I walked back up the hill to the paper. My bluebird brooch felt like it weighed five hundred pounds. Which was a good thing. After that half hour with Ike both my brain and my heart felt like they were pumped full of helium.
Anyway, the second the elevator door opened I knew a big story was breaking. People in the newsroom were talking louder. Walking faster. Huddling for impromptu meetings. Using other people’s phones. Mindlessly gulping from other people’s coffee mugs. “What gives?” I asked Margaret Newman, who was wiggling into her raincoat as she ran by.
“They got the other brother,” she said.
I raced to Dale Marabout’s desk. His phone was cradled under his chin. His feet were propped on the corner of his desk. From the way he was rhythmically tapping his toes together I gathered he was on hold, listening to some peppy tune. “Randy Depew?” I asked him.
He Grouchoed his eyebrows. “They got him in Las Vegas. Some hot sheets motel. Pizza delivery guy recognized him from America’s Most Wanted.”
Before I could ask another question, Dale twisted toward his computer screen and started spitting questions into his phone. I headed for my desk.
I just love it when a big story breaks like that. Oh yes, big stories are usually tragic stories. But just the way the newsroom comes alive to cover them, it’s better than-well it’s better than almost anything.
And so I settled in at my desk and watched everybody else work. Dale had the lead story to write, about how Randy Depew was apprehended and what was likely to happen to him when police got him back to Hannawa. Bob Beyer and Nan Ritchey put a sidebar together chronicling events from Paul Zuduski’s murder to the shootout in Hannawa Falls. Margaret was pulled off her feature on the county’s disappearing frog population and sent to police headquarters to catch any crumbs that came out of there. Burl Chancellor was given the politics sidebar, how a future trial would affect Congresswoman Zuduski-Lowell’s re-election. Our TV writer, Roxanne Kindig, was assigned the America’s Most Wanted angle, how that show was making it impossible for criminals to evade justice. Other reporters were pulled in to the coverage as needed. All afternoon Managing Editor Alec Tinker trotted from desk to desk, like one of those damn plate spinners you used to see on The Ed Sullivan Show, to make sure it all came together by deadline.
There was one angle of the story that we weren’t covering. The angle that affected me. With Richard Depew safely locked away, Scotty Grant just might find a little more time for Sweet Gordon’s murder. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure if I liked that prospect or not.
I stayed in the morgue until six-thirty and drove down to pick up Ike. The lights in his shop were already turned off. He flipped the CLOSED sign. Locked the door behind him. Trotted to my car. “If I’m going to close early for you, the least you can do is get here when you say,” he complained.
Downtown Hannawa doesn’t have much rush hour traffic anymore, and what little it does have was over long ago. I made a wide U-turn and headed south. “I’m a woman with responsibilities,” I said.
He laughed until I laughed.
And I needed to laugh. I was so nervous about seeing Shaka Bop I could barely breathe.
“He knows you’re coming?” Ike asked.
“What fun would that be?” I asked back.
We were in Thistle Hill in two minutes. The streets there were narrow, mostly brick, mostly one-way. The houses were a hundred years old and looked it. Many yards were surrounded with chain-link fences. Many of those fences featured BEWARE OF THE DOG signs.
We passed Garfield High School and a half-dozen abandoned factories. We crossed Sixth Street and pulled into the bumpy, gravel-covered parking lot that surrounded Shaka Bop’s garage. We wound through the uneven rows of old cars until we found a place to park.
The garage was modest but it was big. It was constructed of cement blocks. It had five bays. A hand-painted sign ran the full length of the building. SHAKA BOP’S AUTO RUN RIGHT it said.
A tall, wide-shouldered man appeared out of nowhere at my car door. He bent low and smiled at me through the window. It was Shaka Bop himself. He wasn’t wearing his signature dashiki or porkpie hat that day. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and a blood-red necktie, a navy blue spring jacket zipped tight around his ample belly.
I rolled down the window. “You remember me?” I asked.
He squinted at me and then smiled. “Pop your hood for me, Dolly.”
“I didn’t come for my car, though God knows the old thing needs plenty of work,” I said. “I came to see you about Gordon.”
Shaka’s smile faded. Then recovered. “Pop it!” he said.
So I popped my hood and he strolled slowly to the front of my car. He lifted the hood and hooked it open. Ike and I joined him.
Shaka rested his hands on the grill and leaned over the engine. He studied all the dirty old parts, scatting some wonderful jazz under his breath. I introduced him to Ike. “This is my friend, Ike,” I said. “Ike’s Coffee Shop downtown.”
Shaka didn’t take his eyes off my engine. “Oh yes. Ike’s Coffee Shop. Good to see you making a stand down there, Ike.”
Ike put out his hand, but when no hand came back at him, withdrew it into his coat pocket. He remained cordial nonetheless. “Maddy’s told me all about those years in Meriwether Square.”
Shaka looked up now. “Too bad you couldn’t have been there,” he said.
I’m sure Ike knew what he meant. I know I did. Meriwether Square was as segregated as every other neighborhood in Hannawa in those years. Unless a black man had a saxophone or a trumpet or a pair of drumsticks, he was not welcome in any of those clubs.
Shaka checked my oil and antifreeze. He carefully lowered the hood, as if it might disintegrate if he let it drop. “You’ve got some catastrophically cracked belts and hoses, Dolly. God knows you need a tune-up. But other than that, everything appears surprisingly copacetic for an old honey wagon like this.”
Shaka wrapped his arm around me and walked me to the garage. Ike followed. By the time we reached his office, Shaka had my car keys and my agreement to let a couple of his miracle men give my Dodge Shadow a good going over while we talked.
Shaka had a huge wooden desk, piled high with car parts, diet Coke cans, old newspapers and magazines. He sat behind the clutter. He folded his hands across his belly. Ike and I sat across from him, on an old car seat propped against the wall.
“The love sure flowed back then, didn’t it, Dolly?” Shaka said. He was swiveling back and forth in his chair, like the confident king he was. “Though I don’t recall any of your love ever flowing my way.” His eyes studied my reaction, then shifted to Ike, to study his.
I wanted to see Ike’s reaction, too. But I didn’t dare look at Ike. Instead I watched as my car disappeared into one of the bays at the other end of the garage. “I guess by now you know I’m looking into Gordon’s murder,” I said.
Shaka sifted through the newspapers on his desk, pulling out a copy of The Harbinger. He snapped the story about me with his thumb and forefinger and grinned. “Soon as I saw this little nugget of journalistic joy, I knew it would just be a matter of time before I saw you, too.”
I stretched my neck toward his desk like an ostrich, as if I’d never seen the story before. “You did?”
He handed me the paper. “Murder ain’t a big thing in Thistle Hill. I’ve been to more premature funerals over the years than I care to think about. But over on your side of town, Dolly? Around that happy little college? Those happy little neighborhoods filled with all those happy, happy people? There’ve been just two murders in fifty years and both involving Sweet Gordon. Next stop Coincidence City and don’t forget your luggage. First his libidinous chum. Then the professor himself. Oh, yes! Soon as I saw that little write-up, I knew the sagacious Dolly Madison Sprowls must’ve put two and two together. Knew sooner or later she’d squeeze the saxophone man into her math.”