by Martin Clark
“Well, the name on the envelope is ‘Ruth Wright.’ Like I said, I have the envelope. There’s not much debate about that.”
“You’re right. Now that I think about it, you’re right. I wonder if Ruth Esther is Ruth Wright? Maybe the letter wasn’t written to Ruth Esther. Damn.” Evers scratched his head again. “Any ideas about how we can figure out what was in the letter? Anything else you know?”
Pauletta smiled. “I’m afraid that my plan was to ask you.”
“Incredible.”
“Yeah.” Pauletta rubbed her eyes with her thumb and index finger.
“I wonder why she included you? Why she gave you the stamps?”
“I’m not sure. Not sure at all. I’ve always tried to do right by Ruth Esther, and I’ve done some legal work for her, but I’m still not sure why she gave me the stamps. She knows they’re very valuable. But she insists that she wants me to have them. She has from the first time we talked about the clues her father left.”
“I’ll go get your water.”
“Thanks. Thank you.”
Evers rolled the glass back and forth between his palms. “I was thinking I might stop by to see you tomorrow on my way out of town. If that’s okay. I don’t want to bother you.”
“That would be fine.”
After breakfast the next morning, Evers went by Pauletta’s office to say good-bye and to take her a gift, a coffee mug with a picture of Gumby holding a West Virginia state flag. Evers had bought the mug in the hotel gift shop. He hurried past the receptionist and slouched down behind a newspaper while he was waiting outside of Pauletta’s door—he didn’t feel like talking to anyone, especially people with pressing legal problems. Evers had read all the classified ads—puppies, cats, cars, foreclosures, furniture, houses, baby clothes, washers and dryers—before Pauletta’s secretary led him into the trees and plants. Pauletta was sitting in front of her desk, in one of the client chairs, talking to a man in the other chair. She ignored Evers for a moment, then stood up. “Hello, Judge Wheeling.”
“Good morning.”
“I’d like for you to meet someone. You’ll recall that I spoke to you earlier about Marvin Ross, one of my clients. He’s charged with murder.”
Marvin Ross kept sitting in his chair in the small clearing near the middle of the office, didn’t stand. He nodded at Evers when he was introduced, bent forward and offered his hand. He was around fifty years old, thin, small and wiry, and he had on glasses with gold metal frames, big glasses that were too large for his head and eyes. Ross was oddly slow and deliberate when he moved, as if he were tired or his hands and neck and face were weighted down. He was wearing a black shirt with a large silver X across the chest.
“How did you get out on bail, Mr. Ross?” Evers asked. “I remember Pauletta telling me some time ago that you were in jail.”
“They lowered it. Miss Qwai got it done.”
Evers looked at Ross. “Oh.” He paused. Without any more transition or warning he turned toward Ross and invited him to breakfast. “I’ve already eaten once, but I’m still hungry.”
“Me or her?” Ross said. He looked confused.
“You, Mr. Ross. The two of us.”
“Why would you want to have breakfast with Mr. Ross?” Pauletta asked.
“I just wanted to talk to him. You told me I might be able to give you some help with his case.”
“I don’t think that it’s a good idea,” Pauletta said.
“How come?” Ross asked.
“You won’t enjoy it, and you won’t benefit from it.” Pauletta folded her arms in front of her.
“What kind of judge are you?” Ross drawled. “You from here, from Charleston?”
“From North Carolina. I’m a superior court judge.”
“You buy?” Ross looked at Evers.
“Sure,” Evers said.
“Then let’s go. You’re serious, right?” Ross pushed his glasses up his nose with his middle finger.
“I’m serious.”
“Any man good enough to ask me, I can sit at a table with.” Ross looked at Pauletta and winked. “He’ll be all right.”
“Meaning what?” Pauletta asked.
Evers smiled. “Ponder this, Miss Qwai. First, Lorne Greene used to do commercials for Alpo, right? And Lorne told us that Alpo tastes great. That’s what he said, that Alpo tastes great. How did Lorne Greene know how it tastes? Second, consider the fact that ‘Jesus Is Coming Soon’ is a negro spiritual written around the turn of the century.”
“What in the world are you talking about? What? And you consider this. If you fuck up Marvin Ross or his case, I’ll castrate you. I swear it.” Pauletta clenched her jaw. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you sometimes. I’ve just about got a manslaughter plea worked out for Mr. Ross. And where are you going? I thought you had to be back at work by early afternoon. Why is it that you want to act like a fool half the time?”
“I’ll probably be losing my job soon anyway. And one of the job perks is that I’m my own boss.”
Evers and Marvin Ross ate at a Shoney’s, ordered steak and eggs, had square cuts of meat that were well done and the same color all the way through. Ross drank coffee and smoked cigarettes while he ate.
“What was the name of the man you shot?” Evers asked Ross.
“Ancie Penn.”
“So what did you think after you shot Ancie Penn?”
“That I done fucked up.” He looked at Evers. “I knowed you was going to ask me that.”
“You were right. I did.”
“Yeah. Well, he deserved to be shot.”
“Did you feel good about it?”
“Yeah, I sure did. He’d been screwin’ my old lady. Screwin’ her while I’m at work, then puttin’ on my cologne and smokin’ my cigarettes. Then, because he’s that kinda shitass, he’s got to tell me to my face, you know.”
“It was fairly cold-blooded, wasn’t it? Pauletta told me you just walked up to him and shot him, then went home and washed your car.”
“It wasn’t a wrong thing to do, okay? I know I’m gonna pull some time, but Miss Qwai figures it won’t be much. Says a jury might be sympathetic, so she thinks she can make a deal. She got some letters and cards between my old lady and Penn from the D.A. They had to give ’em up because of some motion she filed. They’re some shameful shit. She’s right smart, ain’t she?”
“She is.”
“Yep.”
“Still, killing a man over a little trim is kind of excessive, don’t you think?” Evers smiled at Ross.
“Figure it’s sin for sin. Adultery and killin’. Pretty much even.”
“What about your wife?”
Ross smiled back at Evers. “She ain’t worth the trouble. No need to punish a whore, she’s already common.”
“Where’d you get that shirt?” Evers asked.
“Nephew give it to me,” said Ross.
“You’re a fan of Malcolm X?”
“Naw. I figured it was somethin’ to do with football at first. The Raiders, maybe. I got too many problems of my own without worryin’ about whether enough brothers gettin’ to be astronauts or manage baseball teams. Things for me is a little more day to day, right?”
Evers laughed.
“How come you want to eat with me?” Ross stubbed his cigarette out.
“Why not?” Evers wiped his hand on a paper napkin.
“What you wanna do after we eat?” Ross leaned forward in his chair.
“How about we get some beer and go bet on the dogs?” Evers offered.
“For real? You want to?”
“Sure.”
“Fuckin’ A, yeah. If you wanna, yeah.”
“We’d probably do well to take a cab if we’re going to drink.”
“Pretty long ride out to the track,” said Ross.
“My treat.”
“So you really a judge, huh?”
“Yep.”
“How ’bout that.” Ross picked up his glass. “Grab a ha
ndful of them Captain’s Wafers from the salad bar ’for we leave, okay? They’ll go good with the beer.”
Two hours later, Evers called Pauletta from the track to report that Marvin Ross and he had won four hundred and fifty dollars betting on a dog named Frankenstein. Pauletta was annoyed and hung up the phone. “You’re drunk,” she said before leaving the line. It wasn’t even one in the afternoon.
“You call her, Ross,” Evers suggested.
“No way.”
“Come on.”
“You been dippin’ into that, ain’t you?” Ross bit a cracker.
“Pardon?”
“You and her been gettin’ it done, ain’t you?”
“No way.”
“Tell the truth now,” said Ross.
“I’ve tried, okay? I’ll admit that much.”
“Right. I knowed it. I sure did.”
Marvin Ross and Evers laughed, a drunken, conspiratorial laugh that men can laugh because they know they’re able to assume certain things about each other, just as well as they know that those certain things are inescapable—god’s imprimatur, Il Duce’s code, serial numbers that may change in the end but share the first five or so digits. After all of the races were over, they sat down and pressed their backs against a wall near an exit and ate Captain’s Wafers until a security guard made them leave. Evers dropped Ross off at his home, then took the cab to Shoney’s and picked up his car. He rode around the city for an hour after that, looking at the hill walls and dull, drab buildings, wondering if he should go by to visit Pauletta again and spend another night in West Virginia or begin driving back to Norton. He had called his office from the dog track and canceled court for the day, explaining to his secretary that he had the flu and a bad headache. There were people talking in the background when he called, and the public address announcer began recapping a race right as Evers was about to hang up, but what was she going to say to him?
Evers had given Marvin Ross almost all the money they had won at the track, and had kept two twenties for the ride home. He bought some gas and coffee and a microwave sausage biscuit and started back to Norton; he decided not to call Pauletta or see her again before leaving Charleston.
The next morning, Detective Loggins called Evers at his office in Norton. Evers felt fairly good and settled. He had sobered up during the drive back to Norton and slept for nine hours.
“Good morning, Judge Wheeling.”
“It is. What can I do for you?”
“We’re treating your wife’s death as a homicide now. Not a suicide.”
“What does that mean? Do you give the file a different color tab or something?”
“Different number, actually.” Loggins’ voice was so plain that Evers couldn’t tell if he was serious.
“Anything else?”
“Would you be willing to take a polygraph?” the detective asked.
“Fuck no.”
“Why?”
“You know why. They don’t work, you can’t use them in court and even if I pass it, you’ll keep bothering me. I have nothing to gain.”
“Do you care if some of us come up there and do a little longer interview?”
“Leave me alone. Don’t call anymore. Don’t come up. Go away.”
“Well, let me tell you one more thing. I talked to the doctor yesterday, the medical examiner, and he told me your wife was just about eaten up with throat cancer. Had a year or so to live at the most. She was real bad off.”
Evers was startled, surprised. He leaned back in his chair. “Say that again.”
“She had cancer and was going to die.”
“Help me if I’m wrong here, but wouldn’t that be a reason to shoot yourself? I haven’t done this as long as you, don’t have that hard-to-get, two-year criminal justice degree from the community college, but wouldn’t this tend to suggest that she killed herself?”
“I don’t think she knew. We checked her primary physician—she had one of those health plans where everything goes through one doctor. She hadn’t been in for over a year. And no referrals. The doctor was just as surprised as you.”
“Maybe she used another name or went somewhere else,” Evers said.
Loggins chuckled a little. “Well, I don’t have no law degree, but why would she do that? Plus, she ain’t mentioned it to a single, solitary person.”
“Sometimes maybe you just sense things. I don’t know.”
“I think I’d find out if it was a sore throat or cancer before I shot myself,” Loggins said.
“What else did you want to ask me?”
“Where were you sleeping that night at your brother’s?”
“I went to sleep on the sofa,” Evers answered. “Why?”
“And the phone’s in the kitchen, next to the den?”
“Yeah, good memory. So?”
“So how come you don’t wake up? That’s a small trailer, and he’d walk past you and then be right there in the kitchen, talking and all.”
“I never said he didn’t wake me up.” Evers shifted in his chair.
“You sure acted surprised when he told us. He was standing right there on the phone and you don’t wake up or nothing?”
“Well, you know he made the call. That much you can’t deny. And I imagine he listened, not talked, right? It’s phone sex, Detective. He pays them, not the other way around.”
“Just odd, you not knowing about it. You didn’t know, did you?”
Evers was angry. “You’re the sleuth. You figure it out.”
“By the way, I have a four-year degree from East Tennessee State in physical education. I can run fast and jump high, that kind of shit.”
“You can jump up my ass for all I care. Did you call just to vex me and waste my time, or is this some new police technique?”
“Other than the fact that you hated your wife, did you have any reason to shoot her? Girlfriend, anything like that?” Loggins was suddenly hostile.
“Just the insurance policy, I guess.” Evers coughed.
“Insurance?”
“Yeah. A cool million. I bought it about three weeks before she died. So what?”
“Really?”
“No, of course not, Columbo. Jesus,” Evers said, then slammed the phone down.
He sat in his office, gazing out of his window and thinking about the thick stands of hardwood trees all around Norton, old North Carolina oaks and poplars whose branches and leaves and limbs could block out an acre of sky. The high, green canopy made him feel as if he were sitting at the bottom of a bowl, looking up. Norton, the Tupperware town. He thought about the place mats at Howard Johnson’s and how much fun it would be to design them. Can you find ten things wrong with this picture? Can you unscramble these letters to spell five common words? Then he thought about cycling. And Pauletta. And Jo Miller and Pascal, the two poles in his life. “Zounds,” he said to his office.
NINE
NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS; IT began to get hot—heavy, stupefying heat—and sluggish, everyone stayed sticky, baseball was on all the cable channels at night, and swallows started chasing gnats and flying bugs when the dusk-to-dawn light switched on in front of Evers’ apartment at the Coin-O-Matic. Pascal called one evening and told Evers that the trailer dwellers had run an extension cord from the mobile home out to the sofa so they could hook up a fan. Pascal was wearing old Bass loafers and short pants all the time, no shirt, and smoking dope inside until the sun went down. No one had heard anything from Ruth Esther. Evers went to work and stayed busy. He’d phoned Pauletta the day after he got back from Charleston, and her secretary said she wouldn’t be available for several days. Summer had flattened out, turned muggy and prosaic.
Finally, one night when Evers was sitting in his apartment eating a pizza and reading Cosmopolitan, Pauletta called. “I thought that perhaps you were angry with me,” he said. “About the track, when Mr. Ross and I called you. I’m sorry about that. I called … it’s been close to two weeks ago, I guess … called to a
pologize.”
“I’ve been away. I just got back. I assume my secretary told you that.”
“She told me you wouldn’t be available for a while. That can mean many things.”
“I wasn’t snubbing you or being rude, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Pauletta said.
Evers turned the volume down on his TV. “The Atlanta fucking Braves are on every channel. Have you noticed that? Cinemax, HBO, Discovery, the Weather Channel. Nothing but baseball, always the Braves. And Ted Turner’s always sitting there in the stands, looking washed out and a little off center.”
“I don’t watch much TV.”
“So, where have you been, if I may ask?”
“I went to a seminar.” Pauletta paused. “I went to D.C. for a seminar, the Black Trial Lawyers Association. It was a good trip.”
“I’ve always wondered about that. Could I join?”
“No. You have to be black.”
“Oh.” Evers laughed. “That doesn’t seem fair. Or at least it seems ironic. Sort of separatist and discriminatory.”
“Most things are discriminatory in some sense, Judge Wheeling. Dumb kids don’t get into good colleges. Try as they might, work like Trojans, they’re just not smart enough. That’s discrimination—they’re being excluded because of the way they were born. Unattractive men and women cannot be fashion models. Congenitally hobbled people cannot compete in most Olympic events or drive a city bus. Accidents of birth. The world’s full of doors and pits and barriers. You know that.”
“I really wasn’t trying to start a battle. Or provoke a scolding. I just wanted to know. I wasn’t planning on actually signing up and then boycotting hotels or restaurants or the NBA if I didn’t get my way.”
“I wasn’t trying to be contentious either. Sorry. But you did ask.”
Evers grunted. “I did, didn’t I? I should’ve known better.”
“Listen,” Pauletta changed the subject. “Here’s why I’m calling. Are you still curious about the letter, about what was in the envelope?”
“Sure. Yeah. I’m just disappointed you don’t know the whole story.”