The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.

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СКАЧАТЬ chandelier resembling a wedding cake iced with glass. The edges of the cavernous room were columned every dozen feet, walls of dark velvet. Forty board feet of food waited at the rear: carved roasts of beef, glazed hams, shrimp, crab cakes, cheeses, breads, sweets. A fountain dribbled minted punch. Three ice sculptures rose above the food: two swans and a four-foot-tall Channel 14 logo.

      Three bars were at the edges of the room, black-vested barkeeps already pouring fast to manage demand. On the stage, a ten-piece band tuned up.

      The round tables were filling fast with employees and clients and guests. I saw a vacant table near the stage. I couldn’t figure out why it was empty until close enough to see a tabletop placard announcing, RESERVED. We took a table with staffers from the station. Unfortunately, I was the only attendee in a gunslinger tuxedo.

      The band kicked in and we launched into the mingle portion of the program, Dani moving like a dervish, barking “Hey-yas” and “How-de-dos” and spinning from one clot of revelers to the next. I finally got to meet the news director she adored, a shambling, fiftyish guy named Laurel Hollings. Hollings had missed a button on his shirt, mumbled when he spoke. He kept checking his phone, maybe hoping some major catastrophe might pull him from the event. I liked Hollings from the git-go, even more when he expressed admiration for my tuxedo, saying he wished he “had the balls to wear something like that”.

      Dani talked shop with reporters, discussed industry trends with home-office types, schmoozed station clients – car dealers, realtors, mobile-home manufacturers, supermarket owners – with either modest propriety or bawdy wit, depending on the client. After a half-hour, she called for a minute off her feet.

      The closest chairs were at the still-empty RESERVED table. I set my beer on the white tablecloth and took a seat, gnawing a roll while she slipped off her shoes and squeezed her toes, cursing the inventor of high heels.

      “Excuse me, sir,” said a voice at my back and a finger tap on my shoulder. I swiveled to a pout-mouthed man wearing a bow tie, purple vest, and a name card announcing EVENT MANAGER.

      I set my roll on the table, picked up my drink. “Yes?”

      “I’m sorry, but this table’s waiting for someone.” He pointed to the RESERVED card. I saw his glance take in crumbs of roll on the tabletop and a damp circle from my drink.

      “The lady’s resting her feet. If the table’s owners arrive, we’ll move.”

      “I’m sorry,” he said, ice on his vocal cords. “No one can sit here.”

      “I hate to disagree with you, sport …” I said, about to point out we were already sitting. Dani heard my voice shift to the one I use for supercilious assholes. Her fingers tapped my wrist.

      “Don’t be that way, Carson. There’s a table across the way. Follow me.”

      We moved, EVENT MANAGER signaled for the bus staff to change the RESERVED tablecloth, like I’d left some kind of stink on the table.

      The band stuttered to a halt in the middle of a rhythmically challenged “Smoke on the Water”, launching into “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here”. Heads swung to the door. A party of three men and three women gathered atop the marble steps as two photographers raced to shoot pictures. Behind this nucleus were several other men and women.

      Forefront in the vanguard group was a tall, fortyish man with an older woman on his arm. She was the one person in the group who didn’t look direct from a Vogue eveningwear issue: white-haired, plank-faced, pale, eyes as dark as coal. A large woman, she wasn’t obese, but sturdy, a prize Holstein in a designer toga.

      The tall man escorted her to the unoccupied table as pout-mouth whisked away the RESERVED placard. Only after she had sat and nodded did the others take seats.

      I chuckled at the spectacle. “Looks like Buckingham Palace let out.”

      “It’s the Kincannons, Carson. Surely you’ve heard of them.”

      It struck a chord. “There’s a big plaque at the Police Academy that mentions a Kincannon something or other. Maybe a couple huge plaques. A program?”

      “A grant, I imagine. The family is big on grants and donations and endowments.”

      I studied the tall man: well-constructed, his tuxedo modeled to a wide-shouldered, waist-slender frame. His face was lengthy and rectangular; had he wished to ship the face somewhere for repairs, it would have been neatly contained in a shoe box. Judging by the admiring glances of nearby women, however, it was a face needing neither repair nor revision. He seemed well aware of this fact, not standing so much as striking a series of poses: holding his chin as he talked, crossing his arms and canting his head, arching a dark eyebrow while massaging a colleague’s shoulder. He looked like an actor playing a successful businessman.

      “Who’s the pretty guy working the Stanislavski method?” I asked. “Seems like I’ve seen him before.”

      A pause. “That’s Buck Kincannon, Junior, Carson. Sort of the scion of the family.”

      “How are scions employed these days?” I asked. “At least this scion?”

      “The man collects cars and art and antiques. Sails yachts. Breeds prize cattle.”

      “Good work if you can get it,” I noted.

      “He also runs the family’s investments. The Kincannons have more money than Croesus. Buck keeps the pile growing.”

      The funds would be fine if they grew as fast as the throng gathering to acknowledge the late arrivals, I thought. An overturned beer truck wouldn’t have pulled a crowd faster. Several notables hustled over: an appellate judge, two state representatives, half the city council.

      “What’s the connection to the station?” I asked.

      “The family’s one of the major investors in Clarity, part of the ownership consortium. Buck Kincannon’s my boss, Carson. Way up the ladder, but the guy who makes the big decisions.”

      Clarity Broadcasting owned Channel 14 and a few dozen other TV and radio outlets, primarily in the South, but according to newspaper accounts they were pushing hard toward a national presence.

      “Who’s the older woman?” I asked.

      Dani’s voice subconsciously dropped to a whisper. “Maylene Kincannon. Queen Maylene, some people call her. But only from a distance. Like another continent. Buck’s the oldest of her kids, forty-one. Beside Buck is Racine Kincannon and his wife Lindy; Racine’s thirty-eight or so. The guy closest to Mama is Nelson Kincannon, thirty-four, I think.”

      “Who are the others with them?”

      “Congressman Whitfield to the right, beside him is Bertram Waddley, CEO of the biggest bank in the state, next to Waddley is –”

      I held up my hand. “I get the picture.”

      I turned from the hangers-on and scanned the brothers: Buck, Racine, Nelson. Though the angular faces weren’t feminine, the men seemed almost gorgeous, their eyes liquid and alert, their gestures practiced and fluid.

      My eyes fell on the matriarch, lingered. Though her skin was pale and her hair was snow, nothing about her said frail. She looked like she could have СКАЧАТЬ