At seven a.m. the door to the restaurant opened and James T. James walked to the table where Sandhill was scratching on a tablet. Sandhill’s gaze started at green alligator loafers, ran up the skyblue sharkskin slacks and over the pink silken shirt with a ruffled button line. It ended at wary eyes above a hard cosmetic smile.
Sandhill said, “You’re one of the Temptations, right?”
James’s grin disappeared and he angled his head to look down his nose. “You know who I is. Who you, man?”
“I’m the Gumbo King.”
James raised an eyebrow at the spiky crown. “I hate to tell you this, King, but somebody been cutting on your fez.”
Sandhill’s boot pushed out the chair across from him. “Set a spell, Mr James.”
James slowly lowered himself. “What you want
from me so muthafuckin’ impo’tant I got to drive down here and look at you?”
“It’s nice to see you, too.” Sandhill nodded to the carafe and second cup on the table. “Coffee?”
James ignored the overture. “An’ why you got that other crazy-ass guy using threats about tellin’ stuff to my sister to get me here? She don’t need to know nothing about what I did in Mo-bile. Bad on her heart. What you got against a nice old lady’s heart?”
“I’ll cut to the chase, Mr James. I need your observational skills.”
James found his grin again. He reached for the coffee, poured a cup, sipped, then crossed his arms and leaned the chair back on its legs.
“You need me, huh? So what’m I getting paid for this gig, leasing you my skills?”
Sandhill pulled his badge wallet from his vest and flipped it open. He set it in front of James like a talisman.
“Your ass stays out of jail today, Gentleman Jim. How’s that for a down payment?”
Jacy heard the door to the World open and the Minute Hour came down again. He had a little TV set and a short-leg table. She scooted back on the cot and watched silently as he set the TV on the table and plugged it in. Then he tied wires behind it and left. The television showed dancing sparkles. Jacy watched, thinking a show would come on.
When nothing happened, she began reading. The book was about the once-upon-a-time days when kings and knights were everywhere and saved m’ladies and people in trouble. It made her think of the Gumbo King. She wondered if he was looking for her, like Aunt Nike would be doing.
Or did he forget her?
No. The Gumbo King would be looking everywhere. It was his way. But could he see her deep under the ground, in a metal cave built by the Minute Hour?
She shivered and felt her eyes fill with water until caught by movement on the TV. The Minute Hour was sitting on a couch. He’d combed his hair and had on clothes like for church, a white shirt and those pants with edges.
The Minute Hour waved. Jacy didn’t know what else to do, so she waved back.
Something seemed different.
Sandhill and James surveilled the morning shift change at MPD headquarters from a half-block distant, binoculars lifted as cops and support staff streamed through the doors. James scanned the crowd. “It’s hard looking, man. They all crossing back and forth in front of one another. I be having cop nightmares for a month.”
“Eyes see better when mouths are shut. Concentrate on the suits, not the uniforms.”
After fifteen minutes, Sandhill hadn’t seen Squill or Bidwell or several of the top honchos,
and suspected they’d been summoned to an early-morning planning session. Still, bodies continued to trickle inside, and the pair focused on each face in turn, Jones grunting,
No…huh-uh…not the one…man, he a ugly mutha, ain’t he…not him…
The trickle dried up. “What you want me observatin’ at now?” James said. “Them newspaper boxes over there?”
“Let’s bag it,” Sandhill said. “I knew this was too long a shot.”
He saw an opening in the traffic, and squealed into the lane. Passing the building, James twisted 180 degrees in his seat. “Yo, that’s sorta like the guy,” James said. “Just coming ‘round the corner, gray suit.
Ugly
gray suit.”
Sandhill jabbed the brakes and heard a blast of air horn, a truck grille filling his rear-view. He was surrounded by traffic with nowhere to pull over.
James said, “He’s almost inside. Whip it around, man.”
Heart hammering, Sandhill turned at the next side street and doubled back, crawling past the station at five miles an hour, oblivious to the horns behind him.
“See him anywhere?” Sandhill said.
“Gone like dust in the rain, King. Must be inside.”
Sandhill turned the corner by the parking lot and stopped. “What’d he look like?”
James studied a gray-suited figure a half-block away, pulling a paper from a
Mobile Press-Register
box. “Hey, there he is.”
“It’s the guy who paid you?” Sandhill asked.
“It was night. The guy looked kinda like that. I’m not full sure.”
Sandhill aimed his binoculars at the distant figure. Grunted.
“You know the guy?” James said.
Sandhill lowered the glasses. “We’ve met a time or two.”
Jacy grew tired with reading and set the books on the floor. The picture on the TV was showing the empty couch. Then, like knowing she was watching, the Minute Hour walked into the TV picture and sat. He was drinking from a straw in a big cup.
“Can you hear me, Jacy?”
Jacy looked at the camera eye, knowing it was how she looked at the Minute Hour. She nodded.
“I’m sorry I frightened you before, Jacy. I didn’t mean to. Do you like the books I brought?”
“Some are for little kids. But I like…” Jacy held up her favorites and the Minute Hour nodded. His eyes looked away, then back.
“Jacy? You get scared when I come to visit, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I have to bring your food. And empty the toilet.”
Jacy said, “It’s when you look at me I get the most scared.”
The Minute Hour made a sad face; Jacy was learning it had a bunch of them, like different colors of sad. He said, “Am I ugly? Do I look like a monster?”
“Aunt Nike says nobody’s ugly. Everybody got somewhere pretty inside them. You got to look for it.”
“Everybody has pretty in them? Your aunt says that?”
“She said she learned it from my mama.”
“Where’s your mama at, Jacy?”
“She got sick and the sick took her away to heaven.”
“Do you miss your mama, Jacy?”
“Mostly not. Sometimes it’s all I can think about. My Aunt Nike says Mama’s always with me. Even if I can’t see her, she’s there to help me.”
“Do you really believe that, Jacy? About your mama?”
“Through and through.”
“How about your daddy?”
“I don’t remember him at all, not even shadows.”
“Do you get scared your mama isn’t around to help you? Not now, but every day?”
“I have Aunt Nike and Miss Marie and the Gumbo King.”
Jacy watched the Minute Hour set the cup on
the floor. He put his face in his hands and was quiet a long time before looking back at her.
“I’m scared all the time, Jacy. I’m scared to death.”
“What are you scared about?”
The Minute Hour did another sad face; sad with its eyes closed. “I’m scared about me, Jacy. I’m scared I don’t have any pretty place inside. Just ugly.”
Jacy heard the sound of a door come through the TV. She watched as the Picture Man showed up in the TV. He was laughing.
“Having our little fantasy hour are we, Rose? Why the hell you dressed like that?”
“Shut up, Tru. Go away.”
The Picture Man’s face filled Jacy’s TV screen. He said, “What’s this doing here? What are you up to?”
The Minute Hour stood. “Leave that alone.”
“Double cameras? Hah! That’s funny. She watch you pull your peter?”
Jacy saw the Minute Hour jam the cup into the Picture Man’s face, foamy white drink splashing all over. The Picture Man tried to slap at the Minute Hour but couldn’t reach past his arms. Then they weren’t on TV any more and there was a bunch of hollering and thumping. Jacy heard the Picture Man yell, “
Enjoy it while you can, asshole
,” and “
One more day
,” and the TV turned off.
One more day until I go home? Jacy wondered.
Ryder plucked a volume from Sandhill’s shelf:
Advanced Forensic Techniques.
He opened it, saw a color plate of a body splayed open, and slid it back into place. He turned to Sandhill, sitting at the table in the apartment’s dining area.
“So what does it mean, Sandhill? What James said?”
Sandhill scribbled on a legal pad, attempting to make connections between names. Lines were scratched out, redrawn, scratched out again. Sandhill threw the pad on the table.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe James was wrong. Still, he seemed pretty certain about the ID being the contact and payoff man.”
Ryder frowned. “I’m not sure how much ‘pretty certain’ means from a scammer like James.”
A knocking at the door, soft and hesitant. Sandhill rose and opened it. Nike stood outside. She looked past Sandhill to Ryder.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here,
Detective Ryder. I didn’t mean to bother you guys, I’ll stop back later.”
She turned to leave but Sandhill grabbed her arm. “Whoa, girl. Since when do me and Ryder scare you off?”
Ryder studied something in Nike Charlane’s face and made a show of checking his watch and seeming surprised at the time.
“I was just leaving, Ms. Charlane. I’m overdue at a meeting.”
“Overdue where?” Sandhill asked.
Ryder shot him a glance that said,
shut up.
“Oh yeah,” Sandhill said. “See you later.”
Ryder descended the stairs. Nike drifted across the room to look out the window, as if preferring the damp heat to Sandhill’s cool white spaces. “Jacy’s ninth birthday is coming up soon, Conner.”
“Marie mentioned it the other day. Jacy talked about it a time or two.”
“Did you ever think about it? Her birthday?”
“I planned a party. Double chocolate cake, ice cream. I got her a kid’s set of mythology books and a—”
“Not the festivities, Conner, the timing. Did you always think she was born in September?”
Sandhill’s brow furrowed. “Come to think of it, I thought some years back you mentioned Jacy’s birthday was around Christmas. But I guess a few months don’t make a whole lot of dif—”
He froze. His eyes traced back and forth as if working equations on a mental blackboard. When
he saw the sum chalked at the bottom, he turned to Nike, all color gone from his face.
“But that could mean…”
Nike looked in Sandhill’s eyes. “The name Jacy comes from the letters J and C.”
John Conner Sandhill stood abruptly and walked to the kitchen area, anger and confusion clouding his face. He put his hands on the countertop and leaned slowly forward as if searching for balance in a shifted universe.
“Why the hell didn’t Thena tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Nike said, “I swore I wouldn’t and, contrary to Thena’s wishes, I just did. I didn’t agree with her decision to not tell you, Conner. But it was Thena’s decision to make and mine to respect. Things are different now. And I think she’d want you to know.”
“A baby. And all this time you’ve been telling me—”
“That Jacy was born in December. Thena said you weren’t ready to know.”
“But that’s crazy, I—”
“Maybe you don’t remember how you used to be, how little time you had for anything but yourself.”
“For myself?
Myself
?”
“For your damned non-stop cases, then. Thena was going to tell you, at first. But she didn’t see you for weeks. You were too busy being Mr Detective. You couldn’t find a couple lousy hours
to stop by, say, ‘How you doin’, Theen?’ Maybe hear what she had to say, what was happening in her life?”
“I was working, that’s all.” The words weren’t through Sandhill’s lips before he knew they sounded shrill and defensive.
“You were living your work. There’s a difference.”
“I tried to be with her as often as—”
“‘To thine own self be true’—isn’t that one of your mantras? Think back, Conner, without rosy glasses. How much time did you really spend with Thena?”
Sandhill closed his eyes and tumbled through memories. Thena arriving as he was leaving; the “I’m-working-through-the-night” calls; missed meals; parties she’d attended expecting him to arrive, his only presence a late phone call expressing regret…
Nike said, “When Thena found out she was pregnant she was torn in half. It wasn’t expected, and neither was the exhilaration she felt, the excitement. Thena interpreted her pregnancy as the most creative act imaginable, the creation of life. She believed such a creation demanded total involvement and nurturing.”
“I was fully able to deal with whatever—”
Nike shut Sandhill off with a raised hand. “Exactly, Conner. Thena knew you wouldn’t—couldn’t—share her awe, her excitement, but she knew you’d deal with it. You’d regard it as a duty.
Thena didn’t want dutiful, Conner. She needed to share in a joy and commitment you weren’t ready for.”
“So she left. She simply ran away.”
Nike’s eyes flared. “She wasn’t running from, she was running
to.
To a life where she didn’t have to parcel off her energy between her child and a part-time partner. Where she could devote everything to Jacy. Then, one day, when you’d changed,
if
you changed, she’d explain and…”
Sandhill walked slowly to the couch and sat. Nike sat beside him, bringing his hand to her lap and wrapping it in hers.
“You’re different than you used to be, Conner. You started being different when you opened the restaurant. Started wearing those crazy vests, that goofy crown. I was standing in Spikes’s grocery last year when you passed by, singing. Conner Sandhill singing! I know part of it was an act, just like being the iron-spined detecting machine was partly an act…”
“Act? What do you—”
“Both are part of you, but not all of you. I’m not saying you’re another person; you’re still a headstrong jackass and won’t hear anyone else’s opinion until all of yours are used up, but you’re not so damned rigid any more.” Nike paused, touched Sandhill’s cheek. “I see how you’ve changed and I get sad Thena never got to.”
Sandhill leaned his head back and stared into the white of the ceiling. “All this time I thought
she’d found someone else. That she’d moved away to be with him.”
Nike paused. “I was always surprised you let her go so easily. Thena was too. She was afraid you’d track her down, ask her to come back. She knew she’d be unable to resist.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want her back; I thought she’d finally wised up. I never understood what she saw in me in the first place.”
Nike’s lips brushed Sandhill’s fingertips and she laid her cheek softly against his hands. “She saw possibilities, the Conner Sandhill everyone else missed, the one you’ve become. Seeing possibilities was her gift, it was always…her…”
Nike’s voice shook apart. Sandhill wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He watched the room begin to pitch and shimmer. Sandhill fought the tears knowing he would lose, having to fight them anyway, hating himself for it.