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She nodded her head. “You should, too.”
“Tell me, Charlotte, who owns this place?”
Her expression shifted instantly to one of distrust, maybe mixed in with a healthy dose of pissed off.
“Who are you?” she said, sharp now.
“I’m nobody. Just curious, that’s all. Where can I find Brother Hogg?”
Boy, that did it. Her eyes darkened; that deer-in-the-headlights look was gone, replaced by that of a dedicated soldier of the cross.
“You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”
“Everybody keeps accusing me of being a reporter today,” I said. “No, Charlotte. I’m not a reporter. I just want to talk to Hogg.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Oh, c’mon, Charlotte, lighten up. I might buy something.”
“I said leave,” she repeated, this time her voice about twenty percent louder than before. I saw a shuffle in the curtain, and two guys stepped out from the same room where Charlotte had been. They wore white T-shirts that let me know in no uncertain terms how much they could bench-press. One had hair the color and length of a lion’s mane, with a short, well-trimmed reddish beard. The other was just plain dark and looked about as mean as a snake.
“Gee, I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“Goodbye, sir,” she said, one last time.
I stepped to the door and opened it, then turned back to her for a moment. She really was quite lovely; what a waste.
“See you guys around,” I said.
So discreet was apparently an understatement. The Pentecostal Enochians were not only disinclined to advertise their ownership of Jericho’s, they were liable to pummel you to goo if you asked too many questions.
I cut over to Church Street, crossed the Viaduct just before you get to the Downtown YMCA building, then left again and found a parking space a couple of blocks down on the street in front the Tennessee Workmen’s Protective Association Building.
Phil Anderson’s office was on the fourth floor, with a window that looked out over Capitol Hill and toward North Nashville. The blazing red Bruton Snuff sign over the U.S. Tobacco Company glowed like a landmark in the deepening afternoon shadows. Farther north, the traffic was just beginning to back up in the northbound lanes of I-65.
I sat in the reception area outside a bank of offices for about ten minutes. Once Phil saw the videotape of the Shaquille O’Neal of the bricklaying set, I was going to be an insider here. I could feel it. I’d do a written report once Phil told me what he wanted to see in it, and I’d be available for court testimony if civil suit or prosecution arose; at my customary fee, of course.
All in all, not a bad gig. I felt pretty good.
A long line of beige-colored metal doors ran down the hall to my right, past the middle-aged secretary whose fingers buzzed away on a word processor. One of the doors flew open and an imposing Phil Anderson stepped out. I’m about six feet tall and have a tough time maintaining one sixty. Phil’s got at least four inches and a hundred pounds on me, and he moves like a hyperactive kid who forgot his Ritalin.
“Harry, you rascal, how are you?” he demanded in his booming voice. The secretary’d heard it before. She never broke rhythm on the keys.
“Fine, Phil, good to see you.” I stuck out my hand and he jerked it like a pump handle. A long lock of shiny brown hair drooped down over his forehead, and great bags hung under his eyes. I realized then where I’d seen him before; he’s what Thomas Wolfe would have looked like if he’d lived into his late forties and spent too much time on the couch with a six-pack and a case of potato chips.
“C’mon down here. We’ve got a VCR and a monitor in the conference room. A couple of the other guys want to see this tape, too.” He turned to the secretary. “Jane Ellen, call Rick and Steve and tell ’em Harry’s here.”
The secretary’s left hand picked up the telephone handset while-I swear it’s true-her right hand kept typing, covering both sides of the keyboard with one hand. Never missed a beat. Talk about a focused woman.
We walked down the carpeted hall into a large conference room with a rectangular table that would have seated about twenty people. At the other end, a big JVC monitor and tape player sat on a portable gray metal wheeled rack.
I sat my briefcase down on the table and opened it. “I went ahead and got an invoice ready, Phil. I ran into some pretty sizable expenses, equipment rental, mileage. No hotel bill, though. I slept in a van.”
“No problemo, amigo,” he said from the other end of the room as he turned on the monitor. “We’ll take care of it right after the meeting.”
I took out the videotape and slid it down the length of polished tabletop. The door opened behind me and two other guys stepped in, both in suits, striped power ties, the whole corporate costume.
“Harry, meet Rick Harvey and Steve White. They’re the field investigators who were assigned to this case.”
Great, I thought, so they already hate me. I went out and did their job after they screwed up. May as well make the best of it.
“Hi. Harry James Denton,” I said cordially, hand extended. “Glad to meet you.”
We did the corporate introduction ritual and immediately afterward I forgot which was which. They were both midtwenties, clean, well-groomed, polished. Probably applied to the FBI Academy and didn’t get in.
“How much did you say you got, Harry?”
I settled into a seat and tried to relax. “Little over an hour’s worth of him actually out of the chair. I spent a week up there staking the guy out. It took a change in the weather to get him on his feet.”
“Oh,” one of the investigator clones said, “so that explains why it was so easy.”
“It wasn’t that easy,” I answered. “I’m still scratching the chigger bites from laying in the grass for so long.”
“Yeah,” the other one said, his voice a caricature of a cop movie. “Stakeout’s a bitch, all right.”
Right, I thought. Barney Pife in a suit and tie. Guy probably carries a bullet in his shirt pocket.
Phil popped the tape in and started it. Immediately the backyard in Louisville jumped on the screen, with the bricklayer in the wheelchair off to the side watching the action. The other adult male and the teenage boy passed the ball around, shot a few. Then the bricklayer held the ball.
I’d seen it all before, so watched the other three to check the look on their faces when the guy jumped out of the wheelchair. When it happened, the two young suits set their jaws and tucked their chins down toward their chests. This was, after all, the tape they were supposed to have produced.
Phil, however, howled like a true basketball fan, especially when the bricklayer did his three-sixty and slam-dunked the ball.
“Guy’s good, ain’t he, fellas?” Phil commented, looking around at his two investigators. “ ’At’s a dang fine jump shot, too.” I turned back to the screen, trying hard to disappear.
We sat there for the better part of the next hour, until finally the bricklayer’s wife came to the sliding-glass door, saw her husband bouncing around, and chewed his butt so hard the tiny video microphone caught parts of it. His shoulders slumped and all three men, caught and scolded, walked back inside. We saw the sliding-glass door slam shut and then the slide of drapes as the door was covered up.
“Holy cow, look!” Phil called. “He left his durn wheelchair outside.”
I grinned. “Yeah, just watch.”
In a moment the drapes were pulled again and the door slid open. The bricklayer ran back outside sheepishly, flopped down in the chair, then strapped himself in. As the wife stood there with her hands on her hips, locked and loaded in the pissed-off position, the poor guy drove his wheelchair back into the house.
Even the two suits behind me at the table were laughing now. Phil slapped the table hard and shook his head from side to side, his massive cheeks shaking with laughter.
“Oh, boy,” he sputtered. “This is great. We not only got him, we’ve nailed his wife and the whole durn family for conspiracy to defraud. Harry, you deserve an Oscar for this one.”