Beauty and the Beast

5

My partner Frank is a firm believer in his own variation of Murphy’s Law, which states that if anything can possibly go wrong just before a planned vacation, it will most certainly go wrong. Your healthy cat — or in this case Dale’s healthy cat — will suddenly come down with a 104-degree fever that the vet will assure you is not particularly high for cats, whose normal temperature range is somewhere between 100 and 103, but that nonetheless will necessitate a battery of tests in order to determine the cause. Normally — the vet told Dale, and she reported to me on the phone late Monday night — a cat’s fever will be directly related to a fight he or she has just had with some other cat or a dog or, in Calusa, a raccoon. But Sassafras, Dale insisted, was the sort of benign feline who never got into even a spitting contest, much less a bonafide battle. Nonetheless, Sassafras was now at the vet’s, and Dale would have to call tomorrow to find out what the story was, and tomorrow was Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, three days before we were to leave for Mexico, and she hoped it was nothing serious because she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving a sick cat behind while she went off on a holiday.

That was on Monday night at 11:00.

On Tuesday morning, at around 8:00, a loudspeaker in the Calusa airport crackled with the news that my 8:30 A.M. Sunwing Shuttle flight to Miami had been delayed and would not be leaving till 9:00. It is sometimes difficult for nonresidents of Calusa to believe that we have so much trouble flying from here to Miami, a scant 165 air miles away. There are four major airlines servicing our modest city, but three of them — Delta, Pan Am, and United — don’t fly from here to there at all. Eastern has five daily flights to Miami; only one of them is nonstop, and that leaves at 9:48 P.M. The rest require changing planes either at Orlando or Tampa. It is easier to take Sunwing’s Shuttle (which my partner Frank — accustomed to the more sophisticated shuttles from New York to Boston or Washington, DC — calls the Sunwing Scuttle), a tiny airline with three scheduled flights to Miami and back every day of the week. The flight takes an hour and twenty-five minutes — when it’s on time. My 8:30 A.M. flight that morning did not, in fact, leave until 9:20, confirmation — if any was needed — of the Murphy-cum-Summerville Law.

I arrived in Miami at a little before 11:00, an hour after I should have arrived, and immediately placed a call to my office. Cynthia Huellen informed me that the state’s attorney had already served Harper with the indictment (he was wasting no time, that son of a bitch) and that Karl Jennings of our office had appeared before the same Circuit Court judge who’d earlier denied Harper bail; unsurprisingly, he had denied it once again, setting a date two and a half weeks away for appearance, at which time we would have to enter our plea. The taxi I caught at the airport was driven by a Cuban who did not know Miami half as well as he had known Havana. It took him a full hour to find the address I had carefully lettered onto the sheet of paper I handed him, and then another ten minutes making change for a twenty-dollar bill in a grocery store two doors up from the house in which Lloyd Davis lived and conducted his business. It was 12:15 when finally I got out of the cab.

Davis’s house was small and constructed of wood shingles painted green. The front lawn was patchy and strewn with what appeared to be the overflow debris of the junk piled against the side of the house and visible in the backyard, a flotsam-and-jetsam collection of automobile parts and radiators and refrigerators and bottles and lawn furniture and plumbing fixtures and you-name-it, Lloyd Davis seemed to have it. A dog of uncertain origin sat on the rickety front porch of the house, scratching his ear. He barely glanced at me as I mounted the steps and approached the screen door.

A record player was going someplace inside the house — Billie Holiday singing the blues. There was no doorbell. I rapped gently on the wooden frame surrounding the tattered screening. There was no answer. I rapped again, and then called, “Hello!”

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice said.

“I’m looking for Lloyd Davis,” I said.

Billie’s voice reached for a high note, found it, teased it, slid down the other side of it.

“Hello?” I said.

“Just a minute,” the woman answered.

The record ended. I heard only the sound of the needle caught in the retaining grooves, clicking endlessly, and then silence. I waited. She appeared suddenly behind the screen door, a woman of about thirty, I guessed, wearing a faded silk wrapper, her hair done up in rags, her eyes studying me suspiciously.

“You here about the bike?” she asked.

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I’m a lawyer representing George Harper,” I said. “I’d like to see Mr. Davis, if that’s possible. Is he home?”

“He’s out back. In the garage,” the woman said. “I’m his wife.”

“All right for me to go back there?”

“Don’t see why not,” she said.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions first?”

“What about?”

“About Mr. Harper’s visit here on the fifteenth.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

She did not open the screen door. She stood just inside it, a vague filtered figure in the gloom beyond.

“Was he here?”

“He was here.”

“Looking for your husband?”

“Looking for Lloyd, yeah.”

“What time was this, would you remember?”

“Sometime in the morning.”

“Can you be more exact about that?”

“Around eight o’clock, I guess it was. Eight-thirty. Around there.”

“How long did he stay?”

“Five minutes, is all. Said he wanted to see Lloyd, told him Lloyd was off with the army.”

“Did he say where he was going next?”

“Nope. Just said thanks and went on his way.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Davis,” I said.

She did not answer. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone again, disappearing as suddenly as she had materialized. As I walked toward the garage at the back of the house, I heard the Billie Holiday record starting again.

Lloyd Davis was a man in his late twenties, I guessed, some six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds, give or take. He was wearing blue jeans and a white tank-top shirt, his chest and arm muscles bulging as he carried a Franklin stove from one section of the garage to another. Despite the obvious weight of the cast-iron stove, he moved as effortlessly as a quarterback through an ineffective defensive line, gingerly picking his way across the cluttered garage floor, setting the stove down with a grunt, and then turning to face me with a sudden and surprising smile. A fine sheen of perspiration glistened on his handsome face, highlighting the distinctive cheekbones and almost patrician nose. His skin was as black as Harper’s, the color of bitter chocolate, his eyes the color of Greek olives. The teeth behind the wide smile were even and white.

“You the man who called?” he asked.

“What?” I said.

“About the motor bike?”

“No,” I said. “I’m Matthew Hope. George Harper’s attorney.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, how are you? I’m Lloyd Davis, nice to meet you.” He extended his hand, took mine in a firm clasp. “Would you like a beer? I’m dying of thirst here.”

“Thanks, no,” I said.

He went across the garage to where three old refrigerators were standing side by side against the far wall. Unerringly, he opened the door of one that was plugged in, and reached inside for a can of beer. The garage was littered with the same sort of debris that cluttered the driveway and part of the front lawn: ancient lawn mowers, yellowing toilet bowls, gutters and leaders, lampshades, bridge tables, radios, copper pipes, brass couplings, bikes with and without wheels, roller skates, clay pots, a typewriter, a set of battered leather luggage, a floor lamp with a metal base, and more miscellaneous crap than I could hope to count in a month of Sundays, all of it vying for floor or shelf space with an assortment of cardboard cartons containing everything from old magazines to beads and souvenir ashtrays to — in at least one instance — what appeared to be a priceless collection of soiled rags.

“I thought you were the guy coming for the bike,” he said. “He called ten minutes ago, said he heard I had a good used bike for sale. It is, too.” He ripped the tab from the beer can, brought the can to his lips, and drank deeply. “Mmm, I’ve been craving this,” he said. He set the can down precariously on what appeared to be an upended plaster-cast statue of a lion or a seal or perhaps the Venus de Milo, difficult to determine since it was missing its head and all of its appendages. “So Georgie got himself in trouble, huh?” he said.

“It looks that way.”

“From what I can gather, he’s using Miami as an alibi, right? Says he was here in Miami when it all happened.”

“Well, he was, wasn’t he?”

“He was here Sunday morning a week ago, is what he was. Spoke to Leona — my wife — and then left. I don’t know where he was after that.”

“But you didn’t see him, is that right?”

“Nope. I was off with the reserve. Got to put in my drill hours, you know, if I want to keep my rating and pay. Sixteen hours a month, plus another two full weeks a year, usually sometime in the summer. Takes me away from my business, but what can you do? Anyway, I’ll be finished with it come January.”

“Exactly what sort of business are you in, Mr. Davis?”

“It’s a perpetual tag sale here, is what it is,” Davis said. “There’s nothing retired old farts like better than a tag sale. Think they’re getting something for nothing, you know? Every Saturday and Sunday, they come in here like I’m giving my stuff away. Nothing to do with their time, they go looking for crap they can clutter up their trailers with. I’ll be open Thanksgiving Day, ought to be a good day for me.”

“Had you known Mr. Harper would be here on the fifteenth?”

“Nope.”

“He didn’t call you beforehand?”

“Well, he never does. He loads up his truck, comes on down to see if there’s any crap I’d like to buy. He’s got a few other dealers down here, too, but I’m his main customer.”

“Who are the other dealers, would you know?”

“Nope. Georgie’s kind of closemouthed when it comes to business. When it comes to anything, for that matter. You sure you don’t want a beer?” he asked, and picked up the can again.

“No, thanks,” I said. I hesitated, and then asked, “Was he that way in Germany, too?”

“What way?”

“Closemouthed.”

“Oh, sure. Except when he was busting some poor bastard who got drunk on a weekend pass. We’d get a lot of soldiers come to Bonn, we still got lots of troops stationed in Germany. They’d come up there for the weekend, get drunk and start howling at the moon. Georgie’d love to bust ’em. He has a mean streak in him, Georgie has. I’m not surprised it ended up this way.”

“Do you mean what happened to Michelle?”

“Yeah, sure, what else would I mean? The way he used his club on some of those dogfaces over there... well, I’m not surprised, is all I’m saying.”

“When you say ‘The way he used his club...’ ”

“Well, these guys were drunk for the most part, I mean they weren’t doing anybody any harm, you know what I mean? Okay, every now and then you’d get some guy pissing in the Rhine, or else starting up with some German girl he thought was a hooker but who turned out instead to be some honest burgher’s daughter, you know what I mean? Even so, it was all harmless, guys off on a weekend toot. Georgie used to treat them like they just committed an ax murder. Beat the shit out of more damn stupid assholes...”

Davis let the sentence trail. He tilted the beer can to his mouth, sipped at it.

“Did you know Michelle in Bonn?” I asked.

“Sure, that’s where I met her.”

“Where was that?”

“In Bonn. You just asked me—”

“Yes, but where? Under what circumstances?”

“Oh. Georgie and I double-dated one night. I had me this white chick used to sing in a little cabaret — listen, don’t mention this to Leona, okay?” he said, and winked. “I was married at the time, but I was a long, long way from home. You ever been a long, long way from home?”

“On occasion,” I said.

“Then you know how it is,” Davis said, and smiled.

“So you double-dated...”

“Yeah, we went to a little joint near the Kennedy Bridge — are you familiar with Bonn?”

“No.”

“Anyway, that’s where I first met Michelle. Saw her that one night, and that was it.”

“How come?”

“What do you mean, how come?”

“If Harper was your friend...”

“Well, yeah, but... you know. A guy wants to be alone with his chick, am I right?”

“What was she doing in Bonn? I thought she was French.”

“Her father’s French, her mother’s German. They used to live in Paris, moved to Bonn when she was — I forget what she said, thirteen, fourteen, something like that. She was maybe nineteen when I met her.”

“Was that the last time you saw her? That night?”

“No, no. Saw her again here in the States, when she came here looking for him.”

“Looking for Harper?”

“Right. Came to the house here, first place she came. Well, let me correct that. She went to his mother’s place first, ’cause that’s where she thought he was living. Then she came here. I was the one who gave her his address in Calusa.”

“When was this, Mr. Davis?”

“A year and a half ago, little more than that maybe.”

“Before they got married?”

“Oh, sure. That’s why she came here, you see. To find him, to get him to marry her. She was crazy about him.”

“But he was crazy about her, too, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah? Funny way he had of showing it then. When we got our orders, when we knew we were coming back to the States, he shipped out without even giving her a dingle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t phone her, nothing, just packed his duffel and off he went.”

“How do you happen to know that?”

“He told me, is how.”

“That he hadn’t called her?”

“That he didn’t plan to call her. Said she was prime white pussy, but that was all behind him, he was coming back home to feast on some soul food. Those were his exact words.”

“Did he have anyone specific in mind?”

“Huh?”

“This ‘soul food’ he mentioned.”

“No, no, just the general black female population,” Davis said, and grinned.

“But she followed him here anyway.”

“Sure did. Real tenacious lady, that Michelle,” he said, and grinned again. “Didn’t find him here in Miami, went right up there to Calusa, cornered him like a rat. Said she loved him and wanted to marry him, and either he married her or she’d go drown herself in the ocean.”

“Who told you that?”

“She did.”

“Then you saw her again after she left Miami?”

“Oh sure. I was at the wedding, in fact. Best man at the wedding.”

“When did Michelle tell you this story about drowning herself if he wouldn’t marry her?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. One time when I was visiting the house there. She made a big joke of it, you know, like how to hook a man who doesn’t want to be hooked. Georgie laughed, too. It was like a joke.”

“Uh-huh. So you continued seeing them after the wedding, is that right?”

“Now and then. Socially, you mean? Now and then. Business, I see Georgie every month or so, whenever he comes down with a load of stuff.”

“Let me try to get this straight,” I said. “Harper left Germany without even phoning Michelle, after what was apparently a hot romance between them...”

“That’s right.”

“So she followed him here and demanded that he marry her or else she’d drown herself.”

“You got it.”

“Was she in trouble?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was she pregnant?”

“No. What makes you think she was pregnant?”

“Woman follows an American soldier all the way here, says he’d better marry her or else she’ll drown herself... that sounds peculiar to me, Mr. Davis.”

“Peculiar or not, she wasn’t pregnant.”

“You know that for a fact.”

“I know it for a positive fact. I was at the wedding, this was maybe six months after we shipped out of Bonn. A woman six months gone can’t wear a tight gown like she was wearing and not show whether she’s pregnant.”

“Is that what she was wearing? A tight gown?”

“White satin,” Davis said and nodded. “She looked beautiful. A real beauty. Lord knows what she ever saw in Georgie.”

“What do you think she saw in him?”

“Who knows?” Davis shook his head. “It’s a real pity,” he said. “She was a nice lady. And I’ll tell you, Mr. Hope, even though Georgie’s a friend of mine, I wish he fries for this. I wish they strap him in that chair real tight and turn on eight million watts of electricity, and fry him to a crisp.”

I found George Harper’s mother in a storefront Baptist church in the same black section of town. I had been to her house first, and the man who lived next door told me where she might be. Except for her, the church was empty. She sat on a folding chair some three rows back from the altar, her head bent, her hands clasped in prayer. I was reluctant to intrude, but I was there about her son, and my business was urgent.

“Mrs. Harper?” I said.

She looked up, blinked, shook herself out of her reverie, and then seemed surprised to see a white man in a black man’s church.

“I’m Matthew Hope,” I said. “I’m the attorney representing your son.”

She was a woman in her late sixties, I guessed, her complexion as black as her son’s, her face wizened and weary, her eyes studying me with a suspicion bred of centuries of slavery and nurtured by another century of denial, her eyes silently asking why her son couldn’t have found himself a black attorney.

“Yes, Mr. Hope?” she said. Her voice was almost a whisper, an echo of the frail body in the frayed black coat.

“I’d like to talk to you, if I may.”

“Please sit down,” she said.

I sat beside her. Behind the altar, a tall window streamed early afternoon sunlight.

“Mrs. Harper,” I said, “your son is in serious trouble, he’s been accused of murdering his wife.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I want to ask you some questions. Your answers might help us in—”

“I wun’t in Miami when he was here,” she said. “If thass whut you wants t’know, I wun’t here. I was up visitin my sick daughter in Georgia. She’s still sick, but I couldn’t stay away no longer. Not with George spose to’ve done whut they say he done.”

“Do you think he did it, Mrs. Harper?”

“No, sir, I do not. Ain’t a gentler soul alive than my George. Loved that girl to death, wouldn’ta lifted a finger to her ever.”

“Mrs. Harper, your son claims he went to your house on Sunday the—”

“Yes, he did.”

“And was told by a neighbor that you were in Georgia.”

“Thass juss where I was.”

“Which neighbor would that have been?”

“Miz Booth next door.”

“Could I have her full name, please?”

“Alicia Booth.”

“And her address.”

“837 McEwen Road.”

“Did she report to you that your son had been there?”

“She did.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“When I got home.”

“Which was when?”

“Lass Wednesday. Soon’s I learned my boy’d been locked up.”

“She told you he’d been there on Sunday the fifteenth?”

“Thass ezzactly whut she said.”

“I’d like to see her before I go back to Calusa,” I said. “Would you know whether she’ll be home during the day, or does she work?”

“She’s ninety-four years old, an’ she’s blind,” Mrs. Harper said. “You’ll fine her home, I’m sure.”

“Mrs. Harper, from what I understand, your daughter-in-law came here to Miami looking for your son, is that correct? I’m referring now to the time before they were married. This would’ve been approximately a year and a half ago, would you remember?”

“I remember.”

“Did she, in fact, come to see you?”

“She did.”

“When was that, exactly?”

“George got his discharge in January and they was married in June. So this would’ve been in the spring sometime, March or April, sometime in there. I remember she was wearin a coat. It’s unusual you see anybody wearin a coat in Miami, even on the coldest day. But she was wearin one. All bundled up, she was, like she was expectin a blizzard down here.”

“Can you tell me in detail what you remember about that visit?”

As Mrs. Harper remembered it, she had just come home from visiting a friend that day — yes, it had to have been in April because she recalled that she and her friend had been talking about the flower arrangement they planned to put on the church altar on Easter Sunday, this had to be just before Easter sometime. She was putting her hat on the rack in the front hall when she heard someone knocking at the door, and she opened the door and this very beautiful woman was standing there, prettiest young woman she’d ever seen in her entire life, white or black. The woman said her name was Michelle Benois, and she was looking for George Harper, was this where George Harper lived?

Mrs. Harper heard Michelle’s French accent, and surmised she might have been someone George had known overseas, but she wasn’t about to go telling her where she could find her son because she didn’t know but what this was trouble standing here on her doorstep and shivering in what was sixty-degree weather, holding her coat closed tight around her, asking where she might find George Harper. George had moved to Calusa by then, to start his junk business, told his mother he’d make himself a fortune buying and selling junk, fat chance of that happening. But she wouldn’t tell this strange beautiful woman with the French accent where she could find George, not until she’d talked to George at least, which she did by telephone every Saturday, to take advantage of the lower weekend rates. She planned to call George the very next day — she remembered now that this had to be a Friday when Michelle came to the front door because she was planning to call her son the next day, and what she did was call every Saturday — and she would ask him then about whether she’d done the right thing in not telling a stranger where he was living.

Michelle then asked — and this surprised her — if Mrs. Harper knew where she might find a man named Lloyd Davis, who was a friend of George’s and who, Michelle said, she had also met in Bonn. Mrs. Harper was beginning to think now that this was some kind of trouble involving both George and Lloyd, who she knew had been with her son in the MPs over there in Germany, and who she knew when she saw him on the street, but not really to talk to. She didn’t know where Lloyd was living at the time, knew he was married and lived with his wife somewhere in this section of town, but not exactly where, and anyway she wasn’t about to give away Lloyd’s address, even if she had known it, same as she wasn’t about to tell any white woman looking for trouble where she could find George.

“I was polite to her an’ all,” Mrs. Harper said now, “but I tole her to go try the supermarket, or one of the bars, ast them there where Lloyd Davis lived ’cause I juss dinn know.”

“What kind of trouble did you feel she represented?” I asked.

“I dinn know whut kind, Mr. Hope. All I knew was a beautiful young woman showin up on my doorstep in the middle of Niggertown, askin for my son’s whereabouts, an’ that meant trouble, white trouble. Turns out I made a mistake, but I dinn realize that at the time.”

“What kind of mistake?” I asked.

“Well, I dinn know George was in love with her. I dinn know he’d be happy to see her.”

I looked at her.

“When you say ‘happy to see her...’”

“Beside hisself with joy. I called him the next day, you know, Saturday, like I always called him, an’ I tole him this woman named Michelle somethin had stopped by the day before, askin where she could fine him an’ all that. Well, I tell you, I never heard him sound so excited in his life. He kept askin me questions on the phone — how’d Michelle look, whut was she wearin, did she finely cut her hair short the way she said she was gonna do the last time he’d seen her, did she leave a number where he could reach her—”

“Did he say when that might have been?”

“Whut?”

“The last time he’d seen her?”

“No, I don’t recall as he did. But, oh my, he was juss thrilled t’learn she was here in the States. I tole him she’d asked after Lloyd, too, an’ he told me he was gonna call Lloyd soon’s he hung up with me, couldn’t wait to get off the phone, didn’t even ast me how my rheumatism was, which’d been botherin me somethin terrible just then.”

“Do you know whether he called Mr. Davis or not?”

“Well, I spose he did, but that din’t help him none.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dinn actually get t’see her till almost two weeks later, when she showed up in Calusa.”

“Took her two weeks to find him, is that right?”

“Almost.”

“I don’t understand that. Mr. Davis told me he’d given her your son’s address in Calusa.”

“Well, I don’t know. I juss know it wasn’t till two weeks later he called me an’ tole me Michelle was there with him, an’ he’d ast her to marry him, an’ she’d said yes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nice weddin it was, too. Pretty as a picture, she was, a beautiful June bride. White satin gown, I remember. I can tell you, Mr. Hope, I wun’t too keen on the idea of my son marryin a white woman, I knew whut kind of trouble that was askin for. But I guess it turned out all right, leastways I never heard nothin from him to the contrary. Until now, it was all right. Now someone’s gone an’ killed her, an’ they’ve blamed my boy for it, an’ that ain’t right. He couldn’ta killed her, Mr. Hope. He loved her too much.”

I barely caught the 2:30 plane back to Calusa.

I had gone directly from Mrs. Harper’s house to the address she’d given me for her neighbor, Mrs. Booth, and had confirmed there that George Harper had indeed stopped by to see his mother on the Sunday he was supposed to have been there. Since Mrs. Booth was blind, I carefully questioned her about how she had known this was Harper, and elicited the information that she’d known him since he was a tad, and would recognize his voice and his scent anywhere. I had not until that moment known that other humans give off distinct scents to blind people. I thanked her for her time, and left secure in the knowledge that she would make a good witness when it came time to pinpoint Harper’s whereabouts in Miami.

The problem, of course, was not where he had spent the morning hours on Sunday the fifteenth, but rather where he was at eleven forty-five that night, while Michelle was being brutally beaten, and where he’d been on Monday night while she was being murdered in Calusa. I did not get to the county jail until a little before four o’clock. The jailer was not happy to see me; he kept telling me as he led the way to Harper’s cell that I should have called first, this wasn’t a hotel they were running here.

Harper was wearing jailhouse clothing not dissimilar to what he’d been wearing the first time I met him: dark blue trousers, pale blue denim shirt, black socks. In place of the brown, high-topped workman’s shoes, the county had supplied him with black shoes that looked oddly formal in contrast to the rest of his clothing, the kind of highly polished footwear one might have worn to Calusa’s annual Snowflake Ball. He got to his feet the moment the jailer unlocked the cell and let me in. The ceiling seemed too low for him, the walls too confining. I felt again this aura of menace emanating from him, and experienced a chilling sense of fear as I heard the jailer twist the key in the lock behind me. His footfalls retreated down the corridor, clicking on the asphalt-tiled floor. Harper and I were alone together.

“I ast that sum’bitch jailer to call your office for me,” he said angrily. “Three times he called, three times they tole him you was still out of town. Where in hell you been, man? I thought you was spose to be my lawyer.”

“I’ve been in Miami,” I said. “Interviewing people we’ll need as witnesses when this thing comes to trial.”

“Whut people?”

“Lloyd Davis and his wife. Your mother and the woman who lives next door to her, Mrs. Booth.”

“Why’d you go botherin them?”

“To find out if you actually were in Miami when you said you were.”

“I was.”

“I know that now. At least I know where you were for an hour or so. It’s the rest of the time that troubles me.”

“I tole you where I was the ress of the time. Pompano, Vero Beach, an’ then back to—”

“With no witnesses.”

“I dinn know my wife was bein murdered. If I’d known that, I’da made sure I got the names and addresses of anybody I passed on the goddamn street.”

“Where’d you have lunch that Sunday?”

“Pompano.”

“Remember the name of the place?”

“No. Fust time I’d even been to Pompano.”

“How about dinner?”

“Miami.”

“Where?”

“Little diner.”

“Do you remember the name of it?”

“No.”

“How about the location?”

“Downtown someplace.”

“Would you recognize it if you saw it again?”

“Looked just like any other diner.”

“Would you remember what the person who served you looked like?”

“I ate at the counter.”

“What did the counterman look like?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was he a man?”

“I think so.”

“White or black?”

“I don’t remember. I had me a hamburger an’ some fries an’ a Coke. Then I paid the man, an’ left.”

“And went to the beach?”

“Thass right.”

“To sleep.”

“Thass right.”

“And slept on the beach all night long.”

“Thass whut I did.”

“And stayed in Miami all day Monday.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I tole you. I thought Lloyd might come back.”

“Lloyd told me you have other people you do business with in the Miami area.”

“Coupla other people, yes.”

“Did you try to see any of them on Monday?”

“No.”

“Even though you had a truckload of stuff you couldn’t sell to Lloyd?”

“Lloyd wun’t there.”

“I know that. But you didn’t try any of your other customers?”

“Stuff woulda been juss right for Lloyd.”

“Do you normally conduct business on a Sunday?”

“I was sure I’d catch Lloyd there on a Sunday. Weekends are the biggest time for Lloyd.”

“But he wasn’t there.”

“No, he wun’t.”

“You didn’t call him first...”

“No need to. Usually catch him there on a Sunday.”

“You filled your truck with gas on the Saturday before you left, is that right?”

“Thass right.”

“At A&M Exxon, at seven, seven-thirty Saturday morning.”

“Yeah.”

“And you also bought an empty five-gallon gasoline can, and had it filled with gas.”

“I did.”

“By a man named Harry Loomis.”

“Harry sold me the can and filled it for me, right.”

“Was he wearing gloves?”

“Whut?”

“Gloves. Was Mr. Loomis wearing gloves when he handled that can?”

“Why’d a man be wearing gloves here in Calusa?”

“Garage attendants sometimes—”

“I don’t recall as he was wearin any gloves, nossir.”

“Did he wipe off the can before he gave it to you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What’d you do with that can, Mr. Harper?”

“Put it in the back of my truck.”

“Did you take it with you to Miami?”

“Nossir.”

“What’d you do with it?”

“Put it in my garage.”

“Why?”

“Needed it there.”

“For what?”

“My lawn mower.”

“Are you saying that’s why you bought the gas? For your lawn mower?”

“Yessir.”

“What was so urgent about buying gas for your lawn mower on the morning before you were about to leave for Miami?”

“Wun’t nothin urgent, but I was there buyin gas, so I picked me up a new can and had it filled.”

“What happened to the old can?”

“Sprung a leak, had to throw it away.”

“When did you throw it away?”

“When I foun out it was leakin.”

“Was that before you left for Miami?”

“Two, three days before. Leaked gas all over the garage floor, had to wipe it up ’fore it started a fire.”

“Threw it away where?”

“In the garbage.”

“When is the garbage picked up at your house?”

“Mondays and Thursdays.”

“So if this was two or three days before you left for Miami, the old can would’ve been picked up on Thursday.”

“I reckon.”

“And you say you put the new can, filled with gasoline, in your garage that Saturday morning.”

“Thass what I did.”

“Where in the garage?”

“On a shelf there. Over my workbench.”

“You’re positive you didn’t take that can with you to Miami?”

“Positive.”

“Okay, let’s talk about Bonn a little, shall we? That was where you met your wife, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“In a bar there.”

“And began dating her?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And fell in love with her, is that right?”

“Yessir.”

“Then why’d you leave Bonn without even calling her?”

“Whut?”

“Lloyd Davis...”

“I called her ten, twenty times the day before I left. I kept askin her to marry me, she kept...”

He shook his head.

“You asked her to marry you while you were still in Bonn?”

“I did. A hunnerd times. A thousan times.”

“And?”

“She said she needed t’think it over.”

“Which apparently she did.”

“I don’t know whut you mean.”

“I mean three months later she came here looking for you.”

“Thass right.”

“Insisted that you marry her or else she’d go drown herself.”

For the first time since I’d known Harper, he smiled. The smile transformed his face entirely. Nothing could have made him appear handsome or even faintly attractive, but the smile brightened his eyes and changed him from a creature of hulking menace to someone suddenly very human.

“Yeah,” he said, pleased with the memory. “Used t’say that all the time, Michelle. If I wouldn’ta married her, she’da gone drown herself.”

“Any reason for such a threat?”

“Well, it was only jokin, you know.”

“She wasn’t pregnant, was she?”

“Pregnant? Michelle? Nossir, she was not.”

“Had you had sexual relations with her in Bonn?”

“Well, I don’t see as that’s any of your business, Mr. Hope.”

“Maybe it isn’t. But if we’re going to keep you out of the electric chair—”

“I dinn lay a finger on Michelle till after we was married.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Thass the truth. Some kissin, some huggin, but never nothin further’n that. Michelle was a virgin when I married her. Had to teach her like she was a chile. I swear to God, Mr. Hope, wasn’t nothin funny goin on ’tween her an’ me in Bonn.”

“How’d you feel about her and other men?”

“Whut other men? Wasn’t nobody in Michelle’s life but me. She was a proper wife, Mr. Hope. Anybody says otherwise is lyin.”

“But you were very jealous of her, isn’t that true?”

“Had no reason to be jealous. Why would a man be jealous of a wife was proper in every respeck?”

“You never argued with her about what you thought might be improprieties on her—”

“I don’t know whut that word means, impo... whutever you said.”

“You never thought she paid too much attention to other men?”

“Never. ’Cause she didn’t, plain and simple. She loved me, Mr. Hope. Woman who’s crazy ’bout a man don’t go payin ’tention to no—”

“She was still crazy about you after a year and a half of marriage, right?”

“Yessir.”

“No problems, right?”

“Well, it wun’t ezzactly the way it used to be, but...”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you know how it is when two people get married, they...are you married, Mr. Hope?”

“I used to be.”

“Then you know how it is. Things get diff’runt, is all. That don’t mean two people don’t still love each other, it means juss they’s got to work out whutever it is ain’t the same no more.”

“What was it that wasn’t the same?”

“Well, personal little things. Mr. Hope, this ain’t got nothin to do with I’m sposed to’ve killed Michelle. Nothin at all. They wun’t no trouble ’tween us that’d cause me to go killin her. None a’tall.”

“What personal things were wrong between you?”

“Personal means personal. It means you don’t go discussin them with your minister, or with your doctor, or even with your lawyer either.”

“Were they matters that could’ve been discussed with a minister or a doctor?”

“They were personal, Mr. Hope, an’ that’s that, so let’s juss forget it.”

“Okay, let’s talk about your service overseas. You were with the military police, is that right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Were you unusually cruel to anyone you took into custody?”

“Nossir.”

“Did you use your club on drunks?”

“Nossir.”

“Never beat up any soldiers who’d—”

“Never.”

“I’m getting conflicting stories, Mr. Harper.”

“From who?”

“From you, and Sally Owen, and Lloyd Davis. The only thing everybody seems to agree on is that you were in Miami on the morning of Sunday the fifteenth. Aside from that—”

“Thass juss where I was.”

“But aside from that—”

“I don’t know why anybody would want to lie about me an’ Michelle, or whut kinda person she was, or whut kinda person I am. Wun’t nothin wrong with our marriage, we loved each other, we respected each other, an’ anybody says it wun’t that way is a plain and simple liar. Now whut I want to know, Mr. Hope, is why they ain’t lettin me out of here. Thass why I been tryin to reach you all day long while you was in Miami with people who tole you nothin but lies about me an’ Michelle. I want to know whut you doin to get me out of here. That sum’bitch jailer told me this wun’t be comin to trial till maybe January sometime, am I spose to sit here all that time? Why’d you send that peachfuzz kid to the judge with me this mornin? I coulda told you beforehand no judge’d let a kid like that talk him into settin bail for me. When you gonna get me out, man, thass whut I want to know.”

“There’s nothing I can do about getting you out,” I said. “Nothing in the law obligates the court to grant bail. Bail was denied in your case because the court considers the crime a particularly brutal one. That’s why they can put you in the electric chair, Mr. Harper, the fact that the crime was ‘especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.’ I’m quoting directly from the statutes, the aggravating circumstances of the crime are what make it a capital offense. Which is why I’d like you to reconsider everything you just said to me, and if any of it wasn’t the truth—”

“All of it was the truth.”

“Then everybody else is lying. Do you know a man named Luther Jackson?”

“Nossir.”

“He says he saw you on the beach with Michelle the night she was murdered.”

“He’s mistaken.”

“Another liar, right? Sally Owen’s lying, Lloyd Davis is lying, Luther—”

“Maybe they juss ain’t rememberin correctly. Anyway, Sally never did like me, an’ Lloyd’s somebody I mostly do business with. Which reminds me, Mr. Hope. How much, ezzactly, is all this gonna coss me?”

“I haven’t had a chance to discuss it fully with my partner,” I said. “I’ve already told you—”

“Well, I wish you’d do that soon,” Harper said. “Won’t be no sense ’scapin the chair and then havin to work the ress of my life to pay off a bunch of lawyers.”

“Mr. Harper,” I said, “let’s take first things first, okay?”

“Far as I’m concerned, that is the fust thing. An’ I want it put in writin, hear? When you comes to a fee, I want you to put it for me in writin. I don’t want you to go changin it later on.”

“I’ll put it in writing,” I said, and sighed deeply.

“Okay,” Harper said, and nodded.

It occurred to me that a man worrying about legal fees rather than the possible loss of his life was surely a man who was as innocent as the day is long. In which case, why did his version of events differ so strongly from what Lloyd Davis and Sally Owen had—

“You said Sally never liked you. What’s she got against you?”

“Her husband’s a friend of mine. Her ex-husband. When the divorce come about, I took his side. She ain’t never forgive me for it. Never will.”

“Where is he now? Her former husband?”

“Right here in Calusa. Owns a liquor store on Vine and Second, I think it is. Second or Third.”

“Andrew, is it?” I said, trying to remember. “Is his first name Andrew?”

“Andrew Owen, correct.”

“What’s the N in your name stand for?”

“Whut?”

“The N. Your middle initial.”

“Nat. I was named for Nat Turner. Whut’s that got to do with anythin?”

“I hate mysteries,” I said.

It was close to 5:00 P.M. when I got to the liquor store owned and operated by Andrew Owen. He was standing at the cash register when I came in, the drawer open, the shelves behind him lined with rows and rows of whiskey in differing shades of brown. His own shade of brown was a deep mahogany. He was almost as tall as I was, but much heftier, a burly man with huge hands that deftly transferred the cash from the drawer to the countertop, stacking the money there in neat little piles of singles, fives, tens, and occasional twenties. At last, he looked up.

“What’ll it be?” he said. “I’m about to close.”

“My name is Matthew Hope,” I said. “I’m representing—”

“Hope,” he said, and looked at me more closely, and nodded, and came around the counter. He went to the front door, locked it, and then turned a sign hanging there so that the word Closed faced the plate-glass inset. Over his shoulder he said, “I remember you. You’re the lawyer who got Sally that big settlement.”

“Well, not so big,” I said. I was thinking of what my own wife had managed to get from me, under the guidance of that mealymouthed shyster, Eliot McLaughlin.

“The house and three hundred bucks a month is plenty big where I come from,” Owen said, walking back to the counter. “So what’s it this time? Is she starting up again? I make my payments each and every month, right on the dot. What’s she—”

“This has nothing to do with the divorce settlement.”

“Then what?”

“Your friend George Harper has been accused of murdering his wife. I’m the attorney—”

“Yeah, I saw that on television,” Owen said.

“I’m representing him.”

“I suppose he could do worse. After what you got for Sally, maybe you won’t do so bad by George.”

“He is a friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“I guess you might call him that.”

“What would you call him?”

“A friend, sure.”

“How good a friend?”

“So-so. We used to go fishing a lot together. He was nice to me when all that shit with Sally started. Is that a good friend? I guess. Who knows? We sort of lost touch lately, but I guess we used to be good friends.”

“What happened to change the friendship?”

“Nothing. Who says it changed? He’s still my friend, okay? It’s just that people drift, man, they drift.”

“What kind of support did he give you during the divorce?”

“Shoulder to cry on,” Owen said.

They were the exact words his former wife had used in describing her relationship with Michelle.

“Can you go into that?”

“Sure, why not? I wish you’d asked me this at the time of the divorce, though, I might’ve come out of it with something more than the shirt on my back. I loved Sally a lot. She wanted the divorce, I didn’t. I cried to George about it, and George listened. He was a good listener, George. A friend in need.”

“This was when?”

“Almost a year ago to the day. You handled the divorce for her, don’t you remember when it was?”

“I was trying to... she’d have been friends with Michelle by then, isn’t that so?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Good friends?”

“I suppose.”

“Good enough for Michelle to have confided in?”

“Man, I had troubles enough of my own without wondering whether Michelle was confiding in my wife.”

Someone rattled the front doorknob.

“We’re closed!” Owen shouted. “Read the sign! It says closed!” He shook his head, and said, “Damn winos wait till the last minute to get what they need. The sign says closed, what’s he shaking the doorknob for?” He looked to the front door again, and again shouted, “We’re closed! Go home! Get lost!” He shook his head again, said, “Damn winos” under his breath, and then said, “Anyway, that’s the story.”

“Did Harper ever discuss Michelle with you?”

“No.”

“Did he seem like a jealous person to you?”

“No.”

“How’d she behave when other men were around?”

“Fine.”

“Ever flirt with any of them?”

“No.”

“Ever see them argue in public?”

“No.”

“Ever come home and find her in tears in your house? Talking to your wife?”

“No.”

“What’d Harper talk about on those fishing trips?”

“They weren’t trips. We’d go over to the bridge and fish from there.”

“At night?”

“At night, usually. Sometimes on weekends. Wouldn’t be a bridge, would it, unless half a dozen niggers were fishing from it.”

He waited for my reaction, and seemed disappointed when my face registered nothing.

“So what’d you talk about while you were fishing?”

“Is this before the divorce started or afterward?”

“Before.”

“Everything under the sun. Most talkative guy I ever met in my life, George. He’d bend my ear all night long. Army stories, stories about his business, things that happened when he was growing up in Miami, everything. Nonstop talker.”

“That wasn’t your wife’s impression of him.”

“Well, that’s what he was. Mr. Big-Mouth himself. Listen, Sally is the most fucked-up woman in the universe, her impressions of things aren’t always too accurate, you follow me? The only thing that interests Sally is her own little self and the two inches of vertical real estate between her legs. George Harper could’ve conducted a four-day filibuster in the Senate and Sally wouldn’t have noticed. All Sally cares about is Sally, period.”

“Yet she seemed to be concerned enough about Michelle to have listened to her whenever she came to the house with—”

“The black woman’s burden,” Owen said, and again studied my face for a reaction.

“Well, it must have been difficult for Michelle, don’t you think?” I said. “A foreigner. A white woman married to a black man. She couldn’t have had too many friends in Calusa...”

“I never heard anything about any difficulties Michelle was having. I don’t know what bullshit Sally gave you, but I wouldn’t trust anything she said. Did she come on with you?”

“No. Not that I was aware of.”

“Didn’t cross her legs so her skirt rode halfway up her ass?”

“No.”

“Didn’t shake her tits in your face?”

“No.”

“She must be getting old,” Owen said.

“What’s your impression of Lloyd Davis?” I asked.

“Who’s Lloyd Davis?”

“I thought you might’ve met him. He was best man at Harper’s wedding...”

“I wasn’t there.”

“And apparently he saw the Harpers socially on several occasions.”

“Oh, yeah, Davis. Big black nigger like me, right?”

I said nothing.

“I remember him now,” Owen said, and smiled as though he had won some sort of secret victory.

“Tell me a little more about Harper,” I said.

“What do you want to know?” Owen said, and sighed. “It’s been a long day, man, I want to get home.”

“Does he seem like a violent person to you?”

“No. Just the opposite. Gentle as can be. Used to bother him to have to take a hook from a fish’s mouth. Used to say fish had feelings, same as us.”

“Do you think he killed his wife?”

“Never in a million years.”

My partner Frank was still in the office when I got there at a little past six. He had not liked the deal I’d made with Willoughby, and he still didn’t like it.

“We’re supposed to be partners,” he said. “You had no right to go to him behind my back.”

“I had no intention of deceiving you,” I said.

“No? But without consulting me, you go to a little prick whose vendetta complex is well known in Calusa, and you make a deal with him that requires you to do all the shit work while he sits back and takes all the glory if he manages to win this case, which I doubt even he can do for a man as guilty as Harper seems to be.”

“I’m not convinced of his guilt.”

“Who’s supposed to absorb our loss, Matthew?”

“What loss?”

“The loss we’ll incur while you run all over town doing Willoughby’s work for him. The loss of your time, Matthew, the loss we’ve already incurred while you were off in Miami today, out of the office all day long with the phones going like sixty. To quote Abraham Lincoln, ‘A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.’ Our time is what we sell here at Summerville and Hope, Matthew, your time and my time, that is what we get paid for here. Now if you can explain to me how the loss of the revenue your time would normally generate if you hadn’t become obsessed with—”

“I’m not obsessed, Frank.”

“What do you call it then?”

“Look,” I said, “I don’t want to talk about this, okay? If it’s bothering you so much, I’ll waive my draw for however long it takes to—”

“And that’s not obsession, huh?”

“Whatever the fuck it is, let’s not talk about it any more, okay?”

“Okay, fine,” Frank said. “I’m going home. Will you grace us with your presence tomorrow morning, or are there other pressing matters that will necessitate your being away?”

“I plan to be here,” I said.

“I feel honored. If you have a moment, you might take a look at the stack of messages Cynthia piled on your desk. Good night, Matthew,” he said.

It occurred to me as he went out that in all the years we’d been practicing together we had never before that moment had an argument of any real substance. I went into my own office and found the promised stack of messages Cynthia had left on my desk. I pulled my briefcase out from under the kneehole and unceremoniously dumped all the messages into it. They would wait till I got home; tomorrow was another day. But there was one thing I wanted to check before I left.

In the cabinets lining Cynthia’s receptionist cubbyhole, I located the file I wanted, and then carried it back into my own office. It was beginning to get very dark. I snapped on the desk lamp, and then opened the bottom drawer and pulled out the whiskey bottle I kept there on reserve for clients who became overly distraught, as some clients were wont to do while pouring out their complaints to me. Rarely did I ever touch a drop of whiskey in the law offices of Summerville and Hope, preferring instead to imbibe on my own time, leisurely and hardly ever to excess, although my former wife Susan’s constant complaint had been that Beefeater martinis made me “fuzzy and furry and slurry” (her exact words) whenever I had more than one of them. In fact, and with all due respect for Susan’s judgment, it was Susan herself who’d made me fuzzy and furry and slurry. From the bottom drawer, I pulled out one of the clean glasses Cynthia always kept in readiness for impending hysterical outbursts, poured myself two fingers of Scotch, and then opened Sally Owen’s divorce file.

She had come to us in October last year, complaining that her husband, Andrew N. Owen (another N, I thought; what is it this time — Nicholas, Norris, Newton, Nathaniel?), had deserted her and had taken up residence with a woman named Kitty Reynolds, who at the time was living in an apartment on Lucy’s Key, over the boutique she ran in the exclusive Lucy’s Circle shopping complex. The woman Sally claimed had stolen her husband was described as a white thirty-five-year-old blonde.

I closed the file.

I felt suddenly weary.