“This pose reminds me of something, Adam,” I said. “But what?”
“Maria-Katherine patterned her shot after the plaques sent out into cosmos aboard Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. They feature naked male and female side by side, the man with his right hand raised. On those plaques, male is taller than female, and islands at bottom are not Cuba and so on, but the sun and planets of our solar system. A miniature of the spacecraft is leaving third such body and flying off between Jupiter and Saturn into cosmic ocean. Again, it was Kander person’s idea to use this pattern. A Plexiglas model of Africa hangs to right because our kind, it seems, did begin there. Miss Maria-Katherine made this continent artifact herself.”
Hammond twisted his cap in his hands. “You had no idea this photograph would show up as a Newsweek cover?”
“They would have,” I said, “if the cover story had been about them. The editorial staff would have said so. But this issue’s cover story is about the new photography, and the only release the editors probably needed was from M.-K. Kander.”
“If we’d known they were going to use it,” Hammond said, “we would have told them what was going on down here. We’d’ve asked them to deep-six the damn thing or at least delay it another week. There’s nothing that topical about ‘The New Photography,’ for God’s sake. They could have waited.”
Adam stood, thrust his hands deep into his slacks pockets, and, balancing on one leg, picked up a copy of Newsweek with the toes of his other foot. The magazine dangled there like a startled sea creature yanked from its natural element. And then Adam disdainfully dropped it.
“I am very unhappy with Miss M.-K.,” he said, “very unhappy, indeed.”
I returned to work. Hammond remained at the house with Adam. At six o’clock that evening, the agent telephoned the West Bank to tell me that something had happened and that he and Adam must leave for Atlanta.
“Wait a minute. I want to go with you.”
Livia George, at my elbow beside the cash register, said, “This got somethin’ to do with Miss RuthClaire gettin’ jaybird-skinny for that cover?”
“Hush, Livia George.”
“City did this to ’em. City made ’em think they could shuck their clothes for some hotsy-totsy nashunal magazine.”
“Damn it, get out of my ear for a minute!” I muffled the telephone’s mouthpiece. A couple at a nearby table peeked up at me, disapprovingly.
Hammond’s voice said, “This isn’t your affair any longer, Mr. Loyd. Niedrach’s just called. We’ve got to go.”
“T. P.’s my godson. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be there with you.”
“We’re leaving.”
“I’ll follow.”
“That’s your prerogative.”
“The Montaraz house on Hurt Street?”
“Goodbye, Mr. Loyd.”
“What happened? Did Craig call? Did someone see him?”
But all I had in my ear was a busy signal. I barged into the kitchen and found Livia sullenly slicing tomatoes into a salad. Hazel Upchurch was sautéing mushrooms in a cast-iron skillet. Debbie Rae House, my new waitress, was watching them, bored.
“Pray,” I commanded. “I don’t know what the hell good it’ll do, but pray. Pray for T. P.” Then I was gone.
Despite their head start, I caught up with Hammond’s pickup between the two exits sandwiching Newnan, Georgia, on I-85. The sun was lowering itself rung by rung to the western horizon, but daylight still lingered above the heat-browned meadows flanking the interstate, and traffic was brisk in both directions. Doing eighty, I had to hit my brakes to keep from overshooting the agent’s truck, and my own car almost got away from me before I brought it under control and followed Hammond and his habiline passenger into Atlanta without further incident. We parked across the street from the Montaraz house and went inside.
Adam and RuthClaire embraced.
Niedrach was present, Davison was not. In the latter’s place were two men in sports jackets and spiffily creased slacks. Neither of these men had yet hit his fortieth birthday. One had stylishly long hair that just touched his collar in back but stayed well off his ears. He was pink-cheeked and clear-eyed, after the fashion of a second lead in a B movie of the 1940s. The other man had an astronaut’s conservative haircut, a nose that had once been broken, and a shovel-shaped mouth that sometimes seemed to move as if it had a will distinct from its owner’s. Feds, these fellows. Latter-day heirs of the late, unlamented J. Edgar Hoover.
Bilker Moody introduced these men as Investigator Tim Le May (the B-movie second lead) and Investigator Erik Webb (the shovel-mouthed astronaut). They had taken over the case on the Saturday afternoon following the kidnapping, but Niedrach had stayed on to coordinate their investigation with local police departments and the antiterrorist unit of the GBI. Given federal jurisdiction over most kidnappings, this was a somewhat unusual arrangement, but Niedrach’s familiarity with Klan tactics and his knowledge of events precipitated last summer by the Kudzu Klavern had argued tellingly for his uninterrupted involvement with this case. I was glad to see him. He wore his bulldog belt buckle and a navy-blue windbreaker that made him seem out of uniform. He looked like the fatigued, seedy uncle of the younger, more dapper FBI agents.
Adam approached him. “What has happened?”
“The bastard phoned,” Bilker Moody said, his upper arms straining the sleeve bands of his sweaty Banlon shirt.
“We’ve got a tape,” Le May said. “Come into the kitchen and we’ll play it.”
We filed into the kitchen. The tape machine, with two sets of headphones, was connected to the wall phone beside the door leading to Bilker’s pantry headquarters. Still, you could sit at the kitchen table while listening to or taping a call, and Adam and RuthClaire sat down there with Niedrach, Le May, and Webb. Hammond, Moody, and I found corners into which to wedge ourselves, and Le May turned a dial on the antique-looking recorder. Its milky reels began to turn, but at first all we could hear was the low hum of the refrigerator. Then Craig Puddicombe’s voice said, “A whore and her hibber. For all the world to see.”
“Where’s Paulie?” RuthClaire’s voice asked. “Tell me how he is, Craig.”
“ ’S good’s can be expected, considerin’ what and where he came from.”
“We’re living apart, Adam and I. We’ve lived apart for nearly ten days now. You know that, don’t you?”
“No, ma’am. You’re standin’ right next to each other for all the fuckin’ world to see. That’s what you’re doing.”
“We had no idea that—”
“That you had your goddamn clothes off? Interestin’ defense, ma’am. Interestin’ goddamn defense.”
“That the photo would show up as a magazine cover.”
“Course you didn’t. And the spade who raped a troop of Girl Scouts said, ‘Sorry, angry white folks. I had no ideah I was gonna get caught. No ideah at all.’”
On the tape, RuthClaire began to cry. “What do you want me to do? The photo’s history. Adam and I can’t undo it. So what do you want from us now?”
“Who said I wanted anything, Missus Hibber Whore?”
“Then why have you called? Tell me about Paulie.”
“You’ve surprised the whole damn country, haven’t you? Well, everybody deserves as good as they give, don’t they? A big surprise all their own.”
“What surprise, Craig?”
Puddicombe was silent a moment. Then he blurted, “But I do want something. I want you and your hibber to get back together. Now. Today. This very evenin’.”