Pleasantville (21 page)

“One that he conveniently forgot to tell the cops about.”

“It's all going to come out, including the failure of the D.A.'s office to prosecute the only suspect in the murders of Deanne Duchon and Tina Wells. Putting Neal on trial for the third girl, it looks like Wolcott's covering her butt.”

“Those cases aren't connected.”

“Says who?”

“The
Chronicle
, in black and white,” she says with a knowing smile.

“This comes dangerously close to rigging an election.”

“Don't insult me,” Parker says, wrenching around in her seat to face him head-on. “You have any idea what I get paid, the kinds of people I work with? I don't need to rig some Podunk mayor's race in south Texas.”

“You can't win without Pleasantville.”

“If I want Pleasantville, I'll reach right out and take it.”

“It's Sam's, and you know it.”

“Sam's day is done.”

“You think it's so easy to get around him? They love him out there.”

“And he's done a lot for that community, he has,” Parker says. “He built that precinct with his bare hands. But even Pleasantville, as anyone knew it, has an expiration date. And
why shouldn't it? The circumstances that created it no longer exist. Wasn't that what you, of all people, were fighting for, ‘back in the day,' as the kids say? The rules of the game have changed. The voting maps have changed. The whole math of how people win elections has changed. From here on out,
every
vote counts. And I, for one, am not willing to concede an entire precinct on Sam's say-so. People can make up their own minds. It's their vote, not Sam Hathorne's. All that paternalistic crap, it's a thing of the past.”

“They know Axel out there, they trust him,” Jay says. “At least they did before you and Wolcott started putting those flyers all across the neighborhood.”

“Axel, God bless him, isn't a politician. He'd do his legacy a favor to stay in the role of beloved former cop, city's first black chief. You can tell him I said that. He's not cut out for the mayor's office. He's trading on a last name.”

“Interesting coming from the woman who helped put Bush junior in the governor's office.”

“You're wrong to underestimate him,” she says.

Then, tapping the back of Rolly's seat, she announces, “I'm not walking all the way the fuck back.” Rolly doesn't move, not without Jay's explicit instruction. Jay, running out of time, reaches into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a sheaf of papers. “Last chance to end this,” he says. “Tell Wolcott to drop this case.”

“I believe she told you she doesn't have a thing to do with it.”

“Bullshit.”

But Parker doesn't budge.

Jay pulls the last card he has: he threatens Parker with the news of Wolcott's affair with a cop, a man who just happened to be a witness in one of her cases. “You sure you want that coming out ahead of December?”

“Please,” Parker says. “If they wanted to use that, they would have by now. And I'll bet money they never will. We have opp guys too, you know.”

“He's going to be acquitted.”

“Congratulations,” she says. “But by the time this goes to trial, Mr. Porter, Sandy Wolcott will already be a few months in office, and I'll be back in Austin.”

“Not if there's no election.”

“What are you talking about?”

He hands her a photocopy of his motion to enjoin the city's runoff election, scheduled for December tenth, and his request for a hearing on the matter in county court at the earliest possible date. Jay tells her it's her copy.

“You can't do this.”

“I already did,” he says.

Parker looks up just as Rolly, out of the driver's seat now, opens the back door for her, a signal that her ride is through. Parker, in a huff, shoves the motion into her bag and grabs her mobile phone. She ungracefully scoots her behind out of the Town Car. Rolly tips his hat to her as she goes.

Back in the Walgreen's parking lot, Rolly lights a smoke. Jay asks if he picked up anything on the ride over, stuff that Parker and Wolcott talked about.

“A lot that didn't mean much to me one way or the other.”

“They mention Neal? Or the court case?”

“Not a word, just a bit of chatter about media interviews, general stuff,” Rolly says, exhaling smoke. “And talk about the big donors in their pocket.”

“Any names?”

“They got Cole.”

“Hmmph,” Jay mutters. Thomas Cole, Cynthia's old pal.

Looks like everybody is lining up behind Wolcott.

They part ways soon after this, Rolly to finish what they
started at Beechwood Estates, trying to get close enough to Alonzo Hollis to figure out his game, and Jay to make sure Neal's alibi, his one true hope of getting the case tossed, hasn't fled the county. From Montrose, Jay heads south, to Third Ward.

Come drinking
hours, the streets around the Playboy Club are lit up like Christmas. Young men hang on street corners, sipping beer out of paper bags, waiting on the club's doors to open. Older women trade gossip between sips of spiked tea, sitting on the porch steps of shotgun houses, rows of them lined up like tiny churches right off Scott Street, not even a quarter mile from the rough-and-tumble headquarters of Jay's first fledgling SNCC offshoot–a group he started with Bumpy Williams, Lloyd Mackalvy, and Marcus Dupri–and where he first laid eyes on Cynthia Maddox. He thinks again about this morning, the fact that, for whatever reason, she went out of her way to warn him. But against what, she wouldn't say, not really, offering only a vague sense that all with this election is not what it seems, which he was already beginning to see with his own eyes.

Jay parks under a dim streetlight just a few feet from the door of the Playboy Club, not realizing he's been followed. But as soon as he steps out of the Land Cruiser, he sees his pursuer. The driver of the Z, the one who was in his office and outside his home–the one he assumes is after his legal records for the Cole case–is standing right in front of him. The unkempt hair, the same cutting smile, the familiar funk of marijuana smoke laid tonight on top of a sweet, sweet cologne. He's so close Jay could reach out and touch him, which he tries to do to block the first blow, an uppercut that lands under his chin, knocking his teeth together until he tastes blood. Jay, if he had a weapon,
couldn't reach it anyway, not as fast as the kid comes on him again, this time socking him under his rib cage. The .38 is a mirage, a dream he once had. Irony of ironies, he left it with Lonnie tonight, worried someone might try something at the house. He would laugh out loud if he could catch his breath. Doubled over, Jay tries to speak. He spits blood on the kid's sneakers, white Air Jordans, earning himself another hit, a punch as near to the kidneys as he can take without passing out. And then he hears the unlikeliest string of words in the English language.

“Motherfuck that injunction.”

Jay sees the grip of a 9 millimeter in the waistband of the kid's underwear, peeking out above his baggy jeans. He's lifted his shirt to make the threat clear, like something out of a Tupac video Jay once asked his daughter to turn off. Laid out in the street, he thinks he can hear the song's thumping bass in his head until he realizes it's his own blood beating against the walls of his skull. “You understand?” the kid says, kicking Jay in the gut. “Shut it down, Heathcliff.”

The headline: “Hathorne
Camp Seeks to Halt December Runoff.”

The photo caption: “Attorney Jay Porter Accuses Wolcott of Misconduct in Murder Charge.”

The article, written by Gregg Bartolomo, gives the unfortunate impression that Jay is working for the Hathorne campaign, rather than doing everything he can for his client
and
for the parents of Alicia Nowell, who deserve more from the top prosecutor than having their daughter's murder used as a political pawn. The sloppy reporting is infuriating but not wholly unexpected. Lonnie last night had warned Jay of as much, guessing the
Chronicle
's editorial slant, and they both suspected Reese Parker of leaking all kinds of information to the press. (Lead
sentence, paragraph two: “Sources inside the district attorney's office say there is enough evidence for a conviction. . . .”) Lon practically wrote the story off the top of her head while she helped dress his wounds. He'd staggered into the house a little after eight, blood staining the front of his white shirt–after first calling Lonnie from the driveway to make sure he could get from the back door to his bedroom without his kids seeing. At breakfast this morning, he tells them he took a fall, delivering the news offhandedly while passing a plate of eggs. Ellie stares at him across the table, and Ben stops eating, complaining of a sudden stomachache. “Come on,” Jay says. “We're late for school.” He shoves the newspaper into the trash on their way out.

They ride with the radio off.

Twice in the car, Ben asks if Jay, his last remaining parent, is sick, mistaking the bumps and bruises for a different kind of pain. “I'm fine, son,” Jay says, reaching across the front seat for Ben's hand. He's actually better than fine. He woke up this morning feeling strangely, yet powerfully, numb, not so much unable to process the pain across his cheek and jaw as indifferent to it. Standing over his bathroom sink at dawn, staring at the blood-crusted aftermath, he found the darkest center of the blackest bruise and stuck his middle finger straight into it, feeling nothing that a year without his wife hadn't overprepared him for. What, after all, was a scratch on the surface of a body that had already been hollowed out? He looked at his hands, at his shirtless torso, in the bathroom mirror. He saw his whole body anew, imagining grief, of all things, as a kind of superpower. This, he thought, looking at the abrasions across his brow, the swelling of his lips and cheek, this is the least that I can endure. It was like powder in a bullet, this knowledge. He felt inexplicably, undeservedly free. And he owed it to somebody to do something with this, didn't he?
Do it for them
. He heard his wife's voice and understood, more than ever, what she meant.

“I'm going to be fine,” he says to his son.

When Jay arrives at the civil courthouse at eight thirty sharp, Gregg Bartolomo is waiting outside. “You set me up,” he says acidly, the second Jay starts up the walk and into the building. Jay is not surprised in the least to see him here. Bartolomo is at his heels the whole way, hovering behind Jay in the line for the metal detectors, the two men removing their watches, the change in their pockets. “You should check your facts next time before you rush to print whatever Reese Parker feeds you,” Jay says as he passes through the parallel walls of the metal detector, reaching for his belongings in the dingy plastic cup on the other side. “You ought to be spending your time talking to Alonzo Hollis.”

“I already did.”

Jay pauses, a few feet from the bank of elevators, watching as Bartolomo puts on his watch and the belt the deputies made him remove. “I'm not a bad reporter,” he says to Jay. “But I
am
a gratefully employed one. My editor told me to drop it, so I dropped it. Nothing about Hollis ever made the final cut of any of my stories. But it doesn't mean I didn't do my job. Honestly? They're going to play this story the way they want it played,” he says. “Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“I can get an exclusive interview with you or your client.”

“No comment.” Jay turns and walks toward the elevators, sliding into one and watching, with pleasure, as the doors close on Gregg Bartolomo's face.

He presses floor six for the clerk's office.

Eddie Mae
is in rare form when Jay arrives later that morning. She's dressed for the occasion, for her new status as secretary–“no, legal assistant,” she says–to a man on the front page of the
city's only newspaper, with a murder trial no less, her very own Johnnie Cochran. “Don't call me that,” he says. She's wearing a slim skirt, tight across the waist but otherwise demure, and a cream-colored blouse, and her hair actually appears to be her own. It's a soft, silvery gray, with a shallow spray of curls in the front and an egg-size bun pinned at the back. “Cynthia Maddox called,” she tells him. “Twice.”

“Cole's willing to talk,” Cynthia says when he gets her on the phone.

“I'll bet he is.”

“But it has to be now.”

“Where?”

“Houston Club.”

“I'll be there.”

“And, Jay, listen–”

He hangs up.

The Houston
Club is the oldest private social club in the city, and no one gets up to the tenth floor without an express invitation. Jay's is waiting for him, a handwritten card resting on a silver tray held immovably in place by a black man in a penguin suit and white gloves standing in the lobby. Jay is instructed to walk the card to the elevator and up to the tenth floor, where he is to hand it to the hostess outside the main dining room. When Jay says, “Thank you,” the black man nods without ever making eye contact. Inside the elevator, Jay ticks off the floors on the slow rise, passing, according to the buttons on the inside panel, the club's gym, indoor tennis court, and pool; its private ballroom; and its barroom lounge. On the tenth floor, the hostess is waiting for him as he steps off the elevator. “Right this way, Mr. Porter,” she says, motioning for him to fall in line behind her as she leads the way through
the anteroom, past the hat check and the rows of Stetsons resting on individual racks. The room smells of tobacco and Colombian coffee and woodsy aftershave, and the champagne-colored carpet is so thick that Jay's knees nearly buckle as the soles of his shoes sink into it. The hostess fairly skates across it, carrying her weight in her youthful hips, swinging them left and right as she walks between the linen-topped tables in the dining hall, smiling her way toward her Christmas tips, nodding at each male club member she passes. And it
is
all men, in boots and suits, seated two and three to a table. Odd, Jay thinks, for an hour that rightly belongs to tennis wives and retirees, that dull stretch of time between Bloody Marys and the day's first chardonnay. But these are men whose money is being made whether they're in their offices or not, and there's a leisurely and fraternal air about the room . . . at least, there was.

The conversation comes to an abrupt halt.

Everyone has turned to stare.

The black and purple cuts and bruises across the left side of his face, the eye that's slightly swollen–these are not enough to disguise the fact that Jay and the man on the front page of the day's newspaper are one and the same. “Mr. Cole is waiting,” the hostess says, pointing to a corner table in the back of the room with a view of the city's skyline. The man himself is seated in a chair against the wall, so he can't actually see the view he's paying for. He's older than Jay by a decade, and it shows in the silver hair and the feathered lines cut into his tanned skin, but he is otherwise still at a fighting weight, ropy and lean. He's wearing a button-down oxford beneath a hunter green collared cardigan, a pair of reading glasses tucked at the neckline; and a Camel cigarette is sitting in a crystal ashtray a few inches from the gold nugget on his right hand. He looks up from the newspaper in his hand, smiling amusedly at the sight of Jay, as if he were a gnat Cole had swatted at and missed, a
winged thing that had bested him and lived to tell. “Jay Edgar Porter,” he says, calling out Jay's full name–which appears in a single place, on his original birth certificate filed in the Trinity County courthouse on May 5, 1950–letting Jay know, in five syllables, that there is no part of his life that Cole hasn't dug for and found. “I wish I could say it was a pleasure.”

“Likewise,” Jay says, pulling out the nearest chair.

Despite their legal showdowns, Jay has not laid eyes on the man in the flesh in fifteen years. In fact, the last time the men drew breath within a few feet of each other was inside a men's room in the criminal court building downtown, when Cole had uttered these words: “Don't make me regret I didn't kill you when I had the chance.” He had delivered this particular prick of poison as if he were doing Jay some big favor, one he might cash in at any time.

“Let's start with you calling off your muscle,” Jay says.

“Excuse me?”

Jay unbuttons his suit jacket and takes a seat.

He leans across the table, lowering his voice. “I'll give you Nathan Petty, okay? He's yours,” he says boldly. “But you can't have people following me.”

Over a center vase of milk-colored narcissus, Cole stares at Jay. His eyes narrow slightly as he lifts the cigarette from the ashtray.

“I have children,” Jay says.

“Two.”

Jay feels his blood rush. “Yes,” he says, watching Cole roll the tip of the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger before taking a slow drag. “So you can see why I can't have anything happening to me. I need you to call him off.”

Cole lets out a slow exhale, still studying Jay.

He gently taps his cigarette against the side of the ashtray. “I'm afraid I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.”

“The kid in the Z,” Jay says. “Get him off my back.”

“Let me get this straight,” Cole says, glancing at his watch. Approving of the hour, he holds up a finger to signal a waiter. He orders a bourbon, offering nothing to his guest, and shoos away the server before he can ask. “A ‘kid' named Nathan Petty is following you, and, what, you think I had something to do with it?” He smiles, offering this retelling of the bits and pieces of Jay's story with an air of incredulity, as if he thinks Jay is bullshitting him and he's personally insulted by the lack of sophistication. “Surely,” he says, taking another drag on his cigarette, “this isn't the reason you asked to meet with me.”

Now it's Jay who's feeling tricked.

He leans back in his chair, studying the blank look on Thomas Cole's face.

Either Cole's flunky hasn't yet found the link to Petty in Jay's records or Cole doesn't know the man existed, and doesn't, in fact, know what Jay is talking about at all, which Jay finds hard to believe. “You're not tailing me?”

Cole takes another drag on his cigarette. “Should I be?”

He exhales, a puzzled look on his face, just as his glass of bourbon lands sloppily on the edge of the table, a tiny wave of honey-colored liquid splashing over the side and soaking through the tablecloth. The hand that delivered it is white, a racial anomaly in his peripheral vision that causes Thomas Cole to turn and look up, directly into the face of Charlie Luckman, Esquire. “This one's on me, hoss,” he says, pulling out the chair to Cole's left and squeezing himself right into the middle of the men's private meeting. Jay knows both of them, under wildly different circumstances, of course. Time was, Charlie Luckman, former prosecutor turned highly paid defense attorney, held a permanent position in Thomas Cole's Rolodex, as he did in the private directories of other moneyed men in Cole's
set, Charlie having gained a well-earned reputation as a fixer of sorts, a lawyer willing to work cases high and low, as long as the price was right. Jay had gone up against him in one of the absolute lowest of the low, the case of a hooker who suffered an on-the-job injury in the front seat of a port commissioner's car. The commissioner had paid Charlie to make the whole thing go away. Charlie, Jay remembers, was a friend of Cole's back then, and had even represented Elise Linsey, the tartlet on Cole's payroll who was the face of Stardale, the shell development company. Charlie had inadvertently confirmed the breadth of Thomas Cole's involvement in the hoarding and hiding of barrels and barrels of crude oil–which had planted the seeds of Jay's civil case against the oil giant. Jay has never known how, or even if, the men's friendship recovered. This morning Charlie seems tickled as pink as the broken capillaries across the tip of his nose to see Jay and Cole together in the middle of the Houston Club. He sets his own tumbler of bourbon on the table and throws a hammy hand across Jay's shoulder. “So you're the one messing with little Georgie's election,” he says.

“What?” Jay says, shucking off his oily grip.

“You're drunk, Charlie,” Cole says.

“I prefer to think of it as a slow marinade,” Charlie says, signaling one of the servers for another round. He is quite openly on the downslope of a once unstoppable career, having benched himself after his very public loss to Sandy Wolcott, a woman twenty years his junior, in the murder trial of the Houston-area surgeon. “She got me,” he said, as if he'd been the one to take the knife and not Dr. Martin's wife. Jay'd heard that since his public loss, he's settled down–on paper, at least–marrying, in his sixties, the daughter of a Mexican textile magnate and raising two boys, nine-month-old twins. Here, even in the soft white light of the dining room, he looks tired, the collar of his shirt cutting into the flesh of his neck like a yoke, the seams
of his size-38 oyster gray suit surrendering under stress. It's a costume he need not torture himself with, Jay thinks. Charlie hasn't set foot inside a courtroom in a year.

“Walk away from the table, Charlie,” Cole says, irritated.