In the Night of the Heat (37 page)

“Ain't that a bitch?” Rubens gasped. “You came out here to save my ass. Then I kill my own damn ass tryin' to kill you.” He laughed again.

I sagged down beside him. A troupe of tap-dancing hippos had used my bones for a xylophone, and I was running on empty. “What happened with that bodyguard and the construction worker out west?”

He panted, and when his eyes opened they didn't immediately focus on me. “Hell of a fight. Ripped a damn good shirt. Bodyguard was good.” He grinned. “Not as good as you—you're all right. You know what? I forgive you for Grayboy. That mean old bastard's surely going to hell. Be nice to see a friend.”

I didn't want to, but I laughed. But Rubens had stopped smiling. “You're good, but you'll never lay a finger on Donald Hankins,” he went on. “No evidence.”

“Hankins sent you to kill T.D.” I said. I wasn't a question. “What was the second shot?”

“Cleanin' up.” Rubens gasped, suddenly looking panicked. His breathing quickened. “My truck. Under the seat. There's a paper bag.”

“What about it?” I asked.

“That night in '67 planted a seed in Bird,” Bear whispered. “I didn't have a pot to piss in, so I couldn't do nothin' for her—but a
friend stepped in to help her keep her honor. They married for all the right reasons, except for love. The only love she'd ever had was for me, and me for her. I tried to put her out of my heart, wish her well. But I never could. And Bird had every comfort, but her home was empty. Raising that boy killed her. She couldn't bear to give him up, couldn't bear to raise him. She tried her best, but she never could love him. She thought it was her duty to do what she did. I have something that belongs to her, and I want you to take it back.”

We talked, Bear and I. Some of it was about his life, but mostly about music. He seemed like someone I could have spent a night laughing with. Wallace Rubens was just a terrible old man whose lard-spackled arteries were finally coming apart.

His big hand reached out and took mine. Squeezed. “Never thought I'd live to see it,” he said. “Ain't no tellin' what a young man can do in this world today.”

He knew what he was doing when he put his gun down. He'd known he was giving me a chance. I looked carefully at Bear's broad, soft, quiet hand. No trace of a thorn.

Before long, he stopped caring whether I came or went. So I went.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

The barn was empty by the time Bear's shotgun and I made our way back. I scouted carefully, making sure no ambush waited, but no one was in sight. Bear's crew was a bunch of small-time punks held together by the mesmerizing personality of a brutal, charismatic, and oddly honorable man. They would be disappearing into the sticks, assuming I was talking to the sheriff.

I found my cell phone in the barn, and my wallet on the seat of the black GMC truck. My phone's battery was dead. Of course.

Under the truck's seat, I found the brown paper bag Wallace Rubens had sent me for. Wrapped inside was a black jewelry box half the size of my fist. I opened it up.

The contents gleamed.

Well, well, what do you know…

A Super Bowl ring.

I finally had a phone signal on Bear's Palm Pilot. I dialed 911.

 

The EMTs bandaged up my dog bite and gave me ice and Tylenol with codeine for my other aches and pains. I could barely sit upright from Bear's last body blow.

It was nearly dawn before Wallace Rubens was loaded into the back of the ambulance, beneath a heaping blanket. I was the only one who had been foolish enough to wait with the body, and no good deed goes unpunished. I overheard a jurisdictional squabble between Kelly and the sheriff from neighboring Gadsden County, and I rooted for the brother from Gadsden County to win.

But it was Sheriff J. Kelly, the cowboy I'd met at Bear's place, who led me to the back seat of his cruiser. The painkillers seemed to wear off all at once as he drove me to the tiny Stephens County Sheriff's Office in downtown Mercy, which was about the size of a cell back at Hollywood division. It didn't matter that I'd already been through hell: My luck wasn't about to change. The last time I'd been found too close to a dead body, I almost got arrested for murder.

The office was dark and empty, since it was barely dawn. Three desks, a wall clock and a coffee machine. Kelly pointed out the way to his office, where the half-open door was marked
SHERIFF JAMES KELLY
.

“Please,” Sheriff Kelly said, as if I had a choice.

Inside, after I sat in the pine green office chair in front of his desk, Sheriff Kelly read me my Miranda rights. He read from his card slowly and carefully, to make sure I didn't miss anything. “Do you understand these rights?” he asked.

“I want a lawyer.”

“What you need a lawyer for?”

Classic cop bullshit, as if asking for a lawyer is an admission of guilt. “Because I'm being detained in a police station, and I have a plane at nine I can't miss.”

I have no idea what was going through Sheriff Kelly's head that morning; he kept his thoughts off his face. But for the first time, his eyes burned at me. Anger. “There was a dead man in my county—a dead man who's something like a hero around here—so you'll have to excuse me if I don't give a damn about your plane.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Tell me what happened with Wallace, and you'll be the first to know.”

Good sense dictated that I should tread carefully with Kelly. I knew that. His glassy eyes told me that he and Wallace Rubens had been friends. It wasn't smart to piss off a cop who'd just lost a friend. Alone in his office. But I was bone-weary, and my mind wasn't quite mine again.

“Get me a lawyer,” I said.

Sheriff Kelly looked at his watch. “It's almost six now, and Meg's in Kissimmee this week. She's our lawyer. They're infested with lawyers in Tallahassee, but you sure as hell won't get anybody before nine. Then you'd miss your flight for sure. Coffee?”

He was more polite than Lieutenant Nelson on his best day. I accepted the coffee, and the caffeine nudged the parts of my brain that were still sleeping.

Flights from Tallahassee had been booked solid, and since none of them was direct, I was already scheduled to arrive at LAX at 5
P.M.
I would be pushing it to get home before Chela left. A later flight, and I had no chance. Maybe I should have had other things on my mind, but all I could think about was Chela's homecoming dance.

“Like I told you, Rubens had a heart attack,” I said. “Your coroner will confirm that.”

“Why'd he beat you half to death, Mr. Hardwick?” Sheriff Kelly said.

“Like I told you, Bear and I went walking, and I fell down a hill. He had a heart attack.”

By then, I thought I understood the significance of the sheriff's name, Kelly. I even let him see a glimpse of what I knew in my eyes. I hoped it would get me on my plane.

“Your record's pretty clean,” Sheriff Kelly said. “Except for one li'l' blip over in California. You and your dad? I saw that wreck on TV, but I didn't know that was you. Looks like folks who piss you off end up dead.”

“Like I told you, I just met Rubens,” I said.

“Funny thing about that,” Sheriff Kelly said, pulling out a stick of gum he popped into his mouth. “You told me you were a Bobcat. In town for the game? Well, guess what—Tennyson Hardwick's not a name you hear every day…and it turns out you've never been registered at Florida. Not even the dropouts. So from the start, I know you're a liar. Then Bear's ticker gives out, and both of you look like you've been in a fight. So…you see my dilemma?”

“You got family in town, Sheriff?” I said. My eyes were crystal clear.

Sheriff Kelly sat on his desk like a statue. He stared at the floor. “There's six names on the Mercy town charter from 1855,” he said
quietly. “One of the names is Kelly. He was an Irish cabin boy. He came here with nothing.”

“I understand Wallace Rubens had deep roots here, too.”

Sheriff Kelly nodded, blinking. He was working extra hard to keep his emotions battened down. Kelly consulted his notebook. When he spoke again, there was a tremor in his voice. “Looked like there was an altercation of some kind at the old barn,” he said. “Lots of footprints. Tire tracks. Some blood.”

“My blood,” I said. “Nosebleed.”

“We found Bear's dog out by the smokehouse. Beat to death.”

I shook my head, saddened. “We were looking for the Grayboy. Where was he again?”

“What if we found your footprints, too?”

“Damn. We must have walked right past him.”

Sheriff Kelly sighed. “I suppose you have a story about that dog bite, too. Mr. Hardwick, everyone knows Bear had a temper,” he said. “And he didn't always keep good company. What I don't know is the magnitude of my dilemma. For instance, if there's gonna be feds sniffing my town's ass.”

In some ways, his words reminded me of Lieutenant Nelson's when he walked behind me into his office:
Are you a problem for me?

“In other words,” Sheriff Kelly went on, “I'm mighty curious as to why you came all the way out here from Los Angeles to see Bear. And why you're stirrin' up questions about a football game that happened before either of us were born.” His green eyes locked with mine.

The sheriff might not understand everything, but he knew plenty. I got a headache, and suddenly everything about me was in pain.

“I'd like to make a phone call, Sheriff,” I said.

“By and by.”

“I just want to catch my flight.”

Sheriff Kelly stood up. “I'm gonna make a special trip, drive you to the airport myself.”

So much for stopping at my hotel to pick up my luggage; my alias at the hotel would make me seem suspicious.
He's not going to drive you to the airport,
my Evil Voice said.

“Your father's retired LAPD,” Sheriff Kelly said. “Ain't that right?”

I wondered if he had just begun researching me since the accident, or if he had begun his research the night he met me. As soon as I'd been foolish enough to mention the Sunshine Bowl. I had no idea what Sheriff James Kelly and Wallace Rubens had shared besides family history.

“I want a lawyer, Sheriff,” I said.

“Let's just get you on that plane.”

“No offense, but I'd like another deputy to ride along with us.”

He didn't look offended. His face was nearly blank. “No one's available this early but me, I'm afraid. But I'm a careful driver.”

Before Mercy, the last time I'd sat in a police car was when I was arrested for prostitution in 1999. Since Hollywood was my father's command, those guys treated me like I was precious cargo, strict on the protocols. Nobody wanted to be at fault if something went wrong. Once a person is in the legal custody of another, there's room for disaster. Prisoners try to escape. Behave erratically. Get violent.

It happens all the time.

The sheriff drove me in dead silence through the empty streets of early-morning Mercy. I hoped we really were headed toward the interstate and the airport. I even closed my eyes to make it more like a prayer. Didn't work. Sheriff Kelly drove past the green sign pointing the way to the 10, ignoring its arrow.

“Where are we going?” I said.

The sheriff didn't answer.

His car turned on to a bumpier road, hardly paved. I noted a horse ranch, then grass grew high on both sides of the road. Wilderness. Small rocks popped and churned beneath his tires. The car swayed as it drove. Thin pine tree trunks appeared in the windows on all sides of us. He was driving me into the woods.

“I hope you're not about to try something stupid, Sheriff.”

“Me, too,” Sheriff Kelly said. “Time will tell.”

There was a house in the woods, built in an idyllic clearing. The house was large, but it looked like it had been built from the surrounding trees, almost more a cabin. An old man who looked my father's age sat on a crate in the carport, painting birdhouses. The yard was full of birdhouses, all brightly colored. A child-sized all-terrain vehicle was parked off to the side.

It looked like the sheriff's home.

Sheriff Kelly climbed out of the car. His car door slammed shut. “Just be a minute.”

Leaving me in the car, Sheriff Kelly walked up to the old man and patted his back. The man grinned up at him as if he hadn't seen him in days. Then the sheriff vanished into the house.

While the sheriff was inside, the old man stood up and walked toward the police car. His hair was a half bale of wilted hay. His walk was unsteady, and his posture was terrible, but once upon a time he was probably a strong, solid man. He peered at me, curious, tapping on the window. His bright green eyes gazed me up and down with childlike fascination.

“Hello?” he called to me.

I nodded, but I didn't answer. If I hadn't just suffered one of the worst nights of my life, I could have smiled. More tapping on my window. “Hey—you want to buy a birdhouse?”

I shook my head. The old man tapped the window again, waving good-bye.

Within about five minutes, the sheriff came back outside, walking down his porch's three whitewashed steps. He was trailed by a boy and a girl who looked eight and ten—both cocoa-colored, with tightly spiraled hair. The children didn't see me in the police car, so they stayed close to the old man. I was struck by how much they reminded me of Maya and Tommy Jackson. I heard one of the children call the man
Grandpa.
A woman's brown-skinned arm waved from the window.

The sheriff's Jeep was suddenly filled with the scent of biscuits and bacon.

“My wife called and said she had breakfast for me,” the sheriff said, once he was back in the car. “I brought you a biscuit sandwich for the plane. I hear the airlines don't feed folks for shit anymore.”