The Trust (3 page)

In Wild Turkey, wisdom.

On Monday he’d call his lawyer. He’d fall on a sword and take one for the team. Avoiding the law was an unacceptable risk, one Palmer refused to take with his family’s safety at stake.

Afterward, he’d call Grove. That kid had navigated more than his fair share of problems. He was a guy Palmer could trust, smart and rock-solid reliable even if a little slow to take action.

“Sometimes you do the best you can and just say fuck it,” Palmer observed to no one in particular.

“Is that any way for a good Catholic to speak?”

Palmer almost leaped out of his skin. He whirled toward the cabin. What he saw made him sick.

CHAPTER THREE

NARRAGANSETT, RHODE ISLAND
SATURDAY

Annie and I had driven up to my beach house in Rhode Island for the weekend. Years ago, she was my sales assistant at SKC. Now she’s getting her master’s in creative writing at Columbia.

I’m glad she decided against law school. Quick and whip smart, my girlfriend would make a great attorney. But the world doesn’t need another litigator who bills at nine hundred dollars an hour. And I doubt she’d be happy anyway.

It was 10:15
A.M.
Annie was at the house surgically attached to her laptop. She had a short story due Monday. I was laboring through a kickboxing class, my instructor beating the crap out of me.

“Where’s your head, Grove?”

“Sorry.”

I couldn’t focus. I was thinking about Palmer. The coach’s three-step exercise was simple enough. Left jab. Right cross. But when I reached the roundhouse kick, he leg-swept my feet from underneath me.

“Pay attention.” My instructor is a big guy, solid, six foot two, built like a tank. I had never seen him so frustrated. “You asked to join my academy. Remember?”

“Sorry.”

My apology, number two in as many minutes, was lip service. You don’t grow up with a self-assured demigod, listen to him shake and hesitate over the phone, and park your concerns at the door to a martial arts studio. Not when the guy’s been a pillar all your life.

Last night, I dialed Palmer’s cell from the road. Same thing this morning before class. I tried his office. And when that didn’t work, I phoned his home on South Battery. I wanted to ask, “Is everything okay?”

A machine answered each time. “It’s Palmer. Leave a message.” His recorded voice, the trademark whisper of a Southern drawl, resonated just as soft and sweet as the real thing.

“Left jab,” my coach barked.

Bam. I smacked his hand pads, the crack from my glove reverberating like a snare drum.

“Right cross.”

Bam.

“Roundhouse kick.”

No bam this time. My coach took my legs out from underneath me, again.

“What about your bike races?” he growled.

He was right. I had signed up for kickboxing lessons to improve my reflexes for those tight finishes when the slightest hesitation separates first place from fourth. The classes were a good workout. But cycling is my sport, cross training my way to win more races.

“Sorry.”

“You say that again, and I’m taking you down.”

Try as I might to pay attention, it was all Palmer that morning. His four words were haunting: “I need your help.”

I told myself once, maybe a hundred times during the kickboxing session,
Palmer’s fine. Stop being so alarmist.

The admonitions didn’t work.

“Left jab.”

Bam.

“Right cross.”

Bam.

“Roundhouse kick.”

This time my coach clubbed the right side of my head with his pads, which, cushion or no cushion, stung like a bastard. “You got no street in you. Somebody’s gonna pop you outside of class, and you won’t know what to do.”

My eyes narrowed.

He saw the anger. “Take a shot.”

I took my fighting stance, left leg forward.

He waited, expecting one of those endless combo drills that dominate our exercise routines. My ear smarted. And me being the sensitive guy I am—always sucking it up until my temper takes over—I wanted to kick his ass. I jumped and twisted in midair, my right shin wheeling around and leveled at his head. Make no mistake: I was going for blood.

The coach ducked, low enough to avoid serious contact. I still managed to swipe his clean-shaven pate. After about ten lessons, it was the closest I had ever come to landing a real blow. And cuffing him felt glorious.

He was surprised. His mouth curled up to the right—smile, smirk, a hint of respect. He continued to circle. “Nice, man, real nice. But in a street fight, nobody’s gonna wait for you to wake up.”

I waited, fuming, not thinking about what he said. I watched for an opening, ready to jump and take down my coach with a spinning hook-heel kick, anything to get even.

“Enough for one day, Grove. Your legwork’s good. Must be all that cycling, because it sure as hell isn’t your concentration.”

“You want to come riding with me?” I was throwing down the gauntlet. I could take him in a bike race, no sweat.

“Thanks, man. Can’t.”

Palmer never called Saturday, which was odd. We don’t worry about bothering each other on the weekends. We’re long past that. I knew something wasn’t right. And my instincts were eating me from the inside out.

CHAPTER FOUR

FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

“What’s your wife say?”

“About what?” The crew boss rubbed his temples. He was trying to forget last night’s special, the dazzling kick line of two-for-one tequila. He wished the kid would shut up and leave him alone.

“Us working Saturday.”

“Says she needs the time off.”

“From what?”

“Me.”

“Hah!” the kid chortled. “Go figure.”

“Shut up.”

There were five men working a job near exit 55 on I-95. They had taken two pickup trucks, one equipped with a cherry picker. The telescoping boom reached forty feet no problem, important for the big jobs.

Everyone on the crew wore a blue construction helmet and a body harness, company policy at Smithfield Outdoor Media for employees going up. A sticker on the kid’s helmet read,
I STILL MISS MY EX, BUT MY AIM IS IMPROVING.
The decal was not standard at the billboard company.

They had driven south from corporate headquarters, forty-five minutes through the dense stands of pine and cypress. Saturday morning or not, it was like any other day on the North Carolina freeway. Flying insects detonated against windshields, splattering in yellow cones. Heat wafted off the tarmac in double helixes of Southern ennui. And aging northerners gunned their Cadillacs south. The winter pilgrimage to Florida was under way.

An endless procession of billboards broke the monotony of open road. They promoted fast food, hotels, and chains of every kind. By far, the displays from South of the Border were the most annoying, its one-liners legendary. One after another, they exhorted drivers to pull over and flex their credit cards at the decaying theme park on the Carolina border:

FILL UP YOUR TRUNK WITH PEDRO’S JUNK.

HONEYMOON SUITES: HEIR CONDITIONED.

KEEP YELLING, KIDS! (THEY’LL STOP.)

Soon, one lone billboard would steal all the attention from Pedro, South of the Border, and the blight of signs along I-95. The five men were about to ignite a firestorm. They knew it. So did the owner of Smithfield Outdoor Media. He’d agreed to post the advertisement only after negotiating top dollar and a hold-harmless agreement.

*   *   *

Greater Fayetteville, pronounced “Fed-vull” by the locals, is 200,000 people strong. It’s an eclectic place, where patriotic residents take pride in the military presence. Were it not for the armed forces, Fayetteville might be another one of those countless two-blink towns that sprout like mushrooms along muggy Southern highways.

Thousands of soldiers, hailing from every state in the nation, are stationed at nearby Fort Bragg and Pope Army Airfield. They train and run military maneuvers, which make armed caravans a common sight. Many troops deploy to the Middle East, leaving their loved ones behind.

When the soldiers return, local television stations broadcast joyous reunions at Pope. Couples kiss. Little kids hug their mommies or daddies. Everybody has a good cry. And during those moments, parents forget their worries about tight budgets and mortgage payments.

Some families—they’re more the exception than the rule—have lived in Fayetteville for generations. They’re fiercely proud of their heritage and bristle at the occasional mention of “Fayettenam,” military-speak ever since the Vietnam War. The historic district, long-timers note, may be small. But it’s bursting with Southern charm, with the craftsmanship and detail orientation that predated the military’s arrival en masse.

For the most part the communities are full of hardworking families. Parents take jobs with local businesses that provide services to those living steady lives in tidy neighborhoods. There are big wheels in front of the houses, dogs and cats everywhere.

Neighbors are always getting together for backyard barbecues. They talk football and local politics. They plan day trips to places like Mount Olive, birthplace to the pickles that line supermarket shelves across the country. Or they compare notes about more distant locations, historic resorts like New Bern on the coast.

But Fayetteville, however all-American, suffers a unique misfortune. Located halfway between New York City and Miami, it serves as a convenient hub for the East Coast drug trade. The area’s combustible mix of soldiers on furlough, lonely spouses, and a steady supply of recreational drugs makes the city prone to spectacular, sometimes sordid events.

*   *   *

In Fayetteville 28312, where the five men from Smithfield Outdoor Media were working, there were fifty-six churches in total. Twenty-four of them were Baptist. The residents, young or old, military or otherwise, were God-fearing folk for the most part. Sunday services buttressed their lives like the pillars inside the various houses of worship.

Neighbors were accustomed to freeway billboards. Many signs were visible from their backyards because of size and shape. But the new advertisement was a real monster. It soared forty feet in the air, high atop a thick metal pylon. The ad space measured fourteen feet by forty-eight feet. And powerful spotlights illuminated the message dusk till dawn.

None of the neighbors would be happy with what they saw. Size was hardly the issue. It was the promise of comfort food, the pledge of clean showers and spotless bathrooms, and the prurient offer of Sodom and Gomorrah to every trucker on the East Coast.

Three members of the team stood on a metal gangway, behind the billboard’s face and high over the ground. They clasped sturdy ropes and began to pull, hand over hand.

Smithfield Outdoor Media no longer employed sign painters. They were a vanishing breed. These days, the company hung preprinted tarps on their billboards. Two men at the bottom fed the sign to their colleagues up top. They took great care to prevent the vinyl tarp from flapping in the breeze.

The giant advertisement began to climb, the message strangely fetching. It read:
HIP—TWENTY THOUSAND SQUARE FEET OF FANTASIES OPENING NEXT WEEK.

As the men unfurled the vinyl sheet, the middle section hinted at the coming horror. To the left, the tarp listed what customers would find inside those twenty thousand square feet: costumes, novelties, restaurant and bar, shower facilities, CDs, and toys, toys, toys. There was an ad burst proclaiming,
TRUCKERS WELCOME.

To the right was a woman’s face, not quite in profile but close. Her unnaturally blue eyes were sultry and stylized, one closed in a salacious come-hither wink. Her red lips were pouty and lush. They evoked images of Park Avenue clinics and other epicenters for plastic surgery where collagen sightings are a dime a dozen. She was sucking on the biggest chocolate-covered strawberry ever seen in those parts. And her radiant face suggested steamy sex at its best.

The bottom three feet eliminated all doubt. The ad copy was big, black, and beckoning. It read,
HIGHLY INTIMATE PLEASURES. THE SOURCE FOR ALL YOUR ADULT NEEDS.

Next week an adult superstore, twenty thousand square feet of lechery and fetishes, was opening off exit 55. The billboard ended speculation, all the guessing over the last six months about who was putting up what just a few clicks from the Temple Baptist Church.

The uproar, however, had just begun.

CHAPTER FIVE

FAYETTEVILLE 28312
SUNDAY AFTERNOON

“Hey, Biscuit.” Mrs. Jason Locklear wedged her way to the front of the room. She was a plump woman, her ample bosom jutting forward like the nose cone of a 747. “What do we tell our children?”

The crowd hushed and waited. They were homeowners. They were military families, stretching for their piece of the American dream. Above all, they were kindred souls united by a common problem.

Mrs. Jason Locklear was the reliable neighborhood activist. She had proven herself time and again, whether organizing block parties or staving off tax hikes on their homes. Now she was assembling resources for the fight of the young subdivision’s life.

Parents had packed into her 3,100-square-foot colonial with wraparound porch. It was by far the largest home in the neighborhood, the only residence that came with a bonus room from the builder. Liberty Point Plantations was a community on edge.

Most days the development resembled other suburbs near exit 55. The houses were uniform, two stories, two-car garages, and too much red brick. Their timber trim—whites, blues, and greens bordering on black—kept things interesting.

Bikes were sprawled across front yards. The lawns were a tangle of crabgrass and regret, a dappling of bare spots underneath towering pines that dropped needles everywhere.

The communal swimming pool was a notch too small. Kids were always landing cannonballs on each other, every summer marked by three or four 911 trips to the emergency room for broken bones. Liberty Point Plantations was the kind of place where young families would grow old—were it not for the cycle of active military that moved in and out every few years.