April produced another warm day, the kind with no clouds and a crisp blue sky. Manny met me downtown for lunch and we walked along the row of market vendors hawking wares grown in Floyd and Franklin County and Botetourt. The fruit wasn’t ripe yet, so I bought a loaf of yeast bread, homemade honey peanut butter, and strawberry preserves. We were contemplating vegetables and cold cuts when Manny spotted a clue.
“Ah hah,” he said.
“You don’t say Ah hah. Only I say Ah hah.”
“I spotted a señorita in distress.” He pointed across Market Street to a small table outside Jack Brown’s burger joint. Ronnie Summers sat there with two men, waiting for lunch.
“Ah hah,” I said.
“That’s what I thought. We gonna…what’cha call it?”
“Instigate mischief. Yes.”
“Because of jealous rage?” he asked.
“You betcha.”
I purchased a pint carton of cherry tomatoes and we lined up across from her table, thirty yards distant. I threw a tomato, which arced over the street. My distance was perfect but the aim was lacking, and the tomato bounced harmlessly against the wall.
Manny went next. His parabola was notably less noble than mine, and I told him so, and he connected solidly with Jack Brown’s display window.
The tomato’s impact got Ronnie’s attention. Her two male suitors were too involved with her many perfections and their own excitations to notice.
I threw again, missing, but Ronnie saw us.
The market vendors observed our fatuous onslaught with dismay, but no one was brave enough to reproach Manny. He had that effect. And a badge.
Ronnie covered her mouth with one hand. With the other she picked up her cell.
My phone buzzed.
>> You two are children.
>> Don’t go anywhere! I’ll order you both a hamburger and join you for lunch. Purchase a bottle of wine, please, at the store behind you. Something chilled.
>> These guys are ass hats anyway.
Manny threw once more and connected with the shoulder of Ronnie’s friend. The guy sat straighter and turned but Manny and I were already hiding behind a delivery truck.
“What are we doing, señor?” he said.
“Acting puerile and precocious.”
“Stupid words. I am not an hombre who hides.”
“I do it all the time. Called snooping.”
“We snooping right now?” he said.
“More like, getting free hamburgers from Jack Brown’s burger joint. Let’s go before the tiny lawyers threaten us with scary litigation.”
Ronnie arrived twenty minutes later bearing two greasy translucent bags. Her scent combined with the hamburgers’ and I had never been so happy.
“Who were you eating with, señorita?” said Manny.
“Sycophants. Idiots after a date and a settlement to a personal injury case.”
She distributed the hamburgers and fries, and I poured white wine into plastic cups. Ronnie wore khakis and she kicked off her heels, and we sat on my rug crisscross. She daintily sipped her wine; Manny removed the bun from his burger and carved off chunks of beef and bacon with a knife and fork; I ate like a savage.
“Will you?” I said.
“Go on a date with the ass hats? Absolutely not. Settle the case? Not until they add a zero.”
“They’re offering a hundred grand but you want a million?” said Manny.
“Something like that.”
“Aggressive,” I noted.
She smiled at me. Such a preternaturally arresting sight that Manny and I paused eating to admire it.
“Yes. I am. My track record with judges and juries is sterling, so I can demand a lot.”
“We should feel grateful that a demanding, fearsome, and sterling attorney bought us lunch, eh amigo?”
“You should, yes,” she said. “But it was my pleasure. I’m demanding, aggressive, fearsome, but also rich.”
“You’re rich?”
She shrugged. It was a good motion; she knew it was a good motion; so did we.
“Relatively. I am the proprietor of my own law firm, and you boys chose professions that limit your significant earning potential. I bet my salary laps your combined income. But then I spend it all on shoes, so who knows.”
“I spend mine on diapers,” I said.
“And me? Expensive tequila and more expensive watches,” said Manny.
Ronnie raised her plastic cup.
“A toast. To you two, Roanoke’s most desirable and destitute fighters of injustice and sin. And to me; all the eligible women within fifty miles would kill to sit where I am.”
We banged plastic cups together and drank.
“What injury has your client sustained?” I asked.
“He broke his scapula on a malfunctioning escalator.”
“And you’re asking a million.”
“I am.”
“For a broken scapula?”
“No, silly.” She finished a french fry and carefully wiped her fingers and her lips with a napkin. “Not for a broken scapula. That’s not how our justice system works. I can ask that much because my client is a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old Grecian boy in med school who cries easily. He will tell the opposing counsel, and the judge, and the jury if necessary, that his hopes of being a surgeon are ruined, even though that’s not provable. It’s not his scapula that will get a million; it’s his dreamy appearance, his dashed dreams, and my aforementioned track record.”
“I have concerns,” I said, “about the robust goodness of our courts.”
“You should. Speaking of goodness and cases, how is yours?”
I told her, not omitting names any longer. About the accusations and the religious megastar. About Jeremy Cameron and the missing kid. About the secrets and the suppressed pain. I didn’t realize how angry I was until it began flowing. I was on my feet and pacing by the end.
“I know Father Louis,” she said. “We were at a cocktail thing last week. He’s as sexy as sixty gets.”
“He hit on you?” said Manny.
“He did not.”
“Ay dios mio. He is gay.”
“Why’re you so angry, Mackenzie?” she said.
“Lots of reasons.”
“Because the priest is gay?”
“It’s not the gender of his victims that bothers me.”
“Most Christians consider homosexuality a sin, right?”
“Tendentious but true,” I said.
“Do you not take sin seriously?”
“I take it seriously enough to know I shouldn’t be the judge. I leave that to God. I assume he’s better at it, after all. You’re talking to a guy who spent ten years in Los Angeles, working homicide. Pulling bullets out of bodies and trying to find the guy who fired them. Consoling grieving families and orphaned kids. My opinion, God takes sin even more seriously than I do. But of greater concern to him than the gender is the assault itself.”
“So tell me why you’re angrier than usual,” she said.
“Because I’m a little stuck. There are people I need answers from but I don’t want to push hard, because they’re already under duress. Because our culture crushes whistleblowers for doing the right thing. Because I like the church and it’s under attack. Because a kid is missing and I’m worried I helped cause it. This thing went from a simple ‘employment’ case—trying to prove a man is unfaithful to his wife and ergo his profession—to a larger and more important investigation and I’m on an unforgiving clock, especially if Alec is being held somewhere.”
“There’s another reason he’s angry,” said Manny.
“Which is?” Ronnie asked.
“You’re the third person to insinuate Mack would care more about the homosexuality than the assault.”
“I meant no offense. In fact that’s not what I meant at all. I know Mackenzie; he’s not that sensitive,” she said.
“He didn’t take offense, that’s not it. It’s that the questions are…indicative, that right? The questions are indicative of society. It’s that, he doesn’t want the gay man to have kidnapped the kid. Right?”
I nodded. “I think Louis took him. But I don’t want it to be true.”
“Because he’s gay?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She pursed and tapped her lips. Scrutinized me a moment.
“I think I get it. You’re worried that if Father Louis took Alec Ward, it will reinforce the false stereotypes.”
“Yes.”
“The false stereotype that all Christians have got it in for the LGBT crowd. Or that homosexuals are pedophiles, you don’t want to perpetuate that. Yet the results of your investigation might incidentally give credence to the stereotypes, potentially creating a greater rift between the local church and the gay community,” she said.
“I hadn’t adumbrated it quite so clearly in my mind. But yes.”
“You can’t save everyone, Mackenzie.
“I’m not trying.”
“Yes you are,” she said.
“How so.”
“You want to save Alec Ward. You want to save Jeremy What’s His Name, the clergy kid. You want to rescue the church from their mess. And you want to preserve homosexuals from bad press.”
“And me, you let me sleep on your floor,” said Manny.
“Lastly,” she said, “on some level, you’re trying to save me.”
“Nerds,” I said. “You two are nerds.”
“You are, though. You think I shouldn’t marry Darren and you want to rescue me from it.”
“First of all, Darren is a stupid name. And second, I’m not interested in saving you,” I said.
“I hope that’s not true. Because believing it helps me fall asleep at night.”
“In this instance, unless it’s far worse than I know, you can save yourself. Even though it’s hard. And if I interfere, I’ll be sending the signal that you can’t. That I don’t believe you could, which isn’t true.”
“Oh.” She stared at her empty cup. “Would that be so bad?”
“I think so. It would put us on uneven footing. And if we have any future together, a fun but doubtful dream, I wouldn’t want to begin it with an unfair or false moral advantage.”
She grew somber. Her cheeks colored and she inspected her toes. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”
“Some girls are worth it.”
“At every turn, Mackenzie, I am reminded of your depth. It is always a pleasant and humbling surprise.”
“And I say,” said Manny and he finished his wine, “white people think about stuff too much.”