Jasmine’s eyes widened when he pointed to the Corvette. “Cool.” She yanked a black-and-white-checked baseball cap from her knapsack and hopped up onto the door, slid her skinny butt over the edge. She hunkered down in the seat, fastened the lap belt when he refused to start the car until she did. He was skeptical of her ability to direct him to the photographer’s since she couldn’t see out of the car. With a dramatic sigh, she asked if he could find Georgetown Road at Thirty-fifth Street.
Before they reached the intersection, Jasmine tugged on his arm, pointed at an alley, saying there was a parking lot around back. She squirmed out of the seat and vaulted over the door before he got the shifter into reverse and the engine shut down. He heard a screen door slam and a deep voice call out, “Leibchen, all that Jaz, where have you been?”
The sign next to the door said PARKING FOR SAMUEL J. GROËN, PHOTOGRAPHER, which helped Mick redraw his mental image of the proprietor. His expectations had been colored by Jasmine’s pronunciation of the photographer’s name—Sammy Groan, she chanted, Sammy Groan. He’d pictured a skinny electronics wiz with numerous chains and an attitude. He figured “groan” was his handle. The umlaut over the e made Samuel Groën a horse of a different color, though in person, he was almost deplete of color. He was an elderly Jew, dressed entirely in black, riding in a black wheelchair. The monochromatic deadness was relieved by chrome wheel spokes and the gray in his black beard.
And by the grin on his face aimed at Jasmine. “I have been worried. You do not come all day.”
Jasmine shrugged like it was no big deal, but her smile said differently. She dug the xD card from the pocket of her slacks. “My picture melted. Can you make me another?”
“Melted? Like ice cream? Chocolate or vanilla—”
“Or both!” Jasmine squealed and darted toward an opening in the wall masked by a black curtain.
Groën watched her go. “Such a delight, that child. You are a friend?”
Mick said yes, hoping that the one-word answer would suffice and save a lot of explaining. He told the photographer about the picture being left out in the rain.
“Ach, she uses the machine at the drugstore again. How many times do I tell her? There is no fixative to protect the pictures over time. Or from the weather. She should let me do them, always. You know which number the photograph is?”
Mick didn’t. He was saved from admitting it by Jasmine’s return. Most of her face was hidden behind an ice cream sandwich. She’d bitten off all four corners and was licking the vanilla around the edge of the chocolate wafer. She mumbled what sounded like “fiftootle,” which turned out to be number fifty-two. Groen made a note of it on a paper bag that had once contained a Hallmark greeting card. He wheeled around Jasmine, shifting his shoulder to avoid the dripping ice cream confection she held out to him.
“No, I do not want to lick. Wash your hands before you leave.” He slipped the disk into a bin containing other orders. “I will have this for you at four o’clock. Mrs. Swenson’s vacation photographs come first. You will return, yes?”
Jasmine looked up at Mick. He said, “Fine.” He definitely wanted to be the one to come back for the photograph. It would be worth the wait to see the expression on Moore’s face when he presented her with a picture of the shooter.
Groën spun his chair around at the sound of the door opening. A hefty woman in a turquoise pants suit entered, lugging two albums decorated with daisies. She was followed by a couple of lovebirds still in their teens, cooing as if they were secluded in the dovecote. Groën introduced him to Mrs. Swenson. Jasmine wasn’t around to be introduced. She’d evaporated faster than a witness at a gang shooting. He could see her through the back-door screen, slouched down in the car, only the crown of her checkered cap showing.
A hand clutched at his wrist. Groën peered up at him. “You are friends with her race driver, yes?” Mick nodded, a tad miffed that everyone liked the idea of Moore squealing tires at breakneck speeds.
The photographer bobbed his head in response. “Good. You will marry, maybe? Give Jasmine a proper home. You could not have a better child. Think about it.” Still nodding, he wheeled off the deal with his customer.
What the blazes was he talking about?
Moore was definitely not mother material, married or not. Old Groën’s imagination was as wild as the kid’s. They made an odd couple: an elderly Orthodox Jew and a precocious kid with a skin disorder. She should be playing tag with friends her own age. Not hanging on his wheelchair. Didn’t she have a family? Didn’t he?
Twenty-eight
Rebecca felt like walking. She asked the cabby to leave her at the corner of Thirtieth and Falcon, a few blocks from the house. Two deciduous trees had been planted in front of nearly every house on the street. Beech, or something with oval yellow leaves, alternated with maples in crimson and gold. The leaves were drifting down, dancing on the breeze, layering on the concrete sidewalk. The colors were intense, as was the sky. It made her smile. Or maybe she was smiling over the conversation with her grandmother. Dorothea didn’t think she was crazy to ask about Heinrich Kauffman. Didn’t scold her to be careful. She was eager to join in, promised to contact a volunteer with a Nazi-hunting group and pick his brains.
“Rebecca, I promise you’ll hear the moment I learn anything.”
The quest was a long shot. The connection, if there was one, would be moldy with age. What were the odds that Dorothea’s Heinrich Kauffman was same man mentioned on the tape, or connected with him in any way? Still, the search would amuse her grandmother and it might not be futile. To borrow Hagan’s expression, the German connection was an itch worth scratching, particularly as it pertained to the elder Peyton Madison.
She stooped to pick up a red leaf, fed the stem through a hole near the center and rolled it into a sheath for her index finger. She wrapped it tightly and began picking off the edges. Ruminating, as she shed tiny leaf fragments like breadcrumbs marking her path.
One magazine article said that Madison II got his start working for a German chemical company in South America. Argentina was a favorite relocation spot for Nazis after WWII. None of the magazines said where he’d come from prior to that, but the photo caption in Life magazine gave his first wife’s name as Ingrid Thierman, the son’s name as Karl. Very Germanic-sounding. Not much of a leap to penciling in Germany as the family’s country of origin. Granted, Madison didn’t sound German, but his father wouldn’t have been the first to change the surname when fleeing the homeland.
She dropped the tattered leaf into the gutter and forced her hands into her pockets to still them. Her thoughts kept moving.
Now, after more than fifty years, the son of his second marriage is inexplicitly tortured by an unknown assailant playing a tape of a German voice yelling Heinrich Kauffman over and over. At the back of her brain, the overture from Cabaret began to swell. Humming along, she shuffled through leaves, trying to quell the beat enticing her to join in, life was a cabaret.
It wasn’t much fun for Peyton at the moment. What did he know, or what had he done, to deserve being tortured? Could he be descended from a hated Nazi collaborator? Would that explain his current troubles? There were days at the track when he acted like he’d trained with the Gestapo. It didn’t take much imagination to see him with a bristling mustache, barking out orders, goose-stepping in shiny boots. Achtung.
When she rounded the corner, her humor faded, the soundtrack stilled. A black and gold police cruiser was parked in front of the house, doors open. The Gestapo were there in the flesh—Speedway cops in their black uniforms—hauling Hagan onto the lawn. She recognized two of them from the track that morning: Chief Patten and the rookie with the dimple.
She sprinted down the sidewalk. The chief looked up, waited for her beside the cruiser. Hagan was arguing, refusing to get in until they let him lock up the house. Patten wagged his chin in her direction. “She can lock up. You’re coming with us now.”
Rebecca demanded to know what was going o
n.
Hagan cut her off. He spoke very distinctly, as if English was not her native tongue. “I had a run-in with Evans. He’s pressing charges for assault. It’s nothing to worry about. Go inside. I’ll call you when I need a ride. Oh, and Moore, don’t upset my Jasmine tea. I left it cooling outside.”
She hugged her arms to her body as he was bundled into the cruiser. She knew Evans had been on the receiving end of the bruised knuckles. Hagan was younger and more physically fit, so Evans probably was sore and in foul humor. But he didn’t seem the type to go whining to the police.
Had someone with more clout encouraged Evans to do it? Someone like Elise Carlson or Peyton Madison II, who might find it convenient to point the cops in Hagan’s direction. Blame the outsider. The police would buy it in the blip of a siren. Assume that if Hagan would pick a fight with Evans, he might have attacked the team owner as well. Evans’s gripe would put Hagan behind bars, as least temporarily. Everyone else could get back to racing.
Or was she jumping to conclusions? Patten’s officiousness could be posturing. The State Police had pulled rank on him this morning, stolen his limelight. Frustrated, he might have decided to take out his hostilities on a visiting police officer with an attitude.
When the cruiser turned the corner, she hurried inside.
No translator had been necessary for Hagan’s parting comment. He didn’t drink tea. If he did, he certainly wouldn’t have drunk anything flowery like Jasmine. Lipton, strong to the point of bitterness, maybe.
She sprinted through the living room, into the kitchen, crossed to the sliding glass door. The patio appeared empty except for a squirrel brazenly sitting on the redwood table, shelling a peanut. He cocked his head at her, chattered, decided she was no threat and resumed gnawing at the crack in the shell. She slid the door open and stepped outside. The squirrel leapt from the table. His movement was followed by a rustle near the corner of the fence. The shadow of the azalea bush expanded and moved.
“Jasmine?”
The shadow stilled. Twigs snapped as the girl wiggled her way clear of the branches. She stood close to the bush, tugged unevenly on the hem of her sweatshirt. She raised her face to Rebecca and waited.
Rebecca could not overlook the facial discoloration. It reminded her of a Sycamore tree: strong dark trunk, peeling away as it rises up, leaving irregular patches of ash white. She was particularly drawn to the pale arc that raised the child’s right eyebrow in a perpetual question. How appropriate, given the intelligence and curiosity in the imp’s expression.
Jasmine scrutinized her in return, judging, tension in the set of her thin shoulders, the twist of her mouth.
Hoping she wasn’t disappointed, Rebecca stepped forward and opened her arms. “Jasmine, I’m so delighted to meet you at last.”
Her hand flew to her white cheek. She blinked, pursed her mouth into a perfect “O” and exhaled. Then raced forward and wrapped herself around Rebecca’s legs.
Together they rooted through kitchen cupboards and found powered lemonade mix. While Jasmine slurped the diluted yellow liquid, Rebecca reassured her that the cops wouldn’t hurt Hagan and he would soon be back. The girl was more interested in shelling peanuts for the squirrel named Fred. She insisted that he visited every day when she snuck in to leave the pictures. He waited for her. He knew she’d come. She was very dependable, Fred counted on that. Jasmine made that last statement with such sincerity that Rebecca had no doubt of it.
For an hour Jasmine amused Rebecca as she replayed the events of the shooting, acting them out on the patio. Standing on the table, she pretended she was spying on the pit area. She swore she had snapped a million pictures so she could ask a zillion questions later. She would have taken more, but the birds suddenly flew away squawking.
“What birds?”
“The birds that snack with me.”
Jasmine’s routine was to dot the bleachers at the track with shelled peanuts or crusts from her hot dog roll. Thursday afternoon she’d covered a distance of about thirty yards between her perch and the VIP suites. When the birds suddenly took off, she turned and saw a reflection, like sunlight off metal, poking out from the shadow of the building. She thought it was another camera until she looked through the lens. It was the barrel of a gun. As it inched forward, she started snapping pictures. Then she heard the explosion.
She leapt down from the table. “It was awful. I was afraid you had been killed by the demon. But you turned your head in my direction. Looked up. Everything was right as rain.” She clapped her hands over the miracle.
“Did you see the shooter?”
She frowned. “He ran down the stands, very fast. All in black like the devil. Or a vampire.” She made a cross with her two index fingers and bared her upper teeth.
Rebecca had to laugh. The child’s personality, like her skin, seemed to have two distinct sides. Close-up, she was confident to the point of being defiant. But she said she kept out of the way of crowds, like at the races. People stared. Sometimes they made fun of her.
“They can’t help being ignorant. They don’t understand about the disease. Lots of people have it, it just shows up best on us with black skin.”
She hopped from the table and took her glass to the kitchen sink. When she turned, sunlight through the slider spotlighted her face. The dark/light coloring was exotic and slightly whimsical, the way a pinto horse appears playful. Rebecca wondered what Jasmine’s parents looked like, her siblings. Were they all similarly marked, or was Jasmine unique? With large bright black eyes and a wide grin, the petite girl was truly beautiful, even in a society that puts too much emphasis on conformity.
At four o’clock, they drove to Samuel H. Groën’s photography shop. Hagan hadn’t filled the tank so they stopped at an Exxon station on the way. Jasmine borrowed money and slipped into the minimart to buy another bag of peanuts for Fred. That was the most productive part of the trip. Groën wasn’t at his shop. He had asked his assistant to apologize. There was an important errand he had to run. Could Jasmine please return at six o’clock? The shop would be closed and he would have time to devote to her little puzzle.
Jasmine sighed and let her shoulders sag. Until Rebecca said yes, of course they would return.
Twenty-nine
Once back on Patricia Street, they had to search for a parking space. A shiny black Lexus had claimed the spot in front of the house. An early indication that the serious race fans were starting to arrive.
Jasmine snatched up the peanuts and ran to the gate. She disappeared through the gap. Then reappeared almost as quickly, backing up, tripping in reverse. Elise Carlson followed in her wake. A galleon in parade splendor: subdued plaid suit by Jones of New York Sport set off by a lemon turtleneck.
Her expression was too somber for the outfit. She held the gate open for Jasmine, waited for the tot to scoot around her. Then she crossed the lawn, indicated that she would follow Rebecca into the house. They were both still standing when Elise delivered the news. “Peyton is dead. I’ve just come from the hospital.”
Rebecca sank onto the sofa. “What happened?”
He’d been exhausted when she’d seen him just a few hours ago, but appeared in no immediate danger. His burns had been bandaged and he was being administered fluid intravenously. There had been no indication that more acute care was needed. No hint that he was hanging on by a thread. She assumed that he was going to be fine.
Elise sat next to her, rummaged in her purse for cigarettes and a lighter. “According to his father, Peyton had heart complications that were not apparent. Who would have guessed? He looked so superiorly healthy. The doctors refused to comment on whether the electrical shocks weakened his heart, or if there was a drug reaction. They fear a lawsuit, no doubt.” She flipped the lighter in her lap end for end. “Either way, he’s dead.”
The room went silent. Everyday noises took over. A pipe clanged in the hallway, the clock on the kitchen stove hummed.
Elise lit up, inhaled. Expelled a lop
sided ring, then looked around for an ashtray. Finally cupped her hand under the ash. “Madison senior is being stoic. He wishes the race to proceed tomorrow as scheduled, which is good news. As a tribute to his son.” Her voice was flat and techy.
Arriving at the hospital just after Peyton died, she’d spent two hours holding the older man’s hand. He was angry, in denial. He’d rambled on about his son’s profligate lifestyle, his reluctance to grow up and settle down.
“Then, abruptly, he mellowed. He said that if racing was so important to Peyton, he would honor that. Try to understand his lost son through his passion for motor sports. He tasked me to handle the arrangements—black armbands, a public announcement of the team’s loss. There’ll be a memorial service on Monday so the crew can mourn together. Afterwards Madison senior will take the body back to South Carolina for a family burial.”
She coughed discreetly, turned it into a sigh. Rebecca rose to find a saucer. Elise stood, but didn’t follow. “Rebecca, don’t be insulted, but it would be better if you did not come to the pits tomorrow. The car is nicely prepared. The crew can handle the adjustments during the race. Please understand, it’s a bad time for them, and like little boys, they pout. They need someone to blame. You’re the most obvious candidate.”
“Elise, I had—”
“Of course, I know you’re not responsible. But, still. Enjoy the race with your attractive friend, I’ll arrange good seats for you in turn two. You’ll be paid through the weekend, so don’t worry about the—”
“It’s not about money.”
“No. Of course, it isn’t. You’re right.” She started to say more, then reached for the plate Rebecca was holding. Steadied it as she ground out the cigarette. “Forgive me that you are the last to receive the news. I tried phoning earlier, but there was no answer. Perhaps such news is better in person. You were out with the child?”
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