“Are you the guest?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’ll need a little touch-up around the eyes and beard line,” she said, judging me from where she stood.
I had not shaved since seven that morning, Puerto Vallarta time. In the mirror lined with small electric light bulbs, I looked like Richard Nixon about to face the nation.
“Okay, dearie,” the makeup woman said to the blonde, who leaned forward closer to the mirror, touched her forefinger to the corner of her mouth, delicately dabbed at something invisible there, and then got out of the chair. She smiled at me as she went out of the room; I guessed there would be blue skies tomorrow. I took her vacant chair.
“This is pancake,” the makeup lady said. “It’ll wash right off later.” I went on the air at 6:21 P.M. after the Weather Lady reported that tomorrow would be rainy and cold, and before the sportscaster, waiting in the wings, gave the news on Calusa’s local teams. The anchorman introduced me. I looked directly into the camera and said, “I’m addressing this to George Harper. George, this is Matthew Hope. If you’re watching this somewhere, I want you to listen very carefully. I still believe strongly in your innocence, and I’ll do everything I possibly can to prove that to a jury when the time comes. I want you to call me, George. I’m in the Calusa phone book, call me either at home or at my office, that’s Summerville and Hope on Heron Street. I want to talk to you, George. It’s important that we talk. Please call me. Thank you.”
I felt like a horse’s ass.
I did not get home from Tampa, where I’d taped essentially the same message for a potentially wider audience, until almost 10:00 P.M. I was exhausted. I mixed myself a very strong Beefeater martini, dropped two olives into the glass, and walked into the study, where I turned on my answering machine. The first message was from Jim Willoughby.
“Matthew,” he said, “I don’t know why the hell you went on television, but I hope the state’s attorney doesn’t ask for a change of venue after hearing you proclaim Harper’s innocence to any listening prospective juror. That was a dumb thing to do, Matthew. You’d better call me as soon as you can. Anyway, I thought you were in Mexico.”
The next dozen messages were from lunatics.
“Mr. Hope,” the first caller said, “I caught your little speech on television, Mr. Hope, and I’d like you to know just how I feel about your defendin that murderin nigger. Serve him right if he gets the chair. And you, too!”
The man hung up. There was a hum on the tape, and then the next caller, a woman, said, “I know where he is, Mr. Hope. He’s in Niggertown is where he is, gettin drunk enough so’s he can go out and kill somebody else. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
A click. Another hum. Then another woman’s voice:
“You looked cute on TV, Mr. Hope. Anytime you feel like partyin, you just give me a call, hear? Ask for Lucille, but call me at work, ’cause I’m married and all. I’m a waitress at the Loftside Restaurant, down on the South Trail. Or maybe you can just drop in sometime, look over the goods ’fore you commit yourself. You’re awful cute, honey.”
A click. A hum. A man’s voice on the tape:
“I wish that Harper nigger not only calls you but actually comes to see you, Mr. Hope. ’Cause I’ll be parked outside your house with a sawed-off shotgun, an’ I’ll blow that fucker’s brains out the minute I see him. Sleep tight, Mr. Hope.”
The next voice, a man’s, said only, “God will strike you dead, Mr. Hope, for taking up with niggers.”
And then a woman: “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
Click.
Another woman: “If God intended niggers to be masters, then Harper’d be defendin you ’stead of the other way around. He’s already raised his hand against one white person, an’ I hope he comes to see you an’ uses the same hammer on you that he used on that nigger trash he killed next. Good riddance to her and you, too, Mr. Hope. Say hello to the devil for me.”
A man: “Well, Mr. Hope, you got yourself a real good one this time, dinn you? You do your best on this one, Mr. Hope, and every nigger in town’ll be runnin over to your office so’s you can get him offa whatever he done — be it murder, be it armed robbery, be it rapin white women. Congratulations, Mr. Hope, you’re a real credit to the community.”
And a woman: “I told my husband you’re the scum of the earth. He said you should be shot in public.”
Another woman: “Why don’t you move to Africa, Mr. Hope? Plenty of people there who’d love you to death, maybe even make you chief of they tribe, so’s you can get to wear beads and paint and all. Think it over.”
A man: “I’m calling on behalf of the CCAC, Mr. Hope. I don’t know if you’re familiar with our organization, the letters stand for Concerned Citizens Against Crime. We’ve been working hard to see that people like your client Mr. Harper are punished adequately for the crimes they commit against our community. I want you to know, Mr. Hope, that we’re adding your name to the list of people we feel are working against that goal. I doubt you’ll see too many honest and law-abiding clients in your office after that little speech you made tonight. I hope you know how to shine shoes, Mr. Hope. Or maybe cleaning toilets is more in your style.”
And lastly: “Mr. Hope, this is Lucille again. You might like to know I’m five feet eight inches tall, and I weigh a very curvy hundred and fifteen pounds. A lot of people think I look like Jacqueline Bisset, if you’re familiar with her. You may have seen her wearing that wet T-shirt in The Deep, the movie The Deep. My husband calls me ‘Bullets,’ if you take my meaning. Call me or come see me, hear?”
After Lucille’s voice, there was only a long hum on the tape. I switched off the machine, and went back into the living room, stunned. I had not until that moment fully believed the accounts I’d read of crank calls and letters from the public in cases involving any major crime. And whereas I knew that black-white relations were as strained in Calusa as they were anyplace else in the nation, I had until now entertained the perhaps naïve hope that things could only get better; now I knew exactly how deep the hatred ran. I sat sipping at my martini and wondering if I should call Bloom. A man had threatened to park outside my house with a sawed-off shotgun, hadn’t he? Should I ask for police protection? Should I have my telephone number—
The phone rang.
I suddenly regretted having turned off the answering machine. I did not want to talk personally with anyone spouting abuse or making threats. The phone kept ringing. I put down the martini glass, and went to answer it.
“Hello?” I said.
“Mr. Hope?”
“Yes?”
“This is Kitty Reynolds.”
“Yes, Miss Reynolds?”
“I’m sorry to be bothering you so late at night, but I wonder if... Mr. Hope, do you think you could come here for a few minutes? There’s... something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“What is it, Miss Reynolds?”
“Well, not on the phone. I’m on Flamingo Key, the address is 204 Crane Way, just past the yacht club and over the bridge. I know it’s late, but if you could come here, I’d appreciate it.”