Kansas City Noir (15 page)

As he lost Celeste, he lost more of her perennials, as well. When he started trying to rebuild his life without her, he planted butterfly weed, beebalm, and gayfeather. The garden got him through the grieving process. He added more and more native plants and tall prairie grasses and enlarged the garden until it took over half the front yard and most of the back. James saw it as his memorial to Celeste. He felt closest to her when kneeling in the dirt, wrestling with weeds or dividing and transplanting.

His son Scotty lived in Germany, working for the Department of Defense, so he didn’t visit often. But Scotty called every weekend. Again and again, he tried to persuade James to sell the house and move somewhere safer.

“That neighborhood has really gone downhill, Dad.” Scotty’s voice always reminded James of his own father’s. It was strange how those things skipped generations.

“It’s what it always was, Scotty, a working-class neighborhood. Just the way it was when you were growing up.”

“When I was growing up, that head shop and porno place where all the crooks and hookers hang out was a pet store, and the Epicurean Lounge with its armed guards at the door was Eddy’s Loaf ‘n Stein. The liquor store on that corner was a pizza restaurant. The tattoo parlor was an expensive beauty shop. Mr. Emory’s, wasn’t it?” Scotty’s voice had an edge of sarcasm to it.

“So, businesses have changed along Troost. That’s not really the neighborhood.” Scotty always tried to make things sound worse than they were.

“Dad, you’re one block from Troost. That is your neighborhood.”

Sell and move somewhere safer, Scotty repeated. It was an ongoing argument.

Shortly after the Clarks moved in, workmen began digging up Mrs. Martinson’s shrubs and perennials and cutting down all their trees. Chainsaws and other power equipment roared for days. James had to leave his house to escape the noise and the headaches it gave him. At the end of a week, nothing was left outside the Clarks’ house but grass.

James was appalled, but kept his mouth shut. The good neighbor.

Not long after, he wakened at 4:45 a.m. to a heavy pounding sound and Tony Boll’s drunken shouts to his wife to unlock the door and let him in. Tony lived on the other side of the Clarks. Tony kicked at their door, screaming curses.

Suddenly, Mr. Clark’s deep voice joined in. He told Tony to shut up and go away somewhere to sober up. James sighed and stepped to the window. He knew Tony wouldn’t take that well. Tony threatened to kick Clark’s ass up between his ears. Fists cocked, he charged over to where Mr. Clark stood on his front steps in his robe and slippers. James didn’t see clearly what exactly happened, but Tony wound up on the driveway, screaming in pain. Clark went back inside.

James called 911 for Tony, and he soon went off in an ambulance.

When Tony came back, his left arm was in a cast and he sported a black eye and broken nose. James was impressed. Tony was a big barroom brawler, and if he ended up with black eyes, the other guys usually looked half dead. Mr. Clark had looked just the same as always.

After they’d been in the house a month and a half, Mr. Clark just disappeared. There was no sign of him for more than a month, then just as suddenly he was back. This became a pattern—several months at home, then vanished for a month or two.

Mrs. Clark developed her own eccentricities. She stood out in her front yard for hours at a time, talking on her cell phone and pacing. When James worked in his garden, the sound of her shrill voice would follow him all over his yard, invading his quiet time with Celeste’s memory. When he went inside, he could still hear Mrs. Clark holding forth tirelessly. He admired the long life of her phone’s battery.

One day Mrs. Clark’s obsessive outdoor phone calls took a new turn. She paced in a long bathrobe, which was tied so loosely at the waist that she exposed her long bare legs clear to the crotch of her red panties. It embarrassed and irritated James. Not satisfied with plaguing his peaceful garden time, she had to invade his privacy as well. She spent hours marching back and forth in that robe several days a week. James just tried to ignore her.

When he told Scotty about it, Scotty decided she was mentally ill. “You need to get out of there, Dad. You have no idea what she might do.”

“No, but it’s interesting to wonder about.” James said that just to work up his son.

“Maybe her husband leaves when she’s dangerous, you know. He may know something you don’t, Dad.”

“I think I’m more worried about Mr. Clark,” James joked. “For all I know, he might be a hit man off on assignment. He sure did major damage to Tony Boll.”

“Good for him! That damned Tony’s needed someone to hand him his ears for years, Dad. You know that.”

And so it went. His son and he agreed on very little.

Eventually, Mrs. Clark designated herself as block captain. The block had never had one. Still, she began talking to the city on everyone else’s behalf. James just sighed at the arrogance.

One day James received a letter from the city, a warning that cited “
tall, noxious weeds
.” His beautiful purple coneflowers? His prairie grasses?

He called the number on the notice and tried to explain about his native plants. The city guy said a neighbor had complained, and the plants would have to be cut down. City ordinance. Any plant over twelve inches tall, other than trees, could be cited as too tall and noxious. James’s neighbors had the right to expect a well-maintained lawn to keep housing values high, he said. And if James didn’t cut down the “weeds” and put in grass, another neighbor complaint would lead to a court summons or arrest.

James found this unbelievable. As if his neighborhood ever had high house values! He went to the library and confirmed the bad news. Same thing was happening all over the country. Cities were throwing law-abiding citizens in jail and bulldozing their yards. He hadn’t known he was part of the “native plant movement,” but he determined that wouldn’t do him much good.

When he approached Mrs. Clark, she was strutting up and down her front yard in robe and purple panties, yakking on her phone. James waited until she hung up.

“Did you call the city to complain about my garden?”

She looked down at him with disdain. “That isn’t a garden. It’s a bunch of weeds.”

“Mrs. Clark, this is a carefully tended garden of native plants. It’s much more environmentally sound than your monoculture lawn of bluegrass. I would be happy to educate you about the various plants in my garden. They are not weeds.”

“They look like weeds, so they are. Appearance is what counts. Property values drop unless all the houses in a neighborhood have neat, well-maintained lawns.” She sounded as if she were quoting from a book. She turned her back and started talking on the phone again. She must have been dialing while they spoke.

James sat in the garden, trying to find communion with Celeste’s spirit, but he was too upset, and it eluded him. He wiped sweat from his eyes and went inside to drink some iced tea and calm down. Maybe a little whiskey in the tea, even though he never drank before sundown.

James wasn’t the only neighbor Mrs. Clark complained about. A man at the end of the block gave loud drunken parties. They often bothered James, but he tried to tolerate them since they only happened about once a month. Good neighbors know when to clam up. One night, the man had a party going, and a police car pulled up. The cops hammered on the door. The party host stepped out and argued with the cops. Over their shoulders he saw Mrs. Clark, who was now standing in the street, watching and talking on her phone. He flipped her the bird. People started leaving the party, and the man at the end of the block stood out on his lawn seeing them off.

He yelled to Mrs. Clark, “Eat my dick, bitch!” and made thrusting motions with his pelvis. She shook her fist at him before turning and hurrying into her house.

James felt a sense of satisfaction at seeing Mrs. Clark insulted. He would never do that, and he was ashamed of the feeling—for about a minute.

That weekend, Scotty called, more agitated than usual. “Listen, Dad, you have to get out of there. Put the old house up for sale. I checked out that Clark guy who lives next door.”

“Now why’d you do that, Scotty? You can’t invade someone’s privacy like that.” Just because Scotty worked for the government didn’t give him extra-legal rights, but he never seemed to understand that.

“Well, I had a bad feeling about him, especially after you said that about him maybe being a hit man.”

“Scott, I was joking! He’s probably a traveling salesman. You don’t even know his first name. You probably looked up the wrong guy.”

“I had his address and got his full name from the deed.” His voice became more confident and forceful. “We run security checks on people all the time, Dad. And he’s not a traveling salesman. He’s black ops.”

That sounded like something from one of those superhero comic books. “What on earth is black ops?”

Scotty’s voice dropped into the condescending tone he always took on when he explained something about his job. “He works for one of the civilian security firms we employ to do dirty work for the military and the CIA. Assassinations, kidnappings, etc. This is a dangerous man, Dad.”

“Wouldn’t someone like that be living in the DC area?”

“Oh, Dad! We contract with dozens of companies all over this country that hire former military personnel. Usually with special forces training. Ex-military guys live all over the country, and they don’t have to move. They deploy from where they already live. They’re on contract, so why would they uproot their families? But the ones who fly out to do short assignments and then fly back home, they’re usually the real dangerous ones. Removal experts. You know,” he lowered his voice. “We need to get you out of there.”

James could hear the fear behind the imperative in Scotty’s voice.

“You put that house up for sale right away. I can help. We’ll get you into a condo out there, or you can come to Germany and live with Marla and me, but you need to get away from those people.”

“I don’t want a condo, Scotty. All I want is my garden. It’s all I have left of your mother. I can’t give up our garden. I promised her I’d take care of it.”

“Dad, Dad! Mom’s been dead for ten years. And she wouldn’t want you to stay in a dangerous place out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to her memory.”

“I hope I never get to the point where I believe that loyalty to Celeste’s memory is misplaced. Maybe you can just forget your mother and all that she gave you, but I never will.”

James was ashamed to remember he had been so upset that he hung up on Scotty. His own son.

Two days later, he was out among the ditch lilies and hydrangeas, once again ignoring Mrs. Clark’s piercing phone conversation and her state of undress, when Derrick Kappell, whose mother owned the house across the street from the Clarks, marched up to her. Derrick ran with the Bloods. Dressed in red—T-shirt, hat, socks, shoes, and hoodie with sleeves tied around his waist.

James didn’t have any problems with Derrick. His mother was a sweet, long-suffering woman, and Derrick pretty much kept his gang activities away from the neighborhood. Twenty blocks further north, it would have been hell having a gangbanger living on the block. Those streets around there were up for grabs among the gangs, and the violence was constant. The death rate of young African American males living thirty to forty blocks north and east of Troost kept Kansas City among the top murder cities in the country.

Derrick grabbed Mrs. Clark’s phone from her hand and tossed it into her backyard.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she cried.

“What in the hell are
you
doing? Calling the city on me for that expired license plate! That’s going to cost me money. And what harm was it doing to you? What business of yours was it anyway?”

Derrick was nineteen. He was six feet tall, so she actually topped him a little, but he was built like a linebacker, thick everywhere with hard muscle. He got right up in her face, and the skinny Mrs. Clark backed away, looking more than a little frightened.

James was glad to see that. She needed to be frightened of Derrick and what he and his gang might do to her.

“Your car was a nuisance. I’m the block captain. It’s my job to get rid of nuisances.” Mrs. Clark’s voice quavered.

“You’re the fucking nuisance, bitch!” Derrick’s shout moved her further back into her yard.

James shook his head at the woman’s stupidity, bringing the city’s attention onto Derrick in his home. He wondered what he’d do if Derrick started to beat her up. He didn’t like the woman or her husband, but he decided in all decency he’d have to try to intervene. That would be dangerous before and after. James didn’t like thinking about it. So he tried to fortify himself and steady his nerves.

“Look at you, fucking ho. I ought to call the cops on you for flashing your skinny cunt around the way you do. Right across from my mama’s house. You advertising? You want me to send some brothers your way? Maybe some high rollers? I bet you give good head with that big mouth.”

James had never seen Mrs. Clark speechless, but her mouth—it was big—sagged open before Derrick’s verbal attack.

“I ought to kick the living shit out of you, bitch!”

James tensed his muscles, not that an old man like him would be much of a deterrent to a pit bull like Derrick, but he could try to slow him down or at least get to Mrs. Clark’s cell phone in the backyard and call 911 for help.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she cried. “But you know the city’s going to come down on you if you don’t follow the law, so why don’t you just do it?”

“The city ain’t going to come down on me unless some bigmouthed bitch calls them. You get one warning, ho! Call the city on me again, and you will bleed! You understand?” Derrick roared on the word
bleed
, and James thought Mrs. Clark’s gangly legs might collapse at the sound. She swayed a little but remained standing, and James had to admire her stubborn backbone, if not her lack of sense.

“I understand. But you know the city’s going to be watching this area. They may come ticket you, and it won’t be because I called.”