Lady Midnight (3 page)

I nodded. I’d heard all of this before, and would undoubtedly hear it all again, somewhere down the road.
 

“So you’ve come to set up a meeting between the two of us somewhere else?” I asked, making a sweeping gesture that encompassed Sally’s Diner and patrons. I felt a bit like an actor feeding someone a line in some junior-high play, because I still felt like I knew what was coming next: Halt, who goes there?
 

“Exactly.” Baucom glanced at his watch, approvingly. It was an expensive watch, rather like the murdered man’s had been. I wasn’t wasting his time, Baucom’s glance at the watch seemed to say, and he apparently liked that. He gave a little smile of satisfaction, and thought for a second before he continued speaking.
 

“Mr.—Mr. Washington would like to meet you at this location tomorrow afternoon.”
 

Mr. Washington. I smiled to myself. Sure, sure.
 

Baucom whipped out a black leather notebook and withdrew some folded sheets of paper. On one, written in a precise and careful hand, which was no doubt Baucom’s own, was an address; the other sheet was a computer printout from one of those websites that give you directions on how to get to places. At the top, a time was written in the same precise hand as the address: 2:00 p.m. This one gave the directions to the place I was to be the next afternoon, just in case I was too dumb to get there on my own. Clearly, Mr. Washington, whoever he really might turn out to be, wanted to make sure that I made it to the rendezvous, and on time. I picked up the papers and put them in my inside pocket. Baucom nodded; he liked that, too.
 

“Good. We’re all set, then. I’ll tell the—that is, Mr. Washington, that you’ve agreed to meet him.”
 

Baucom rose, and we shook hands again. With that, he headed toward the door, not quite like a man who was on his way to a fire, but it was obvious that Sally’s Diner wasn’t a place he’d be visiting again, any time soon.
 

I smiled to myself and pretended to savor my new cup of even-colder coffee. Unlike Baucom, I had to leave the proprietress with a favorable impression.

Chapter 2

I left the Brooks Building the next afternoon. The directions that Baucom had given me took me to the rail yards on the northeast side of Birmingham. The old downtown district brooded in giant shadows as I drove down Third Avenue North, across the named avenues. That part of town had been in a slide ever since the New Downtown had started springing up farther east, in the Seventies.
 

There were still lots of impressive historical buildings in the old downtown area. But they were like lost old men, forgotten by time, standing vacant and awaiting the bang or the whimper that would spell their ends, and inevitably, the end for this whole part of town. A lot of the uglier episodes of the Civil Rights struggle had happened on these streets. Now the old streets were quiet. Uptown, the ghosts had gone to sleep, and nobody was home down here, either.
 

The sprawling, rusty Birmingham rail yards are inhabited at night by the homeless and the dispossessed. It was the perfect place to get a dirty assignment, and I was about to get one of my dirtiest ever. The sun had returned after the previous day’s rain. It was really too bad that it was a nice spring afternoon. Otherwise, I figured, we could have had fog and drizzle, and worn heavy trench coats to enhance the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of it all.
 

I pulled into the rail yard in my 1979 Buick Century, and cut the engine off. I loved my Buick; it is in vintage condition, I like to tell people. Vintage, that is, except for the small dent in the rear driver’s side quarter panel, and the fading paint on the hood, and maybe a couple of other little imperfections, here and there. Oh well. I didn’t have the heart to part with old car. It had been my faithful steed for too long. It still ran fine, after all. I sat there for a bit.
 

After another minute or so, I heard another car approaching. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw that it was a limousine. Well of course it was a limousine. I wasn’t expecting his employer to show up in anything like a Subaru.
 

I stepped out of the car and assumed what I hoped was a friendly posture. The limo pulled up next to my aging Buick and stopped. As I supposed would happen, two large, well-dressed men got out and walked to where I stood.
 

“Mr. Longville?” the first one asked with a certain emphasis. I nodded, and raised my hands gingerly. The other man came forward and patted me down. I wasn’t carrying a gun. No point dragging a gun along if it’s just going to get taken away from you, I’d learned a long time ago.
 

The two men stepped back. The one who knew my name opened the limo’s rear door, and with a theatrical sweep of his hand, invited me to enter. Two seats faced one another. I took a seat in the one facing backwards, which was empty. Two men sat across from me—Baucom and a tall, white, gray-haired man. I knew him instantly. He wasn’t George Washington, but they were in the same business. I had seen this man’s face on the news many times.
 

He was Senator Keith Patrick, who had recently announced that he was running for Governor. Many suspected he wanted to be President, too, if the gig as Governor panned out. His presence here meant he had trouble, and it was probably of the hush-hush variety. I supposed that there must be a few snags that the big man needed to shake loose from before the election began to heat up. No wonder all the cloak and dagger stuff. I figured his problem must be pretty serious.
 

Baucom gave a little cough and opened up the conversation. “Mr. Longville, let us apologize for all the subterfuge. For a man in Mr. Patrick’s position, this sort of thing is necessary, at times.”
 

“Keith Patrick, Mr. Longville. Thank you for coming here.” The older man reached out his hand and shook mine in a practiced, firm, yet gracious manner, and gave me a caring, fatherly smile. I’m really a heck of a guy, I wish we could be pals but I’m just too busy, the smile seemed to say. I was almost tempted too believe it all, too. But not quite.
 

“I won’t waste your time; I’ll come right to the point. This matter concerns my daughter, Mr. Longville. Her name is Constance Patrick, and she is my only child. She has always resented certain aspects that are part of the reality of my life. As a child, for example, she protested that she was often left alone too much,” Patrick volunteered, although he fairly squirmed as he said it. “Her mother died when Connie was very young, leaving just the two of us. She was frequently, therefore, left with nurses and the like while I was away.” He paused for a second.
 

“I take it that she demonstrated this resentment in some way, Senator.”
 

Senator Patrick nodded. “She has always been, well, sort of a wild child, to be blunt, Mr. Longville. As she grew into a young woman, childish resentment gave way to rebellious behavior, which only grew worse as my law practice, and then my political career, kept me away from home, sometimes for extended periods of time. I love my daughter, and I have always striven to give her the very best of everything, Mr. Longville, but try as I might, I’m only one person. The harder I worked, by necessity, the more I was away. Connie was lonely rather often as a child, and I suppose she harbors some resentment toward me on those grounds. Perhaps a great deal more than I had supposed.”
 

Patrick eyed Roland for a second before going on, and then glanced at Baucom.
 

“It’s all right, Senator,” I said, sensing the man’s hesitance to reveal so many sensitive family issues to someone he had only just met. No doubt somewhere in his mind he was envisioning tabloids with all the lurid details of his strained relationship with his daughter splashed across them. I had seen that sort of thing happen, and I didn’t blame him.
 

“Everything that’s said between us here remains confidential. I assure you that you can tell me anything. None of this goes any farther than the three of us.”
 

Patrick nodded and allowed his expression to soften. There was something a bit more human about him in that instant. “Forgive me. Of course your reputation speaks for itself regarding such matters. I do feel that I can trust you, Mr. Longville.”
 

“Then call me Roland.”
 

Patrick smiled slightly at that. “Okay. Roland. Well, you see, there’s a bit more. Connie has disappeared. She just graduated from college, and dropped out of sight. Well, perhaps ‘disappeared’ is putting it too strongly. I know that she’s gone away of her own free will, but the truth is, a couple of months ago we had a rather big argument. It was a terrible fight, really.”
 

Patrick looked grim as he recollected what was clearly painful for him to think about.
 

“We’ve had other arguments like it, and in those cases, she’s done the same thing, which is to disappear for a while. It’s her way of punishing me. I’m used to it. This time, though, things were said that were hurtful, and unfortunately, since she’s been gone, something has happened within the family, something that she needs to know about.”
 

“The family? Pardon me, Senator, but I thought there were just the two of you.”
 

“Well, for the most part. But there was, until recently, my late wife’s father, Claude Ettinger. He was a fine man, though he had become a recluse in his last years. He and Connie were close when she was a child. Not only was he her only surviving grandparent, but he was her last link to her mother. I think that she must have felt that connection acutely, though it had been years, I think, since she actually saw him. He passed away recently, and he left almost everything that he had to Connie. I have tried to notify her, of course, and I made very effort to get in touch with her during his illness, but had no luck.”
 

He leaned forward, and added as though it were an after-thought, “Of course there was the need to keep the matter of her intentional disappearance quiet, so the regular authorities could not be consulted.”
 

“You don’t want any of this to get to the media,” I said quietly and flatly.
 

Baucom stepped in again. “The Senator’s political enemies would take unfair advantage of his private life to divert attention away from his campaign, and his proposed reforms. They would also harass Connie, we felt. Senator Patrick therefore decided to keep the matter private.”
 

I looked at Patrick. I decided to be blunt, too. “So, Senator, you’d like me to find Connie and tell her about her grandfather’s death, and the inheritance he left her. And this, without the news media finding out that she’s done a disappearing act, so your opponents won’t use it to show you can’t take care of your affairs at home.”
 

“In a nutshell, Roland, that’s correct,” Baucom answered for Patrick, who was still trying to formulate an answer.
 

“Any idea on where she might be?”
 

Baucom produced a manila envelope and extended it to me. I opened it and pulled out two large, glossy pictures. The first was of a beautiful young woman, with platinum blond hair that was almost white, and icy blue eyes the color of the sky in ages long gone. Constance Patrick. The second picture was of a young man. He had long, darkish hair and dark eyes, and a friendly smile.
 

“That’s Randy Herron. He’s an erstwhile musician,” Baucom explained. “We think Connie is probably traveling with him.”
 

“He’s a bum,” Patrick growled. “A bum and a gold-digger.”
 

“I take it that you and the young man have met, Senator.”
 

“She brought him to dinner, obviously to enrage me, which she succeeded in doing. He continually insulted everything I stood for, and in quite some detail. I told him to get out of my house. I worked my way up in the world, and have no respect for anyone of Herron’s ilk.”
 

Baucom spoke again. “Herron has a record of petty crime—a couple of arrests for possession, and a drunk driving conviction. He’s a college dropout, and has never held down a regular job. Senator Patrick felt that the man’s interest in his daughter was motivated by the fact that she was associated with wealth.”
 

“Really, nothing could be more obvious,” Patrick rumbled. “Connie left her fiancee, just before the wedding. She practically left him at the altar.”
 

“Connie was engaged to another young man?”
 

“That’s right. His name is Millard Brooks IV—his father’s a very prominent attorney himself—a fine young man, destined for law school. But Connie’s senior year in college—the year other girls settle down and start thinking about their plans after college: family, career, graduate school, what have you—she fell in with some young people, friends of this Anthony Herron. I believe that’s when she started using drugs. Her grade point average plummeted, she was increasingly absent, and there were times when I couldn’t contact her for days. She finished college—barely. Soon after, she broke off her engagement with young Millard.”
 

“Did you try to intervene during any of this, Senator Patrick?”