Along Came a Spider

I told her. “About the so-called news story, though. It’s going to be impossible for a week or so. Then nobody will care very much.”
    Nana shook her head. Her little white helmet of hair turned neatly in place. “No. People
will
care. Some people will remember this for the rest of your life. What’s that saying? ’If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’ ”
    I asked her, “What was the crime?”
    Nana used the back of her knife to clear away toast crumbs. “You’ll have to tell me that yourself. Why are you and Jezzie Flanagan sneaking around if everything is aboveboard? If you love her, you love her. Do you love her, Alex?”
    I didn’t answer Nana right away. Of course I loved Jezzie. But how much? And where was it going? Did it have to be going somewhere?
    “I don’t know for sure, at least not in the way I think you’re asking the question,” I finally said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out now. We both know the consequences of what we’re doing.”
    “If you love her for sure, Alex,” my grandmother said to me, “then I love her. I love you, Alex. You just paint on a very large canvas. Sometimes you’re too bright for your own good. And you can be very peculiar — by the ways of the white world.”
    “And that’s why you like me so much,” I said to her.
    She said, “It’s just one of the reasons, sonny boy.”
    My grandmother and I held each other for a long moment at the breakfast table that morning. I am big and strong; Nana is tiny, frail, but just as strong. It seemed like old times, in the sense that you never really grow up completely, not around your parents or grandparents. Not around Nana Mama, certainly.
    “Thank you,
old woman
,” I said to her.
    “And
proud
of it.” As usual, she had the last word.

    I called Jezzie a few times that morning, but she wasn’t home, or she wasn’t answering her phone. Her answering machine wasn’t on, either. I thought about our night in Arlington. She’d been so wired. Even before the
National Star
had arrived on the scene.
    I thought about driving over to her apartment, but I changed my mind. We didn’t need any more tabloid photographs or news stories while the trial was winding down.
    Nobody said much to me at work that day. If I’d had any doubts before, that showed me how serious the damage was. I’d taken a hit, all right.
    I went to my office and sat there all alone with a container of black coffee and stared at the four walls. They were covered with “clues” from the kidnapping. I was starting to feel guilty, and rebellious, and angry. I wanted to punch glass, which I’d actually done once or twice after Maria was shot.
    I was at my government-issue, gunmetal desk, facing away from the door. I’d been staring at my work schedule for the week, but I wasn’t really seeing anything written on the sheet.
    “You’re in this one all alone, motherfucker,” I heard Sampson say at my back. “You’re all by your lonesome this time. You are meat cooked on a barbecue spit.”
    “Don’t you think you’re understating things a little?’ I said without turning to him.
    “I figured you’d talk when you wanted to talk about it,” Sampson said. “You knew that
I knew
about the two of you.”
    A couple of coffee-cup rings on the work schedules held my eye. The Browning effect? What the hell was that? My memory and everything else were deserting me lately.
    I finally turned around and faced him. He was decked out in leather pants, an old Kangol hat, a black nylon vest. His dark glasses were an effective mask. Actually, he was trying to be charming and softhearted.
    “What do you figure is going on now?” I asked him. “What are they saying?”
    “Nobody’s real happy about the way the holy-shit kidnapping case has gone down. Not enough ’attaboys’ coming down from upstairs. I guess they’re lining up potential sacrificial lambs. You’re one of them for sure.”
    “And Jezzie?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.
    “She’s one, too. Associating with known Negroes,” Sampson said. “I take it you haven’t heard the news?”
    “Heard what news?”
    Sampson let out a short burst of breath, then he gave me the latest hot-breaking story.
    “She took a leave of absence, or maybe she left the Service altogether. Happened about an hour ago, Alex. Nobody knows for sure if she jumped or was pushed.”
    I called Jezzie’s office immediately. The secretary said that she was “gone for