The Broken Souls

“Check it out, Carson,” Dani said, gesturing at the faces with her champagne glass. “They look like monkeys.”

The Channel 14 event was at the Shrine Temple, a high-ceilinged, marble-floored exemplar of baroque excess. Our driver pulled up front, jumped out to open the door. I think he bowed. We stepped into the path of Jenna Doakes, a weekend news anchor my girlfriend dubbed “Prissy Missy High’n’Mighty”.

Doakes regarded the departing limo with a raised eyebrow.

“Isn’t that a little Hollywood, DeeDee?”

Dani said, “You didn’t get one?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The station sent it for me,” Dani explained.

Doakes’s grin melted into confusion, then fear. She hustled away on the arm of her escort, shooting over-the-shoulder glances at Dani, like she was twelve feet tall and glowing.

The soirée was in the ballroom, entered via a dozen marble steps sweeping to the floor, spotlit top and bottom. The only thing lacking was the monocled guy announcing the arrivals.

We descended to the milling crowd. Soft light fell from above, a sprawling chandelier resembling a wedding cake iced with glass. The edges of the cavernous room were columned every dozen feet, walls of dark velvet. Forty board feet of food waited at the rear: carved roasts of beef, glazed hams, shrimp, crab cakes, cheeses, breads, sweets. A fountain dribbled minted punch. Three ice sculptures rose above the food: two swans and a four-foot-tall Channel 14 logo.

Three bars were at the edges of the room, black-vested barkeeps already pouring fast to manage demand. On the stage, a ten-piece band tuned up.

The round tables were filling fast with employees and clients and guests. I saw a vacant table near the stage. I couldn’t figure out why it was empty until close enough to see a tabletop placard announcing, RESERVED. We took a table with staffers from the station. Unfortunately, I was the only attendee in a gunslinger tuxedo.

The band kicked in and we launched into the mingle portion of the program, Dani moving like a dervish, barking “Hey-yas” and “How-de-dos” and spinning from one clot of revelers to the next. I finally got to meet the news director she adored, a shambling, fiftyish guy named Laurel Hollings. Hollings had missed a button on his shirt, mumbled when he spoke. He kept checking his phone, maybe hoping some major catastrophe might pull him from the event. I liked Hollings from the git-go, even more when he expressed admiration for my tuxedo, saying he wished he “had the balls to wear something like that”.

Dani talked shop with reporters, discussed industry trends with home-office types, schmoozed station clients – car dealers, realtors, mobile-home manufacturers, supermarket owners – with either modest propriety or bawdy wit, depending on the client. After a half-hour, she called for a minute off her feet.

The closest chairs were at the still-empty RESERVED table. I set my beer on the white tablecloth and took a seat, gnawing a roll while she slipped off her shoes and squeezed her toes, cursing the inventor of high heels.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a voice at my back and a finger tap on my shoulder. I swiveled to a pout-mouthed man wearing a bow tie, purple vest, and a name card announcing EVENT MANAGER.

I set my roll on the table, picked up my drink. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, but this table’s waiting for someone.” He pointed to the RESERVED card. I saw his glance take in crumbs of roll on the tabletop and a damp circle from my drink.

“The lady’s resting her feet. If the table’s owners arrive, we’ll move.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, ice on his vocal cords. “No one can sit here.”

“I hate to disagree with you, sport …” I said, about to point out we were already sitting. Dani heard my voice shift to the one I use for supercilious assholes. Her fingers tapped my wrist.

“Don’t be that way, Carson. There’s a table across the way. Follow me.”

We moved, EVENT MANAGER signaled for the bus staff to change the RESERVED tablecloth, like I’d left some kind of stink on the table.

The band stuttered to a halt in the middle of a rhythmically challenged “Smoke on the Water”, launching into “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here”. Heads swung to the door. A party of three men and three women gathered atop the marble steps as two photographers raced to shoot pictures. Behind this nucleus were several other men and women.

Forefront in the vanguard group was a tall, fortyish man with an older woman on his arm. She was the one person in the group who didn’t look direct from a Vogue eveningwear issue: white-haired, plank-faced, pale, eyes as dark as coal. A large woman, she wasn’t obese, but sturdy, a prize Holstein in a designer toga.

The tall man escorted her to the unoccupied table as pout-mouth whisked away the RESERVED placard. Only after she had sat and nodded did the others take seats.

I chuckled at the spectacle. “Looks like Buckingham Palace let out.”

“It’s the Kincannons, Carson. Surely you’ve heard of them.”

It struck a chord. “There’s a big plaque at the Police Academy that mentions a Kincannon something or other. Maybe a couple huge plaques. A program?”

“A grant, I imagine. The family is big on grants and donations and endowments.”

I studied the tall man: well-constructed, his tuxedo modeled to a wide-shouldered, waist-slender frame. His face was lengthy and rectangular; had he wished to ship the face somewhere for repairs, it would have been neatly contained in a shoe box. Judging by the admiring glances of nearby women, however, it was a face needing neither repair nor revision. He seemed well aware of this fact, not standing so much as striking a series of poses: holding his chin as he talked, crossing his arms and canting his head, arching a dark eyebrow while massaging a colleague’s shoulder. He looked like an actor playing a successful businessman.

“Who’s the pretty guy working the Stanislavski method?” I asked. “Seems like I’ve seen him before.”

A pause. “That’s Buck Kincannon, Junior, Carson. Sort of the scion of the family.”

“How are scions employed these days?” I asked. “At least this scion?”

“The man collects cars and art and antiques. Sails yachts. Breeds prize cattle.”

“Good work if you can get it,” I noted.

“He also runs the family’s investments. The Kincannons have more money than Croesus. Buck keeps the pile growing.”

The funds would be fine if they grew as fast as the throng gathering to acknowledge the late arrivals, I thought. An overturned beer truck wouldn’t have pulled a crowd faster. Several notables hustled over: an appellate judge, two state representatives, half the city council.

“What’s the connection to the station?” I asked.

“The family’s one of the major investors in Clarity, part of the ownership consortium. Buck Kincannon’s my boss, Carson. Way up the ladder, but the guy who makes the big decisions.”

Clarity Broadcasting owned Channel 14 and a few dozen other TV and radio outlets, primarily in the South, but according to newspaper accounts they were pushing hard toward a national presence.

“Who’s the older woman?” I asked.

Dani’s voice subconsciously dropped to a whisper. “Maylene Kincannon. Queen Maylene, some people call her. But only from a distance. Like another continent. Buck’s the oldest of her kids, forty-one. Beside Buck is Racine Kincannon and his wife Lindy; Racine’s thirty-eight or so. The guy closest to Mama is Nelson Kincannon, thirty-four, I think.”

“Who are the others with them?”

“Congressman Whitfield to the right, beside him is Bertram Waddley, CEO of the biggest bank in the state, next to Waddley is –”

I held up my hand. “I get the picture.”

I turned from the hangers-on and scanned the brothers: Buck, Racine, Nelson. Though the angular faces weren’t feminine, the men seemed almost gorgeous, their eyes liquid and alert, their gestures practiced and fluid.

My eyes fell on the matriarch, lingered. Though her skin was pale and her hair was snow, nothing about her said frail. She looked like she could have wrestled Harry to a draw.

“What happened to Papa Kincannon?” I asked.

“Buck Senior? I haven’t heard much about him. He has some form of mental ailment, early onset Alzheimer’s or something similar, a disease of the brain. He’s alive, but has been out of the picture for years.”

“He started the fortune?”

“He had a mind for business. An instinct or whatever.”

“You know a lot about the family, Dani.”

She looked away. “I’m a reporter and they’re a major investor in my company.”

“Where’s Kincannon’s wife?”

“He’s single. Divorced years ago.”

“Have you ever met him?”

Dani studied her wineglass, drained it. “I met him at a charity event eighteen months back.”

“You talked to him since?”

She passed me her glass. “Could you get me another, please? While I climb back into these shoes.”

Rather than cross the center of the room, where I might re-meet someone I’d already forgotten, I moved to the shadowed edges and circled toward the nearest bar. My path took me behind the Clan Kincannon. The Buckster was still working the receiving line, his hand squeezed by men, cheeks pecked by women.

Mama Maylene was another matter: it seemed forbidden to touch her, and even the most hand-grabbing, hug-enwrapping, cheek-kissing folks stopped short of Mama, offering a few brief words before quickly slipping past.

When not engaged in long-distance greetings, Maylene Kincannon raked the crowd with emotionless eyes, black as cinders in the whiteness of her face. I watched in fascination as they gathered full measure of the room, every face, every gesture, every contact.

Perhaps she felt my gaze, for her eyes swung to mine. For a moment we stared at one another, until her eyes moved away, restless, scanning. I had the feeling of having been surveyed by a machine, deemed of zero value, dismissed.

There was a crowd at the bar and I got in one of the lines. My position faced me down a service hall to a kitchen door. Surprisingly – and delightfully – a woman’s derriere backed from the kitchen, wiggling as it retreated. The owner followed, throwing air kisses and whispering thanks. I suspected she was a late arrival not wishing to enter via the cascading steps and glare of lights.

I put her age in the early thirties, slender where she needed to be, ample where she didn’t, big lavender eyes augmented with too much shadow, perhaps trying to balance a succulent, lipstick-ad mouth. Her dress was cobalt blue, strapless, anchored by gravity-defying breasts whose origin was dubious.

“Whatcha need, sir?” the barkeep asked.

I reluctantly turned from the woman. “Tall bourbon and soda, light on the bourbon, and a white wine.”

“We have three whites tonight, sir. A Belden Farms Chardonnay, a B & G Vouvray, and a Chenin Blanc by Isenger.”

I knew wine as well as I knew Mandarin. I said uh several times.

“Go for the Vouvray, Slim,” a woman’s voice said. “The others are horse piss.”

I turned. The woman in cobalt leaned against the column at the end of the bar, a few feet distant. She winked. “Grab me a drink while you’re there, wouldya? Double scotch.” Her voice was a purr of command, cigarette husky, a voice with more years on it than the woman.

I turned, three drinks in hand. She snatched hers and spun away. I watched her circle behind the crowd, pause against another column, study the surroundings. She belted the scotch. Then she snapped her wrist twice, like flicking paint from a brush. She thought a moment, then repeated the odd motion, more exaggerated this time, like cracking a whip.

She flipped the empty glass into a trash can, snapped on a bright smile, and headed into the crowded room. My eyes kept following her derriere, but the room went dark.

Lucas arrived a half-hour after the Channel 14 soirée had started, parking outside the Shrine Temple, slipping the used Subaru into the anonymous dark between street lamps. He had been eating granola, spitting stale raisins out the window into the street. It had irritated him that a fucking health-food store would sell granola with stale raisins and he’d considered returning to the store, grabbing the slacker clerk by his Bruce Cockburn T-shirt, dragging him down here and making the bastard lick the raisins from the pavement.

“Those taste fresh to you? You little cocksucking son of a …”

He had caught himself. Taken several deep breaths, cleansing breaths. Listened to Dr Rudolnick conjure up clouds.

“Settle into the clouds, Lucas. Let your anger drift away …”

Nothing much had happened while he waited; not that he’d expected anything. But he’d read about this soirée in a newspaper column and decided to rub elbows with the swells, even if it was a distant rubbing.

Sometimes things were revealed in small motions. Like the black stretch limo parked in the lot down the block, engine idling, keeping the air conditioning at a precise seventy-eight degrees. Lucas had wanted to knock on the door of the limo, engage the driver in conversation. Maybe leave a warm ass-print in the leather seat, like a dog spraying its territory.

Common sense had prevailed. It wasn’t yet time to prod the Kincannons.

After he’d been sitting for several more minutes, calm again, a woman slipped from the doors of the Temple, a sexy woman in a blue dress, large breasts bobbing as she high-heeled down the sidewalk. She was weaving a bit, a sheet or two to the wind. She laughed, flicked her hand in the air in a strange and sudden motion, like a drummer tapping a cymbal. Then she hawked and spat onto the sidewalk, lit a cigarette, and crossed the street to climb into a battered red Corolla. It took two minutes of grinding the ignition before the engine kicked over and the car rattled away trailing a plume of blue exhaust.

The woman was suddenly more interesting to Lucas than a building he couldn’t safely enter, and his curiosity made him follow her, just for a lark.

CHAPTER 12

As I crossed the ballroom in the dark, a drink in each hand, the podium turned white with spotlight, signaling the business side of the affair. I returned to the table as the general manager took the dais. He droned industry jargon for twenty minutes: ratings points, targeted growth analysis, revenue streams, optimized asset utilization, and so forth. He was followed by three heads of something-or-other. Finally the GM reclaimed the microphone, burbled a few more comments, then swept his hand toward the Kincannon suburb.

“…cornerstones of our station and community, ladies and gentlemen, the Kincannons…”

The family members smiled and waved. Buck Kincannon elevated from his seat. A balcony spotlight centered him, and I figured it had been aimed beforehand. The crowd applauded Kincannon like it had applauded everyone, solid, polite; then, after a few seconds, started to wane.

A voice yelled, “Speech.”

Several men at a front table stood, hands clapping, calling for words from Kincannon. Folks at adjoining tables followed, checking side to side as they rose, concert-goers uncertain whether the music was that good, but everyone else seems to think so. Applause thundered from the front table. They reminded me of cheerleaders in tuxedos. Or, less politely, shills.

Dani stood and pounded her palms together. Kincannon took the dais with a laugh line, apologizing for disturbing “everyone’s reason for being here: free food and drinks”, then segued into more business-speak. To my untrained ear, it seemed fifty per cent jargon, fifty per cent bullshit; the trick, perhaps, to discern which was which. Or perhaps it didn’t matter.

After several minutes, Kincannon reverted to English.

“…nowhere is professionalism more evident than in the news department. No news team won more awards in Alabama last year than Channel 14 Action News…”

Applause from the audience at large.

“We’ve heard from some of those fine folks this evening, but there’s someone else needs to say a few words. I’m talking about the hard-charging investigative spark of the team…”

“I didn’t expect this,” Dani said, touching at her hair. “How do I look, Carson?”

“Like you. Only dressier.”

“…gives me great pleasure to introduce a present star and future superstar of Clarity Broadcasting Network, a woman with more in her future than she knows…”

Dani grinned, shook her head.

“…I give you DeeDee Danbury…”

Kincannon lifted his arms wide, the Pope blessing St Peter’s Square.

“Come on up, DeeDee.”

Applause rang out as Dani jogged to the dais. Buck Kincannon extended his arms and she walked into them, his wide hand rubbing her bare back. They traded smiles and a few words and Dani stepped to the microphone as Kincannon moved back a step, but still in her light.

She cleared her throat and mimed opening an envelope, blowing into it, reaching inside. The crowd went silent, wondering what she was doing.

Dani plucked an invisible card from the invisible envelope, held it distant as if to better see the words.

“And the winner in the category of best employer is…Clarity Broadcasting Network!”

The crowd laughed, applauded, whistled. I clapped as well, fighting the notion that I’d seen her pander to the audience, to her employer. I felt embarrassment, but didn’t know for whom. Then I realized I was as naïve to the ways of broadcasting as I was to the rental of formal wear. This is what they must do at these bashes, I thought. Kiss ass and march in rhythm. Relax.

Dani’s speech took two minutes. It was humorous. Smooth. Rich in praise to Clarity Broadcasting and the Kincannon family. And, like her allusion to the Academy Awards, seemed more act than sincerity.

Kincannon grabbed the mike, yelled, “Let’s hear it for our own beautiful DeeDee Danbury!” He waved his hands in a Bring it on motion. Again led by the group at the front table, the audience jumped to its feet as if Dani were a figure skater who’d just completed a quintuple something-or-other.

The soirée broke up at eleven. Since Dani’s effusive blessing by ownership, she’d been surrounded by sudden friends. Outside, I waited as she chatted with others, enjoying the limelight. With little to do, I wandered in the warm night. I stepped around the corner and saw Racine and Nelson Kincannon and their wives waiting for transportation. It was a service entrance and I figured people like the Kincannons didn’t queue with the riff-raff.

I leaned against a lamp a hundred feet distant and watched, just me and the Kincannons. No one in the family spoke to anyone else, their eyes flat and expressionless. It was like the show was over, everyone could turn off their faces and go home. Racine Kincannon was drinking, carrying glasses in both hands.

Nelson said something. I couldn’t hear what. Racine spun, threw one of the drinks in his brother’s face. Racine threw the other drink on the ground, grabbed his brother’s lapels, pushed him away hard. The wives stepped a dozen feet away and looked into the night sky, bored. The two men seemed about to square off when I heard a voice like broken glass.

“Stop it, now!”

Maylene Kincannon exploded from the building like a rodeo bull from a gate, Buck Kincannon at her side. She thundered up, finger jabbing, tongue lashing. I heard the anger, but not the words. Her two squabbling sons looked at their feet. The wives remained turned away, like nothing was happening.

Then Buck Kincannon leaned toward his mother, said something. Whatever it was didn’t agree with her. She slapped his face so hard it sounded like a gunshot. No one else seemed to notice or care.

A black stretch limo rolled into view. The family grouped together as the chauffeur emerged to open the doors. The black beast pulled from the curb. I saw an impenetrably dark window roll down. A male face, contorted in anger, yelled, “Get a life, asshole.”

The curtain fell.

It was almost midnight when our driver returned us to Dani’s, the night drenched with haze and lit by moon glow, the air perfumed with dogwood and magnolia. Arms linked, we walked to the porch as a night bird sang from the eaves. She shook her keys free of her purse, opened the door. The cool, clean air felt good after sharing the exhalations of three hundred others for two hours. I looked at her phone, a red LED blinking.

“You’ve got a message.”

She went to the kitchen to rattle the lock at the back door, the habitual checks of a woman living alone. “Probably Laurel Hollings twitting me for the speech. He does that kind of thing when he’s had a few. Punch it on while I look out back.”

I heard the kitchen door open, the screen slam, as she went out to check the back porch door. I tossed my jacket into a chair, walked to the phone, pressed Message.

“It was great to see you this evening, dear DeeDee. I meant everything I said about the bright future. And by the way, that red dress was fantastic. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Four hours earlier I wouldn’t have recognized the voice. But now I did.

Buck Kincannon.

I closed my eyes and wondered what to do, then diddled with the reset button on the phone. Dani returned a minute later. I stood in front of the hall mirror, fiddling with the button on the vest.

“Crap,” I snarled.

“What?”

“The button’s snagged. Wrapped in a thread.”

She looked at the phone, the display blinking like it had never been touched.

“You didn’t check the phone?” she asked.

I glared at the button. “If I tear the damn button off they’ll probably charge me thirty bucks. There still scissors in the bathroom?”

She nodded and I hustled to the john, closed the door. I stood in the dark with my racing heart as she checked her message. My straining ears caught Buck Kincannon’s voice again roaming through Dani’s house.

It was a business call, I told myself; Buck Kincannon was the capo di tutti capo of the Kincannon family and Clarity Broadcasting. He probably called all the station’s speechgivers, made them feel part of the team. It was just business.

I returned a couple minutes later, vest in hand. Dani was in the kitchen moving dishes from the dishwasher to her shelves.

“Can’t that wait until tomorrow?” I asked.

She shrugged; put on a smile. “Just felt like doing something. Excess energy or whatever.”

“The message, was it your jokester from the station?”

Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine; she turned and slid a dish into place, spoke into the cupboard. “Nothing important. A friend wanting to talk when I have a chance.”

That night we lay in her bed, but neither made motions toward making love. Lightning flashed at the windows and filled the room with shadows, but rain never came. Just past dawn I arose without waking her, penciled a note explaining I had a busy day, and fled into a day already breathless with heat.

CHAPTER 13

Harry shoved aside a file of forms on his desktop, set a new stack in its place. He paused and stared at me.

“You all right, Cars?”

“Sure, Harry. Why?”

“You’ve said maybe three words since you got in this morning. How was the big kick-up for Channel 14? Dancing and prancing with the swells? That was this weekend, right?”

“It was fine.”

I realized if I didn’t go into detail, Harry’s antennae would register my distress. I gave a brief synopsis of the evening: impaired music, great eats, first-class beverages, lots of chatter in biz-speak.

“Plus I even got a look at upper-crust Mobile: a family called the Kincannons. They were so –”

Harry broke into my recitation. “You meet Buck?”

I stared at my partner like a plumed hat had appeared on his head.

“What?”

“Buck Kincannon. You get a chance to say hi?”

“How the hell do you know Buck Kincannon?”