For just an instant there was Joe Mundy talking into a microphone upon the balcony of the rotunda. “That’s right, Lynn, Mayor Jordan—” Joe Mundy was younger than Roland Barris, but he had an unfortunate pair of ears that stuck way out on either side. You loser! thought Peepgass, stroking his own full head of thatchy light brown hair. You’ll never even make it into the studio in Atlanta. They’ll leave you out there “in the field” until you get an ear job.

  On the screen was a medium shot of Mayor Wesley Dobbs Jordan walking up the short flight of stairs toward the landing. The camera angle was from the rear.

  “—and toward the podium,” the voice of Joe Mundy was saying. The camera stayed on the Mayor, then suddenly returned to the stairs. Now you saw the back of a big, bald white man laboriously climbing the stairs by leaning upon the shoulder of a slender young white man, wearing a navy polo shirt and khaki pants, who walked at his side.

  There was an awkward pause on the telecast, as the camera stayed fixed upon the gimping old man’s progress. Not a peep from Mr. Joe Mundy, who evidently didn’t know who this burly old man was.

  “Look, Mom!” said Wallace. “That’s Dad!”

  Roger’s seat in the front row had been assigned so that he would be looking directly at Croker as he sat in his banker’s chair on the landing waiting for Wes to introduce him. Roger intended to give Croker the eye, the accusing, threatening, bankrupting eye, the entire time, to make sure he came through with his part of the morning’s recitation. Two seats away from Roger, here in the front row, was Croker’s wife, Serena. I wonder if she’s even half his age, thought Roger. She’s a number, and I bet she’s trouble. With her short skirt she had a way of crossing her legs that was enough to drive you crazy … But practically every other seat in the place was given over to the Press, the usual pack of shaggy mutts. At this moment a tremendous buzz was running through the pack. Some wondered why on earth the big developer Charlie Croker had come in gimping from the wings, unannounced, to accompany the Mayor as he delivered some sort of homily on racial unrest in Atlanta. Others saw this big, hulking white man using a young white man as a crutch and wondered who these people were and why they were here.

  Croker leaned heavily on the boy’s shoulder and grimaced as he climbed the stairs up to the landing. He clung tightly to the boy’s hand for support as he lowered himself into one of the ash-wood banker’s chairs. He sat there panting and red in the face, with his bad leg, the right leg, stiff as a length of lumber. The boy left the landing and went back down the stairs and stood on the side with the rest of the overflow crowd.

  Now Wes was at the podium. Standing there in his standard-issue gray single-breasted suit and his white shirt and his dark red tie, he didn’t look like much at first glance. He was about half the size of Croker. If he had a muscle in his plump body, it wasn’t obvious. But when Wes seized you with his glittering eye—Coleridge, thought Roger—he had you. He had a stare that radiated sternness and irony all at once. He was now busy panning the members of the Press with that glittering eye, and they grew quiet. Wes faced them down a little longer, allowed just a hint of his familiar ironic smile to cross his lips, then looked serious, serious to the point of stern, and said:

  “I want to thank the members of the Press for coming here in such numbers this morning, because I want to enlist your help—the city of Atlanta wants to enlist your help—in dealing with a situation that has been festering for two weeks now. I refer, as I’m sure you’re aware, to the reports, the reports, that Georgia Tech’s all-American running back, Fareek Fanon, has been accused, accused, of sexual assault.

  “I want to emphasize here at the outset that we are talking about ‘reports’ of an ‘accusation” … reports of an accusation … As of this moment no one has filed any charges with the Atlanta Police Department or any other governmental department, organ, or bureau, or with Georgia Tech’s administration or student government. We have only reports of an accusation … reports of an accusation … and yet these reports have now been published in every medium of the Press, including the Internet. Now, what is the danger here? I’m sure you know. If a false rumor about you is printed once, you can shrug it off as gossip. But if it’s printed twice, it becomes an accepted fact. That’s the age we live in. That is what has now happened in the case of Fareek Fanon, except that in his case we aren’t talking about ‘twice,’ we’re talking about a thousandfold. Naturally every society is protective of a woman reputed to have been sexually assaulted. But let me remind you that men have rights, too. Even celebrated young athletes have rights. A young man like Fareek Fanon should not have had to endure the rumors that he has had to endure over the past two weeks. Rumors of sexual crime cannot simply be washed away, whereupon you’re clean again. Of course, I have no firsthand knowledge of what, if anything, if anything, if anything did or didn’t happen on the night in question in this ‘report’ of an ‘accusation,’ but I do have firsthand knowledge of Fareek Fanon, and I want you to think about him for a moment before anyone is tempted to continue to relish in this … report of an accusation of sexual crime … Fareek grew up on English Avenue at a time—I think we have to be frank about this—at a time when English Avenue was one of the most unfortunate, most run-down neighborhoods in Atlanta. Today English Avenue is turning itself around and is fast becoming the vibrant neighborhood it used to be. But it was a difficult time when Fareek was coming up, so much so that parents on English Avenue used to brag about it if they had a teenage boy who didn’t have a police record. That was considered an achievement … an achievement … Well, that was an early achievement of Fareek’s. At the age of fourteen he was already a powerful athlete, six foot one and 190 pounds, but he confined that power to constructive pursuits in the arena of sports. And I know of someone who can take credit for this constructive side of Fareek Fanon. I’m talking about his mother, Thelma Fanon. She set herself against every obstacle a boy can run into in the ghetto, and she prevailed. There’s one thing everybody who gets to know Fareek remarks upon: not his size and power, not his talent, not his determination, but his thoughtfulness … his thoughtfulness … a precious gift that only a mother like Thelma Fanon can bestow.”

  Jesus God, thought Roger, no more, Wes! You’re gonna drown!

  “The career of Fareek Fanon,” the Mayor continued, “is testimony to a mother’s love and a son’s refusal to be frightened by the odds against him. I urge you to think about that before allowing this young man’s reputation to be besmirched any further. The young woman whose name is being mentioned behind the hand, as it were”—the Mayor brought the back of his hand up to his mouth—“is due the same consideration. The most sinister element in this entire ‘reported accusation,’ however—let’s face it and call it by its right name: race. There are those who have immediately seized upon the most heinous and long-ago-discredited forms of racial stereotyping to explain this incident whose actual occurrence has never even been established. Would Fareek Fanon be capable of playing the role that the stereotype-mongers have dreamed up for him? Not the Fareek Fanon I know … not the Fareek Fanon I know … not the Fareek Fanon I know …” Wes leaned forward on the podium as he repeated this phrase and slowly swept the audience with his eyes, until he seemed to be right across an intimate little table from them, telling them the gospel truth at last. “Nothing, least of all a vile canard like that, should be allowed to tear this city asunder along racial lines. We have all come too far together for that. This is … a city too busy to hate. There is … an Atlanta Way. We do not … give credence to hateful rumors—rumors full of hate—and let them destroy the mutual respect that has brought Atlanta this far. And we do not … allow them to snuff out the hopes, the dreams, the shining successes of fine young men like Fareek Fanon. Now, I am not alone in my concerns, I am happy to say.” He turned toward Croker, then back toward the microphones. “One of Atlanta’s outstanding business leaders”—synonymous with “rich white people,” thought Roger—“Charles E. Croker, has joined us. It’s hard to say what Charlie Croker is more famous for, his success as a real estate developer and creator of the Croker Global Corporation or his exploits as a running back and linebacker for the Georgia Tech football team. In his college years he was what Fareek is today: a gridiron star for the Yellow Jackets. He was known as ‘the Sixty-Minute Man’: the man who played entire games on both offense and defense. Now, it’s true that some things change in sports, but other things don’t. The pressures on a successful young athlete, the exploitation of a successful young athlete, the resentment against a successful young athlete—these are all things Charlie Croker can recall vividly. Furthermore, he knows Fareek Fanon and, in fact, has visited him recently. I think we can all learn a lot about this situation from his unique perspective. One of Atlanta’s greatest builders of all time, one of Atlanta’s greatest athletes of all time, a man from one generation who knows the young man from another whose name has been propelled into this ‘reported accusation’”—he gestured toward the hulking white man sitting in the banker’s chair—“Charlie Croker.”

  There was a smattering of applause, thanks to the elaborate tricolon with which the Mayor had introduced the man, but it quickly died down. Soon enough everybody’s attention was riveted upon Croker’s struggle to rise up from his chair. His right leg wouldn’t bend enough at the knee. The boy, his attendant, started toward him from the side, but Croker motioned him back with a faint gesture, a low downward pumping of his hand. Then he put his hands on the arms of the banker’s chair and pushed down with all his might. Slowly his massive body rose from the chair, and he managed to support himself on his good leg and start hobbling over to the podium. It seemed to take forever. Roger was afraid he was going to collapse before he could ever get there. But finally he made it, grasping both sides of the podium’s top surface in order to steady himself. He looked down at the surface, and the moment began to lengthen, lengthen, lengthen. He looked out at the shaggy mutts and then this way and that way at the assorted lawyers, city officials, and politicians sitting on the stairs, and he smiled—rather sadly, it seemed to Roger—and said:

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You’re generous … to a fault. That wasn’t much of an athlete you just saw staggering from that chair over to here. It’s rust. If you live long enough, your body starts to rust, and so do your ideas.”

  Roger didn’t know what Croker was talking about, but his voice was strong and he had made a seemly sortie out onto the terrain of self-deprecation.

  “As Mayor Jordan just mentioned,” said Croker, “I have met Mr. Fareek Fanon.” He pronounced Fareek Faireek.

  The use of “Mister,” a genteel honorific that did not fit Fareek Fanon under any circumstances whatsoever, put Roger on guard and on edge.

  “But before I talk about that,” said Croker, “I oughta tell you how I happened to meet Mr. Fanon, because it’s sort of an interesting story all by itself. Mayor Jordan just called me a ‘great builder’ or sump’m like‘at. I s’pose’at’s a polite name for real estate developer, and I’m not even feeling like a great real estate developer along about right now.” Rat now. “There is a great developer, from Chicago, named Sam Zell, and he once said, ‘Real estate development is a good business to get into—and it’s a good business to get out of,’ meaning that most uv’us don’t know when to take our winnings off the table and stop betting. We’re always determined to build one more office tower, one more mall, one more tower plus mall plus hotel plus apartments—like the one I built in Cherokee County—and named after myself—no Atlanta developer ever had the nerve”—the nuv—“to name a building after himself before—anyway, the time always comes when that one more development does it, and you wind up just one more bleeding bankrupt son of a gun.”

  Roger looked at Wes, who was seated expressionless in one of the banker’s chairs, and then Wes glanced toward him and arched his eyebrows, and they both wondered, What in God’s name is the man doing?

  “What’s he doing?” asked Peepgass. He glanced over at Martha. Wallace looked at her, too, as if wondering the same thing. But Martha continued to look straight ahead at the screen … here in deepest, lushest Buckhead.

  “I don’t know,” she said, but in a dreamy, distracted way that indicated she hadn’t really absorbed the question. In fact, she was afraid for Charlie, though she couldn’t have told Ray or anybody else exactly why.

  “Right now,” said Croker, up on the landing in the rotunda, “I’m about this far from bankruptcy.” He raised his right hand and put his forefinger a fraction of an inch from his thumb. “Now, I’m telling you all this for a reason. One day ’bout … oh … two weeks ago … a lawyer representing Mr. Faireek Fanon came to me with a right interesting proposition.” Rat innerestin’.

  Roger’s heart began banging away. He looked to Wes up on the landing for—for—for—for help. And Wes was looking at him. His expression was impassive, but his eyes started darting all over the room. He seemed to be searching for someone, some henchman, some minion, some worker of wonders who could step up and put a hook around Croker and haul this great gimping hulk off the landing. Roger began looking about, too. He caught the eye of Don Pickett and Julian Salisbury, who were seated on the stairs. They looked as bewildered as he was.

  “This lawyer,” said Croker, “he told me he could work some magic. He told me he could make my troubles with the bank disappear, overnight prack’ly. All I had to do, in return”—retun—“was grant him a simple favor, a very easy favor.” Veh easy favuh. “All I had to do was go meet Mr. Faireek Fanon and come away from that meeting testifying—not in a court of law”—a coat a law—“but right here at this press conference right now”—ratcheer at this press con’frence rat now—“testifying that he’s a fine young man who’s getting dogged by all the things that can dog you when you’re a sports celebrity. Well, I wrestled with the angels … for a little while. Then I said to myself, ‘Well, hell’”—wale, hale—“what’s the big deal? I won’t be swearing anything on the Bible. I’ll just be indulging”—indulgin’—“in a little harmless flattery at a press conference. Who’s gonna care? So I met Faireek Fanon. I met him at the home of Coach Buck McNutter. Oh, by then, hehhhhhh”—Croker chuckled morosely—“I was sump’m. I was so eager to please, I started flattering Mr. Faireek Fanon right off the bat.” Rat off the bat. “One thing I got to give Faireek Fanon credit for. He didn’ bother flattering me, even though there was sump’m I could do for him. I could show up at this press conference and create the impression that the business interests—everybody’s always talking about the ‘business interests’ in Atlanta—that the ‘business interests’ were on Faireek Fanon’s side, or at least they weren’t”—wunt—“lined up against him. Nevertheless, Faireek Fanon’s eagerness to please the Sixty-Minute Man here”—Croker paused; a smile ran across his face and disappeared, as if he had thought of something amusing and then decided not to mention it—“his eagerness to please measured about zero, or maybe it was down in minus territory, because I think I detected more than a little contempt. I congratulate him for that, because he was in the presence of a man who was undertaking a contemptible thing. Mr. Faireek Fanon struck me as a typical sports hero. I know the type, because I was once one myself, or so the sports pages kept informing me. You get to the point where you expect people to do whatever you want because they’ve been lucky enough to breathe the same air you breathe. When you pass by people who are talking, you assume they’re talking about you. You think you’re exempt from the rules of ordinary conduct, since the world has been handed you on a platter, and therefore it’s all yours. Money? There wasn’t much money in football forty years ago, the way there is now, although then, like now, you were likely to take the money mainly to show everybody how wonderful you were. Sex? That hasn’t changed much. It was yours for the asking. It was set at your feet like an offering. Did Faireek Fanon take part in the kind of incident that everybody’s”—evuhbuddy’s—“talking about? I ain’t got a ghost of an idea. Would he be capable of such a thing? Well, Faireek, he’s arrogant, he’s obnoxious, he’s impertinent, he thinks the world owes him whatever he wants—but you can’t necessarily jump from that to say he’d do whatever he wants. Besides, my information is that sexual customs are a lot different today from what they were when I was young.”

  Charlie took a deep breath and lifted his eyes and looked about the rotunda … the journalists in the seats just below him … the great crescent of television cameras at the rear of the seats … the gray-and-white marble fountain in the middle of the rotunda and the tons of curved marble that created the rotunda wall … the people sitting shank to flank on the stairs to either side of the landing … and in the first row of the seats, Serena, slumped back on her chair, giving him the same look of social horror as when he and Billy Bass and the others had gone on about AIDS benefits that night down at Turpmtine—Lawdy me, I got de HIV!—and Lawyer Roger White, who seemed to be trying to look daggers through him … but in fact Charlie had never felt so impervious to criticism in his life. He felt like a man free of all encumbrances. He felt whole again, as if he could stride up and down those stairs without the slightest limp.

  Conrad could tell that Charlie was about to get to the message. He felt exhilarated as he watched him. It was for this that he had undergone the trials of Hercules and traveled all the way across America. Exhilarated! Yet dangers remained. He could see the Mayor looking this way and that. He was looking for someone to come up with a stratagem for getting the old man away from the podium. Conrad bent his knees slightly and centered his weight over the balls of his feet. If anyone tried to move Charlie so much as an inch, he was ready to intervene, even if it meant ending up in the hands of the police.