Upside Down

by John Ramsey Miller

  A male voice rang out. “Okay, gang! Take the cases down. They go inside. Your bags all go in the van. Let's get cracking. We're on the Lord's time!”

  To Faith Ann's immense relief, Peter was first up the ladder. He pointed at the left side of the van and held up two fingers, warning her that the two adults were down there. He untied the first duffel and tossed it down to someone on the ground. With Peter on the ladder, there was no way anybody else could see her unless he moved aside. It seemed that the others were happy to let him do the high-altitude work.

  “You okay?” he murmured. “You must have just about froze your nuts off.”

  “Yeah, just about. The coat sure helped. Thanks,” she said, handing it to him.

  “Okay,” he said, looking off to his left. “Mr. Lander is headed inside the church. Ms. Forest isn't looking this way. Everybody knows about you but them, so come around me and go down the ladder. Just stand down there while we unload the crap and they'll think you're one of the local yokels. Jesus, j-e-z-i-s.”

  Faith did as he said, holding onto the rail and edging past him. As she hit the ground, the teenagers crowded around to cover for her. After the things were offloaded, Faith Ann wandered into the church with Peter. The competition was being set up in the sanctuary. There were about seventy kids and at least twice that many adults—mostly parents and siblings of the contestants. Faith Ann doubted anybody else would want to sit in on this if they didn't have to.

  “What're you gonna do now?” a voice asked. She turned to find herself face-to-face with another boy.

  “I need to make a long-distance call. I guess I ought to go find a pay phone.”

  “This is Ashe,” Peter said. “He's the best speller we have.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Faith Ann said, shaking the boy's hand.

  Ashe's brown eyes were serious. “You're a girl, aren't you?”

  Faith Ann nodded.

  “I told ya,” Ashe said, punching Peter's shoulder. “I knew I saw breasts when the wind blew her shirt against 'em.”

  “I knew that,” Peter said indignantly. “She's way too pretty to be a guy.”

  “Unless you're turning queer,” Ashe said, laughing. “Which you probably are. You're that girl the cops are looking for, aren't you?”

  Faith Ann felt the heat rising to her cheeks. She didn't know what to say, what the boys would do. “Yeah.”

  “Cool,” Peter said.

  “You can use this, then.” Ashe held out a Nokia cell phone painted with red and yellow flames. “My mom gets pissed if I rack up roams. Talk as long as you want.”

  The two boys high-fived.

  “Thank you, guys,” she said, kissing each of them in turn on their cheeks. She felt like yelling.

  “Anytime,” Peter said.

  “Guys, what's the name of this place again?”

  “Church of Christ. Barataria, Louisiana.”

  Faith Ann dialed Rush's number and held her breath while it rang.

  84

  Tinnerino saw the four men strolling from the hospital's main entrance stopping at Manseur's car. Tinnerino heard the sound of Manseur's car door opening over the receiver. Manseur had just opened his door when the marshal answered his cell phone, stepped away a few steps to talk. Massey was on the phone for a minute, before he took out a card and scribbled on it. Massey waved the other two men into Manseur's car.

  Through the earphones Tinnerino heard the men getting into Manseur's car and slamming the doors. He opened his pad to make notes because making a tape of this wasn't smart.

  “That was Sean. Faith Ann just called her,” the deputy's voice said.

  “Where is she?” Manseur asked. “Did she say?”

  Massey was silent for a few seconds. “She's about thirty miles from here and she's freaked.”

  “You direct, I'll drive,” Manseur said.

  “I have to go alone. If she sees anyone besides me, she'll bolt. Last time she called, the cops showed up before I did. I'll get her calmed down and explain things and I'll bring her back. Sean told her the police weren't trying to arrest her, but she doesn't believe it.”

  Manseur said, “I'm interested in this alleged evidence. Does she have it or not?”

  “She doesn't have the evidence with her. She hid it after she escaped the parking deck. You can wait at the governor's hotel and I'll bring her straight there. You can get the governor to put a hold on the execution. You can see it when we show it to him, and we won't waste time.”

  Manseur said, “I won't bother the governor, attempt to stop Pond's execution, until I see absolute proof that he's innocent. I'm not believing Suggs was involved in a frame and cover-up until I see proof.”

  “She has an audiotape of the killings in the office and negatives and photocopies of pictures that show the real killer doing it.”

  Manseur said, “And you believe that sort of evidence exists—that somebody was stupid enough to take some sort of incriminating pictures and keep them? That girl has a vivid imagination.”

  “Maybe not,” Massey said.

  Manseur was silent for long seconds. “Okay. So what do we do?”

  Massey said, “Nicky and Adams will go to my hotel and wait for me to bring Faith Ann there. You said a few minutes ago you hadn't seen your family in two days, so go home. I'll call you when we get the evidence and we can meet and you can see the stuff and make your call to the governor.”

  “I get the feeling you don't trust me,” Manseur said.

  There was a long silence in the car.

  “Okay. Meet me at the ferry landing at Canal Street—an hour, an hour and a half,” Massey said. “I'll pass on the evidence envelope.”

  Tin Man heard three car doors closing.

  The Impala's engine came to life and Tin Man heard Manseur call his wife to tell her he was swinging by the house to say good night. Then he turned the car radio to some opera crap and Tinnerino turned the volume on the receiver down.

  “Who the hell are we following?” Doyle asked over the radio. “They're leaving in three separate cars.”

  “Nobody,” Tin Man said. “Let them go.”

  “What?”

  “I know where they're going. We can give them all the space in the world.”

  Tin Man dialed Captain Suggs. And he smiled because he knew their plans. He also finally knew exactly what the girl had and what all that lovely knowledge was going to be worth down the road. Suggs would put together a plan to snag the evidence. Let the Spics handle the heavy lifting. Tin Man didn't want to actually kill a child, or be in a shoot-out with Massey. When Manseur sent him and Doyle out, he would be handing them alibis on a silver platter.

  85

  Passing under a banner proclaiming a “Bible bee,” Winter went into the Church of Christ in Barataria, Louisiana. He declined a program sheet offered by a man in a knit shirt with winglike collars and entered into the sanctuary, stopping at the top of the wide center aisle.

  On the riser, teenagers sat in rows of folding chairs. A skinny girl with frizzy red hair stood at the pulpit. “Armageddon,” she said into the microphone. “A-r-m-a-g-e-d-d-o-n. Armageddon.”

  “That . . . is correct,” a voice announced.

  Someone in the audience shouted out, “Praise His holy name!”

  The girl raised her hands in the air in triumph.

  A camera flashed.

  The crowd applauded.

  Winter recognized the skinny, short-haired boy with a bruised cheek who walked briskly toward him from the back corner of the santuary. Faith Ann grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. Outside the front door Faith Ann looked up at him, her lower lip quivering.

  “It's going to be all right,” Winter said, putting his arms around her. “I'm here, Faith Ann. Everything is going to be fine.”

  He felt the sobs wrack her thin body. He understood that it would be a while before she'd be able to speak. He knew what sort of relief she was feeling, because he shared it. It was almost over.

  86<
br />
  When his cell phone rang, Harvey Suggs was walking away from the Verdict, a restaurant located around the corner from police headquarters, where he had explained to Tinnerino and Doyle what he expected from them. The captain's seriously shaken confidence had returned to normal. He had thought every angle through to its most likely conclusion. Everybody knew exactly what to do.

  Peace of mind was going to cost Suggs a promotion each for Tinnerino and Doyle, and he'd toss the Spics a few thousand dollars. Tinnerino and Doyle would make sure that Manseur ended in such a way that he was discredited, so that whatever he had might have shared with the FBI agent and the private investigator could be more effectively denied. The Latinos were capable of the more difficult task of making the evidence vanish. They'd take care of the meddlesome Massey and the Porter kid. Without the evidence, no matter how loudly anybody howled, it would all fade away.

  “Hello,” Suggs said, not recognizing the number spelled out on the caller I.D. He strode toward his car, parked a half block away. Tinnerino and Doyle sped by in separate cars, Tinnerino nodding once in greeting.

  “Harold?” the somehow familiar voice said. “This is Parker Hurt.”

  “Parker Hurt?”

  “Governor Morton's assistant.”

  “Sure, Parker. I knew your voice was familiar. It's been a while.” Hurt had been an assistant under Lucas Morton when he was the Orleans Parish district attorney.

  “It has been a while.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I just had an interesting call, and before I talk to the governor, I thought I should talk to you.”

  Suggs's trouble antennae were fully erect. He stopped short of his car and fingered his keys. “Sure thing,” he said cordially, although his blood had turned to ice in his veins.

  “I got a call from a Michael Manseur a few minutes ago. I believe he's one of your homicide detectives.”

  “Well, he's presently one of my homicide investigators,” Suggs replied, his mind aflame with the implications. “Can you tell me why my detective called you?”

  “Manseur wanted me to tell the governor that he was about to come into possession of evidence proving that Horace Pond is innocent.”

  “So he wants to stop the execution.” Suggs added a tinge of sadness to his words. “You know . . .”

  Suggs knew he had one chance to find the exact words that would nip this in the bud—and cover his own ass. And he realized that given the close gubernatorial race and Manseur's recent behavior, it was going to be a breeze.

  Harvey Suggs finished his conversation with Parker Hurt, climbed into his car, and allowed himself a few moments to savor his masterful manipulation of the political animal Mr. Hurt.

  If the evidence ever somehow found its way to the police or the press, Hurt wouldn't ever dare mention he took the call from a discredited, deceased cop—and failed to mention it to his boss.

  As long as the evidence didn't surface, and Suggs knew it never would, Pond would just be another state-sponsored corpse. There would be nothing to connect Suggs to anything that happened, and everybody still living would resume life as usual. In two years, Suggs would retire and live out his life with his twin pensions. He'd also have the money Jerry Bennett had paid him over the years as filler for those little things a man appreciated. If by some miracle the Bennett negatives ever did surface, Suggs could blame his own dead partner—say Billy Putnam had gotten the location of the murder weapon from Pond when Suggs was out of the interrogation room. Ten years after the fact, who could prove differently? The fact that Billy had committed suicide would further support that the man had a guilty conscience.

  And it wasn't like Bennett would be around to dispute anything. Suggs was meeting Bennett at the businessman's boathouse, supposedly to fill him in on the status and discuss future plans.

  Suggs just hoped Bennett's cigarette racer had a nice heavy anchor on board.

  87

  Faith Ann sat in Mr. Massey's car, feeling dazed, staring out through the windshield at the church van. Mr. Massey had called a detective and told him they were on their way to get her envelope on the Canal Street ferry. After he hung up on the cop, Mr. Massey made another call, telling someone named Adams that he had “the package” and was “rolling.” As soon as that was done, he called Rush's mother and told her he had Faith Ann in his car and said he'd call back when things were settled. Before he hung up, he asked, “You want to tell Rush anything, Faith Ann?”

  She shook her head. Not because she didn't want to talk to Rush, but she wasn't in a talking mood at that particular moment. How could Mr. Massey trust the police after what she'd told him about what they did to her mother? She'd made a terrible mistake in trusting him. “Can I talk to Rush later?”

  “Sure.”

  When Mr. Massey hung up, he pocketed the phone and drove out of the parking lot.

  “You were talking to a policeman,” she said.

  “I was.”

  “You can't trust the police, Mr. Massey. The police killed Mama.”

  Mr. Massey took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her, flipping on a map light so she could see it. Faith Ann's hands trembled as she looked at the image of a driver's license that portrayed a smirking man with swept-back hair and eyes that burned with pure evil. The picture belonged to the man who'd shot her mother.

  “Is that him?”

  “Yes.” The name on the license was Arturo Estrada. “He's the policeman who killed . . .”

  “He isn't a policeman, Faith Ann.”

  “He is too! He was at my house with the lady who chased me this morning at the aquarium. With those other two policemen.”

  “I know he was at your house. Those two policemen are crooked, but Detective Manseur isn't one of them. He's going to help us get your mother's evidence to the governor.”

  “No! Please. She said we can't even trust the governor,” Faith Ann blurted out, her level of fear growing. He still didn't understand.

  “Who said you couldn't trust the governor?”

  “Amber Lee told Mama that. It's on the tape in the envelope. Governor Morton is a friend of Jerry's, Amber Lee said so. Arturo said Jerry sent him to get the pictures she had. I'm sure of it!”

  “Ms. Lee was mistaken. You can trust Detective Manseur. And you can trust the other men helping me; Nicky Green and Agent John Adams. And you have to trust Governor Morton, since he is the only person who can stop the execution at this late hour. He'll do the right thing here because he has no choice.”

  “Why are you so sure he will?” Faith Ann hated the wobble she heard in her voice, but she couldn't help it.

  “Because Detective Manseur called him and told him the evidence that proves Horace Pond is innocent is coming to him in a little while. If he let an innocent man die, he'd have the devil to pay. That's politics.”

  Faith Ann was sure Mr. Massey believed what he was saying, but she wasn't nearly as sure of his judgment in this instance as he seemed to be.

  “Did he run over . . .” She couldn't get “Uncle Hank” and “Aunt Millie” to come out.

  “There's no evidence of it. None.”

  “You don't think he was looking for me and . . .”

  “No,” he said, firmly. “I really don't think he did it.”

  “Did you arrest him?”

  “He'll be arrested as soon as he shows his face.”

  Mr. Massey knew about such things, she told herself. He was a U.S. marshal, just like her uncle Hank. That was even better than being a policeman, because it was being a policeman for the federal government. She had always enjoyed studying her uncle's badge, loved the smell of the mink oil he rubbed into his leather belt and holster, running her fingers over the yellowed stag grips on the Colt that had belonged to his father, who died on duty. She had never ever told her mother that he had let her shoot it at an indoor range one summer afternoon—it would always be their secret. Even with the ear protectors it had been loud, and the gun had
almost jumped out her hand.

  Faith Ann watched Mr. Massey as he drove, noticed him checking the rearview mirror. He drove fast, but he kept both of his hands on the steering wheel like her mother, and like her mother he didn't turn on the radio. No distractions.

  Faith Ann was relieved that Mr. Massey had come to get her, and she knew she should feel safe, but she just couldn't believe that it was really all over and that Horace Pond would stay alive.

  “Mr. Massey, can I go see my uncle as soon as we see the governor?”

  “Let's wait and see what time it is,” he told her. “I'm sure you could use some rest after what you've been through. Your Uncle Hank is going to be just fine in time. I spoke to the doctor earlier and he told me Hank is being weaned off the coma medicine, so he should start regaining consciousness anytime now.”

  “So when will he be well?”

  “Well, I don't know. I suppose it depends. He's going to be in the hospital for a while before he can be moved to Charlotte, and then he'll need lots of therapy. He's going to need you to help him get well. We'll help you.”

  Faith Ann leaned back, crossed her arms, closed her eyes, and pictured herself on the rear deck behind her aunt and uncle's house, sitting in a lawn chair beside Hank's wheelchair, watching his quarter horses running across the fenced-in meadow. Living in North Carolina on the little farm would be nice. It wouldn't be the same without Aunt Millie, though. Or without knowing that her mother was waiting for her to return. . . . Tears welled up under her closed eyelids and threatened to spill out.