Paper son, p.13
Paper Son, page 13
We circled the square twice before we found a parking place. I fed the meter, and we headed first to FedEx, where we shipped Jefferson’s computer to Wong Security same-day, for evening delivery. As we walked to Café Café, I texted Linus not to go out clubbing.
Café Café’s yellow sign hung under the arcade, presiding over outdoor tables occupied by fleece-clad students, December be damned. I found a booth inside while Bill went to the counter to get green tea for me and coffee and a pecan roll for himself. A slim, smiling young woman, blond hair under a yellow Café Café bandanna, took his order and his money: none other than Anna Rae Ferguson herself.
We sipped and nibbled while we watched her. She deftly made change, took an order, and assured someone his latte was on the way, all with athletic grace and a cheery good humor that seemed genuine to me.
I tore my eyes from Anna Rae Ferguson and looked around. “You know, this is the first place since the airport where black people and white people are just hanging around together.”
“College coffeehouse,” Bill said. “Cutting-edge in sociological developments.”
“Am I hearing a touch of cynicism?”
“From me?” He finished his coffee. “There seems to be a lull in the action. Should we?”
“We should.”
I got up and wove my way through the tables of students studying calculus, studying Facebook, studying each other. Bill got up, too, leaving our jackets to hold the fort. I asked Anna Rae for a tea and a coffee, and after she relayed the order, I paid her and asked if she was Anna Rae Ferguson.
One of the things about being a short, young Asian woman is that you’re not instantly threatening. This isn’t so hot in bodyguard work, but it’s useful if you’re sneaking up on a subject.
“I sure am,” Anna Rae replied, tilting her head, still smiling. Probably she was trying to figure out which class she knew me from and what notes I wanted to borrow.
“I’m Lydia Chin,” I said, handing her my card. “I’m an investigator from New York. Not police, and this isn’t about your family, Anna Rae.”
Her smile went to the place smiles often go when people read my card. “What about my family?”
“Nothing. Really. It’s about my family, and I need your help.”
“I’m working.”
“It’s okay.”
Anna Rae glanced over at a young man Bill and I had pinpointed earlier as the manager. It hadn’t been so hard: his name tag read, Freddie, Manager. From his post pulling cappuccinos, Freddie smiled and nodded at Anna Rae. He waved Bill’s card in the air and shooed her along, then handed Bill the coffee and tea I’d ordered, plus a pumpkin spice latte for Anna Rae.
That the card was one of the ones Bill has that identify him as a reporter, and that it had come with a twenty folded behind it, might account for some measure of Freddie’s cooperation.
I spoke low to Anna Rae. “He thinks we’re doing a newspaper article on nontraditional college sports. Like Ultimate Frisbee.”
“I— Who’s we?”
“My partner and I,” I said as Bill slid into our booth with the drinks. “Please. I need your help. And talking to us will be easier than explaining to Freddie why you’re not.”
Anna Rae looked again to the manager, who shooed her a second time. A young black woman with curls bouncing out from her yellow bandanna came over from the baked goods counter. “Go ahead, girl. I got you.”
“Thanks, Darlaine.” Anna Rae managed another smile, but it, too, was gone by the time she’d followed me across the café and into our booth.
I sat next to Bill so Anna Rae wouldn’t feel hemmed in. That gesture didn’t seem to improve her mood. She spoke low. “What kind of stupid game is this? Who are y’all? Leave me alone.”
“Anna Rae, we don’t mean to scare you,” I began.
“I’m not scared.”
Could’ve fooled me. Anna Rae folded her arms across her chest and gave us what I assumed was her hardest stare.
I said, “Jefferson Tam is my cousin.”
That derailed the glare for a moment. “Jefferson? What about him?”
“Do you know him?”
“Sure, I do. He grew up near me. He went to high school with my brother.” Still eyeing me with suspicion, she reached for her pumpkin spice latte. “What about him?” she repeated.
“You know he’s been arrested?”
“For killing his daddy. Did he do it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
She shrugged. “Guess you could say that. I see him around town sometimes. He lives up here now, you know. We get a drink, now and then go to a game. And killing your daddy . . .” She shook her head.
“Do you know he escaped from jail yesterday?”
Her eyes widened. Then she snickered. “Road Runner beats Wile E. Coyote again. Sorry, y’all, I guess it’s not funny. Just, the Sheriff’s Department down there in Coahoma County . . .” She shook her head again, still smiling.
“We met a couple of deputies yesterday.”
“Not Sheriff Bradley’s fault,” Anna Rae said, putting her mug down. “Got to give credit where it’s due, he tries. But he’s just a couple of years in the job, and some of what he inherited, they couldn’t find their private parts with both hands and a map.” She looked from me to Bill. “But I still don’t understand why y’all are here.”
Since her eyes rested on Bill, he took it. “Jefferson Tam’s escape was well organized, from the outside.” He told her how it went, and when he was finished, added, “A few weeks ago, Jefferson was in Burcell.”
“He was? When?”
“Just after Thanksgiving.”
She was silent for a few moments, I guess maybe expecting more. Bill said nothing else, so she looked to me. I didn’t speak, either.
“Hold on a minute here. Y’all are thinking someone in Burcell helped Jefferson to escape? That’s just craziness!”
“Is it?” I said.
“Who’d do that? Why?”
“Maybe Johnny? Maybe because Jefferson’s gotten to be part of your family’s business?”
“Jefferson?” She sat back sharply. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I leaned toward her. “Anna Rae, you family cooks meth in Burcell for distribution in Memphis. We really don’t care about that if Jefferson’s not involved, but this escape makes it look like he is.”
I watched her eyes as she went through her options: pretend surprised insult; hotly deny; silently stand up and leave. At the end she did none of those. Dropping her voice, she said, “Are y’all nuts? Whatever my family does, and I’m not saying it’s one thing or another, but it’s family business. Jefferson’s no part of that, no way.”
“Then why was he in Burcell?”
“I have no idea. Maybe he and Johnny had a bet to settle.”
“What kind of bet?”
“Who knows? They could have laid money on the game or something.”
“What game?”
She stared at me. “Football. The Egg Bowl.”
“Ah,” I said, full of Pete’s knowledge. “Ole Miss versus Mississippi State. They’d have bet on that?”
“There’s nobody in Mississippi doesn’t have an opinion one way or the other, so why not put a few dollars on it?”
“All right,” I said. “We’ll look into that. Anna Rae, are you dating Jefferson Tam?”
Her eyes widened, and she burst out laughing. “Seriously, y’all crack me up. Tell me all y’all came to Oxford just to ask me that.”
“Are you?”
“Of course not! Me and Jefferson? It’s a good one, though.” She placed her palms on the table. “I need to get back to work. I hope y’all find Jefferson and I hope he didn’t kill his daddy. If I can help any more be sure to let me know.” Smiling, she stood and walked away.
Bill and I watched her go. “What do we think?” I said.
“Either she’s a really good actor, in which case American history’s a waste of a major, or she’s telling the truth.”
“Meaning, she knows Jefferson, but she’s not dating him. I actually believe that, not so much because she told us, but she just doesn’t seem as upset as you’d be if your boyfriend had been arrested for murder. But what about Jefferson going to Burcell to pay off a bet?”
“Or collect on one.”
“Good point. Either way, it makes Johnny more of a friend of Jefferson’s than we knew. Which makes it seem even more likely that he’s working with the Fergusons, no matter what Anna Rae says.”
“She may not know. She’s one of the—what did Big Bone Stafford call them?—one of the deserters.”
“True. And let me ask you something else. We think she’s telling the truth. All of it?”
“No,” he said, looking at her back behind the counter, smiling, taking orders. “No, I think she’s hiding something.”
“Any idea what?”
“No.”
“Me, either. But you know who I’d like to have a word with now?”
“Johnny Ferguson himself?”
“None other.”
22
We didn’t head directly back to Clarksdale, however. I fed the meter again—I had the feeling Oxford’s square was like a New York street, where once you’ve found a parking place you give it up for no man—and we walked west, toward the Ole Miss campus. Out in this direction, the brick houses gave way to smaller wooden ones, a touch more shambling and bicycle adorned. This was a student neighborhood, and though Jefferson Tam was not a student, his address turned out to be a green clapboard house flying the flag of the Ole Miss Rebels.
“Rebels?”
“Football,” Bill told me. “Also basketball, volleyball, baseball, track and field. Probably darts and Ping-Pong. Women’s teams, too, by the way.”
“Don’t they have black athletes?”
“Sure, they do.”
“What do they think of being Rebels? Oh, wait, I know. It’s complicated. And plus, this is Mississippi.”
He nodded somberly. “If that ain’t the truth, then grits ain’t groceries.”
I laughed.
“You like that one?”
“And plus, I like how you said it with a straight face.”
We climbed the porch steps under the Rebels flag. The mailboxes told us Jefferson’s apartment was number four. “That just shows how far Jefferson’s gotten from his roots. Four’s an unlucky number. No Chinese person in his right mind would live in apartment four.” I was reaching for the house doorbell when Bill stopped my hand.
“Why draw attention?”
“How are we going to get in?”
“Why, little lady. This ain’t the big bad city.” He turned the knob. The door was unlocked.
The apartment door at the top of the stairs with the big wooden four on it was not unlocked, but with me keeping an eye out for the other denizens—who didn’t appear—Bill had it open in under sixty seconds. We went in, closed it, and stood looking around.
The walls held posters for Skrillex and Deadmau5, and one for the Japanese cyberpunk anime Akira. That didn’t surprise me. What did was one from a museum show of Chinese paintings, of the Three Friends of Winter: pine, plum, and bamboo. Loyalty, perseverance, and resilience. A flat-screen TV hung on one wall, and controllers for Wii, Xbox and various other video game systems sat on the coffee table. Large speakers flanked industrial metal shelves full of CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and the occasional book. A kitchenette took up one wall, and dirty dishes took up the sink.
The air smelled of socks (visible) and un-emptied garbage (not visible, but I could guess). Through a doorway, I glimpsed a linoleum-floored bathroom and a dim room with a storm of an unmade bed. Shades hung on all the windows, but no curtains.
The place was a mess. It was hard to tell single-young-male-computer-geek sloppiness from cops-just-tossed-the-place disarray, though the dishes and the socks were, I thought, a clue.
Bill already had his latex gloves on, from the door-opening process. I snapped mine on and we went to work.
Forty-five minutes later, we’d unearthed nothing. We worked as methodically as possible in the clutter. We weren’t looking for anything in particular, and that’s what we found. By the time we decided to call it quits I knew what kind of toothpaste my cousin Jefferson used, and that he didn’t put the cap back on it; I knew nothing was hiding under his mattress, in the back of his closet, or in the jumble of unconnected socks in his dresser drawer. He didn’t keep a journal, or a gun. If the deputies had found those things, they’d have been on Callie Leblanc’s inventory list. I didn’t know how thorough the deputies had been, but I knew how thorough we were, and finally I peeled off my gloves and suggested we get back to the square before the meter ran out.
The denizens were still not in evidence as we trundled down the stairs. As soon as we stepped out under the Rebels flag, though, I felt eyes on me. On the next-door porch sat a middle-aged woman with a tight blond perm and a thin, sour face. She was staring straight at me, so I smiled and waved as I started down the porch steps.
“Are y’all looking for that Oriental boy?” she called. “He’s not coming back. Got himself arrested.” She sat back smugly.
“He did?” I said, as though this were news to me. I gave Bill a tiny stay-back hand gesture and turned along the sidewalk to the neighbor’s house. Bill stopped at the bottom of Jefferson’s stairs to light a cigarette. “What for?” I asked the sour lady.
She sipped from a purple porcelain cup, holding the matching saucer in her other hand. A wreath of artificial lilies and violets decorated her door. At her feet, a small dog with a lavender bow stood up and growled. “Hush, Pixie,” the lady said, in a tone that, to the contrary, implied she’d growl at me herself if I came much closer. She looked over at Bill, who had his phone out and was pretending to text, which I don’t think he has any idea how to really do. The dog settled down, and the lady leaned forward and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “They say he killed his daddy,” she told me, and narrowed her eyes in satisfaction. “I declare, I don’t know what these young people are capable of.” From the way she looked at me, I got the sense that young wasn’t Jefferson’s only flaw. I was about to thank her for the update and turn to leave when she sniffed and said, “I always knew that boy was no good.”
I paused. “Really? Why?”
She eyed Bill, then shifted her gaze back to me. “It’s my belief people should stick to their own. I have no argument with Orientals, or with colored, either, but too much mixing just isn’t natural.”
“Just give me a minute, Mr. Smith,” I called over to Bill, and he waved a thumbs-up. Back to the lady, “My real estate agent. He’ll wait. Could you tell me what you mean? Does that young man not keep to his own?”
She seemed to relax on the news that Bill and I weren’t involved in a mixed-race romance; and just like the gossips I grew up surrounded by in Chinatown, she didn’t for a second stop to consider why, if I was just a random apartment hunter, I’d ask her to tell me more about someone I presumably didn’t know.
“His name is Jefferson Tam, or some such.” Waving her hand exactly like my mother’s friends, she pretended not to care about the information she’d just superciliously imparted. “Not that he did me the courtesy of coming over to introduce himself, neighbor to neighbor. None of them do, those students. They think the neighborhood is one big hotel, where they can come and go and let other people clean up their messes. I swear the number of times I’ve had to clean their garbage off my lawn—”
“I know what you mean about students,” I said in my most sympathetic voice. “They can be so inconsiderate. I’m a secretary, myself. I just got a new job here. I hear Oxford’s a wonderful place to live.”
At this, the lady softened a touch, giving me a small, condescending smile.
“But students . . . ” I shook my head. “Are this Jefferson Tam’s friends worse than most students?”
Now came a sneer of distaste. The lady took a sip and put her purple porcelain down. I just stood there, smiling kindly. Finally, she said, “No. I can’t fairly say they are.” She spoke in an aggrieved tone, as though it were unreasonable of Jefferson and his friends not to demonstrate the debauchery of which she knew they were capable. “But still, it’s wrong.”
“What is?”
“Bringing those people here. Why, as far as I can see, the boy doesn’t even know any other Orientals.”
“Then who does he bring here?”
She leaned forward again. “That big bald colored boy,” she said. “And the skinny, smiley blond girl. Sometimes all three of them, here at the same time! It’s just so wrong.”
23
I was tempted to take the arm of my real estate agent as we walked away, because I knew that would make the neighbor lady gnash her teeth. But I maintained a prim silence and a proper distance until Bill and I had sauntered another block and turned the corner. Then I relaxed into my normal New York stride and told Bill what she’d said. I had to make air quotes around “colored boy,” but I got the words out.
“Big and bald?” Bill said. “She didn’t happen to tell you his name?”
“Did she have to?”
“We may be jumping to conclusions.”
“So let’s jump. Tolson Reeves told us he sees Jefferson when Jefferson comes to Clarksdale. He never mentioned anything about up here.”
“We didn’t ask.”
“We asked if they were still close. He sidestepped, but if this is him, it’s obvious they are.”
“Or at least close enough for Reeves to visit Jefferson’s apartment.”
“If my apartment looked like that, I’d only let my close friends in. The question is, why hide it? If this guy is Tolson Reeves, I want to know why the big secret, and if it isn’t, I want to know who it is.”
“And the blond girl?”
