Paper son, p.6
Paper Son, page 6
“Ain’t no one never got tangled up with Tremaine and come out the better for it,” Henry said. “I suppose he don’t think no more of Chinese than his momma did, but I wouldn’t take it personal. Tremaine don’t think nothing of hardly nobody, including his own brother. He don’t even care for his mama’s sister Lunetta. She come back down from Chicago to spend her last days with family, now she sitting alone in a nursing home. That what hate do, you raised that way.”
I thought about that. “Could Tremaine McAdoo have killed Leland? If Tremaine had a long-standing hate, maybe it just boiled over?”
“Wouldn’t say no, Tremaine being who he be. But that hate, like I say, it ain’t personal,” Henry said. “And it been going on for all Tremaine’s life, so why now?”
“Okay,” I said. “But is there someone else around here who hated Chinese people?”
“Well, ma’am,” said Bobby Lee, “even if Miz McAdoo, neither her boys, they didn’t never set foot in here, still, Leland have his share of trouble with no-accounts. But those type of people, they lazy, for the large part. What we looking at here is a pretty thorough job. You do this to a man’s business when he’s living, you be telling him something. Pay up your protection money, or get outta town ’cause we don’t like your kind, whatever you got to say. But after a man’s gone, it ain’t even clear who you’re talking to.”
“You sound like you’ve seen this kind of thing before,” I said.
Bobby Lee shrugged. “Seen all kinds of things. Worked railroad security on the Amtrak, thirty-two years.” He smiled, pointed at Bill. “Following my big brother’s footsteps.”
The Smiths fist-bumped.
“Plus, there’s another thing,” said Sam. “Miz McAdoo and them aside, even them wannabe gangbangers around here mostly got love for Chinese. Chinese grocers carried a whole lotta sharecroppers through the Depression, and through bad crops in years after, too. These ignorant children don’t hardly got no idea what the Depression might have been, but most of them was raised thinking Chinese was good people.”
“Chinese grocers,” I said, remembering my father’s letter. “This is something I only just heard of. Are there a lot of them? This store isn’t unusual?”
The three black men looked at me like I was from Mars, and Captain Pete seemed to revive. He turned around, frowning. “You serious? You Yankee Chinese don’t know this?”
“Know what?”
“Used to be there was Chinese grocers all over the Delta. Every city, every two-bit town, from Tunica to Vicksburg.”
I looked at Bill. He shrugged, shook his head. “Pete,” I said, “I never—”
“Pah.” He waved me quiet. “I’ll give you a history lesson some other time.” I was glad to see the color back in his cheeks, even if it was my ignorance that had brought it. He straightened his shoulders. “Right now, I gotta go check about the house.” With a “Damn!” he strode forward, crunching chip bags as he went. At the back of the store, the door in the rear wall was standing open.
I walked through after him into a combined living/dining/kitchen area the width of the store. It was another mess. On the right, above the sink, air blew in through an open window, its mesh cut away. Formica cabinets gaped wide. Dishes, whole and broken, blanketed the linoleum floor. Knives and forks glittered menacingly, the drawers they’d come from hanging open. Over on the left, beyond the dining table, the faded upholstery of the sofa and chair had been filleted. Does anyone, I wondered as I stared around the wreckage, ever really hide anything in a sofa cushion?
As in the store, the walls here were bare. Photos and pictures littered the floor, as did the frames that had once held them. The same tornado of destruction had hit the two back bedrooms. Mattresses had been dragged from the beds and bookshelves emptied. Toothbrushes and vitamin bottles were strewn all over the bathroom tiles.
“Oh, my merciful Lord,” Pete muttered as he surveyed the damage.
Bill and the others had crunched on through the store to join us in the back but had stayed silent, out of respect, it seemed to me, for the rubble of Leland Tam’s life.
And Pete’s. He pointed to one of the doors opening off the back wall. “That was Ma and Ba’s room,” he said, his voice unsteady. “And that there was me and Jonas’s.”
“And Paul’s?” I asked, as much to distract him as anything else. “Did he share the room with you, too?”
Pete shook his head. “Him and Jonas shared, until I came along. After that, Paul didn’t want to bunk in with no crying baby. Daddy built a little wall over there, crowded everything else up.” He nodded to what was now the living room. “Paul had him a bed, little bookshelf, door he could close. Damn, would you look at this?”
Pete’s voice went from unsteady to quavering. So much for distraction. I put my arm around his shoulder.
“Pete,” Bill said, “it seems pretty clear now this was someone looking for something. Do you have any idea who, or what they might have been looking for?”
“Can’t imagine. Leland didn’t have anything. He was a grocer, for God’s sake.” Pete looked around. “All this mess, just to find something? They had to break his dishes?”
“No,” I said. “They probably did some of this to cover up that they were looking, so it would look like vandalism.”
“I can’t imagine. I just really can’t.”
I wasn’t sure what Pete couldn’t imagine: what it was Leland might have had that someone wanted this badly, or the reality of all this gratuitous destruction.
“Well,” I said, “I think we’d better call the sheriff.”
Pete looked at me. “Bert and them? I got to?”
“The place might have been robbed, Pete. You don’t know what’s gone. And all the stock in the store—if insurance is going to cover this you’ll need to file a report.”
“Also,” Bill said, “it might help Jefferson if you report this.”
Pete turned to Bill. “For real? How?”
“Well, what happened here could mean there’s more to Leland’s death. And if this happened last night, it wasn’t Jefferson. He was in jail.”
“Now that makes sense. All right, I’ll call. Can’t stand to look at this mess anymore, anyhow.”
Pete spun around and made his way to the front of the store. The others went with him. I pulled out my phone and took photos before I joined the rest of them on the porch out in the waning day.
10
It seemed like a good time for me and Bill to head for the office of Callie Leblanc. We had a case to work on, and no one could see any upside to our being at H. Tam and Sons when the law arrived.
“Most likely they’ll just send some deputy to take a report,” said Pete. “Or either it’ll be Bert Lucknell, and he’ll think up all kinds of questions, not a one of them useful. Then he’ll arrest us for disturbing his lunch. You two should be off asking questions your own selves. I’ll stay here, be a decoy.”
“We’ll stop with you, you want us to, Pete,” said Henry, and though both Sam and Bobby Lee shifted uncomfortably, neither objected.
“Nah,” said Pete. “Kind of you, but I gotta start going through Leland’s papers, see can I find his in-surance.” He emphasized the in; the r was completely silent. “Also, see if I can’t get this place cleaned up some.”
“But after the cops come, right?” I said. “So you don’t disturb any evidence.”
Pete shrugged. Bobby Lee said, “Evidence? Bert Lucknell wouldn’t recognize no evidence if it jumped right up and bit him.”
The Public Defender’s Office was in downtown Clarksdale, which meant it took all of three minutes to drive there from the store. We were prepared to meet Callie Leblanc at the courthouse or wherever she could be found, but when I called, we were told she was in and could give us a few minutes if we came right over.
The attorneys’ workplaces I knew, in Chinatown and elsewhere, were all in office buildings, a few, or many, flights up. Here in Clarksdale, the office of the Coahoma County Public Defender occupied a wide storefront on one of the town’s main streets. That could be accounted for by the lack of multistory office buildings, and also by the relative wealth of empty storefronts. Clarksdale was by no means a ghost town. The street was neat and clean, with Christmas stars strung across it and flowerpots hanging from the lampposts. Posters advertised blues musicians, Christmas carol sings, Sunday afternoon football, and upcoming playoff parties in the bars, with the occasional Tam or Mallory sign sprinkled in. Still, any enterprise looking to establish itself would not lack for real estate choices.
The Public Defender’s Office was buzzing when we pushed through the glass door. The receptionist barely looked up from her keyboard when I introduced us. She pointed over her shoulder, past young people on phones and at desktop computers that even I could see were a few generations old. At the back of the space were six cubicles, all piled high with paperwork. My mother’s original idea, that Jefferson Tam didn’t trust his white lawyer, might still be right in concept, but it was wrong in detail. In one of the cubicles—the one with the window, even if only onto the alley—sat a thin woman with smooth walnut skin and short cropped hair just starting to gray. She looked up when I knocked on the partition.
“Hi,” I said. “Ms. Leblanc?”
She didn’t smile, rise, or offer her hand. “You’re Jefferson Tam’s cousin from New York. The investigator.”
“Yes. How did you know?” I hadn’t told the receptionist anything but my name when I’d made the appointment.
“News travels fast.” Her drawl was identifiably Southern, but clipped and shortened, as if in her world, time were a valuable commodity not to be wasted in any way. “Do you know where to find him?”
“Find Jefferson?” I was taken aback. “No. I’ve never even met him. We were hoping to learn something more about him from you.”
She didn’t reply, but looked pointedly at Bill, so I said, “Bill Smith. My partner. Ms. Leblanc, I’d appreciate anything you can tell me about Jefferson.”
“I know very little. I’ve only met him once myself.”
Her office had a single visitor chair, its stained fabric starting to separate from the plastic frame. She didn’t offer it, but I sat anyway.
“I really don’t think I can help you,” she said coldly.
“I’m a little perplexed. Aren’t we on the same side? Don’t we both want to help Jefferson?”
“I don’t know what you want to do. My job is to build his legal case, which was looking bad enough before he ran. Now he’s a fugitive and you say you don’t know where he is. Until he turns up, there’s nothing I can do for him. Meanwhile, I have three dozen active cases.” She tapped her pen on the papers before her. “I’d like to see if I can get some of them home for Christmas.”
“There’s nothing you can tell me about Jefferson that would help?”
“Help what?”
“Find him.”
“Is that why you came to Clarksdale?”
“Not to find him. I didn’t know he’d broken out. But I’m his cousin. I came to help.”
She threw down her pen. “Look, Ms. Chin—”
“Ms. Leblanc, ma’am.” Bill stepped forward. “We do apologize for taking up your time. Captain Pete Tam told us you’re a busy lady, and anyways we can see that.” At the mention of Captain Pete, Callie Leblanc’s frown relaxed a bit. “My partner’s just real worried about her cousin,” Bill went on, and as opposed to Callie Leblanc’s, his Southern drawl, usually imperceptible, was wide and luxurious. “Being on the run’s a serious thing, and we’re thinking it’ll go better for Jefferson if kin finds him before the law does.”
Callie Leblanc regarded him. “You local, Mr. Smith?”
“No, ma’am. I’m from Louisville. Been in New York for a number of years, though,” he added, as if ruefully admitting a flaw.
“Well, then, maybe you remember how things work in the South. You’re right, Jefferson Tam would be better off if the first person to find him wasn’t someone with a weapon. Or if he hadn’t escaped custody to begin with. Or if he’d told me something I could use other than, ‘I didn’t do it.’ But he didn’t, so I know no more about him than the circumstances of his arrest.”
“We’d be obliged if you’d tell us about that, then.”
I spied her foot jiggling with impatience. She spied me spying it, and it stopped. “Jefferson called 911. By the time the police got to the store, Leland was dead.”
“Jefferson called them?”
“Which means nothing, as I assume you know.”
She was right, of course. I said, “He had blood on his clothes and his prints were on the knife, is that right?”
“He says the blood’s from trying to stop Leland’s bleeding and the prints are from the last time he used the knife.”
So he did tell you something, I thought, but I only asked, “Which was when?”
“He doesn’t remember.”
“How did he come to be in the store at exactly that moment?”
“He claims he’d gotten to town earlier in the day. He says Leland had called the day before, wanting to talk about something, but before they got to whatever it was, Leland started laying into Jefferson about how he was conducting his life. Jefferson got mad, left to cool off, and then he came back and found Leland bleeding on the floor.”
“Did Leland say anything before he died?”
“According to Jefferson, something about a picture. Jefferson thought maybe Leland got a picture of the killer on his phone. But the police didn’t find a phone.”
“The killer might have taken it.”
Callie Leblanc shrugged.
“Do you know what it was Leland wanted to talk to Jefferson about?”
“No.”
“The fact that Jefferson admitted to an argument makes him seem a little less guilty, to me,” said Bill.
“Without a better story from him,” Callie Leblanc said, “it’s a hard case to build. ‘I didn’t do it’ only goes so far. And without him, it’s looking worse every minute.” She blew out an exasperated breath. “I wish he hadn’t run. The wound was in Leland’s leg. It severed the femoral artery. He bled to death, but it’s the kind of thing that happens in a scuffle, not an intentional homicide. I likely could have pled it down to manslaughter two. A few years and out. But this . . .”
She shook her head. Then she looked me in the eye. “Justice isn’t very flexible in Mississippi and neither is my budget. I can’t spend time on a client I might never see again.”
I returned her look, thinking, Lydia, be water, not stone. After a few moments, Callie Leblanc picked up her pen again. “The paralegal out in the bull pen, in the blue shirt,” she said, looking down at her papers. “Tolson Reeves. He’s the one who told me Jefferson Tam’s cousin was in town. They went to school together. He hasn’t had his lunch break yet.”
I could take a hint. “Ms. Leblanc,” I said as I stood, “one more thing. Will you—will the Public Defender’s Office—hire us?”
“Will I—?” Now she did look up, and paused. “So anything you find is covered by lawyer-client privilege, is that what you want?”
“It would pertain if we were working for Jefferson’s lawyer. But not if we’re working for Pete Tam.”
“I’m not sure it would anyway, unless you’re licensed in Mississippi.”
I shook my head and waited.
She stood. “On the other hand, I’m not sure it wouldn’t. I have no time to research the question, and I can’t see how it could hurt. Understaffed the way we are, volunteers are always appreciated. Come with me.” She strode past us volunteers and out into the bull pen.
“Tolson,” Callie Leblanc said to a large young man with shining dark skin and a shaved head, “this is Lydia Chin, Jefferson Tam’s cousin.”
Tolson Reeves stood to shake hands, but he didn’t smile and his eyes seemed guarded. The other paralegals and secretaries paused in their bustling to check us out.
“She and her partner will be doing some investigative work for us,” Callie Leblanc continued, “so please draw up a contract. They’d like to speak to you, too, since you know Jefferson. I don’t want the disruption in here so—”
“So can we buy you lunch?” I stuck in.
Tolson Reeves eyed me uneasily, and he didn’t seem any happier with Bill. His boss had clearly issued an order, though. He nodded. At least he’d get lunch out of it.
“You can do the contract when you get back,” Callie Leblanc said, clearly meaning, Hurry up and get out of here so everyone can get back to work. Her gaze swept the bull pen, and people took their eyes quickly off us and picked up their phones and their papers. She turned to me. “I’m warning you. If you step an inch over the line, I’ll tear that contract up and personally call the law. The last thing I’ll tolerate is you people compromising whatever case I might still have, once Jefferson’s found.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Concerning your retainer, I assume a dollar’s enough?”
It was a dollar more than I’d expected to make on this case, so I said again, “Yes, ma’am.”
11
At Yazoo Pass, a café two empty storefronts and three occupied ones down from the Public Defender’s Office, Tolson Reeves, Bill, and I collected lunch and caffeine and slid into a booth. Christmas carol Muzak filled the air.
“It’s probably just my Yankee prejudice,” I said brightly, hoping to come across as friendly and disarming, “but this isn’t the type of place I expected to find in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I mean, dried cranberries in the salad bar, cappuccinos, and a guy by the window writing the Great American Novel?”
Tolson Reeves sipped his coffee, which, like Bill’s, was a straight-up cup of dark brew, the fancy concoctions on the blackboard notwithstanding. “Well, I couldn’t rightly say anything about Yankee prejudice,” he drawled, his tone implying that he actually had a good deal to say on the subject but didn’t see much point in saying it to us. “But the espresso machine doesn’t get much play. The guy by the window’s with Teach for America, most likely working on a lesson plan for kids who come to school hungry and can’t follow a thing he says in his Yankee accent. And half the people in here are blues-trail foreign tourists who have a certain comfort level with cranberries in a salad bar.”
