Charming Grace (23 page)

I stood there thinking:
This agent didn’t learn to gut a man with a twelve-inch hunting knife at the police academy.

“But we’re now sorry to report,” the reporter said quietly, “that the heroic law enforcement agent is Harper Vance of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the agent whose unconventional methods, often referred to in the media as ‘mountain man science,’ caught the admiration of millions of people in this country and our international audience, the man in charge of this case for many months, has sacrificed himself to stop the man alleged to have killed or injured more than two-dozen public officials in small towns across the South.” The woman paused for effect. “Hospital officials have just confirmed, yes, that the valiant GBI agent whose courageous, self-sacrificing efforts were chronicled here by helicopter news crews just a little over an hour ago suffered fatal gunshot wounds and has, yes, died downstairs as the hospital staff he had saved worked frantically, but futilely, to save his life in return.”

The pink ice cream scoopers made soft moans. “Why do all the good men die young?” one said.

“Heroes almost always die young,” another woman answered. “Look at James Dean. And Elvis. And Tom Hanks in
Saving Private Ryan
.” Everyone nodded. And cried some more.

“Harper Vance,” one of the pink women went on, “is going to be a legend.”

“And famous,” another said.

Harper Vance. Just a stranger crossing my path. I didn’t hate men of the law anymore than men of the law hated men like me who had lived outside the law. You get set on a certain path—lucky or unlucky—so you walk it. And I’m not cold-blooded about a man dying. It’s just that there weren’t many heroes on my planet. Harper Vance, Mother Mary May He Rest In Peace, was probably up at the pearly gates wishing he’d taken a cigarette break when God started handing out invitations to be special.

“Hey, you ugly piece of pork shit,” someone said behind me, slurring a little. “Whas a damn pig doin’ in front of an ice cream shop-ee?”

“Yeah, I come here to have a espresso rainbow sundae,” a second surfer-dude voice said. “Not to look at fat chicks eatin’ off the sidewalk.”

“It’s a pig, you shit-for-brains. Not a chick.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, Porky, wanna little smoke? Want to be
smoked
bacon? Get it?”

I pivoted to find a greasy pair of old rock stars trying to feed Shrek a hand-rolled smoke. From the aroma it wasn’t a smoke made of tobacco, if you get my drift. The old rockers’ limo was parked on the curb behind them. I’m not mentioning names, but let’s just say you only see these wasted tokers on reruns of their thirty-year-old hit music videos. Mummified bull balls have fewer wrinkles. And better manners. A bodybuilder chauffeur in black leather and a Harley do-rag waited by the front bumper, frowning and flexing his biceps.

I stepped in front of Shrek. “The pig gave up smoking for Lent. Leave him be.”

That set the old dudes off on a vodka-perfumed yelling spree that included some choice words you don’t say to me in front of a pink ice cream parlor, especially when
ma petite cheres
and their nun-raised nannies are inside. I raised a fist, gently tapped one rocker on the forehead, then girl-slapped the other one. They wobbled then sat down on the pink marble sidewalk. “I warned you not to dis the pig,” I said.

Their beefy chauffeur ran over. I tensed, but he stopped far enough away to bolt if I even crooked a finger. “Don’t pound me, too, man. I’m like you. Just a babysitter.”

“I’m betting you don’t want cops nosing around your bosses and their stash.”

“Not even within a hundred yards, man.”

“Then get ‘em out of here.”

He nodded and helped the old rockers to their feet. They mumbled and wobbled and held their heads, but let him lead them to the limo. Probably not worried about getting busted for drugs so much as having their fans find out they’d gotten their asses kicked in front of an ice cream parlor.

I raised my fist and studied it as if it was a bad dog who’d run away from a good home. I’d spent nine years in prison deciding I had better answers than the five-knuckled salute, but when push came to shove I still shoved.
Glorified babysitter.
Frowning, I turned to find the pink scoopers staring my way, and not happily. They looked scared of me.

Shrek oinked and drooled ice cream on my shoe.

I was no hero.

Not like Harper Vance.

I stood there trying to look noble. The pink women weren’t fooled and sidled inside the little shop building with nervous twitters. A dull weight settled on me. Alone except for the pig, I hunched my shoulders and gazed up and down the sunny, convertible-friendly street, pretending to just watch the world go by.

Except I really was watching the world go by
me
.

On the patio television, the woman news anchor started talking about Harper Vance’s incredible personal story. His devoted wife…an extraordinary story of star-crossed childhood sweethearts…Southern beauty queen, Atlanta TV personality. . .by his side when he died an hour ago. “Heel, Sausage,” I said, and led Shrek toward the patio. I wanted to know what kind of woman had loved lawman Harper Vance since childhood, loved him and been devoted to him and his not-standard-issue methods for saving the world.

“Grace Vance is one of the most popular morning hosts on Atlanta television. Over recent months she has refused to discuss her husband’s role in tracking the Turn-Key Bomber, saying that not only was the case very sensitive but that her husband was a very private man. Clearly, her husband was on her mind this morning. Around eight-thirty a.m. Atlanta time she was conducting a live interview with former President Jimmy Carter.”

The screen filled with a face.

No. Not just any face. Her face. Grace.

She was a big, classy redhead with a tough jaw and stop-your-heart green eyes. A dark pants suit and no jewelry looked like a trip to Paris on her. She had curves no model could abide and no man would turn down. She couldn’t quite hide the rich-girl drawl in her TV voice, and she talked with long, ballerina-farmgirl hands, waving and gesturing as if she was going to politely twist the old President into peanut-shell origami while she interviewed him. She didn’t look interested in what he had to say about world peace; she looked tired and worried and distracted. She knew something was going on out there beyond the camera, where her husband was cornering a killer to preserve the peace of a smaller world. But she was keeping it all to herself and doing her job, probably the way he’d want her to.

Grace Vance. I had never seen her before in her life, but I recognized her.

In prison a wise man spends his dark hours piecing together fantasies he can hope for—jobs, family, money, women. Those pieces are like days off for good behavior. They save your sanity. They give you a hand hold on the climb out of the pit that’s become your life. I’d had my image of a clean-spirited, kind, strong, smart woman who would say to me, “I’m here for you, and the past is all behind you, now.” She had been a soft idea like a kaleidoscope image I kept shifting without ever letting it click into focus. Now, it had.

This stranger. Grace Vance. As simple as looking at a sunrise and knowing you’ll want to get up every morning to see it again.

Suddenly, she stopped talking to President Carter. Stopped pretending she could concentrate as he spoke about his recent Nobel Prize. She touched the tiny speaker hidden in her ear, listening. Something broke behind her eyes.

“I have to go, Mr. President,” she said. “I apologize, but I have a bad feeling my husband needs me.”

“Surely. Go on, now, you just go,” the former President of these United States said. It’s always good to have a kindly old Leader of the Free World With A Nobel Prize in your corner.

But off to the sides cameramen could be seen waving their arms. Something metal clattered on the floor. There were muffled voices and commotion. I had a mental image of TV people yanking their hair and mouthing
You can’t just walk off it’s live.

Grace Vance stood, jerked her earphone and the tiny mic off her lapel like they were ticks, and rushed off camera. She didn’t care if she left the leading member of the Ex President’s Club sitting across from an empty chair.

She had to go see if her husband was okay.

She must have been afraid, even then, that he wasn’t.

Back at Chez Senterra I was unloading Shrek and thinking about Harp Vance, Grace Vance, life, death, meaning, purpose, want, need, and the meandering ramble my life had always been, while the nannies herded the girls inside. Suddenly Kanda called on the intercom. “You’re needed in Command Central.”

Code words for
trouble
.

I made a bee-line through 20,000 square feet of Italianate California mansion, down one of the three elevators, past the professional gym, the indoor basketball court, the forty-seat theater, into a suite of offices filled with Stone’s big-game trophy heads, also his sports collectibles like Joe Namath’s football jersey, and his movie memorabilia, including George C. Scott’s army helmet from
Patton
and John Wayne’s Stetson from
McClintock
. In Stone’s big museum-office I always felt like something was about to bite me, tackle me, or shoot me in the ass with a pearl-handled Colt .45.

When I saw Stone, I stopped cold.

He was crying.

To say I’d never seen Stone Senterra cry before was like saying I’d never seen little green men from Mars or Michael Jackson’s real nose. The Stone Man was one of the toughest, most disciplined, most righteous muthas I’d ever known, and that included lifers back in the Gumbo State who made Hannibal Lecter look like a sissy. I glanced around for a diplomatic spot where I could pretend I didn’t see an ex-wrestler and ex-Army Ranger watering the knees of his black silk workout sweats.

Stone sat with his back to me at his buffalo-leather topped desk in his buffalo-leather executive chair. On a wall of wide-screen televisions, CNN was still talking about the Turn-Key Bomber and heroic GBI Agent Harper Vance. Stone turned just slightly to the right—his best three-quarter face shot, the angle that pulled the muscles tight on his jaw line. He was bigger than me by nine years, five inches, seventy pounds, and several hundred million dollars. But I had a better jaw.

“If you tell anybody you saw me bawling,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll make you walk Shrek through West Hollywood wearing leather chaps and a t-shirt that says ‘The Other White Meat.’”

“Boss,” I said carefully, “you’ll never get the pig to wear chaps and a t-shirt.”

Stone frowned. He didn’t
get
irony. “I’m not joking,” he said.

I nodded. “Me, neither.”

He wiped his eyes, looking like hell, making me feel bad for not giving him a hug or a pat on the back. Like I would or he’d let me. I felt a cold breeze up my spine. Back home we called it a voodoo shiver. Big mojo. A cat running over your grave. I didn’t want to be there with my thoughts about my life and Harper Vance’s better life. Ditto Stone’s shrewd, watery scrutiny. Sometimes he looked at me like I was a doorman to the dark side. Like I could tell worldly secrets to a middle-class Italian boy from the suburbs of New Jersey. Stone was not exactly a streetwise punk by background. More like an altar boy who’d grown up to playact at being tough.

“Harper Vance was one of my favorite good guys,” he said.

Ahah. Stone followed criminal investigations the way some men follow sports. I could picture him happily buying a big-city police force like it was a football franchise. The Los Angeles Handcuffers. The Chicago Miranda Righters. The Dallas Patrolmen. He’d played noble lawmen in so many films that “A Senterra” had become cop slang for a flashy take-down. Lawmen admired him, and he admired them. Stone kept elaborate files on famous investigations, collected insider info, and discussed the on-going ups and downs of current cases with his cronies among the police and FBI. Now I understood. The Turn-Key Bomber—tracked for months by Agent Vance and his foot-long hunting knife—had been one of Stone’s personal interests.

“Tell me why Harper Vance isn’t worth my saltwater,” Stone ordered, wiping his eyes. “
I watched him die on live TV fighting to get the bomb detonator away from that crazy bastard.
Right now I feel like when I was a kid and saw the film of Kennedy being assassinated. As if I ought to pray for the whole world to survive.”

I made a show of not making a show while the invisible cat walked right over my RIP spot again. “Vance was where he wanted to be.”

Stone stared at me. “How do you know
that
?”

“Because it’s not a bad way to die. Being called a hero.”

“All right. But tell me what motivates a man to risk his life for the safety of strangers in a hospital. And don’t say duty, honor, et cetera. That’s what I’d say. Tell me what you say. What a guy on the street says when he takes a blade or a bullet for someone else.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He wanted to be remembered better than he was. That’s all that matters. To be remembered better than we think we are.”