The Trust Page 2

In local circles, Palmer’s name equaled largesse. His reputation had grown beyond the boundaries of his own resources, which were already vast. As the chairman of the Palmetto Foundation’s board of trustees, he signed every single check—whether he was making the gift or honoring the wishes of other philanthropists.

  That $100,000 donation to the College of Charleston: Darlene Simpkins chose to remain anonymous, so she channeled her gift through the Palmetto Foundation. Palmer signed the check, which prompted a handwritten thank-you from the college’s Director of Development. Same thing with the Spoleto Festival, the Holocaust Memorial at Marion Square, and several dozen other nonprofit organizations around town. They were all good causes. And Palmer was happy to accept thank-yous, even if he was not the force behind the gifts.

  Still, his family gave generously. It was Kincaid money that created critical mass at the Palmetto Foundation. JoJo had recently completed renovations at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Palmer was funding a new wing at the South Carolina Aquarium. And Claire had developed into a philanthropic force all her own at the Charleston Library Society. The locals regarded Palmer’s organization as their beachhead against exogenous threats to Southern manners, stucco houses, and a way of life distilled over three hundred–plus years.

  The acclaim, Palmer knew, would end soon enough. If word leaked out, all of Charleston would scorn the Kincaids and whisper behind their backs. He struggled to his feet and lumbered across the hall to his daughter’s office. He felt every bit of the wear and tear from his sixty-six years.

  How could I be so stupid?

  Claire was the Palmetto Foundation’s Vice President of Development. Her job was to identify families with at least five thousand dollars to give away and help them structure their gifts for medical research, children at risk, whatever.

  She was a natural, glowing around donors, opening wallets with the best. She made families believe in the power of giving. She taught them the importance of a philanthropic culture in the home. Everybody trusted Claire Kincaid.

  Palmer’s friends often said she would make an “awesome mom,” a high accolade that gave him hope.

  “See you Monday, sweetheart.” He was mustering his resources, putting on a good show.

  Claire glanced at her watch and feigned disapproval. “And where are you going, mister?”

  Palmer marveled that his daughter could stay fresh, both clothes and attitude, through a humid September afternoon. She had a sweep of satiny brown hair, tidy and medium length. Her eyes were clear, free of judgment. Her skin was smooth, flawless, unsullied by the worries that come from society games. She was growing more gracious with age, just like her mother, who’d always had a kind word for everybody.

  “Night sailing on Bounder.” He mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

  “Oh, fun. May I come?”

  “Not tonight, sweetheart.”

  “I won’t ask Mikey,” she persisted, slightly hurt.

  Claire’s latest boyfriend was a turkey. Palmer would rather slit his wrists than spend five minutes at sea with that guy. But he avoided the urge to make a disparaging remark.

  Smiling, eyes twinkling, and stomach somersaulting, Palmer shook his head. “He’s not invited either.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Nope.”

  Claire paused. Her dad’s reply felt too breezy for her comfort. “You’re not yourself.”

  “I need some space tonight.”

  One floor down Palmer stopped by JoJo’s office, high ceilings and bold chocolate-brown walls. Her dachshund, Holly, big-dog attitude compressed into a small body, jumped up and sniffed his wingtips. Tail wagging like crazy.

  JoJo was sitting on an overstuffed red chintz settee. Her knees were bent, Jimmy Choos tucked underneath. She gunned Spanish into the mouthpiece of her headset, so fast that Palmer couldn’t tell where one sentence began and another ended.

  He had taken the language all through high school. A total waste, he’d realized on more than one occasion. Sometimes JoJo would tease him and deadpan in the slow, elongated Spanish she reserved for foreigners, “Usted habla español como un gringo.”

  Seeing him, JoJo sprang from the sofa and stuck the landing on four-inch heels. Never stopped talking on the phone. Never missed a beat. Not so much as a pause. Palmer mouthed the words “I’m going sailing,” whereupon she fussed his hair into place, shifted her mouthpiece, and kissed him square and sloppy.

  JoJo dabbed traces of Crimson Blush, her favorite shade of lipstick, from his mouth. Her deft touch bordered on foreplay, though it was nothing more than simple affection. “Qué pasa? Qué pasa?” she echoed into the phone, happy and excited, unable to rein back her enthusiasm.

  The two made an odd couple. Not so much the difference in their ages: JoJo was thirty-nine; he had a false hip. It was the way they paced through life. Palmer was the classic Southern gentleman, never in a hurry, always slow and methodical, as though the earth would delay its rotation until he caught up. She was kinetic, touching, talking, and tempting.

  For an instant JoJo fixed on Palmer. He saw the concern flash across her golden mocha features, her brown eyes dark and almond-shaped, dilated with worry. Palmer smiled double wide, as though closing a deal, and cupped JoJo’s cheek until she twinkled back and all the angst disappeared.

  With that he headed down onto Broad Street and into the Charleston evening, still muggy at 5:30 P.M. Just once he glanced over his shoulder at his building, yellow stucco, big soaring windows, the place he dubbed “our world headquarters,” only half in jest.

  These days the Palmetto Foundation made him sick. Walking inside was pure torture, the air rank with stupidity and regret. Leaving was hardly any better. Because from the outside, Palmer’s house of good intentions looked more like a tombstone than his shot at redemption. As far as he was concerned, the epitaph should read:

  HERE’S WHERE KINCAID FUCKED UP.

  * * *

  It was 9:30 P.M.

  The sun had gone down. Sea breezes chased the heat, and rising tides drowned the marshy stink of pluff mud. There were no mosquitoes, none of the flying insects that enjoy air supremacy over Charleston. There was just the hypnotizing chop of water, Bounder rocking in the ocean’s cradle. It was a night that made the day easy to forget.

  Palmer stared at the Cooper River Bridge. His eyes traced the pillars to the flickering of traffic overhead, to the soft light of the crescent moon. His lungs savored the salty air, his ears the symphony of buoys and navigational bells playing the harbor at night.

  After a while, Palmer’s eyes dropped to the ocean’s surface. He lost himself in the occasional flash of dolphins breaking the water, the silvery glint of baitfish stirring the surface in desperate attempts to elude their predators. No way he was pulling up anchor and going home, not anytime soon.

  Now, halfway through the bottle, Palmer poured another shot of Wild Turkey. He knocked it back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He felt the fire rake his throat, the hot-chill liquid sliding down his pipes.

  Alcohol is Advil for stupidity.

  Palmer had boiled a pound of king-sized shrimp for dinner and was down to the last few. He peeled one, tossed the head and shell over the gunwale, and thrust the shrimp into a bowl of his special cocktail sauce.

  It had taken him exactly three tries to perfect the formula, which was nothing more than the generic brand plumped up with horseradish and Peter Luger’s steak sauce. He laughed when he considered all the people who had offered to pay for the recipe.

  The stars, the open night, made everything okay. Behind prison bars, he would lose this peace, the swells and salty smell of sea, the shadowy views of Charleston brushed by moonlight.

  He might go a year without seeing JoJo or Claire, maybe several depending on how things played out. He had no idea what the courts would decide. But the more he drank, the less he cared about what happened to him. It was time to protect his wife and daughter. No matter what.

  In Wild Tu
rkey, wisdom.

  On Monday he’d call his lawyer. He’d fall on a sword and take one for the team. Avoiding the law was an unacceptable risk, one Palmer refused to take with his family’s safety at stake.

  Afterward, he’d call Grove. That kid had navigated more than his fair share of problems. He was a guy Palmer could trust, smart and rock-solid reliable even if a little slow to take action.

  “Sometimes you do the best you can and just say fuck it,” Palmer observed to no one in particular.

  “Is that any way for a good Catholic to speak?”

  Palmer almost leaped out of his skin. He whirled toward the cabin. What he saw made him sick.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NARRAGANSETT, RHODE ISLAND

  SATURDAY

  Annie and I had driven up to my beach house in Rhode Island for the weekend. Years ago, she was my sales assistant at SKC. Now she’s getting her master’s in creative writing at Columbia.

  I’m glad she decided against law school. Quick and whip smart, my girlfriend would make a great attorney. But the world doesn’t need another litigator who bills at nine hundred dollars an hour. And I doubt she’d be happy anyway.

  It was 10:15 A.M. Annie was at the house surgically attached to her laptop. She had a short story due Monday. I was laboring through a kickboxing class, my instructor beating the crap out of me.

  “Where’s your head, Grove?”

  “Sorry.”

  I couldn’t focus. I was thinking about Palmer. The coach’s three-step exercise was simple enough. Left jab. Right cross. But when I reached the roundhouse kick, he leg-swept my feet from underneath me.

  “Pay attention.” My instructor is a big guy, solid, six foot two, built like a tank. I had never seen him so frustrated. “You asked to join my academy. Remember?”

  “Sorry.”

  My apology, number two in as many minutes, was lip service. You don’t grow up with a self-assured demigod, listen to him shake and hesitate over the phone, and park your concerns at the door to a martial arts studio. Not when the guy’s been a pillar all your life.

  Last night, I dialed Palmer’s cell from the road. Same thing this morning before class. I tried his office. And when that didn’t work, I phoned his home on South Battery. I wanted to ask, “Is everything okay?”

  A machine answered each time. “It’s Palmer. Leave a message.” His recorded voice, the trademark whisper of a Southern drawl, resonated just as soft and sweet as the real thing.

  “Left jab,” my coach barked.

  Bam. I smacked his hand pads, the crack from my glove reverberating like a snare drum.

  “Right cross.”

  Bam.

  “Roundhouse kick.”

  No bam this time. My coach took my legs out from underneath me, again.

  “What about your bike races?” he growled.

  He was right. I had signed up for kickboxing lessons to improve my reflexes for those tight finishes when the slightest hesitation separates first place from fourth. The classes were a good workout. But cycling is my sport, cross training my way to win more races.

  “Sorry.”

  “You say that again, and I’m taking you down.”

  Try as I might to pay attention, it was all Palmer that morning. His four words were haunting: “I need your help.”

  I told myself once, maybe a hundred times during the kickboxing session, Palmer’s fine. Stop being so alarmist.

  The admonitions didn’t work.

  “Left jab.”

  Bam.

  “Right cross.”

  Bam.

  “Roundhouse kick.”

  This time my coach clubbed the right side of my head with his pads, which, cushion or no cushion, stung like a bastard. “You got no street in you. Somebody’s gonna pop you outside of class, and you won’t know what to do.”

  My eyes narrowed.

  He saw the anger. “Take a shot.”

  I took my fighting stance, left leg forward.

  He waited, expecting one of those endless combo drills that dominate our exercise routines. My ear smarted. And me being the sensitive guy I am—always sucking it up until my temper takes over—I wanted to kick his ass. I jumped and twisted in midair, my right shin wheeling around and leveled at his head. Make no mistake: I was going for blood.

  The coach ducked, low enough to avoid serious contact. I still managed to swipe his clean-shaven pate. After about ten lessons, it was the closest I had ever come to landing a real blow. And cuffing him felt glorious.

  He was surprised. His mouth curled up to the right—smile, smirk, a hint of respect. He continued to circle. “Nice, man, real nice. But in a street fight, nobody’s gonna wait for you to wake up.”

  I waited, fuming, not thinking about what he said. I watched for an opening, ready to jump and take down my coach with a spinning hook-heel kick, anything to get even.

  “Enough for one day, Grove. Your legwork’s good. Must be all that cycling, because it sure as hell isn’t your concentration.”

  “You want to come riding with me?” I was throwing down the gauntlet. I could take him in a bike race, no sweat.

  “Thanks, man. Can’t.”

  Palmer never called Saturday, which was odd. We don’t worry about bothering each other on the weekends. We’re long past that. I knew something wasn’t right. And my instincts were eating me from the inside out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

  “What’s your wife say?”

  “About what?” The crew boss rubbed his temples. He was trying to forget last night’s special, the dazzling kick line of two-for-one tequila. He wished the kid would shut up and leave him alone.

  “Us working Saturday.”

  “Says she needs the time off.”

  “From what?”

  “Me.”

  “Hah!” the kid chortled. “Go figure.”

  “Shut up.”

  There were five men working a job near exit 55 on I-95. They had taken two pickup trucks, one equipped with a cherry picker. The telescoping boom reached forty feet no problem, important for the big jobs.

  Everyone on the crew wore a blue construction helmet and a body harness, company policy at Smithfield Outdoor Media for employees going up. A sticker on the kid’s helmet read, I STILL MISS MY EX, BUT MY AIM IS IMPROVING. The decal was not standard at the billboard company.

  They had driven south from corporate headquarters, forty-five minutes through the dense stands of pine and cypress. Saturday morning or not, it was like any other day on the North Carolina freeway. Flying insects detonated against windshields, splattering in yellow cones. Heat wafted off the tarmac in double helixes of Southern ennui. And aging northerners gunned their Cadillacs south. The winter pilgrimage to Florida was under way.

  An endless procession of billboards broke the monotony of open road. They promoted fast food, hotels, and chains of every kind. By far, the displays from South of the Border were the most annoying, its one-liners legendary. One after another, they exhorted drivers to pull over and flex their credit cards at the decaying theme park on the Carolina border:

  FILL UP YOUR TRUNK WITH PEDRO’S JUNK.

  HONEYMOON SUITES: HEIR CONDITIONED.

  KEEP YELLING, KIDS! (THEY’LL STOP.)

  Soon, one lone billboard would steal all the attention from Pedro, South of the Border, and the blight of signs along I-95. The five men were about to ignite a firestorm. They knew it. So did the owner of Smithfield Outdoor Media. He’d agreed to post the advertisement only after negotiating top dollar and a hold-harmless agreement.

  * * *

  Greater Fayetteville, pronounced “Fed-vull” by the locals, is 200,000 people strong. It’s an eclectic place, where patriotic residents take pride in the military presence. Were it not for the armed forces, Fayetteville might be another one of those countless two-blink towns that sprout like mushrooms along muggy Southern highways.

  Thousands of soldiers, hailing from every sta
te in the nation, are stationed at nearby Fort Bragg and Pope Army Airfield. They train and run military maneuvers, which make armed caravans a common sight. Many troops deploy to the Middle East, leaving their loved ones behind.

  When the soldiers return, local television stations broadcast joyous reunions at Pope. Couples kiss. Little kids hug their mommies or daddies. Everybody has a good cry. And during those moments, parents forget their worries about tight budgets and mortgage payments.

  Some families—they’re more the exception than the rule—have lived in Fayetteville for generations. They’re fiercely proud of their heritage and bristle at the occasional mention of “Fayettenam,” military-speak ever since the Vietnam War. The historic district, long-timers note, may be small. But it’s bursting with Southern charm, with the craftsmanship and detail orientation that predated the military’s arrival en masse.

  For the most part the communities are full of hardworking families. Parents take jobs with local businesses that provide services to those living steady lives in tidy neighborhoods. There are big wheels in front of the houses, dogs and cats everywhere.

  Neighbors are always getting together for backyard barbecues. They talk football and local politics. They plan day trips to places like Mount Olive, birthplace to the pickles that line supermarket shelves across the country. Or they compare notes about more distant locations, historic resorts like New Bern on the coast.

  But Fayetteville, however all-American, suffers a unique misfortune. Located halfway between New York City and Miami, it serves as a convenient hub for the East Coast drug trade. The area’s combustible mix of soldiers on furlough, lonely spouses, and a steady supply of recreational drugs makes the city prone to spectacular, sometimes sordid events.

  * * *

  In Fayetteville 28312, where the five men from Smithfield Outdoor Media were working, there were fifty-six churches in total. Twenty-four of them were Baptist. The residents, young or old, military or otherwise, were God-fearing folk for the most part. Sunday services buttressed their lives like the pillars inside the various houses of worship.

  Neighbors were accustomed to freeway billboards. Many signs were visible from their backyards because of size and shape. But the new advertisement was a real monster. It soared forty feet in the air, high atop a thick metal pylon. The ad space measured fourteen feet by forty-eight feet. And powerful spotlights illuminated the message dusk till dawn.