Pleasantville

by Attica Locke

  Rolly has a connection at the hotel, a guy behind the front desk, who, for an ounce of hash every two weeks, provides any guest needing a ride the phone number for Rolly’s car company. For the same deal, he’s more than happy to get Jay a room number, sending him to a two-story suite on the seventh floor. The Hathorne campaign has had it for the past two nights, leading up to tomorrow’s debate on Channel 13. It’s one of the few on the floor that use a bolt lock instead of a key card. Through the door, Jay can hear the steel lock turn, just moments before Vivian Hathorne answers the door. She’s in a black sweater, something silky and wine colored peeking from underneath. Below, there are black slacks and slippers on her feet. She is, as he last saw her, holding a glass in one hand.

  “They haven’t found her, have they?”

  “That my fish?” a voice behind her calls out.

  Vivian opens the door wider, giving Sam Hathorne a view of their visitor.

  Down the short hallway that leads to the suite’s main room, Jay’s and Sam’s eyes meet. Sam smiles stiffly.

  “Come in,” Vivian says.

  Jay follows her down the hallway into the suite, passing a guest bathroom and a kitchenette before entering the main room. The suite is bigger than his first apartment, the one-bedroom in Third Ward where he and Bernie started a family, Ellie sharing a room with them for the first two years of her life. There’s a private bedroom on the suite’s lower floor, and a short, curved staircase leading to another upstairs. In the living room, furniture has been pushed off to the sides. The TV has been turned to face a back corner of the room. There’s a mess of wires coming out of the back of it, one of them leading to a video camera set up on a tripod in the middle of the room, facing a mock debate setup. Axel Hathorne, all six feet of him, stands behind the lectern on the left. He’s in a Rice University sweatshirt, a bib of paper towels around the neck and two different shades of brown powder and foundation on each cheek. Behind the second lectern, Russell Weingate, a University of Texas political science professor and campaign consultant, is playing the part of Axel’s rival. The wall of glass behind them offers a postcard picture of Houston’s glittering skyline. Across the room, a young white guy wearing a Blues Traveler T-shirt sits in front of a television screen, a pair of headphones resting on his neck, next to a young woman wearing a nose ring and a tool belt filled with cosmetics. She’s checking her work on-screen. Neal stands behind her, his arms crossed tightly.

  “Let’s go through that last bit again,” he says.

  Russell Weingate is wearing a sweater vest over his button-down shirt, jeans, and black sneakers. He takes off his glasses, wiping them with the untucked tail of his shirt. “The projections for tax revenue from Kingwood in the next year alone have changed even the hardest hard-liners on this issue,” he says. “Wolcott has always supported pulling the town of Kingwood into Houston, which is on message for her. ‘Smart, low-risk growth.’ You’re weak here, Axe.”

  “I still say it’s spreading the city’s infrastructure too thin.”

  “Can I get you a drink, Mr. Porter?” Vivian says.

  “No, that’s fine.”

  Sam takes a last pull on the cigarette in his hand. He grinds it out in a crystal ashtray resting on a nearby table. “Bring me a Coke, would you, Viv?”

  “Axel?”

  “No, I’m fine, Mama.”

  Neal turns from the TV screen and sees Jay for the first time. Axel is already walking from behind the lectern, yanking the paper towels from his collar.

  “Jay Porter,” he says. He pats Jay on the back, shaking his hand. He’s got a good three inches on Jay but never seems to tower. His manner is affable and open, a practiced demeanor meant to mitigate the power of his height. He’s relaxed in his later years, a long way from the stern and unforgiving cop with the cutting nickname. He seems happy to be away from the lectern.

  “Nice to see you, Axe,” Jay says. He, after all these years, remembers the man fondly, remembers when Hathorne was the only name he trusted on a police force filled with good ol’ boys. Axe went easy on Jay a few times, and on Bumpy Williams and Lloyd Mackalvy, even one time declining to arrest them during an anti–police brutality march through Fifth Ward, despite pressure from higher-ups to come down hard. “They’re just walking,” he’d said to his superiors.

  “You too, man,” Axel says to Jay. “How’re your kids?”

  Neal sighs. “Guess this means we’re taking a break.”

  Vivian returns from the small kitchen. She hands a can of Coke to Sam, and presents Jay with a glass of water he never asked for. Resting a thin hand on his forearm, she again asks if they’ve found the girl. Sam shakes his head matter-of-factly. “Jim would have called.” Frankie, Sam’s driver, enters the hotel suite next, cradling two greasy take-out bags. Sam clears a space to set down the food, Styrofoam containers of catfish and slices of white bread, damp with steam.

  “Viv, honey, check if they got some hot sauce in the kitchen.”

  “She didn’t work for us, by the way,” Neal says to Jay.

  “It’s true,” Axel says. “Neal and Tonya did a top-to-bottom search, and there’s no paper, no eyewitnesses that put her anywhere near our offices or our campaign. No one in the organization remembers her. The description of her clothing on the day in question, it’s likely just a coincidence.”

  “Axe is on top of it,” Neal says. “We’ve talked to the lead detective.”

  “Detective Moore,” Jay says offhand.

  “That’s right,” Axel says, a little surprised to hear the name coming out of Jay’s mouth. “He’s heading the case out of the Northeast Division.”

  “We’re cooperating fully. We turned over records, answered all their questions,” Neal says. And yet, Jay thinks, Detective Moore is this morning on his way back to campaign headquarters, hunting that schedule, a copy of which rests in Jay’s pocket right now. “They know about the planned search. We made them aware of the residents’ concerns, to say nothing of Alicia Nowell’s family.”

  Axel sighs heavily. “I told her parents to call night or day.”

  “I still don’t know why we can’t put this on the current police chief somehow,” Neal says. “The other girls went missing on his watch too.”

  Sam shakes his head. Russell too.

  “It nullifies the department’s endorsement if we tear them down publicly,” he says. “It’s a fine line to walk. But HPD is key for us.”

  “Plus, I don’t want to go negative,” Axel says.

  “Well, the chief’s not the one running,” Neal says, glancing at his grandfather. He has the same nut-brown coloring as Neal, but the Hathorne similarity stops there. For the life of him, Jay still can’t tell where the boy came from. “Don’t think Wolcott’s not storing up a reserve on you. I’m telling you, it’s a mistake to not strike her first. We’ve got her affair, just say the word.”

  “Wolcott?” Viv says.

  “With a married cop during her first trial, a witness, no less.”

  Sam shakes his head. “It’s not the right time.”

  Vivian turns to Axel with a plea. “You’ll find the girl, won’t you, son?”

  Sam tells her their son is doing everything he can, short of going out in the streets himself.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Axel says.

  Sam shakes his head. “We need you here, son. We finished barely three points ahead of Wolcott. You need to go to sleep and wake up thinking about how to widen that gap before December tenth. The runoff is–”

  “It’s been four days,” Jay says. “She’s been missing four days.”

  Sam looks across the room at Neal, who nods once and then quickly turns to the makeup artist and the tech guy in the ratty T-shirt. “Can you excuse us a moment?” As the two shuffle out of the room, they all watch in silence–Jay, Axel, Sam and Vivian, Russell Weingate, and Neal, of course, who waits until the door catches before speaking again. “Look, the campaign is going to release a statement today, outlining our assi
stance on the case, Axel’s ties to the area, his concern for the family of the missing girl. Marcie is drafting it now.”

  “But we’d like to keep Axel as far away from this as possible,” Sam says.

  “Campaign statements, interviews with the cops, we’re handling it all.”

  “We don’t ever want him to have to lie about Tuesday night.”

  “Lie?” Jay says, staring at Axel.

  The candidate shrugs. “It’s nothing, really.”

  “Lie is probably too strong a word,” Neal says.

  Sam sighs. “There were plans made for Tuesday night, big stroll down Pleasantville’s streets, knocking on doors, folks wanting a handshake, the way things have always been done. But the night got past us, and in the end–”

  “You never showed,” Jay says, realizing. He remembers Ruby Wainwright’s description of the celebratory pound cake that sat untouched on her kitchen counter. “So you were never in Pleasantville Tuesday night?” he asks Axel.

  “No one from the campaign was.”

  “Which we’d rather not have advertised,” Sam says.

  “We’ve had the precinct in our column since Axel filed papers to run,” Neal says. “We can’t afford to lose our core support over a few hurt feelings.”

  “Where were you then?” Jay asks Axel.

  “Dinner with a few donors downtown.”

  “Eyes on the prize,” Sam says, dabbing at the grease on his chin.

  Neal turns to Jay. “We appreciate you checking on the situation. It was good of you to come last night, but we’ve got this handled.” He puts a hand on Jay’s shoulder, the gesture a naked attempt to usher Jay out of the hotel suite.

  “Actually there’s something else.”

  From his coat pocket, Jay pulls out the folded-up copy of the flyer, the printed accusations against Axel and his campaign over the Buffalo Bayou Development Project. “You got some folks in your old precinct worried.”

  Axel takes the paper from Jay, unfolding it.

  His lips move slightly as he reads the words.

  “What is this?”

  “We’re tracking it down right now,” Neal says. He and Sam exchange a look. It’s clear they knew about the flyer already, and their candidate did not.

  “What is the Buffalo Bayou Development Project?” Jay asks.

  “Nothing that anybody in Pleasantville ought to worry about,” Sam says.

  Axel is still holding the flyer. “Where did this come from?”

  “It’s Acton or Wolcott,” Neal says; “it came out a few days before the general.”

  “It’s a dirty trick is what it is.” Sam pushes away the leftover bits of food, reaching into his pockets to light a cigarette. He’s on his good leg mostly, his left hip swung out to the side, boot dug into the carpet. “You see they made it look local, like someone in my neighborhood has a problem with Axel, as if anyone in Pleasantville would put out anything like this without coming to me first,” he insists, coming dangerously close to saying, “without asking me first.” Through a helix of smoke, Sam studies Jay, doing the math in his head, how a flyer distributed to the residents of Pleasantville made it into Jay Porter’s hands. “Who gave it to you?” he asks, even though he knows Jay better than that. He trusts Jay, that’s always been clear. Hell, Jay wouldn’t have signed his first client in Pleasantville without Sam saying it was okay, that Jay was the best out there, especially for a case like theirs. But, early on, Sam discovered that being “mayor of Pleasantville” wouldn’t grant him special access to Jay’s process or progress, which he had on more than one occasion insinuated was his due. No, the case was Jay’s, and his clients were entitled to his discretion, even now.

  “Doesn’t matter. The point is there are some folks out there worried about what this means, whether this is another threat to the neighborhood. There’s a group out there talking about selling and getting out of Pleasantville before the next blow comes,” Jay says, pointing to the bayou development flyer. “The same ones pushing for a cheap settlement in the civil lawsuit, just to wrap it up quickly. So you can see why this would present a problem for me.” The mobile phone in his pocket rings. He checks the screen, but doesn’t recognize the number. He lets it go to voice mail.

  Axel shakes his head. “This isn’t even a part of my platform. It’s not in any of the campaign literature. How would anybody think to put this out there?”

  “It’s Wolcott,” Neal says. “This has Reese Parker’s name written all over it. Mailers, that’s her thing. When she ran Blanchard’s campaign in Dallas, she was sending out letters all over the city, letters from black preachers hinting that Blanchard’s unmarried opponent, Dale Ackerman, was living outside the laws of the Bible, taking care to point out his close friendship with one of his male aides. It was a week after the election before anyone realized nobody’d ever heard of a single name signed to those letters. The preachers, the church names, she just made it up whole cloth. Rove in Austin was so impressed, he hired her to work George W.’s race for the governor’s seat. I would have thought she’d have hopped onto a national race by now, especially with rumors about Bush making a run for the White House. I don’t know what she’s doing fucking around with a mayor’s race in Houston.” He plops down in a nearby chair, seemingly exhausted by the force he’s up against. “We’ve been negotiating a price for Acton’s endorsement. We’re working on a number. He’s a greedy bastard, and an asshole, frankly. But I don’t think he’d stoop to this.”

  In Jay’s pocket, the Motorola trills again.

  “You planning something along the bayou?” he asks Axel directly.

  “No, not at all.”

  “They’re using this to paint him as a fool.” Sam puffs on his cigarette. “The bayou project is a boondoggle, a money pit,” he says. “And everyone knows it.”

  Russell Weingate nods. “The BBDP is just a commission, a few developers with deep pockets, that’s all. Every election cycle, they court the candidates, write a few checks, make their pitch.” For decades, folks have been dreaming up ideas to build something grand along Buffalo Bayou, like the River Walk in San Antonio: restaurants, shops, and luxury hotels with views of the water, anything but the weeds and concrete that surround it now. “And every cycle the candidates nod and act interested, and then they cash those checks and nothing ever comes of it. No one can seriously think that just ’cause Axel met with the commission one time that he’s serious about this thing. That commission’s a dinosaur. They’ve been around for at least fifteen years.”

  “Since Cynthia’s reign,” Jay says, his tongue nearly tripping on a name he hasn’t uttered in years. Cynthia Maddox, the former mayor of Houston, Texas, current booster for Axel Hathorne’s historic run for office, and the woman Jay has long suspected of turning him over to the feds in ’69, of being an undercover informant, one, or a girl in over her head, two, a believer who sold her soul to save her ass. It was a betrayal that gutted Jay’s life, stole from him love and faith when he needed them most. “Isn’t that where she ran into trouble her last years in office?” he says. It was widely reported back then, in the pages of the Post and the Houston Chronicle, that she used taxpayer money to have the Army Corps of Engineers survey the land along the bayou for construction, and then nothing ever got built.

  “That’s not all Cynthia’s fault,” Axel says.

  “You can’t put the whole oil bust on her,” Sam says. “Those early investors fled because the city’s economy collapsed, everything dried up.”

  “Only no one remembers it that way,” Russell says. “And now it looks like Wolcott and her attack dog Parker are trying to turn Cynthia’s support of Axel into a liability for him, like he’s pushing her old ideas.”

  “This is just to scare people,” Neal says.

  “Well, it’s working,” Jay says.

  His phone rings again. Irritated now, he snatches it out of his pocket. He flips open the mouthpiece, barking a less than cordial “Hello.”

  It’s a
woman’s voice. “I’m sorry to have to call you on your cell phone.”

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Ms. Hilliard, Mr. Porter.”

  “Who?”

  “From Lamar High School.”

  “Is Ellie okay?”

  “Oh, yes,” she says. “She’s sitting right here in my office.”

  Hilliard, he remembers. The school’s principal. “That serious, huh?”

  “I’m afraid so, Mr. Porter.”

  He sighs. “I’ll be right there.”

  He flips his Motorola closed. “Gentlemen,” he says. He reaches for the flyer. “You need to clean this up before it gets any further out of your hands.” He folds the paper, tucks it back into the inside pocket of his jacket. “If there’s a message I can convey to my clients to put them at ease about the threat of any proposed development, I sure as hell wish you’d tell me.”

  “There is no threat,” Sam says, openly bristling at the idea that anyone or anything would come between him and his beloved Pleasantville, his tiny fiefdom by the port. “I appreciate your concern for the community’s feelings on this,” he says. “But anything more that needs to be said will come from me.”

  A tiny worm of a frown inches across Axel’s face. But he never says a word. Between the two of them, it’s hard not to wonder whose political dream is being fulfilled, that of the son or the father. Had he been born in a different time, Samuel Hathorne might have made his own run for mayor of Houston, instead of settling for the office that was within his reach: “mayor” of Pleasantville, and city hall’s ambassador to the colored community, delivering votes in exchange for working streetlights or a new middle school–what neighborhoods like River Oaks and Memorial took for granted as their due. Everything in Pleasantville had been fought for and protected by Sam Hathorne, who led with a strong, steady hand. In the parlance of his day, he was what black folks used to call the Head Nigger in Charge, a title that was high praise or a deep insult, depending on the speaker’s tolerance for obsequiousness as a political tool. Sam knew the game better than anyone else, and he played his hand. “I’ll take care of it,” he says.