Shakespeare's Champion

"They killed those people out of incompetence." I closed my eyes. I remembered the scene inside the church.

"There are groups that like to kill as many black people as they can, Lily, and don't care what age they get. These guys, no ... they hadn't ever built a bomb before and they got it wrong."

"How'd they get it in the church before the meeting?"

"The church is unlocked during the day. Jim just chanced it, best as I can piece it out."

I felt sick.

"But Darnell, they haven't said anything about him?"

"No, but your name has come up a bunch of times."

"Wait." The most important question of all hadn't even occurred to me until now. Jack was new at the store. Why would they trust him to keep silent? "How can you overhear all this?"

"Lily, I put a bug in the employee lounge."

"Is that legal?"

"Well..."

"Hmmm."

"It's not exactly true to say they haven't talked about Darnell's murder," Jack said, perhaps to distract me from wondering about how much illegality he'd put up with. "They all feel like he got what was coming to him. Don't ask me to explain their thinking, because that's impossible. And then they mention you, because I gather that was a real brawl. Did you have to pitch in?" He turned me to face him and looked me in the eyes. His own eyes were serious. I ran my finger down his cheek, down his scar, traced his neck to his collarbone.

"Don't think I haven't had regrets that the whole thing happened, that I happened to be there, even. I'm no activist. I want to be left alone. But I was there, and he was outnumbered, and those boys would've beat the shit out of him."

Jack absorbed that, accepted it. "But you see, from their point of view," he said, very quietly, "you defended Darnell, and you were there at Howell's when they came to reclaim the rifles, and you were in the church when it blew up. That's too many coincidences for them, no matter that you were minding your own business in every instance."

"Do they think I'm you? Do they think I'm some kind of detective?"

"They think you like black people too much and they do think you might have something to do with their not being able to get the guns back. Then I spend the night with you on the very night they're trying to find out who was spying on them. So they wonder about you, a lot. At the same time, it seems like they have a weird kind of respect for you."

"How did they come to chase you last night?"

"I was hidden in a sort of niche I'd made. If you think the customer part of the store is overwhelming, you should see the back of the store. Someone could live back there for a week and no one would ever know. Anyway, I knew they were going to be meeting after hours in the storeroom, and it's not bugged. I wanted to know what they were planning."

"How'd they know you were there?"

"You're going to laugh," he said gloomily, and I had a feeling I really wasn't. "The boy, Paulie, who works at the Home Supply store, brought his dog with him. He's real proud of that dog, talks about it all the time. It cost some ungodly amount. A bluetick hound, I think. The dog sniffed me, started barking. It seemed smarter to run for it than to wait until they came to investigate."

I was right. I wasn't laughing. "They would have killed you."

"I know it." He lay staring at my ceiling, thinking about that real hard. "I don't think all of them were in on Darnell's murder, but they would have killed me last night because they were all together and they were scared."

"Do you think they're suspicious now?"

"Maybe. I got a phone call today from Jim. He said he'd heard from Darcy that I was courting Lily Bard. He suggested I'd be better off with some more traditional girl."

"Courting, huh? That what this is?"

"Damn if I know. But I like it, whatever we call it."

"And I'm a girl," I said thoughtfully. "A nontraditional girl."

"Screw tradition, in that case," Jack murmured.

"So what are you going to do next?"

"I'm going to keep on like I have been, as long as I can. Collecting the tape every night, listening to it, copying it, phoning Howell with any information I can glean. Waiting for him to decide what he's going to do; after all, he's my boss." Jack put his arms around me. "Lily, I get stubborn and mad and do the wrong thing sometimes. If I was really a great detective, I'd tell you I can't see you until this over. Maybe I'm putting you in even more danger than you're already in. But maybe somehow, since they still believe my cover, I'm giving you a little credence with them. If a bad boy like me is interested in you, you can't be a snitch, they figure - I hope. But I just don't know."

He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed. I was treated to a view of his bare back and bottom. I enjoyed it very much. I traced his spine with my finger, and he arched his back. "You can tell," he said, not looking at me, "that I have a real problem with impulsiveness."

"You're kidding," I said, deadpan.

"Let's not joke about this, OK. I came to your house when I was wounded, brought you under more suspicion, maybe. Put you in danger. I made love to you on impulse. I can't regret that. I'd stay in bed with you for a year if I could. But I was impulsive starting that affair with Karen, and she died." He turned a little to meet my eyes. "I can't let my thoughtlessness put you in danger, like it did her."

"I don't guess you'll be able to stop it. And I'm not Karen Kingsland." There was a certain edge in my voice.

"Lily, listen to me! I know you're strong, I know you think of yourself as a tough woman, but this is not just one opponent who fights fair. This is a pack, and they would kill you... and maybe not straightaway."

I stared at him. Somehow I had lost pleasure in the view.

"You're saying - stop me if I get this wrong, Jack - you're saying that I only think of myself as tough, I'm really not... that I can only win if my opponents fight fair... that Darcy and Jim and Tom David would rape me if they had the chance. Gosh, why would that occur to me?"

"I know you're getting mad," he said, turning around and looking down at me. "And I probably deserve it, but I just can't let anything happen to you. You just can't be involved in this in any way, any longer."

"You'll just stop by when you have a minute to fuck? Insult my other guests?"

His sculpted lips tightened. He was beginning to get mad, too.

"No. I shouldn't have said anything about Bobo being here. I had no right. And I told you I was sorry. Hey, I never said anything about the cop sending you flowers, and they were still sitting on your kitchen table with the card stuck in them."

"Which, of course, you had a perfect right to read."

"Lily, I'm a detective. Of course I read it."

I gripped my head with my hands. I shook it to clear it.

"Go," I said. "I can't deal with you right now."

"We're doing this again," he said helplessly.

"No, you are." I meant it. "You screw my brains out after telling me we shouldn't be publicly involved. Okay, I admit, I screwed you right back, and I publicly involved us - to save your ass. You spill your guts to me - on impulse - tell me my employer doesn't trust me, tell me I may or may not be in serious danger, and then tell me not to involve myself in the resolution of this mess."

"Put that way, I admit, it doesn't sound like I'm doing the right thing by you."

"Gosh, no kidding."

"Why do we get so - so - crossways? I'm trying to do the right thing! I don't want you to get hurt!"

"I know," I said. I sighed. "You need to go on now. Come back and talk to me - somewhere public - when you decide what your current policy is."

He stood. His face was full of conflict. He held out his hand.

"Kiss me," he said. "I can't leave like this. This is something real we have."

Almost unwillingly, I held out my hand, and he pulled me up to kneel on the bed. He bent over and kissed me hard on the mouth. I felt the heat begin to slide through me again. I pulled back.

"Yeah. It's real," he said, and dressed. He dropped a kiss on my head before he went out the door.

Chapter Eight

Carrie wasn't at the clinic that morning. It was the first time in a long time she hadn't been there on a Saturday. I hadn't realized how much I'd counted on seeing her until I pulled into the lot behind the clinic and found it empty.

She'd left me a note taped to the patients' bathroom door, since she knew I cleaned that first.

Lily - I'm following your suggestion. Today the entire off-duty police department is moving Claude downstairs to the O'Hagens' old apartment. Becca Whitley's putting in a ramp at the back door! Knew you would want to know.

I was a little disconcerted by Carrie's taking charge of Claude. I'd been to see him in the hospital a couple more times, and I realized now that both times he'd talked about Carrie. Maybe the reason I hadn't worried about the problems of Claude's homecoming was that I'd absorbed the clues that someone else was doing it for me? Well, well, well. Carrie and Claude. It sounded nice.

I got the clinic cleaned, though I felt lonely without Carrie. As I started work at my next client's, I brooded about what Jack had told me. It gnawed at me that Howell didn't trust me. I am very reliable, I keep my mouth shut, and I'm honest. My reputation as a cleaning woman depends on those qualities.

I struggled to recall all the contacts I'd had with Howell recently, trying to pick out one that would explain his sudden lack of faith in me.

By the time I was through for the day, I'd decided to make a call.

After checking the phone book and the map, I drove again into the black area of Shakespeare which surrounded Golgotha Church. I felt a wave of nausea when I passed the damaged structure, now bathed in bright winter sunshine. The cold wind rippled a large sheet of plastic over the hole in the roof, and temporary front doors had been hung. A junked pile of splintered pews lay outside in the grass. A whiff of burning still lingered in the air. Men were at work inside and out. A white man was among them, and after a careful look I recognized the Catholic priest from Montrose. Then I saw another white face: Brian Gruber, the mattress factory executive. And redheaded Al from Winthrops' Sporting Goods. I felt a little better after that.

My business lay a block or two away, in one of the few brick homes in the area. Tidy and tiny, it sat within a four-foot chain-link fence, with a "Beware of the Dog" notice. The shutters and eaves were painted golden yellow to contrast with the brown bricks. I scanned the yard, didn't see the dog to beware of. I lifted the gate latch, and a big tan short-eared dog of unfortunate parentage tore around the house. He woofed and he growled, and he ran from side to side right within the fence.

A small black woman came to the front door. She was trim and tidy like the house, and she had picked rose red to wear today, her day off. At her appearance, the dog instantly silenced, waiting to see what the woman's attitude would be.

"What you want?" she called. She was neither welcoming nor repelling.

"If you're Callie Gandy, I need to talk to you. I'm Lily Bard."

"I know who you are. What do we have to talk about?"

"This." I held up the shabby brown velvet ring box.

"What you doing with Mrs. Winthrop's ring?"

Bingo. Just as I had suspected, this had never been Marie Hofstettler's ring.

"Miss Gandy, I really want to talk."

"Miss Bard, I'm not aiming to be rude, but you are only trouble and I don't need any more of that than I have."

I had already learned what I needed to know.

"All right. Good-bye."

She didn't answer. She and the tan dog watched me with poker-faced stillness while I returned to my car and buckled up. She closed her door then, and I drove home with even more to think about.

That afternoon I went to the grocery, cleaned my own house, and made some banana nut bread for Claude. He liked it for breakfast. It seemed very sweet, very personal to know that about a friend. That was what I'd missed most, without ever knowing it, in my wandering years and my first years in Shakespeare: the little details, the intimacy, of friendship.

I retrieved one of my homemade individual entrees from the freezer. Claude liked lasagna, I remembered. Feeling like a small-town paradigm of neighborliness, I walked over to the apartments.

The move was complete, apparently, and some of Claude's cops were still there drinking a beer by way of thank-you. Claude was on his old couch, his bad leg propped up on an ottoman. The door was open, so I just stepped in, self-conscious at having an audience.

"Lily, are you a sight for sore eyes!" Claude boomed, and I noticed he looked better than he had since his injury. "Come on in and have a brew."

I glanced around at the men lounging in the living room. I nodded at Dedford Jinks, whom I hadn't seen since the Winthrop break-in, and Todd Picard. He seemed a little more relaxed in my presence than he had been in weeks past. Tom David was sitting on the floor, his long legs crossed at the ankle, a Michelob bottle in his hand. His bright mean eyes scanned me, and his mouth curved in a nasty smile.

Judas, I thought, drinking Claude's beer when you knew he was going to be in that church. Could you have kept that child from dying?

My face must have become very unpleasant, because Tom David looked startled, then defensive. His smile faltered, then increased in wattage. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">