Paper Gods

by Goldie Taylor

  “That’s what we pay them for. Keep him on ice.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is that all you have for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Holly scooted back from table, paused, and said, “I’ve never lived in D.C., but if you will have me, I’d like to join your congressional staff.”

  “The race isn’t over yet. There will be many more miles before any of us can sleep. Is the Haverty statement ready?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I will have the press office send you the draft. And if you don’t mind my saying, I’ve got faith in you. We all do. You’re like that phoenix,” Holly said, pointing to the gold-embossed city seal on her binder. “You keep rising from the ashes.”

  “Indeed. Thank you, Holly.”

  “If you will excuse me, I have a meeting with the council president.”

  “About?”

  “He wants to rename a street after Christopher Bridges.”

  “Ludacris? He’s from College Park.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, that’s one Bridges I happen to like. Which street?”

  “South section of Whitehall.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes and said, “Tell the council president he has my blessing. Just tell him not to go trying to rename anything after Yung Joc, Stevie J, or Gucci Mane until I leave this office.”

  “I will inform him,” Holly said with a broad grin.

  Before she got to the door, Victoria stopped her.

  “I want you to know that I am grateful. You could be out there making a lot of money at some big law firm, but you gave up a great job to work for me,” she said. “So, whether I am still mayor or I take that congressional seat, there is a place for you. I need people like you at my side.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  A lot of things in Atlanta carry the city seal or at least some version of it, Victoria was thinking as Holly closed the door. It was inscribed with the word resurgens, Latin for “rising again,” and Victoria knew the history well. A bronze monument now located in Woodruff Park, in the center of downtown, was erected in 1969 to memorialize the city’s hundred-year recovery after the Civil War. The sculpture, a gift from the Rich Foundation, depicts a woman being lifted by a bird from the flames—a phoenix. Victoria felt like that statue now, naked from the waist up and hoisting a mythical phoenix overhead.

  Staring at the seal, she was reminded of her duty to her city. What she had always feared now stared Victoria in the face, demanding a reckoning. Taking down Virgil Loudermilk, tying him up in court, and sending the GBI his way were only the beginning, she knew.

  Do the next right thing.

  * * *

  Gathered in the bowels of City Hall East on Ponce de Leon Avenue, in their cavern floors beneath police department headquarters, the mayor’s SOC team listened as she pieced together what she knew. When she was finished, Victoria let her chest fill with air and blew out a hard gust. She placed two ziplock bags that contained two red pieces of origami on the table.

  “My brother was carrying this one the night his car exploded,” she said, lifting the corner. “Congressman Hawkins received the other. I found it in his Bible.”

  “I’m confused,” Pelosi said. “Slow down and tell me again. You think someone sent these to Ezra and Chip just before they were killed?”

  “Yes. And they left one balled up in Haverty’s mouth,” Victoria replied. “Every time I see one, somebody dies. It’s a sign of rebirth, but, of course, the victims don’t rise again. Whoever is behind these believes their own power is ascendant.”

  Pelosi eyed her closely as she spoke. A tear wet her cheeks.

  “I know who did this,” she said. “And if I’m right, this isn’t over.”

  “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you are right. Have you said anything about this to Chief Walraven?” Pelosi asked.

  “You and I both know my police chief doesn’t have the stomach for this. I should’ve fired him a long time ago, and the GBI is still chasing its own tail. If I’m right, it won’t be enough. I am a dead woman walking.”

  “We’ve got a security detail covering your entire family.”

  She was visibly shaken, still tearful, but kept her hands planted on the metal table. “This won’t end until he takes everything from me.”

  “Who, Loudermilk?”

  “This is bigger than him. I should’ve listened to Ezra.” She broke down. Tears flooded her face. “God, I should’ve listened to him. He’d still be here now. And Chip too. This is my fault. But I was naïve. I could’ve stopped him.”

  “Stopped who?”

  Victoria said nothing. Her lips quivered.

  “I’m not into conspiracy theories, but let’s play this one out,” he said. “Somebody get me a list of everything that carries the city seal or any part of it. Anything with a phoenix or the word resurgens,” he said finally. “What else do we have, Detective Delacourte?”

  “There’s a million companies with resurgens in the name. But I looked up the symbol online,” she said, “and I think it’s called a chronepsis.”

  “What in the hell is that?” Pelosi said.

  “The dragon god of fate, death, and judgment,” the mayor interrupted.

  “As in Dungeons and Dragons?” another officer said.

  “Fill us in, Whitney,” Pelosi said.

  “Yes, sir, Mayor Dobbs is right. In the virtual game, the chronepsis is silent and dispassionate. Only interacts with those who are dead or dying.”

  “I have an old friend who was into that sort of thing,” Victoria said.

  Pelosi scratched his head. “Dragons or murder?”

  “Both. And there’s only one company that matters. It’s a commercial development firm owned by Coleman Delacourte.”

  “Who’s this friend?” Pelosi said.

  Victoria wiped her face and said, “A word in private.”

  Pelosi ordered the room cleared.

  FORTY

  The Monday morning court hearing ended almost as quickly as it got going, and Virgil walked away with what he called a pyrrhic victory. An injunction against Reclaim Atlanta was ordered, but despite Highsmith’s chest thumping, Virgil testified to little more than he had to. He rang his secretary to say he wouldn’t be in as planned. He ordered his calendar cleared.

  There was some testimony that Virgil preferred not to have on the record, including his role in the Goodwin campaign and two other candidates in prior races. Specifically, he was forced to confirm the members of the League and exactly how much money each of them had given directly to Pastor Goodwin’s now-defunct campaign. Highsmith wasn’t nearly so good as his reputation, but good enough to drag his good name through the mud. Donors to Reclaim Atlanta were protected under both state and federal law, but Judge Sheehan decided he’d heard enough about the League’s monkeyshines and ordered the questioning stopped.

  It didn’t matter that Virgil went to law school at University of Georgia with Rufus Sheehan, who was only the second African American in its history to graduate. Virgil had even written a glowing letter of recommendation back in 2002, urging the governor to appoint Sheehan to a vacancy on the state supreme court. Much to his relief, the hearing was over almost as soon as it started.

  At precisely 10:45 A.M., Virgil entered a Starbucks near the corner of Fourteenth and West Peachtree Street, a few doors down from the Four Seasons Hotel and in the heart of Atlanta’s row of high-priced law firms, and ordered a double-shot Venti vanilla latte. He settled into a hard-back chair in a far corner and unfurled a newspaper. The second rush hour was petering out, but there were still too many customers in the coffeehouse for his tastes. He took three sips, quickly forgot it, and lost himself in the business section of the New York Times.

  He enjoyed the anonymity. No one here knew his name, let alone what was unfolding. He savored the quiet moments. His cell phone buzzed and he let it. Virgil was drowning in the soup now, he admitted to himself. Between Victoria’s
legal plays and the silence from Riley Lester, he felt the walls closing in. There was no way to predict what one or the other might do. He’d dialed Riley that morning before the hearing got under way but got no answer.

  The partnership had paid good dividends, but the brothers and their penchant for violence could not be controlled. He wondered now if his head would be the next one on the platter.

  There was no way he could explain this to Whit, not that he gave diddly-squat about his huffing and puffing right now. He tossed the nearly full latte and the newspaper into a waiting garbage can and left the coffeehouse. Virgil drove aimlessly about the city for a bit, thinking through his next steps. Lucky arranged for a private security team, and he was due to meet with the lead man within the hour.

  Ten minutes later, he was tooling along Piedmont Road, headed north toward Buckhead, when his cell phone started buzzing again. It was near ’bout noon, and he’d missed his favorite truffle deviled eggs drizzled with honey and topped with fried chicken skins. The caller ID on the dashboard said it was Libby Gail.

  “You ready to come on home yet, gal?”

  “How’re you keeping yourself?”

  “Barely,” Virgil said. “Without Harold around, I ain’t eating good.”

  “You can order takeout.”

  “We’ve been married thirty-five years, and all I can get is takeout?”

  “I’m sure the Buckhead Diner will bring you something.”

  “Pulling in there now.”

  “That figures.”

  “Ain’t you gone ask me about how the hearing went?”

  “You got yourself into this, Virgil, and you’ll get yourself out,” Libby Gail said. “I read about it already. Anyway, that isn’t what I’m calling about.”

  “Well, don’t wait. Give it to me, gal. Tell old Virgil what’s on your mind.”

  “Stop calling me ‘gal.’”

  “Never thought it bothered you.”

  “You remember Rose, don’t you?”

  “Rose?”

  “Rosetta.”

  “Park Dobbs’s wife? The mayor’s mama? Sure enough.”

  “She called Whit last night, saying she needed to meet with him.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Patsy Jo told me, of course. She took the call at the house when it came in.”

  “What does she want with Whit?”

  “You and I both know what she wants.”

  “Does my sister-in-law know that?”

  “If she does, she’s never uttered a word to me about it. Never once in all these years.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “Don’t know. Patsy Jo didn’t hear all of the conversation. Said Whit just kept nodding and saying ‘uhn-hun.’ Then he took it to the den. He should know good and well, a secret like that won’t hold forever. Not in Atlanta.”

  “Listen here, Libby Gail, I only told you because you’re my wife. It ain’t no time to start flapping your gums to Patsy Jo or anybody else.”

  “It has never been my place to say,” Libby Gail said.

  “I’ve got some calls to make. I’ll ring you back in a while.”

  “Virgil, honey, this is a mess. If this ever gets out—”

  “It won’t unless you start talking.”

  “Big Whit is rolling over in his grave. You know that, right?”

  “You and I both know my daddy would’ve done everything I did and then some. He knew all about this.”

  Libby Gail suddenly went silent.

  “You still there?” Virgil said. “Hello, hello?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Something else is on your mind. I can smell it.”

  She paused and said, “Did you kill Haverty?”

  “I figured that’s what you had twirling around in your head. No, I didn’t, Libby Gail.”

  “Did you pay somebody to do it?”

  “No, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you about it.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Hampton dialed Chanel again, for the fifth time that night. His mother, Florence, hadn’t heard from her either.

  “Come on, Chanel, pick up,” he said, pecking at the keypad on his smartphone.

  Another call rolled straight to voice mail. No greeting, just two beeps.

  She’d been anxious on their last call. Talking in circles and then coming to a dead stop when he got around to the subject of money and who might’ve killed Ezra Hawkins. The notion of a lone wolf hadn’t set right with Hampton either. After all, the congressman didn’t sit on the Armed Services Committee or Veterans Affairs. There was no indication the shooter had ever once called his congressional office or made any contact via social media.

  According to the FBI, the gun found in the house was a clean match to the murder weapon. Caleb Vasquez was dead, and the investigation was officially closed.

  Hampton wondered now if Chanel might’ve been right. She clearly knew more than she was saying.

  Sending her to Flint seemed like a good idea, or at least the best he could think of at the time. Going to the police with such a flimsy story felt like a fool’s errand. He hadn’t the stomach to tell Tucker what he suspected, and he hadn’t uttered a word to anyone about the congressman’s affair with Chanel.

  He’d heard rumors about Ezra Hawkins over the years. The scuttlebutt was that Hawkins frequented a gay nightclub on the Westside, where he had a reserved room. The congressman never married and had no children, but the notion that he had been in a three-decade-long relationship with a transgender woman was still more news than Hampton saw fit to print.

  The revelation, if he ever told it, would make for an explosive headline. But Hampton wouldn’t write about it—not for Hawkins’s sake, but for Chanel’s—at least for now. If everything she said was true, meeting with him meant jeopardizing her life. She was smart and streetwise, but obviously scared. Now he thought she’d gone and done something they’d both regret.

  It was well after 11 P.M., and the story about Shaun Haverty had been all over cable news again that day. Hampton was sure the detective was behind the mysterious email he’d received, just as Mayor Dobbs suggested. Hampton looked up at the smiling set of headshots posted on the wall. Loudermilk was tacked to the middle of the fray, which he called the “wall of shame.”

  Dressed in a banker’s suit, with a silk tie and a starched white shirt, Loudermilk looked like any other lawyer. That he was Whit Delacourte’s cousin-brother complicated matters. Hampton realized that he had always been afraid of this moment, afraid that his story was about more than buying up elections. In the early days, he thought the League was just a group of rich Buckhead businessmen pouring money into their chosen candidates in exchange for city contracts. Hampton had been doubtful, at least before Haverty was discovered in the river with his tongue sliced off, that they’d actually kill somebody to get what they wanted. And if they had Haverty murdered, why not Prentiss Dobbs and Ezra Hawkins? What was once too absurd to believe made perfect sense now.

  You don’t know what kinna people you messing with.

  He stepped out onto the rear porch and relit a menthol cigarette, a Newport, the eighth one that night and seven more than he’d had since he was seventeen, and smoked it down to the butt. Hampton’s chest was burning, but his head was clear. His calculations had been deliberate, the accounting for the money and connections precise, but he had not banked on what he was looking at now. There was a failed transportation bill worth billions, a Delacourte family–owned construction business, and a trail of bribes. And now, there were bodies, at least seven of them by his count: Chip Dobbs, Haverty, and four others who were killed at Ebenezer along with Congressman Hawkins. Hampton was possessed by the idea that the League might be behind it all.

  He steadied himself and walked back inside. The mayor was involved in some way. Her fingerprints were all over that transportation bill, and he was certain, despite the scant documentation, that the League had funded every campaign of her political lif
e. His disdain for Victoria Dobbs was not a matter of debate, and he still believed that she and her band of thugs were behind his car accident. Even so, he couldn’t wrap his head around the notion that she was involved in a string of killings.

  He rang her press secretary a dozen or more times, unable to get an interview. Hampton wanted to look her in the eye and ask the mayor about Reclaim Atlanta. Her books were clean. Still, Hampton had his suspicions.

  He fished through Chicago’s local news, hoping he wouldn’t find her among the weekend’s shooting victims. It was a relatively light weekend in the Windy City. Four people had been murdered, according to the Tribune, and another three wounded. None matched Chanel’s description or the names “Malik Townsend” or “Burris.” He tried “Tracy Cantrell,” the pseudonym he gave her, but came up with nothing.

  He rang four hospitals that night and even put in calls to the Cook and Lake county morgues. No one matched the description he gave, not even when he mentioned that the potential victim was a transgender woman.

  He laid his head on his desk, still gripping his cell phone, and began to weep. The tears quickly became sobs.

  Claire was here now, fast asleep in his bed. She’d been feeling sick, vomited twice, and turned in early. They joked that she might be pregnant.

  “Wouldn’t that be a hoot,” she said.

  “A beautiful hoot,” Hampton replied.

  Around 2 A.M., he crawled in beside her and cupped her warm body in his arms. She had a slight fever and slept fitfully. Hampton rose again around 4 A.M. His smartphone, the ringer turned on for the first time in months, lay on the bedside table. He checked the display. No calls.

  He started to pray. Hampton hadn’t talked to God about much of anything in years, even as he lay half-dead after the accident. But pray, he did. He prayed for Chanel’s life, for answers to all the horrific questions floating around in his head. Hampton looked up at the ceiling and wondered if anybody was listening.

  Inside his makeshift war room, Hampton began walking through every word Chanel ever told him. He leafed through the mound of campaign finance disclosures again, looking for something he might have missed. He printed pictures of Cole and Rafaela Delacourte and added them to the array on the wall. Raffi was a gorgeous woman, with serious eyes, just as Claire had described. He found an image of Caleb Vasquez, in Army dress uniform, and added him to the mix.