The Dangerous Edge of Things

CHAPTER 17

Come Sunday morning, I was feeling a twinge of guilt at not telling anyone about my mysterious phone caller. In fact, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to. Rico, however, had an idea.

“It’s something you have that they don’t,” he said. “You’re spiteful that way. Always gotta have something in pocket.”

He’d called me as I was getting dressed, his voice rough with exhaustion and a night of talking too loudly. And he was right—I did like to hoard my secrets. After all, I wasn’t telling him what I’d discovered about Trey the night before, and I told Rico everything.

I took the phone outside to a secluded area off the lobby where the valets hung out on their breaks. They were a wholesome-looking bunch, young and well-scrubbed. They all smoked. I tried to stay upwind, but the spiky bite of secondhand smoke found me anyway, curling into my nose. I shoved two pieces of gum into my mouth and took a seat on the edge of a planter.

“Hey, can you trace a call backwards, from a phone number?”

“Depends. Residential, cell phone, payphone?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Of course you don’t. But yeah, I can give it a shot.”

“I knew you could. You busy this morning?”

“Got nothin’ but time.”

“Cool.” I hopped down off the planter. “How about giving me a lift? My car is still at Phoenix, and there’s this field trip I’m dying to take.”

***

I waited for him in the lobby. When he arrived, the two women sitting opposite me checked him out like he was some rap singer they should have recognized. Or perhaps a criminal from a wanted poster.

He did look startling. Baggy black pants flowing over high-top Converses. A red Falcons jersey with a black 69. Gold hoops in each ear, a diamond stud in his nose, and a goatee, neatly-trimmed and black as his eyes, which were hidden behind dark sunglasses this morning.

I jumped up and grabbed him in a bear hug. Up close, his skin looked darker than usual, more café than au lait. I waited for the Hollywood smile, but it was low wattage.

I pulled off the shades. His eyes were red-rimmed and bleary.

“Jeez,” I said. “How much sleep did you get?”

He snatched the glasses back. “Three hours, and that’s roundin’ up.” He sat down, spread his legs. “So what’s the plan?”

I shouldered my tote bag and grinned at him.

He sighed loudly. “Oh crap.”

***

We took his car, a leased Chevy Tahoe that wolfed down a third of his take-home pay. He’d recently converted the sound system to MP3, so I no longer had to kick through a pile of CDs to make room for my feet. He had one of his mixes playing, the bass cranked up so high his car was practically bouncing off the line. The bank employees walking down Peachtree stared, like they knew exactly who we were.

“Go left,” I said.

We inched down Peachtree for a half mile or so, past the commuters, past the newspaper men hollering the Journal-Constitution headlines. I saw a panhandler talking on a cell phone while another slept under a blanket of wrapping paper.

Rico followed my directions without question, heading south until we hit the old part of the city, where the lofts of Cabbagetown rose over the MARTA railway line.

“Great,” he said, “we’re going to the zoo. You know I hate the zoo.”

“Not the zoo.”

“Unless the pandas are out. I’ll go see the baby panda.”

“Maybe later. Turn left.”

Rico squinted ahead. “Oh man, I hate it when you do this to me.”

“Do what?”

“Drag me into your ghost shit.”

We pulled in front of the arching brick gates of Oakland Cemetery, eighty-eight verdant acres dotted with some of Atlanta’s most elite dead people. The azaleas had yet to burst into full glory, but daffodils dotted the walking path in profusion. Two runners and their dogs stretched at the entrance as a docent gathered a group of tourists.

I shook my head. “I told you, ghosts don’t usually haunt cemeteries—not enough residual energy.”

He continued reluctantly through the gates, parking just past the visitor’s center near an enormous magnolia. We got out with some door slamming on Rico’s part, some kicking and muttering too.

He peered over his sunglasses. “White chicks and ghost shit. I do not get it.”

As we walked, I opened my Beaumont folder. It now contained an article about the reburial of Charley’s great-grandfather near the Confederate section. We followed my map to that area of the park, where I spotted the enormous stone lion I’d seen in the picture at Jake Whitaker’s office. The Southern Cross fluttered crisply above the marble creature, its paws clutching a cannonball, its face contorted in dying anguish.

Rico stopped walking and took off his sunglasses. “Oh no, we are not doing Gone with the Wind.”

“At least it’s not ghost shit.”

“Look at this skin, baby girl, what color is this skin?”

I patted a massive bicep and grinned. “Hot chocolate.”

“Shut up.” He put his sunglasses back on. “You better have a good reason for dragging me to the Great Cracker Burial Ground.”

“Stop being deliberately offensive, you know I hate that. I’m looking for somebody.”

“Clark Gable?”

“No. Somebody who was buried here last year. Or reburied here actually.”

“So this is ghost shit.”

I ignored him. The Oakland Preservation Society representative I’d spoken with that morning had been very helpful—when I mentioned the lion, she knew exactly which grave I was talking about. Even though the last plot had been sold in 1865, families occasionally put one up for sale, and the Oakland staff maintained a list of interested buyers, like Mark Beaumont. She’d demurred when I’d asked how much it had cost.

“Over there,” I said.

Shadrick Turner Floyd’s grave nestled under a dogwood. It wasn’t in the Confederate section proper, but in a private plot next to it. I got out my cell phone and took a picture.

“It’s a pretty spot,” I said. “You can see the lion, the obelisk—”

“The MARTA,” Rico replied.

To prove his point, a train rumbled by. Private Floyd didn’t have as prestigious a plot as the late Maynard Jackson, the city’s first African-American mayor—his grave was sited catty-cornered with a prime view of the Atlanta skyline—but it wasn’t bad.

“They imported him from Charley Beaumont’s hometown in…” I peered closer at the tombstone. “Tennessee, apparently, not far from South Carolina-Georgia border. Found the remains in a cotton field. The Daughters of the Confederacy contacted Charley about it and here we are.”

“I thought she was from Miami.”

“Apparently she has these redneck credentials that she only drags up if it’s politically useful.”

“Why is it politically useful to drag your dead great-great-grandfather all the way to Atlanta?”

I pointed at the photograph accompanying the article, a twin of the one in Jake Whitaker’s office, looking once again upon Senator Harrison Adam’s beaming robust face.

“This, you cannot spin wrong. Somebody’s gonna be pissed at you no matter what opinion you hold about the Confederate flag. But this…” I gestured toward the grave. It was well-manicured and tidy, with tasteful purple irises. “This is history.”

“It’s a stunt,” Rico replied. He plopped down on a bench and examined his fingernails. “The Beaumonts dug up this man and dragged him from West Bum-F*cked to be buried here, just to get some good press so their boy will get elected.”

“Looking like.”

“What could this possibly have to do with the real live dead girl, the one in your brother’s driveway?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m gonna find out.” I pulled at his elbow. “Come on. I gotta get my car back.”

***

Rico drove me back to Phoenix. He put me out at the main entrance, and I shoved three squares of gum in my mouth. He gave the building the skunk eye, then rejected my invitation to come inside.

“Just call me later. I’ll have that number looked up by then, unless it’s something tricky.” He examined me over his shades. “You quit smoking again?”

“Yeah, a week ago. Why?”

“Because you haven’t lit up once all morning. And you just ground out that gum wrapper with your shoe.”

I looked down. “Oops.”

***

The parking garage felt more deserted than usual. My footsteps echoed damply, and I didn’t see another person. I spotted Trey’s Ferrari right off—he’d parked it in a faraway corner and left it there, like a cowboy might tether his stallion before heading into the saloon. But no people.

My car was exactly where I’d left it, next to the elevator. Above it, I saw the empty spot where the security camera had been until someone had smashed it, that someone most probably being Dylan Flint. No security cameras meant no security. My paranoia quotient ratcheted up a few notches.

I quickened my pace, got out my keys. Suddenly, my little red Echo looked as sweet and welcoming and safe as a fortress.

I unlocked the door and climbed in. I was fastening my seatbelt when I saw the flyer on the windshield. My first thought was annoyance. My second thought was surprise. And my third thought? There wasn’t one. Fear will do that, short circuit your thoughts.

Because it wasn’t a flyer. It was a simple round target, black and white and clean as a whistle. Except that the center was a picture of me, with the middle shot clean through. Ragged edges, massive hole, probably something large caliber, something lethal.

A bull’s eye.