The Clouds Roll Away (19 page)

“You come with Granny Lew.” She leaned in close to be heard over the singing and clapping.

She took my hand, her skin soft and warm as risen bread dough, and her flashlight beamed across the dark grass. We walked past the cars to a horizontal oil drum set on metal legs. Chickens roasted on a metal grate, coals beneath glowing orange.

“Lookit this,” said Granny Lew. “That girl can't even keep her mind on my birds.”

She headed across the grass, leaving the grill, rolling forward and picking up speed as she headed for a house behind the chicken coops. I trotted behind, trying to keep up.

“Zennie!” she called. “Zennie!”

A wooden ramp angled over the house's front stairs and Granny Lew came across it like dice rolled out of a cup, her feet churning and clunking. But before she reached the top, the front door flew open.

Zennie looked mutinous.

“My chickens are about burned.” Granny Lew breathed hard, her wrenlike chest rising and falling. “What do you expect me to feed those men after the service—feathers?”

Zennie grabbed a coat hanging beside the door. “Zeke had a nightmare,” she said. “That crazy music scared him again.”

“Five years old and the boy still can't sleep,” Granny Lew said to me. “It's not that music,” she told Zennie. “That music's from God. It's on account of that no-good man says he's his father.” She wagged the flashlight, zipping the beam around. “You listen to me, child, and you listen good—”

Zennie slammed the door, stomping down the ramp, leaping onto the dark grass.

“See that?” Granny Lew said. “She just scared that boy all over again.”

Trundling down the ramp after her granddaughter, who was already passing the beat-up cars, Granny Lew murmured in front of me. I lagged behind, wondering if I should come back another time. Gray veils were rising from her mouth, disappearing in the night.

Zennie snatched a pair of tongs from the grill and began flipping the chickens. The skins sizzled on the grate. Granny Lew was rolling up behind her, breathing heavily. When she grabbed Zennie's shoulder, I froze, thinking the fight was turning violent. But Zennie only continued to stare down at the embers and her grandmother squeezed, a wordless gesture, summing up love and anger and laughter and argument. It was a touch that said nothing could ever diminish this woman's bond to her family.

“You listen, child,” Granny Lew said again. But her voice was tender now. “And you listen good.”

She let go, rolling past. The flashlight beam swung with her gait as she walked to the building where the men were still singing.

Zennie had not looked up from the chickens. I glanced back at the house behind us.

A light shone in the room above the porch. The window was open, a yellow curtain billowing in the breeze.

“What kind of life do you want for him, Zennie?” I asked her.

Twisting her wrist, she snatched the chickens, slapping them down on the hot metal. But the hiss was drowned out by the music coming from the small building. The clapping cracked like electricity through the cold.

“What I want,” she said, “is for those ex-cons to shut up.”

“They're ex-cons?”

“Milky's fault,” she said. “Granny went out to visit him in jail. She never stopped. She promises to feed them if they come worship.” Waving the tongs, she took in the coops. “This place is just death row for birds.”

I knew what she was doing. I refused to play along.

“Zennie, what do you want for your son?”

Several long moments passed. She stared at the glowing red embers under the grate, the fire exploding as the juices dripped. In the ambient light, her cabochon face looked wounded and stubborn.

“You want him to grow up and join a gang?” I asked.

“Get off it.”

“Sure, your grandmother can go visit him in prison. Then he can come out here wearing a suit from the Salvation Army. Are you going to cook chickens for that?”

“You don't know anything about me,” she said. “Moon takes care of me.”

“He'll take care of you all right.”

But I didn't get any further. The doors burst open and the men came tumbling out of the building, gasping at the cold air. I saw Milky and another man carrying Granny Lew, lifting her by the elbows. The singer was the last person out. He held the damaged guitar by its neck and moved as though he'd donated every ounce of his blood.

“You gotta eat,” Zennie grumbled.

“Thanks, but—”

“I ain't inviting you,” she said in a tone that said as much. “Granny Lew's got a rule. Nobody leaves here without a meal.”

The men swarmed around the grill, exclaiming over the scent. Several others slid coolers from the truck beds and held cold soda cans to their sweating faces. Granny Lew rolled among them, admonishing, pushing them back until the ex-cons formed a loose circle. In the night, their dark faces were almost invisible, but I could see their bodies, still swaying, still moving to the raw music.

Granny Lew took my hand and squeezed it. Then she told us to bow our heads and give thanks.

chapter twenty-four

M
onday morning I sat in Phaup's office and stared out the window, watching clouds heather into soft washboards. When I glanced back at her, she was sitting behind her stalagmites of memos. I went back to counting the ripples in the cloud's washboard. When I reached nine, Pollard Durant cleared his throat. He sat to my right.

Phaup looked up.

Dread crept across my heart.

“Raleigh.” She closed the file a little too slowly. “I'm curious about something.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You maintain that your actions Friday night were not out of order. Do you plan to stick by that . . . theory?”

I didn't move.

Pollard cleared his throat again. He wore a dark blue, nearly black suit with a white shirt and blue tie. “In all fairness,” he said, “Raleigh changed their minds regarding our informant. We have that on tape. They suspected our informant. But Friday night's events changed their minds.”

“It's valiant of you to defend her, Pollard. But she's once again in my office, expecting me to agree when she steps outside the protocol.”

“I'm not expecting anything like that, ma'am.”

“We've been down this path before, Raleigh, and from what I can see, you've learned absolutely nothing from your disciplinary transfer. In fact, you seem determined to go one better.”

“I learned from my transfer,” I said.

She raised her brows.

“Ma'am,” I added.

“What did you learn, exactly?”

“When I went into that house Friday night, I had my gun with me.”

“You're missing the point. And you know it. The issue here is that you placed yourself in harm's way, again. No backup. I'm beginning to believe you actively seek out opportunities to work this way.” She looked at Pollard. “You disagree?”

I didn't let him speak.

“The informant pulled the change-up,” I said. “I reacted to it.”

It was like being a gnat.

She continued looking at Pollard. “I can understand why you're supporting her. You want to see the task force continue. I can appreciate the strain of keeping that operation going when you're shorthanded.” She smiled, and it scared me. “So I'm willing to let Raleigh remain on the task force, with one alteration.”

I didn't even attempt to breathe.

“She's now the drug buyer.”

“You want—” Pollard stopped.

“Is there a problem with that?”

The man without fidgets was a statue. “My understanding was the Bureau didn't want agents doing street buys anymore.”

Her cold smile warmed with victory. “Then you agree it was dangerous for her to go in there?”

Pollard glanced at me. His eyes held a mixture of disgust and admiration. Phaup was so terribly good at painting people into corners.

“Thank you, ma'am,” I said. “I'm honored by your trust in me.”

She opened her mouth. Then closed it. Her lips tightened.

“Pollard,” she said, “give us a moment, will you?”

He walked across the room, all too eager to leave. When the door closed, Phaup reached into her red blouse and tugged.

“Any undercover work will be strictly part-time,” she said. “Your top priority remains this hate crime, which I guess I need to remind you is still open. Have you seen the news stories, Raleigh? Either you close this by month's end, or—”

“I'm heading out there as soon as we finish here.”

She smiled, frigidly.

“Then go,” she said. “We're finished here.”

In the whistling cold of the K-Car, I drove past the roadside elephants and down the long driveway. The guard shack was empty and covered with gold tinsel.

Climbing out of the car, I saw fresh gravel smothering the blown-out blackness where the teenager had died inside the vehicle. Crime scene tape had been removed from the garage, and new doors hinged each of the garage's eight bays. Walking across the grass, I counted the days. It was just seven days ago that the bomb detonated. Yet now there was no sign of it.

Beside the stucco additions, a long white box truck was parked on fresh mulch. The truck's metal tongue touched the wood chips, guiding men who marched like ants down the ramp. They carried white chairs across the mulch and set them inside an enormous white tent. One of the flaps was rolled up, exposing round tables that dotted the Astroturf floor. I stopped counting the tables at twenty-six.

Cujo stood next to the truck, chewing his spearmint gum. The rifle was slung across his back. “RPM's in the house,” he said.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Christmas party,” he said.

I walked across the mulch to the formal brick walkway laid centuries ago. As I stepped on the porch, Sid opened the door. He was smiling.

“RPM's got an interview,” he said, still smiling.

In fact, Sid was smiling so hard it looked painful. A diamond glittered in the middle of his gold front tooth. It matched the two white stones in his ears. His broad smile seemed to be waiting for me to acknowledge his new accessory. I didn't particularly care for jewelry in mouths. Or noses or eyebrows or any unmentionable locations. And at strained moments like this, my background in science reared its head, filling my mind with clinical descriptions. Everybody had their coping mechanisms; this was mine, thinking that the half-carat white diamond was affixed to the anterior number nine tooth, on the maxillary upper horseshoe.

“You like it?” Sid said.

“Is it new?”

He nodded. And although it didn't seem possible, his smile broadened. “You like it?” he asked again.

“Wow,” I said. “Is RPM around?”

“He's talking to a reporter. You can wait in the photo booth.”

Motioning me to follow, Sid walked across the foyer. At the bottom of the wide stairs, a pair of ebony figureheads sat encased in bubble wrap, apparently brought back from Africa.

“How was the trip?” I asked.

“Good.” Sid continued down the hallway. “Sounds like we missed some fireworks around here.”

I nodded, glancing at the rooms we passed. It was decorated chaos. Plastic children's toys and suede loungers and big-screen televisions. But no people.

“Quiet today,” I said.

“Everybody's sleeping,” he said. “Getting ready for the party.”

He turned into a square room, the walls painted the color of cloudy emeralds.

“I'll tell him you're here,” Sid said.

Photographs covered the green walls, frame touching frame like a jigsaw puzzle. I walked the room's perimeter, the famous faces staring back. Actors, musicians, starlets. Faces I'd seen only in magazines. Here they partied with RPM on yachts and walked red carpets and held up champagne flutes. In one picture, the governor of Virginia stood with RPM. It appeared to be some kind of ribbon-cutting ceremony. Their arms were around each other's shoulders like old friends.

But at the corner, the photos suddenly shifted. No champagne flutes. No movie stars. I stared at the dry grass huts. Swollen dark bellies. Naked children. Women staring at the camera with dull eyes, holding listless babies. I leaned in closer. The skin on the women's arms was marbled pink and brown.

“Hey.”

I whipped around. Wally stood at the edge of the room. His face looked wan and tired. Except his eyes. They were strange, almost scary.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What are
you
doing here?”

“Working.”

“Me too,” he said. “What happened to your hair?”

I felt as ridiculous as Sid. “You like it?”

He shrugged. “Not too bad. You here about his car getting blown up?”

I nodded.

“He's negotiating with
Newsweek
.” Wally feigned casualness, badly. “He wants them to use my photos.
Newsweek
, you believe it?”