Hornet's Nest (20 page)

• • •

Brazil was running down the escalator, deciding to take matters into his own hands. He pushed through several sets of doors, finally entering the rarified air-conditioned space where Brenda Bond ruled the world from an ergonomically correct green fabric chair with rollers. Her feet were on an adjustable footrest, her valuable hands poised over a contoured keyboard designed to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome.

Bond was surrounded by IBM and Hewlett Packard mainframes, multiplexors, modems, cabinets containing huge tape reels, decoders, and a satellite feed from the Associated Press. It was her cockpit, and he had come. She could not believe that Brazil was standing before her, had sought her out, and wanted to be with her and no one but her this very second in time and space. Her face got hot as she looked him up and down. God almighty, was he built, and he knew it, and was already showing his contempt for her.

“I think someone’s getting into my basket and going through my files,” Brazil announced.

“Impossible,” Bond, the genius, arrogantly told him. “Unless you’ve given out your password.”

“I want it changed,” he demanded.

She was studying his uniform trousers and the way they fit him, particularly in the area of his zipper, appropriating and full of her superiority. Brazil made a big point of looking where she was looking, as if there must be something on his pants.

“What? I spill something?” he said, walking off.

It was not that his trousers were too tight, nor were they provocative in any way. Brazil never wore anything for the purpose of drawing attention to himself or impressing others. For one thing, shopping had never been an option. The entirety of his wardrobe could be accommodated by two dresser drawers and about twenty coat hangers. Mostly, he had uniforms, and tennis clothes supplied by the tennis team and by Wilson, which had put him on a free list when he was in high school and consistently ranked in the top five juniors in the state. Brazil’s uniform trousers were, in truth, baggy if
anything. Yet people like Brenda Bond still stared. So did Axel.

When Brazil was in midnight blue and black leather, he had no idea what effect it had on others. If he had paused to analyze the matter, he might have discovered that uniforms were about power, and power was an aphrodisiac. Axel knew this for a fact. He got up and trotted out of the newsroom, in pursuit. Brazil was notorious for his sprints down the escalator and into the parking deck. Axel worked out in the Powerhouse Gym every early morning and was rather spectacularly sculpted.

Axel drank Met-Rx twice a day and was very much admired when he was gleaming with sweat and in a tank top and a weight belt, pumping, veins standing out, in his skimpy shorts. Other fit people stopped what they were doing just to watch. He had been stalked several times by residents of his apartment complex. In truth, Tommy Axel could have anybody and probably had at any given time. But he was not into aerobic exercise because it was not a spectator sport. He got winded easily.

“Shoot,” Axel said when he burst through glass doors leading into the parking deck, as Brazil was driving his old BMW out of it.

Publisher Panesa had a black-tie dinner this night and was going home unusually early. The publisher was starting his silver Volvo, with its unrivaled safety record and two airbags, and was witness to Axel’s shameless behavior.

“Christ,” Panesa muttered, shaking his head as he pulled out of his reserved space in the center of the best wall, no more than twenty steps from the front glass doors. He rolled down a window, stopping Axel cold.

“Come here,” Panesa told him.

Axel gave his boss a crooked, sexy Matt Dillon smile and strolled over. Who could resist? “What’s going on?” Axel said, moving in a way that showed muscle to its best advantage.

“Axel, leave him alone,” Panesa said.

“Excuse me?” Axel touched his chest in pure hurt innocence.

“You know exactly what I mean.” Panesa roared off, fastening his shoulder harness, locking doors, checking mirrors, and snapping up the mike of his private frequency two-way radio to let the housekeeper know he was en route.

The longer Panesa had worked in the newspaper business, the more paranoid he had become. Like Brazil, Panesa had started out as a police reporter, and by the time he was twenty-three, knew every filthy, nasty, cruel, and painful thing people did to one another. He had done stories on murdered children, on hit and runs, and husbands in black gloves and knit caps stabbing estranged wives and friends before cutting their throats and flying to Chicago. Panesa had interviewed women who lovingly seasoned home cooking with arsenic, and he had covered car wrecks, plane crashes, train derailments, skydiving gone bad, scuba diving gone worse, bungee jumping by drunks who forgot the cord, and fires and drownings. Not to mention other horrors that did not end in death. His marriage, for example.

Panesa frantically ran through downtown traffic like a Green Bay Packer, cutting in and out, the hell with you, honk all you want, get out of my way. He was going to be late again. It never failed. His date tonight was Judy Hammer, who apparently was married to a slob. Hammer avoided taking her husband out in public when she could, and Panesa did not blame her, if the rumor was true. Tonight was USBank’s Public Service Awards banquet, and both Panesa and Hammer were being honored, as was District Attorney Gorelick, who had been in the news a lot lately, scorching the N.C. General Assembly for not coughing up enough money to hire seventeen more assistant D.A.s, when it was clear that what the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region really needed was another medical examiner or two. The banquet was held at the Carillon, with its wonderful paintings and mobiles. Panesa was driving.

• • •

Hammer’s personal car was a Mercedes, but not new and with only one airbag, on the driver’s side. Panesa would not ride in anything that did not have a passenger’s side airbag, and this had been made clear up front. Hammer, too, was rushing home early from the office. Seth was working in the garden, weeding and fertilizing. He had made cookies, and Hammer smelled the baked butter and sugar. She noted the telltale traces of flour on the counter. Seth waved a handful of wild onions at her as she peered out the kitchen window at him. He was civil enough.

She was in a hurry as she headed to her bedroom. God, the image staring back at her in the mirror was frightening. She washed her face, squirted nonalcohol styling gel into her hands and riffled through her hair. She started all over again with makeup. Black-tie affairs were always a problem. Men owned one tux and wore it to everything, or they rented. What were women supposed to do? She hadn’t given any thought to what she might put on until she was walking into a house that smelled like a bakery. She pulled out a black satin skirt, a gold and black beaded short-waisted jacket, and a black silk blouse with spaghetti straps.

The truth was, Hammer had gained four pounds since she had worn this ensemble last at a Jaycee’s fundraiser in Pineville about a year ago, if memory served her well. She managed to button her skirt but was not happy about it. Her bosom was more out front than usual, and she did not like drawing attention to what she normally kept to herself. She irritably yanked her beaded jacket around her, muttering, wondering if dry-cleaning might have shrunk anything and the fault, therefore, not hers. Changing earrings to simple diamond posts with screw-backs was always troublesome when she was rushed and out of sorts.

“Darn,” she said, closing the drain just in time before a gold back sailed down the sink.

Panesa did not need a personal shopper, had no weight concerns, and could wear whatever he wished whenever he wished. He was an officer in the Knight-Ridder newspaper
chain, and preferred black-label Giorgio Armani that he did not get in Charlotte. Hornets fans had priorities other than draping themselves in two-thousand-dollar foreign suits, it seemed, and shopping remained a difficulty in the Queen City. Panesa was as it turned out dazzling in a tuxedo with satin lapels and trousers with stripes. His was black silk, and he wore a matte-finished gold watch and black lizard shoes.

“So tell me,” Panesa said when Hammer climbed into the Volvo. “What’s your secret?”

“What secret?” Hammer had no idea what this was about as she fastened her shoulder harness.

“You look stunning.”

“Of course I don’t,” Hammer said.

Panesa backed out of the driveway, checking his mirrors, noticing the fat man working on geraniums. The fat man was watching them leave, and Panesa pretended not to notice as he adjusted the air conditioning.

“Do you shop around here?” Panesa asked.

“Lord, I need to.” Hammer sighed, for when did she have time?

“Let me guess. Montaldo’s.”

“Never,” Hammer told him. “Have you noticed how they treat you in places like that? They want to sell me something because I can afford it and then treat me like an inferior. If I’m so inferior, I ask myself, then why are they the ones selling hose and lingerie?”

“That is absolutely the truth,” said Panesa, who had never shopped in a store that did not have clothes for men. “Same thing in some restaurants I won’t go to anymore.”

“Morton’s,” Hammer supposed, although she had never eaten there.

“Not if you’re on their V.I.P. list. They give you a little card, and you can always get a table and good service.” Panesa switched lanes.

“Police officials have to be careful of things like that,” Hammer reminded the publisher, whose paper would have been the first to print a story about Hammer’s V.I.P. status or any other special favors possibly resulting in one establishment getting more police protection than another.

“Truth is, I don’t eat much red meat anymore,” Panesa added.

They were passing the Traveler’s Hotel, upstairs from the Presto Grill, which Hammer and West had made rather famous of late. Panesa smiled as he drove, reminded of Brazil’s Batman and Robin story. The hotel was a horrific dive, Hammer thought as she looked out her window. Appropriately, it was across Trade Street from the city’s unemployment office and next door to the Dirty Laundry Cleaner & Laundry. No eating or drinking was allowed in the lobby of the Traveler’s. They’d had an axe murder there several years earlier. Or was that the Uptown Motel? Hammer couldn’t remember.

“How do you stay in shape?” Panesa continued the small talk.

“I walk whenever I can. I don’t eat fat,” Hammer replied, digging in her purse for lipstick.

“That’s not fair. I know women who walk on the treadmill an hour every day, and their legs don’t look like yours,” Panesa observed. “I want to know precisely what the difference is.”

“Seth eats everything in my house.” Hammer was out with it. “He eats so much, I lose my appetite on a regular basis. You know what it does to you to walk in at eight o’clock, after a hellish day, and see your husband parked in front of the TV, watching ‘Ellen,’ eating his third bowl of Hormel chili with beef and beans?”

Then the rumors were true, and Panesa suddenly felt sorry for Hammer. The publisher of
The Charlotte Observer
went home to no one but a housekeeper who prepared chicken breasts and spinach salads. How awful for Hammer. Panesa looked over at his peer in satin and beads. Panesa took the risk of reaching out and patting Hammer’s hand.

“That sounds absolutely awful,” the publisher sympathized.

“I actually need to lose a few pounds,” Hammer confessed. “But I tend to put it on around my middle, not my legs.”

Panesa searched for parking around the Carillon, where Morton’s of Chicago steak house was doing quite a business
without them. “Watch your door there. Sorry,” Panesa said. “I’m a little close to the meter. I don’t guess I need to put anything in it?”

“Not after six,” said Hammer, who knew.

She thought how nice it would be to have a friend like Panesa. Panesa thought how nice it would be to go sailing with Hammer, or jet skiing, or do lunch or Christmas shopping together, or just talk in front of the fire. Getting drunk was also a thought when normally it was a big problem for the publisher of a nationally acclaimed newspaper or the chief of a formidable police department. Hammer had overdone it with Seth now and then, but it was pointless. He ate. She passed out. Panesa had gotten drunk alone, which was worse, especially if he had forgotten to let the dog back in.

Being drunk was a rarified form of beaming-out-of-here, and it was all about timing. It was not something that Hammer ever discussed with anyone. Panesa did not, either. Neither of them had a therapist at this time. This was why it was rather much a miracle that the two of them, after three glasses of wine, got on the subject while someone from USBank was pontificating about economic incentives and development and company relocations and the nonexistent crime rate in Charlotte. Panesa and Hammer hardly touched the salmon with dill sauce. They switched to Wild Turkey. Neither of them fully recalled receiving their awards, but all who witnessed it thought Hammer and Panesa were animated, witty, gracious, and articulate.

On the way home, Panesa got the daring idea of tucking his car near Latta Park in Dilworth and playing tunes and talking, with headlights out. Hammer was not in the mood to go home. Panesa knew that going home was soon followed by getting up in the morning and going to work. His career was not as interesting as it used to be, but he had yet to admit this even to himself. His children were busy with involved lives. Panesa was dating a lawyer who liked watching tapes of Court TV and talking about what she would have done differently. Panesa wanted out.