Mesopotamia Read online

Twelve hours and hundreds of miles later, having blasted through eight big bags of Doritos, several gallons of water, and all of my CDs twice, I washed up in that reportorial flood zone of Memphis. Over the past few unemployed months, in the wake of my chat with Silas, the retired meteorologist, I had become a one-woman lobbyist, trying to attract some big-name reporter or magazine to follow up on the story of the new FEMA being ill-prepared. After pitching it to a couple dozen reporters and editors I knew, I had only succeeded in becoming a pariah.

  As I gathered with the other reporters covering the Scrubbs case, I learned that our just-indicted target, Thucydides, had not been seen for over a week. Rumor was he had traveled to Europe just before the D.A. announced he was going before the grand jury and the suspected wife killer wouldn’t be back for another week or so.

  From across the magnolia-lined thoroughfare, behind a forgotten Confederate solider statue, under the swaying and dappled shadows of redundant maple leaves, in his dirty white seersucker suit and clownish panama hat, leaning against a rented white compact, was the gentleman alcoholic and friend extraordinaire, Gustavo Benoit. If Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre ever shared a quadroon mistress, Gustavo might well have been the result.

  When I crossed the street and joined him, he put a Styrofoam cup in my hand and before I could pretend that I was on the wagon, he poured some tempting single malt.

  “It’s Lara Croft, tomb raider, in our sleepy little Bayou-burg,” he said in a retractable Southern drawl.

  “If you’re expecting me to thank you for getting me this awful job, forget it,” I replied, gulping down the whiskey so as to quickly get to that always better second cup.

  “Actually, you could compensate me by joining me for a drink at one of the local boy bars.” He flung his hat into his car.

  Gay Gustavo would always pay my tab at such pubs, where he used me to entice cute young men who he would attempt to intoxicate and seduce. But that was when Clinton was president and we still thought of ourselves as old youths. Despite our obvious decline—measured by the intake of liquid ounces—Gustavo was still as sharp as a rusty tack.

  “I’m too broke to have fun,” I said, finishing the Scotch, “so unless you can loan me a grand I’m going to have to pay a visit to the ruins in Mesopotamia.”

  “Sorry,” he answered, impoverished.

  As the expensive Scotch started to do its magic, I opened the back door of his car for a place to sit. Out fell a pair of battery-operated devil horns. His entire backseat was covered with odd party favors: hook-on rabbit ears,a shotgun that unfolded into an umbrella, a strap-on parrot beak,a Groucho Marx eyeglasses-nose-mustache, and under a George W. Bush mask I spotted Bozo, a clown scalp that I pulled over my own hair.

  While I rooted around for the attachable nose, Gustavo filled me in: “This Scrubbs dude isn’t coming back to town for at least a week, so now’s a good time to have your big maternal reconciliation.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked, fixing the round red nose on. “I’ll never get another assignment if I miss him.”

  “I’ll call you if his bulbous head pops up,” Gustavo replied. “You’re going up near Nashville, right?”

  “About midway between here and there.”

  “Anywhere near …” he peeked in his notebook, “Doomland, Tennessee?”

  “Daumland,” I corrected. “It’s ten minutes away. Why?”

  “That’s where the Scrubbs child bride hails from: Daumland.”

  “Any names or addresses?”

  “I tried,” Gustavo said, trying to light a second cigarette from the first. “All I could get was the town’s gloomy’s name.”

  “You know, if you think you’re going to fool any doormen or security guards with this stuff …” I kidded, referring to the novelty items in the backseat.

  “These orphans were rescued from a fire in Screwy Louie’s Novelty Shop yesterday. I found most of them in the garbage bin out back. I just couldn’t resist.” He reached in and pulled out a flat Frankenstein top that he clipped over his coiffed scalp, then sipped his Scotch.

  After thanking Gustavo for three cups of booze and all the 4-1-1, I got back in my jalopy and called editor Riggs, giving him an update on Scrubbs: he was out of town while the D.A. was convening a grand jury.

  “I can write a decent little piece that suggests he might be fleeing the country.”

  “We’re going to print in roughly an hour, have it by then.”

  “Fine, but since nothing else is going on here, I thought maybe I should dash up to Daumland, Tennessee, and see if I can dig up anything on Missy’s family.”

  “Sounds good, but don’t go too far in case I need you back down in Memphis.”

  I stopped at a Starbucks, fired up my laptop, made a couple of calls, and whipped out my first new item in over four months. It played up the fact that T. Scrubbs was about to be a fugitive from the law. I e-mailed it to Riggs and made a quick grand. Now I only owed nineteen thousand dollars.

  When I pulled into the driveway of my mom’s shop an hour and a half later, I stopped in to say hi to old Pete, but he was busy doing checkout for an impatient line. As I walked around to the back of the big empty house, it was difficult not to remember my teenage years when this place was crawling with kids.

  Rodmilla answered the door. She made a big show of hugging and kissing me, her prodigal daughter. She led me into her huge kitchen.

  Like a living newsletter she updated me on the successes of her two real daughters. Ludmilla and Bella had married and reproduced. Three and four children respectively. Both were comfortably situated in suburban Atlanta where they were living in elegant homes and prescribing to Rachael Ray’s hasty vision of domestic bliss.

  Finally, as she tore her garden-grown mint leaves into her etched-crystal pitcher, she asked about Paul, my wonderful blond husband.

  “He was fine last time I saw him.”

  “When exactly was that, dear?” she asked, delicately placing her large decanter of mint julep and glasses on an antique silver tray and carrying it out onto the veranda.

  “About six months ago, when he forgot his way home.” I sat on her new antique patio set. Although I had no intention of drinking alcohol, I didn’t want to offend her, so I asked for just a small glass.

  “What exactly are you saying?”

  “I packed up and moved out a few months ago.” I swigged down the drink.

  She sighed and poured me a second helping. “Did you try working it out?”

  I shrugged and finished the second glass quickly, which she politely refilled.

  “I don’t know what to say.” She looked off dismally and took a sip of her mint julep.

  “Also, I haven’t gotten much work lately and was hoping for a little loan.” Life was easy once you learned to deaden the shame.

  “How much is a little?”

  “About three grand should do it.” It sounded like a lot, but was only a fraction of what I had given her over the years.

  “You know I thought Paul was a prince.” That was the first leak in her levy. “In fact, to be quite frank, I thought he could’ve done better.”

  “Oh, he did a lot better—with every young intern in his office.” “I find that difficult to believe. He used to dote on you like no man I ever saw.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t adopt him,” I said as I refilled my glass.

  Paul was currently the executive producer of the highest-rated local news show in the tristate area. It was difficult to imagine what more he could’ve accomplished.

  “You come here to announce you’re getting a divorce and you’re broke and—”

  “If you don’t want to loan me anything, that’s fine, but please don’t kick me when I’m down.”

  “Sandy, I don’t have much time left,” she began. “My veins are clogged with a lifetime of fat. My lungs are congested with tar and nicotine. And when any one of my old body parts finally conks out, the rest of me is eager to follow.”

  “Pe
ople live for a long time nowadays.”

  “Didn’t you tell me and your sisters that as someone who was rejected by her own biological parents, you wanted a child more than anything else?”

  “I haven’t spoken to my sisters in ten years, but yes, I told you that. And thanks for not letting me forget that I’m a middle-aged, dried-up Asian adoptee with a failed marriage and a drinking problem.”

  “Though I wasn’t going to mention it, you clearly do have a drinking problem.” She pointed to the nearly empty crystal pitcher. Rodmilla had put it out simply to test me. Of course I failed.

  “Look, Ma …”

  “You can move back into your old room. Other than that I simply have nothing for you.”

  I apologized for wasting her time and walked out into the darkness. Being born an orphan was hard enough, but being airlifted halfway around the world from Panmunjom, Korea, and adopted by a liberal Jewish household in Tennessee was just plain awkward. When I wasn’t called a kike, I was a gook—Gustavo actually merged the two words and called me a kook.

  Five minutes after I left her, only a few blocks away, I decided to hell with the Scrubbs case, I was going back to New York. Drunkenly I missed a turn and went through a bank of bushes. Luckily there was no serious damage, but I was starved for sleep. Pushing back my seat, I covered myself with every piece of clothing I could find and passed out.

  Awaking groggily several hours later, I turned the key and got back on Highway 21.

  I drove for a short time before I heard some rattling around in my glove compartment. When I popped it open I found a mini bottle of Scotch just sitting there. Without even thinking, I used my teeth to twist open the top and sucked it down just as quickly. While looking out at rolling hills of dark green maple trees, I passed an old Welcome to Daumland sign, population two thousand something. Just then, my cell phone chimed.

  “Cassandra?”

  “Who is this, please?”

  “Debra Blake … with the New York Times.”

  Suddenly my faith in good journalism rose. Someone had finally responded to my endless e-mailings. “Okay, I met this guy at a party last December, a meteorologist from FEMA,” I explained. “He told me that this is an active hurricane year.”

  “Active how?”

  “Apparently the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s were inactive, until the late ’90s. It’s a cycle and we’re in the middle of a really active period that could last another twenty years.”

  “Cassie, the thing is—”

  “Now, I didn’t really believe him, but the hurricane season started so early this year and—”

  “Early?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said and rattled them off: “June 9, tropical storm Arlene. June 28, Bret, and Cindy was next. Then on July 10 the first hurricane, Dennis, a category three hit Florida—”

  “Wow!”

  “Then hurricane Emily, which was a category four. Franklin and Gertrude at the end of July.”

  “But—”

  “Harvey came next, and as we speak Irene is still active, off the coast of New Jersey. And it’s only the beginning of August.”

  “This is all quite fascinating but—”

  “This is just the weather. I mean, it could be an earthquake, a flood, you name it—the real story is FEMA.”

  “You mean the Federal Regulatory—”

  “The Emergency Management Agency. It was just reshuffled under Homeland Security and they’ve completely stripped it down and so that—”

  “Cassandra, the reason I called is—”

  “No one even heard of the guy who heads it,” I managed to squeeze out.

  “Hold it.”

  “I know, I should be talking to your editor or something, but I’ve tried to get this story out and no one’s going anywhere near it. It’ll just take one of these hurricanes—”

  “Didn’t you just move into that old building on the northeast corner of 50th Street and Ninth Avenue?” she finally elbowed in.

  “Yeah, why?” The last time I had seen her was when I was moving into my new bachelorette pad.

  “Cause I’m walking by it right now and I saw the fire trucks and police barricades and just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Huh?” It was a solid brick building. How could it catch fire?

  She continued: “Also, I’m a fashion reporter. I don’t know anyone in politics.”

  “Could you do me a teeny favor?” I asked. “I’m on an assignment down South. Could you ask someone what happened?”

  “There’s actually a sign right on the front door.” Then, clearing her throat as if about to audition for an anchorwoman spot, she read, “The heading says, Department of Buildings, City of New York, then in big red letters it says, Vacate, do not enter. Underneath that it says, The Department of Buildings has determined that conditions in these premises are imminently perilous to life. These premises have been vacated and reentry is prohibited until such condition has been eliminated to the satisfaction of the Department. Violators of this vacate order are subject to arrest.”

  “FUCK!” Five minutes ago I just needed a little cash, now I was homeless. “Debra, thanks a lot for everything and if you want a good fashion tip for next season, look into hazmat gear.”

  I quickly located the phone number of my downstairs neighbor, Wanda Basall—I remembered her because her name rhymes with asshole—in my address book. She picked up after the first ring.

  “Hi, this is your upstairs neighbor. You’ll pardon me for calling, but I’m out of town.”

  “No problem.”

  “Some woman just told me our building was condemned, but I’m sure there’s a mistake.”

  “If there was a mistake,” she replied, “I probably wouldn’t be talking to you from an army cot on the gym floor of Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx that was set up by Disaster Services of the American Red Cross.”

  She then explained what had happened. Our landlord Mr. Wolfe, one of the last of the great slumlords, had hired three Mexican workers to do some construction. He was trying to convert the former corner bodega into a new Starbucks, every landlord’s wet dream. Apparently, too intimidated by Wolfe to confirm his vague instructions, the workers had accidentally torn down a load-bearing wall. When the entire building suddenly sagged down the center, someone called the fire department. They in turn notified the Department of Buildings, who instantly condemned the premises.

  “Now the landlord has to get a building permit to get a licensed contractor to fix the problem and then they have to get the building inspector back in there to give it some seal of approval. According to one person I spoke to,” Basall concluded, “that could take months.”

  “Where the hell am I suppose to live until then?”

  “There’s an empty cot next to me.”

  “What about all our things! And the rent?”

  She explained that the landlord was prorating everything. All rents would be suspended until the place was livable again.

  It was then I heard a faint siren slowly growing closer. I thanked her and clicked off. When the cop car closed in, I pulled over and realized my breath probably still smelled of liquor.

  I could live with a DUI on my record; I didn’t even mind the prospect of being locked up for the night in some uriney small-town jail cell. The horror was that the only person in the county with the cash to bail me out was the very last person I ever wanted to see again—dear old Ma.

  As the corpulent officer with the ninth-grade education slowly walked the short distance from his cruiser to mine, I fruitlessly searched for a Tic-Tac.

  “You know why I pulled you over, don’t you, ma’am?” he asked, employing the mandatory patronizing tone.

  “Was I speeding, officer?”

  “Probably. But you missed a stop sign a couple of miles back. Driver’s license, please.”

  Inasmuch as he still hadn’t detected the booze on my breath, I frantically flipped through my purse and knew I’d be lucky if he just wro
te me the damn ticket and cut me loose.

  Just when I realized I had left my license and registration at home—another citation—his radio blared, “A homicide at Blue Suede’s.” The small-town dispatcher didn’t even bother with police code.

  “I’m there,” the cop replied on his remote, then, leaning into my car, he said, “I’ll let you off with a warning, but the next time this happens, you’ll get a ticket.”

  Before I could thank him, he raced back to his vehicle and zoomed about fifty yards down the road and spun to the right into a tangle of untrimmed trees. Of course I followed him. It opened up into a parking lot for some large pub. Having worked for several years as an investigative reporter at the city desk of the Daily News, I had covered more homicides than could fill the town’s cemetery, certainly more than this Quick Draw McGraw. He appeared to be first on the scene. I saw him pull to a stop at the back of the lot at the base of a hill. I discreetly slipped my vehicle between a pink Cadillac covered with silly decals and an old, dilapidated wooden garage.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I reached into my shopping bag and did a quick change into country casuals: an old pair of worn cowboy boots and a faded dungaree jacket. Then I lassoed my hair in a red checker scarf. To hide my Asian squinters, I pulled on a pair of sunglasses. The dark, dirty roadhouse had a large vintage sign obscured by trees that read, Blue Suede Shoes Tavern. Under it was a black silhouette of Elvis’s huge pompadour. I sat in my car and just waited. When the cop came back down the hill with another man and vanished inside the pub, I figured they must’ve just returned from the murder scene.

  Since the coast seemed clear I cut right through the foliage and headed up that verdant hill, until I noticed a large old antebellum mansion through the trees. Hiking up further toward it, I spotted some yellow police tape and, just beyond that, the protruding heels from a large pair of boots belonging to a corpse. Suddenly, though, I found myself sinking into a brown rectangle of newly plowed dirt. I quickly slipped through the dirt and could now see that the vic was a large bruiser of a man lying flat on his back. Taking out my cell phone/camera, I carefully crouched close to his face—which struck me as oddly peaceful—and snapped a couple photos. His mouth and eyes were slightly open. Despite the fact that he looked to be in his late fifties, he had an inky black, triple-decker pompadour with thick, clownish muttonchops. The wide collar on his outdated jacket was yanked up in the back. His white shirt had light pink ruffles down the button line. His black dungarees were caked with mud as were his red alligator-skin cowboy boots. A large, serrated circle had turned the center of his chest into dark red pulp. It was either a ten- or twelve-gauge blast at close range.