small army of hulking types in orange T-shirts patrolling with walkie-talkies. Some of the Beef Brigade stood on stage, others down at spectator level. From the way they glared and scanned the crowd, they could have been guarding the crown jewels.
Latch grinned and waved, puffed a couple of high notes into the mike, and said something about celebrating life. His words echoed across the schoolyard and died somewhere out on the spotless streets of Ocean Heights. A row of ten folding chairs had been set up to the left of the podium. Eight of them were occupied by middle-aged men and women in business suits. Except for the sound gear and the Orange Men lurking behind them, it could have been a middle-management seminar.
Sitting in the two seats closest to the podium were Bud Ahlward, in the same brown suit he’d worn the day he’d shot Holly Burden, and a thin, attractive woman with taffy-colored wedge-cut hair, a deeply tanned face, and a jawline so tight it looked like a seam.
Mrs. Latch. The former Miranda Brundage. Looking at her attire reminded me the sixties were ancient history. Or maybe they’d never happened at all. She had on a two-piece black leather outfit with padded shoulders and gold lame applique, diamond earrings, and the rock Linda had mentioned- a solitaire on a chain that, even at this distance, reflected enough light to brighten a ballroom. Her legs were well shaped, sheathed in gray silk, crossed at the ankles, her feet encased in spike-heel thonged affairs that had to be handmade Italian. She alternated between gazing out at the audience and looking up at her husband.
Even at this distance she looked bored, almost defiantly jaded. I thought I remembered that she’d once wanted to be an actress. Either she had no talent or wasn’t bothering to fake it.
Latch held forth in echoplex eloquence:
“… so I told DeJon [jon… jon… jon] you’re someone everyone looks up to [to… to… to]. Your message is positive, a message for today, and the kids at Hale need you!”
Applause line.
Latch stopped and waited.
The kids didn’t get it, but the suits and the orange gorillas did. The sound of twenty pairs of hands clapping was feeble.
Latch beamed as if it had been an ovation at the National Convention, removed his welfare glasses, and loosened his tie. His wife’s affection for high style hadn’t rubbed off: He had on a rumpled tan corduroy suit, blue chambray shirt, and navy knit tie.
“DeJon said
“The school board said
“So
“… So here he is, boys and girls of all ages: the
Power chords tumbled out of the speakers like avalanche boulders: rumbling, deafening, threatening, finally picking up melodic content and terminating as a sustaining organ tone- a fugue performed by an E. Power Biggs on acid. A hailstorm of guitar chords shattered the silence. Thunderous drums. Hissing cymbals. The suits on stage looked stricken but kept their places. The orange T-shirts marched toward them and touched the backs of their chairs. As if choreographed, the bureaucrats in the suits got up and filed off the stage. Miranda Latch and Ahlward hung back, she applauding with aerobic fervor that seemed disconnected to the ennui in her eyes.
Latch left the podium and took her hand. Waving to the audience, the two of them walked off the stage. Ahlward trailed, looking bored, one hand inside his jacket.
The three of them took seats in the front row, amid a group of plainly dressed women- my group. The mothers were all applauding. I couldn’t see their faces.
The music got louder. Linda grimaced.
I said, “One sec,” and made my way toward the front of the assembly, weaving past news crews and camera gear.
Finally I got close enough to see. Hundreds of faces. Some blank, some puzzled, some burnished with excitement. I glanced over at the front row. The mothers looked intimidated but not unhappy. Instant celebrity.
Latch noticed me. Smiled and continued snapping his fingers in time with the beat. Bud Ahlward followed his boss’s glance, let his eyes settle on me, then looked away. Miranda was snapping her fingers too. For all the fun she was having it might have been physical therapy.
I returned my attention to the kids. The volume of the music continued to climb. I saw one little girl- a first grader- slap her hands over her ears.
I moved forward to get a better look. The little girl’s eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth was trembling. A blast from the speakers and she burst into an open-mouthed wail rendered silent by the din. No one noticed. All eyes, including those of her teacher, were fixed upon the stage.
I went back to Linda and managed, with gestures and shouts in her ear, to communicate what was happening. She looked over at the little girl, who was crying harder. Then she nudged me and pointed. A couple of other kids in the lower grades were looking unsteady, holding their ears too. More tears.
Linda gave a furious look and stomped forward, elbowing cameramen and orange bruisers until she reached the little girl’s teacher. She talked behind her hand, pointed discreetly. The teacher’s mouth formed an O. Looking chastened, he turned his attention back to his class.
I counted about six or seven children crying by now, four of them kids I recognized easily because they were in the high-risk group. Linda saw them too. She went over to each of them, bending low, patting heads, talking in their ears. Taking their hands and offering them the choice of leaving.
Four headshakes, three nods. She removed the nodders from the group, herded them past the press clutch, back into the school building.
I followed her. It took me a while to get into the building. Linda was halfway down the main corridor, sitting on the floor in a circle with the three children. Smiling, talking, holding a hand puppet and making it talk in a high- pitched voice. The children were smiling. No distress that I could see.
I took a few steps forward. She looked up.
“Look, kids, it’s Dr. Delaware.”
“Hi,” I said.
Shy waves.
“Anything you guys want to ask Dr. Delaware”
Silence.
“Looks like everything’s under control, Dr. Delaware?”
I said, “Great, Dr. Overstreet,” and went back outside.
Though the music was louder, the stage was uninhabited. Not a musician in sight, not even a synthesizer wizard. I realized this was going to be a lip-sync exhibition. Prefab passion.
Nothing happened for several seconds. Then what appeared to be a huge orange flame burned its way through the black backdrop. Gasps from the audience. As the flame got closer, it turned into an oversized sheet of heavy satin, trailing along the stage. Beneath the satin was movement- a swelling and pulsating as the sheet shimmered forward. Like a gag horse, minus head or tail. Cheap trick, but eerie.
The sheet bumped and grinded its way center stage. Organ crescendo, cymbal crash, and the sheet dropped, revealing six more huge men, bare-chested and wearing orange tights and silver jackboots. Three blacks, on the left, scowling under broom-bristles of straightened yellow hair. On the right, a trio of Nordic types in royal-blue Afros.
The six of them spread their legs and assumed wrist-gripping iron-pumper poses. Between them appeared a very tall, very skinny man in his mid-twenties, with skin the color of India ink, Asian eyes, and orange Jheri-curled past-the-shoulders hair that looked as if it had been braised with axle grease. Wide shoulders, the hips of a prepubescent boy, rubbery limbs, a Modigliani neck, and the terminal-illness cheekbones of a
He wore electric-blue goggles in tiger-hide plastic frames that were wider than his face, a tight silver silk jumpsuit embroidered with orange thread and festooned with costume sapphires in baroque patterns. His hands were encased in fingerless blue satin weight-lifter’s gloves; his feet shod in silver high-tops with orange laces.
