James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

What was this world coming to? A fancy-dress invite from L. J. Stringer, of all people!

It was hard to believe that the sweet, kindly boy with whom I’d spent a good portion of my childhood was now in such a lofty position that he could send out invitations engraved on thick vellum. And that on his way to manhood, L.J. had invented a machine that shot twine around cotton bales in one-eighth the time it took four men to do the job.

The Stringer Automatic Baler. Without it, Cotton would no longer be King.

I eased into a rear table at the Slide Inn Café. I ordered coffee and a big breakfast of grits and eggs, patty sausage and biscuits. I thought about L. J. Stringer for a moment or two, but my heart was heavy at the absence of a single letter from home.

Why hadn’t Meg written? I didn’t really need to ask myself that. I knew the answer. But even if she was too angry – why hadn’t she allowed the girls to write?

I decided to detour by the post office just to make sure no letters had been accidentally sent to Judge Everett Corbett’s home.

Meantime I took a slurp of the Slide Inn’s good chicory coffee and tore open the last of my three letters, the one without a return address.

At first I thought the envelope was empty. I had to feel around inside it before I found the card.

It was a postcard, like any other postcard. In place of a picture of the Grand Canyon or Weeki Wachee Springs, the card bore a photograph of a young black man dangling from a rope. His face had been horribly disfigured. The whip marks on his bare chest were so vivid I felt like I could touch them.

On the other side of the card was a handwritten message:

THIS IS THE WAY WE COOK COONS DOWN HERE.

THIS IS THE WAY WE WILL COOK YOU.

WE KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE.

GO HOME, NIGGER-LOVER.

I DIDN’T GO HOME, of course; I couldn’t – my mission was only just getting started. So I actually talked to some candidates for federal judgeships. And I continued my secretive investigation for Roosevelt. I even squeezed in a few hours at L. J. Stringer’s party and remembered what a good friend he was.

A few weeks later, I felt I needed a haircut, and I knew where to go: Ezra Newcomb’s.

During my visit, I congratulated Ezra, Eudora’s only barber, on the sharpness of his blade. This resulted in my receiving a nine-point instructional course on the most important techniques involved in properly sharpening a straight razor. (The truth was, I had brought my own dull razor along, hoping to have Ezra sharpen it.)

“You got to start her off real slow, then you swipe down the strop real fast,” he was saying.

This was exactly the lesson I had gotten from Ezra the last time he cut my hair, when I was a boy of eighteen.

“Just don’t understand it,” Ezra said. “A boy goes all the way up to Harvard and they don’t teach him how to sharpen a razor.”

“I must have been out sick the day they gave that class.”

Ezra laughed and swept the bib off me with a dramatic flourish. He returned my sharpened razor to me. I handed him a quarter and told him to keep the change. He whistled at my generous big-city tipping habits.

Then I stood outside the barbershop in the bright September sun, admiring the dangerous gleam on the edge of the blade.

“Why, Ben, you’re looking at that razor the way most men look at a pretty girl!”

I turned around to see Elizabeth Begley standing right there beside me. We were practically elbow to elbow.

“I was admiring Ezra’s handiwork. In all my years of trying, I have never been able to put half as good an edge on a razor.”

“Oh, Ben, I don’t believe there’s anything you can’t do,” she said, “if you decide to go after it.”

Now what was this craziness? Was my old girlfriend flirting with me? Was I flirting right back?

I flicked the razor shut and slipped it into my pocket.

“Come walk me to Jenkins’s store,” she said. “I bought new boots for Emma and she’s already been through the laces. That’s not right.”

We walked the sidewalk of Commerce Street, which was fairly deserted at this hour.

“A little bird told me you were the guest of honor at the Stringers’ dress party the other night,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say guest of honor,” I said. “But I guess some people are a little curious what I’m doing back here.”

“You must tell them all you’ve come to visit me, ” Elizabeth said with a smile. “That will get their tongues wagging.”

She laughed, and so did I.

“Speaking of people who love to talk behind other people’s backs…” She nodded in the direction of Lenora Godwin, who was walking toward us on the sidewalk across the street, apparently lost in thought.

“Lenora was at the party,” I said. “She’s still as well dressed as ever.”

“Did she look ravishing?” There was a slightly caustic edge to the question.

“She may still be the ‘Best Dressed,’” I said, “but I was wondering why the ‘Most Popular Girl’ at Eudora High wasn’t there.”

“It’s simple, Ben. She and her husband were not invited to attend.”

I was surprised to hear this. I knew that Eudora “society,” such as it was, was a small, intimate group. Surely Elizabeth would be included.

“I think you know my husband is Richard Nottingham, the state senator,” Elizabeth said. “Richard is known to be the political kingmaker.”

“I did know that,” I said.

“Well, then, put it together. L. J. Stringer never sits down to dinner with anyone more important than himself. Some people say that Richard will be the next governor,” she said.

“And what do you think, Elizabeth?”

“He certainly wants to be governor. But I… I don’t want to leave Eudora.”

We had reached Jenkins’s store now. “Thank you for walking with me, Ben. And for our talk. Now I have boot laces to buy.”

To my disappointment, she didn’t invite me in with her. But Elizabeth leaned in and lightly kissed my cheek, then disappeared into the store – the same one where my mother had collapsed when I was just a boy.

MY MOTHER USED TO SAY, “When you’re truly in love, you see the face you love in your coffee cup, in the washstand mirror, in the shine on your shoes.” I remembered those words as I sat at my regular table at the Slide Inn, sipping a cup of strong and delicious chicory coffee.

Miss Fanny brought my breakfast of fried eggs, creamy salty grits, a slice of cured ham, and buttermilk biscuits, but I only had eyes for my coffee cup, and Mama’s words haunted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Elizabeth. Yes, Mama. I see her face in the surface of my coffee.

Elizabeth.

If I were not feeling so lonely and abandoned by my wife, would I be having these feelings? Probably not. But I was feeling lonely and abandoned, and worse – aroused.

Elizabeth.

My reverie was broken by Fanny’s exclamation as she looked past me and out the window.

“That boy is like to drive me crazy, late as he is. Look at him, running up here like his shirttail’s on fire!”

A gangly colored boy of about sixteen was headed for the café in a big, sweaty arm – pumping hurry – such a hurry, in fact, that he almost dashed in the front door without thinking.

Then he saw Fanny and me staring at him. He remembered his place, ducked his head, and went around back.