Speaking In Tongues

10

Joshua LeFevre glanced down at the odometer. He’d driven another twenty miles along I- 66 in his battered old Toyota since the last time he’d checked. Which put him about seventy miles from Fairfax.

Mr. Tibbs, the unflappable police detective within him, had finally figured out where Megan and her therapist lover were going: to the doctor’s mountain place. It was now chic for professionals to have vacation homes in the Blue Ridge or in West Virginia, where you could buy a whole mountaintop for a song.

The rain had stopped and he cranked the sunroof open, listening to the wind hissing through the Yakima bike rack on the roof.

It was early afternoon when he broke through the Shenandoahs and saw the hazy Blue Ridge in front of him. The rolling hills’ were not evocative gunmetal today, the literature major in him thought, but were tinted with the green frost of spring growth. Recalling that he and Megan had talked about a bike tour along Skyline Drive, which crested the ridge, later in the spring.

Without the rain LeFevre could see more clearly now and he realized that only the doctor was visible in the car. Where was Megan? Taking a nap? Wait… Was her head resting in his lap?

He was considering this appalling thought, distracted and angry, when the Mercedes got away from him.

Never would have happened to Sidney Poitier.

Damn.

The Merce had pulled out to pass a semi and he’d followed. But as soon as the big gray car had cleared the cab of the truck the doctor had steered hard to the right and pulled onto the exit ramp as the truck driver laid on his air horn and braked.

LeFevre’s Toyota was caught in the left lane and he couldn’t swerve back in time to make the exit.

His head swiveled and he saw the roof of the Mercedes sink below the level of the highway as it slowed on the ramp.

LeFevre slammed his fists on the wheel. Tantrums were definitely not Poitier’s style but he couldn’t help it. He thought about making an illegal U over the median, but he was a black kid with knobby dreads driving through the crucible of the Confederacy; the fewer laws he broke, the better.

The next exit was a mile down the highway and by the time he’d followed the Mobius strip of ramps and returned to the exit the Mercedes had taken, there was no sign of the big car-only an intersection of three different country roads, any one of which they might have taken.

And now that he thought about it, the doctor might just have stopped for gas and gotten back on to the interstate, continuing west.

He closed his eyes in frustration and pressed back hard into the headrest. Metal snapped.

What the hell’m I doing here?

The stuff love makes you do, he thought.

Hate it, hate it, hate it…

LeFevre pulled into the gas station, filled up at the self-service island then walked up to the ski

“How you doing?” Sidney Poitier asked very politely.

“Okay yourself?” the man muttered.

“Not bad. Not bad.”

The man stared at LeFevre’s hair, which was not exactly modeled on Mr. Poitier’s, circa 1967, but was much closer to a rap star’s.

“Helpya?”

It occurred to LeFevre that even Officer Tibbs, in suit, tie and polished oxfords, wouldn’t get a lot of cooperation from a guy like this by asking which way a seventy-thousand-dollar automobile had just gone.

At least, not without some incentive.

LeFevre opened his wallet and extracted five twenties. Looked down at them.

So did the attendant. “That’s cash.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You charged your gas. I seen you.”

“I did.”

“Well, whatsitfor?” The grimy hair swung as he nodded at the money.

“It’s for you,” LeFevre said in his most carefully crafted queen’s English.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Why’s it for me?” The man seemed to sneer.

“I have a little problem.”

The stubbly face asked, Who cares?

“I was driving down sixty-six and this Mercedes cut me off, ran me off the road. Nearly killed me.” (This had happened to Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night. More or less.) “Did it on purpose. The driver, I mean.”

“Don’t say.” The man yawned.

“Front end’s all screwed up now. And see what kind of bodywork I’ll need?”

Thank goodness, LeFevre thought. He’d never fixed the damage after he’d scraped the side of the car on a barricade when he’d dropped his mother off at Neiman Marcus in Tysons Corner last month.

The attendant looked at the car without a splinter of interest.

“So you want me to look at the front end?”

“No, I want the license number of that Mercedes. He came by here five, ten minutes ago. I was hoping he stopped here for gas.”

This had seemed like a good way to break the ice-asking for the license number. It made things official-as if the police were going to get involved. LeFevre believed this trick was definitely something that Sidney Poitier would do.

“Why’d he run you off the road?” the man asked abruptly.

Which brought LeFevre up cold.

“Well, I don’t know.” LeFevre shrugged. Then he asked, “You know which car I mean?” He remained respectful but asked this firmly. He’d decided not to be too polite. Sidney Poitier had glared at Rod Steiger quite a bit.

“Maybe.”

“So he stopped here for gas.”

“Nope.” The scrawny guy looked at the money. Then he shook his head; his slick grin gave LeFevre an unpleasant glimpse of bad teeth. “Fuck. Why’re you bullshittin’ me? You don’t want that tag number.”

“Um, I-”

“What you want is to find out where that sumvabitch lives. Am I right?”

“Well…”

“An’ I’ll tell you why you want that.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause he was drivin’ his big old Mercedes and he thunk t’himself,

Why, here’s a black man-only he was thinking the N-word-driving a little shit Jap car and I can cut him off ‘cause he don’t mean shit to me and he don’t got the balls to complain to nobody ‘bout it.” A faint laugh.

“And you don’t want no tag number for State Farm Insurance or the po-leece. Fuck. You wa

So, end of story. Well, it was a nice try. LeFevre was about to put the money away and return to his car-before the man called some real-life Rod Steigers-when the attendant shook his head and said, “God bless you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That frosts me, what he done. Truly does.”

“I’m sorry?” LeFevre repeated.

“I mean, I got friends’re black. Couple of ‘em. And we have a good time together and one of ‘em’s wife cooks for me and my girlfriend nearly every week.”

“Well, is that right?”

“Fuck, yeah, that’s right.” The twenties were suddenly in the man’s stained fingers. “I say, more power to you. Find him and wail on him all you want. I know that sumvabitch.”

“The man in the Mercedes?”

“Yeah.”

“Dr. Hanson, right?”

“I don’t know his name. But I seen him off and on for a spell. He comes and goes. Never stops here-probably thinks my gas ain’t good enough-but I seen him. Pisses me off royal, people like him. Moving everybody down the mountain.”

“What do you mean, ‘moving down the mountain’?” Sidney Poitier asked politely, smiling now and giving the man plenty of thinking room.

“See, what happened was, when folk settled here they moved to the top of the Ridge. Naturally, where else? That’s the best part. But they couldn’t keep the land, most of ‘em. Money troubles, you know. Taxes. So they kept selling to the government for the park or to rich folks wanted a weekend place, and families kept moving down the mountain, Now, most everybody’s in the valley-most of the honest folk, I mean. Pretty soon there won’t be no mountains left ‘cept for the rich pricks and the government. ‘S what my dad says. Makes sense to me.”