"Holy s.h.i.t," Cheezer said. "You think it's the same guy?"

"Maybe. Did you call the police and report it?" I asked.

"I did," Cheezer protested. "I called from the pay phone in the bar and I told them two guys were beating the s.h.i.t out of another guy in the alley. When I hung up, I went outside to see what was happening. And they'd pulled a car around, a black pickup truck. I saw 'em take s.p.a.ceman and toss him in the back. Like he was nothing. Like he was trash. They got in and took off."

"Did you get the license number?" I asked.

"I couldn't see it," Cheezer said. "But it was a black Chevy pickup. And it had a sticker on the window. I couldn't see the words, but it looked like one of those cop buddy a.s.sociations. The kind you put on your car so you don't get a speeding ticket."

"Fraternal Order of Police," I said, feeling sick myself.

"I told Hap about it," Cheezer said. "He was pretty p.i.s.sed off. He went running outside to see if he could stop the guys, but by the time he got there, they were gone. That's when I decided to get out of there, too. I'm sorry, but I didn't stick around to see if they'd send anybody."

I patted his shoulder. "You did the right thing."

"Those f.u.c.kers maybe killed s.p.a.ceman," Cheezer said. "They coulda killed Edna. Jeez. Man, I wish I'd have tried to stop them anyway."

"You want to do a little nosing around for me?" I asked.

"Sure," he said eagerly. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just talk to people around the neighborhood. You know a lot of those street kids. See if anybody's seen s.p.a.ceman since last night, or heard anything about it. See if any of the other street people have been roughed up."

I dug in my pockets and brought out a twenty-dollar bill. It was all I had left after bankrolling Edna and the girls. "Here's some expense money. Sometimes you have to buy people a drink to get them to talk. You know?"

He looked at the bill in his hand. "Cool."

"No dope, though," I said hastily. "Nothing illegal."

He looked offended. "As if."

24.

A couple times that night I rolled over in my sleep and threw my arm across Edna. She mumbled, pushed me away, and pulled the stack of quilts closer around herself. Some mother.

One of the benefits of having no electricity and no phone is that you lose track of time. Some time in the night I got up, pulled on another pair of wool socks, threw more wood on the fire, then fell immediately back to sleep.

To make it up to me for hogging all the covers, Edna let me sleep until noon. When I finally sat up on the sofa bed, pale yellow shafts of sunlight were streaming in through the window. I looked groggily out at the view, which I still hadn't gotten adjusted to. I blinked. A Georgia Power cherry picker was parked in our backyard, and three or four p.i.s.sed-off-looking neighbors were standing around it, watching the workmen. I couldn't hear them with the windows closed, but I was sure they were muttering ominous threats against the Garrity women under their breath.

Edna came into the den with a cup of coffee. "Mr. Byerly's daughter called the power company and told them he might die unless his dialysis machine got hooked back up again," she said. "So they sent a crew right over. Phone company's already been and gone while you were asleep."

"Mr. Byerly doesn't have a dialysis machine," I pointed out.

"He doesn't have a daughter, either," she said, sipping her coffee. "But he does have a cell phone. I sure do like those new digital models."

As soon as I had enough coffee in me, I called my new client to give her a progress report. Anna Frisch wanted to talk to me as badly as I wanted to talk to her.

"Did you find out anything in Hawkinsville?" she asked.

"My a.s.sistants and I managed to talk to some people," I said cautiously.

She agreed to meet me at the Blind Possum in Little Five Points. "I want to see if my mash kettles have been set up yet," she said.

Some kids had made a fire in a wire-mesh trash barrel down at the Point, and they were huddled around it, pa.s.sing a joint hand to hand. Most of the shop doorways had a shapeless blanket-wrapped bundle propped against them. Everyone in Little Five Points, it seemed, was enjoying the great outdoors today.

The regulars were sitting at their table in the window at the Yacht Club when I walked up. I knew them not by any names, only by their a.s.signed seats. The fat guy with the sleeveless denim jacket always sat near the door. His girlfriend, who had enormous knockers and a missing front tooth, sat in the window to his right. Next to her sat the guy in the greasy red Winston Cup Racing Circuit cap, and on the side by the wall sat the oldest hippie in captivity.

It was only two-thirty. The Yacht Club had been open thirty minutes, but already the regulars' table was littered with empty longneck bottles and over-flowing ashtrays. In the daylight like this, it struck me how ghoulish they all looked. Pale, bloated. The undead.

Hap was just coming out the front door. He had a length of garden hose with a nozzle attachment, a bucket of sudsy water, and a long-handled broom. As soon as I got close, I understood why the need for the cleaning supplies.

"Hey, Callahan," he said. "Watch your feet."

He took the bucket of cleanser and splattered it all over the sidewalk, then attacked it with the pushbroom. "The romantic life of the saloonkeeper, huh?" he said, pushing a wave of filthy water toward the curb. "Miranda hosed this down last night before we closed up, but you can see we've had nocturnal visitors."

He turned the hose on the granite front wall of the bar and I had to do a quick two-step to avoid being splashed.

"Sorry I lost my temper at that thing for Wuvvy," he said, looking a little ashamed. "I was an a.s.shole. You got a right to do your job. You stick around long down there in Hawkinsville?"

"I spent the night," I said.

"Place is f.u.c.king depressing," Hap said. "No wonder Wuvvy hated it so bad. Prison was probably better than that place."

"Friendlier, at least," I agreed. "Hey, Hap-do you know anything about a plainclothes cop rousting street people down here?"

"That kid Cheezer, he told you what happened, huh?" Hap said. "He was pretty upset. I hate to say it, but maybe it was just some guys joking around. h.e.l.l, I don't want to see anybody get hurt, but, Christ, look at this mess." He gestured with the hose at the sidewalk and gutter. "We have to go through this routine two or three times a day. Maybe this cop was looking for the guy who mugged your mom?"

"No," I said quickly. "Cheezer described the guy with him. It sounds like the same kid who mugged Edna. A white kid with dreadlocks. Have you noticed anybody like that around the neighborhood?"

Hap thought about it. "I can ask Miranda, and some of my help. Doesn't sound like any of my regulars, though. I hope they catch the t.u.r.d." He turned off the faucet, unscrewed the hose, and started coiling it in a thick roll.

"We're gonna start getting a whole different clientele down here when the Blind Possum opens," he confided. "Money brings money."

"They've definitely got money," I agreed. "The question is-who are they?"

Hap took the coiled hose and put it into the empty bucket.

"I don't know," he said. "I knew Poole, of course. He came over and introduced himself after he picked up Wuvvy's place. All he told me was, he was part of an investment group that was opening these brewpubs all over the place."

"You weren't worried about the compet.i.tion? Right next door?"

Hap smiled. "It's a white tablecloth house. Fine dining. Whole different concept. It'll bring new business to the neighborhood, new business to the Yacht Club."

"It's so weird that he would end up here. Right here in Little Five Points-and take over YoYos, of all places," I said. "That still blows my mind."

"You still think he knew who Wuvvy was?" Hap asked.

"How could he not?"

"Wuvvy, man," he said, shaking his head. "That chick definitely had some bad karma. She could not catch a break."

I looked over at the storefront that had been YoYos two weeks ago. More miracles had been wrought since my last visit. The building had received a layer of stucco, one that had been painted a deep brownish-black. The plategla.s.s window had been replaced with leaded-gla.s.s cas.e.m.e.nt windows, and-this was a first for Little Five Points-a scalloped white wooden window box had managed to sprout overnight with blooming red and yellow pansies and curling strands of ivy.

"What next, cobblestones?" I marveled.

Anna Frisch popped her head out the door of the Blind Possum. "Cobblestones," she said. "Great idea. I'll mention it to the designer."

Hap went back to the Yacht Club to tend to his regulars, and I followed Anna back inside Little Five Points's latest dining concept.

"Wow," I said. Two bra.s.s and copper vats had been set up in a gla.s.s-walled brew room that had only been a blue line on a set of plans just last week.

Anna ran one hand over the gleaming metal. "They're the same kind you saw in the Roswell restaurant," she said. "But our s.p.a.ce here is so much smaller, we'll have a fairly limited production. The beer will be just as good, though. Totally up to Blind Possum standards."

"Who is Blind Possum?" I persisted.

"I told you before," she said, shrugging. "Investors. Restaurant people and money people. The president of Blind Possum is a man named Reuben Sizemore. He lives in Birmingham. I've only met him at the openings of the other restaurants."

"One person doesn't put up all this capital and start an operation on this scale, Anna," I said. "Tell me who they really are, or I can't help you."

Anna looked out at the workmen in the dining room who were rolling cream-colored paint on the walls.

"We're supposed to be a totally self-contained ent.i.ty," she said. "Home grown. That's the whole concept. That's why we have owner-managers and owner-brewmasters."

"But," I prompted.

"Total Entertainment Systems," she said in a half whisper. "They're us. We're them."

"The cookie people?" I asked. I'd read about TES. And they weren't just cookies anymore. From a family-owned bakery in Birmingham, the company had gone into manufacturing video arcade games, which is where they'd made their first big money. The company had gotten swallowed up by a bigger company a few years back, and now, to my knowledge, they owned an upstart cable television system, a minor league baseball franchise in Memphis, and a gospel music theme park in Texas. Total Entertainment Systems was one of those conglomerates that had steamrolled in a dozen different directions in the late eighties.

"Video games, cable television, pro sports, and now beer," I said admiringly. "All that's missing is a popcorn company."

"Grandma Sue's Ole-Timey Movie Show Popcorn," Anna said. "We own them, too."

"And how did Jackson Poole fit into the company?"

"He was working for TES, marketing video games in Portland. That's where we met," Anna said.

"When TES decided to start up Blind Possum, Jackson was picked to be part of the management team for the new division. I'd already graduated from brewschool, and this was a great opportunity for both of us. Jackson moved down here a year ago to start the real estate acquisitions."

"Why live in Atlanta?" I asked. "I heard Blind Possum is opening brewpubs all over the place. And TES is headquartered where?"

"Birmingham," Anna said. "I don't know. He liked it here, I guess. And I thought, maybe, he was a little homesick for Georgia, but he didn't want to admit it."

"He's the one who did the real estate acquisitions?" I asked. "He picked this location: YoYos, which just happened to be the place where his long-lost stepmother was trying to eke out a living?"

"I guess," Anna said weakly. "It sounds strange now, I know. But as soon as TES talked about expanding into other markets, Jackson knew he wanted to come to Atlanta. And he always talked about wanting to have a presence in Little Five Points. Jackson knew his stuff. He said this was a hot neighborhood. I was just in charge of making the beer. I didn't care where we made it, as long as it was good beer."

She was getting teary-eyed now. I didn't know if it was over Jackson Poole's murder or the prospect of making a really b.i.t.c.hin' brew.

"Never mind," I said, trying to head off the tears before they gained momentum. "You said Jackson told you something was wrong here. Have you looked around? Can you give me any idea what he could have been talking about?"

"No," she sniffed. "I mean, yes, I've checked the place from top to bottom. It looks fine. It looks great. We're ahead of schedule, even. That's how TES does things. You have a schedule, you have a plan, you have goals, and you perform."

"Even when there's a murder. d.a.m.n," I said admiringly. "I wish I could get my business to operate like that.

"What about Jackson's office, or his apartment?" I asked Anna. "Did he keep any business papers relating to Blind Possum?"

Her face fell. "He was working out of his condo. I was living with him. It's on Greenwood, near Piedmont Park."

"Can we go take a look?"

"It's no good," she said despairingly. "I cleaned it out. After Jackson was killed. The company's attorney called me and asked me to box up all his files and things. They've hired a new manager, and he's actually supposed to start work this week."

"You sent everything?" I asked incredulously.

"Sergeant Deavers told me they were going to arrest that Wuvvy woman," Anna said. "Our lawyer called me and told me he'd have a messenger pick up the boxes. It didn't occur to me to keep anything."

"What about personal papers? Bills, correspondence, that kind of thing?"

Anna put out a hand to steady herself against one of the vats. The cool feel of the metal seemed to comfort her.

"I got rid of everything," she said. "It was so depressing having it around. I'm still living there, see, until everything is settled. In the meantime, I'm paying rent," she said, as if I cared.

"I'll need the name and phone number of the company lawyer," I said. "And a list of everybody who's had anything to do with this restaurant. Contractors, suppliers, vendors, drivers, delivery people, anybody you can think of."

"All right," she agreed. "We're closed tomorrow. Everybody else is off, but I always go in on Mondays because it's a good day to have the place quiet and to myself. I think we used a lot of the same people at both restaurants. I'll get the list together and call you tomorrow."

25.

The power was on again when I got home, and Edna was working the phones, apologizing for creating a blockwide blackout and organizing her Commando meeting for that night.

"We're going to discuss security systems," I heard her saying. "I've got a close personal friend who'll give us a group discount."

I groaned and went back out to the car to start bringing in the boxes of Wuvvy's stuff.

It was obvious Wuvvy's belongings had been more or less tossed at random into the cartons, by somebody who had other things on their mind. The cops had been tidy, though. Each of the cartons was sealed with tape, with a typed inventory list attached.