New England White (42 page)

“Most Sundays, four hundred. Five. Twice that Christmas and Easter.”

“I’m impressed,” said Julia, thinking of Lemaster’s stubborn Anglican congregation, which counted it a small victory to welcome fifty parishioners, and a major miracle to break one hundred.

“No reason to be. It’s the Lord’s work.”

“Uh-huh,” said Julia, fighting the urge to nibble at her cuticle, and wondering why in the world Miss Terry had brought her here.

Passing a couple of neatly groomed parishioners, who greeted Miss Terry with what looked to Julia like joy, they made their way down a back hallway—the place was enormous—and wound up in a Sunday-school classroom. On the walls were scenes from the Bible and quotations from both Testaments. An attendance calendar, the names of the children running down the side, was marked with checks and minuses. In the Bible scenes, everybody was black.

They sat on two child-height chairs, facing each other across a low table.

“DeShaun didn’t have a room like this to grow up in. This church didn’t exist back then. None of my children were raised here. But most of my grandchildren started out either here or someplace like it in another church. Me, I didn’t come to the Lord until I was advanced in my years, but most of the children from around here are raised in the church. They listen to the Lord’s words every Sunday, they sing the hymns, they get themselves baptized.”

Julia, about to say she agreed, decided not to interrupt.

“We have a ton of little children here, Julia. Most of the churches around here do, but this one especially. Their mothers bring them most of the time. Their fathers, I am sorry to say, are not very interested in what the Lord has to offer, although Heaven knows they need it. Most of them, well, they can’t be bothered to marry the mothers of their children. Used to be, a young lady got herself pregnant, well, her father and her brothers would be on the young man’s doorstep the next day looking to cause him some kind of trouble unless he did the right thing, and, a couple of months later, we’d have ourselves a wedding.”

Julia blushed and dropped her eyes, remembering afresh how Lemaster’s aunt had accused her of trapping him into marriage. Miss Terry didn’t notice. “Well, those were the old days,” she continued. “But, these days, Julia? We’d have to hunt around in the prisons or in the cemeteries. Or down on the corner. Most likely that’s where we’d find the father. That’s where we’d find the brothers. And they’d say, ‘Get outta my face.’”

Julia wished she possessed her husband’s gift for patience. She said, “Miss Terry, if we could just talk about DeShaun—”

“Julia, honey, that’s exactly who I am talking about. You have to understand what we are trying to do here. We are trying to keep these kids in the church, because the church is the only hope most of them have. They go to school, and they can dress any way they want and they never hear about God but they hear about sex and they hear about being themselves and doing their own thing. Well, maybe for the white folks in the suburbs, it’s okay to tell kids to do their own thing, to be themselves, whatever they learn out there. I wouldn’t know. I only know that for our kids, it’s a disaster, Julia. Just a disaster.

“Some stupid boy gets some silly girl pregnant, and the white folks say they don’t have to get married and it’s wrong to pressure them. We fall into line. We do what the white folks tell us. See, Julia, we’re still basically on a plantation here. The white folks get to set the rules. The white folks say no God in the schools, so there’s no God in the schools. The white folks say you can’t tell the kids not to have sex, so they have sex. The white folks say you can’t make them feel ashamed if they get in the family way, so nobody feels ashamed. Like I said, the white folks set the rules. And then they get to live in the big house. Down here in the fields? Nobody asks our opinion. So, we live on the street corner or we live in the Lord’s house. Down here, there isn’t any third choice.”

Every word stung. Every sentence presented a proposition against which Julia longed to argue. But she dared not offend Theresa Vinney, not now when she was so close. She had to focus. “And DeShuan—”

“DeShaun chose the corner, Julia, and that’s what killed him. He was wicked, Julia. From the day he came out of the womb, he wanted things his own way. He never took any telling, that boy. The night he died, I had told him already that I was putting him out of the house. The way it turned out, I didn’t get the chance. Now, you want justice?” She waved her hand around, encompassing the ornate church with its huge sanctuary and many classrooms. “This is our justice, Julia. Not some fancy government program. This building. This building is all we have. And it’s all we need.”

Julia was about to object, but Miss Terry wasn’t finished. Out in the hall, somebody was singing, off-key, a snatch of sixties Motown, but a sharp voice told the artist to shut up.

“Listen to me, Julia. Yes, we filed that lawsuit. Yes, we dropped it. Now, I’m not saying why. But I’ll tell you this. God made a miracle here. We built this church. We built this school. We have some benefactors. They send a nice check every six months, and every penny goes to the church and the school. We’re growing every year. We’re trying to teach our kids what the white folks don’t want us to learn, like how much God loves them and the difference between right and wrong. We can’t pay much, so our teachers aren’t what you have out there in the suburbs, but we do the best we can.” For a silly moment Julia thought she read accusation in the hard eyes, as if DeShaun’s mother knew that her guest had once been a teacher, and was waiting for her to volunteer. But Miss Terry was only gathering her strength to resume the lecture. Her finger stabbed the air. “Now, DeShaun is dead, and if you go digging that up, well, no story in the newspapers is gonna bring him back. Putting some powerful white man in jail isn’t gonna bring him back. But with this school, Julia, with this church, maybe we can save a few of our kids from going down DeShaun’s path.” Her voice softened. “You used to be some kind of teacher, didn’t you?”

Julia bristled but kept her temper, the surface tension holding. “I taught in the public schools for—” She stopped, aware that she had missed the point. “How did you know I used to be a teacher? Kellen Zant told you, didn’t he? The professor who got killed. He came to see you to talk about your son.”

Theresa Vinney nodded. “This was, oh, last spring. Early summer, maybe. He asked me what you did, if some black man had paid me to drop the lawsuit.”

“He asked about a black man?”

“That’s what I said.”

So simple, Julia realized. She should have seen it. Kellen’s motivation was coming into sharper focus. Perhaps he was not, after all, just after money. Until today, Julia would not have guessed that the man who went around and sanitized the evidence after Gina died was black. Even now, she knew only because Theresa Vinney had let the fact slip. Kellen had the information before he arrived. Maybe he worked it out from the diary. Or maybe he knew because he heard it from—

“Miss Terry?”

“Yes, dear?”

“When Professor Zant asked you if the black man offered you money, what did you tell him?”

“That God had a plan for him.” She patted Julia’s knee. “Now, Julia, I am truly sorry about what your daughter is going through. I’ll ask everybody in the church to pray for her. But what I think you need to do is go home and count your blessings. You need to take care of your own children, Julia. Let us take care of ours.”

CHAPTER 46

TWO MORE MEETINGS

(I)

“I
HAVE MOST
of what you asked for,” said Bruce Vallely. “Not all. But most.”

Across the table, Julia Carlyle pulled a face. To Bruce she looked a little spoiled, or perhaps she had simply grown used to getting her way. He knew that Trevor Land had prodded her to talk to him. Julia, in turn, had offered to help him out, but insisted that they trade.

“Then we’ll go with what we’ve got,” said Julia. They were in Ruby Tuesday in the shopping mall up in Norport, and Bruce sensed the authority slipping from his fingers into hers. Not long ago, he had thought this woman weak and pampered, the prototypical Princess of the Gold Coast, the sort of whom, in college, his working-class crowd had made relentless fun. But there was steel beneath the softness. He remembered Marlon Thackery’s warning about not crossing Julia or her husband. “Tell me what you have so far,” she ordered, as if he worked for her.

Bruce almost smiled. “I couldn’t find out much,” he told her, sliding yet another envelope across the table for her collection. “As far as the public records are concerned, the Empyreals might not be bankrupt, but they’re close. They own a clubhouse in Brooklyn. There are about ten liens on it. They used to own a nice piece of property in the Hamptons, where they planned to build a very ritzy black-owned country club. Foreclosed twenty years ago. They had a hotel in Atlantic City back in the fifties and sixties, but now the land is part of a casino parking lot, and the Empyreals don’t own any of it. I don’t think they’re doing so well, Julia.”

“Hmmm.”

“May I ask why you wanted this information?”

“Yes.”

He waited, then frowned. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, Bruce, you may ask. But I’m not going to tell you.” She patted his hand, an instinct, because she used to be a dedicated toucher of other people, and found she connected better that way. “Thank you, though. I mean it. I called you because I couldn’t think of anybody else.”

“Does this have anything to do with your husband?”

“Sorry, Bruce. I’m not going to talk about it.”

“He’s an Empyreal, isn’t he?” Bruce leaned across the table, he hoped more imploring than threatening. “Julia?”

She shook her head firmly. “Don’t press me, Bruce.”

Something in her eyes bothered him, and perhaps she saw something in his, because she dropped her hand to the table. She started drumming.

“All right,” said Bruce. “Then it’s your turn to give me information.”

Except that she could not. No, she had not seen anybody or anything before stumbling across Kellen’s body. No, she had no idea where he might have been going the night he was shot, or what “Jamaica” meant.

Bruce said, “He was at the div school that night, wasn’t he?” A reasonable surmise after his conversation with Tony Tice, who had no doubt made the same guess. Bruce knew he was right when Julia, trying to suppress her reaction, reacted. “Why was he there, Julia? Did you leave something for him? Did he leave something for you?”

She shook her head, more in refusal than in denial.

He said, “And what about Gina Joule? Do you think it’s likely that Kellen Zant was looking into the death of Gina Joule? Because that’s the way it looks to me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Had he tracked the killing to somebody high up? Is that why he was shot?”

She spread her hands and offered her crooked smile. “Really, Bruce, I couldn’t possibly help.”

“You can’t do this without help,” he said, but Julia was too busy doing the math in order to split the check.

(II)

J
ULIA TRACKED DOWN
J
OE
P
OYNTING
in the student lounge, where he was struggling to craft a practice sermon for his homiletics course. She wanted to know the definition of “nonrivalrous consumption,” an economics term, and Joe was, once more, her muse.

“Consumption is rivalrous,” he said, “when my use of a thing leaves less for you. Look out the window. See the gulls? They’re fighting over a piece of food. When one of them eats it, his consumption is rivalrous to all the others, because they can’t eat it. See?”

Julia nodded.

“Consumption is nonrivalrous when my use does not affect your use. Look at the gulls again. See the sun glinting off their wings? The rainbow effect? It’s lovely to look at, and the fact that I’m looking at it does not reduce your ability to look at it. We can both consume it. Nonrivalrous. See?”

She saw. She thanked him.

The case was about nonrivalrous consumption, Kellen had told Mary, and sent her the photograph of Malcolm Whisted. Malcolm Whisted, who knew the family. It was beyond vicious to refer to a human being as being consumed, but perhaps that was what Kellen had in mind. If Gina had a single boyfriend, then the consumption was rivalrous. But if she had, say, more than one—then it was nonrivalrous.

That had to be what Kellen was trying to tell them. The two boys who picked Gina up that night in the Jag were planning to share her. Say Jock was the boyfriend. Maybe one of his roommates was getting a little jealous of what Jock was getting. And Jock, the most fun-loving in a fun-loving bunch, said, Sure, next time she calls, come along. We’ll share her.

Share a human being, like a sex toy.

Nonrivalrous consumption.

Only Gina was not ready to be shared. Gina had fought back.

And lost.

She worried the problem around in her mind, and then, for the moment, forgot it. Inspiration had struck. The seagulls.

The sea
gulls.

Kellen and his word games.

Julia pulled out the memo pad on which she had been scribbling hopeless anagrams of “Shari Larid,” the mysterious substitute teacher nobody could track down. Of course nobody could find her. She didn’t exist, except as a message for Julia’s own ear. By describing her as a substitute teacher, he was giving an instruction. A larid was a kind of seagull, and if you
substituted
“Gull” in place of “Larid,” you got “Shari Gull,” which was an anagram of…

CHAPTER 47

SUGAR HILL

(I)

O
N
S
ATURDAY,
the mothers of the Harbor County chapter of Ladybugs gathered their smallest children—the Littlebugs—and decamped for Manhattan, where they lunched in the delightful space-age insanity of Mars 2112, then took in the matinee of
The Lion King
on Broadway. They went by car pool, and Julia, driving the Escalade, ferried Kimmer Madison and her son, Bentley, who was two years younger than Jeannie. Julia would have been grateful for the break from her worries, had the trip only been a break. But it was not. She had scheduled an unscheduled stop. She planned to spring it on her passengers on the way home.

Kimmer spent most of the trip into the city asking Julia to turn down the radio while she took another call on her cell phone, because for lawyers these days, as for other professionals, the office possesses no natural borders. In between her urgent conversations, she beamed at the two children ignoring each other in the back seat and murmured, over and over, “Who knows what the future holds for these two?”—because Kimmer, like Julia, came from one of the royal families of the darker nation, and worried about the future of the traditions.

The show was a hit even with the most unsentimental among the mothers—like Kimmer—or those who, like Julia, had seen it before, and the children clamored to stay in town for dinner, but the caravan loaded up despite the begging, and by half past five, all the cars were on their way out of town.

All but the Escalade.

Julia explained about the stop she had to make.

“If you have time,” she told Kimmer.

“How much time?” Actually looking at her watch. Seeing that she was caught, she pulled an infectious smile. Kimmer was fun-loving and sassy and smart. There were two husbands behind her, and it was easy to imagine others waiting their turn.

“It’ll take us half an hour out of our way. No more.”

“Half an hour?”

“And you can wait in the car with the kids. I’ll be, like, ten minutes once we get there.”

“Where are we going?”

“Harlem.”

“Julia, it’s almost six.”

“They don’t close.”

(II)

T
HE LAST TIME
Julia Carlyle had seen the three-story townhouse at Edgecombe Avenue and West 145th Street, all her children had been with her, and happy. It was seven years ago, and Julia, accompanied by Tessa, was showing them through Harlem, spinning barely remembered stories in mimicry of Granny Vee. Despite her own reluctance, the kids had clamored, and so she had driven them for a quick goggle at the fabled Veazie mansion, not stopping to let anybody out, streaking past in the hope that none of them would notice how the once-proud structure, setting of so many of their mother’s stories, had fallen into a dilapidated mess.

Squeezing the Escalade into a space that might have been shaped for it, she expected no more tonight. She knew it was a fool’s errand, and yet she had to try.

Just in case she failed to solve the anagram of “Shari Larid,” Kellen had arranged for Mr. Huebner to deliver the note. Take a train, Kellen had written, knowing his ex-lover’s musical tastes: Broadway and the big-band sound, preferably as interpreted by artists of her nation. The translation was trivial: Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington had made famous Billy Strayhorn’s song about taking the “A” train to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem.

Sugar Hill, the highest point in Harlem, where, back in the day, invisible to the larger world, the elite of the darker nation, ensconced in apartments and row houses furnished as beautifully as those on Park Avenue, had looked down their noses at the middle-class Negroes in Strivers’ Row, down around 138th Street, and, farther south, the lower classes crowding into what the denizens of Sugar Hill labeled, derisively, the Valley. Sugar Hill, where Amaretta Veazie held her fabled court, one among the “light-skinned Czarinas,” as Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., called them—the matriarchs who ran the elite end of Harlem. Amaretta, an original Sister Lady; Amaretta, who had tried to limit membership in the Clan to a handful of the old families, the way her whole generation did, thinking the exclusivity a gift to future generations; Amaretta, who, like the rest of the Czarinas, failed. The darker nation proved too big and talented; or integration too tempting; either way, the Clan spread and thinned.

The townhouse where, according to legend, Ladybugs was founded. And where, back in the old days, Amaretta had kept her famous collection of mirrors.

Kellen had sent her mirrors, and reminded her of history, just to make sure she got the point.

How Vanessa had figured it out Julia was not sure, but this had been her daughter’s destination, too, the Veazie townhouse. Julia was certain of it. Vanessa had realized before her mother did that the house was at the heart of Kellen’s mystery, and wanted for some reason to visit it alone. The trouble was, Vanessa did not remember the address and was trying to pick it out by eye. Like most African Americans who had never lived there, Vanessa underestimated the sheer vastness of Harlem, the hundreds upon hundreds of square blocks. Searching Harlem was not like searching a tiny New England town. The chance of blundering by accident upon a single townhouse among all the streets and boulevards of what had once been the capital of the darker nation was virtually nil.

As Vanessa had discovered.

No wonder she had chosen to dance the night away instead, first at the club in Elm Harbor, and then, as only her mother knew, to the funeral dirges behind the locked door of her bedroom.

Why Kellen wanted her to go to Amaretta’s house, Julia had no idea; but she was quite certain this was where he wanted her to go.

Julia climbed out. She asked Kimmer to wait in the car with the kids.

“You’re going in there?”

“Ten minutes at most. They’re probably not even home.”

“Julia, come on. We’re in the middle of Harlem.” The lawyer looked around as if expecting an army of escaped convicts to show up, Uzis at the ready.

“Look around. This part is all gentrified now. We’re perfectly safe.”

“But—”

“Please. I need to do this.”

The lawyer took a long look at Julia’s face, then a longer look around at the neighborhood. She slid into the driver’s seat. “I’ll be circling the block,” said Kimmer, who hated, above all things, sitting still.

Julia turned, and mounted the steps.

(III)

T
HE BUILDING WAS BRIGHTLY LIGHTED
in the early winter night, tasteful curtains in the windows, bricks nicely pointed, the snow neatly cleared from the steps. A hallucination, Julia decided. Her disobedient brain had carried her back nearly four decades, to the days when she used to play, along with her brother and her cousins, on this very sidewalk, waiting for Granny Vee’s maid to call them for dinner. But when she glanced over her shoulder, there was the Escalade, Kimmer struggling to maneuver the massive car out of the space so that she could circle the block. Turning back, Julia spotted the gleaming new buzzers, and realized that the elegant old house had been converted to apartments, one to a floor, including the basement with its walled-in rear yard.

Sugar Hill was coming back. Some of the hottest property in Manhattan: the
Times
said so, and so did her favorite real-estate blogs.

Great. The Veazie mansion was co-ops. What now?

She lifted the hand mirror she had stuffed into her pocket but saw in its dulling surface only her own reflection, brow furrowed uncertainly. Kellen had told her to bring it with her, but she could not think why. She was stymied. About to return to the car, she noticed movement on her right. A man stood in the first-floor bay window, smoking a cigar and watching her.

All right, fine.

She smiled and waved as though they were old pals, pointed to the door, and pressed the second button from the bottom, hoping it was the right one. The man vanished, and, seconds later, the front door gave off an electronic groan, a tumbler clicked, and Julia stepped into the lobby.

The pattern of orange and white tiles on the floor of the foyer was as she remembered. The wood walls gleamed with recent refinishing, mailboxes had been added, and in front of her, where the archway to the parlor should have stood, was a somewhat stronger door, reinforced with metal bars, and the same man holding it open, the same cigar in his hand, as he gazed at her questioningly out of a brown face so smooth and confident that she was reminded of Kellen. Behind him was a hallway, the door to his first-floor apartment standing open, smooth jazz wafting from beyond.

He said, “Are you Margot?”

“Me? Oh, no. No. I, ah, I used to live here. Or spend time here.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Julia. Julia Carlyle.”

His handshake was moist and disappointed. “You couldn’t have used to live here, Julia. I’m just the second owner of the unit.” He frowned, glancing over her shoulder, perhaps searching for someone more important. “Are you sure you’re not Margot?” A nervously apologetic smile. “It’s a blind-date thing.”

“My grandmother owned the place. The whole building.”

“Retta Veazie?”

“Amaretta Veazie. Yes.”

“I’ve heard of her. They used to call her Retta, back in the day.” He drew on the cigar, stepped toward her, flicked ash out into the street, reminding her of Mary Mallard. In his pricey shirt and loosened tie, he looked bored and prosperous. “So, what can I do for you, Mrs. Carlyle?”

“I was in town on business, and I was driving by, and, well, I didn’t know they’d done a conversion. I had to stop and see.” She shrugged, aware that she was telling too much, as she always did when nervous. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to see what the place looks like now.”

“Oh, no. No. It’s no bother, Mrs. Carlyle. Do come in, please. I was just having a drink.”

Julia hesitated. She sensed no attempt at seduction, and, after all, the whole point of this stop was to peek inside with the mirror now tucked into her pocket. But the certainties of half an hour ago were dissipating into a larger fog, and she no longer felt sure of her purpose. The mirror business was ridiculous. A mirror was glass and silvering and

—and the occasional Eggameese—
a fancy handle, put together by human beings in a shop or factory somewhere, not a doorway into the past or the future or the hidden supernatural world where everyone looked at things edgewise. To walk in would be to act the fool. No matter what she thought Kellen might have been trying to tell her.

She smiled and backed off. “No, thank you. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Go back to your drink.” The man in the doorway took a long pull on his cigar but never budged, sharp hazel eyes measuring her, and, even before she sensed trouble, Julia wondered how on earth he could have known she was married. “I hope your date gets here soon,” she said, backing away faster. “Thanks again.”

From deeper in the apartment, a familiar voice said, “Oh, you can spare us a few minutes, Julia. Come on in.”

(IV)

C
AMERON
K
NOWLAND BECKONED
with a proprietary air that told her immediately that he owned the unit, and, maybe, the whole building.

“Well, this is a surprise,” she said, because she had to say something.

“Not an unpleasant one, I trust.”

“That depends on what we’re all doing here.”

Cameron smiled. Julia looked around. The ceilings were as high as she remembered. The pricey furnishings expressed a modern blandness that no amount of money could quite disguise as taste. The man who had smiled from the window was of the Clan: she sensed it in his manner of speech and of dress and in the way that he carried himself, without either the tragic slouching disdain of the young men of their nation, or the nervous confidence of those who were newer to fortune. He was probably a decade younger than she, and it became clear in the first minute that Cameron was the boss, and the black man his minion.

Not that she had harbored any doubt.

“I’m sorry for the melodrama, Julia.” He perched on the edge of the long table. “I happened to be in the city on business. My people told me you were coming to town—”

“What people?” she said sharply.

Cameron smiled. “My people told me you were coming, and, well, you hadn’t been up to Harlem since Zant died. I hoped this might be the occasion. I guessed right.” His tone said he usually did.

“This is…yours?”

“It used to be Kellen’s. Did you know that? He bought as soon as the building went on the market.”

“How did you hear I was coming down?” she asked, tone still wooden. When Cameron just kept smiling, she tried another question: “Tony Tice. Are you his secret client?”

This at least drew a bothered frown. “A most disagreeable man. Certainly not. After Kellen died, Tice got in touch with me to suggest—Well, never mind. No, Julia. I have nothing to do with him and want nothing to do with him.”

“Good,” she said, and meant it.

The billionaire looked around the room. “This is a beautiful apartment. They tell me the whole townhouse was beautiful, back in the old days. Sugar Hill.” He rolled the name around. “Until a couple of months ago, I’d never heard of it. But this was the heart of Harlem, wasn’t it? Your Harlem. Your family. The other old ones.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be frightened, Julia. Nobody means you any harm.”

“I’m not frightened.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m just tired of being lied to.”

Cameron Knowland came down off his perch and crouched in front of her. “When have I lied to you, Julia? Have I told you one thing that wasn’t true?” But she was a long way from persuaded. “We’re after the same thing. Kellen’s surplus. Look around. I bought this apartment from the co-op. I bought it with contents. Never mind how. There are ways. The contents were crucial. I wanted to keep it just the way Kellen left it. He spent a lot of time decorating, making sure everything was just the way he wanted. He was down here at least once a month. You didn’t know that?”

“No, Cameron. I didn’t know that.”