The Clouds Roll Away

by Sibella Giorello

  “Dennison Fielding.” He shook my hand, a surprisingly strong grip. “DeMott, bring Miss Raleigh a chair.”

  He spoke with the syncopated rhythms of a true Virginian. A word like chair had two undulating syllables. Chair-ruh. DeMott obeyed the order and carried over a Windsor chair. It looked like it had crossed the Atlantic on the Susan Constant.

  “Thanky,” said Dennison Fielding. “Now go see if your sis-tahs need help.”

  DeMott excused himself and I sat down. His grandfather leaned over. His breath was brisk with whiskey.

  “You’re the gal who almost put my son Harrison in the clink?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sat back. “He shouldn’t have tried cutting deals with that colored mayor.” He paused. “You’re not one of those rightists?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Women’s rights, animal rights, human rights. You take offense when I say ‘colored’?”

  “I’ve heard worse.”

  “True. And personally, I don’t care for this new word. Black. It doesn’t fit. Of course, neither does white. We’re pink. But I grew up hearing ‘white’ and ‘colored,’ and I got used to those words. I’m ninety-one years old and it’s too late to change.”

  He didn’t look a day over ninety. “May I ask you a question, Mr. Fielding?”

  “Hang on.” He lifted his hand, the fingers rough. Working hands. Signaling the waiter, he asked for a Bushmills straight up. Then he turned to me. “What did you want to ask?”

  “Do you know if the KKK is still active around here?”

  “Not the small-talk type.” He grinned, nodding happily. “I don’t particularly care for small talk myself. But I’ve noticed most people are invertebrates, no backbone to them. They don’t appreciate us straight shooters. We come into heaps of discord because piffles rule the world.” He reached over, patting my bare arm. “Your daddy was a judge, wasn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “Then we’ll do this like court. I’ll ask a question right back. When the federal government took its first census out here, what year do you reckon that was?”

  “The federal government? I’d guess about1800.”

  “Right close, 1790,” he said. “They counted some five thousand folks. White and colored, neck and neck.”

  “The colored being slaves.”

  “Not all, not all.” He wagged a long finger. “People forget. We had right many free blacks in these parts. Ol’ Lott Carey, he was free. They all should’ve been. Slavery was an evil kind of stupid. And most Southerners knew it had to end. The Yankees just hurried us along. Half a million men were killed in the process.”

  The waiter arrived with his drink and Dennison Fielding thanked him, taking a long draw. The band was playing a song about an enchanted evening.

  “The most recent census,” he said, “was two years ago. How many people you figure they counted?”

  “I’d rather hear from you.”

  “You’re the girl for DeMott, all right. They counted nearly the same number as was here in 1790. You see where I’m going?”

  “No change is the best change.”

  “You hear me. Folks along the James River want things to stay how they always were. Of course, that gets expensive, holding back time. Take that little gal over there.” He lifted his glass, aiming into the crowd. “Every month, she’s got to figure out how to cover her bills.”

  It took me a moment to realize who he was talking about.

  Flynn Wellington stood with her husband, Leighton, and another couple. Flynn wore black silk trousers and a white sequined top, her platinum hair combed back with a sparkling headband.

  “She’s a hard worker, I’ll give her that,” he said. “Grew all the flowers in here tonight. We paid her right well.”

  A soft wave of exclamations rippled through the room. The crowd parted as waiters wheeled a three-tiered chocolate cake covered with sparklers. I watched bits of stray sulfur leap and pop in the air.

  “All so foolish, celebrating like this before a wedding.” He shook his head. “I give MacKenna six months before she runs home crying her eyes out over that boy.”

  DeMott walked over. “Granddad, they want a toast from you.”

  Sighing with the weight of ninety-one years, he lifted an arm. DeMott helped him out of the chair. I stood up.

  He tugged his worn tuxedo into place. “Don’t let her get away,” he said.

  “I don’t plan to,” DeMott said.

  The old man looked over at me. “And don’t you be leaving Virginia again. Stay where you belong.”

  He headed toward the cake with the sidling amble of a crustacean. DeMott guided me toward the crowd, placing his hand on the small of my back. Heat radiated through my dress, my knees weak again. When I felt something tingle near my heart, I wondered if I was going to be dumb enough to faint.

  But when the tingling came again, I took my purse out from under my left arm. I was almost relieved. My cell phone buzzed a third time.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dennison Fielding began his toast as I walked down the long hall toward the front door. Stepping outside, the cold air felt like a slap on my bare arms.

  Detective Nathan Greene sounded like he was dying.

  “He set up a buy,” he said.

  “Who, Sully?”

  “Yeah.” He sneezed.

  “Bless you.”

  “We don’t show, they get suh-suh—”

  “Suspicious? Bless you.”

  He groaned. “I can’t go.”

  I found a pen in my purse but no paper and wrote his address on my left palm. Closing the phone, I went back inside, searching for the maid who took my cape. DeMott came down the hall.

  “Raleigh, what’s wrong?”

  “I have to go. Can you help me find my . . . coat?”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, but I have to go.”

  He hesitated, then nodded and walked across the room, speaking to one of the maids. He walked me back to the front door.

  “Last to come, first to leave,” he said.

  “But I was here.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  We stood by the front door, waiting for the cape. DeMott was smiling, but I kept looking away, the bright light in his eyes making me feel uncomfortable.

  “What?” I finally said.

  “You get one point for keeping your promise.”

  “How many points are there?”

  “One.” He was still smiling. “There’s only ever been one.”

  chapter nineteen

  The detective lived in Highland Park, an old neighborhood north of downtown that showcased noble Victorians and Queen Annes and ancient oaks that leafed out in summer like stage curtains, concealing the huge homes. Like so many streetcar suburbs across America, Highland Park’s decline began soon after World War II, when returning veterans wanted newer homes and the automobiles that carried them farther out. Later, when white flight swept through, crime marched in. And today the latest stabbings, break-ins, and murders had an almost conversational air. The detective had the worst kind of job security.

  I pulled up to his house on Second Avenue just after 10 p.m. and glanced at my palm, where I’d written the address. I wasn’t sure I had the right house.

  It was pink.

  Bright pink.

  The house next door was cerulean blue. And across the street, a cadmium yellow Victorian. I got out, stepping over the cracked concrete invaded by tree roots. I’d heard young families were moving back to Highland Park, picking up the historic homes for a pittance, pouring in their sweat equity. The brightly colored houses with the filigree details reminded me of stern-wheel riverboats.

  At the front door, Lisa Greene waited. Pretty and petite and put-together, she looked like the kind of woman who yanked up old linoleum without breaking a nail.

  She handed me the envelope of cash and said, “I sprayed it with Lysol
.”

  “He’s that bad?”

  “Quarantined in the guest room,” she said. “The kids haven’t seen him all day. I’ve got an open house on Christmas Day. I’m not serving my guests the flu.”

  I thanked her and was walking back to the K-Car, stepping over the rupturing tree roots, when she called out my name. She was still standing in the doorway, the light silhouetting her tiny figure, making her look like a boxed doll.

  “Pardon?” My breath clouded the night air.

  “Thank you for what you did,” she said.

  “I don’t know—”

  “For Mike.”

  It took me a moment to realize who she meant. And then I was grateful for the distance and the dark between us. She meant Mike Falcon. Detective Michael Falcon. Her husband’s dead partner.

  “If that one had turned into a cold case, it would’ve ruined my family.”

  I nodded, got into the car, and was shivering before I reached the end of the driveway. Against my legs, the vinyl bench seat felt like a cold compress. The dreaded cape lay on the seat next to me—I had refused to put it on with DeMott watching—but now I swung the thing over my shoulders, snapped the collar, and drove down to Chamberlayne Avenue with my right hand slapping the dashboard. Even if the heater didn’t kick on, beating the thing would warm me up. And maybe it would even knock some of the annoyance off me. I didn’t want to make this buy, didn’t want to see Sully again. And I really didn’t want to think about the expression I’d seen in DeMott’s eyes. For some reason, it scared me.

  Cutting over to Montrose Avenue, teeth chattering, I trolled up and down the road until Sully finally stepped from the shadows of Battery Park.

  “So we meet again.” He deposited himself on the bench seat.

  My teeth chattered.

  “Nate sounds really sick,” he said cheerfully.

  I pulled a U-turn, heading south.

  Sully slouched down. “How come you’re not, like, totally humiliated driving this car? Man, I’d die if somebody saw me in this thing.”

  The wicked temptation swept over me. I wanted to lean on the horn. Wave out the window. Let the whole world see him in this car. Instead, I drove silently down Broad Street, listening to Sully sniff as though he had a cold. We passed a kooky Caribbean restaurant painted bright green and yellow, some pawnshops, the city’s convention center, and at Ninth Street I hung a right and followed the hill down to the river.

  With office buildings purged for the weekend, Richmond felt eerily quiet until I crossed the bridge to Southside. It was busy in a worn-out sort of way, like broken-down shoes kicked off at the city’s back door.

  Sully sat up. “Your hair—”

  I looked over.

  “Your hair.” He sounded panicked. “Why is your hair like that?”

  “What?”

  “And why—why are you dressed like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Hold on.” He sat up even higher. “Stop the car.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Stop the car!” he screamed.

  I kept driving across the bridge.

  Sully leaned forward, splaying his pale hands on the dashboard. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Nice disguise, but you can forget it. You’re not coming in with me.”

  Another temptation swept over me. It was harder to resist.

  “Why can’t I come in with you?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Tell them I’m your girlfriend.”

  “What’re you, crazy?”

  “That’s it, the crazy girlfriend. Good thinking, Sully.”

  “You can’t.” His voice cracked. “You can’t do this.”

  “Come on. I even wore my red cape.”

  His pale face wadded with worry. I could see all the sneaky ideas, all the schemes and double-crosses, snaking through his narrow mind. Behind him, the bridge’s streetlights clicked past, the water sparkling like a jewel.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “You set up the buy. We have to go.”

  “I’ll make up something. Turn around.”

  “They’ll get suspicious. You know that.”

  “Okay, how about I tell them some crazy woman kidnapped me?” he said. “How about I tell them she works for the FBI? Huh? How about that?”

  When I looked over, I’d successfully wiped the perma-sneer off Sully’s face. Stewing in his own rancid juices, his cramped face almost looked human. But it wasn’t normal fear. It was the anxiety of the compulsive manipulator, a guy who was afraid he wouldn’t get the final twist, the last dig, the ultimate lie. I would have liked to instill authentic fear in Sully, but he belonged to the detective.

  And the task force needed him.

  “Relax, Sully,” I said. “I’m not going in with you.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Seriously, I’m not.”

  “Then why are you dressed like that?”

  “I was at a Christmas party.”

  “And your hair?”

  “I got a haircut, that’s all.”

  “You don’t look like a cop anymore,” he said.

  “I promise, you’re going in by yourself.”

  He closed his eyes, sighing with relief. When I pulled into the parking lot of the abandoned mill off Decatur, he was already unzipping his fanny pouch. I counted out the bills. Sully licked his lips, yanking the bills from my hand.

  “You’re still walking across the bridge,” I said.

  He stuffed the bills into his marsupial nylon pouch, got out, and slammed the car door.

  I drove back across the bridge and up to Main Street. White Christmas lights framed the buildings, delineating their shapes and making them look like enormous presents. Circling down to Seventh Street, I parked where I could watch the bridge that clasped the city’s opposing sides like a bejeweled broach.

  After ten minutes of rubbing my bare arms, tapping my feet against the floorboard, and slapping the dashboard, I pulled out my cell phone and called my mother.

  “Will you be late?” she asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “I’d only worry if you came home early.”

  I stared out the windshield at Riverfront Towers. Inside, a janitor guided a polishing machine across the marble foyer. On the phone, in the background, I could hear canned laughter from some television show my mother was watching.

  “Is it beautiful?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “The party—is it beautiful?”

  Something landed on my chest, the full weight of it. The white Christmas lights on the buildings blurred.

  “It’s a very nice party.” I swallowed.

  “Who have you seen?”

  I tossed out names, tightening my throat as I told her about MacKenna’s dress and Mr. Fielding’s toast and seeing Flynn Wellington and her husband, and when I finished the lights were rivers of white light.

  “Tell DeMott you’ll see him Sunday for church,” she said.

  “We’re going back?”

  “And I made a Bundt cake for breakfast. And eggnog from scratch, just the way Daddy liked it.”

  I closed the phone and watched the janitor finish polishing the floor. The K-Car felt like a meat locker. Uselessly, I put my hand over the heat vent. It felt like the air conditioner was on. Pulling the cape around my body, shivering, I stamped my feet to stay warm. By the time Sully came sauntering across the bridge, my teeth were clacking.

  Nobody was following him.

  Rather than drive under Riverfront Towers, I raced across the bridge, pulling an illegal U-turn to drive up beside him. He didn’t seem particularly surprised and dropped on the seat. I hit the gas, holding out my hand for the product.

  He sat up, as if suddenly remembering the point of this exercise, and unzipped the little fanny pack. He tossed me a plastic baggie.

  My fingers felt like popsicles. Ther
e were six stones, just like last time. “Thizizit?”

  “What?”

  I clenched my jaw, forcing out the words without chatter. “This . . . is . . . it?”

  “You look cold,” he said. “It’s freezing in here. Can you turn the heat on?”

  “Money,” I said. “Where’s the money?”

  He reached over, twisting the knob already cranked to hot. “This thing doesn’t even have heat?”

  “Sully.” I gritted my teeth. “What did you do?”

  “I bought drugs.”

  “You had twice as much money. Where’s the rest?”

  “You think it’s some kind of store?” he said. “I walk in and ask for change? Maybe in your little white bread world, that’s how it works. But this is the real world, babe. Quit nagging and start driving.”

  I hit the brakes. Cranking the wheel, I pulled another U-turn and raced across the bridge, heading south. The bridge lights zipped past.

  “What the—” Sully said. “What are you doing?”

  I headed up Semmes. The light turned red; I slammed on the brakes. Two women on the corner walked toward the car. They were not dressed for the cold and stared at the K-Car, a little uncertain. When the light turned green, I stepped on the gas and looked over at Sully. His pale face was starting to show fear. Real fear.

  “Hand it over, Sully.”

  “I gave it to you,” he said.

  “Then give me the rest of the money.”

  “I used it all.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Sully. We’ve got one rule, and you know it. Stick to the routine.”

  “I did.”

  “There’s barely enough in that baggie for possession.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Okay, I’ll just go in and ask them what happened.” I turned left on Cowardin. “Are they down this street?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me. Because whatever you pulled tonight, I guarantee you sent up red flags.”

  “I didn’t. I swear.”

  My radar went screaming red. It did that whenever a self-serving creep uttered the words “I swear.” What could they possibly swear to except themselves?

  I stopped at Perry Street. It was nothing but shadows. The streetlights were shot out, the copper wires cannibalized for cash. I felt an urge to lock the doors. But showing fear would give Sully the upper hand. I looked over. Sully was licking his lips, eyes darting.