Free The Quiet Game by Greg Iles Page B

record.”
    â€œShe obviously didn’t.”
    I try to remember the point at which I asked to go off the record. I can check my tape, of course, but I already know what Caitlin Masters will say: she thought I wanted the Jungian analysis and the comparison between Germany and the South off the record, but not the Del Payton remarks, whichwere an extension of our earlier conversation on racism. At least she honored my request not to mention the Hanratty execution.
    â€œWhat about that Klan rally stuff?” Dad mutters.
    â€œYou took me to that rally!”
    â€œI know, I know . . . damn it. I just wanted you to see that wasn’t any way to be. But you didn’t have to drag it all back up now, did you?”
    â€œI made it clear that stuff was all in the past. And she printed my qualifications, I’ll give her that.”
    â€œGod almighty, what a mess. Do you think—”
    The front doorbell rings, cutting him off.
    â€œWho the hell could that be?” he asks. “It’s only eight-thirty.”
    He walks out of the bedroom, taking the wadded-up newspaper with him.
    My thoughts return to Caitlin Masters. Despite her assurances, I was foolish to say anything to her that I didn’t want printed. Maybe she did show me a little leg and lull my usually vigilant defenses. Am I that easy to manipulate?
    â€œGet some clothes on,” my father says from the door, his face grave. “You’ve got visitors.”
    â€œWho? You look almost scared.”
    He nods slowly. “I think I am.”
    Â 
    Uncertain what to expect, I hover in the hall outside my mother’s living room. The hushed sibilance of gracious women making polite conversation drifts from the wide doorway. I walk through the door and stop in my tracks. Two black women sit primly on the sofa, delicate Wedgwood cups steaming before them on the coffee table. One is in her eighties, if not older, and dressed in an ensemble the like of which I have not seen since the Sundays I drove past black churches as a teenager. The skirt is purple, the blouse green, the shoes a gleaming patent black. Her hat is a flowered concoction of black straw and varicolored silk. Beneath the hat is a shining black wig, beneath the wig a raisin of a face with watery eyes that glisten amid the wrinkles.
    The woman beside her looks thirty years younger and wears a much more subdued outfit, a pleated navy skirt with a periwinkle blouse. She looks up, and her gaze disconcerts me. Most black people I grew up with rarely made direct eye contact, locking their feelings behind a veneer of humility. But this woman’s gaze is unveiled, direct and self-confident.
    â€œYou keep a fine house, Mrs. Cage,” the older woman says in a cracked voice. “A fine house.”
    â€œYou’re so kind to say so,” my mother replies from a wing chair on theother side of the coffee table. She wears a housecoat and no makeup, yet even in this state radiates a quiet, stately beauty. She turns to me and smiles.
    â€œSon, this is Mrs. Payton.” She gestures toward the elderly woman, then nods at her younger companion. “And this is Mrs. Payton also. They’ve come to thank you for what you said in this morning’s paper.”
    I flush from my neck to the crown of my head. I can only be looking at the widow and mother of Delano Payton, the man bombed and burned to death in 1968. Barefoot and unshaven, I make a vain attempt to straighten my hair, then advance into the living room. Without rising, the elder Mrs. Payton enfolds my right hand in both of hers like a dowager empress. Her palms feel like fine sandpaper. The younger Mrs. Payton stands and shakes my hand with exaggerated formality. Her hand is moist and warm. Up close, she looks older than I first guessed, perhaps sixty-five. Because she has not gone to fat, she projects an aura of youth that her eyes cannot match.
    â€œAlthea works in the nursery at St.