by Lou Berney
Mr. Bingham had been such a dick, an officious and petty dictator, incapable of any genuine human emotion. O’Malley called him the Little Cheese.
The alarm on Wyatt’s phone finally chimed. He’d barely had time to brush his teeth when Candace called.
“Wake up,” she said. “Are you awake yet?”
“Who says I ever went to sleep?” Wyatt countered. “Maybe I don’t plan to rest until justice is done.”
“Shut it. I want an update.”
“It’s six o’clock in the morning, Candace.”
“So?”
Wyatt stood by the window and watched dawn break, the line of the horizon smoldering like a fuse. His room was on the top floor of the hotel. Back in the eighties, the Marriott on Northwest Expressway had been the fanciest hotel in town, with the hottest nightclub and the best restaurant. Tate had plans, once he turned eighteen, to get a job as a barback at the nightclub. He said he’d heard the tips were outrageous, man, and so were the girls.
“Give me a day or two,” Wyatt said. “You’ll be the first to know when I know something.”
Candace made the sound she made—groan to sigh to hiss.
“I have to make breakfast for Lily,” she said.
“Sorry to keep you. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Get to work!” she said, and hung up.
WYATT SHOWERED, SHAVED, and got dressed. It was too early to eat breakfast—he was still on Vegas time—so he just made a cup of instant coffee in the room and drank it. He flipped through his notebook and found the number that Candace had given him for Jeff Eddy, the late Mr. Eddy’s older brother.
When Wyatt called, Jeff Eddy’s assistant told him that she might be able to squeeze him in that morning. But only, the assistant’s tone made clear, if she moved heaven and earth to make it happen.
Wyatt drove downtown. Once there, he had a hard time getting his bearings. The buildings were the same, the old First National Bank and the courthouse and Leadership Square, but . . . the people. There were people everywhere! People and cars and buses and the morning hubbub of a real downtown, a real city. Men in suits, women in suits, a surge of pedestrians whenever a light changed. A line of people waiting outside a hip-looking coffee shop at the corner of Park and Robinson. A woman in yoga pants walking a yellow Lab. Trees in full autumn flourish along the median. Wyatt tried to think. Had there been trees downtown before?
And no, actually, not all the buildings were the same buildings. There was the glittering glass skyscraper that Wyatt had seen coming in from the airport—fifty or sixty stories high. A huge new library, a new brick-faced arena. The old Colcord Hotel, a dead shell when Wyatt left town in 1986, had been renovated, as had the Skirvin, now a Hilton. Even the Myriad Gardens, he saw, now resembled actual gardens and not the surface of some barren and inhospitable moon.
Wyatt sat in his car at a red light, taking it all in.
Times change, he told himself again. Life goes on.
Get over yourself.
Jeff Eddy’s office was in Leadership Square. Wyatt rode the elevator to the fifth floor and followed the engraved brass pointers to a door marked EDDY COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE APPRAISAL. He stepped inside. A woman behind the reception desk eyed him suspiciously. She was in her early sixties, with lots of makeup and a wine-colored silk scarf tied around her neck in the French fashion. At the corners of her mouth were the deep creases of a lifelong frowner.
“Yes?” she said, frowning.
“Wyatt Rivers. I have an appointment with Mr. Eddy. You must be his assistant. Emilia? Iago’s wife in Othello and the most interesting character in that play, if you ask me. We spoke earlier.”
She gave him more of the same frown. “Mr. Eddy is on a call,” she said. “He’ll be with you when he can.”
When, in other words, the power dynamic had been clearly established. Wyatt had wondered, riding the elevator up, if Jeff Eddy would make him cool his heels or not. Now Wyatt knew something about the guy—just a little something, but something—he hadn’t known before.
Wyatt took a seat on the sofa. The reception area was decorated with framed posters of former Oklahoma University running backs on two walls and current Oklahoma City Thunder basketball players on the third. Wyatt stood back up and crossed the room to examine a poster of Heisman Trophy winner Billy Sims. This put him side by side with Jeff Eddy’s assistant, Emilia. It was always more effective to approach from the side if you wanted someone to lower her guard, rather than head-on.
Billy Sims, in his crimson-and-cream Sooner home uniform, leaped over two tacklers. The stands behind him were a sea of soft-focus crimson and cream.
“Cruise director,” Wyatt said.
A moment went by. Jeff Eddy’s assistant turned her head. “Pardon me?”
“I’m guessing you were a cruise director at one time in your life,” Wyatt said. “Back in the eighties, when cruise ships were still kind of glamorous, a glamorous way to travel.”
He finally looked over at her. She was still frowning at him, but in a different way now.
“Am I way off?” Wyatt said.
Another moment went by. “I was a stewardess,” she said.
“No kidding.”
“How did you know that?” She had turned all the way around in her chair to face him.
“I didn’t,” Wyatt pointed out. “Just a guess. The way you tie your scarf, like the French do? It’s very cosmopolitan. And before you jump to any conclusions, I’m not being a smart-ass.”
A smile—maybe, possibly—began to swim its way up to the surface of her face.
The door to the inside office opened, and a man stuck his head out. Jeff Eddy. He saw the empty sofa and looked surprised. Then he glanced around and saw Wyatt.
“Come on,” he said. “I don’t have all day.”
“MY LITTLE BROTHER, I loved him dearly, but sometimes he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground,” Jeff Eddy said. “Pains me to say so.”
It didn’t seem to pain him, Wyatt noted. But he nodded politely. Jeff Eddy was jowly and sunburned. A golfer, Wyatt suspected. His body was pear-shaped, and so was his head. The shelves behind him were loaded with signed footballs, signed basketballs, a signed basketball shoe that looked big enough to fit a giant.
“So I take it you didn’t think it was a wise decision,” Wyatt said, “for him to leave the Land Run to Ms. Kilkenny?”
Now that, Wyatt noted, seemed to genuinely pain Jeff Eddy.
“A wise decision? A wise decision. Look. Greg was a child. He was gullible. He was gullible his whole life. I loved him dearly, like I said. He was my brother. But he was . . . okay, my complete dumb-ass of a brother.”
Wyatt wondered if maybe the worst part of being dead was not being able to defend yourself against tools like Jeff Eddy. Though maybe when you were dead, you didn’t give a shit what the tools said about you. Wyatt hoped, for the sake of the dead, so.
“That’s one big-ass basketball shoe,” Wyatt said, pointing to the shelf. “I apologize for stating the obvious.”
Jeff Eddy shifted around to look, then shifted back again without comment.
“So she hired you?” he said. “The stripper? Why?”
“There have been a couple of incidents at the Land Run. Ms. Kilkenny thinks someone might be harassing her.”
“Harassing her? And she thinks it’s me?”
“She doesn’t know who it is. That’s where I come in.”
“Well, it’s not me.” Jeff Eddy shook his jowly, pear-shaped head. “Unbelievable.”
“She never said it was. And she’s not a stripper.”
“Excuse me. Former stripper.”
“She’s not that either,” Wyatt said. “She’s a former cocktail waitress.”
Jeff Eddy shifted around again
to glance at the big-ass shoe. “That’s a signed Kevin Durant game-worn shoe from the first game he ever played in a Thunder uniform. Everybody in the city claims they were there for that game, but I was.”
He lifted his chin, as if daring Wyatt to make such a claim.
“Not me,” Wyatt said. “I live in Las Vegas.”
“Look,” Jeff Eddy said, “whatever she is, she’s a gold digger. I know for a fact she took advantage of my brother. I know for a fact she manipulated him into leaving her the Land Run.”
“But you didn’t contest the will?”
Wyatt knew enough about probate to know that even if Greg Eddy’s will was ironclad, his brother could have used lawyers to keep the estate tied up for months.
“I’ll tell you the truth. I should have contested it. But at the time—what happened hit me hard, Greg going down like that. You know he was only fifty-two years old? My little brother.”
“Who you loved.”
“And I’ll tell you the truth again. I really didn’t want the damn place. It’s a dump. It’s not worth a damn thing, coming or going. I needed the hassle like I need a hole in the head.”
Wyatt waited for Jeff Eddy to address the obvious question. When he didn’t, and glanced with impatience at the big watch on his wrist, Wyatt had to ask it.
“So why are you trying to buy it now?” he said.
“Look,” Jeff Eddy said. “The place is a dump. But it’s been in my family for forty-six years. My brother worked there since he was fifteen years old. I don’t know. The more I thought about it . . . maybe I’m sentimental.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Wyatt suggested.
He wondered if anything Jeff Eddy had told him was true. He began even to doubt that Jeff Eddy had even been there for the first-ever game with Kevin Durant in a Thunder uniform.
“It is! It is the principle of the thing! You think the place is worth anything? Ask that client of yours what she pulls down on a good week. A good week. And here.”
Jeff Eddy opened a drawer and lifted out a file folder. He found a sheet of paper and set it in front of Wyatt.
The county assessor’s report. The Land Run was worth even less than Wyatt had expected. And he hadn’t expected much.
Jeff Eddy took another sheet from the folder. “These are the comps. The commercial properties nearby that have sold over the past year.”
Wyatt looked over the comps. Per square foot, they were even worse than the assessment.
“Can I take this?” Wyatt said. “And the assessment?”
“Be my guest. Have Emilia make copies for you.”
Jeff Eddy checked his watch again. He made a production of it: a snap of the wrist, a lot of aggrieved staring and heavy throat-clearing.
“Are we done here?” he said. “This was a courtesy.”
He stood up. Wyatt stood up.
“Just one more question,” Wyatt said. “Two.”
“Look. I have work to do.”
“Fur pie?” Wyatt said. “Anal surprise?”
He checked Jeff Eddy’s reaction but saw nothing there, one way or another.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jeff Eddy said.
WYATT GOT INTO his car and drove up to NW Twenty-third, where he found free Wi-Fi at an indie coffee joint called Cuppies & Joe. It was in what used to be a 1920s bungalow. The new owners had preserved the original floor plan—living room with fireplace, dining room, bedrooms, all with the original, unrefinished wood floors. Lots of windows, vintage mismatched furniture, cupcakes made from scratch. The young, pretty cupcake maker came out of the kitchen, her apron dusted with flour, and poured Wyatt a mug of excellent coffee.
The old house next door had been turned into an art gallery. The old house next to that one was now a trendy-looking barbecue joint.
Across the street was a plasma clinic. Now, that was the NW Twenty-third that Wyatt remembered.
He spent an hour slogging across the Internet—such was the glamorous life of the modern-day gumshoe—but found no clues to Jeff Eddy’s newfound interest in the Land Run. Wyatt didn’t buy all that bullshit about principle, about sentimental value, and he didn’t like how the most recent tax assessment Eddy had given him was from June. The latest comp was from August, and it was now October. Sometimes the best lie was just the truth left to ripen on the branch too long.
Wyatt stepped outside and called the city desk at the Daily Oklahoman.
In every city, at every newspaper Wyatt had ever worked, there was always one crotchety old lifer—a city-desk reporter or an editor with a bad comb-over and high-waisted slacks, an ink- and nicotine-stained know-it-all who nursed ancient grudges and critiqued everyone else’s copy, who ignored HR’s pleas to please, please clean out his firetrap of a paper-crammed cubicle.
A woman answered the phone.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Wyatt said. “At every newspaper, every city desk, there’s always this one crotchety old-timer. You know the guy. He’s always critiquing everyone else’s copy and his cubicle is a firetrap.”
The woman laughed. “Who is this?”
“But he knows the town. He’s the guy who really knows his town, inside and out, past and present.” Wyatt recognized the possibility, really the probability, that the species he was seeking had gone extinct when the newspaper industry tanked—layoffs, buyouts. “I’m a private investigator from out of town. I need to get the lay of the land.”
There was a moment of silence. Wyatt thought the woman might have killed the call. But then she said, “You probably want Haskell. Bill Haskell. Hold on.”
The line beeped a couple of times and then clicked.
“What?” a man’s voice said. Strunk & White: Omit needless words.
Wyatt explained who he was and that he was working a case involving the Land Run. “You know it?”
Haskell grunted. “In the old Fenton Spry library building. What about it?”
“I’ve been shown evidence,” Wyatt said, “that the property isn’t worth much. While I trust the evidence, I don’t trust the person who gave it to me.”
“What’s the evidence?”
“The tax assessment and some real-estate comps. But they’re a few months old. I can’t find anything online that might have affected the value of the Land Run in the meantime.” Wyatt thought Bill Haskell might like that part, so he gave it an extra nudge. “The Internet, as incredible as this might seem, has its limits.”
Haskell grunted again. “The almighty Internet.”
“Do you know the inspiring story of John Henry versus the steam shovel?”
“John Henry died at the end of the story.”
“I don’t want you to die, Bill. But I thought you might know someone who might know someone who might know someone.”
“Is that what private investigators do? Ask other people to investigate for them?”
“I’ll buy you lunch,” Wyatt said. “Or dinner. The best restaurant in town. And yes, that’s how it works a lot of the time.”
Haskell’s third grunt was the charm. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Wyatt gave him his number, and Haskell hung up without saying good-bye.
Wyatt checked his watch. It was almost noon, and he was starving now. He got into his car again and drove over to Classen Boulevard. Back in Wyatt’s day, everyone called Classen just north of Twenty-third “Little Saigon.” Now there were official street signs that were more politically correct: THE ASIAN DISTRICT. Most of the business names were still Vietnamese, though. Pho restaurants and jewelers and law firms, travel agencies and pain-management clinics. The bottom of one plastic sign had been sheared off in a storm. All that was left was the top line, EXTENDED PAIN.
Wyatt picked a pho restaurant at random. Inside, the windows were fogged f
rom the steam rising off the bowls, and most of the clientele hunched over the bowls were Vietnamese. Two good signs. A third was the smell. That was the best sign.
The waitress brought Wyatt a bowl of broth and noodles and skirt steak, rare, with a giant pile of fresh cilantro, sprouts, and greens on the side. Limes, hot sauce. Wyatt took a taste and left his body. He was sucked back through time and space to a pho restaurant just like this one. Maybe it was this one. Who knew? Back in ’85 or ’86, all the clientele had been Vietnamese, not just most. It was the first time he’d ever tasted food like this. O’Malley, who’d brought Wyatt here after a stop at Rainbow Records, seemed to know everybody in the place. He slapped backs and shook hands as he led Wyatt to a table.
Wyatt and O’Malley had made the trip to Rainbow Records almost every week, to barter free movie passes for cassettes. O’Malley had introduced Wyatt to the Replacements, the Pretenders, R.E.M. After the last show of the night, if Mr. Bingham went home before the doormen and the concession girls finished cleaning, O’Malley would go up to the projection booth and pop a cassette into the theater sound system. He’d crank the music so loud that the walls of the auditorium would vibrate. Sometimes the girls, Karlene and Janella, would climb up onto the narrow ledge in front of the screen and dance. Melody, too, once in a while. Never Theresa.
Karlene, who looked like a girl in a Whitesnake video, danced like one, all that frosted blond hair whipping around. Janella swayed to a secret inner groove. Melody—Melody could dance. Theresa would watch from the back of the auditorium and, if Wyatt was lucky, smile.
On the night of the robbery, they were all waiting for Mr. Bingham to go home so they could put in a cassette and crank the music in the auditoriums. O’Malley gathered them together in the storeroom to toast the end of the shift. It was a new tradition he’d started, the latest of many. Vodka in waxed-paper Dixie cups. O’Malley and Theresa and Karlene and Melody and Grubb and Wyatt. Melody didn’t drink but attended the ceremonies anyway. She sat on a stack of empty soda tanks, snapping her strawberry Bubblicious. O’Malley had them raise their Dixie cups and repeat after him: “Here’s to dear old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod!”
