He insisted upon meeting her in an alley. Downtown.
"Beyond ridiculous." She called Gayle beforehand as a precaution in the event of a dumpster-related demise.
"How did you get in touch with him?"
"Phone book. Same last name."
"Hard to think of him having a last name. Mac just . . . seems so definitive. Anyway, why the secrecy?"
Kelly sighed. "I have to buy them. Cash. I guess he doesn't want the rest of the family to know."
"They'd rather keep the pictures private."
"Actually, he's afraid they'll want a cut. The mother, I guess. Doesn't have to worry about the sister, does he. And no dad in the story that anybody knows."
"Okay. So be careful. Your brother will be appreciative. I'll make sure of it. And then, you're going over to that, that school for preliminary on the idea we had, right?"
"I'm gone."
"Oh. Oh." Kelly said, bumbling into the small office, scrambling to keep her stack together. "Tee Nine See? Mrs Roberdeau?"
A severe black woman looked up with a kind of affronted curiosity. "You're spelling it. Say Te-Nine-cee fast. It's an old timey local dialect variant of tiny, which, hard to believe now, I was as an infant."
"Oh." Kelly introduced herself and went through her canned spiel about a story on the upcoming role of computers in schools. "You'd make a great perspective."
"Do you mean because I am black?"
"Oh no no no no, no worry, no . . "
"A woman in computers? Is that what you mean?"
"Of course not. I, I . . ." Kelly took a seat, explaining the new series she was pitching. T9C listened with one eye remaining on the open manual before her. Kelly shifted the stack of photographs from one knee to the other, one eye distracted in the same manner.
"You putting together a family scrapbook?"
"Huh? Oh, no, no ... my brother—he's writing a book and I got these for him—"
"I've seen that man."
"Oh no, ma'am, I don't think so."
Mainly school-issue photos, individuals or groups of two. A joke-take of one man putting a knuckle-burn on another man's head, with the resulting strains of humiliation.
"I know I have. I mean, in the paper, yes, he's the one charged with the Reverend Doctor's murder I'm aware, but I've seen him."
"That was probably when I interviewed him on TV, I was the first—"
"I don't watch your channel."
"Oh. Well. I guess you could consider this a formal invitation—"
"The night my friend died. I had just been to see her—"
"Oh. I'm sorry your friend died. Was she—?"
"It wasn't then. It happened later in the night. I had to come back. But it makes me think, the night the Reverend died, that was the same night. About what time did happen, you ought to know?"
"Hmmm, I don't think there was an exact determination—"
"You know, if he was over here on Renwick, and Black Bayou Lake so far up north of town—"
"I'm not saying I know, but there's all kinds of things we don't know about the situation which the police do, and it's been pretty well established that he's the only one—"
"You think it was him? Because you interviewed him?"
"No no no, actually, I knew him, knew him before all this—"
"So you think he's the kind of person—does he fit the profile? Were you ever frightened of him?"
"Gosh, I hadn't meant to stay so long, keeping you from your work, I can call you if you think it's okay to do this piece on you, you don't have to—" Spilling photos on the way out.
One way of being rid of that white woman.
