In the Night of the Heat (5 page)

Her expression was so fragile that I wanted to retrieve a memory to delight her. I tried to remember a single conversation with her from class, a friend or relative to inquire about, but I couldn't. Back in school, she had been invisible to me, and probably to almost everyone else. Watching her walk away beneath a veil of sadness, I wanted to reach back through time and invite her out for coffee after class. But all that was too little, twenty years too late.

I was ready to leave the Taus, too.

I'd lost sight of April, so I went looking. I found her at a Sno-Cone machine with three other women, deep in a huddle. Their fingers fumbled with cups and plastic jugs of rainbow-colored syrup. Even before I was close enough to hear, I could tell that the women were pressuring April about something, and I was paranoid enough to believe that they were talking about me. In a way, I guess they were.

“…for you. You're the one who has to take control,” one of the women was saying. “If you don't—” She clammed up when she saw me coming. She was as model-thin and as tall as I was, with hair dyed platinum in an ill-chosen contrast against her skin.

When April met my eyes, I thought I saw guilt tug at her mouth.

“Hey, Ten,” April said absently, hooking her arm through mine.
Hey, old buddy.

Four sets of eyes felt heavy on my face. “Is there a problem I can help with?” I said.

“No,” April said quickly, before anyone else could answer. “It's nothing.”

April didn't lie often—and maybe not at all since she'd been my girlfriend—but that lie made us even. On our way to the fund-raiser, April had asked me a half dozen times what was bothering me, and I'd
relied on the same old line, too. Nothing. One bad lie deserved another.

“I'm ready to go,” I said. “If you need to stay, I'm sure someone can give you a ride.”

Around me, reflexive hands perched on hips. I felt unspoken refrains of
Oh-no-he-didn't.
April looked slightly embarrassed, but she gave me a gentle pull that made me think she was almost relieved to get away. “Maybe it's okay if I go. I'll ask Percy.”

Whoever Percy was, I wanted to suggest some anatomically challenging acts he could perform on himself. Why was a stranger having a say with my lady? But I set my teeth and followed April toward the throng at the other end of the room.

“One of my sorority sisters found out she has lupus,” April said as we crossed the room.

“Sorry to hear it.”

“They want me to take over her project, but I'm not interested.” April sighed. “A high school journalism class.”

“You've always wanted to teach.” April's father was a college professor, and she'd vowed to leave the newspaper for teaching one day.

She dropped the bomb. “It's in Soweto. Six months in South Africa. Classes start in three weeks, and I couldn't land there cold on day one. I'd have to take a leave from the paper, like,
now.
And sublet my room.” April was no longer talking to me; she was thinking it through.

One night, after half a glass too much of wine, I had asked April to move in with me. That was probably when my feeling of unease began, if I had to choose a date on a calendar. Three months before. I'd seen surprise flare in her eyes, and I realized that maybe she'd misunderstood me. When I said it, I was mostly thinking what a pain it was that April couldn't spend the night more often—that was before she'd confessed that Chela made her uncomfortable. The way I saw
it, why should she be spending six-fifty a month for a room in a two-bedroom apartment when she could live in my house for free? That was all. Convenience.

April had answered my offer with a laundry list of excuses: not enough notice for her roommate. Respect for her parents. The distance from her job. Her list of reasons, sounding a firm
no,
made me realize I'd been asking more than I thought. But this time, I already recognized the hungry ring of
yes
underneath her excuses. The challenges weren't a wall to hide behind; they were bricks to be torn down. April wanted to go to Soweto. She might not know how badly yet, but she would before long.

April pulled herself closer to me, reassurance. “I'm not interested,” she said again.

“Yet.” If April heard me, she didn't let on.

The man she was looking for, Tau chapter president Percy Duvall, also dressed in crimson, hovered near T.D. Jackson's booth to keep order along the velvet ropes. Duvall was below average height, with a Napoleon syndrome that kept his neck at full tilt. In proximity to T.D. and his crew, Duvall looked like a gnome.

T.D. was jocular and grinning as he posed for photos with admirers. Each newcomer, men and women alike, paid one hundred dollars for the privilege of giving T.D. Jackson prayers, hugs, and encouragement in his hour of need.

“Too blessed to be stressed, bro.”

“Stay strong, brotherman.”

“The truth will set you free, man.”

“T.D., you're an inspiration to humanity.” That quote is verbatim.

I had done my best to ignore the trial, since celebrity trials are a waste of taxpayer money. But anyone with ears knew the details: T.D.'s ex-wife, Chantelle, had been highly pedigreed. She hailed
from a political family, and she was an entertainment lawyer well liked in the industry. While her two children were at their grandparents' house, she and her unlucky fiancé, Arturo Salvador, had been hogtied, gagged, and murdered in her garage. Having gained some painful experience with gags and hogties recently, I felt especially sorry for them. It's no way to die.

Even as murders go, this one was mean-spirited. Personal. The coroner had determined that the murderer killed the fiancé while T.D.'s ex was forced to watch, then she was shot execution-style in the back of the head. (In the end, was the killer unable to look at her face? That was my bet.) The killer's boot had left partial tread marks on his upper thigh. Injuries to the man's swollen groin suggested a bit of ill will. The murdered man had once been a probation officer, so T.D.'s defense had argued that the killings might have been retaliation for a job well-done.

But police records proved that T.D. had threatened and harassed his ex-wife in the year since she won half his fortune in their divorce. His blood was found on the scene, and threads from a type of fiber and weave identical with a jacket T.D. had had custom-made not nine months before…and what some considered a telling degree of mental confusion in the forty-eight hours following the crime—I thought the L.A. prosecutor's office might win a big one at last.

Nope. The justice system just isn't set up to penetrate a multimillion-dollar defense. Celebrity just makes it worse. The jury's failure to convict T.D. Jackson felt like a far cry from vindication, considering that half the jurors posed for pictures with T.D. after the trial.

To the Taus, T.D. Jackson was family, plain and simple. Ask any mother sheltering her fugitive child how difficult it is to give up on family. Still, that crowd's certainty of T.D.'s innocence—or, rather, their utter lack of imagination regarding the possibility of his guilt—
made me wonder if they thought they could read the man's mind. I could understand T.D.'s classmates and relatives fawning without restraint or caution, but what about the people who'd never met him, and only knew him as a face on the screen?

Faces aren't windows. They're just masks made of skin.

Extraordinary talent or success implies a level of sanctification that can make wrongdoing seem impossible. Not to me. I've collected too many secrets of my own. There was every chance T.D. had killed those two people, despite his football records, hit movies, and boyish smile. I wasn't going to spit in his face like April would have liked to, but I wouldn't kiss his ass either.

I have too much respect for the dead.

Two blond twins with bodies like Playmate caricatures—overblown lips, concave bellies, and island-sized breasts—waited for T.D. in folding chairs just beyond the photo booth. They both sat with their legs crossed, their short dresses hiked up high enough to cast shadows between their thighs. They were hookers or porn stars, or maybe both, and they reeked of pheromones. Every sister in fifty feet tightened her grip on her man's arm.

T.D.'s crew hovered, too. They were former football players, but that night they were on protection detail. Hard, watchful eyes scanned everyone who came close. For an instant, April locked eyes with the biggest of them, who looked like a younger Jim Brown, and her face made him puff out his chest like a dare.
Don't start no shit, sister
. I hoped April had as much common sense as I thought.

April's shoulders rose as she steeled herself to approach the Tau president, which meant walking within ten yards of T.D. Jackson. She kept her eyes on Percy Duvall, never glancing at T.D. Truth be told, I think T.D. scared her more than his hulking friends. Smart girl.

“Percy? I was wondering…” she began.

“April, thank God,” he interrupted. “Did you hear? We need you in South Africa…”

Suddenly, a hand was on my shoulder. A woman's feather light touch. “I don't believe this! Tennyson Hardwick. Speak of the devil!”

I was trying to eavesdrop on April's conversation, and suddenly April wanted to listen to mine. April's eyes dashed away from Percy in time to see a woman rise to her tiptoes and kiss me lightly on the lips. I saw the delicate tip of an ear, long braids, a slender frame, and ochre-colored skin before the woman pulled back far enough for me to take in her face.

“Melanie Wilde,” I said, recognizing her. Another classmate from SoCal State. I hadn't realized I had been in school long enough to make so many friends. Melanie's name hadn't crossed my mind in nearly twenty years, but her face was impossible to forget. She had a high forehead, button nose, and pronounced cheekbones, like a Senegalese princess. Exotic and beautiful. “Long time.”

I was careful about my distance, opening a chasm between us. Melanie was T.D. Jackson's older cousin. We had met because she came in and out of the dorm, often carrying loads of T.D.'s laundry. I had asked her about the laundry once, and she only laughed.
Success is a family project,
she had said, her cousin's future dancing in her bright eyes. The Church of T.D. Jackson had opened its doors long before he won the Heisman or played in the NFL.

“Oh no, you don't understand,” she said intensely, grabbing my hand. “This is uncanny. God is at work here, Tennyson. I was just speaking your name. Hey, Bumpy!”

She waved toward T.D. Jackson, and the sound of her voice made his head snap up. His offensive line stepped aside to make a path for her as she pulled me toward him by the hand. April's eyes burned a hole in the back of my head.

“Look who it is!” Melanie said when T.D. turned to face me. “This is the one. Tennyson Hardwick, remember?”

T.D.'s crew closed a circle around us, shielding T.D. from the waiting crowd. Anyone who was pissed about the interruption kept it to themselves.

When he saw me, T.D. Jackson's face lighted with a grin that no one could refuse to return. “How you been, man?” He leaned in for an embrace, patting my back. For an instant, my head swam. Maybe T.D. and I had been tight all along, like brothers, and I'd forgotten somehow.

“Who's this?” one of his friends said in a skeptical basso. He was square-jawed, with a deep cleft in his chin.

“Hardwick,” Melanie said. “The bodyguard.”

There were murmurs of recognition, and another pat on the back from T.D. The circle closed in more tightly. They checked me out, jock to jock. They'd seen movies, and knew a glance can't tell you anything about a man's skill with a gun, or behind the wheel of a car: two critical skills in the close-protection industry. And hand to hand? You just don't know. I work out with a skinny little guy who'll be sixty-five next birthday, one of the best real-world bodyguards there is. He won't play dojo games: You'll just wake up hurting, if you're lucky.

So about the only thing about me they could evaluate was my fitness. Not even that: They weren't going to ask me to run a hundred, bench my max, or hit the sled for them. And they weren't going to ask me what my ring record was, or number of red stripes on the black belt. They would take the instant, male-male snapshot appreciation, an automatic question most guys don't talk about much:
Can I kick his ass?

Of course, there's a balancing question:
Can he kick
my
ass?

You could divide men into categories based upon the instinctive
choice of one of these questions. Whole families of life decisions and actions separate the worlds of the men who think of themselves as Thumpers and Thumpees. Neither is a better or worse human being. But trust me: They're two different guys.

T.D., these men, and I were all Thumpers. We all knew we'd bruise each other up. One level of reflexive male challenge done, and bonding begun. I wasn't afraid of them. I wasn't a monster, but my solid muscle was balanced, loose, bouncy. Watchful. They couldn't know how well trained it was, but they had to wonder why I wasn't intimidated. But if I was a leopard, they were lions. They figured they could kill me, even if they'd get scratched up doing it.
All right, you're okay buddy, you can watch my flank, and I'll watch yours.
We had sized each other up almost instantly, and the mutual answer was “yes.”

I enjoyed being welcomed into the heart of that invincible tribe. I admit it. The rest of the banquet hall vanished.

All his career, the media had criticized T.D. for his arrogance and cockiness. But I watched the grin fade from his face, revealing what he kept from hidden from everyone except his closest friends and family: He was tired and scared. The smooth skin he'd had in college looked weathered, and his eyes were slightly red, even crazed. No telltale white residue on his nostrils, but his eyes looked like fried marbles.