Turning Angel

Chapter 18

The First Baptist Church is a massive monument to the Southern Baptist sensibility. Built on forty-eight acres of pristine meadow sold by the devout owner of the antebellum mansion next door, the towering church complex manages to look both smug and sober at the same time. Today it’s quiet, but usually the grounds echo with the screams of basketball from the church’s gymnasium or the crack of softballs from the emerald diamonds in back.

I’m parked by a bronze bell in the front parking lot, waiting for Sonny Cross to arrive. Like so many parts of Natchez, the contrasts here are stark. On this side of the highway stands Devereaux, a nationally famous gem of Greek Revival architecture surrounded by oaks shrouded in Spanish moss. On the other side sit an aging Pizza Hut restaurant, a Coca-Cola bottling plant, and somewhere in the clapboard houses behind them the fossilized shell of the Armstrong Tire plant, once one of the most powerful economic engines in the city.

Sonny Cross’s Ford Explorer turns into the entrance of the church’s broad drive. As I watch him approach, I recall visiting the Coke plant as a child. Its interior was a cavernous, open space filled with rattling, clanking machinery. The most awe-inspiring contraption in the place pulled empty green bottles along a conveyor belt, jetted ten ounces of fizzing, caramel-colored elixir into each bottle, then sealed each one with a silver cap. I could have watched that machine for hours. The icy Coke I was handed as I left that building was the best-tasting drink I ever had in my life. But that place exists only in my memory now. Today that Coca-Cola building bottles nothing. It merely serves as a hub from which trucks distribute cases of aluminum cans throughout what remains of the city I remember. We don’t make anything anymore.

”Hey,“ Sonny calls from the window of his Explorer. ”I only got a couple of minutes. You hear there’s an emergency school board meeting tonight?“

The drug agent has light blue eyes, a blond mustache, and a mullet hairstyle that belongs onstage with Lynyrd Skynyrd. Cross seems to fancy himself a sort of Miami Vice cowboy, favoring snakeskin boots and turquoise jewelry.

”I heard about it,“ I confirm.

”You gonna be there?“

”Unless you tell me I shouldn’t.“

”No, you should. The deadheads who’ve been asleep at the switch all this time are finally calling me about Marko Bakic.“

”Let me guess. Bill Sims.“

”He’s one of them.“

”What does Mike Pinella getting beat up at Brightside Manor have to do with St. Stephen’s?“

”Maybe nothing,“ says Sonny, his face hardening in anger. ”Or maybe a lot. This past October, Mike started getting into pot. He’d never tried it before, but since all his friends suddenly decided weed was the thing to do, Mike went along. He got steadily deeper into it, but the deeper he got, the more unhappy he got. He’s a Catholic kid, and he had a lot of guilt. Still, he went to that X-rave two nights ago where Marko shot off all the fireworks.“

”At the lake,“ I murmur, orienting myself.

”Right. Anyway, Mike grew up downtown, on the same block with another kid you know a lot better.“

”Who’s that?“

”Chris Vogel.“

The boy who drowned in Lake St. John last night…

”When Vogel drowned, something snapped in Mike. I know this kid pretty well, okay? His younger brother is friends with my oldest son, and I worked for his dad a couple of summers out of high school. So, after Mike heard Vogel drowned, he called me up. He told me he was really upset, and he didn’t want to see anybody else get hurt. He said he knew where Chris had got the acid that killed him. He told me he was willing to testify against the guy who sold it or set him up for a bust, whichever I wanted. He just needed to get some things straight before he told me what he knew. I pressed him, but he wouldn’t budge on that. That was this morning, Penn.“ Sonny takes a deep breath. ”Now he’s lying in the ICU at the hospital. His jaw’s broken, his hands, too. He can’t tell me what he knows, and he couldn’t write it down either, as hard as he tried. I sat there watching tears roll down that boy’s face while he struggled to do it.“

The reality of this is difficult for me to accept. What could the skinny kid I remember from that play have to do with drug dealers? But of course that’s all too easy to answer. It’s my heart that won’t accept it. It’s something I’d rather not believe could happen in Natchez. ”Who beat him up, Sonny? Cyrus’s people?“

”Had to be.“ Cross is clenching his side-view mirror so hard that his knuckles are bone white. He doesn’t even seem aware that he’s doing it.

”Didn’t you tell me you thought it was Marko who supplied the drugs for the lake party?“

Sonny nods.

”Do you still feel that way? Or do you think it was Cyrus?“

”When you get right down to it, is there any difference?“

”From the school’s point of view, there’s a big difference. From Mike Pinella’s? None.“

”I try to go by the letter of the law,“ Sonny says quietly. ”But sometimes…in this business…I just want to fuck somebody up. You know?“

”I know. When I was an assistant D.A. in Houston, I saw things nobody should ever see. And I dealt with cops who saw a lot worse than I did on a daily basis. Sometimes I wanted to pick up a gun and go out there myself. But you can’t do that.“

Sonny fixes me with a no-bullshit stare. ”The way I heard it, you have done that. And more than once.“

”Only in defense of my family,“ I say softly. ”That’s where I draw the line.“

He looks away for a while, seemingly at the church steeple, then turns back to me. ”How do you define ‘family’? Because I’m not Mike’s biological father, I don’t have a responsibility to protect him?“

”You can’t protect Mike now. He’s already been hurt.“

”And the others like him? They’re part of this community, Penn. Part of this town we call ours. Those kids aren’t family?“

”They are. But you can’t do whatever it is you’re thinking about doing. That’s a tribal reaction, Sonny. I’ve felt it myself. Drew’s walking the same razor’s edge you are. He’d like to break out of jail and take Cyrus White apart piece by piece. But you can’t give into that urge. Not yet, anyway. Give the law a chance to work.“

Sonny’s mouth wrinkles with contempt. ”You talking about Shad Johnson?“

”Yes. And Sheriff Byrd and Chief Logan.“

The drug agent hawks and spits on the asphalt. ”That’s what I think of Sheriff Byrd these past couple years, and I work for the man.“

”I don’t know what to tell you, Sonny. You’re part of the system. Make it work. But please, anything you find out about Marko, pass it on to me before tonight’s meeting. Six p.m.“

Sonny pulls a tin of Skoal from his shirt pocket, dips his thumb and forefinger into the snuff, then packs it between his lower lip and gum. ”I got some things working,“ he says, putting the Explorer in gear. ”I’ll let you know something, one way or another.“

”What do you have working?“ I ask anxiously.

He winks and grins. ”Don’t ask, don’t tell, right? Later, bud.“

The Explorer’s tires squeal as Sonny skids around the silent bell and roars back toward the highway.

The early afternoon passed without surprises. Shad Johnson cussed out the chief of police for arresting Drew, but he did nothing else about it. The whereabouts of Cyrus White remained unknown. My father spoke to Quentin Avery, but the famed civil rights lawyer did not promise anything beyond ”giving some thought to your son’s situation.“ I picked up Annie from school at three and drove her to softball practice at Liberty Park. I often stay and watch her practices, when I’m not drafted into coaching myself.

She’s hitting well today, but her fielding is less than spectacular. The coach ends practice early for some reason, and Annie walks over with a dejected expression on her face. I’m about to console her when my cell phone rings. The ID says it’s my father.

”Hey, Dad. What’s up?“

”Quentin Avery just called me.“

A fillip of excitement runs through me. ”Yeah?“

”He says he’s bringing a lawyer by my office, one who’d be perfect for defending Drew. He wants you to meet him. Can you get away?“

”Hell, yes. What time?“

”Daddy, you’re cursing again,“ Annie reminds me.

I smile and tug on her ponytail. ”What time?“

”Now. Quentin already had an appointment to get his foot checked, so I guess he figured he’d kill two birds with one stone.“

”Who’s the lawyer?“

”He didn’t say.“

”Okay, fine. I’m on my way. I just have to drop Annie off.“

”Was that Papa?“ Annie asks when I hang up.

”How did you know?“

”By the way you talk to him. It’s different than when you talk to me.“

Annie has more intuition than I ever did. ”You’re just like your mother, girl.“

All the humor goes out of her face. ”Am I really?“

”You are. Just like her.“

After we get in the car and start toward the highway, Annie says, ”You and Caitlin haven’t been talking much lately, have you?“

”No. She’s pretty busy up in Boston.“

Annie mulls this over. ”It sure seems like it. But I thought she’d come down and visit us more often.“

”I did, too, punkin. So did Caitlin. Work is something adults don’t have a lot of choice about sometimes.“ Although in this case that’s not true.

”Can I ask you something personal, Daddy?“

”Sure, Boo.“

”Is Mia too young for you?“

The question leaves me speechless.

”I mean, I know she is,“ Annie goes on, ”but she seems really mature for her age, and I really like her a lot. She doesn’t seem at all like the other high school kids, you know? She reads the same kind of books you do, and she’s really pretty, and-“

”Annie.“

My daughter’s eyes go wide, as though she’s hoping for good news but expecting bad.

I reach over and squeeze her hand. ”Mia’s got a lot to do before it’s time for her to settle down, baby. She has to go to college and figure out what she’s going to do with her life. Just like you will in about ten years.“

”Nine years,“ Annie corrects. ”I’ll be eighteen in nine years. I just thought she’d be a cool mom, that’s all. For somebody, you know?“

”I think you’re right.“ I lean over and hug her to my chest so she can’t see the tears welling in my eyes. My daughter so desperately needs a maternal figure, and I have failed to provide one. Right now-for the first time, really-I feel true anger at Caitlin for spending so much time away. I don’t think she was honest with me or with herself when she took her latest ”temporary“ assignment.

”I need to run down to Papa’s office for a while, Boo. I’ll see if I can get Mia to sit, okay?“

”Okay,“ she says in a bored voice, as though seeing Mia holds no excitement whatever.

I take out my cell phone and speed-dial Mia’s number.