Late Rain (23 page)

“Women are stronger than men,” she said after a while. “We have to be. You’re a single mother. Surely you understand that.”

Anne Carson took a sip of her tea, the small frown still in place, pulling at the corners of her dark eyes.

“Did you know Stanley?” Corrine asked.

“No. Or not very well. I remember my father did some work for him a couple times.”

“Did you ever think about how unusual it was for a man like Stanley Tedros to hit upon something as successful as Julep?” Corrine asked. “He was an immigrant, Anne. Hard-working, sure, but nothing more than a bottler of generic sodas. Then all of a sudden, Julep.”

From there, it was easy for Corrine to embellish, to tease out damning implications and build on them, because, despite herself, Anne Carson was like most people who’d never had much money. When faced with someone else’s astounding success, she secretly wanted to believe it was undeserved and somehow achieved at her own expense, that people like Stanley Tedros had cornered the luck that should have been due her.

Corrine evoked the image of the public Stanley Tedros, the industrious immigrant and old-fashioned man of principle, the hard-line businessman who still knew all the names of his employees, the Stanley Tedros from the placards advertising Julep, the self-made man who favored out-of-date brown suits and starched white shirts, and then Corrine systematically went about dismantling that image, suggesting that something dark and corrupt festered deep within the man Stanley Tedros kept hidden from the public’s eye.

“Stanley didn’t come up with Julep himself,” Corrine said. “He had plenty of help from men you and I would never want to meet. Stanley cut a deal with them. Stanley went to them for backing and cut a deal to get Julep up and running. Things were fine until Stanley arrogantly and foolishly decided he didn’t need them anymore.”

“The man my father described,” Anne Carson side, then stopped, looking down at her lap and finally back at Corrine.

“He works for the men who bankrolled Stanley and Julep,” Corrine said. “Even if he’s caught and charged, there will be no real justice because the men ultimately responsible for Stanley’s death will remain untouched.” Corrine paused, taking in a deep breath. “Or if he’s caught and charged and talks, something even worse could happen. Justice will be served, but in the process, the truth will completely destroy Buddy.”

Anne Carson sat quietly. She bit her lower lip.

“Buddy doesn’t know any of this?” she asked.

Corrine shook her head. “Stanley loved his nephew. He sheltered Buddy. Protected him his whole life. Buddy worshipped Stanley and only saw what Stanley wanted him to see.”

“I’m still confused,” Anne said. “You, I mean. How do you know all this?”

“Stanley told me,” Corrine said softly, then looked away.

“I don’t...,” Anne said and faltered. “I mean why? Why would he do something like that?”

Corrine had been expecting the question, had seen it slowly gather in Anne Carson’s features as she’d talked, and Corrine uncrossed her legs and lifted her hand, then let it fall, dragging out the gestures and the moment for maximum dramatic effect.

“Oh, Anne,” she said. “Stanley liked to brag after—” Corrine broke off the sentence and lowered her head.

Anne Carson hesitated, then leaned over and squeezed Corrine’s hand.

“You know Stanley never married,” Corrine said. “While Buddy was growing up, the only woman in the house was the housekeeper who came in once a week. To all appearances, Stanley Tedros was a confirmed bachelor.”

Corrine thought she saw movement on the periphery of her vision, but when she glanced at the doorway to the kitchen, it was empty.

“After I married Buddy,” she said, straightening the hem of her dress, “we spent a lot of time with Stanley. Buddy joked about it being a Greek thing, all the emphasis on family, so I didn’t think much about it when Stanley started dropping by when Buddy wasn’t around.”

Corrine paused, letting Anne fill in a few of the blanks herself, before she wiped her eyes and continued.

“I tried to ignore it at first,” Corrine said, “but then one afternoon—Buddy and I had been married less than two months— Stanley put his hands on me, Anne, he put his hands on places where he shouldn’t, and when I told him to stop, he wouldn’t, and he kept putting his hands on me, and he described what he was going to do to me and what he wanted me to do to him; they were vile things, Anne, and when I threatened to tell Buddy, Stanley laughed at me, he laughed and asked if it came down to my word or his, who did I think Buddy would believe, and before I could answer, Stanley turned the threat around, saying he’d tell Buddy that it was me who’d seduced good old Uncle Stanley because it was Stanley’s money, never Buddy, that I’d been in love with all along, and Buddy and I were still newlyweds, Anne, and I was scared that my husband wouldn’t believe the truth; I was really scared, because I loved Buddy and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose him, and so I did, Anne, I let Stanley touch me, and I did what he wanted.” Corrine paused, then plunged into a coda. “Stanley, he came by two times a week after that. He wouldn’t leave me alone, and poor Buddy never suspected a thing the whole time.”

There’d been a point where the story itself took over and wrestled free of Corrine’s control so that it sounded true even to her, and the tears that Corrine was afraid she wouldn’t be able to summon at the opportune moment found her instead and burned on her cheeks, leaving Corrine shaken and a little panicked at their intensity, unable to fully appreciate just how successful she’d been at playing Anne Carson.

Once again, Corrine thought she detected movement in the kitchen doorway.

Anne Carson handed her a box of tissues and blinked back her own tears.

“I don’t know what to say, Corrine.”

“Buddy can’t—,” Corrine said, “he can’t hear that tape. You understand now, right? The truth would destroy him. He needs his illusions. We’re women. We know better. You and I, we can protect Buddy. I’m begging you, Anne.”

Anne Carson rested her hand on her throat. “What do you want me to do?”

“Erase the tape. Never tell Buddy or anyone else I was here.”

Anne stood up and walked to the window. She stood there with her back to Corrine and her hands at her sides.

“Buddy and I, we’re talking about starting a family,” Corrine said. “Please don’t take that away from me.”

A moment later, Anne picked up the tape recorder. Corrine stopped herself from saying anything more. She waited.

Anne Carson rewound and erased the tape.

Corrine crossed the room and stood next to her at the window. The yard burned with afternoon light.

Corrine handed Anne a manila envelope.

She flushed when she opened it. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“I want you to have that.”

“I couldn’t,” Anne said. “All that money, it doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s the equivalent of the reward Buddy posted. Your father earned it.
You
earned it, Anne.” Corrine paused. “I’ll always be grateful to you. I owe you my marriage.”

Anne Carson held the envelope to her chest like a clutch of schoolbooks and nodded.

There was a small noise behind them, and Corrine and Anne turned from the window at the same time.

“Paige,” Anne said. “We didn’t hear you come in.”

“I was trying to be quiet in case Grandfather was taking a nap. I got some orange juice and was going to start my homework.” She held up a laminated notebook whose cover depicted the layout of the solar system.

Anne lowered the envelope and let it rest against her leg. “My manners,” she said. “Paige, this is Mrs. Tedros.”

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Paige said.

BEN DECOVIC CHECKED, then double-checked, the duty roster on the bulletin board in the locker room. He couldn’t believe it. He’d just had two double shifts during the last week, and now his day off had evaporated because he’d been temporarily assigned to foot patrol.

Behind him, someone laughed.

“Who’d you piss off, Decovic?” Carl Adkin said. “This heat, foot patrol, spring break, you must of got on someone’s wrong side.”

Ben turned around. “You see Samuel anywhere? I’m going to talk to her.”

Car Adkin stepped back and spread his arms. “La’Shawn’s with the big boys meeting with the mayor for the third time this week. I’d say something’s in the air.” Adkin laughed again. “Come on, Decovic, tell me. Why’d you think you ended up on the foot roster?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Ok,” Adkin said. “Your biggest problem is your neck. It’s too stiff, my man. The time comes, you can’t turn your head.” He moved over to the row of sinks and started washing his hands. Adkin watched Ben in the mirror fronting the sink.

“Sometimes all that’s required is to look the other way,” Adkin said. “Just turn your head and do it. Nothing more than that.”

“Is that what you did at the Passion Palace when you were late on backup?”

Adkin’s smile was slower this time. “Someone tries to tell you something for your own good, and you strike an attitude.”

“You never answered my question,” Ben said.

“Manny Harrison says you’re still stopping by the Palace and trying to talk to Sonny Gramm.” Adkin shook off his hands and hunted down some paper towels.

“Someone vandalized his car and house. Gramm’s scared. He doesn’t trust anybody, particularly the police, right now.”

“He’s an old man,” Adkin said. “He boozes. He sees threats everywhere. There’s a word for that.” Adkin paused and shook his head. “Christ, it’s got to the point where he’s so far gone he’s scared to hire anybody but family to work for him.”

When Adkin noticed Ben frowning, he said, “You didn’t know Manny Harrison is family? He’s Gramm’s sister’s kid. Sonny hired Manny and his three brothers as bouncers. Before that, each of them were burger jockeys. Taco Bell. McDonald’s. Burger King. Hardees.”

Adkin balled up the paper towels and threw them in the direction of the trash can. “Sonny’s still shopping for a bodyguard. I’ll give him one thing though. At least he was smart enough not to hire any of those boys as one. You want someone asking if you want extra pickles watching your back?”

Ben finished changing into civilian clothes and closed his locker. Adkin crossed his arms and leaned back against the sink.

“I have to go,” Ben said.

Adkin let him get almost to the locker room door before he said, “You heard, didn’t you, that the ballistics were in?”

Ben paused. He remained facing the door.

Behind him, Adkin said, “The two Sentinel Avenue shootings? The one where the house got burned down too? Those ballistics.”

Ben waited. He’d heard the self-satisfied smile shadowing Adkin’s words.

“The word is, your Glock, Decovic. The one you let get taken off you at the Palace. Ballistics match.”

“They recover the Glock?” Ben asked.

“Yep. Extra crispy and yours,” Adkin said.

Ben closed his eyes for a moment, then pushed the locker room door open. He was on his way out when he heard Adkin say, “You think about it, Decovic, if you’d waited that evening like I told you, just waited and looked the other way for a while, you wouldn’t have gotten your Glock taken away, and the two people on Sentinel, they’d be alive right now.”

Ben started down the hall. He worked on his breathing. The hallway appeared foreshortened, stretching on and on and narrowing. Ben felt as if he were looking down a long chute.

CORRINE TEDROS, caught in traffic, watched two men in dark suits leave the curb and begin moving among the line of cars backed up at the light on Williams. Across the intersection in an empty lot next to a Shell station was a large canvas tent housing Reverend Redd Benton’s End Times Revival and street-side a sign reading:
THERE ARE NO FIRE EXTINGUISHERS IN HELL
.

When one of the men stepped up to her car, Corrine saw they were not men at all, but boys, tall and thin, their adolescence swallowed by the dark lines of the suits.

The face framed in her window was wide and flushed from the heat. He held up a flyer. Corrine waved it away.

He smiled and began tapping lightly on the window. Corrine shook her head.

Still smiling, he pointed across the street at the tent and a moment later, directed his index finger toward the stretch of sky above it. Despite herself, Corrine looked up. As she did, he then slipped a flyer under her windshield wiper and moved on to the next car.

The light changed. Corrine glanced at the dashboard clock and took out her cell phone. She punched in Raychard Balen’s number.

The flyer under her wiper jumped and flapped, creating momentary stills of a crudely drawn brown snake and a scattering of red stars, the question below them appearing and disappearing word by word: ARE ...!--ERROR: punct spacing-->.YOU ... READY ...?

Corrine left Williams for Old Market Boulevard. This time Balen’s secretary didn’t try to deflect her and put the call through. Balen asked what he could do for her.

“For starters, Raychard, you could return my goddamn phone calls.”

“The world is a large and busy place,” he said, “and full of sundry problems caused by and for the people I represent and to which I have been devoting considerable time and energy in hopes of arriving at a satisfactory solution to said problems for all concerned.”

Balen paused and added, “You, yourself, are included in that number, Mrs. Tedros.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” When she placed the call, Corrine had hoped to catch Balen off guard. She had not expected him to go on the offensive.

“It means thanks to you husband’s misguided zeal in posting rewards for information concerning his beloved uncle’s murder,” Balen said, “I have been busting my ass trying to locate Croy Wendall. It seems an associate of Croy’s was about to turn him in, so Croy dispatched the associate and his significant other posthaste to the Hereafter.” Balen paused. “The upshot being, Croy Wendall is on the loose.”

“Oh shit,” Corrine said. “I thought you told me Croy did what you told him to.”

Balen sighed. “Croy
does
do what he’s told, but unfortunately I have to be in contact with him in order to relay those wishes. Our one conversation literally dissolved into thin air when the cell phone connection broke up. I have yet to hear from him again, though I fervently hope to do so in the very near future.”