Ciji Ware (57 page)

“Sorry to disturb you, Ace,” King’s voice said gruffly. “Don’t worry. This is purely a business call.”

Corlis sat up in bed, uncertain whether to be relieved that King was following the rules she had set down, or upset that he sounded so cool and detached. She hadn’t seen or even heard about what he was doing in more than a week.

“What’s up?” she asked cautiously.

“We’ve just gotten word that the good Mr. Jeffries is planning a little demolition derby about three this morning. I thought WJAZ might be interested in covering it.”

“How do you know this?” Corlis demanded.

“Can’t reveal my sources,” King shot back. “But trust me, Ace. There’ll be lots of dramatic pictures of big ol’ bulldozers doing their thing.”

“And what do
you
plan to do?”

“Some friends of mine and I plan to lie down and catch a little shut-eye… at various spots around the 600 block of Canal Street.”

Corlis leaped out of bed and began to shed her nightclothes as she stood holding the receiver to her ear. “I’m on my way! I’ll get a hold of Manny and Virgil—”

“Already did that,” King interrupted.

“You did
what
?”
Corlis countered indignantly.

“This is war,” King declared in a chilly tone of voice.

“Yeah… but Virgil, Manny, and I are the war
correspondents
—we’re not the combatants, and you can’t order us to the front unless I say so!” By this time she was really steamed and was glaring at the telephone. “Don’t you get it, Mr. Preservation? WJAZ is not your private PR department. You and I have different
functions
!”

“Yeah… Well, get that good-looking derriere of yours in gear, and start functioning as a reporter! Gotta go.”

And with that the line went dead.

Corlis called Virgil on his cell phone and directed him to meet her on Common Street behind the Selwyn buildings to avoid being seen by anyone on Canal Street. She wanted the trio to remain inconspicuous until they were geared up and ready to go.

At ten minutes to three on this early May morning, the neighborhood of three- and four-story buildings was silent except for the Saddlery restaurant where patrons at the all-night bar were still whooping it up. Corlis gazed up and down the street and began to wonder if King had been pulling a practical joke.

Without warning, Chris Calvert, King’s teaching assistant, sprinted around the corner and dashed through the entrance to the restaurant, looking for all the world like Paul Revere shouting, “The British are coming! The British are coming!”

“This is it!” Corlis shouted. “Let’s move it! Start rolling
now
!”

They entered the restaurant in time to capture the last of Calvert’s announcement made to some very familiar faces that were clustered around the bar.

“They’ve just about finished unloading the heavy equipment,” Calvert declared, panting for breath. “I think it’s time we get going!”

King leaped up onto the bar and surveyed the group of some thirty preservation stalwarts, plus Cindy Lou Mallory, who wore a pair of crisply pressed blue jeans, a white silk blouse, and a stunning, squash-blossom turquoise Navajo necklace. Everything about her soigné appearance shouted “par-tee!”

“All right, everybody!” King bellowed. “Settle down!” He flashed a smile of recognition at Corlis. “Y’all have your stations and assignments?”

“Yes!” they shouted.

“Then let’s move on
out
!
Go! Go!
Go
!”

Like a well-trained battalion—with King serving as their marine drill sergeant—men and women of various ages filed briskly out of the restaurant.

“Stick with Duvallon,” Corlis shouted hoarsely amidst the hubbub. “I’m guessing he’s going to lie down in front of the bulldozers at the main entrance of the building.”

“Right!” Virgil shouted back. “Just follow me.”

Canal Street had been transformed into a stage for a modern enactment of a medieval passion play. Large work lights were positioned near generators that had been parked opposite the aluminum facade obscuring the Greek Revival structures. A gigantic crane with a wrecker’s ball was poised near the front entrance. The metal monster was flanked by two enormous yellow bulldozers, fifty feet distant on either side.

With amazing precision, King’s preservation guerrillas fanned out in front of the demolition equipment, their large placards declaring: “Save Our Selwyns!” and “Free People of Color, Unite!” along with one that said “Jeffries Industries Do It Illegally.” The silent protesters stood with their backs to the woven metal screen and squinted into the blinding work lights. Corlis noted that Cindy Lou picked a spot that was five or six volunteers away from where King was standing directly under the twenty-foot-high metal letter
S
.

A sleek black late-model Lincoln Town Car pulled up near one of the bulldozers, and a barrel-chested man got out of the backseat. The expression on Grover Jeffries’s face revealed his surprise—and wrath—at the sight of King Duvallon and his band of protesters.

“You’d better clear off, Duvallon,” Grover shouted furiously, “ ’cause I own these buildings, and my men have orders to pull ’em down—
now
!”

“This is an illegal action,” King yelled into a battery-powered megaphone, his own rage barely contained. “These buildings are in a landmarked historic district! The city council has not voted yet—”

“Fuck the city council!” Jeffries said. “They’re just a bunch of pussies. Payin’ the fines they’re gonna assess me for pullin’ these eyesores down is just the cost of doin’ business, boy! This is
my
property, and I can do whatever I damn well
want
with it, so clear out, or y’all are gonna get run over—and I sure as hell ain’t payin’ your hospital bills, I can tell you that! You were
warned
!”
He waved his right arm over his head to signal the bulldozer crews should begin moving toward the buildings.

Corlis banged her microphone into Virgil’s shoulders, their signal she wanted a tight close-up.

The cameraman hissed. “I got it. I
got
it, boss! You’ll see the guy’s tonsils flapping in the shot!”

The sound of the behemoths’ engines revving up was deafening. Several other news vans drew up behind Grover’s car, and their camera crews tumbled out, scrambling for position. Virgil, Manny, and Corlis had already taken places between the bulldozer on the right and the crane with its heavy wrecking ball suspended from an enormous chain.

Grover Jeffries glared at the assorted members of the media and waved a piece of paper clutched in his hands. He seemed on the verge of an apoplectic fit.

“I
own
these goddamn derelicts!” he cried. “This is my
deed
!
I’m doin’ the public a service pullin’ ’em down and not costin’ the taxpayers money while pussy preservationists like
him
—” He jabbed a trembling finger at King Duvallon. “Un-American guys like
him
, here, delay and maneuver and use the law to twist the meanin’ of the goddamn Constitution that’s supposed to
protect
private property!”

However, the cameras were ignoring the furious developer except to record audio of his expletive-laced tirade. Instead, all lenses focused on the line of protesters that stood defiantly in the glaring lights with backs pressed symbolically against the aluminum-shrouded wall and arms waving protest signs. Corlis knew instinctively that Grover Jeffries had no idea what a bonanza he was handing his adversaries. It was going to be page one in the
Times-Picayune
and the top of the newscast at WJAZ and everywhere else, possibly even the national morning news shows.

“Do it!” Grover screamed at his work crew. “Do
it
,
goddamn it! Take ’em down!” Jeffries signaled emphatically to the bulldozer operator on the right. “Take out the front door and that big ol’
S
first!”

The engines shifted from idle gears into a roaring wall of sound. Black diesel smoke billowed out, jettisoning choking fumes toward Jeffries, the television crews, and Corlis and her colleagues. The bulldozer nearest her began to inch forward, crossing in front of the wrecking ball, creeping closer and closer to the spot where King had taken up his protective post.

Twenty feet distant, the second bulldozer did likewise, inching toward a stunned-looking Cindy Lou Mallory. The closer the bulldozer approached, the more horrified Cindy Lou’s pretty features became.

Corlis tapped Virgil on the shoulder and shouted, “Get the redhead! Get the redhead!” Just at that moment Cindy Lou looked desperately to the right and left at her stationary colleagues. She bolted like a startled gazelle, running past the lumbering bulldozer and disappearing in the darkness beyond the perimeter of lights. With great aplomb Chris Calvert moved over five feet and immediately took Cindy Lou’s place. The others adjusted themselves in similar fashion. She wasn’t even missed.

Meanwhile, King was still standing under the
S
like a defender of the Alamo as a bulldozer bore down on his section of the human chain.

In an adrenaline rush Corlis screamed at Virgil over the roar of the mammoth engines. “From now on, stick with Duvallon,
no matter what
!”

She stared at the unfolding drama as if she were viewing a film one frame at a time. The enormous piece of equipment drew closer… and closer… yet King didn’t flinch. Closer and closer, until the gigantic scoop was only three feet away. The man showed no sign of blinking first.

“Preservation chicken…” Corlis muttered to no one in particular as she and Virgil took a step toward where King stood, rooted to his spot.

And still the bulldozer advanced.

Corlis arched her neck to stare into the cab of the giant machine and suddenly locked glances with the burly driver. Shoulder to shoulder with Virgil, who now had both King and the front of the bulldozer in his viewfinder, Corlis kept her eyes glued to the operator, unable to watch the front of the machine roll ever closer to King.

Then suddenly she heard one engine conk out.

The bulldozer nearest King had shut down.

Astonished, Corlis turned just in time to watch the other heavy equipment operator lean forward and turn the ignition key, silencing his roaring beast as well.

Grover Jeffries glared first at one of his employees, then at the other. Finally the engine of the giant crane with the wrecking ball dangling from a chain also went silent. The crane operator pointed to the giant
S
on the building in front of him and said, “We’re not pullin’ anything down tonight, Mr. Jeffries.” He gestured in the direction of Corlis and her crew. “Everybody in the world sees I do that, somebody gets hurt, and the city’ll pull my license and cancel it—forever. I’ll be out of business. Sorry, sir, but this is a no-go.”

Grover Jeffries remained silent then slowly shook his fist at King before turning abruptly on his heel. He stormed to the side of his waiting vehicle and yanked open the back door of the luxury car. Within seconds his driver sped away from the curb, the taillights receding until the red pinpoints disappeared down a darkened side street.

King was the first to start clapping and yipping like a coyote on a moonlit night. Soon Chris Calvert and the rest of the protesters joined in until they were transformed into a rollicking mass of cheering humanity—with King in the center, accepting everyone’s hearty congratulations.

Everyone, of course, except Corlis McCullough and Cindy Lou Mallory. Miss Mallory was nowhere to be seen. Corlis, on the other hand, calmly walked around the corner and then sprinted toward her car in hopes of beating her television crew back to WJAZ. She and the editor worked until the sun came up to get the high-octane drama on the morning news.

***

“Can you magnify the close-up of Grover’s desk?” Corlis asked of Sam Lombardo, the video editor.

“Yeah… gimme a sec,” Sam replied, tapping console keys in the tiny, darkened editing bay. To relieve the closeness in the small room, Corlis opened the sliding glass doors behind them, allowing air in from the office corridor.

She looked at her watch. She’d been up for almost twenty-four hours straight. Early in the day she and Lombardo had put together “Demolition Derby,” as the story of the early morning fracas on Canal Street had been slugged on the show rundown for the morning and noon news broadcasts. She’d done additional interviews with city officials during the day concerning the implications of Jeffries’s patently illegal action to demolish the Selwyn buildings without a permit, then repackaged a longer version of the story that had run on last evening’s news magazine program. Now Corlis was intent on reviewing all the video that Virgil had shot inside Grover’s office on the night of the Jeffries’s masked ball.