crushing fear that took his father’s life. So he marched and wrote speeches and armed himself for a coming revolution . . . until they arrested him and locked him in a jail cell, threatened to take his life away, holding him to answer on shaky evidence and flat-out lies. It was a courtroom instead of a country road. Still, they killed his spirit.
He’s older than his father now. His daddy is somewhere, still twenty-one.
Jay thinks about that fact every day, thinks of what he has to live for now, the family he wants to protect, and how, in his own way, all these years later, he’s become just as conservative as his father’s generation. He is just as afraid.
Chapter 6
Charlie Luckman keeps an eye on the black girl, the one on the right side of the stage. Her ass is hanging out of a little burgundy number, her long, pointy nails painted to match. She ducks coyly behind the pole, wrapping one leg around it, then the other, as she makes a graceful dive backward, until she is practically hanging upside down, dark nipples spilling out of her costume.
Jay looks down at his watch.
He’s been fidgety and unfocused through most of lunch, bumbling through the appetizers and small talk, feigning inter est in the girls onstage, all the time thinking about police detec tives combing the crime scene by the bayou.
The black girl arches her back, sliding down the pole like a cat. Charlie, fascinated, can’t take his eyes off her.
J. T. Cummings, the port commissioner, is on the other side of the table, halfway between Jay and Charlie. He’s sweating, hunched over the remains of a filet he’s too nervous to finish. He’s been sucking on a roll of Tums for the past twenty minutes.
“We get down to business already?” he says, rolling an antacid around his tongue. “My whole goddamned political career is on the line here, and I’d just as soon get this over and done with before I’m back at the office.”
Charlie glares at his client. Whatever script they worked out before Jay got to the table, J.T. is decidedly going his own way, making no secret of the fact that he’s worried about a trial. Charlie, on the other hand, is trying to act casual—the reason for meeting in this place, Jay realizes. Or maybe it was meant to throw Jay off his game. It’s a certain kind of man can look at pussy while he eats, never mind talking business at the same time. “Did you know,” Charlie says, “that there are more gen tlemen’s clubs, or titty joints, depending on your preference or income level, per capita in Houston, Texas, than there are in any other city in the state? The whole nation, in fact.” He plucks a pearl onion out of his glass with his thick pink fingers and pops it into his mouth, practically swallowing the thing whole. “And lord knows I’ve been to my fair share. I consider myself some what of an expert on the local industry. And let me tell you what I know for sure . . . I have never seen a girl like
He’s pointing to the black girl.
“Maybe at the Boom Boom Room or the Wet Bar or Pussy cats, you know, joints off the freeway. But not an upscale place like Wynston’s.”
“I wasn’t aware this is a whites-only establishment,” Jay says, his voice rising, Charlie’s casual insult getting the better of him. He’s had a couple of drinks with lunch. Not his usual habit, but then again neither is steak at lunch.
“Well, there’s no sign on the door, nothing crass like that. But the price list here alone . . . I wouldn’t think most blacks and Mexicans could afford this kind of establishment, right?” Charlie says, directing his question to Jay, the expert.
Jay looks around the posh club, peppered with business men and city officials. He is, in fact, the only black man in the room. Money, it turns out, is the new Jim Crow. Jay looks at Charlie, feeling a heat spread beneath his collar, imagining yet another motive for bringing Jay to this place, with its creamy leather chairs and sterling silverware, the twenty-dollar steaks and Kenny Rogers pumped through hidden speakers. Around the dining room, Jay counts at least three sitting judges, several of whom have nodded Charlie’s way or come by the table to offer regards and well wishes. This is all to let Jay know how well con nected Charlie is and just who has the upper hand.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Charlie says. “I’m for equal rights and all that.” He smiles, raising his martini glass in a toast to the black girl onstage. “As far as I’m concerned, this is an affirmative action plan we can all get behind.”
“Jesus, Charlie. Can we get on with it?” J.T. says, popping another Tums in his mouth. “Tell the man what we came to, what we’re prepared to offer.”
“You want to let me handle it?” Charlie says to J.T.
Then he turns to Jay. “You’ll never win a jury trial.”
“I’m not going to trial, Charlie! Goddamnit, I can’t!” Cum mings is practically shrieking. “That goddamned dyke down at city hall is already making me do a dog and pony show just to keep my goddamned job. I can’t have something like this getting too much attention.” There are salty, cloudy streaks running down his face. Jay can’t tell if Cummings is sweating or crying.
“J.T.,” Charlie says, his voice steady and self-assured. “You are still missing the point, the beauty of the thing. There is no police record that says that woman was ever
“If you’re so sure about that, then why are we here?” Jay says.
J.T. starts to say something. Charlie holds up a hand.
“Look, I’m as fair as the next man,” he says to Jay, as if he’s doing him a big favor. “I want to come up with something
“Is that an admission of guilt?”
J.T. starts to answer. Again, Charlie holds up his hand.
“Not at all,” he says. “Let me put it to you this way . . . Mr. Cummings is not a
