X. Atkins - Richmond Noir

Everyone knew Mac Constantine carried a pistol. The one party I’d been to at his Prestwould unit, I was appalled to see that he left it sitting on the kitchen table, like it somehow showed what a tough guy he was. He was just the kind of moron to leave it loaded too.

Maybe Jordie hid in the maid’s room when she heard the door open that night. Maybe she had the gun already. Maybe, when Mac Constantine turned around and saw her, just before he ruined Taylor’s rug with his brains, he didn’t take her seriously. Maybe he laughed.

It was the Nabs that had tipped me off.

When I saw those orange crumbs on the floor and that half-eaten pack sitting on the kitchen counter, I knew Jordie had been there. It was the only thing she seemed to care about eating much of the time, and Taylor kept boxes of them around. It wasn’t like a healthy diet was Jordie Randolph’s biggest worry. And it wasn’t like Mac Constantine to be munching on Nabs. He was more of a foie gras kind of guy.

After she did it, she probably panicked and retreated to the utility room and then, later, up the ladder in the closet to the tool shed on the roof. One time, the first couple of months Kate and I lived there, she’d disappeared for two days, and that’s where they found her, living on Nabs and rainwater.

Next morning, Hanford sent word down, via Jackson, that he wanted a tick-tock piece a.s.a.p., telling everything from the history of the Randolphs to Mac Constantine’s demise, which he saw as the final chapter in another fucked-up Southern family’s spiral to oblivion. He actually used that phrase, which was pretty poetic for Hanford. I saw it as a major invasion of privacy. And the last straw. I went to the fourth floor and told Hanford this, suggesting also that he commit an act of self-gratification. He seemed happy that he didn’t have to fire me. That afternoon I walked over to police headquarters and tried to get Gillespie back walking a beat. They listened politely for a while, then not so politely showed me the door. Jordie Randolph didn’t deserve to have it end the way it did, but you don’t always get what you deserve. Gillespie sure didn’t.

Back home in the Prestwould, I called Kate for the first time since she left.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me after the requisite pregnant pause. She sounded worried. I really don’t think she hates me.

“I haven’t decided,” I told her, as honest as I could be. “I’m not sweating it though. A guy like me, I’ve got plenty of options.”

Devil’s Half Acre

The Raggedy Ann was almost as tall as Tug, who looked not at the doll but at the hand of the man who had flung it on the couch. The man — Mr. Not, as Tug always referred to him, silently — reached up to pat an imaginary loose strand on his head, then looked around the room, as if to survey his property.

“Where’d you find that?” said Tug’s mother Velma. “And what’s that smell? Ray Harold, I thought you hated Tug having Marguerite. Now you bring him home another doll?”

“Oh, Vee, quit yapping. I got it at a toy shop over on Broad Street. The owner sprays everything to keep it fresh.” Ray Harold tore at the plastic bag the doll was wrapped in. When he had liberated the thing, he smiled a small, mean smile and thrust the doll at the boy.

“Go ahead, take it, Harold. I told you if you acted like a sissy, I’d treat you like one. You’re nine years old. Stop peeing in your bed and maybe I’ll buy you something for big boys.” Ray Harold bent down and stared into Tug’s eyes. The boy stiffened like a miniature soldier at the sour smell of liquor on Mr. Not’s breath, but he picked up Raggedy Ann from the couch.

“Thank you,” said Tug.

“Thank you, Uncle Ray ,” corrected Velma. “Where’re your manners?”

“Thank you... Mr. Vermeer,” said Tug.

Ray Harold snorted in disgust. “Vee, pour me a drink. I need to sit down and catch my breath. Regina was at it again tonight, threatening to come over here and break all the windows.”

“Why don’t that woman take care of her own household and quit trying to interfere in mine?” said Velma while she poured her longtime lover a glass of Johnnie Walker. “Tug, this is grown folks’ talk. Take your doll to your room. You can watch that new Batman movie I bought you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tug dragged Raggedy Ann by its stitched foot along the hardwood floor. He propped it in a child-size chair in the farthest corner of his bedroom, then inserted The Dark Knight into his DVD player and undressed for bed. He kept the sound low, so he could listen to the voices at the other end of the hall. Whenever Mr. Not came around, it was always the same routine. Tug, go play. Tug, go to your room. Tug, go downstairs. Tug, go next door . His mother had wanted him to call his godfather Uncle Ray, but Tug refused to call him anything to his face when he could get away with it, and when he couldn’t, he called him Mr. Vermeer. The name sounded to Tug like a cat howling to be let in at night. Vermeer . He thought it suited the man whose very presence in the house on East Leigh Street spoke no and not .

Ordinarily, Tug would become engrossed quickly in a movie, but he couldn’t concentrate with Mr. Not there. He never knew what was going to happen. Mr. Not changed the way his mother acted. When she wasn’t at work in the dining room office downstairs, she spent time doing things with Tug, playing checkers, playing cards, reading to him, taking him skateboarding. But whenever Mr. Not was in the house, her voice changed from being calm and almost musical to sounding whiny and high-pitched. Sometimes, when Mr. Not was around, she even called Tug “Harold,” despite the fact that she’d given him the nickname herself.

“Shhh,” Tug said to Marguerite. She was a bisque brown porcelain doll in a gingham dress, and he held her close to his chest and tiptoed to his hiding place behind the window drapery on the second-floor landing, midway down the hall from his bedroom. It was an excellent place to listen to his mother and Mr. Not...

Velma went to the refrigerator, removed a can of beer, and sat down at the kitchen table.

“Regina says she wants you and Harold out of this house by the end of the summer,” said Ray Harold, already on his third drink.

“I never asked to live here. I never did. I used to think you put me and Tug in this house because you loved me, but I now think it was just cheaper than paying rent on an apartment.” Velma popped the can’s top for punctuation.

“This house is the property of the Vermeer family. We have owned it—”

“For over fifty years,” finished Velma, wiping beer foam from her lip. “I know.” She glared at Ray Harold, then she laughed.

“The thing about you, Velma? You don’t have any class!”

“No, Ray Harold, I don’t. I wasn’t born the illegitimate great-great-grandson of a Confederate captain. I didn’t graduate from Hampton University. I didn’t grow up on Quality Row. And my grandfather didn’t work for Charles T. Russell, the famous black architect.” Velma sat down and faced him across the table. “I don’t have any class, but I do have you, may God have mercy on my soul!” She stood up again. “I’m tired and I’m going to bed. I want to take Tug skateboarding tomorrow, and later on I have some paperwork to do... for you!” She turned off the kitchen light and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom.

“For me,” said Ray Harold. “That’s right. The cancellation of that bid to renovate the Eggleston. And make sure you do it correctly.” He sighed and stared into the bottom of his empty glass.

“Don’t you worry about it. I always do,” replied Velma from the top of the stairs, dragging out the last three words to register her disgust.