Dead Ball (23 page)

Harvey sprinkled everything on his plate with a homemade pepper sauce, then speared a corner of meat, loaded the back of the fork with greens, chewed it with an audible hum of pleasure, and washed it down with tea.

If the man hadn’t directly intimidated Cherry Ann, it was only because he didn’t know who she was. If he already knew her, then learning her first name—a highly unusual one—from Chirmside would have been enough to identify her.

Harvey bit into the corn bread and shoveled forkfuls of smoky peas and squash into his mouth.

If the man didn’t know Cherry Ann, then he must have thought that Cherry Ann knew him. Cherry Ann lived in Providence. Therefore, it was most likely that she had seen him there. Therefore, it was likely that the man lived in or around Providence. Cherry Ann herself thought she might have seen him at the club, where a man’s gluttonous eyes were sure to make more of an impression on her than elsewhere.

Now another wedge of chicken-fried steak, on which Harvey balanced some black-eyed peas before loading it into his mouth. Chirmside had made him ravenous. He drained the rest of his twenty-four-ounce plastic tumbler of tea, and by the time he put the empty glass back on the table, a waitress with pretty wide-set green eyes refilled it from a pitcher. It was as if she’d been hovering, waiting for customers’ glasses to be emptied. Harvey realized that’s just what she’d been doing.

How hard would it be for the man to discover Cherry Ann’s identity, even given Moss’s and her secrecy about their involvement? Once he knew it—and it appeared he did—he would try to neutralize her.

In any case, the man was in New York now, leaving Moss a note at the Marriott Marquis.

Harvey sucked up some squash, then ground a piece of steak between his molars.

And he knew where Moss Cooley lived in Cranston.

Andy Cubberly was too young to be the man in the photo, even if he resembled him, which he didn’t. And although Cubberly came from Clawson, South Carolina, which Harvey knew now was less than seventy miles from Snellville and Wyckoff, Georgia, Harvey could find no mention of any Cubberly among the witnesses or suspects in the sheriff’s report on the Pettibone case.

A huge man in bib overalls at the neighboring table cast Harvey a skeptical glance that suggested he didn’t belong there. A little flame of self-consciousness inside Harvey flared up, and he hunched over his food, eager to finish.

Terry Cavanaugh, the manager? Harvey wondered as he dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin and headed for the cashier, a lady whose face was thirty years older than her hair. Cavanaugh was old enough, but he grew up in New Britain, Connecticut.

It took a phone call to Fathon for directions, and well over an hour on the road, to find Connie Felker’s house on the town line between Smyrna and Marietta just northwest of Atlanta. Harvey called ahead on his cell phone to say that Charlie Fathon had suggested she might answer some questions for research he was conducting on behalf of GURCC. She agreed, saying, “Anything for those nice people. I’m so glad I did the right thing.”

Harvey found her white-and-tan one-story ranch house in a neighborhood of similarly modest houses dating back to the 1950s or ’60s, parked in the driveway behind a dark blue Buick Le Sabre, and knocked on the aluminum door.

When the door opened, it revealed a short, busty woman in her fifties whose face, though finely lined, was still once-pretty beneath a mass of frosted swirls. Her turquoise cotton top said “LOVE” on it in silver sequins. She looked like someone who’d had her share of fun, and expected more any minute.

“Connie Felker?”

She held out a tiny hand and took Harvey’s. “It’s Connie Rush now. My maiden name.”
Muhayden nime.

“I’m Harvey Blissberg.”

Two tiny brown dogs erupted from the back of the house and bustled toward him like motorized mop heads.

“Queenie! Prince!” she said, glowering at them, and they took refuge behind her. “Ignore those two, or you’ll be picking hairs off your pants for a week. They never met a lap they didn’t like.”

“They couldn’t be cuter.”

“Blissberg,” she said, now ushering him inside. “Now that’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“I thought so.” As if she had found him out. “How come you’re not wearing one of those cute little beanies?”

“A yarmulke?”

“Looks like a coaster.”

“It’s usually just very religious Jews who wear them all the time.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, I don’t believe everything they say about your people. I buy my meat from a Jew butcher in town, and I’ve never had any reason to complain.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Barry Cohen,” she said, leading him into the tidy living room.

“You give him my best,” Harvey said.

The living room was filled with comforting touches like needlepoint pillows and a crocheted afghan draped over the back of the plaid sofa. It was the home of a woman who has reached a certain stage of her life and only wants around her what she can trust: familiar objects, order, and a limited serenity. Harvey wondered if it was her way of dissociating herself from the ugliness into which she had once married.

When Harvey settled onto the sofa, Queenie and Prince arranged themselves near his feet like a pair of bushy eyebrows. To avoid exciting them, he averted his eyes, which fell on a framed photo on the coffee table of Connie Rush, looking only a few years younger, standing by a lake with her arm around a smiling middle-aged man. He had a full beard and a full head of hair, and was decidedly not the man in the lynching photo.

“I know you probably don’t want to delve into the past,” Harvey said. He laid his old leather briefcase—a birthday present from Mickey many years before—on top of his thighs. An air conditioner over his shoulder sounded like it had emphysema.

She plopped into an armchair, saying, “Edward’s dead”—as though those two words were all that needed to be said on the subject of the past and the putting of it in its place. “Can I get you something to drink? Hell can’t be any hotter than Georgia in July.”

“I’m fine. Thank you, ma’am—”

“Connie to you, young man.”

“All right then, Connie, I’ll get right to the point.” Out of his briefcase he slid a Kinko’s copy of the eight-by-ten and propped it up on his lap for Connie Felker to see. “I need to know who the man in this photograph is.”

“I’ve been through this, dear. I don’t know who he is.”

“No idea?”

“If I knew, don’t you think I would’ve told Charles Fathon at GURCC? I gave them the damn photos, hoping
they’d
know who the other guy is.”

Harvey nodded. “I assumed that, of course, but I wanted to ask you myself.”

“Ed had a lot of associations in those days I knew nothing about. He’d go out most nights and run around with friends he’d never bring home and introduce me to. He had another life, and other women, for all I know.” It sounded memorized, like a stump speech.

“As far as you know, who were his best friends?”

“The only ones I ever saw him with were two old high school pals, Dave Womack and Jimmy Schott.”

The sheriff’s report indicated they had both been interviewed during the investigation in 1971 and were either not talking or didn’t know anything. They had strong alibis and were never under suspicion. “Where can I get hold of them now?” Harvey asked.

“Oh, I’d have no idea. My recollection is that they both left this area shortly after Ed’s trial. When Ed went away, that changed life for them around here.”

“Their families still around?”

“I imagine their folks are dead and buried by now. I don’t know who’s left.”

Harvey despaired of finding Womack and Schott after all this time without a major effort, and he doubted they’d have any more to say than they did before.

“Connie, does the name Cubberly mean anything to you?”

She thought for only a second before shaking her head. “Sorry.”

“Can I ask you why you provided an alibi for Ed on the night of the lynching?”

“Why the hell not?” she said. “He was my husband, after all, and he asked me to, and in those days I did what he asked. If I didn’t, he’d pop me one.”

“He’d hit you?”

“Sure as you’re sitting right there.”

“Was he active in the Klan at the time?”

“Well, his daddy had been the Exalted Cyclops of the Snellville Klavern until about a year before we were married, when he had a bad accident and lost the use of his legs, so Ed was brought up in that environment. But was he active during the first two years of our marriage before that thing he went and did? Yes, I’m sure he was, but I never knew to what extent.”

“The sheriff’s report included an undercover cop’s statement saying Ed had a spotty attendance record at Snellville Klavern meetings.” He was probably one of those rednecks who operated in the shadowy world between the law and official Klan activities.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Connie Rush said.

“Would you know—can you remember if Ed seemed to you at the time to need to prove anything to anybody?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, young man. Ed usually didn’t say boo to me.”

“Did he mention to you at the time that Isaac Pettibone had been promoted at the store?”

“I believe he did.”

“Was he upset about it?”

“Well,” Connie said, picking at the fabric on the arm of the chair, “I don’t believe that I ever told this to the sheriff’s people at the time, but he did complain about it and—I’m using his words now—he said some nigger at work was being made a salesman and making almost as much as he did.”

“Did he say that other whites at the store were upset?”

“Not specifically, but you can probably bet they were.”

“You remember the names of his coworkers, besides Isaac Pettibone?”

“No, dear. And I don’t believe Allison Brothers is still in business.”

“It’s not,” Harvey said. “It went out of business in nineteen-seventy-nine.”

“Well, I know the sheriff’s people talked to everyone who worked at the store.”

“That’s right, they did,” Harvey said, looking up now at the photo on the wall. “Who’s that with you in the picture?”

“That’s my friend Reggie. He’s shaved that beard off. I told him he looked like a dust ball with teeth. He’s a good-looking man, and I wanted folks to know that.”

“What’s he do for a living?”

“You just don’t stop asking questions, young man, do you?”

“Connie,” he said, “it’s a little like eating those smoked almonds for me. Once I get going, I can’t stop.”

She smiled. Harvey was surprised at how nice her teeth were, and they weren’t false ones. “Anyway, he owns a couple of service stations.”

“Was that picture taken around here?”

“At my lake house.”

“Where’s that?”

“Oh, it’s just a little bitty cottage about fifteen miles from here. I should be there right now in this heat, but I had some errands to run.”

“Well, I’m sure glad I caught you in.”

“I don’t think I’ve told you anything you didn’t already know, dear.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Are you sure I can’t fix you some iced tea?” She braced her hands on the arms of the chair.

“I’m sure.

She lowered herself back in the chair, disappointed.

“Anyway, your kids must enjoy having a place on the lake,” he said.

“I don’t have any children.”

“No?”

“No. After the business with Ed, I didn’t feel like doing anything with a man, least of all making a baby. And then the time just got away from me, and I never did find the man I wanted to have children with until it was too late. Reggie’s got a couple of boys in their twenties, though, and they come down to the lake to ski quite a bit.”

“Reggie keeps a boat there, does he?”

“The boat’s mine.”

“Then you’ve done all right, haven’t you?”

“Things sometimes work out all right, don’t they? The good Lord sees to it.”

“Yes, indeed,” Harvey said, slipping the photo back in his briefcase, latching it, and rising slowly from his chair. “I can imagine that after a long week of work it’s great to head out to the lake for the weekend.”

Connie Rush rose too, saying, “I retired a few years ago.”

“You did?” Harvey poured on the incredulity. “Connie, you don’t look anywhere near old enough to even be thinking about retiring.”

“I put my time in.”

“Where was that?”

She put her little hands on her hips. “Well, dear, I sold notions at the Snellville five-and-dime, I set hair in three counties, and for a while I had my own gift shop.”

“Good Lord, you’ve been busy.” He walked toward the front door ahead of Connie Rush, past a wall-mounted shelf of china dogs. Connie’s two real ones leaped into action, taunting Harvey’s shoes.

“Queenie! Prince! Shoo!”

“Why did you give the photos to the Georgia Unsolved Race Crimes Clearinghouse?” he asked her at the door.

“I’m trying to get washed in the blood of the lamb. I can’t believe I married that man. The things we do when we’re young.”

“It takes us a long time to learn about life.”

“You said it.”

“You know, you have the prettiest smile.”

“Honey, you’re too young and good-looking to be interested in me, so I’ll just take that as the innocent compliment I guess it’s intended to be.”

Harvey pulled off the road a few miles from Connie Rush’s place and dialed the number of Southern Bell. After fighting off five or six recorded instructions, he got a human being on the other end of the line and said, “I’ve lost my phone bill and wondered if you could tell me what the payment due date is on it. The name’s Chirmside. Clay Chirmside.” He spelled it and gave Chirmside’s home number.

“Payment’s due on August one. Seventy-seven dollars and ninety-four cents.”

“So I’m up to date on my payments?”

“You’re showing no previous balance.”

“One more thing. I can’t remember if my long-distance charges are included on your bill.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because my son made a call or two that I want him to pay for out of his own pocket. Can you tell me just looking at the screen there if he’s been calling New England? You know these kids.”