Sure, the kid came from a different generation. He lived by different rules, some combination of hip-hop and bad-ass football bravado. But shouldn’t a kid smart enough to get those good grades know how easy it is for a favored child to fall? Shouldn’t he know how fast and how far that child could fall in what was still a white man’s world? Even when you figured in the boy’s youth and inexperience and how much he had already been petted and pampered by white coaches and teachers, it still didn’t make sense. The boy being in that place, doing what he’d done, taking the attitude he’d taken with a sergeant of the Major Crimes Division of the Tampa Police Department.
SEVEN
Teach parked the Buick under a majestic banyan tree on the old redbrick drive of the Tampa Women’s Club. The city of Tampa had once proudly worn miles of redbrick streets, and employed men, mostly Cuban, who knew how to grade the roadways and spread the white beach sand and nestle the rich red bricks into the sand from one granite curbstone to another. The artisans were gone now, and the red bricks survived only in the best neighborhoods, saved by the vanity of the rich.
The automobiles Teach passed as he hurried toward the old Spanish stucco and terra-cotta tile facade of the Women’s Club were the thoroughbred descendants of the Packard Roadsters and Delages and Stutz Bearcats that had lined this drive when the banyan trees were sprigs, and the sky beyond the club’s roof was not crowded with glass-and-steel skyscrapers. Ahead of Teach, the last arrivals, women in filmy tropical pastels and expensive shoes, towed in their bored husbands.
Teach checked the bloodstain on his coat sleeve for the tenth time since leaving Malone’s Bar. He had bought film at a drugstore, then, with a few minutes to spare, he had driven to a bar on Kennedy Boulevard. The bourbon he’d tossed back while the barmaid counted out his change had steadied him, quieted the loudest voices of his headache, and sent him back out into the muggy dusk with the ramshackle house of his optimism somewhat repaired.
Teach quickened his step and prepared his smile. It was always strange for him, stepping into the opulence of the ballroom. The varnished mahogany wainscoting, the crystal chandelier shedding its pink light on the damask tapestry with its stilted scene of serene men on horseback spearing a lion that seemed to be in no particular pain. The murmur of conversation that would suddenly quiet as the lights went down and the music began to play and the first dancers appeared on stage, shy and brave and fragile.
Teach rested the old Minolta SLR on his right coat sleeve, concealing the bloodstain. He would look, he hoped, perfectly natural entering this way. A club woman gave him a program and a gentle frown for his lateness. Teach deferred the pleasure of opening the program to see Dean listed as principal dancer. He stood behind the last row of seats, imagining his wife, Paige, somewhere in the sea of organdy and silk. That she had not lived to see their daughter in this role seemed a crime of fate, a sin worse than any of Teach’s own. He closed his eyes and saw Paige where he knew she would have sat, halfway down on the aisle. In his mind’s eye, she lifted her head to look around for him, her shining honey-blond hair in the usual chignon. She’d had a good neck, long and smooth, and a heartbreaking wisp of hair had always escaped the chignon just under her left ear.
As he started down the aisle to find a seat, a hand took his arm, turning him. A red-faced man in a pink blazer looked petulantly at him and said, “Please.”
Teach stepped aside as the man ushered a tall, fiftyish black man and his wife down the aisle to the reserved front row. Stately was the word that formed in Teach’s mind. The way the couple moved, the way they claimed the usher’s deference and the attention of this prosperous audience. The black man walked with a musical grace, and his dark suit was rakishly cut for a man of his age.
The man’s wife carried herself with regal dignity. The entire ballroom watched them settle in the first row next to a couple Teach recognized as the mayor of Tampa and his wife. The two couples smiled and greeted each other comfortably, and the lights began to go down.
Teach hurried down the aisle in the half dark, excused himself across the knees of a sixtyish couple, and dropped down next to a diamond-beglittered matron. He smiled at the woman, who inclined her head toward him and sniffed. Her nose worked on the air between them, then she frowned. The bourbon. And if she could smell it, so, probably, could others. Well, what the hell? Other men had come here straight from work after a bump from the office bottle or a stop at Eric’s in the Franklin Street Mall. Teach took a good comprehensive whiff of himself and got it all: the musky sweat of violence and fear, the tang of blood and whiskey.
After a brief overture, the curtain rose on a woodland scene Teach thought must have been painted by a descendant of the tapestry maker. A line of girls flowed onto the stage in pink tutus, white tights, and pink toe-shoes. Their hair was blond and bunned, and each wore a white blossom on the crown of her bun. These girls, Teach had learned, were the corps de ballet.
Several of them were pretty. They were all earnest and deeply imbued with the seriousness of The Dance. But none of them, Teach knew from years of these evenings, was talented. And wait a minute, there was a new girl. A black girl. She tottered in on uncertain toes, her movements a little too robust for the corps. Watching her, Teach knew she was an athlete. He could see her running the hurdles or doing the Fosbury flop over a high-jump bar. A spirited girl, she seemed trapped up there on the stage, her eyes a little panicky, her energy too large for this subtle rite.
Sitting here amongst these complacent burghers, listening to the lilting music, watching these daughters of wealth and privilege move in stately patterns on the stage, Teach shuddered and thought, I could be handcuffed in a police station, could be fumbling through the Tampa phone directory for the name and number of an attorney, could be leaving a phone message for my daughter: “Uh, it’s Dad. Sorry I didn’t make it, honey. Something’s happened. I’ll be home as soon as possible.”
And then the entire vista of disaster opened up before James Teach: himself in prison, a lost man in a world of grinding stupidity and violence, all because of a few seconds of bourbon-inspired heroism in a men’s room.
And there was gorgeous Dean. She had swept onstage in a swell of violins, turning on pointe with her arms sweetly arched above her head, the stiff tutu flaring out to reveal the clean line of her thigh. God, she was beautiful. God, what gifts she had given and been given.
She had inherited Teach’s athletic talent, but that wasn’t all of it. She was the perfect combination of his power, reflexes, and concentration, and something ineffable and inexpressibly fine that was Paige. Teach watched as Dean commanded the stage, turning and twirling in front of the other girls. Behind her, they were no more animate than the trees and shrubs of the backdrop. When the solo was finished, Dean moved to the wing and three other girls danced in unison—wood nymphs, shepherdesses? Teach wasn’t sure. He looked at the program. There would be three more moments for Dean, and one of them had to be Teach’s too. He would rise in false apology, hurry, bent-backed, down the aisle, and kneel at the foot of the stage. As unobtrusively as possible, he would snap the Minolta’s shutter, capturing the elusive art of Dean.
Teach pushed himself up and apologized his way to the aisle. When he got to the foot of the stage, the music was swelling for Dean’s second solo. Teach knelt and the corps de ballet moved into his viewfinder. In the middle was the black girl, and, as she entered Teach’s field of vision, he heard to his right a small squeal of pleasure, a whispered, “There she is. Isn’t she just so sweet?”
Teach lowered the camera and looked over at the black couple. They had melted in delight at the sight of the girl. Beside them, the mayor and his wife looked on with dutiful appreciation. The black man slowly turned his head. He looked mildly annoyed to see Teach crouching in the dark. Teach lifted his chin in greeting, held up the camera, shrugged. The music swelled. The man nodded and turned back to the stage. Teach focused the