In the Night of the Heat (30 page)

My investment wasn't wasted. After an hour at my desk, a story emerged:

For starters, Laura Ebersole hadn't told me everything she should have about her husband. His name had come up in a civil trial when a business partner was sued for breach of contract after a real estate deal gone awry in the Valley. A defendant was quoted calling Ebersole “nothing but a bully,” accusing him of intimidation tactics. Change the name, and the article could have been about Donald Hankins.

Ebersole and Hankins both liked to play rough.

LAPD might have done more than threaten Laura Ebersole with a long DUI sentence—they might have had other dirt on Chad, too. If she'd kept making accusations about Hankins, evidence of her
husband's past wrongdoing might have begun to surface in the news, too. After his death, the only thing Chad Ebersole had left to lose was his name. She'd given up.

Predictably, there had been a loud collision from the moment Hankins and his former business partner made a play for the property adjoining Ebersole's in Hollywood—a half a block's worth of land where Hankins's crony wanted to build a boutique hotel, changing the zoning from residential to commercial. The change would have had a wide impact, effectively killing Ebersole's plans to refurbish the apartment building he owned on the corner.

There had been a shouting match on the street between Ebersole and one of the lawyers for the company with Hankins's backing, Page/Tiger Properties. According to a short article in the
Los Angeles Times
on May 12, 1999, a Hankins staff member promised to seek charges against Ebersole after he “stormed” into the councilman's office to berate him with the “N-word.” No charges had been filed, but Ebersole had made the news, at least for a day. Two weeks later, Ebersole's death had been reported on the California page:
MAN DIES IN HOLLYWOOD HILLS CRASH
. The story had been short, with much discussion of the night's rainfall and none at all about the possibility that Ebersole's death wasn't accidental.

Chief Randall had promised to sweep race out of LAPD politics, but it was obvious that some promises can't be kept overnight. If Ebersole's widow hounded them for six months—and even had a reporter from the
Times
calling on her behalf—someone should have looked into her story, especially after the incident at Hankins's office. Instead, under pressure from the chief, LAPD had ignored her claim with all its might. Lieutenant Nelson probably wasn't throwing T.D. Jackson's case intentionally, but he was feeling heat from Chief Randall, too. Why?

Chief Randall and Donald Hankins were friends, Dad had said.

And Hankins's role in pushing for LAPD funding in Sacramento couldn't be overestimated—he had been voted the most pro-police member of the legislature, and he had rallied his supporters behind the proposition that funneled millions to LAPD. Suddenly, LAPD's hiring freeze was over—and Chief Randall could hire an army.

So what if Chad Ebersole had help driving off a road?

So what if someone might have shot T.D. Jackson?

To Chief Lester Randall and Senator Donald Hankins, it worked out in the end. It was all for the public good. I could see how it might have happened.

Next, I moved on to Wallace Rubens.

Rather than a thug or a hit man, Rubens sounded more respectable than either Ebersole or Hankins. I would never have guessed an arrest for trespassing without the report from April's friend Casey Burnside.

He'd been mentioned in the
North Florida Business Journal
in 2002, in an article entitled “10 People Behind the Scenes.” The photo was the most striking part: Wallace Rubens was a hulk of a man, broad in the face, shoulders, and chest. His grin was hearty and full-faced. He had been in his late fifties when the photo was taken, but his hair was mostly black. Still, his face was more deeply lined and looked older than either Jackson's or Hankins's. Since Rubens was dressed in a crisp Italian suit and stylish tie, there was no sign of the mark on his chest.

Still, I realized right away what Chad had meant when he told his wife about his eyes. Even when Wallace Rubens was grinning, his eyes seemed far from the surface. Sunken.

The rest of the piece was a mini biography. Rubens was the only one of the ten people profiled who didn't list a college or university; in
most cases, the others profiled had attended two or three institutions, listing both graduate and undergraduate degrees. This listed SoCal University very briefly, with a mention of “played football.” Not exactly Glory Days.

Name:
Wallace Rubens.
Hometown:
Mercy, Florida.
Bread and Butter:
Restaurants, real estate, auto repair.

Auto repair: I'd bet he knew his way around a set of brakes.

Last Book Read: Dreams from My Father
, by Barack Obama.
Hobbies:
Fishing, blues music.
Affiliations:
Mercy Rotary Club; First Baptist Church of Mercy.

If all else failed, I knew where to find him on Sunday mornings. Maybe.

But I couldn't wait until Sunday.

All I dug up on Wallace Rubens was a few property listings throughout Florida and Georgia, and the
Journal
's fluff piece, but I'd made up my mind as soon as Laura Ebersole hung up her phone. I did my best to get a good price on a flight to Florida, but it's hard to avoid getting gouged when you book so late. I bought myself a first-class ticket, round-trip. I got the ticket for under two thousand dollars and considered myself lucky.

I just had to be back in time for Chela's dance Saturday night; I had to be there to see her go in her dress. If Wallace Rubens was out of town, I'd find out what I could and come back another time.

But I had to try to see him in person. I had to know.

April called me just after midnight, while I was packing the leather duffel bag I use for weekend trips. In Johannesburg, it was seven in the morning. I pictured April arriving in her hotel room, hair tousled, after a night with someone else.

“I never notice my light flashing,” she said. “Is it too late to call?”

Never,
I thought. “Let me call you back,” I said. “It'll be on my dime.”

She didn't argue. When I called April back, I told her about Carlyle Simms. And my suspicions of Donald Hankins. I had no client to protect, so I told her everything.

“Oh, Ten!” she said. She sounded breathless, as if she were gazing at a natural disaster unfolding before her eyes. “That's big.”

“Yeah.”

“No, I mean
really
big. As in the story of a lifetime. Two lifetimes.” She laughed, giddy. The delight in April's voice helped me imagine her smile, dimples and teeth. I smiled, too.

“I'd love to give you that story as a present,” I said. “I'll do my best.”

“Oooooooohhh…Why am I way over here?”

The question hung on the line. If April didn't know, then I didn't have the answer. Quickly, she went on. “Ten, please be careful. I'm serious. Rubens could be a stone hit man. We don't know what else he's done. He could be waiting for you.”

As certain as I felt that Wallace Rubens was worth talking to, I knew there were still holes in my theory tying him to T.D.'s death. It was hard to buy Rubens as a standard hit man, no matter what Laura Ebersole said, or how his eyes looked.

“Why would a well-to-do businessman do violence for a politician and risk going to prison?” I asked April. “Maybe it could happen once—the Ebersole thing might have just escalated out of control—but multiple times? That piece doesn't sit right.”

“True. And I've got one for you…” April said. “If Hankins is planning to run for governor, he'll need to get his campaign going. Why would someone who knows he's under extra scrutiny order a hit at a time like this?”

“He loved his daughter. He was spurred by a miscarriage of justice.”

“Ten, come on—he's still a politician. Think about it.”

I knew she was right. As a suspect, Rubens flew against logic on two counts. And Donald Hankins couldn't have risen to his current station without rapier instincts as a politician.

But his
daughter
? That threw all logic out the window.

“I'm really proud of you,” April said. “Even though I'm petrified something will happen to you in Florida, I'm proud of the way you put this together, Ten.”

“Thanks, babe.”

We slid into a long silence before either of us realized it was coming.

“I'm flying into Tallahassee,” I said, trying to jump-start the conversation again. “I guess I could swing by and say hello to your parents.”

April's silence told me that my humor had been lost on her.

“Joking,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Don't worry, I won't embarrass you by bothering your parents.” It flew out before I could think or pull it back. The way she'd said
oh
smarted. She hadn't tried to mask her relief.

“What?” I hoped I could pretend I hadn't said it, and she could pretend she hadn't heard. I heard a tendril of anger in her voice. “Embarrass me how? You think I'm holding that over you?” She didn't have to say what
that
was.

“April—please stop.” My voice was as gentle as rainfall because I didn't want to argue.

“Stop what?”

Stop lying to yourself.

“I'm not the person you wanted me to be,” I told her. “Admit that
to yourself. I fell short. I disappointed you. Don't act like you have no idea what went wrong. Most people don't mind their friends dropping in on their parents.”

“Ten, I'm very private…”

“You mean you hide things. There are some friends you tell them about; some you don't. Does your father still think you're a virgin?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I just don't flaunt it in his face.”

A daddy's girl. But I'd known that already. “Well, I wasn't planning to show up and announce that we used to fuck.”

“Thank you for sounding so vulgar. If this is going to turn into drama, I can't handle it right now, Ten. I'm on my way to school, and I'm packing. I got assigned a family to stay with, finally. Out in Soweto.”

“Will you have email?” I followed her lead. Neither of us wanted to fight.

“Yes, at school. But probably not at the house.”

I wanted to ask about her access to a telephone next, but it would have sounded exactly the way I meant it. Either she would keep calling me, or she wouldn't; it was up to April now. And no matter what, the April I knew couldn't keep away from a good story.

“Don't worry,” April said quickly. “I'll definitely call you to check on what happens in Florida. Just email me if you need any contacts from me.”

“What do you know about Mercy?”

“I've driven past, but I don't think I've ever been there. It's one of those small towns west of Tallahassee, like Midway and Quincy. The sticks. There were lots of tobacco growers out that way. Cotton. Citrus. To you, it'll look a swamp with houses.”

“So…no Starbucks?”

“I bet you've got family in towns just like Mercy, city boy.”

She was right. My mother's family had come to California from Georgia; my father's family from Chicago, but the previous generation had come from North Carolina, where they had lived since slavery. I don't remember my grandparents, who were all dead either before I was born or when I was young. I didn't know my extended family well, mostly because of distance.

Suddenly, I realized that April and I had avoided the fight we'd almost had. I also realized that this was our longest conversation since she left.

“You haven't told me what it's like,” I said. “Are you changing the world?”

She laughed. “A little at a time, maybe. Mostly I'm just trying not get lost. Teaching is
hard.
But I have the most incredible students—you wouldn't believe their stories, what their families have to sacrifice. It's so different than back at home. These kids talk about going to school like it really means something. They expect school to take them somewhere.”

“American kids are hungry, too,” I said.

“It seems different. I feel so appreciated.”

“Of course. They're happy that a rich American woman would take such an interest.”

“You know I'm not rich.”

“Please. Wasn't that one of the first things you learned?”

“True, I'm blessed,” she said, and sighed. “Blessed and confused. I miss you.”

Missing me was harder than she thought it would be. That would have been my moment to strike, if I'd been stalking April like I stalked Melanie. But I didn't want April to come back to me when she was confused. One of us might end up angry, and I was trying to keep anger far out of the whole thing.

“I miss you, too,” I said. “But I can't think of what to do about that right now. Can you?”

“No,” she said, resigned. She paused. “Good luck in Florida. You deserve this one.”

“So do you.”

Our civility and warmth at the end didn't help. After I hung up, I felt every one of the ten thousand miles between us.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30

The first flight I could get was Thursday, and I lost the day in the air.

Even leaving on a 7
A.M.
flight, which meant I missed wishing Chela good-bye before she got up for school, I didn't land in Tallahassee until after five. My second plane, from Atlanta to Tallahassee, was a little twenty-passenger jet parked out on the tarmac by its lonesome. We had to walk out. It was colder outside than I expected. Forty degrees, maybe cooler.

I wished I had brought a heavier jacket. Tallahassee isn't Miami Beach.

Tallahassee's tiny airport felt as if it was out in the wilderness, with a simple wooded road toward town. I was overjoyed when the first Applebee's came into sight. April was right about me: I'm a city boy. I grew up in L.A., and I've traveled the world, so L.A. is small enough for me.

There was no satellite radio in the rental, so I had to listen to the local fare. The sharp, noticeable accents from radio station callers re
minded me that I was in the South. Deep South. I bypassed the country stations and rested on soul. To me, Aretha blended best with the thin-trunked pines and ancient oak trees draped in moss.
What the fuck am I doing here?
I thought, and Aretha's earthy clarion call reminded me that Melanie's family was in misery. While Aretha sang about a bridge over troubled water, I hoped that bridge was me.

This is where it all began,
I thought as I drove down that narrow road.

In a blink, I was in a fair-sized city. At rush hour. I found myself snarled in traffic on Capital Circle Drive in Tallahassee, which is northern Florida's version of downtown Manhattan. It wasn't L.A.'s 405 by a long shot, but Tallahassee's traffic was no easier to navigate. The town was a mixture of brick façades, old colonial architecture, and strip malls, assembled around the soaring twenty-two-story state capitol building. Sitting in a lane that wasn't moving, I passed the time by entering an address in my navigator: 14620
FILLMORE STREET
.

The result surprised me: I was within ten minutes of where April's parents lived.

Mercy was in another direction, headed out of town, but a detour wouldn't take long.

I'm not sure why I'd looked up the address for William R. Forrest. Or why I wanted to stop by the house on Fillmore Street before I went searching for Mercy. But the sun would be setting soon, and suddenly I wanted to see where April had come from. Maybe I thought the sight of her house would teach me something. If I was going to fix whatever was wrong with me and April, if it
could
be fixed, I needed all the evidence as I could gather.

The neighborhood was quiet, only blocks from the bustle of Florida A&M University's campus, where her father was the dean of the criminal justice department. As the sky's angry orange daylight faded, and the shadows from the pine trees stretched long, I found myself
idling across the street from a one-story redbrick ranch house shaped like an L, on a street of well-kept homes.

The house had a covered porch draped in kudzu and a circular driveway, where a purple minivan was parked in front of the whitewashed door. The minivan had a Barack Obama campaign sticker and a green FAMU Rattlers vanity license plate:
PROF
229. The yard was on a slight incline, big and lush, carpeted with pine needles. Light shone through the closed blinds in the living-room window.

I remembered April telling me that since she and her brothers had all moved out, her parents thought their old house was too big for them. Every year, April and her brothers spent four weeks at their parents' house—two in summer, and two at Christmas. It looked like a pleasant place to spend time.

I was about to drive off when the front door opened, and a silver-haired woman with a short 'fro and a white track suit came bounding outside with a large box in both hands. Her car's remote control dangled from her hand. I saw her van's lights flash as the doors unlocked.

April's mother. She raised her knee, trying to balance the box as she opened the van's passenger-side door. April said her mother was a one-woman machine, between her volunteer work at her church and her job as a social worker. April had mentioned more than once that she was afraid her mother was wearing herself down. As April's mother leaned over, the box nearly slipped from her hands. It looked heavy.

Shit.
My hand was on my door handle when she got the box safely inside the van and slammed the door. Before she climbed into the passenger side of her van, I got a very good look at Gloria Forrest. Her face was fuller than April's, but so similar that it was eerie. She was April's future, and the future looked bright. April's mother was beautiful.

I tapped my horn and waved as I drove past, and she waved back with a ready smile I already recognized. She didn't know me, and it didn't matter. She was that kind of woman; the kind who would greet a stranger with a motherly smile at the end of a busy day.

As I drove away from April's street, I hoped I would see her again.

 

I started out for Mercy as the sky was getting dark.

With the lights of Tallahassee fading behind me, isolation set in right away. Traffic was still clogging the lanes as commuters drove home to the nearby towns, but Mercy was twenty miles northwest of Tallahassee, so traffic thinned as I got farther out. Soon, there was nothing in sight but trees on either side of Highway 10.
The Sticks
, just like April had said. I stared through my windshield at the large white moon radiating above the woods from a clear sky. The starlight's patterns hypnotized me. In L.A., it's easy to forget what a clear sky looks like.

In my rearview mirror, I noticed a pair of bright headlights approaching me fast. A huge pickup, probably a Chevy. The truck came so close that its lights filled my rearview mirror. My ear roared. It was as if Carlyle had come back from the dead.

The truck swerved to pass me in a streak of gleaming silver. The cab was crammed with boys who looked like they were in college. Someone let down a window in back. For the first time, I noticed a large Confederate flag pasted to the bed's door. A flashing red light in the back of my mind went on high alert. Genetic memory, perhaps.

Welcome to the South,
I reminded myself, ready to hit the brakes.

A lanky white boy leaned over to yell at me from his window. I
couldn't hear him, but I saw his lips move:
“Obamaaaaa!”
he called, and grinned, pumping his fist.

Someone stuck out a bright orange foam finger boasting #1 from Florida University, inviting me to honk and join their celebration. I didn't know if they had just come from a game or a political rally, but they were college kids having fun, driving too fast. Life, lived as an extreme sport. I honked twice, and three of them raised their arms while they cheered.

My foot relaxed.
Did you think they were on their way to a Klan rally?
I laughed out loud and called Dad to tell him the story.

“Whoa—I can't believe you still have cell reception,” Chela said when she answered.

“Yeah, me neither. How's Dad?”

“He's good. Don't worry about us. Marcela's driving us crazy. She's lucky she's so cool, or she'd get on my nerves.”

“I heard that!” Marcela called from a distance, and Chela laughed. Chela would never admit it, but she was giddy about Saturday's dance.
No matter what, you have to be home by Saturday night
, I reminded myself. I couldn't leave Saturday night to Marcela.

But without Marcela, I couldn't have left Dad and Chela alone. Marcela had agreed to keep an eye on Chela while I was gone, but Marcela wasn't spending the night. There was nothing I could do if Chela snuck out of the house while I was gone. Or ditched school all day. Marcela was Dad's nurse—but she was turning into a member of the family. I wished Chela had warmed up to April as easily as she had with Marcela.

But April had been different.

“Okay, well don't stay up too late. TV off by midnight,” I said.

“Believe that if you want to.”

“Can you put Dad on?”

“He's taking a nap.”

I was disappointed. I wanted to tell him the story about the pickup truck. I wished he had been able to make the trip with me. I had left my new partner at home.

I tried to dial Len next—I hadn't talked to him in days—but my cell phone beeped.
SIGNAL LOST
, my phone read, at the same time my navigator's British accent informed me that I had arrived at my destination. I took the exit toward Mercy.

Mercy's exit led to a darker two-lane road, and open fields instead of trees. For what seemed like a long stretch, I didn't see any lights—no businesses, no homes. Nothing. If not for my navigator, I would have been sure I was on the wrong road.

But lights appeared like an apparition when I turned right at the dead end, where reflective letters on a green sign pointed toward Mercy. Suddenly, I saw neon signs for hotels standing higher than the treetops on tall poles meant to draw travelers from the highway. They were chains—I won't name them, but one had kept the light on—and both were charging more than a hundred dollars a night.

Might as well stay in town, I figured. The chains were clean and familiar. Nothing fancy, but no cockroaches either. Inside, the hotel was so new that it smelled like paint, and there was a dish of fresh fruit at the front desk. I was feeling lucky until the front desk clerk told me that my room would cost two hundred dollars a night.

“Everybody fills up at homecoming. Big game Saturday,” said the man behind the counter, who looked Indian or Pakistani. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and a beige mock safari coat, the chain's desk uniform. “Florida University.”

I felt jacked, but my stomach was growling. I gave him cash to book a room, registering under the name John Gage, the paramedic from that show
Emergency!
I watched when I was a kid. Just a precaution. “Is your restaurant open?” I said.

“No restaurant, sorry. The Domino's over in Quincy delivers.”

Shit.
I didn't want to spread a bad mood around, so I kept my voice pleasant. “What about in Mercy? Any restaurants?”

The clerk took a long time to answer, absorbed with typing my registration information. “The new Hardee's, maybe.” He sounded distracted.

“I'm looking for some
real
food, man.”

“The good food's in Tallahassee,” he said. “Boston Market. Cracker Barrel. Denny's. You should have brought dinner with you.” He said it as if that was common knowledge.

“Nowhere in town for a hot meal?” My tone slipped two notches, to irritation.

The clerk raised his finger, an afterthought. “Unless you like barbecue.” I was afraid I'd heard wrong; the word
barbecue
made my mouth water. “There's a place in town, Pig'n-a-Poke. Off of McCormack Way. Only sign on the block with neon.”

“Is it good?”

He shrugged. “Never eaten there.”

If the place looked clean, I would try the beef ribs. Or chicken. Or both. But first, work.

My cell phone was still gasping for service and the hotel didn't have Ethernet in the rooms, so I hit one of the two computers in the hotel's bathroom-sized O
FFICE
S
UITE
. I'd done a property records search on Rubens, and I scanned the addresses, computing my distance on MapQuest. Man was livin' large. Most of his property was in Tallahassee, so I might be able to check those out at the end of the day. I noticed that one of his apartment buildings was in Quincy, about six miles away. Maybe I'd start there in the morning, after I sniffed around Mercy. With so little time, I had to hope it would be easiest to find him close to home.

My plane had arrived too late for me to make it to the Florida University Library archives in Tallahassee, which had been closing up at
the same time I was landing, but a librarian I reached by phone had given me a temporary password and user ID. I would have access to the university's archives online for twenty-four hours. A trial membership, since I wasn't a student.

The online archives, which included access to old student newspapers, went only as far back as 1983. I surfed the site, but I didn't find much I hadn't already seen on my previous searches. The most interesting discovery, under the Bobcats Athletics section, was a photograph from the Sunshine Bowl published by the
Tallahassee Democrat
in 1967. The photo looked dramatic in black-and-white, like a still from a classic sports film:

The white SoCal quarterback is nearly falling backward, the football launching from his fingertips while a swarm of determined Florida players in dark jerseys leap at him from every direction. Right behind the quarterback, a Florida player is broadsided in midleap by a hulk of a man in a SoCal helmet, whose face is knit with thunderous will, teeth gritted.

The SoCal offensive tackle was Wallace Rubens. His face was distorted except for his nose, but his nose was enough. The photo was striking because all of the players charging the SoCal quarterback were white—and the most prominent players beating back their charge were black. I wondered how that photo had gone over in Tallahassee the morning after the game.

Florida University had thirty thousand students the year after that game, in 1968, so it had always been big. And powerful. Between current students and alumni, FU had a large influence over Tallahassee and the outlying areas.

Information on the Sunshine Bowl was otherwise scant. Universities celebrate their victories, not their losses. A link in the chat section took me to a college sports blog, where an unnamed blogger had written about the 1967 Sunshine Bowl. The anonymous entry was a
year old, but it was my first glimpse into the game from the eyes of an FU student.

“FU tries to pretend it never happened, but I was there,”
he wrote.
“Hell, I was a part of it. I was as mad as everyone else, and it swept the whole stadium that day. Don't forget about Vietnam, folks. We'd lost Calhoun after he graduated, and nobody had recovered from that yet. (Rocket Forever!) There was a Cinderella story, rebuilding the football program after a hero falls. We'd gone in with so many expectations, and nobody thought a damn about Southern Cal back then. (LOL!) I'm not making excuses, I'm just saying we have to take it all into account. It's easy to judge something when you weren't there.