Brother and sister picked up knife and fork, and for a few minutes they sat silently and ate and sipped wine. The Argentine wine was perfect with the trout.

“It all tastes even better than it smells,” Beam said. “If you ever give up psychoanalysis, you could have a career as a chef.”

“Or a culinary psychiatrist.” She took a bite of potato. “I have a theory that everything in life is connected in one way or another with food.”

“Hmm. Didn’t Freud think it was sex?”

Cassie lifted her square shoulders in a shrug. “That’s Freud for you.” She took a sip of wine and dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “Have you seen your friend Nola again?”

“I’m not sure I like the segue.”

“Are you avoiding the question?”

“I suppose. And I shouldn’t avoid it. Maybe you can tell me what’s going on.”

Ignoring his food—which to Cassie might be meaningful—Beam told her about sitting in his car across from Nola’s antique shop, and what went on between them when finally he did go inside.

When he was finished, she said, “You went inside the shop. I congratulate you for acting on your fear.”

“My nervousness, you mean.”

“I mean your fear.”

Beam knew she was right. He had been afraid. “I remembered what you told me,” he said, “about her needing to forgive me.”

“Do you agree now that’s what she needs?”

“I told her it was what she needs.”

“How’d she react?”

Beam told Cassie about Nola insisting that he leave, but not insisting that he not return. He was dismayed that in the telling, it seemed like wishful thinking on his part. It also sounded stilted and futile.

What had happened in the antique shop was beyond words. Words simply weren’t up to the task. They were as useful as paddles in mid ocean. Nola was beyond words.

“Do you think she’ll want to see me again?” he asked Cassie.

“Was your account of what happened between you two accurate?”

“I’m a cop,” Beam said. “I remember details. It was accurate.”

Cassie finished her wine and grinned. “Then you can bet your sweet ass she wants to see you. Don’t you understand, bro, you’re her way out.”

And she’s mine.

When Beam left Cassie’s apartment a few hours later, he drove past the antique shop even though he was sure Nola wouldn’t be there.

The shop’s windows were dark, like those in the rest of the businesses lining the block. Even the lettering on the glass was part of the night and unreadable. The windows reminded Beam of blank, uncomprehending eyes staring out at the street.

When he steered the Lincoln in a tire-squealing U-turn and drove for home, he didn’t notice the car following him, as he hadn’t noticed it when it fell in behind him as he’d pulled out of the parking garage half a block from Cassie’s apartment.

In his business, distraction could be dangerous.

41

Fear, real fear, was one mean mother. You could put up a front and hold it off, but it wouldn’t go away. It just backed up a step and stayed there, licking its chops, waiting.

Be a bitchin’ song.

The commercial possibilities blew through his mind like an icy breeze. The fear came in its wake.

He wasn’t Cold Cat now. He was Richard Simms, the defendant. He kept his fingertips touching the hard mahogany surface of the table so his hands wouldn’t tremble. His knees were almost weak enough to give, and the same could be said of his bladder. His mouth was filled with cotton, and while he could keep his expression neutral, he couldn’t keep the tears from welling in his eyes, which he kept fixed straight ahead at a picture of Justice Thurgood Marshall hanging on the wall behind the bench.

Cold Cat seemed to him more of an invention than ever, a hard structure to hide within, as Richard Simms stood in court and awaited the verdict in his trial for murder. Richard Simms knew he wasn’t nearly as tough as Cold Cat, and the harsh world could be dealt with only if it were Cold Cat and not Richard trying to cope. Here in the emotionally charged, smothering heart of the racist bureaucracy, with a hostile world sitting in judgment, he found it impossible to be Cold Cat.

Richard Simms himself would have to face the system, would have to bear up, whatever the verdict.

It was the total silence that got to him more than anything. All his life Richard had hated silence. It made it difficult for him to breathe, to think. He felt as if he might pass out soon from lack of oxygen.

Richard felt ten years old standing there, the age he’d been the three times he’d attended church at St. Matthew’s, at the insistence of a fiercely religious aunt who’d tried to force the spirit on him. Religion hadn’t taken root in Richard; some of his lyrics, in fact, were virulently anti-faith—all faiths.

But he knew what a benediction was, and that was what he felt when the words were loosed in the stifling courtroom. They were only sounds with no meaning at first, and then, finally, they sank in. They bore in. They suffused apprehension and despondency with relief, and then incredible joy.

Not guilty.

If ever Cold Cat was going to be converted, to experience his epiphany, this was the moment. He almost collapsed with his newfound sense of freedom, sagging so that his attorney Murray had to stand up beside him and support him.

No more jailhouse food, no more god-awful threads, no more nights alone with those dreams.

There’s never music in my dreams.

Then he and Murray were hugging, and the attorney whispered something in his ear that Cold Cat couldn’t understand, because other voices were rising. His mother was screaming hallelujahs! over and over. Hands patted, pounded on his back. He was shaking hands. Everyone wanted to shake his hand, hug him, and hang on.

And the gavel banged! Again! Louder and louder, more and more insistent, until it overwhelmed every other sound in the courtroom and silence returned like a cool river.

At his lawyer’s insistence, Cold Cat sat back down, with a backward glance at his mother, who was sobbing in her jubilation. He watched the judge as she dispassionately polled the jury, and he listened as each juror answered.

The verdict was unanimous. Cold Cat did not murder his wife.

He was free!

It was at that moment that the old rage, the furnace fire of his youth, still burning strong, began to take hold in him. The system had tried to get him but failed. He’d whipped its ass and he would again with his music. It was a scumbag society out to get him from the git-go and it couldn’t shut him up, couldn’t stop his message. He was better than the fools who’d tried to bring him down. Better in every way. He would tell them so. When the time was right, he’d let them know.

Unanimous. Try to reverse that one on appeal, Mr. Smart-ass prosecutor Farrato. Richard tried to catch the little prosecutor’s eye, but Farrato, busy scooping up papers and stuffing them into his briefcase, wouldn’t look in his direction.

Better not look my humpin’ way!

Put ya way down

Ya don’ see it my way

Make ya way pay

Turn ya way gray

Be yo one last final day!

Yes, there were definitely some lyrics here. Food for the beat. It was all material for Cold Cat, all part of his message.

As he stood up to leave the courtroom with his attorneys, he was full of the rage he’d turned to riches. He didn’t glance at the jurors, wasn’t going to mouth a “thank-you” like Simpson. The Melanie cunt that he’d got all wet between the legs in court and conned into helping him was of no use to him now. He knew how he affected some women, and she’d probably try making a pest of herself, but he wouldn’t let her. Old bitch. Older, anyway. Those were bones he didn’t want to jump, so piss on her. He made a mental note to describe her to his security staff so they could keep her the hell away.