In the Night of the Heat

by Blair Underwood

  On CNN, file footage showed Melanie Wilde in a business suit as she demanded answers on T.D.’s death at a press conference Monday. The same clip I’d seen. I tried not to contrast her fiery composure on the screen with the shattered woman I’d just bedded, but there was no running away from the memory of her nakedness. As a rule, I don’t feel guilty about sex. Ever. But the rules in my life were changing. I was grateful when the clip was over.

  From the television studio, Lieutenant Rodrick Nelson himself, Dad’s former protégé, coolly answered the commentator’s questions about whether LAPD was mishandling the case, even venturing a pitying smile. He was my age, but with an authoritative face. He always reminded me of Richard Roundtree in his prime, down to the mustache.

  “We’re hearing from everyone from conspiracy theorists to astrologers.” Nelson’s baritone could have won him a newsman’s job if he’d wanted it. I remembered that voice from Nelson’s questioning after Serena’s death, and it does what it’s supposed to do in an interrogation. “Public reaction to this case has been strong. Naturally, who can fault a family member for her grief? But the evidence of suicide is overwhelming, and we follow the evidence. That said, if any sign of foul play emerges, we’ll pursue it. Absolutely.”

  “Mmmm! Chinese chicken,” Marcela said, peeking into the takeout bags on the table. She had appeared from Dad’s room while I was captivated by the screen.

  I remembered my manners and gave Marcela a hug. I had never called her to apologize the way I’d promised my father, and I was sure it was the first thing Dad asked her when she arrived that morning. Her skin felt warm and flushed. She smelled freshly bathed, too. I used to flirt with Marcela back when Dad was in the nursing home, but that had stopped long ago.

  “Sorry I was an asshole yesterday.”

  She patted my shoulder. “We all have bad days, chico. How’s your ear?”

  I shook my head. “Same. The hearing loss is permanent.”

  She pinched my earlobe gently. “Not so fast, Ten. Hearing loss can last for weeks, even months. I’m lighting candles for you. Maybe God will restore what doctors can’t.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t hold out hope of divine intervention. I wasn’t exactly one of God’s regulars. Still, I never turned down a prayer. Eternal optimism was part of Marcela’s charm.

  When Dad wheeled himself into the room, he shot me an evil look.

  “He apologized, Captain,” Marcela said. “And he brought food.”

  We ate at the table together, but neither Dad nor I had much to say. Marcela made up for the lack of chatter, as she usually did, with stories of the elaborate Christmas pig she always prepared for her family. From time to time, Marcela reached over to help Dad cut something, or to wipe food from his chin. Dad was still a clumsy eater. I waited for one of them to mention that we might be spending Thanksgiving together, but neither of them brought it up. When Marcela asked how April was doing, I only said, “Fine.” Barely looking up.

  But it was enough for Marcela to understand. Her features flattened; she looked genuinely grieved, almost ill. Then she changed the subject. Thank you, I thought.

  I gave myself the entire fifteen minutes we were at the table to talk myself out of my plan, but I never managed to. It had always been hard for me to ask for my father’s help, but this time I would be betraying a client’s confidence. My codes of honor might not impress most people, but they keep me inside the lines. I wouldn’t want to know myself without rules. But this was a special circumstance.

  While Marcela cleared the table, I brought down my manila envelope.

  “I need you to take a look at this, Dad.”

  Dad eyed the envelope in my hands, tantalized but already wary.

  We went to his room, and I laid out a few pages on his desk. I waited patiently while Dad fumbled to reach his reading glasses on his bureau. I tried not to offer help unless he asked for it, which was almost never. Marcela could wait on him hand and foot, but not I.

  Dad only glanced at the papers before he whipped his glasses off again, as if he wanted to erase what he’d just seen. His hand was so unsteady, his glasses dropped to the floor. This time, I reached down to pick them up. They were out of his reach.

  “Where…?” Dad said, his shorthand for Where did you get this? His face was ashen.

  “Judge Jackson.” I’d thought about omitting his name, but Dad would have figured it out. He probably knew before he asked. The stroke had devastated his body, but not his mind.

  Dad sighed, shaking his head. I knew that look on his face: He was overrun with things he wanted to say, but he knew his mouth couldn’t keep up. He reached for his yellow legal pad on his desk and found a black Sharpie. My childhood home had been littered with Dad’s legal pads, and now those pads were the best window into the workings of my father’s mind.

  Over time, with practice, Dad’s handwriting with his left hand had improved. His right hand wasn’t paralyzed, but his right side had never fully recovered from the stroke. Handwriting was better with his left hand now. For clarity, he always wrote with block letters. His lines were rigidly straight, like a schoolmarm’s.

  YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T BREAK THE LAW.

  When my only answer was an impassive stare, Dad sighed and started writing again.

  THE INVESTIGATION HAS BEEN BREACHED. THIS IS AN ACTIVE CASE FILE. YOU’RE IMPLICATED IN EVIDENCE TAMPERING.

  “Only if anyone finds out,” I said.

  Dad laid down his pen. “No one…else…knows?”

  Melanie knew, but I didn’t dare say so. “Judge Jackson doesn’t want it public. And I’m not stupid.”

  “You…sure…about that?”

  “Most days.”

  “Better be.”

  He was right. Evidence tampering with the intent to help a criminal evade justice could put you behind bars for years. What I was doing…well, it was in a gray zone. Whoever had gotten it for the judge was in more trouble than I. If the law came after me I’d stonewall and probably be up for an obstruction charge. Not fun, but I probably wouldn’t end up at Guantánamo either.

  “I get it, Dad,” I said. “I’m not taking it lightly. You’re the only one I trust with this.”

  Dad sighed again, running his left hand across his scalp, which shone through patches of white. He sometimes ignored his right hand and right side, entirely, as if the stroke had made part of him invisible to himself. Gazing at him, I realized that not long ago, I never would have believed that I would be discussing an LAPD case file with my father at his old rolltop desk. Two years ago, I had bought his plot at Hollywood Cemetery. I was still making monthly payments.

  “Jackson’s…gone…crazy,” Dad said, and I remembered that he knew Judge Jackson.

  “His son is dead. He wants to know why. Maybe that’s enough to make him crazy.”

  ENOUGH TO BE IMPEACHED, Dad wrote. WHAT’S YOUR EXCUSE?

  Dad waved me away, exasperated by my silence on the questions that mattered to him. I thought I’d blown it, until I realized he wanted to be left alone to look at the pages. He didn’t like what I’d done, but he was intrigued. Once a badge, always a badge.

  I had reinforcements.

  While Dad read the murder book, I went to the screening room to fire up my computer. A call came from Len on my cell phone while I waited to boot up, but I left the call to voicemail. I needed to focus. I wasn’t an actor anymore, at least for now. And although I was pissed off about Lynda Jewell and her buddy in props, I had probably just lost my lawyer, too.

  Managing my life was too much work, so I wanted to lose myself in the case. I Googled the names from my notes: Miguel Salvador. Carlyle Simms. Donald Hankins.

  Salvador’s name came up frequently in articles about the murders of his brother and Chantelle Jackson; he was obsessed with his quest to see T.D. on death row. I didn’t see any threats against T.D. attributed to him, but the letter Melanie mentioned was enough. I hoped I could get my hands on it—Dad’s contacts inside LAPD might be abl
e to help with that if Dad would agree. According to one article, Miguel Salvador had a rotisserie chicken restaurant in Pomona called Mama Cluckers. I wrote down the address.

  Next, Carlyle Simms. He had played for the Spartans offensive line with T.D. back in the early nineties, later gone pro. He retired from the Miami Dolphins after only three seasons because of multiple concussions. After Chantelle’s murder, when T.D. was so distraught that he’d holed himself up in his house, Carlyle was the one who had talked him into unlocking his bathroom to face police. T.D. had a bottle of sleeping pills in his hand, according to some reports—another indication that he might have had suicidal tendencies.

  Carlyle had also been T.D.’s primary alibi in court, claiming they’d been at Carlyle’s house watching Monday Night Football when the murders took place. Carlyle’s testimony was part of what had saved T.D.’s ass. Money and celebrity had done the rest.

  Could Carlyle’s conscience have gotten the best of him after the acquittal? Had they argued? Carlyle’s protectiveness of T.D. at the fund-raiser didn’t fit the portrait of his future murderer, but Serena’s case had taught me not to trust anyone.

  Last, Senator Donald Hankins. Google produced a slew of hits for the law-enforcement initiative Melanie had mentioned—worth millions to LAPD alone—but the articles that caught my eye were ten years old, from when he was still a Los Angeles city councilman. A political rival’s aide accused him of threatening to make him “disappear” when they clashed over a proposed building project. They both sued and countersued for defamation. Hankins denied the story, and both cases were dropped, but I printed out a copy of the article.

  The aide’s name was Kevin Wong. I found him listed as a Washington lobbyist, if it was the same Kevin Wong. Last-known contact information was a firm in D.C. I noted it.

  Marcela stuck her head inside my door. “Ten? I knocked.”

  I hadn’t heard a knock. Hearing loss in one ear wasn’t going to be a small problem, I realized. It was hearing loss, period. I felt like I had a bucket on my head, muffling everything. Maybe people got used to it, but I didn’t see how.

  Marcela grinned, walking up to me. She spoke more loudly. “Captain Hardwick wants to see you. What are you two plotting?”

  I slid my arm around Marcela’s shoulder and steered her away from my computer screen, toward the doorway. My voice hid my frustration. “Sorry, darlin’. Can’t talk about it.”

  “Whatever it is, keep it up. It’s good for him to engage, comprende? He needs to feel invested in the world outside. You’re a good son, Tennyson.”

  “Wish I could claim I’m doing it for him,” I said. “It’s strictly selfish. My last resort.”

  Marcela laughed and wagged her finger at me. She thought I was joking. “A good son. Admit it, just once.”

  I winked scandalously. “There’s nothing good about me, Marcela.”

  In Dad’s room, I saw that a few of the pages I’d given him had fallen to the floor, scattered beneath his desk. One page had flown as far as his bathroom doorway. As I picked it up, I tried not to notice the smell of pissy clothes hanging in Dad’s bathroom. He might have wet himself overnight and tried to wash out his clothes in the sink; I’d done that at camp when I was eight, afraid the counselors and other campers would learn my secret.

  I gathered the pages without comment and pulled up a chair beside him.

  “How’s it look?” I said.

  “Padded.” The word sounded gummy, so I didn’t understand. He tried another: “Thin.”

  “Thin how?”

  Dad consulted his yellow legal pad. I saw several lines of handwriting, but he didn’t show me his notes. “Nothing…on…Hankins. No…inter-view.”

  Dad thought Donald Hankins could be a suspect, too.

  “What do you know about him?” I said.

  “Gets…what he wants.”

  “Except a conviction in his daughter’s murder,” I said. “How dirty is he?”

  “More’n…most.”

  Then he ripped the page out of his notebook and handed it to me. He’d written a virtual report himself, one painstaking line at a time:

  1999: HANKINS ACCUSED OF RIGGING A CAR ACCIDENT. NO FORMAL CHARGES, NOTHING IN THE NEWS. HEARD THROUGH THE LAPD GRAPEVINE. BUT SOMEONE SAID HE TAMPERED WITH BRAKES. A FATALITY.

  “There was a lawsuit around 1999,” I said. “Kevin Wong?”

  Dad shook his head. “Diff’rent…case.” He motioned for me to read on.

  HANKINS HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF STRONG-ARM POLITICS. HE DOESN’T FORGET HIS ENEMIES AND HE KNOWS WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED. THAT’S HOW HE BUILT UP HIS COALITION FOR THE GOVERNOR’S RUN. HE’S TIGHT WITH CHIEF RANDALL, AND HE TAKES CARE OF LAPD. T.D. JACKSON WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DELIVERED GIFT-WRAPPED TO HIM AFTER CHANTELLE. DIDN’T HAPPEN. NOW THEY HAVE ANOTHER CHANCE TO MAKE HIM HAPPY.

  “Could it have been a police hit?” I said.

  Dad’s face soured. He thought about it, but he shook his head. “Don’t…think so.”

  “But it’s possible.”

  Dad shrugged. Then, reluctantly, he nodded.

  “What about Dolinski?” I said.

  Hal Dolinski was a cop my father had known for years, still on the job but holding his breath until retirement. If not for Dolinski’s help on the inside, I would have faced worse than prison after Serena was murdered—I would have died. Dolinski had warned me that I was a target for dirty cops. Two cops who had kidnapped and almost executed me in the desert were still out working the streets. From time to time, I still dreamed about them.

  Dad held out his hand for his pad, Sharpie ready.

  FORGET DOLINSKI. THIS IS DYNAMITE. I DON’T WANT HIM IMPLICATED.

  “We don’t have to say why we’re asking,” I said. “But he might know something about the investigation. Isn’t he Robbery-Homicide?”

  With an annoyed sigh, Dad underlined the words FORGET DOLINSKI. I understood. Dad was protecting his friend. We were the ones who owed Dolinski, not the other way around.

  “There’s no one on the inside we can go to?”

  Firmly, Dad shook his head. “Find out…what hap-pened…in ’99.”

  “You said it never made the news. No police report. Where would you start?”

  “A…reporter,” Dad said. “Times. Made…calls. Ask…April.”

  Somehow, Dad always knew the one thing I didn’t want to do.

  Melanie was waiting at the curb, leaning on the hood of her silver Volvo. She’d shed her at-home clothes, back to pinstripes. Her skirt wasn’t long enough to hide her bare legs; I peeked even when I knew I shouldn’t. Melanie’s eyes wrestled mine away. Her tears were gone, iced over. She walked toward the house, her arms crossed as if she were walking into a wind.

  I followed her, keeping pace. I wanted to say something, but I wasn’t as good at reality as I was at role-playing. My stalking clothes smelled like her bedroom, so I had changed into my suit. “Melanie…”

  “Proud of yourself?”

  “Not even a little.”

  She shot me a glare over her shoulder. “Imagine how it feels on this end.”

  “I probably have no idea.”

  She climbed the Jacksons’ porch steps, her walk brisk. “Lucky you.”

  I could feel a physical force field radiating from her, prickling my skin. The same day I had touched and tasted her, the sensation was like a blow. I’m sure I was thinking about April, but it hurt. I never want to make a woman unhappy, much less one I’ve made love to. Melanie and I had broken up, and we’d never dated.

  “I’ll bring the money back,” I said. “I don’t want to cause you problems. I mean that.”

  She opened the door. “Don’t flatter yourself. Just get your head on your fucking job.”

  Don’t shit where you sleep.

  The Jackson living room was bursting with even more flower arrangements, some of them already wilting. Melanie led me past the living room toward the long kitchen with its gleaming black floor, where the granite countertop
was stacked with wrapped foods, offerings from well-wishers. The stool where T.D.’s mother had sat for my first visit was empty. Judge Jackson’s study was dark through the closed glass double doors.

  Melanie pointed toward sunlight from an adjacent room, the family room. “Wait in the back garden,” she said. “Judge Jackson will be right down.”

  She didn’t even want me in the house. Melanie peeled off, her heels rapidly retreating against the floor. In the dimly lighted family room, the back door was half-open, waiting.

  I let myself out. The courtyard behind the Jacksons’ house had an aged coral fountain at its center, atop a patio of coral stones speckled brown. The fountain’s water dribbled from an overflowing stone chalice, a soothing sound. Beyond the fountain, there was a rain forest of palm trees, bougainvilleas, and rosebushes. A stone path led to the backyard’s tall fencing, with a latched wooden gate door. Long ago, I mused, that had been the service entrance.

  When no one came outside right away, I drifted away to explore the quiet. It could have been a Japanese meditation garden. The neighborhood outside of the fence might as well not exist. I thought I heard a water spigot go on nearby, and I assumed it was a gardener. Out of curiosity, I drifted around the corner, which had hidden the more traditional garden’s rows of sprouting vegetables in raised wooden beds.

  At first, all I saw was a broad straw cowboy hat from someone kneeling close to the house wall, filling a bucket with water from a bursting spigot.

  Evangeline Jackson gasped, turning around. I was quiet, but she must have sensed me standing behind her. Some people have a sixth sense. The sun was setting, so she was half in shadow, half in golden light. Her face registered no recognition. She looked literally petrified.

  I stepped back to appear more nonthreatening. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jackson. It’s me—Captain Hardwick’s son. Melanie asked me to wait outside. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She nodded, but her expression barely changed. A small scare in her back garden was probably a respite from the rest of her day. She turned off the gushing water flow. The smell of peat was strong from the garden.