Hornet's Nest (25 page)

This went on for days, things stirred up, hostility rising from Cahoon’s crown and swarming through the mayor’s window. Telephone lines angrily buzzed as the city fathers plotted on secure phones, devising a way to run Hammer out of town.

“It’s got to be the public that decides,” the mayor said to the city manager. “The citizens have got to want it.”

“No other way,” Cahoon agreed in a conference call from his mighty desk, as he viewed his kingdom between aluminum pipes. “It’s entirely up to the citizens.”

The last thing Cahoon wanted was pissed-off people changing banks. If enough of them did and went on to First Union, CCB, BB&T, First Citizens Bank, or Wachovia, it could catch up with Cahoon and hurt him. It could become an epidemic, infecting the big, healthy investors like a computer virus, Ebola, salmonella, hemorraghic fever.

“The problem, damn it, is Panesa,” opined the mayor.

Cahoon felt a fresh wave of outrage. He would not soon recover from the publisher’s Sunday editorial with its comment about throwing stones. Panesa had to go, too. Cahoon’s brain raced through his formidable network, contemplating allies in the Knight-Ridder chain. This would have to come from on high, at the level of chairman or president. Cahoon knew them all, but the media was a goddamn centipede. The minute he gave it a prod, it curled up tight and took care of its own.

“The only person who can control Panesa is you,” the mayor said to Cahoon. “I’ve tried. He won’t listen to me. It’s like trying to talk sense to Hammer. Forget it.”

Both the publisher and the police chief were unreasonable. They had agendas and had to be stopped. Andy Brazil was becoming a problem, as well. Cahoon had been around the block enough times to know exactly where he would attack.

“Talk to the boy,” Cahoon said to the mayor. “He’s probably been trying to get quotes from you anyway, right?”

“They all do.”

“So let him come see you, Chuck. Pull him over to our side, where he belongs,” Cahoon said with a smile as he gazed out at the hazy summer sky.

Brazil had turned his attention to the Black Widow killings, which he was certain would not stop. He had become obsessed with them, determined that somehow he would uncover that one detail, that important insight or clue that might lead police to the psychopath responsible. He had gotten FBI profiler Bird on the phone, and had written a chillingly accurate but manipulative story. Last night, Brazil had returned to the train tracks on West Trade Street to explore the razed brick building, his flashlight shining on crime-scene tape stirred by the wind. He had stood still, looking around that forsaken, frightening scene, trying to read the emotion of it. He tried to imagine how the senator had stumbled upon the place.

It was possible the senator had plans to meet someone, back in the dark overgrowth where no one would see. Brazil wondered if the autopsy had revealed drugs. Did the senator have a secret vice that had cost him his life? Brazil had cruised South College Street, looking out at the hookers, still not sure which were men or vice cops. The young one he had seen many times before, and it was obvious that she now recognized him in his BMW as she languidly strolled and boldly stared.

Brazil was tired this morning. He could barely finish four miles at the track and didn’t bother with tennis. He hadn’t seen much of his mother, and she punished him by not speaking on those rare occasions when she was awake and up. She left him notes of chores she needed done and was more slovenly than usual. She coughed and sighed, doing all she could to make him miserable and stung with guilt. Brazil continued to think of West’s lecture to him about dysfunctional relationships. He heard her words constantly in his head. They
pounded with each step he ran, and blinked in the night as he tried to sleep.

He had not seen or talked to West in days and wondered how she was and why she never called to go shooting or to ride or just to say hi. He felt out of sorts, moody and introverted, and had given up trying to figure out what had gotten into him. He did not understand why Hammer hadn’t contacted him to say thanks for his profile. Maybe something in it had pissed her off. Maybe he had gotten a fact wrong. He had really put his heart into that story and had worked himself almost sick. Panesa seemed to be ignoring him also, now that Brazil was making a list. Brazil told himself that if he were as important as any one of these powerful people, he would be more sensitive. He would try to think of the little person’s feelings and make that person’s day by picking up the phone or sending a note or maybe even flowers.

The only flowers West had in her life this moment were the ones Niles had shredded all over the dining-room table. This was after he had scattered litter in the bathroom while his owner was in the shower, her wet bare feet about to step on grit and unpleasant things coated in it. West’s mood was volatile, anyway. She was incensed over the storm of controversy surrounding her beloved boss, and fearful of where it all might end. The day Goode became acting chief was the day West moved back to the farm. West knew all about Brazil following Hammer into very private rooms that not even West had entered.

It was all so typical, she thought as she cussed Niles, rinsed her feet, and cleaned up the bathroom floor. Brazil used West to gain a foothold with the chief. Brazil had acted like a friend, then the moment he got a chance to ingratiate himself with a higher power, West didn’t hear a word from him ever again. Wasn’t that the way things went? The son of a bitch. He hadn’t called to go shooting, to ride, or even to make sure she was still alive. West discovered what was left of the blood lilies from her garden as Niles darted under the couch.

• • •

The resurrection lilies Hammer carried into Seth’s hospital room at ten
A
.
M
. were magenta and appropriately named. Hammer set them on a table and pulled a chair close. The bed was raised, allowing her husband to eat, read, visit, and watch TV on his side. His eyes were dull with the strep infection that had invaded from unknown colonies. Fluids and antibiotics ready for combat marched nonstop through narrow tubes and into needles taped to each arm. Hammer was getting frightened. Seth had been in the hospital three nights now.

“How are you feeling, honey?” she asked, rubbing his shoulder.

“Shitty,” he said, eyes wandering back to Leeza on TV.

He had seen, heard, and read the news. Seth knew the terrible thing he had done to himself. Most of all, he knew what he had done to her and his family. Honestly, he had never meant any of it. When he was in his right mind, he’d rather die than hurt anyone. He loved his wife and could not live without her. If he ruined her career in this city, then what? She could go anywhere, and it would be ever so much easier for her to leave him behind, as she had already threatened, if she had to move anyway.

“How are things with you?” Seth mumbled as Leeza argued with a gender-reassigned plumber who had cleavage.

“Don’t you worry about me,” Hammer firmly said, patting him again. “All that matters right now is that you get better. Think positively, honey. The mind affects everything. No negativity.”

This was like telling the dark side of the moon to lighten up a bit. Seth stared at her. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d called him
honey
. Maybe never.

“I don’t know what to say,” he told her.

She knew precisely what he meant. He was poisoned by remorse and guilt and shame. He had set out to ruin her life and the lives of his children and was getting good at it. He ought to feel like shit, if the truth was told.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Hammer gently
reassured him. “What’s done is done. Now we move on. When you leave here, we’re going to get you some help. That’s all that matters now.”

He shut his eyes and tears swam behind the lids. He saw a young man in baggy white trousers and bow tie and snappy hat, grinning and happy on a sunny morning as he skipped down the granite steps of the Arkansas state capitol. Seth had been charming and sure of himself once. He had known how to have fun and party with the rest of them and tell funny tales. Psychiatrists had tried Prozac, Zoloft, Nortriptylene, and lithium. Seth had been on diets. He had stopped drinking once. He had been hypnotized and had gone to three meetings of Overeaters Anonymous. Then he had quit all of it.

“There’s no hope,” he sobbed to his wife. “Nothing left but to die.”

“Don’t you dare say that,” she said, her voice wavering. “You hear me, Seth? Don’t you dare say that!”

“Why isn’t my love enough for you!” he cried.

“What love?” She stood, anger peeking around her curtain of self-control. “Your idea of love is waiting for me to make you happy while you do nothing for yourself. I am not your caretaker. I am not your zookeeper. I am not your innkeeper. I am not your keeper, period.” She was pacing furiously in his small private room. “I am supposed to be your partner, Seth, your friend, your lover. But you know what? If this were tennis, I’d be playing goddamn singles in a goddamn doubles match on both sides of the net while you sat in the shade hogging all the balls and keeping your own private score!”

Brazil had spent the better part of the morning wondering if he should call West to see if she wanted to play some tennis. That would be innocent enough, wouldn’t it? The last thing he wanted was to give her the satisfaction of thinking he cared a hoot that he hadn’t heard from her in three and a half days. He parked at the All Right lot on West Trade near Presto’s and went inside the grill for coffee, starved, but
saving himself for something healthy. Later, he’d drop by the Just Fresh, the
eat well feels good
fast food restaurant in the atrium of First Union. That and Wendy’s grilled chicken filet sandwiches with no cheese or mayonnaise were about all he lived on these days, and he was losing weight. He secretly wondered if he were getting anorexic.

He sat at the counter, stirring black S&D coffee, waiting for Spike to stop cracking eggs with one hand over a bowl. Brazil wanted to chat. The Michelob Dry clock on the wall over Spike’s head read ten-forty-five. There was so much to do and Brazil had to get it done by four
P
.
M
., when his beat for the newspaper formally began. As much as Packer loved Brazil’s scoops, the regular news of burglaries, robberies, rapes, suicides, fistfights in sports bars, white-collar bank crimes, drug busts, domestic problems, dog bites, and other human interest stories needed to be covered. Most of those reports Webb stole long before anyone else could see them. In fact, the situation was so acute that the rest of the media now referred to the Charlotte Police Department’s press basket as
The Webb Site
.

West, having recalled Brazil’s early complaint about this, had finally done her bit by calling Channel 3 and complaining to the general manager. This had solved nothing. Nor was Goode receptive when West had brought it up to her, not realizing that Goode, in fact, regularly logged into The Webb Site. These days she and Brent Webb parked all over the city in her Miata. This was not due to a problem with their going to her apartment, where she lived alone. The risk of exposure was a huge turn-on to the couple. It was not unusual for them to park within blocks of his house, where his wife waited dinner for him and picked up his dirty clothes and sorted his socks.

T
he task force West had assembled to investigate drug deals going down at the Presto Grill also had much dirt to find, sort through, and hopefully match with other crime trends in the city. Mungo was an undercover detective, and he was eating grilled chicken tips and gravy in the grill while Brazil, whom Mungo did not know, sipped black coffee. Mungo had gotten his street name for obvious reasons. He was a mountain in jeans and Panthers tee shirt, his wallet chained to his belt, long bushy hair tied back, and a bandanna around a sloping forehead. He wore an earring. Mungo was smoking, one eye squinting as he watched the blond guy quiz Spike at the grill.

“No, man.” Spike was flipping a burger and chopping hash browns. “See, none’s from around here, know what I mean?” He spoke with a heavy Portuguese accent.

“Where they come from doesn’t matter,” Brazil said. “It’s what happens once they get here. Look, the source of the bad shit going down is right where we are.” He was talking the language, drumming his index finger on the counter. “Local. I’m sure of it. What do you think?”

Spike wasn’t going to explore this further, and Mungo’s radar was locked in. That blond pretty-boy looked familiar. It seemed Mungo had seen him somewhere and that made
him only more convinced that he was going to develop Blondie as a suspect. But first things first. Mungo needed to sit here a little longer, see what else was going down, and he hadn’t finished his breakfast.

“I need more toast,” he said to Spike as Blondie left. “Who’s he?” Mungo jerked his head in the direction of the shutting front door.

Spike shrugged, having learned long ago not to answer questions, and Mungo was a cop. Everybody knew it. Spike started filling a toothpick holder while Brazil made his next stop. Adjoining the Presto was the Traveler’s Hotel, where one could get a room for as little as fifty dollars per week, depending on how well one negotiated with Bink Lydle at the desk. Brazil asked his questions to Lydle and got the same information he’d been handed next door.

Lydle was not especially hospitable, his arms folded across his narrow chest as he sat behind the scarred reception desk with its bell and one-line telephone. He informed this white boy that Lydle knew nothing about these businessmen being whacked around here and couldn’t imagine that the “source of this bad shit going down” was local. Lydle, personally, had never seen anyone who made him suspicious, certainly not in his hotel, which was a city landmark, and
the
place to go back in the days of the Old Southern Train Station.

Brazil walked several blocks to Fifth Street and found Jazzbone’s Pool Hall. Brazil decided that somebody was going to talk to him, even if he had to take a risk. At this early hour, Jazzbone’s wasn’t doing much business, just a few guys sitting around drinking Colt 45, smoking, telling favorite stories about binges and women and winning at numbers. Pool tables with shabby green felt were deserted, balls in their triangles, waiting for tonight when the place would be crowded and dangerous until the boozy early morning. If anyone knew what was going on in the neighborhood, Jazzbone was the man.

“I’m looking for Jazzbone,” Brazil said to the drinking buddies.

One of them pointed to the bar, where Jazzbone, in plain
view, was opening a case of Schlitz and aware of the golden-hair dude dressed like college.

“Yeah!” Jazzbone called out. “What you need.”

Brazil walked across cigarette-burned, whisky-smelling carpet. A cockroach scuttled across his path, and salt and cigarette ashes were scattered over every table Brazil passed. The closer he got to Jazzbone, the more he noticed details. Jazzbone wore gold rings, fashioned of diamond clusters and coins, on every finger. The gold crowns on his front teeth had heart and clover cutouts. He wore a semiautomatic pistol on his right hip. Jazzbone was neatly replacing bottles of beer in the cooler.

“All we got cold right now is Pabst Blue Ribbon,” Jazzbone said.

Last night had been busy and had wiped Jazzbone out. He had a feeling this boy wanted something other than beer, but he wasn’t undercover, like Mungo. Jazzbone could smell police and the Feds the minute they hit the block. He couldn’t remember the last time he was fooled. Jazzbone only got spanked by the other dudes out there, people coming into his establishment looking just like him, guns and all.

“I’m with
The Charlotte Observer
,” said Brazil, who knew when it was better to be a volunteer cop and when not. “I’d like your help, sir.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jazzbone stopped putting away beer, and had always known he’d make a good story. “What kind of help? This for the paper?”

“Yes, sir.”

Polite, too, giving the man respect. Jazzbone scrutinized him, and started chewing on a stirrer, cocking one eyebrow. “So, what you want to know?” Jazzbone went around to the other side of the bar and pulled out a stool.

“Well, you know about these killings around here,” Brazil said.

Jazzbone was momentarily confused. “Huh,” he said. “You might want to specify.”

“The out-of-towners. The Black Widow.” Brazil lowered his voice, almost to a whisper.

“Oh, yeah. Them,” Jazzbone said, and didn’t care who heard. “Same person doing all of ’em.”

“It can’t be helping your business worth a damn.” Brazil got tough, acting like he was wearing a gun, too. “Some creep out there ruining it for everyone.”

“Now that’s so, brother. Tell me about it. I run a clean business here. Don’t want trouble or cause none either.” He lit a Salem. “It’s others who do. Why I wear this.” He patted his pistol.

Brazil stared enviously at it. “Shit, man,” he said. “What the hell you packing?”

One thing was true, Jazzbone was proud of his piece. He had got it off a drug dealer playing pool, some dude from New York who didn’t know that Jazzbone owned a pool hall for a reason. In Jazzbone’s mind, when he was good at something, whether it was a woman, a car, or playing pool, he may as well own it, and he was definitely one hell of a pool player. He slipped the pistol out of its holster so Brazil could look without getting too close.

“Colt Double Eagle .45 with a five-inch barrel,” Jazzbone let him know.

Brazil had seen it before in
Guns Illustrated
. Stainless steel matte finish, adjustable sights with high-profile three-dot system, wide steel trigger, and combat-style hammer. Jazzbone’s pistol went for about seven hundred dollars new, and he could tell the kid was impressed and dying to touch it, but Jazzbone didn’t know him well enough for that.

“You think it’s the same one whacking all these white men from out of town?” Brazil repeated.

“I didn’t say they was white,” Jazzbone corrected him. “The last one, the senator dude, wasn’t. But yeah, same motherfucker’s doing ’em.”

“Got any idea who?” Brazil did his best to keep the excitement out of his voice.

Jazzbone knew exactly who and didn’t want trouble like this in his neighborhood any more than those rich men wanted it in their rental cars. Not to mention, Jazzbone was a big supporter of free enterprise and collected change from more than pool sharking and beverages. He had an interest
in a few girls out there. They earned a few extra dollars and kept him company. The Black Widow was hurting business bad. These days, Jazzbone had a feeling men came to town after watching CNN and reading the paper, and they rented adult movies, stayed in. Jazzbone didn’t blame them.

“There’s this one punkin head I seen out there running girls,” Jazzbone told Brazil, who was taking notes. “I’d be looking at him.”

“What’s a punkin head?”

Jazzbone flashed his gold grin at this naive reporter boy.

“A
do
.” Jazzbone pointed to his own head. “Orange like a punkin, rows of braids close to his head. One mean motherfucker.”

“You know his name?” Brazil wrote.

“Don’t want to,” Jazzbone said.

West, in charge of investigations for the city, had never heard of a punkin head in connection with the Black Widow killings. When Brazil called her from a pay phone, because he did not trust a cellular phone for such sensitive information, he was manic, as if he had just been in a shoot-out. She wrote down what he said, but not a word of it sparked hope. Her Phantom Force had been undercover out on the streets for weeks. Brazil had spent fifteen minutes at Jazzbone’s and had cracked the case? She didn’t think so. Nor was she feeling the least bit friendly toward Brazil’s two-timing, user-friendly ass.

“How’s the chief?” he asked her.

“Why don’t you tell me,” she said.

“What?”

“Look, I don’t have time to chitchat,” she rudely added.

Brazil was on a sidewalk in front of the Federal Courthouse, hateful people looking at him. He didn’t care.

“What did I do?” he fired back. “Tell me when’s the last time I’ve heard from you? I haven’t noticed you picking up the phone, asking me to do anything or even to see how I am.”

This had not occurred to West. She never called Raines.
For that matter, she did not call guys and never had and never would, with the occasional exception of Brazil. Now why the hell was that, and why had she suddenly gotten weird about dialing his number?

“I figured you’d get in touch with me when you had something on your mind,” she replied. “It’s been hectic. Niles is driving me crazy. I may turn him over to the juvenile courts. I don’t know why I haven’t gotten around to calling you, okay? But a lot of good it’s going to do for you to punish me for it.”

“You want to play tennis?” he quickly asked.

West still had a wooden Billie Jean King racquet, clamped tight in a press. Neither were manufactured anymore. She had an ancient box of Tretorn balls that never went dead but broke like eggs. Her last pair of tennis shoes were low-cut plain white canvas Converse, also no longer made. She had no idea where anything was and owned no tennis clothes, and didn’t especially enjoy watching the sport on TV but preferred baseball at this stage in her personal evolution. There were many reasons she gave the answer she did.

“Forget it,” she said.

She hung up the phone and went straight to Hammer’s office. Horgess was not his usual informative, friendly self. West felt sorry for him. No matter how many times Hammer had told him to let it go, he never would. He had picked up the radio instead of the phone. Horgess, the sycophantic duty captain, had made sure all the world knew about the embarrassing shooting at the chief’s house. That’s all anybody talked and speculated about. The expected jokes were ones West would never want her boss to hear. Horgess was pale and depressed. He barely nodded at West.

“She in?” West asked.

“I guess,” he said, dejected.

West knocked and walked in at the same time. Hammer was on the phone, tapping a pen on a stack of pink telephone messages. She looked amazingly put together and in charge in a tobacco-brown suit and yellow and white striped blouse. West was surprised and rather pleased to note that her boss
was wearing slacks and flats again. West pulled up a chair, waiting for Hammer to slip off the headset.

“Don’t mean to interrupt,” West said.

“Quite all right, quite all right,” Hammer told her.

She gave West her complete attention, hands quietly folded on top of the neatly organized desk of someone who had far too much to do but refused to be overwhelmed by it. Hammer had never been caught up and never would be. She didn’t even want to get to all of it. The older she got, the more she marveled over matters she once had considered important. These days, her perspective had shifted massively, like a glacier forming new continents to consider and cracking old worlds.

“We’ve not really had a chance to talk,” West proceeded delicately. “How are you holding up?”

Hammer gave her a slight smile, sadness in her eyes before she could run it off. “The best I can, Virginia. Thank you for asking.”

“The editorials, cartoons, and everything in the paper have been really terrific,” West went on. “And Brazil’s story was great.” She hesitated at this point, the subject of Andy Brazil still disturbing, although she didn’t understand it, entirely.

Hammer understood it perfectly. “Listen, Virginia,” she said with another smile, this one kind and slightly amused. “He’s pretty sensational, I have to admit. But you have nothing to worry about where I’m concerned.”

“Excuse me?” West frowned.

Brazil was out in bright sunshine, walking along the sidewalk in an area of the city where he should not have been without armed guards. This was a very special juncture known as Five Points, where the major veins of State, Trade, and Fifth Streets, and Beatties Ford and Rozzelles Ferry Roads branched out from the major artery of Interstate 77, carrying all traveling on them into the heart of the Queen City. This included the thousands of businessmen coming from
Charlotte-Douglas International Airport and those bad dudes waiting, including the serial killer, Punkin Head.

Punkin Head was believed to be a sh’im by those who had laid eyes on the pimp, which were few. It held its own council, as a rule, in an ’84 Ford cargo van, dark blue, 351 V8, which it was especially fond of because the van had windows only in front. Whatever business Punkin Head chose to run out of the back remained private, as it should have, and this included sleeping. This fine morning Punkin Head was parked in its usual spot on Fifth Street, in the Preferred Parking lot where the attendant knew to leave well enough alone and was now and then rewarded with services Punkin Head’s business could provide.