Pleasantville (24 page)

“Sad,” Lonnie says.

“Why?” Rob says, wiping his mouth. “ 'Cause people who look like me are moving in?” he says, gesturing toward his vaguely Chicano features, his wide, bright brown eyes. He pushes the ribs aside for the carne asada.

“That's not what I meant.”

“You really looking to return to an America that birthed a place like Pleasantville?” he says. “Jim Crow is what made that neighborhood possible.”

“Still sad,” Lon says, picking at the label on her beer. “It's still a loss.”

“For some. Opportunity for others.”

He fingers a charred green onion lying limp along the inside of his corn tortilla, angling it to ensure it plays a central role in his next bite. “The ‘mighty 259' is going to look
mighty
different ten, fifteen years from now,” he says, digging into the asada, leaning over the table so the meaty juices and chunky bits of salsa slop onto the paper lining of the red plastic basket instead of into his lap.

“If there even is a precinct 259 in ten, fifteen years,” Lonnie says.

“My people vote,” he says, swallowing.

“Just ask Johnetta Paul,” Jay says wryly.

“Surprised she hasn't started conducting campaign stops in Spanish.”

Lonnie shakes her head. “I'm talking about a threat from the outside.”

She's talking, actually, about the flyers, the implied threat to Pleasantville from a development along Buffalo Bayou. Rob rolls his eyes. “There is no threat. That development has never gotten off the ground, and it never will. The flyers, that was just Wolcott scaring the old folks out there, who, when it comes to land use and the slow encroach of development, have been burned before.” Then, remembering to whom he's talking, he cringes at his choice of language. “Sorry,” he says to the plaintiffs' lawyer, before adding, “And either way, Axel is not a pro-development candidate. He really means all that ‘a safe city is a prosperous city' stuff. It really is his top priority, dealing with crime.”

“Which is the
Chronicle
's worst nightmare,” Lon says, smiling faintly, very nearly enjoying the publisher's perceived misfortune. “Three hundred and sixty-five days of running crime stats on the front page. ‘How's the Mayor Doing?' ‘Can Former Police Chief Meet His Goals?' That shit does
not
sell newspapers.”

“Or attract business,” Rob says before taking another bite, talking with his mouth full. “It only becomes a daily reminder to investors to spend their dollars elsewhere, on a city with fewer problems.”

“No wonder the paper is pushing for Wolcott from the inside,” Jay says.

“Even though they publicly endorsed Axel.”

“There are two elections going on. The fiction in the
Chronicle
and the real story on the ground,” Rob says, sucking down the foamy swirl in the bottom of his beer bottle. “Looks like I'm the only one who picked the wrong horse.”

“They're setting Axel up for a fall,” Lonnie says.

“You talked to folks in Pleasantville about A.G.?” Jay says, circling back.

Rob shakes his head, washing down the taco with his beer. “I was under strict orders not to. Most of what I got was from Sam himself, Vivian a little bit.”

“What about Axel?”

Rob shakes his head again. “I was under orders.” He burps softly, then reaches for the opening of his black messenger bag, unhooking the brass buckle with one hand. “There were, surprisingly, a lot of records to pull at the Hathorne Community Center. The women out there, they've saved everything. Newsletters, team rosters, and elaborate directories, listing residents street by street, their kids' names, birthdays. Plus hundreds and hundreds of photographs from community meetings, parties, voter registration drives, even photos of the fight to stop the 610 Freeway from cutting through the neighborhood. The archives are open to the public.” He pulls out a few photocopied pieces of paper. “The story of A. G. Hats is as thin as they come, more myth than anything, a story that begins and ends with
Belle Blue
, his lone solo album. I was trying to put together what happened
after
he stopped playing.”

“Which is?”

“Well, he came home sometime around '75,” Rob says. “Viv nursed him off the drugs. He quit the nightlife, quit playing, and tried to settle down, back home in Pleasantville. Sam had moved out of the neighborhood by then, and A.G. moved into the family house on Norvic. He got a job at the high school, cleaning up. He even started coaching intramural basketball and football teams with the neighborhood kids, the same program that Keith Morehead runs now.”

He shoves the red plastic baskets of food off to the side.

Across the table, he unfolds the photocopied pages.

There, on top, is a black-and-white image of A.G. at the head of a line of marchers, holding up one half of a printed banner that reads:
DON
'
T POLLUTE PLEASANTVILLE
! Behind him, Jay notices a young Arlee Delyvan, in her early forties, her black hair wrapped in a paisley scarf. Jim and Ruby Wainwright stand just to the other side. Given the multitude of belled pants legs, the wide, lank collars, it must be 1976, Jay thinks, the same year ProFerma Labs had to file a public notice of its plans to build along Market Street, and six years after Jay had walked away from his own activism for good, or so he thought. “He got heavily involved in the campaign to keep the area around Pleasantville residential, keeping industry out,” Rob says. “But this is it,” he says, pointing to a photograph from this same march, A.G. again, surrounded by a swarm of kids as young as five and six following him in the street, their mouths open in midchant. “This is the last shot of A.G. I could find anywhere. The
Post
, the
Chronicle
, the archives in the Pleasantville community center, he just disappeared. I drank my way through every juke joint and blues hall in south Texas trying to track down any trace of the man. It was a fluke to find him pushing a broom, right in Third Ward, an absolute shot in the dark.”

The cell phone in Jay's pocket trills, buzzing against the side of his hip. He slides it from his pocket, reading the number on the screen–Rolly, calling from his cell phone.

“Rolly,” he says when he answers.

“We got a problem, boss.”

“What's going on?”

“Hollis is on the move.”

“I thought he had another hour on the clock,” Jay says, checking the time on his watch. “Plus, I thought you were still chasing print shops.”

“I might have moved up the schedule.”

“You mean you didn't follow my instructions.”

“I'm thinking right about now you'll be glad I didn't.”

“How's that?”

“He clocked out early,” Rolly says. “I'm on him now since he left the tire shop, heading not to his apartment, the grocery store, laundromat, nowhere near home, but instead keeping south on 45. Then he hopped on 610. He just exited Braeswood, and now he's turning onto Rice.”

“That's right by my place.”

“Same thing I thought,” Rolly says.

Hollis coming after me?
Jay wonders.

He can't think fast enough to guess why.

He can't think of anything but his kids.

“That's a right turn on Glenmeadow, man. He's on your street.”

“Get ahead of him,” Jay says, standing quickly. “Get to the house and have Ellie let you in. Evelyn should be there, but don't say a word about it if you don't have to.” He throws two twenties onto the picnic table. “I'm on my way.”

When he
arrives at the house on Glenmeadow, almost thirty minutes later, Rolly's El Camino is parked in the driveway, behind Evelyn's Pontiac Grand Am. And just down the street, between two lampposts, a blue Chevy Caprice is parked, the same make and model as the one that was parked next to Rolly's truck the night they staked out Beechwood Estates. “He's just watching the house,” Rolly said, when he called from Jay's street a few minutes ago. Jay lost him after that, his cell phone dropping out during a tricky patch of poor reception on Richmond, and when he tried back, his calls went straight to Rolly's voice mail, and no one was answering the house line. Stepping out of his car, Jay has just enough time to register the lights on
inside the house before Hollis is on him. “Hey,” the man says, marching toward Jay, stepping from the darkness into the light of the streetlamp overhead, two white-knuckled fists already clenched at his sides. Jay looks back toward the house, aching to know what is going on in there, what would keep Rolly or Evelyn from picking up the home phone. “What in the fuck all do you think you're doing?” Hollis says.

He's drunk. Jay can smell it from here. He can practically count the number of empties lining the floor of the Chevy. “Take it easy,” he says.

Hollis is shorter than Jay, but meatier in the places that give men permission to start shit on dark street corners, thick about the neck and upper arms. The ribbed seams of his black-and-gold
GOLDWELL TIRES
T-shirt are stretched by the width of his biceps. It's him, all right. The greasy-haired white guy who confronted Jay in the parking lot of the apartment complex: sandy, almost reddish hair, clipped at the front, and brown eyes, a perfect match for the description given to the cops after the deaths of Deanne Duchon and Tina Wells.

“You following me?” he says.

“Might I point out you're standing in front of my house right now.”

Jay slides his hands inside his pants pockets, thinking he might dupe Hollis into believing he's got something in there other than pennies and his car keys. This is the last time, he thinks, that he's leaving the house without the .38.

“And wasn't that you out in front of
my
house? Coming around my old job, stirring up some ancient shit?” Hollis says, creeping closer. He's sweating despite the cooling night air, and his skin is sallow. His five o'clock shadow is rough enough to be a weapon. “I ought to have you arrested for trespassing, stalking or something,” he says, fists tightening at his sides.

“You really want to invite police scrutiny right now?”

“I ain't done nothing wrong!”

It's here he makes his first move, a quick step on the ball of his right foot while raising his left hand. Jay is quicker, hooking him right up under his chin, a clean blow that catches Hollis by surprise. He stumbles back a few paces before doubling over, resting his hands on the front of his dirty jeans. “I'll kill you,” he says, spitting blood, standing suddenly and charging Jay again. He wraps his arms around Jay's waist and thrusts him to the ground. Jay can hear the pop of his head against the concrete before he feels it, before the bass note of agony echoes in the tight confines of his skull. He rolls over to his side, his stomach lurching with nausea. Hollis gets in another blow to his head before Jay manages to push him off, knocking him to the ground. Hollis, drunk, trips on the toes of his cowboy boots as he tries to stand, falling back to the street. Jay has a straight shot to the man's head if he wants to take it, a single kick that would shut him up for good. But Hollis is already spent, hunched on his hands and knees, struggling to catch his breath. “I swear to God, I'll kill you.”

“Like you killed Alicia Nowell?”

“You not putting no shit on me just to save your boy's ass.”

Hollis stands slowly, cautiously reaching his arms out behind him to catch a potential fall, as if he expects the street to rise up and snatch him back.

He's even drunker than Jay thought.

“There was an eyewitness who saw you.”

Hollis nearly laughs. “Saw me
kill
a girl? Bullshit.”

“There was an eyewitness, several of 'em, actually,” Jay says, “who saw you and your van loitering in the neighborhood. There was somebody who saw you outside the truck stop on Market Street, struggling with a teenage girl.”

“Wasn't that the same thing the newspaper said about your boy?”

He's right, of course. The D.A.'s office
had
said the same thing about Neal.

Hollis stands to his full height. “Anybody can say they saw anything, don't make it true. I never touched no young girls, at least not out there, and I certainly never killed anybody. Worst I ever did in Pleasantville was catch a smoke on the boss man's clock, park my van, and nap awhile. You the only one still can't get that straight. That story about me and some girl outside the truck stop, it never happened. The date it supposedly went down, I wasn't even in the state. I had a special run up to Tulsa for Sterling. They vouched for me, not to mention the shipping company in Oklahoma who received a big shitload of pipe fitters from yours truly. The district attorney's office, the cops, they knew all this years ago, that's why I was never arrested in the first place.”

Jay falls silent, momentarily stumped.

In the dim light, he searches Hollis's bloodshot eyes.

Why hasn't he heard this before?

And how did this never come up in Lon's talks with Detective Resner?

“It's not me,” Hollis says, cracking his knuckles, as if this late show of menace might still put Jay on notice. “I see you around me again, I hear you throwing my name around a murder case, and it's gonna come down a lot worse than this,” he says, before pivoting on his boots and walking back to the Chevy.

It's warm
in the house, too warm. Jay can smell Evelyn's cooking on the stove, spaghetti for the kids, hot links and sweet onions for her. He peels off his suit jacket, the cotton shirt underneath sticking to the hairs on his forearms. He stretches out the muscles in his right hand, where a bruise is developing across his knuckles. The back of his skull throbs. He wipes his
damp forehead as he starts for the kitchen, looking for Rolly and the kids, Evelyn too, feeling a strange stillness in every corner of the house. From the great room, the den past the kitchen, Jay hears the low murmur of a male voice, young and slightly gruff, can actually smell the man's cologne, sweetly overdone, covering god knows what. The pain in his head swells, as panic vibrates through his body. He immediately thinks of the guy in the Nissan Z. He doesn't think anybody could get past Rolly, but how else to explain why his buddy didn't answer his phone? He's about to start for his bedroom, for the .38 revolver, when he finally recognizes the voice in the living room. He turns toward it, inching past the kitchen and into the den, where Pastor Keith Morehead is seated on Jay's L-shaped sectional.