In the Night of the Heat (32 page)

But the food made me forgot the bad service. The sauce was sassy and rich, the beef so tender that the bones offered only token resistance. I decided I would eat there for lunch the next day if I could, and pick up a bottle or two of sauce to take home to Dad and Chela.

As I sat at Pig'n-a-Poke eating my first good barbecue dinner in a long time, I had no idea how close it was to my last.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31

Daylight only confirmed how tiny Mercy was. The road between my hotel and downtown Mercy was surrounded by fields, some ripe with fluffy white cotton plants I'd never seen up close. The few homes I saw had cows, goats, horses, and chickens penned in their yards. The dirt beneath everything was dark orange clay, like the jack-o'-lanterns on every porch.

Downtown was larger than I'd thought, with stop signs to supplement the streetlight at McCormack Way. Driving away from the railroad tracks, turning left instead of right at the Handi Mart, I saw a row of more upscale business: an attorney, an accountant, and a large feed and tack. Several large colonial-style houses had been refurbished into businesses, which gave downtown a homey quality. There were a few blocks of grand older homes with verandas and tire swings; some brick, but mostly wood-frame.

On the other side of town, the area around Pig'n-a-Poke was clearly poorer, with smaller homes, mounted junk cars, and patch
ier lawns. The clapboard houses were built so close together that they looked stacked. I imagined it must have been especially lonely to have so little in a town that didn't offer much to look at. Only First Baptist Church of Mercy shone like a pearl.

I saw three boys running barefoot near a junk pile, and it reminded me of Soweto. South Africa had its work cut out for it, but there was work to do at home, too. I wondered what difference a teacher like April would make in a town like Mercy.

So much for Plan A: I wasn't going to see Rubens taking his morning constitutional.

I programmed my navigator and headed toward the apartment building he owned in the nearby town of Quincy. The building manager could narrow down my search.

Instead of taking the 10, my navigator concocted a maze of smaller roads to steer me toward Quincy, most of them more gravel than asphalt. The road turned muddy, and I noticed water gleaming through the tall stalks of crabgrass on both sides of my car. Grass grew defiantly in the center of the roadway,
thwapping
my undercarriage. A white-tailed deer bobbed up its head as I approached, and went back to grazing when I drove past.

April was right. I was in a swamp.

I'd also just driven into the charcoal drawing I'd seen at the Pig'n-a-Poke: Ahead, an old tobacco barn loomed beside the road, casting a shadow across the lanes. The drawing hadn't captured the sheer height of this barn, which was more a large ornament than a real barn. It was so old that a quarter of its planks were missing. I saw another barn in the distance, closer to the woodland, and it looked timeworn, too.

Tobacco money makes me queasy; it's one of the reasons I've never smoked. Turns out I'm not too fond of old tobacco land either. Even the pine trees looked stripped, as if they were recovering from a storm. No crops grew nearby, and the area looked desolate and empty. I saw
a raccoon's upturned carcass by the side of the road, feet frozen high in rigor mortis. Not far beyond, a wooden cross lashed with string marked an accident victim's unlucky spot.

This is no place to die.
I'm no psychic, but I'm almost sure that was my exact thought.

I noted the road from the sign: A-66. I decided I would take another route back.

Quincy was a welcome relief from the wilderness. It was much bigger than Mercy, with a Wal-Mart and CVS to herald civilization. Pat Thomas Parkway was lined with neon-lighted chains.

The address led me to an attractive apartment compound called Quincy Gardens. There were twelve cottage-style units, more attractive than any apartments I'd seen in Mercy. The cottages were shaded by old oak trees that made them look rustic. There were bright pink bougainvillea bushes growing in splendor between the cottages. It looked like a good investment.

A black man in his midtwenties was just leaving the office as I walked in. I thought he was a tenant, dressed in a long Jacksonville Jaguars sweatshirt, but he wore a ring of keys around his neck. “Shit, you scared me,” he said, leaping backward. His brow creased with irritation. His country accent was thick, too.

“Who'd you think I was?”

He didn't answer, giving me a wary stare. I can't prove it, but I got the feeling that he worked for a boss with a temper. He wore round-frame glasses, his hair in short twists. “No vacancies until January. Waitin' list's pretty long,” he said.

“I'm here to lease, not rent,” I said. “My mother lives out this way, and I've got a Popeye's franchise back home in Philly. Who would I talk to about the adjoining parcel?” There was plenty of land on both sides of the apartments; I figured Rubens owned an adjoining tract, too.

“Wish it was me,” the man said, and waved me into his small, tidy
office. On the wall, I saw plaques from the Quincy City Council and Better Business Bureau. He had a nameplate reading
JAMAL JONES II
.

“It's zoned mixed-use, so you could do a Popeye's, no problem. You'd do big business. But the man you want to talk to is Wallace Rubens.” He went to his desk to grab a Post-it. “Just give me a name and number, or an email address, and he'll hit you back.”

The young man was efficient and well-informed. By the modest size of the apartment complex, I guessed that Jamal Jones II didn't spend his whole day at Quincy Gardens. He might manage Rubens's Tallahassee properties, too, or some of them. I gave him my email address, explaining that my cell phone didn't get reception in the area.

“How's the market?” I said, angling for small talk.

I hit a vein. The kid was a salesman. “Better'n you'd think. Quincy's almost a bedroom community of Tallahassee now, and town infrastructure can't keep up with the growth. Bring in a restaurant, and you'll print paper. If I was you, I'd do Applebee's, a sit-down kind of family place. The town's got fast food—just not enough
food.
”

“So your boss is doing all right here.”

“My boss is doing more than all right. My boss is the wealthiest black man in three counties,” Jamal said, fierce loyalty blazing in his eyes. “He opened this little place because his daughter wanted to live in Quincy, so she asked him to build something nice. But do not judge Wallace Rubens by Quincy Gardens.”

“Looks good to me. Is he from around here?”

“Reared in his grandmother's shack over in Mercy.”

A daughter and grandmother. Rubens might own a house and other property under relatives' names, I realized. Maybe I could find his home address with some research. I didn't want it to come to that, but it would be good to know where Wallace Rubens lived.

“I respect a man with a sense of community,” I said.

“Mister, Wallace Rubens helped pay for my MBA,” Jamal said.
“Me and another honor student from Stephens County High. Everybody else is out for themselves, but Wallace Rubens remembers where he came from.” He wanted to go on, but he stopped himself. His lips twitched, reeling a story back in.

I wanted to ask about the Sunshine Bowl, but instinct told me not to.
Take it slow.
“Now I'm
really
eager to talk to the man,” I said. “But I'm only in town today.”

I wanted Jamal to volunteer Rubens's telephone number, but it had to be his idea. If Wallace Rubens got a whiff that someone suspicious was asking for his number, I would never find him. Jamal seemed like a legit businessman—and I hoped he was—but if he worked for Rubens both underground
and
above ground, he was too smart for me to risk stupid mistakes.

Jamal shrugged. “It's his fishing day, so his cell phone's off. Don't know if he'll check in today or not. I just saw Mr. Rubens last night, too. He plays guitar at the barbecue place over in Mercy. Blues Jam Wednesday.”

Shit.
Rubens had been on the stage only twenty yards from me!

“Pig'n-a-Poke?” I said. “You're kidding. I just ate there last night.”

The man smiled. “Then you just had the best ribs in the Panhandle. And you truly can appreciate the meaning of the saying, ‘They can't kick you off your own stage.'”

“He owns Pig'n-a-Poke, too?” I wondered why the sheriff hadn't mentioned that when I asked about Rubens at the restaurant. Which of us had he been running interference for? I longed to ask Jamal about the working girls I thought I'd seen at the barbecue place, but I didn't.

“Yeah, yeah. A chain. One in Mercy, one in Midway. He's religious about fishing every other Friday, but Wallace Rubens is a
businessman.
”

“I hope I get the chance to do some business with him.” I threw in a frustrated sigh.

Jamal checked his watch, and I checked mine. It was eleven. “Hey, it's a long shot,” he said, “but swing by the Mercy Pig'n-a-Poke in about an hour. If he's done fishin' and it's time to eat, that's where Mr. Rubens is fixin' to be.”

 

Instead of taking the back roads, I hopped on the interstate back to Mercy. That route took ten minutes longer than the shortcut, but I'd seen swamp enough for a lifetime.

While I drove along the well-paved, tree-lined highway, I admitted to myself that the emerging portrait of Wallace Rubens didn't look much like a killer. He was tight with the local police, and his businesses seemed respected even if they weren't completely aboveboard.

Why would Rubens risk flying all the way to L.A. to commit acts of violence? The Wallace Rubens I thought might have killed T.D. Jackson didn't fit the Wallace Rubens who lived in Mercy. They were like two different people—or a personality split straight down the middle. I had no case.
What the fuck am I doing here?

I thought about driving straight past Mercy's exit to go to the airport. I was so eager to be back at home that my leg bounced anxiously beneath the steering wheel.

MERCY
—
NEXT EXIT
, a highway signed warned. Like I said, I'm no psychic, but I could feel myself resisting the whole idea. But my intuition was in hyperdrive, and intuition was all I had to go on:

If I wanted to know what had happened to T.D. Jackson, I had to see Wallace Rubens.

Go in and find him. If you don't get a vibe from him, drive straight to the airport.

But seeing Wallace Rubens would be a dangerous thing to do. I
knew
it, somehow.

I signaled and took the Mercy exit.

Pig'n-a-Poke was waiting.

 

The barbecue joint looked worse in daylight than it had in the dark. Outside, the walls looked like flimsy corrugated tin, caked with red clay dust. Without the aid of the darkened neon sign above, the building looked more like an abandoned warehouse.

At noon, the parking lot was nearly empty. My car was the sixth one in.

The same gray-colored German shepherd trotted past me to come outside when I opened the door. He appeared so fast, I gave a start. It was a big dog. But he only sniffed the legs of my jeans and moved on.

The sawdust had been swept up, but there was no crowd to appreciate the effort. The jukebox was silent, and I didn't smell food cooking. If not for three men at the back table, I wouldn't have thought the place was open.

Three black men sat at a corner table, arguing with such passion that they might have been talking about religion
and
politics. The men were thick-bodied, in their twenties and thirties. The larger one was in a blue jumpsuit, and I realized he was the mechanic from Minit Auto Repair who'd danced in front of the jukebox. None of them glanced toward me when I walked in. All of them had drinks, but no one was eating.

The waitress, Janiece, came to greet me from the bar, practically
meeting me at the door. She was the only part of Pig'n-a-Poke that looked better in daylight, even in her silly dress. She smiled and gave her hair a sassy shake. She didn't seem shy anymore.

“I was hopin' you'd be back,” she said.

She might have been flirting. Nobody had told her how to adjust her posture from a slouch to a rolling strut, so the effect fell flat; but her smile was nice. I can almost always find features to appreciate on a woman's face.

“This is funny…” I said. “Jamal Jones just told me I need to see Wallace Rubens.”

She nodded. “They were both here last night.” That smile wasn't bad at all.

“So I'm the last to hear.” I gave her a grin, and I saw lightning flutter behind her eyes. “Just want to talk about some land. You expect him for lunch?”

“If he's not still fishin',” she said.

The men at the table grew louder. An unusually short man stood up, waving his arms to make his point. He was barely five feet tall, but built like a fireplug. His husky voice dominated their angry volleys. I was glad they weren't pissed at me.

“Damn, they take those ball games
way too serious,
” Janiece said, raising her voice so the men would hear. She beckoned me. “Come on back where it's quiet. Bear'll be 'round.”

Janiece led me past the bar to the now-empty room where the jam session had been held. There were two small tables near the front, both set for customers. The stage was more professional than I'd thought, raised a foot from the ground, polished wood. Center stage, between two microphones, a gorgeous royal purple Fender stood on a guitar stand.

Rubens's guitar, I guessed. Apparently, he didn't expect anyone to walk away with it.

“On Fridays, hard lemonade's fifty cents,” Janiece said. “Might as well have one, 'cuz it's the first thing he's gonna axe when he meets you: ‘How'd you like the lemonade?' Mr. Rubens don't trust nobody who won't take a drink. Plus, it's his grandmama's recipe.”

It was as if she'd taken a personality pill overnight. Worked fine for me, as long as it got me closer to Rubens. “Then gimme a lemonade and a beef brisket sandwich.”

“Lemonade'll be right up,” she said. “But we gonna need a minute for that brisket.”