Pleasantville (9 page)

“Yes, we did, at the candidate forum last weekend.”

“And?”

“And,” Jim says, sighing, “I hate to say, but he sounded like the rest of them, like any other politician coming out to court our vote. The flyer's got folks jumpy, worried, like maybe Axe isn't telling everything, not until the runoff.”

“You really think that of him?”

“Not before this,” Jim says, tapping the flyer with his index finger. “We all want this lawsuit wrapped up before our property values go down any further, Jelly and them too. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Jay, why you're vulnerable in this thing. There's some out there want to settle and then sell and get out of Pleasantville for good. It ain't me, but Jelly and them are putting real pressure on the rest of us to reach a resolution sooner rather than later. Apparently, this Aguilar thinks he can walk us for ten million right now.”

Jay does the math in his head, frowning to himself.

“What's Bill Rodriguez going to do with thirteen thousand dollars ten, twenty years from now when his kid's asthma turns into something worse?” For Jay, it's always about the kids, the main ones who suffer from our choices long after we're gone. Any deal that doesn't look two generations ahead is useless. It might put a Cadillac in the driveway, but it won't secure a future.

“More like sixteen thousand,” Jim says. He's done his own math too.

“How's that?”

“Aguilar says he'll drop his commission to twenty percent.”

“Who is this guy?”

“Jelly knows him. They went to UT together.”

A 20 percent commission on a ten-million-dollar settlement, that's a cool two million. And Ricardo Aguilar is making a grab for it. It's against the rules of the Texas State Bar Association to proposition another lawyer's clients, but Aguilar could always say it was Jelly who reached out first, which as far as Jay knows is exactly how it went down. “We've been wanting to get Axel alone on this issue,” Jim says. “Without Sam and the young fellow, Neal. But Axe is running for mayor of Houston, not Pleasantville, and he's all over the place these days. And then this thing with the girl happened, and, well, it just got lost.”

Jay folds the flyer, tucking it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

“I appreciate you sharing this with me.”

“Like I said, I like you, Jay.” He picks up his drink, finishing it off. “But Jelly's already circulating a petition, getting signatures on the issue of seeking new counsel. There's only so much I can do to slow this down.”

He looks at Jay under the harsh white lights of the club.

It's Jay, he suggests, who will have to save his own ass.

“My next scheduled sit-down with ProFerma's lead counsel isn't for another month,” Jay says. “I can move that up, go at them more aggressively.” Jim nods, liking the sound of that. “They've been dicking around with the numbers, excuse my language. But I have an evidentiary strategy in mind, some cards I was holding until we got closer on the numbers.” Jay is bluffing a little, just to make clear he isn't sleeping on the job. What he doesn't need right now is a rumor about a development
deal making his clients skittish and apt to take less than they deserve. “You let the word get back that I'm on this thing, and that no one should be too fooled by flashy promises. A lot of times these guys say they'll take a lower commission fee, and then jack it up to forty percent when there's a trial.”

“At least he's willing to talk about a trial.”

There it is, out in the open.

Jay's trepidation about, or downright fear of, standing in a courtroom again–it's not as well hidden as he thought. “There's not a one of us don't know what you been through this year,” Jim says. “But the families out there, myself included, we've been through a lot too. We need a fighter, son.” He reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his wallet. From inside, he pulls several bills, leaving the bartender an extra ten for his time. To Jay, he says, “You still have my vote.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Jay watches him go, the bar's padded door swinging closed behind him. The bartender offers him another beer, but Jay shakes his head. The first one left him feeling foggy and loose limbed, weak against the wind that just blew through him. He's never lost a client before. Lord knows he can't afford to start now.

Jon K. Lee
will have to wait, Jay thinks, as he walks to the Hathorne campaign headquarters, one block over on Travis. The volunteers are out this morning, a line of them wearing long-sleeved T-shirts, a deep, patriot blue, with the slogan
HATHORNE FOR HOUSTON
! in white. A staffer, a young black woman in braids, is handing out stacks of door knockers, glossy leaflets to be left on front doors across the city. The leaflets show Axel's picture, an image of the candidate surrounded by a handful of men in blue. The Houston Police Department endorsed him in the general, and there is every reason to assume it will back him again in the runoff against Sandy Wolcott, the D.A., who easily scored the endorsement of the Harris County sheriff. The battle of the law-and-order candidates has made
for one of the oddest campaign seasons in Houston's history. Inside the storefront's glass doors, there are more volunteers at a phone bank in the front part of the office. At a square of four card tables pushed together, they sit on folding chairs, copies of the county voter rolls splayed out in front of them, each volunteer hunched over a script and a telephone. Jay can hear their one-sided conversations:
Hi, I'm ______, and I'm calling to ask for your vote for Axel Hathorne. Mr. Hathorne is a Houston native, and the first African-American police chief in the city. For nearly forty years, he's fought to keep our streets safe.

“Can I help you?”

Jay turns to see the staffer with the long braids, pulled in a ponytail off her face. Coming in from outside, she's got a large, bricklike phone cradled against her ear as she bends down to dump a surplus of leaflets into an open cardboard box. Standing upright, she rolls up the sleeves of her fleece pullover, eyeing Jay with more than a little curiosity. In his suit and tie, he stands out among the jeans and khakis, sneakers and T-shirts in the office. Nor, in this getup, would he ever pass for a member of the press. “You Detective Moore?” she says. The mention of a police officer catches Jay off guard, and before he can correct her assumption, the woman, moving fast, eager to check one more thing off her list, walks to a dented metal desk a few feet from the makeshift call center. “The station said you'd be by,” she says, holding up a finger to slow a staffer headed her way with a clipboard. “I'm the field director,” she says to Jay. “Marcie normally handles Neal's schedule, along with Axel's. But Tuesday, Election Day, everything was get out the vote, and I actually put together the schedule for that day.” She hands him a spreadsheet with detailed blocks of times and locations, and the names of the campaign's key players, including the candidate himself. “It's about what you'd expect, nothing out of the ordinary. There
was
one thing, though,” she says, her brow wrinkling.

“Tonya!”

Down a roll of thin carpet comes Marcie in acid-washed jeans and a Hathorne T-shirt, walking from the back offices, which are really just a series of cubicles set apart by fabric dividers. She's breathless, damp with sweat. “Melanie Lawson at Channel Thirteen wants to tape a segment with Axel, history in the making, maybe some stuff with his dad, that sort of thing, to air after the debate tomorrow night, but they have to get a crew over here today to tape.”

“They're at the Hyatt all day, doing debate prep.”

“Neal on his mobile?”

“Yes.”

Marcie turns, noticing Jay. “You were at Sam's last night.”

“What?” Tonya says, looking confused at first and then panicked. She smiles tightly, eyeing the campaign schedule in Jay's hand, but too timid to ask for it back in front of Marcie, her superior, for all Jay knows. In fact, the more anxious she seems, the more curious Jay is to know what exactly is on that schedule. He folds it and tucks it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Just came for a bumper sticker,” he says, grabbing a blue
HATHORNE FOR HOUSTON
! decal from the corner of a call-center desk, before walking out and heading for the Hyatt.

Rolly has
a connection at the hotel, a guy behind the front desk, who, for an ounce of hash every two weeks, provides any guest needing a ride the phone number for Rolly's car company. For the same deal, he's more than happy to get Jay a room number, sending him to a two-story suite on the seventh floor. The Hathorne campaign has had it for the past two nights, leading up to tomorrow's debate on Channel 13. It's one of the few on the floor that use a bolt lock instead of a key card. Through the door, Jay can hear the steel lock turn, just moments before
Vivian Hathorne answers the door. She's in a black sweater, something silky and wine colored peeking from underneath. Below, there are black slacks and slippers on her feet. She is, as he last saw her, holding a glass in one hand.

“They haven't found her, have they?”

“That my fish?” a voice behind her calls out.

Vivian opens the door wider, giving Sam Hathorne a view of their visitor.

Down the short hallway that leads to the suite's main room, Jay's and Sam's eyes meet. Sam smiles stiffly.

“Come in,” Vivian says.

Jay follows her down the hallway into the suite, passing a guest bathroom and a kitchenette before entering the main room. The suite is bigger than his first apartment, the one-bedroom in Third Ward where he and Bernie started a family, Ellie sharing a room with them for the first two years of her life. There's a private bedroom on the suite's lower floor, and a short, curved staircase leading to another upstairs. In the living room, furniture has been pushed off to the sides. The TV has been turned to face a back corner of the room. There's a mess of wires coming out of the back of it, one of them leading to a video camera set up on a tripod in the middle of the room, facing a mock debate setup. Axel Hathorne, all six feet of him, stands behind the lectern on the left. He's in a Rice University sweatshirt, a bib of paper towels around the neck and two different shades of brown powder and foundation on each cheek. Behind the second lectern, Russell Weingate, a University of Texas political science professor and campaign consultant, is playing the part of Axel's rival. The wall of glass behind them offers a postcard picture of Houston's glittering skyline. Across the room, a young white guy wearing a Blues Traveler T-shirt sits in front of a television screen, a pair of headphones resting on his neck, next to a young woman
wearing a nose ring and a tool belt filled with cosmetics. She's checking her work on-screen. Neal stands behind her, his arms crossed tightly.

“Let's go through that last bit again,” he says.

Russell Weingate is wearing a sweater vest over his button-down shirt, jeans, and black sneakers. He takes off his glasses, wiping them with the untucked tail of his shirt. “The projections for tax revenue from Kingwood in the next year alone have changed even the hardest hard-liners on this issue,” he says. “Wolcott has always supported pulling the town of Kingwood into Houston, which is on message for her. ‘Smart, low-risk growth.' You're weak here, Axe.”

“I still say it's spreading the city's infrastructure too thin.”

“Can I get you a drink, Mr. Porter?” Vivian says.

“No, that's fine.”

Sam takes a last pull on the cigarette in his hand. He grinds it out in a crystal ashtray resting on a nearby table. “Bring me a Coke, would you, Viv?”

“Axel?”

“No, I'm fine, Mama.”

Neal turns from the TV screen and sees Jay for the first time. Axel is already walking from behind the lectern, yanking the paper towels from his collar.

“Jay Porter,” he says. He pats Jay on the back, shaking his hand. He's got a good three inches on Jay but never seems to tower. His manner is affable and open, a practiced demeanor meant to mitigate the power of his height. He's relaxed in his later years, a long way from the stern and unforgiving cop with the cutting nickname. He seems happy to be away from the lectern.

“Nice to see you, Axe,” Jay says. He, after all these years, remembers the man fondly, remembers when Hathorne was the only name he trusted on a police force filled with good ol' boys.
Axe went easy on Jay a few times, and on Bumpy Williams and Lloyd Mackalvy, even one time declining to arrest them during an anti–police brutality march through Fifth Ward, despite pressure from higher-ups to come down hard. “They're just walking,” he'd said to his superiors.

“You too, man,” Axel says to Jay. “How're your kids?”

Neal sighs. “Guess this means we're taking a break.”

Vivian returns from the small kitchen. She hands a can of Coke to Sam, and presents Jay with a glass of water he never asked for. Resting a thin hand on his forearm, she again asks if they've found the girl. Sam shakes his head matter-of-factly. “Jim would have called.” Frankie, Sam's driver, enters the hotel suite next, cradling two greasy take-out bags. Sam clears a space to set down the food, Styrofoam containers of catfish and slices of white bread, damp with steam.

“Viv, honey, check if they got some hot sauce in the kitchen.”

“She didn't work for us, by the way,” Neal says to Jay.

“It's true,” Axel says. “Neal and Tonya did a top-to-bottom search, and there's no paper, no eyewitnesses that put her anywhere near our offices or our campaign. No one in the organization remembers her. The description of her clothing on the day in question, it's likely just a coincidence.”

“Axe is on top of it,” Neal says. “We've talked to the lead detective.”

“Detective Moore,” Jay says offhand.

“That's right,” Axel says, a little surprised to hear the name coming out of Jay's mouth. “He's heading the case out of the Northeast Division.”

“We're cooperating fully. We turned over records, answered all their questions,” Neal says. And yet, Jay thinks, Detective Moore is this morning on his way back to campaign headquarters, hunting that schedule, a copy of which rests in Jay's pocket right now. “They know about the planned search. We made
them aware of the residents' concerns, to say nothing of Alicia Nowell's family.”

Axel sighs heavily. “I told her parents to call night or day.”

“I still don't know why we can't put this on the current police chief somehow,” Neal says. “The other girls went missing on his watch too.”

Sam shakes his head. Russell too.

“It nullifies the department's endorsement if we tear them down publicly,” he says. “It's a fine line to walk. But HPD is key for us.”

“Plus, I don't want to go negative,” Axel says.

“Well, the chief's not the one running,” Neal says, glancing at his grandfather. He has the same nut-brown coloring as Neal, but the Hathorne similarity stops there. For the life of him, Jay still can't tell where the boy came from. “Don't think Wolcott's not storing up a reserve on
you
. I'm telling you, it's a mistake to not strike her first. We've got her affair, just say the word.”

“Wolcott?” Viv says.

“With a married cop during her first trial, a
witness
, no less.”

Sam shakes his head. “It's not the right time.”

Vivian turns to Axel with a plea. “You'll find the girl, won't you, son?”

Sam tells her their son is doing everything he can, short of going out in the streets himself.

“That's not a bad idea,” Axel says.

Sam shakes his head. “We need you here, son. We finished barely three points ahead of Wolcott. You need to go to sleep and wake up thinking about how to widen that gap before December tenth. The runoff is–”

“It's been four days,” Jay says. “She's been missing
four
days.”

Sam looks across the room at Neal, who nods once and then quickly turns to the makeup artist and the tech guy in the ratty T-shirt. “Can you excuse us a moment?” As the two shuffle
out of the room, they all watch in silence–Jay, Axel, Sam and Vivian, Russell Weingate, and Neal, of course, who waits until the door catches before speaking again. “Look, the campaign is going to release a statement today, outlining our assistance on the case, Axel's ties to the area, his concern for the family of the missing girl. Marcie is drafting it now.”

“But we'd like to keep Axel as far away from this as possible,” Sam says.

“Campaign statements, interviews with the cops, we're handling it all.”

“We don't ever want him to have to lie about Tuesday night.”

“Lie?” Jay says, staring at Axel.

The candidate shrugs. “It's nothing, really.”

“
Lie
is probably too strong a word,” Neal says.

Sam sighs. “There were plans made for Tuesday night, big stroll down Pleasantville's streets, knocking on doors, folks wanting a handshake, the way things have always been done. But the night got past us, and in the end–”

“You never showed,” Jay says, realizing. He remembers Ruby Wainwright's description of the celebratory pound cake that sat untouched on her kitchen counter. “So you were never in Pleasantville Tuesday night?” he asks Axel.

“No one from the campaign was.”

“Which we'd rather not have advertised,” Sam says.

“We've had the precinct in our column since Axel filed papers to run,” Neal says. “We can't afford to lose our core support over a few hurt feelings.”

“Where were you then?” Jay asks Axel.

“Dinner with a few donors downtown.”

“Eyes on the prize,” Sam says, dabbing at the grease on his chin.

Neal turns to Jay. “We appreciate you checking on the situation. It was good of you to come last night, but we've got this
handled.” He puts a hand on Jay's shoulder, the gesture a naked attempt to usher Jay out of the hotel suite.

“Actually there's something else.”

From his coat pocket, Jay pulls out the folded-up copy of the flyer, the printed accusations against Axel and his campaign over the Buffalo Bayou Development Project. “You got some folks in your old precinct worried.”