Paper Gods

by Goldie Taylor

  “I need a word with you,” Lucky said, still huffing and puffing like he’d run a country mile. “Alone,” he said, rolling his eyes at Libby Gail.

  Libby Gail quietly rose from the settee, gathered her accoutrements, and disappeared through the archway.

  “Hell, Luck, you sound like you ran all the way down West Paces Ferry. What’s this all about? Did you meet up with that detective?”

  “Sure did.”

  “And?”

  “This ain’t right, Virgil.”

  “You ain’t going weak-kneed on me too, are you, Luck? Where’s your spine?” Virgil said. “Between you and Whit, I’d be doing better with a yard full of buckeye chickens.”

  “Here, look at this,” Lucky said, finally laying out an array of documents and photographs on the coffee table.

  Virgil took a deep breath, thumbed through the neatly laid piles, and then started purring like Libby Gail’s cat.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said gleefully. “Look at here, look at here, look at here! So many secrets in the garden, and some of them even more delicious than others.” He smacked his fatty palms together and said, “You know what we’ve got to do now.”

  Virgil was sure Whit would be upset, though he’d warned his softhearted brother about the storm brewing. Whit was a compassionate man who was slow to anger, and Virgil knew he could take matters only so far. Even so, he knew Whit could raise the devil out of hell if it came to it.

  Loudermilk & Associates had two clients: William Whitney Delacourte, Jr., and the company his and Virgil’s father started with nothing but a stick loan from a pawnshop in 1957. Whit Sr. had bought out the whole shop and the strip mall it was in with the proceeds from a big stock bet, and began investing in telephone wire. Newspapers, radio, and television stations would soon follow. They bought up everything in sight, including the Atlanta Times-Register, a local television station, and two radio outfits. Then came cable television and broadband expansions. One thing led to another, and suddenly Delacourte Enterprises was the largest privately held media conglomerate in the country. They went public in 1989, and the company stock never saw a bad day.

  For a lot of years, working for his brother meant nothing more than Virgil’s cashing quarterly retainer checks and sitting on the board of the family company. Whit had been the kind of client every lawyer dreams about. He paid his bill on time, had few requests and even fewer complaints. Virgil grew rich without so much as lifting a finger.

  When he wasn’t serving as executive vice president and chief legal counsel of W. W. Delacourte Enterprises and its many business units, a job with few real responsibilities, Virgil kept himself busy teaching corporate law at Emory University, volunteering at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, playing checkers and puzzle games with Lucky, and chewing a steady diet of pan-fried catfish. At least twice a year, he and Libby Gail would head down to the Sea Island, off the Georgia coast, where they had a house on the beach, and pretend they were newlyweds for weeks at a time.

  It went on like that for years until the day Whit showed up at Virgil’s office, unannounced, twenty-odd years back. When Whit told him what he wanted, Virgil got up from his desk, locked the door, and pulled the blinds. They didn’t come out until after the sun went down. For four days, they met at eight in the morning and closed shop at eight in the evening.

  On the evening of the first night, when their wives asked where they’d been, Whit mumbled something about how they’d been fishing for bluegills and bigmouth bass out on Lake Rabun. Never mind that their trucks had been seen parked in front of Virgil’s office all day, their clothes were bone dry, and neither one of them had any fish to show for it. Whit never could tell a good lie. Patsy Delacourte wanted to throw a fit, but the look in Whit’s eye told her not to question him. Libby Gail took her husband’s silence on the matter as the only answer she needed.

  “Virgil, at least call your brother first. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Politics ain’t a bean bag, my friend.”

  “You ever been hit in the eye with a bean bag?”

  “Whit knows what’s coming. Besides, she cursed me right to my damn face. She’ll pay for that. You can bet your fancy slippers on it.”

  FOURTEEN

  She grilled two sockeye salmon fillets and roasted ears of summer corn, wrapped in foil and still in their husks, over charcoal on the back deck. There would be fist-sized dollops of egg salad, laced with sweet pickle relish and sprigs of rosemary, and homemade barbecue sauce lathered on the fish, he knew. Claire was a distinctively southern woman in all of her ways, down to the neatly placed silverware. Hampton delighted in her cooking, almost as much as her milky, peach-dipped skin and golden-brown hair that flowed like a cape over her smooth shoulders.

  They took polite sips from two heavy glasses, one filled with white wine, the other with the lemonade she’d squeezed, laced with honey and spiked with cayenne pepper, as they traded small talk. How life had been, how it was now, but nothing about tomorrow. No hopes, wishes. No dreams. No well-laid plans. Being here with her, the warmth of the fire, the light in her eyes were enough for Hampton. He would not ask if she was seeing someone new. If there was somebody, and surely there was, that somebody was not him.

  He’d kept up with her on Facebook. The status updates, infrequent as they were, told him that she was doing just fine. He needed to know that. He never once gave in to the impulse to comment on the happy photos she posted. Her life now was her own, and he’d done his best to move on.

  The night air was pleasurable. The mosquitoes were tamed by a row of flickering citronella candles. Her shimmering sheer lip gloss and the way the straps of her sundress fell over her shoulders mesmerized him.

  Hampton knew Claire would want to know what happened to Inman, a rescue dog they’d adopted from a no-kill shelter off Howell Mill Road. There had been no children, and Inman was the only thing left that tied them together. Hampton knew she would be shaken by the news. Though, he didn’t expect a return text message so immediately or the invitation that followed.

  Can you come for dinner?

  It took a full hour to get up the nerve to respond. There was a lot he wanted to say, though he thought better of it.

  Sure. Say when.

  Tomorrow, if you are free. Casual. 6:30 okay?

  Hampton left the office at noon the next day, went home, and tossed in a load of laundry. He took a longer-than-usual shower, scrubbing away the collected filth, before slipping on a polo shirt and a pair of cargo shorts, fresh out of the dryer, and a pair of lace-up dock shoes. He decided to leave his wheelchair at home and stopped off at Clip Appeal for a long-overdue haircut. He wanted to look good for Claire. He wanted his ex-wife to see a freshly shaven man, standing on his own two feet. For good measure, he even spritzed himself with a dash of cologne.

  He was on the road by four that afternoon. A normally thirty-minute drive up GA-400 to Alpharetta would take at least ninety even if rush-hour traffic was good and his minivan didn’t break down.

  The Abbotts Landing subdivision was as nice as he had imagined. Middle-class people living in neat homes, with two-car garages and manicured lawns, backing up to a golf course. He found the address at the end of a cul-de-sac, a two-story traditional brick-front adorned with white columns. There were no barking pit bulls tied up in a yard behind a chain-link fence, as in his neighborhood. There was no loud music thumping out of passing cars and no sign of Beaver, the homeless guy who frequented his block. Compared to Hampton’s place in Candler Park, Claire lived in paradise.

  The mailbox at the edge of the driveway read TOLSEN. She’d resumed using her maiden name after the divorce, but seeing it now, spelled out in gold letters in front of such a lovely home, with its well-tended lawn and pristine walkway, reminded him of what he had not been able to give her.

  Hampton pressed the doorbell, waited, and then knocked on the front door. He leaned on his crutches as he waited for an answer, until he realized it had bee
n left unlocked.

  “Ruby Claire?”

  “In here!” he heard her call from the kitchen. “You’re early!”

  She was stirring up a pitcher of lemonade.

  “It’s virgin,” she said. “No Jack Daniel’s.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Hampton hoisted himself onto a bar chair and watched her intently as she moved briskly around the kitchen.

  “Can I help?”

  “Don’t you move a muscle,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not sure how many of my muscles actually move, so…”

  “You know you’re the only person on the planet, other than my grandmother, who still calls me by my whole name, right?”

  “Sorry, I can’t help it. How’ve you been?”

  “Good, good.”

  She smiled, cautiously, Hampton thought. He knew her expressions. There was nothing, even now, that she could hide from him. He knew she was nervous too, this being the first time they’d spent any time together since their last court date. In all honesty, he had not expected to see or hear from her again.

  “Hey, you walked in here,” she said. “That’s progress.”

  “If you can call it that. These things leave bruises,” he said, raising one metal support off the floor. “Nice place.”

  “Yeah, I was lucky to find it. Close to work, no traffic jams. It’s a rental. I’m hoping my bonus check will be enough to top off a good down payment on a mortgage.”

  “Ms. Tolsen, I’d give you the rest of my 401(k) money if I still had it to give.”

  It was the first sour word Hampton uttered. He hadn’t called her by her maiden name since he presented her with an engagement ring and asked for her hand in marriage. Claire let it pass.

  “Let’s go outside. No need in wasting perfectly good weather,” she said. “We can eat out on the deck.”

  He followed her through the sliding glass door, hobbling over the threshold. Claire was right, it was a nice evening and even nicer that he could spend it with her. He plopped down onto a patio lounger and leaned his crutches against the deck railing. They traded more small talk, about this, that, and the other. It went on like that until he finally worked up the stomach to talk about the break-in and the goon squad that killed his beloved dog. Glassy-eyed and stammering, he told her what had become of Inman. She worked the fire as he retold the story, avoiding flourishes. He had not been brave. Hampton wanted her to know that.

  “There were three of them. Two black, one white, I think. One of them pointed a gun right in my face. I couldn’t keep Inman off of him. And then he killed him, right in front of me.”

  “I am so sorry.…”

  “It was bad, Claire.”

  “What did the police say? Do they have any leads?”

  “I buried Inman in the backyard.…”

  “What did the police say?”

  “I didn’t call them. You know how it is downtown. These things happen. I’m glad you weren’t there.”

  “I don’t understand. Gunshots, call the police. That’s how it works. They killed Inman, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Maybe out here—”

  “Did you at least go to a precinct and file a report?”

  “They didn’t steal anything, not that I own anything worth taking. My pride, maybe.”

  “At least you can get that back. What did they look like?”

  “Like I said, two black, one white. I thought I recognized one of them. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I can’t say for sure, but he’s the one that shot Inman.”

  “A damn kid?”

  “Yeah, a kid.” He paused and said finally, “I’ve missed you. I miss us.”

  Claire’s eyes started welling up. “I know it sounds funny, but Inman was like the baby I never had. I needed to hear how it all happened. It hurts so much and I guess you’re the only one I can share that with. I’m sorry to bring you all the way out here. I didn’t want to go through this alone.”

  There was a long silence, several loaded sighs, and stolen glances.

  “I didn’t want to leave him,” she said. “I figured he was all you had left, and I couldn’t take him from you.”

  “I was wrong. I need you to know that.”

  Claire gracefully ignored his entreaty, checked the fish, found the center deep pink, and decided it was well enough. The corn was done too. Hampton was intoxicated by the scent of brown sugar and butter that floated from the foil wrappers.

  “Are you ready to eat? I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  “Starving, really,” he said ashamedly.

  “It’s been a really long time,” Claire said finally. “It isn’t every day that your husband gets into an accident with another woman in the passenger seat of the car you bought him.”

  “It was a really nice car,” Hampton said, trying to break up the mood.

  “What happened to her?”

  “Shoshana?”

  Claire nodded.

  “She’s fine. Moved out of state.” Hampton took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, Ruby Claire. I’m sorry that I did that to you, to us. Sorry that this is probably the first time I ever said so.”

  “It is.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I’m not sure what I want.”

  “I’ve always wanted you,” Hampton said.

  There was more silence, more sighs. For the fourth and fifth time, Hampton noticed a chilly distance open up between them. His fish and corn were getting cold now too. He took a bite of potato salad, found it heavenly, and gobbled down some more. She was rambling on about an architectural presentation of some sort, something about a newly proposed high-rise at Atlantic Station.

  “It’s the largest brownfield-redevelopment project in the country,” Claire said. “I’m not the lead designer, of course, but my team is heading up the exterior renderings. It will be a fully green building, state of the art.”

  Hampton offered up obligatory congratulations as he picked over the salmon.

  “How is work for you?” she asked.

  “Same old shit, really.”

  “Still chasing that big corruption story?”

  “Feels more like it’s chasing me,” he said, looking up. “And, yeah, I’m still working it. Writing something that Tucker will publish is a real problem, though. I suppose he’s just keeping his nose clean. I can’t say that I blame him. He’s got a wife and kids.”

  “So, finish it and take it somewhere else. If it goes as deep as you say, surely the New York Times will want it or maybe even Vanity Fair.”

  “Maybe. Right now it’s just a bunch of dark money flowing through campaigns.”

  “What’s dark money?”

  “Basically, it’s using campaign disclosure laws to buy an election with unreported money. They set up shop, and then take in as much money as they want from corporations and individuals, without fear of disclosure. Pick a candidate, back them with a shitload of cash, and then wait for the favors to come rolling in later. A bunch of groups ponied up three hundred million during the 2012 presidential cycle.”

  “Sounds like influence peddling. That’s a federal crime. I know that much.”

  “I would have to find evidence of active collusion between a political action committee and a candidate, and so far, I’ve got nothing.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Maybe forty or fifty million, maybe more, just in Georgia and dating back to the early seventies. And that’s not adjusting for inflation.”

  “Fifty friggin’ million dollars! Who’d they buy, the Queen of England?”

  “You could say that.”

  Hampton was careful not to reveal too many details, even to Claire, and he was determined not to think any more than he had to about Mayor Dobbs tonight. With her congressional campaign set to launch in a few days, he found himself poring over newspaper archives, looking for something, anything that he might have missed. Things were at least q
uiet between them right now, their full-scale war simmering like a stewing pot of water on the back eye of the stove—still hot, but no present danger.

  He found the idea that Chanel Burris and Mayor Dobbs had gone to the same high school intriguing. He’d gone down to Benjamin E. Mays High School, named for the legendary civil rights pioneer and president of Morehouse College, and checked six full years’ worth of yearbooks, but didn’t find a single class-year photograph of a “Chanel Burris.”

  Dobbs, unsurprisingly, was both homecoming queen and senior class president. He’d written about Richard “Dickey” Lester last January. He was in the same graduating class and voted Most Likely to Succeed. His nickname was Phoenix, earned for the many track records he broke in high school. There was a nice picture of the two of them—Victoria Dobbs and Richard Lester—leading the homecoming court. Hampton found that ironic, given his current circumstances as an indicted kingpin under house arrest and hers as mayor.

  “She is quite the politician, I must say,” Claire said at last.

  “Who?”

  “Victoria Dobbs, of course. I mean, you are investigating her, yes? Queen of England? I wish I had her clothes. Her shoe closet must be divine.”

  “You deserve a rich husband who can give you all of those things, Claire.”

  “No, I deserved you.”

  FIFTEEN

  The bulky manila envelope was addressed to MRS. VICTORIA DOBBS-OVERSTREET and marked: PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. It arrived by courier. No uniform, no company logo on the delivery car, no return address.

  Victoria hesitantly peeled open the package. Staring down at the pages and an array of full-color photographs, she wiped her tears on her shirtsleeve. Her daughters were, thankfully, sleeping the night with Rosetta. Unable to sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, she paced the house, then went to the garage. Finally, she dragged out a pressure washer, attached the hose, plugged in the charger, and listened to it hum in the darkness. Nearly an hour later, well beyond midnight, Victoria watched her husband’s moon-silver Maserati turn into the driveway. She met him at the foot of the garage, aiming the extended wand of the pressure washer at him like a double-gauge shotgun.