Jay pulls the last card he has: he threatens Parker with the news of Wolcott’s affair with a cop, a man who just happened to be a witness in one of her cases. “You sure you want that coming out ahead of December?”
“Please,” Parker says. “If they wanted to use that, they would have by now. And I’ll bet money they never will. We have opp guys too, you know.”
“He’s going to be acquitted.”
“Congratulations,” she says. “But by the time this goes to trial, Mr. Porter, Sandy Wolcott will already be a few months in office, and I’ll be back in Austin.”
“Not if there’s no election.”
“What are you talking about?”
He hands her a photocopy of his motion to enjoin the city’s runoff election, scheduled for December tenth, and his request for a hearing on the matter in county court at the earliest possible date. Jay tells her it’s her copy.
“You can’t do this.”
“I already did,” he says.
Parker looks up just as Rolly, out of the driver’s seat now, opens the back door for her, a signal that her ride is through. Parker, in a huff, shoves the motion into her bag and grabs her mobile phone. She ungracefully scoots her behind out of the Town Car. Rolly tips his hat to her as she goes.
Back in the Walgreen’s parking lot, Rolly lights a smoke. Jay asks if he picked up anything on the ride over, stuff that Parker and Wolcott talked about.
“A lot that didn’t mean much to me one way or the other.”
“They mention Neal? Or the court case?”
“Not a word, just a bit of chatter about media interviews, general stuff,” Rolly says, exhaling smoke. “And talk about the big donors in their pocket.”
“Any names?”
“They got Cole.”
“Hmmph,” Jay mutters. Thomas Cole, Cynthia’s old pal.
Looks like everybody is lining up behind Wolcott.
They part ways soon after this, Rolly to finish what they started at Beechwood Estates, trying to get close enough to Alonzo Hollis to figure out his game, and Jay to make sure Neal’s alibi, his one true hope of getting the case tossed, hasn’t fled the county. From Montrose, Jay heads south, to Third Ward.
Come drinking hours, the streets around the Playboy Club are lit up like Christmas. Young men hang on street corners, sipping beer out of paper bags, waiting on the club’s doors to open. Older women trade gossip between sips of spiked tea, sitting on the porch steps of shotgun houses, rows of them lined up like tiny churches right off Scott Street, not even a quarter mile from the rough-and-tumble headquarters of Jay’s first fledgling SNCC offshoot–a group he started with Bumpy Williams, Lloyd Mackalvy, and Marcus Dupri–and where he first laid eyes on Cynthia Maddox. He thinks again about this morning, the fact that, for whatever reason, she went out of her way to warn him. But against what, she wouldn’t say, not really, offering only a vague sense that all with this election is not what it seems, which he was already beginning to see with his own eyes.
Jay parks under a dim streetlight just a few feet from the door of the Playboy Club, not realizing he’s been followed. But as soon as he steps out of the Land Cruiser, he sees his pursuer. The driver of the Z, the one who was in his office and outside his home–the one he assumes is after his legal records for the Cole case–is standing right in front of him. The unkempt hair, the same cutting smile, the familiar funk of marijuana smoke laid tonight on top of a sweet, sweet cologne. He’s so close Jay could reach out and touch him, which he tries to do to block the first blow, an uppercut that lands under his chin, knocking his teeth together until he tastes blood. Jay, if he had a weapon, couldn’t reach it anyway, not as fast as the kid comes on him again, this time socking him under his rib cage. The .38 is a mirage, a dream he once had. Irony of ironies, he left it with Lonnie tonight, worried someone might try something at the house. He would laugh out loud if he could catch his breath. Doubled over, Jay tries to speak. He spits blood on the kid’s sneakers, white Air Jordans, earning himself another hit, a punch as near to the kidneys as he can take without passing out. And then he hears the unlikeliest string of words in the English language.
“Motherfuck that injunction.”
Jay sees the grip of a 9 millimeter in the waistband of the kid’s underwear, peeking out above his baggy jeans. He’s lifted his shirt to make the threat clear, like something out of a Tupac video Jay once asked his daughter to turn off. Laid out in the street, he thinks he can hear the song’s thumping bass in his head until he realizes it’s his own blood beating against the walls of his skull. “You understand?” the kid says, kicking Jay in the gut. “Shut it down, Heathcliff.”
CHAPTER 16
The headline: “Hathorne Camp Seeks to Halt December Runoff.”