To Helene Mayes’s eyes, it’s as if the man is shrinking right in front of her, as if by the time they’re through he could crawl under his own hat and hide.
“Tell him that you got caught with your pants down,” she says. “And that you just saved him a lot of money, now that you’re no longer going to be much use to him, just because before my people are through, they’re going to be all the way up your ass on your finances. And by the way? If me or my people get even a whiff that you’re continuing to do his bidding, these pictures will be all over all kinds of media before you can sayMichael Jordan.Am I making myself perfectly clear?”
He nods.
“For now,” she continues, “and just FYI, I’ll be holding on to your bank records and saving them for a rainy day.”
Nader watches as she picks up the photographs one by one, first placing them back in the folder, then carefully placing them back in the briefcase. The brass locks sound like gunshots in the office as she fastens one in place, then the other.
Helene Mayes stands and towers over him, but not because she’s ready to leave, more for effect. Or just looking down on him because she can.
He looks up at her and says, “Now that you’ve said what you came here to say, would you mind leaving my office?”
“You’re still not getting it, are you?”
“Getting what?”
“That this is my fucking office now,” Helene says.
FIFTY-NINE
AT THE END of the week, there is another meeting, a town meeting this time, open to the public.
This one isn’t held in Burt and Taylor Webb’s living room, but in the parish hall next to the First Congregational Church, where both Taylor and EJ have been known to sing in the church choir on occasion.
I’d asked Taylor one time which one of them had the better singing voice and she’d said, “That’s something for God to decide, even if it’s clearly me.”
She and EJ have done the most to circulate word around town about the meeting. So has Bess Scobee, as much a town crier as either one of them.
The crowd is different than the one I’d seen at Silas Tucker Field. Mostly adults tonight, standing-room only for those who couldn’t find seats even upstairs in the choir area. The small stage, the one used for the Christmas pageant every year, one in which Taylor and I had once starred as Mary and Joseph, is at the front of the big room.
Helene Mayes is seated on the stage by the time the doors have been closed. So are Mayor Larson and Burt Webb. Claire Larson hasasked me to make a few comments to close the program. When I tell her I haven’t prepared anything, she pats my arm and says, “Nobody in this town, including me, is better at thinking on their feet than you are.”
Taylor and I stand off to the side of the stage, along with Abby Wells. Tay and Abby are being cordial enough with each other tonight, but still about ten miles away from being friendly.
“Why are we here, really?” Abby asks.
“The people on the stage are here to talk,” Tay says. “And then they’re here to listen.”
“To who?” Abby asks.
“Cross Rivers, North Carolina,” I say.
I keep looking out at the hall to see if Briar Crockett is in attendance. Or his two sons. So far they’re not.
Mayor Larson finally steps to the microphone and says there’s one order of business for her to go over, telling the audience that Burt Webb has had the interim tag taken off his title and been officially installed as chief; that she’d called off her search committee because they hadn’t interviewed anybody as qualified for the job as he is.
She also announces to anybody in the room who hasn’t heard the news about Nash Hader that Sheriff Hader has resigned. She goes on to say that that’s another reason why people are free to speak their minds tonight, as she’s well aware how many people in her town never saw Hader as serving them and protecting them as much as surveilling them, at least when he wasn’t harassing them for the hell of it.
There is a burst of applause about that. When the room is quiet again, Mayor Larson briefly explains that we’re all here because this is the beginning of what she calls “a better day” for our town.
Before she can continue, a male voice from the back of the hall yells out, “All due respect to the mayor and to Burt Webb, but what difference does any of this make if Briar Crockett is still the one in charge?”
Mayor Larson turns to Helene Mayes.
“Would you like to take that one, Helene?” she asks.
Helene Mayes stands and shakes the mayor’s hand and raises up the microphone, looking cool as can be as she does, as if she’s right where she belongs. Maybe, I think, it’s because she knows what it’s like to play in front of a crowd. Or to one. But it occurs to me, all over again, that this woman isn’t afraid of anything or anybody.
