He’s going to walk away from all of this.”
“What I have trouble understanding,” Tommy says cautiously, “is why a man like that would risk so much.”
I have trouble with that aspect, too, but I say, “I don’t know how often you and Connie have been in Bear Creek recently, but I’m finding out it’s changed a lot since I grew up here.” “It’s changed, all right,” Tommy says humorlessly.
Sensing that he is willing to talk, I ask him what he does for a living, and he tells me that he has a commercial real estate firm in D.C. It sounds as if he is doing quite well, which I don’t doubt. He had the sort of mind that could make sense of the tax code but never tried to intimidate you with his intelligence. I ask what Connie does and learn that she is a physicist in Memphis who measures the amount of radiation given to cancer patients. She has been driving over on the weekends to stay with their mother, who has been ill for the last several years and whose health has not. been improved by her husband’s murder. I am sure he will be on the phone to them after this call.
Before I hang up, he asks, “Is there a trial date?”
I explain that Class has to be formally arraigned first and tell him that despite the circumstances it was good to talk to him. We were friends once; maybe we can be again once this is all over. I place the phone on the table and lean back against the bed and watch Vanna swishing back and forth on the screen. How little it takes to entertain me. Before I can take a sip of bourbon, the phone rings, and I pick it up, hoping it’s not Betty telling me she’ll bring down some extra towels.
“Gideon,” Paul Taylor begins, “damn, I’m glad you’re in this case. Can you believe the shit I’m in?” Who told him I was here? I stare at Vanna’s backside while I try to absorb what he is saying.
Can he still be this arrogant after all these years?
Does he truly not know how I feel about him? Of course, he doesn’t.
Paul, I realize now, is the type who, regardless of what he does, can always rationalize his actions.
“You’re in some shit all right.
Does Dick know you’re calling me? I shouldn’t be visiting with you without his okay.” “Hell, sure he does,” he says casually.
“We’re on the same side of this, right?”
If Angela has talked to him, she didn’t say how I feel about him.
“Of course!” I say as if his charge is one huge mistake.
“But what on earth did you do to piss off the new order, Paul? Unless somebody is playing a huge practical joke, I’d say somebody doesn’t like you.”
He laughs, but the sound coming through the phone is not a merry one.
“This is the new order, all right! Can you believe we have niggers
running Bear Creek? When we were kids, could you have ever imagined the sheriff, prosecuting attorney, and judge would have black faces when we got to be our parents’ ages?”
Paul has some nerve mentioning my parents in the same breath with his.
I realize I better take advantage of this moment while I can.
“Paul, did you have some dealings with my client I don’t know about?” I ask.
Paul’s voice becomes intense.
“What’s he saying, Gideon?”
If I had known I was going to have this opportunity, I would have tried to figure out how to trap him. My mind races for a way to get him to admit that he hired Class or someone else to kill Willie.
“Well, of course, he can’t very well deny once having worked for you, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about the details. I just got hired yesterday. It sounds as if you had some contact with him after old Willie was killed. Is that right?”
“Why don’t you come by the house for a drink after supper, Gideon?”
Paul asks, his voice polite.
“I’ll call Dick, and we can do a little brainstorming-unless you have plans tonight.”
I wonder if something in my tone warned him away or he simply found out what he needed to know. I can’t very well turn him down.
“What time?” I ask, checking my watch. Hell, I wish he would invite me to eat. I’m getting hungry.
“About eight,” he says.
“You know where we live now?”
I confess I don’t, and he says that he has moved into town.
“We sold Riverdale years ago.
We live in the old Yates house. You know where that is.”
“I remember.” Bear Creek’s one mansion.
What a piece of work this guy is. I’d love to ask about Mae, but I ask about Jill instead, and he tells me that she is “just wonderful” and abruptly gets off the phone. I put down the receiver without having gotten to ask how he knew I was at the Bear Creek Inn. All I can figure is that gossip travels the speed of light over here. For all I know, Betty may have called ten people since I checked in. I remind myself to be careful. If I don’t watch myself, I’ll be the one who will end up getting screwed.
I don’t need to arrive at his house thinking that Paul was a great guy after all, and I pour out my bourbon and Coke in the sink. I decide to
shower and get out of the clothes I’m wearing today. Friday night.
Nobody in eastern Arkansas is wearing a suit unless he or she is getting married tonight or buried tomorrow. As I place the pants and jacket on a plastic hanger, I am reminded of Amy, who bought this suit as her Christmas present to me for my rape trial in Fayetteville. She is probably feeding Jessie about now. She is delightful and fundamentally a good person, but all those nudes! What is that about?
Sex or art? If Sarah comes home for Easter in her Volkswagen with a trunk full of photographs of herself wearing just her birthday suit, what will I do? Shoot us both, probably. In the shower I look at my shrunken penis and marvel at its capacity to get me into trouble. Such an ignoble-looking piece of equipment, and, to my mind, visual refutation that humans are somehow endowed with some kind of special nobility among the animal kingdom.
Ten minutes later, wearing a pair of khakis that aren’t too badly wrinkled, I ride into town and eat at Charlie’s Pizza, an establishment whose most inviting feature, among all the computer games, is an old-fashioned pinball machine. I resist the urge to play it, preferring not to call any more attention to myself than I already have. Of course, I might as well be wearing a neon sign around my neck. Everyone in here, no more than twenty, and mostly teenagers, is obviously a regular. When I was a kid, Friday night in February meant basketball. I guess it still does, and with all the private schools in the Delta, sports are almost as segregated as they were when I was growing up. Integration was supposed to bring us together; arguably, nothing has driven us further apart.
Forty-five minutes later, after a cheese-and-sausage pizza that has burned the roof of my mouth, I make a turn onto Scott Street and realize I have missed the entrance to Paul’s drive.
Maybe I don’t remember Bear Creek as well as I thought. I turn around and pull into a curved driveway that sits on a full acre of land, only two blocks from downtown Bear Creek. Three stories, brick, with a formal garden and a couple of birdbaths, this house doesn’t look like it is owned by someone who has suffered from financial reverses. What I keep forgetting, however, is how depressed prices must be over here.
Paul probably got this for a third of what he would have to pay for its equivalent in Blackwell County.
As I press the doorbell, I realize I am fall of anxiety, My family must have been so inconsequential to the Taylors that Paul doesn’t have the slightest idea of the impact he has had on the lives of my mother or me. I wonder what my sister Marty remembers about Paul. As big a pain in the butt as that conversation will be, I should call her and find out. Naturally, Jill comes to the door, though I was hoping I wouldn’t have to see her. I always liked her, and feel awkward seeing her under these circumstances.
“Hello, Gideon,” she says warmly, obviously thinking I am here to help her husband. She gives me a hug, touching me for the first time in our lives. Though once a high-school beauty, now she is almost gaunt, and her once-lovely face is stretched tight against her skull, giving her the look of a middle-aged woman with an incurable disease. Living with Paul has obviously taken a toll.