LaTrout knew right away that it sounded bad, even ominous, but he didn’t know why. He had heard the term “sodomy” here and there in his lifetime, but he actually had no idea what it meant, and he had never heard anyone define it in any way. “What do you think it means?”
Griegson shook his head and looked up the street; a car was coming by at a slow speed. The windows were tinted, so the two men couldn’t see inside the car, but when it passed them by, it slowed even further, almost crawling to a stop for a few seconds before picking up speed and moving on. “I’m not sure what they’re up to,” Griegson answered. “You never know what motivates people these daysBut I want you to check into it. Quietly. You know, everyone has rights and lawyers these days, and you can’t do these things openly, and you can’t put anything down on paper anymore. Just check into it and let me know what you find out.”
Kalim Hussein paused in the driveway of his home in south Nashville and watched his wife walking up the street toward the house, carrying a bag of groceries. His wife wore what many Americans would call somewhat traditional Islamic-style clothing for a woman, except that she didn’t wear a veil over her face. The Husseins were in their late fifties, and had been in the U.S. since the early 1990s, as part of a resettlement of people from Iraq following the Persian Gulf War. Nashville had a relatively large population of Iraqis, and to a lesser degree other Arabs, compared to other cities its size, and many of them had settled in the same south Nashville area along Nolensville Road. Hussein’s wife didn’t drive, and she often made the pilgrimage to a local Wal-Mart store a quarter of a mile or more away. She didn’t complain about her task, even about having to carry groceries—she was part of a team, that was how she had always viewed it. Her husband earned the living, and she did whatever needed to be done to make the two of them happy.
Kalim Hussein worked for the Davidson County maintenance crew, working on various types of mechanical maintenance required by buildings owned by the county that surrounded the city of Nashville. The county and the city were somewhat the same; years before, Nashville had voted in a metropolitan form of government that extended beyond city boundaries. Hussein had joined that body shortly after his arrival in the Nashville area.
When the Husseins had first arrived in the United States in late 1991, they had been settled in a small town in extreme western Montana. The Husseins had not known what to expect, and Kalim Hussein had feared the worst. The couple was desperate to get out of a very volatile situation in Iraq, but he had feared the prejudice he would run into in small town America would be just as bad, if perhaps in a different way. To his surprise, the small community in Montana, composed of a large number of Mormons along with other faiths, had almost welcomed the couple. Neighbors came by to help out with home repairs and errands; some of them brought gifts of food and clothing. Kalim Hussein had very quickly realized not only that he had been wrong in his fears, but that he had been about as wrong as it was possible to be.
Not terribly long after moving to Montana, however, his handler with the government resettlement agency advised him that he was going to be relocated to Nashville, the original intended site for him and his wife. After announcing his future move to a handful of neighbors, Hussein had been surprised when several of them cautioned him about moving “down South.” He was warned that he would encounter prejudice of one sort or another, either based upon his faith, or upon his looks, and he had gone through a gloomy period in fearful anticipation of that new prejudice. “I just wish we could stay here,” he said to himself several times.
For a short time after their arrival in Nashville, the Husseins had found a cautious but welcoming neighborhood, composed primarily of whites and African-Americans. People didn’t seem as friendly as in Montana, but they were polite enough, and no one bothered the Husseins, although they were regarded with more than a little curiosity. Other Iraqi families were scattered in the area, and that gave the Husseins a sort of anchor in the city. They didn’t really know any of the Iraqis before moving there, but it was still nice to have one’s own countrymen nearby in a strange location.
Soon, however, Mexican immigrants began to move into the neighborhood very quickly, and in large numbers. Many were there for construction trades, working on new and existing housing with various skills acquired in Mexico. The cultural differences between the two groups soon became apparent, and Hussein thought to himself at times how much more he had in common with Americans than Mexicans. It was strange, he thought, how some of the conservative Protestant groups that he thought would have the most antagonism toward him seemed, at most times, to be the friendliest toward him. Other immigrants provided the friction: Not only the Mexicans, but Asian Indians and Laotians. It was almost as if each group tried, as best it could, to get along with the majority white population, knowing they were dominant in the area, and failed to take any steps to get along with immigrants of other cultures.
Not that there hadn’t been incidents by white individuals. An Iraqi friend’s wife had been harassed as she walked through the neighborhood wearing her traditional clothing; the driver had slowed down and yelled something at her that she hadn’t understood, but which she had taken as some form of insult. A friend’s daughter in another neighborhood had been attacked by a group of white youths, probably of high school age, although she had escaped the most serious injury. Sometimes, Hussein would reflect on how he evaluated each culture, and try to reassess the advantages and disadvantages of contact with each.
And there were differences within the Iraqi population. Some were Kurds and others were from various regions throughout the country. They often had political differences, variations of religious belief, and other factors that sometimes led to conflict.
Overall, though, Hussein and his wife had been generally happy about coming to the United States, and about settling in Nashville. It was home now, even if the two of them journeyed back to Iraq about once every three years. In addition to his maintenance jobs, Hussein owned three rental houses in three different neighborhoods along Nolensville Road, and was generally very upbeat about the future.
Olivia Farentino neatly formed several piles of paper on the top of her desk, and put away a few odds and ends in a drawer: several pens, paperclips, correction fluid, and a small notepad. Before placing the notepad in the drawer, she ripped off the last sheet and studied it. Holding it in her hand, she eased the drawer shut and leaned back slightly in her chair.
It was shortly after five o’clock in the afternoon, and various workers at the law firm were heading out the door, although many were staying behind and finishing up work of their own. Olivia reported to a paralegal, Melanie Kirkson, who in turn reported to an attorney named Marvin O’Grady, who specialized in a variety of commercial litigation. Olivia had been with the firm almost five years; she had moved to Nashville from Cleveland shortly before that, following in the footsteps of a young man she had met in college. The romance had fizzled relatively quickly after she arrived, but she preferred Nashville to Cleveland, primarily because of the relative mildness of the temperature, and because the job opportunities seemed better. She had a combination degree in English literature and philosophy, and hadn’t really decided where she wanted to head in life. She was twenty-eight years old.
Four local telephone numbers were written, irregularly, across a small piece of paper, and as she sat there, trying to relax at the end of a long day, she tried to put a face to each of the numbers, or at least a voice. She knew two of the people whose numbers were listed on the page, but she had only talked to the other two for the first time earlier that day. She tried to remember, in essence, what each person had said to her when he had called—how he had sounded, what he wanted, and most importantly, whether she had ended the call with a good feeling about him.
A co-worker caught her attention and waved as she turned to go out the door. Olivia came out of her distraction for a brief moment, and smiled and waved back. She arched her back and stretched her arms upwa
rd, trying to release the day-long tension that always built up inside of her. Then she pressed her fingertips against her eyelids and gently pushed, trying to clear out her head and start afresh.
It was never easy ending the day at one job and starting another. It seemed to Olivia as if she had been doing that her whole life in one way or another. She had worked all the way through college, and had held two different jobs at the same time at various points in her working career. In a way, this second job was no different than any other. And yet, of course, in many ways it was.
Each day at this time, she had to make several decisions. First, she had to decide whether she was going to go home and freshen up, or whether she could do it “remotely,” at a location away from home: her car, a fast food restaurant, or the office building bathroom. Then, she had to decide a priority list, and an “ignore” list. In other words, she had to decide whom she wanted to call back, and whom she didn’t, and of those she decided to call, the proper order. Then once she had gotten through that phase and began calling, she had to decide whom she wanted to see, and for how long.
Most days, she made the decision of whether to go home and freshen up on the spur of the moment. If she felt like it, she went home, bathed and went through a whole process. Usually, she only did that if it was a special person she was going to meet, and the meeting was to begin later in the evening and last for some time. She had long made a habit, though, of staying fresh throughout the day, and generally felt that she was “presentable” on most days when her day job ended.
As far as the priority, the order of importance of the individuals who had called her during the day, there were several factors to consider. Had she seen him before? If so, what was he like? If she hadn’t seen him before, did he seem interesting on the phone? “Interesting” could mean a pleasant voice, a detail or two that indicated the person was of some importance, or of a certain level of prosperity or sophistication, or even if the person was from somewhere interesting. All of these things were judgment calls, but over time she had become pretty good at making such judgments. Occasionally, she had been totally wrong, but she had learned how to handle those situations as well.
She decided to freshen up in the office bathroom, then go to a little coffee shop nearby and regroup, and begin making a call or two. She had developed the practice of always sitting somewhere privately, even if it was in a public place, and thinking about everything before starting the evening. She was a little tired, but then she was always tired at the end of a workday. She knew that could change in the company of the right person, or her tiredness could be quickly aggravated in the opposite situation. In some ways, having a generally bad experience could energize her, but having a boring one made the day seem very long indeed.
Carlos Lopez turned the bolt on the front door of his restaurant and opened for business. It was two minutes before eleven, but no one was waiting, anyway. He had originally opened the restaurant at the worst possible moment, just before the recession hit in 2008. As he was preparing the building for opening, he thought he would be opening in the middle of an economic boom, but he realized shortly after he had opened, even before reports of a recession or possible economic downturn began, that something was not right. He already owned several other restaurants in the city, and he had begun to notice a drop-off in revenues at them a month or two before. One month was bad enough, but it could be just some unexplained blip on the radar screen, but two months in a row, to a restaurant owner, signified that something was wrong.
This particular restaurant, Las Vistas, had been more than two years in preparation for opening. He had purchased the building from the owners of an old seafood restaurant that had gone out of business, and he had known that it was in a terrible state of disrepair. He knew it would be a long time getting it ready to reopen, but it had taken almost twice as long. Part of the reason for that was the complicated repairs that needed to take place, and the discovery of new problems related to that as time passed, but another thing was getting the necessary permits to open. He had owned restaurants in other cities, and family members of his spread across the country had as well, but Nashville was something else with regard to permits to operate a new business. The inspectors did everything except ask directly for a bribe. It was maddening; he would rather they had asked directly, as he would have been glad to pay them. Everything is so indirect, he thought, in the white culture. Why in the hell didn’t they just say what they meant, and say what they wanted? It sure would make things a lot easier.
Lopez took a deep breath and surveyed the parking lot. Off in the distance, where the turn-in to the strip shopping center was, he saw two cars turn in, one behind the other, and make their way quickly to the restaurant’s parking area. He watched as the driver got out of each car: a man and a woman. At first, he thought they might know each other, but it soon became obvious they didn’t.
He turned and walked into the main part of the restaurant. The wait staff was composed of five young men and women, who stood in various parts of the room, watching him for instructions. He gave each one a direct look, then nodded generally to the group of them.
One of the waitresses, a relatively new one named Aurora, stood shyly across the room. She was from Honduras, and had only come to Nashville six months before. At first, Lopez had wondered if she would make it as a waitress there, because she was so shy, and her English was relatively poor. However, within a few short weeks, with help from the other staff, she seemed to have grasped the fundamentals of the job, and customers seemed to like her, because she was very polite and subservient to their needs.
Aurora had a small child, and a missing man. She had some family members in the area with whom she lived, but the baby’s father was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t like answering questions about him: where they had met, whether he had ever lived in the United States with her, or what had happened to him—he was just gone. It was a common situation; many of the waitresses who worked for Lopez at different restaurants were in the same situation, although the details sometimes varied. When Lopez thought back to his youth some thirty-five years before, and when he was brutally honest, he admitted he could have been such a man.
Aurora was very pretty, and she had a very nice smile that customers liked, especially the male customers. Many of the male customers tried to flirt with her, but because her English was so poor she often didn’t understand what they were saying, even if she picked up on their intentions. However, there was one customer, a man in his forties, who seemed to be from the area, or at least from somewhere in the South, who had more than just a fragmentary knowledge of Spanish. He seemed to be able to speak in complete sentences, and even knew different verb tenses, although he sometimes mixed them up. He could generally make himself understood well enough, but he sometimes had trouble understanding the answer from a native speaker.
Lopez had mainly watched Aurora and the customer interact from across the room; usually, he couldn’t hear what they said to each other. But the man had been coming in for some time, and gradually he and Aurora seemed to have developed a friendship of sorts, quite unlike any of the other white customers. It seemed to have started when the customer used a few Spanish phrases, to Aurora’s delight, and without being pretentious had shown that he knew more of the language than the average Tennessean. At first it was just a few sentences of conversation, then the customer would order and eat his meal. Over time, however, the conversations between the two of them grew in length. Now, Lopez could tell that Aurora seemed to perk up the moment the customer appeared; a big smile flashed on her face, and her brown eyes sparkled. The customer had seemed oblivious to Aurora’s change of demeanor at first, but it seemed that over time he had gradually become more overtly friendly, even flirtatious, with her. Now, the two of them were somewhat of a humorous reference among the other staff around the restaurant. Even Lopez kidded Aurora about it.
Lopez didn’t mind the relationship; if it helped make Aurora happy, he was all for it. An
d the customer seemed to come in more often, and sometimes even bring others with him, although most often he ate alone. As far as Lopez knew, the two had never seen each other off the job, but one day he had seen the customer handing her what looked like a business card. The man seemed nice enough all around, but Lopez worried that it would be easy for one of his female employees to be used in some way by one of the local characters, and he made up his mind to keep an eye on the situation, at least here and there.
Howard DeLonge sometimes wondered about the sanity of the woman sitting in front of him. He also wondered, though, if feeling that way wasn’t a sign that he was even more burned out than he had suspected. The first African-American police chief of Metro Nashville was planning to step down at the end of the year, almost nine months away. He had started out as a patrolman and worked his way up steadily over a thirty-year period, and had held the police chief’s job for almost five years. He thought he knew what real crime was all about, but the job and the people directing the job seemed to want to steer him in all kinds of directions.
He had known the woman sitting across from him, Sylvia Rogers, for years. She had been a social and moral force in Nashville as long as he could remember, although since he was older than she was, she must have appeared sometime after he joined the force; it seemed like she had been there forever. Somewhere along the way, she had learned how to work her way into many of the major governmental and social organizations around town, pushing one agenda or another. She was well known around the police department; she knew a lot of people, and actually had a lot of friends there. Many of the officers seemed to agree with her agenda, whatever it was at any given time, and the chief knew he had to be careful in crossing her.