Southern Heat

by David Burnsworth

  When I stepped from the stairwell and into the parking area I saw two men standing next to my car. One of them leaned against the right fender, leaving fingerprints on the polished black paint. Each wore khaki pants and a polo shirt. The one touching my Mustang had huge biceps and a chiseled frame. His youthful face was outlined by bleached hair blow-dried in place. He pushed away from the car, revealing his height, or lack of it. His beady eyes would have been menacing on someone taller. The other man was closer to my six-foot height, his goatee starting to gray. In the dimly lit garage, their bright orange polo shirts, the words “Palmetto Properties” embroidered over their hearts, glowed like neon.

  “It’s about time,” said the younger man, his chest stretching his shirt. “We been waiting long enough.”

  Twenty feet away, I said, “Get away from my car.”

  The kid looked at his buddy. “You believe this guy?”

  “I’m talking to you, Shorty,” I said.

  His eyes sighted on me. “Who you calling Shorty?”

  More than a little jumpy, I reached into my pocket for Mutt’s gun and remembered it was in the car.

  The man with the goatee held up his hands. “Whoa, there. Easy now.”

  I kept my hand in my pocket and hoped he’d continue to think I was armed.

  “Never mess with a man’s ride,” I said. “Get out of here before someone gets hurt.”

  A Cadillac Escalade stopped a couple yards away from me and idled. The dark-tinted rear-seat window slid down, and a bald, shiny head the size of a large melon wearing wraparound sunglasses jutted from the opening. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Pelton. I wonder if I might borrow a moment of your time.”

  I looked at the man inside the Escalade and then at the guys in the bright shirts. “You have got to be kidding.”

  The rear door of the SUV opened and the man shambled out. His body shape could best be described as a pear in summer wear and his white shirt bore the same logo as the two idiots in front of me.

  “I don’t kid, Mr. Pelton,” the fat man said, holding the SUV’s rear door open for me. “Just a few minutes . . . an hour at most. I promise we aren’t here to harm you. In fact, you could say it might be worth your while.”

  I eased my hand out of my pocket and held it up to show I wasn’t holding anything. “I’ve read a lot about you and your business ventures in the paper, Mr. Galston.”

  A large grin stretched across the bald man’s face. “I’d like to take you on a little tour of the town.”

  “I’ve already seen it,” I said. “I live here.”

  “I know, Mr. Pelton. I want to show you the future of our way of life. And by the way, I am so sorry to hear about your uncle.”

  I looked at Shorty. “We’re going to finish this later.”

  Shorty patted the fender of my car where his hand had been. “Looking forward to it.”

  My curiosity was too high to let a little thing like personal safety get in the way. I climbed into the backseat of the SUV and slid to the other side so Galston’s rotund body could fit. The two goons in the neon shirts walked to a black Chrysler 300 and got in.

  “Sorry about my security,” Galston said. “They’re just overprotective of me. Sometimes they get a little too carried away.”

  “They were certainly about to be,” I said.

  The driver of the Escalade was a Latino with a thick head of hair. He glanced at me in the rearview mirror through dark sunglasses as he maneuvered us down the levels of the garage. At the exit, he waited for a break in traffic big enough to squeeze through and gunned it.

  Galston smiled, as if what he was ready to say was rehearsed. “People come to Charleston from all over. Women come for the shopping, carriage rides, and the beaches. Men come for golf and deep-sea fishing.”

  We merged onto I-26 and headed out of the downtown area.

  “Tourists,” he said. “They’re the lifeblood of our city.”

  “They’re something, all right,” I said.

  “Exactly. Your uncle’s bar benefits from them like the rest of us do. But preservation is what it’s all about, these days. What I’m trying to do is protect our city. Make sure if it’s going to be developed, it’s done the right way.”

  “That’s great, but why does any of this concern me?” I already knew why it concerned me because Chauncey had told me. To let the fat man finish his pitch was more fun.

  “Mr. Pelton, for the past twenty years, your uncle has been trying to do what I’m doing, which is to defend Charleston from outsiders coming in and turning it into an amusement park.”

  “I’m glad he wasn’t working alone,” I said.

  At an exit five miles down the road, the driver exited the interstate toward the Ashley River. Through the window as we got closer to the water I saw housing developments and strip malls fade away. The road ended and the driver pulled to a stop. A makeshift sign read:

  Sumter Point

  Keep Out

  I’d never been here before, but I wouldn’t let this guy know. “What are we doing at my uncle’s property?”

  Galston said, “Mr. Pelton, I’ll be frank with you. I want it.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “As I said, I never kid. And I promise to safeguard it so that others will get to enjoy it.”

  I looked away from what I knew were a hundred acres covered in trees. “How would you do that?”

  Galston held out his hands, palms up, and opened them in a gesture reminiscent of pictures of Jesus I’d seen. “Create a preservation neighborhood,” he said. “I’m not talking about bulldozing it flat and putting up houses six inches apart along the water, either. I’m talking real codes, stiff ones that make the owners sign over a kidney before they plant a flower. Elevated houses barely touching the ground. Minimum one-acre lots to keep the number of houses down. The whole thing wrapped up tight with wetland offset credits. It’ll be like we’re getting two-for-one on the preservation side of things.”

  I nodded as if in agreement.

  “For the privilege,” he said, “I’m willing to offer two million dollars. Payable today.”

  He grinned big, showing me a mouthful of white-capped teeth.

  Galston certainly wasn’t any protector of Charleston. And he wasn’t the only one doing damage, just the biggest one at the moment.

  I let out a long sigh. “A lot to think about.”

  The fat man bobbed his head up and down like a used car salesman about to offload a lemon. “Sure, sure. I understand. Take some time, but not too much. I’ve got to get this deal roll-ing. You know how it is.”

  On the ride back to my car, I thought about Uncle Reggie. I’d learned more about him in the two days following his death than my lifetime of knowing him alive. An expression Galston used played in my mind: “You know how it is.”

  I surely did.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Church of Redemption was easy enough to find—a good thing because I was running behind in meeting Brother Thomas for dinner. In the middle of the projects, the tall steeple stood out like a beacon of hope. I parked next to a rough, early-eighties Buick. The alarm chirp from my car was slightly comforting. Brother Thomas held the large vestibule door open as I walked toward it.

  “I see you found us all right, mm-hmm.” He extended a hand. “Want a tour before we head out?”

  It had been a long time since I’d been inside a church, and I was still too angry with God to kneel. “Um . . . Okay.”

  The setting sun projected a kaleidoscope of colors from the tall stained-glass windows across old folding chairs and ragged linoleum flooring. We passed a battered podium facing the seats.

  “We’re a small congregation,” Brother Thomas said, “but the Lord provides, mm-hmm. The Lord provides.”

  I’d been raised a Catholic—chandeliers hanging from vaulted ceilings, stiff wooden pews, and burning incense.

  The aroma in this place was strong soap. “How long y’all been here?”

 
; “We built this church in 1983. The community was different then. The shipyard ran twenty-four hours and all the black men around here had jobs and homes and new Oldsmobiles. Now nothing and nobody’s working.”

  We walked through a hallway with peeling beige paint to a large office. On the walls hung black and white photos of Civil Rights protestors getting hosed by redneck cops. A desk stood somewhere underneath piles of papers and books in the middle of the office. A phone rang but I couldn’t see where it was. Brother Thomas dug beneath the mound, pulled out an old black receiver connected by a spiral cord to a base with a rotary dial. He answered, “Church of Redemption.” His voice lost its baritone when he spoke again. “Hey, Cassie.” A smile brightened his face as he listened, holding the receiver away from his ear. I could hear an irate woman on the other end, though not her words. When she stopped the tirade, he put the receiver back to his head and said, “Heh-heh. We ain’t lost. We was on our way, mm-hmm. Thanks for checking.” He hung up the phone without waiting for a reply and looked at me. “Um, our dinner’s waiting.”

  We strolled outside into the lowcountry pressure cooker and down the sidewalk. Brother Thomas hadn’t bothered to lock the door to his church. I felt embarrassed turning on the alarm in my car until I spotted shops closed long ago with plywood for windows. The boards were spray-painted with multicolored names and symbols.

  Brother Thomas gestured to the graffiti. “Those are tags.”

  “Tags?”

  “Gangs aren’t only in Los Angeles, mm-hmm. They use tags to mark their turf.”

  Two blocks later we arrived at a restaurant. Every parking spot was full and a line formed out the door. The crowd parted like the Red Sea when we approached.

  “Come on in, Brother,” said a man standing in the doorway.

  The woman with him said, “You eatin’ out tonight, Brother?”

  Brother Thomas greeted many of the people in line and shook many hands as we walked through. I got more stares than the bearded lady at the freak show and absently touched the small of my back where the gun was. Any of the guys who had seen me take Mutt down might be around and want to make up for it. After driving away from Chauncey’s office, I’d untucked my shirt and stuck Mutt’s pistol inside the waistband of my trousers.

  A light-skinned black woman in a flowing purple dress came out from behind a counter supporting an old cash register. Short and round, she wore her dark hair pulled back in a bun. Her face beamed. She shook a chubby index finger at us. “I told you not to be late, Brother.”

  Brother Thomas gave her a grin and a peck on the cheek. “I’m sorry for our delay, Cassie. This is Mr. Pelton.”

  “My name’s Brack.”

  She offered her hand and I took it, finding the firm and calloused handshake of someone who worked hard.

  Her stern expression melted. “Oh, he’s a cute one, Brother. Don’t leave him alone at the table is all I’m gonna say. Yes, sir.”

  Brother Thomas looked at me. “Mm-hmm.”

  Cassie led us through a small room with crowded tables and steaming plates of food. Loud voices, laughter, and the clatter of knives and forks overcame the sound from a TV in the corner. We stopped at a booth in the back.

  Cassie said, “Hope this’ll do.”

  Once we were seated, she had our food brought out, a mixture of lowcountry and soul. I was hungry, and, after Brother Thomas said grace, shoveled food into my mouth.

  He pointed his fork at me. “Boy, you got some appetite on you.”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve had home cooking,” I managed to say around a mouthful of cornbread.

  “We come to the right place, then.”

  I swallowed and nodded, selecting a fried dill pickle from a small wax-paper-lined basket full of them.

  He chuckled. “Cassie’s single, too.”

  A piece of the fried dill pickle lodged in my throat and I struggled to wash it down with iced tea. Brother Thomas tilted his head back and laughed harder, one of those open-mouthed cackles that went on for days.

  Cassie appeared next to me and put a plump hand on my back. “Everything all right over here, gentlemen?”

  My muscles tensed, but Cassie worked her fingers into my shoulder in a massaging motion and I immediately loosened up. Since my wife died, I hadn’t exactly chosen the best female companions. Most of them had been as lonely and hopeless as I was. And none of them had rubbed my shoulders.

  The grin on Brother Thomas’s face took up the whole room.

  Cassie said, “Let me know if you need anything else, and I mean anything.” She gave my shoulder a final squeeze before departing in a sea of lavender.

  Brother Thomas wiped his face with a paper napkin. “Poor Cassie’s been looking for a suitor a long time. I’m afraid she might be desperate enough to take anyone.”

  I closed my eyes and rolled my shoulders a couple times. “She’s selling herself short.”

  “Mm-hmm,” he said and eyeballed me for a moment.

  “You trying to play matchmaker or are we here to talk about something else?”

  “Sorry, Brother Brack,” he said. “You right. We’re not here for that. I ’membered you say Reggie had something about Mutt in a calendar.”

  I decided Brother Thomas didn’t need to know what kind of calendar it was. “All it said was Mutt’s Bar. Why’d he pull the gun?”

  “I’ve known Mutt a long time,” Brother Thomas said. “Been jumpy since he come back from Kuwait.”

  “No kidding.”

  He said, “How you holding up?”

  “Fantastic,” I said. “I just need to find out who murdered my uncle.”

  Brother Thomas took a long drink of his tea and put the glass down. “Don’t you think the po-lice should be handling it? I mean, it’s not as if your uncle was from this part of town.”

  I felt my face flush with anger. “They’re not going to get very far.”

  Brother Thomas said, “Are you a man of faith?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Don’t mean to pry,” he said, “but if someone in my congregation was to come to me with this problem, I’d say sometimes you got to wait on God.”

  “I haven’t had much luck with Him, lately.” I forked greens into my mouth.

  Brother Thomas nodded as if he knew something I didn’t. “A man doesn’t have the right to avoid reaping what he sows.”

  I chewed on what he said and swallowed my greens. “Meaning?”

  “Whoever killed your uncle will have to answer for it. And you don’t get a free pass just ’cause you think revenge is the right thing to do. They don’t and you don’t.”

  To prevent my foot from going down my throat, I took a swig of tea. The break gave me clarity. “So tell me how you knew my uncle.”

  The pastor worked on the pile of potatoes smothered in gravy covering half his plate. “Your uncle would come by to see Mutt a lot. I think he was helping him.”

  “Helping him how?”

  Brother Thomas stopped his loaded fork an inch short of his mouth. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Why?”

  He swallowed his food before answering. “None of my business. I might be wrong, but Mutt never asked me or the church for anything and I know the few customers he does get ain’t big spenders. He’s gotta pay his bills somehow.”

  “That’s no reason for Mutt to be paranoid.”

  “You right as far as I’m concerned. But that stunt yesterday sure didn’t win you any friends around here, mm-hmm.”

  I tossed a cleaned chicken bone onto my plate and selected another piece. “He can’t go pulling guns on people.”

  Brother Thomas signaled one of the waitresses for another napkin.

  I kept talking. “I was in the alley when my uncle was killed. It put me back in the war.”

  “Why’d you go to Afghanistan, anyway?” he said. “You seem smarter than that. Educated.”

  “My wife died of cancer,” I s
aid. “I didn’t want to deal with it so I left. I thought eating sand for a couple years might clear my head.” And maybe catch a bullet or two.

  Brother Thomas opened his eyes wide. “With people shooting at you?”

  “You’d be surprised how effectively that works.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  I took another drink from my tea. “When my tour was up, I was given the opportunity to re-enlist. My uncle talked me into coming to Charleston instead. Saved my life. Now that he’s gone, I don’t have any friends except the young woman running his bar.”

  Brother Thomas nodded. “You don’t think your uncle was killed for his wallet?”

  “No. He’s got valuable real estate. I’m going to check out that angle.” A two-million-dollar offer, and Uncle Reggie isn’t cold yet. I was definitely going to check that angle.

  Brother Thomas cleared his throat. “I, um, called him a month before this all happened.”

  Finished, I pushed my plate forward. “Yeah?”

  “I knew about the land,” he said. “It’s what fired your uncle up more than anything. People trying to ruin the land. He was one of them, what do they call? En-vi-ro-mentalists?”

  I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say. My uncle never showed me that side of him. Maybe I hadn’t paid enough attention.

  Brother Thomas said, “There’s this old factory not too far from here. Neighborhood kids go there to play during the day. Junkies go there at night. It’s awful. Rundown. Got these pools of water look like they’d glow in the dark.” He held my gaze. “I asked him to check it out. See if the city could do something about it.”

  The names of the companies on the memory stick flashed across my mind. “You happen to know the name of this place?”

  “No,” he said. “But I can show you where it is.”

  Brother Thomas squeezed himself into the front seat of my car and said, “Sure you want to check this place out tonight?”