The Great Divide Page 4

  Marcus suppressed his list of objections. Sometimes a necessary part of lawyering was waiting and listening until a client ran out of steam.

  “New Horizons shows this fancy face to the outside world. Signing on the top stars in every sport you can imagine—tennis, basketball, golf, football, skiing, everything. They spend a ton of money on their advertisements. Slick music, wild lights, everything you can imagine.”

  “I’ve seen the ads.”

  “Of course you have. So has the rest of the world. They pay the stars millions, but they treat their employees like dirt.” She was steam-rolling now. “Gloria was working to show how they locate their factories in the poorest areas, here and abroad. Places like Rocky Mount, where the authorities will be on their side no matter what mess they get into. And there are a lot of messes.”

  Marcus asked quietly, “What do you do, Mrs. Hall?”

  “I’m dean of admissions over at Shaw University.” Shaw was one of the largest black colleges in the state. Alma Hall dug into her jacket pocket, then spent a moment carefully unfolding a sheet of paper and rubbing out the creases. “Gloria is our only child. She left here with a full scholarship to Georgetown University. She took two undergraduate degrees, in sociology and economics. She’s doing her master’s now in labor relations. The topic of her thesis is New Horizons.”

  Alma Hall handed over the page. “Six weeks ago, we received this letter.”

  Marcus accepted the typewritten page, and read it carefully. Then he read it again. And a third time.

  He then turned and looked out the plate-glass window. Sunlight streamed through the pines to splash the glass with brilliant light. A gentle wind waved the trees’ shadows, weaving black script upon the gold. Gloria’s letter was as lucid and determined as her mother. Gloria wrote that she had asked someone named Kirsten to mail this a week after her departure. It was the best way, Gloria wrote, to ensure that her parents did not try to stop her. She was going over to chase down rumors about the New Horizons facility in China. Factory 101, it was called, and what she had gathered so far made the place sound like a glimpse into hell itself. She hurt for those people, Gloria said. She wanted to interview workers from the compound in which Factory 101 was situated. There was a special reason for the timing of this journey. Something that made her mission particularly vital. If they received this letter but had not heard from her personally, they were to contact the United States embassy in Beijing, the consulate in Hong Kong, and the FBI. They should get hold of the best lawyer they could find, and push. Push hard. Her life might depend on this.

  Marcus continued to stare out the back window as the pines etched more shadow-script within the sunlight. Marcus spent a long moment searching for a message before deciding the afternoon wrote its mysteries in an unreadable tongue. The air was so still he heard a clock in another room softly chime the half hour. Gloria’s repeated use of one word rang with the clock in the sun-splashed air. Mission.

  Marcus turned back because he had to. Alma Hall read the furtive search for a way out in his features. She cut him off before he could speak by leaning forward and letting desperation clench her throat and rake every word raw. “Mr. Glenwood, my baby is hurting. She needs help. I can’t explain to you how I know this, but every breath I take, I hear that child crying out from the wilderness.” On any other face the gaze would have appeared drawn from the borderlands of madness. “Maybe you were brought to us for a purpose, did you ever think that? You were drawn here because you’re the man to bring my Gloria home.”

  THREE

  MONDAY MORNING Marcus traveled to and around Raleigh in less than fifty minutes. Where the Rocky Mount highway merged with the Raleigh Beltline, the traffic congealed, but only momentarily. Nine o’clock was a fairly safe time to be headed toward the Research Triangle Park. Techie rush hour began at six and ended at seven-thirty, both morning and evening. This portion of the Tar Heel State prided itself on running to a Silicon Valley time clock.

  The Morgan and Jones law firm occupied one of the ultramodern buildings ringing the Park. The exterior was brick, slate, and mirrored glass; the interior was plush and impersonal. After an appropriate wait for someone without a fixed appointment, Marcus was led into one of the windowless interior offices assigned to associates. “Mr. Glenwood?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Larry Grimes. Come on in. Sorry about the mess.” A black man in suspenders and a hundred-dollar power tie hefted a pile of folders from one chair. “You take coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Right. Hope you don’t mind if I keep packing while we talk. They only gave me until the day after tomorrow to be up and running in Charlotte.” Grimes deposited the files into a box, pulled a pen from his pocket, and scribbled on the top. “Your fax said you wanted to discuss one of my clients who’s approached you seeking representation?”

  “That’s right.” The office was littered with half-filled boxes and piles of unsorted papers. Nails protruded from an empty power wall, below which rested a box crammed with plaques and photos and diplomas. “Alma and Austin Hall.”

  An instant’s hesitation, then Grimes barked a single laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “You remember the case, then.”

  “Sure I remember them. But there’s no case. The matter is a total waste of time.”

  “Alma Hall doesn’t think so.”

  “Alma Hall is an emotionally distraught mother who would do anything to get her daughter back. You met the father?”

  “Yes.” Marcus watched the younger attorney smooth his tie. Again. Stroking the silk with absent nervous gestures. “I couldn’t figure out his reaction.”

  “What’s to figure. The man knows how to think logically.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the whole picture.” Paying almost no mind to his own words. Concentrating on the attorney and his pinstriped shirt with the white collar, his alligator belt, the eyes that danced about the room. “Mr. Hall said you had refused to take their case.”

  “Like I said, what case? The Hall girl was of legal age, she was known as a troublemaker, she went to China, she decided to stay for a while.”

  “Troublemaker in what way?”

  The attorney’s voice tightened. “Look, the claim is groundless. That’s all you need to know. The only tie-in between the girl and New Horizons is some hyped-up letter.”

  Marcus nodded slowly. The man was young, polished, smooth, and under pressure. What Marcus could not figure out was where the pressure came from. “Do you handle many federal cases?”

  “Some. Look, I’d love to chat, but right now I’m up to my eyeballs.”

  “Could I have a copy of any relevant information you turned up?”

  When the man looked ready to refuse him, Marcus rose to his feet and added, “I’m sure the Halls would deliver a formal request if I asked.”

  The man’s sudden stillness brought to mind a nervous quarry. “You can’t seriously be thinking of taking this case.”

  “A girl is missing and nobody seems very eager to have her found. That makes me wonder.”

  “You’re wasting your time.” The shrug held the stiffness of a puppet. “But, hey, if you’re that hungry, be my guest.”

  “Thank you.” Marcus handed over his card, started for the door, then was struck by a sudden thought. He turned back and hazarded a guess. “By the way, congratulations.”

  Grimes froze once more. “How did you hear?”

  “Oh, you know how these things get around.”

  Grimes bent back over the box. “Crazy. Kedrick and Walker said I had to keep my partnership secret until their next general meeting.”

  Marcus tapped on the door frame, his thoughts racing. “I’ll expect that file by the end of the week.”

  ROCKY MOUNT had a divided past and a contemporary chasm. The Tar River flowed dark and sullen through its middle, forming a divide that not even the legal joining of Nash and Edgecombe Counties could bridge. To the west l
ay Raleigh and wealth. All the town’s stores and most of the new investment—private and public both—also lay west of the Tar. To the east, in the area where Marcus’ grandparents had built their home some forty years earlier, sprawled a haphazard collection of enclaves. Most of them were black, poor, and bitter.

  The eastern side of the Tar River was a time warp to a poorer, harsher era. While western Rocky Mount sported three new shopping centers, nine banks, and a score of new factories, the Edgecombe side remained a one-company town. New Horizons employed almost everyone who held a steady job, over four thousand people and still expanding. Soon after his arrival, Marcus had been told by a black neighbor that New Horizons and the white-run city council liked things just the way they were.

  In eastern Rocky Mount, the store windows were boarded up, the roads potholed, the few shops almost empty. People shuffled down cracked sidewalks with tired resignation. This part of town bordered an Indian settlement, three communities established by former slaves, and North Carolina’s largest remaining poverty pocket. Marcus had known little of this when he returned after the accident, and he was still learning. At first the black teens who clustered on porches up and down his block had frightened him. Now they were just a part of the scene. The white citizens who continued to migrate farther and farther west referred to this end of town as Dredgecombe.

  When his grandfather had built his wife’s dream house, the Edgecombe County side of Rocky Mount had been home to the sort of people never fully accepted by their more proper neighbors to the west—sawmill owners and warehouse operators and tanners and hog butchers and landowners whose wealth was built on sharecroppers’ sweat. Marcus’ grandfather had been a tobacco auctioneer until a stroke cut off his voice and mobility. Marcus had kept the place after they died, mostly because it was his last tenuous bond to a past that held little heritage and even less in the way of family ties.

  He turned into his street, which softly hummed sad tales of former grandeur. Decrepit Victorian houses shyly watched his passage, sheltered behind tall oaks. He sometimes had difficulty seeing his place in its newly refurbished state. In a way, he missed how for most of the past eighteen months, returning home had meant confronting a lawn blanketed by sawdust and piles of lumber and sheets of roofing tile and construction tools. Now the roof no longer sagged, the windows did not gape, the huge sycamore no longer probed one dark limb through the third-story cupola, the stairs did not look drunk, and the veranda railing no longer missed the majority of its teeth. Marcus stopped in his drive and regretted the absence of the mind-cleansing labor that had kept him from needing to think of any future at all.

  He was halfway up the front stairs when his secretary called through her open window, “You in for a call from Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some lady, I didn’t catch her name.”

  Marcus sidled around where Deacon Wilbur’s ladder was set in the middle of the front hall. He asked Netty, “Are the extra computer and fax lines hooked up yet?”

  “Been done since last week. Which I told you. Twice.”

  “All right. I want you to get on the Internet and contact one of the corporate search listings. Doesn’t matter which one. Ask for a complete record of everywhere New Horizons operates a facility.” He crossed to his makeshift desk in the back corner of Netty’s office. He picked up his phone, glanced back, and found Deacon Wilbur had climbed halfway down the ladder to look through the open door. “What is it?”

  Deacon asked, “This mean you’re gonna help Austin and Alma bring their child home?”

  “I don’t know anything yet.” To Netty, “Once you get that listing, I want you to run it by a legal search engine.”

  His secretary and the paint-spattered black man shared a glance. Netty said, “Come again?”

  “LEXIS is good. Use them.” Marcus cradled the phone as he spelled the name. “Have them pull past court records. We’re looking for any cases pending or settled against the various New Horizons facilities. Tell them we’re looking for a basic track record, just want to query past practices.” He waited while Netty and Deacon exchanged another glance. “Well?”

  Netty said to the old man, “Sounds to me like real live law is being practiced around here.”

  He raised the phone. “Marcus Glenwood.”

  A very nervous voice said, “My name is Kirsten Stanstead.”

  “The girl mentioned in Gloria’s letter?”

  “Yes. We’re housemates. I’m also Gloria’s best friend.”

  Strung out was the term that came to mind. As though the voice were a viola string, and the tuning knob had been twisted until the wire hummed of its own accord. “Have you heard from her?”

  “Of course not.” The response was not snappish, though Kirsten held to the haughty citified air of one born to money. She sounded like a woman ready to detonate. “Why would we be going to all this trouble if Gloria had contacted us?”

  “Right.” Marcus pulled over his swivel chair. “I see.”

  “I understand you’re taking the case.”

  “I am considering it.”

  “Considering.” The voice twisted one notch tighter. “How fortunate for Gloria that her parents found someone so committed.”

  Marcus detected a faintly nasal twang beneath the strain. Probably Boston. He wondered what her parents thought of their blue-blooded daughter living with a black woman from Rocky Mount. “First I need to see if there is any case at all, Miss … ”

  “Stanstead. I personally feel that the barest of investigations would show that there is an excellent case here.”

  “I see.”

  “Actually, I was calling to offer my assistance. Gloria left some documents you could use as evidence. That was her intention all along.”

  Marcus bent closer to his desk. “Gloria Hall was preparing a case against New Horizons?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” Kirsten pushed out an exasperated breath. “It was the topic of her master’s thesis. Alma told me she had already spoken to you about this.”

  “I know about the thesis, yes. But not about a case. Or compiled evidence.”

  “I was assisting her. I have completed a year of law school.”

  “You’re studying at Georgetown also?”

  “No.” A moment’s hesitation. “For the past several years I’ve been involved full-time in charity work.”

  “Right.” He nodded to the wall. A perfect Brahmin response. When life offered more of a challenge than they liked, the rich hid in charities. She probably organized celebrity jewelry auctions or bridge afternoons. His ex-wife had made a profession of charity wine tastings. “Miss Stanstead, could you tell me what kind of trouble Gloria had been in?”

  The tone flashed from tense to furious. “What is it with you guys?”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You’ve been talking to that other lawyer!”

  “It’s common practice for incoming counsel—”

  “Oh give me a break! I should have known! You’re all the same, just money-grubbing parasites!”

  Marcus held the phone away from his ear, retreating tortoise-like as he had done so often from his wife. “Not at—”

  “You listen to me. The only trouble Gloria has been in came from looking after the rights of people who couldn’t look after themselves! Which is more than anyone could ever say about you and your kind!”

  The phone slammed down. Marcus sat staring at the receiver. Perhaps this was something mothers taught their daughters in the rarefied atmosphere of the long-term rich. Or maybe it was a genetic thing, this ability to fly into unbridled rage at the drop of a single improper syllable.

  He turned around to find Netty and Deacon standing in the doorway. Netty was at the foot of the ladder, Deacon leaning over from halfway up. Both still watching him. “What is it?”

  “Seems like an awful lot of trouble,” Netty replied, “for a case you’re not sure you’re taking.”

  The preacher did n
ot say anything Marcus could hear. Deacon hummed a single note as he climbed back up and returned to his painting. Dipping his brush, the ladder creaking as he shifted to reach a corner, still holding to that one hummed note.

  LOGAN KENDALL’S SECRETARY said through his open door, “Randall Walker just arrived.”

  “You set up the coffee, I’ll go bring him back. Have Suzie Rikkers join us.” Logan hustled down the partners’ hallway, then halted by the entrance to the reception foyer to check his reflection. He had once heard his secretary describe him as a middleweight bruiser with a taste for Armani. In truth, the only thing Logan Kendall loved more than fighting was winning. Which was why he was merely a good attorney, but a great trial lawyer. Logan had boxed for six years, choosing his undergraduate school on its strength in the ring. He smoothed his mustache, adjusted his tie and his smile, and entered the lobby with hand outstretched. “Mr. Walker, I can’t tell you what an honor this is.”

  “Randall to you, my boy.” The founder of the legal powerhouse of Kedrick and Walker pumped Logan’s hand. In the clannish atmosphere of Carolina law, Randall Walker was something of a legend. Two of Logan’s senior partners were there to watch his stock soar. “And the honor is all mine.”

  “I’ve set up our meeting in the partners’ conference room.”

  “Fine, fine. Haven’t been here since you fellows moved. How long has it been?”

  “Not quite two years.” In fact, they had been the first tenants to sign a long-term lease in the newly completed First Federal Tower, the tallest building in Raleigh. They had rented the top three floors and agreed without a quibble to the exorbitant rent, demanding only two conditions: The firm of Knowles, Barbour and Bradshaw was to be the only law firm granted space in the building, and First Federal was to appoint them outside counsel.

  Randall swung easily into step alongside Logan. “This arrangement was Marcus Glenwood’s work, wasn’t it?”

  Logan faltered momentarily. Marcus Glenwood remained a name he despised. The only person who loathed Glenwood more was Suzie Rikkers. And for good reason. “A number of us had a hand in putting the deal together.”