even if she didn’t know her nose from a drill bit. Maybe he was supposed to come up with a fun anecdote for her when a hazy glimpse had shimmed itself in, hills and mist, tumble of faces and soaked uniforms, oven-heat, the blowback of a chopper, stumbling stooped over at the head of a bloody stretcher. Roar and churn of blades above his ducked head, grit blown in his teeth, embedding in his skin, writhing of the man on the stretcher, the weight, the shifting twisting living weight. Lift-off, up, up, noise, smoke, door gunner’s face as he pitched back, clawed at the metal insides of the lurching chopper. The glimpse flared into a black, breathless fear-wall that was himself body and mind, and the wall rammed forward, crushing.
Then something clicked in, and the fear cleared.
Snap, packed away.
In its place, beige calm.
The wide breeze brushed his sweating cheek. Music sluiced by. If you want me to stay I’ll be around today… Someone screamed in a modified fashion. Horsing around, not meaning it.
Oh whoahh.
Good
Wish I could
Get this message over to you now. A better scream this time.
“Fast,” he said to the girl, about the plunging chopper, and swung the stool away from her. Chugged his gleaming Jack on ice cubes from his clean glass. Time to go. He was over himself.
XXXII
A BLACK LINCOLN ruffled the skirt of a woman crossing the street. She abruptly sat down on the bench.
“You’re her, aren’t you,” the woman said.
“Yeah. I’m her.”
Mrs. Robbins angled toward Delpha, taking her in.
Looking into the woman’s eyes, Delpha thought, I’m dead wrong. Those words, prurient, perhaps, anybody can write them.
No makeup, light lines at the eyes, one tracing up from the chin without reaching the corner of her lip. Nose like Isaac’s now that it was healed straight again, not much of a dip at the brow. She wore a baby blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled and a khaki skirt. Loafers. With spatter-spots.
Paper-bag brown hair in an untended pixie cut.
Didn’t rule out Isaac’s mother as their client, a wig would fit over the short hair. But unlike their client, who Mr. Phelan had described as having dirty-brown teary eyes, Mrs. Robbins sported clear lamps there behind her metal-frame bifocals—outsize, blue, almost purple. And turned on Delpha.
“You have a delicate face,” Isaac’s mother said, with surprise. “After fourteen years in prison. My god. I thought up-close you’d be…blowsy. Harsh.” Mrs. Robbins sat straight again, turning her head left away from City Hall.
Up-close. Did that mean Isaac’s mother had seen her from far off? Must have. She too looked away, fixing her eyes on the greened copper trim of the library, the stained glass images of wheat and scythe, of bound sheaves.
“You thought blowsy is what Isaac would like.”
“Not at all. But he’s always been shy and…I thought you’d have brought yourself to his attention in some obvious way.”
“The regular obvious way. I didn’t do time for prostitution.”
“I know what you served time for. It’s not difficult information to find. The law serves man, not justice, and frankly, I’m not unsympathetic to you.”
“Unsympathetic enough to threaten me.”
A braless girl in a gauzy white sundress halted by the bench. She twirled an unlit cigarette backward into her palm. “Wow, hi! Dr. Robbins. I thought that was you. Y’all fixin’ to go down to the Crockett Street fair?” She smiled expectantly.
“No, how are you—” Isaac’s mother said.
“It’s Susan.” The smile dimmed a notch then brightened again. She raised on her toes and signaled toward the street, breasts bobbing. A motorcycle showoff-skidded to the curb.
“I mean to take Bio-Chem again. Hope I can get a better grade in your class this time.” The girl’s hopeful gaze overflowed onto Delpha, drenching her in good intentions. “Nice to see you, Dr. Robbins.” She ran on tiptoe to the motorcycle.
Though light was leaching from the sky, Mrs. Robbins produced clip-ons from her purse and was about to fix them over her glasses, disappearing the wild-indigo eyes. “So. My language. It offended you?”
A beat in Delpha’s throat, then she realized the woman meant the language in her threat, not the language that had led Delpha to call her. Not prurient, not perhaps.
“That’s the sticking point, isn’t it?” Mrs. Robbins expelled a breath. “It wasn’t personal. I’d have written the same to anyone in Isaac’s way. That’s all you want, the threat removed? Not money?” The dark lenses left off scanning Orleans Street, amber-gold in sunset light, and focused on Delpha.
You brought what you had to the fight. Delpha decided to ruin that scrutiny. “Sorry about your husband. Isaac loved his dad a lot.”
The straight nose flooded red at the tip, her lips clenched. Trembled and opened. “Oh, yes. Yes, he did, yes. Yes.” Mrs. Robbins’ wrist touched her forehead, the pose of a silent-movie actress, but effortful, as though she we
re propping herself up.
“Just break it off like I asked. Please. Allow Isaac to resume his education.”
Delpha intended to do just that. She had never intended otherwise. But she had to know. “If I didn’t agree to break it off…what is it you have in mind to do?”
Mrs. Robbins glanced at Delpha and rapidly away. “This is a problem. I know what happened to you. I understand precisely why you did what you did.” Her voice dropped. Her head was shaking in stern disagreement. “I’ve no wish to hurt you.”
“Really. How would you?” This was it, the information Delpha wanted, did she have her plan ready?
“Miss Wade, Miss Wade. Hypothetically, any number of ways. Other than with my son, you’re not a powerful person. I could interfere with your parole officer, bring some sort of complaint. Or perhaps your employment. The latter. Interfering with your employment would violate the terms of your parole. You have to hold a job. You’re a convict. Whereas I supervise a hospital laboratory and teach a class at Lamar College. Hardly Harvard, but respectable. You appreciate the leverage.”
“Oh, I do.” Delpha shifted away from her. “Isaac tell you what my job is?”
“It’s hard to get much out of him. Except your name, he seems to like to say it. I gathered you’re some kind of nurse aid.”
“I did have two jobs, just one now. When you checked up on me, you didn’t find out who I work for?”
“My research took another direction. Quite another. Direction. I discovered…well, let’s wait a minute for that.” Isaac’s mother’s mouth stayed open, she hesitated, as though about to reverse herself and spill whatever she’d discovered. But when she went on, she said only, “That minor point, where you work, that wouldn’t be difficult, either.”
“I work for Tom Phelan. The private investigator. Funny, you and me talked on the phone before I ever met Isaac.”
Mrs. Robbins’s head jerked around to Delpha, her gaze alarmed. Isaac’s mother knew instantly what she stood to lose.
“I am not an extortionist. Sending those photographs, without any message, isn’t a crime. I refer you to Black’s Law Dictionary. I had no expectation of any gain but harm. Harm, like they had harmed us.”
Delpha watched her steadily. “Why’d you want to hurt Elliott?”
“Monstrous. They were monstrous.” Her fists beat against her knees. “My husband’s work should have earned him international recognition and made us comfortable for life. They cheated him. His logbook disappeared, the notes he kept in the files disappeared, and Charlie…Charlie was undone. So angry and already ill. His strength just—they stole it from him. They took his character. Oh, he’d have regained it if he’d had time. Charlie would have gotten hold of himself, I know that. But I…we only had two months left. And they ruined our precious time together. Lloyd and Wallace saw Charlie would die before… It was an unbearably cruel betrayal. But not illegal. Not against the law. Miss Wade, please don’t—”
“The police ain’t in this.”
Mrs. Robbins sat back. “My god.” Doubt flickered across her face. “Are…are you sure?”
“Sure. The police are not in this.”
“Thank you. But…don’t tell Isaac. Don’t make my son lose regard for me.” Below the dark glasses, the bottom half of her face sagged, adrift.
“Oh, come on.” Delpha herself was unlucky but not the kind of blind fool who would try to tie a twenty-year-old. The deal was this: she didn’t want to go back to prison. How hard was that to understand?
Isaac, he was separate. He was a whole other matter, and hell if she was gonna discuss that with his mother. What she’d wanted from Isaac, she’d had. An ironed handkerchief and genuine respect. Some traded sweetness, some fun and companionship and cunt-jarring, brain-jarring, heart-nudging sex. She’d had a time—a time while he was still in her and a bright voice spread outward, filled her to the skin announcing This, this is everything—she’d had that. Being a woman who could choose a man, say yes, not the kind of woman who broke her fingernails clenching a desk-edge while her cheekbone scraped against the wood. Could go with a woman free-choice too, if she wanted. If she chose.
Same for Isaac, in Delpha’s estimation. What he’d needed of her, it had been a fair and willing and joyful trade. He would know that a week or two after he went back to Princeton, went out with his buddies to bars, to city parks, sat in classrooms alongside long-haired girls, and that life sealed around him like he’d never left it. Just like, she knew to the soles of her black flats, if she went back, prison would seal around her like she’d never left it. And she never would.
“Only reason I told you about working for Tom Phelan is because in prison it’s not smart to play like you didn’t hear a threat. Need to keep your ducks where you can see ’em.”
She didn’t expect Mrs. Robbins to seize her upper arm, painfully, to press in close, but it seemed Mrs. Robbins had expected to do this all along. The woman talked fast directly into her ear. When she’d said it all, she released Delpha’s arm and stood.
“You have my phone number. There are arrangements to be made, so talk to Isaac before August 15. Call me at noon—August 15, have you got that, noon?—and inform me how you want me to proceed. Are we agreed? I know you understand what I mean.”
Delpha understood, but it was too powerful to think about all at once. She said, “Wait.”
The woman’s eyebrows raised hopefully.
“Tell me how you make those eyes of yours brown.”
The brows fell. She reached into her purse, brought out a round plastic container, pried it open, and displayed the contact lenses floating inside. Mrs. Robbins squatted, tipped it so the lenses dropped onto the sidewalk, stood and ground them under the ball of her foot.
“I tinted them, but the tint aggravated my eyes. One last thing. It should go without saying, but…I feel I must say it. If by August 15, Isaac still refuses to go back east on your account, you’ll hear from me thereafter. Indirectly, of course.”
Her black lenses held Delpha’s gaze.
“A paradox. I so deeply abhor cruelty, Miss Wade. I’m afraid it’s made me cruel.” She swiveled and headed into the street. A rocket-looking red Pontiac punched its horn and swerved around her without her missing a single stride. Isaac’s mother stepped into long shadows. After a while, her straight back was gone.
Delpha pushed herself up from the bench, crossed her arms, and walked slowly toward Crockett’s lights.
Paradoxyou’ll hear from meindirectly of course
That she would cut Isaac loose, that there was ever a question about that, was insultingly obvious. But Isaac’s mother hadn’t got that at all. Cast in her own turmoil, she had communicated what she’d discovered. Quickly, as though she was unburdening herself. Roughly, getting rid of that knowledge. That other research Mrs. Robbins had done, in case it became necessary.
She’d located the man Delpha had stabbed.
Still alive, did Delpha know he was? She’d thought Delpha would know because if she had been in Delpha’s position, she, Mrs. Robbins, Dr. Robbins, she would have known. Oh yes, she would have made a point of it. Furthermore, that man’s pitiful adult daughter had two children. Two deaf daughters. Very possibly not a biological coincidence, in Mrs. Robbins’s scientific opinion. One of them perhaps but not two. Recipients of an autosomal recessive gene, a mutated gene carried by both parents, Mrs. Robbins had inferred. Perhaps Miss Wade was aware of these children? Had she inquired? Did she comprehend the most likely agent of those two children’s deafness? They were fathered by that old man—possibly some other close male relative. But Mrs. Robbins thought the old man the most likely, given what he was capable of. Didn’t Miss Wade? A waitress at a café near the store they ran had refused to speak frankly. However, she was quite comfortable insinuating that this intolerable situation was suspected locally. There was disgust in her innuendos. And here was Mrs. Robbins’—Dr. Robbins’, Isaac’s mother’s—very last offer, the one in reserve.
; That man could be gone. A distinct benefit for several parties. Mrs. Robbins wouldn’t even have to risk her person, it would not be a difficult thing. And it would be just.
Just.
Just four more years, just three hours till lights out, just let him pass me by, just don’t get into it with her, just keep your mouth shut. Just go to sleep. That’s the kind of just Delpha knew best. Meant “do this little thing and ward off bigger trouble”—that’s what “just” meant.
But to Mrs. Dr. Robbins, just meant right. She had rights. She was used to having rights. She had always lived in a land of rights, they had worked for her. Until suddenly they hadn’t.
A crescent moon rested in the blue layers over the red simmer of sunset. The end of the block pulsed a lively reach. The Crockett Street merchants had rolled out rows of multicolor flags to attract anybody driving by. They had Christmas lights strung. A band tuned as people drifted through a gate. It was a parole-breaker to patronize any of the establishments where alcohol was served, but she could stand back and watch their party. Tables, waitresses, pitchers, paper plates. Smoke and beer and laughter.
On the stage up ahead, faint call from the drummer Uhune deux trois quatre…and like a party barge cutting loose from a dock, the band sailed into “Diggy Liggy Lo.” Guitars rang, the loose-elbowed fiddle player thrust, accordion player squeezed, the spoon player rubbed knuckles to vest—hollers, whistles, and applause, two bobbing couples took to the portable dance floor.
Delpha lingered beyond the lights and flags, slapping mosquitoes, dread ticking inside her, taut shoulders not quite touching a creosote light pole that would smudge her shirt. After the band blew through the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace” and some jumpy number about when you’re hot, you’re hot that she’d never heard, they hailed up a boy singer. Crowd noises died as the husky towhead delivered “Belle Lousiane” in the voice of a stone angel come awake at midnight to sing to the souls in the graveyard.
Ouvre tes bras et serre ton cher enfant.