Darker Than Any Shadow - By Tina Whittle Page 0,13
“This is all your fault.”
“Me? Why?”
“You were supposed to be emceeing! If you’d been here, I could have kept Lex in line instead of having to stop and run the show.” She turned her attention to me. “They say you found him?”
“Jackson and I both did.”
She made a noise of exasperation. “Team finals start on Friday. That’s one week. How am I supposed to get us back on track by then, much less prepare for the individual rounds?” She started ticking off on her fingers. “I have to fill out an exigency request, reschedule the practices, start thinking about who to substitute—”
“What about Vigil?”
“That’s trading one problem for another. But I may have to use him. I didn’t work this hard to see our team pulled at the last minute.”
Padre stepped forward. “Take your fingers off the wheel, Frankie, at least for a little while.”
She glared at him. And then she stalked off, no doubt to drag some important Performance Poetry International officials from their beds and harangue them.
Padre watched her go, hands in pockets. “That woman will never learn. She’s all stick and no carrot.”
I had to agree. As we watched, she intruded on Jackson’s interview, then made a direct heading toward Cricket, who was trembling in a folding chair, a glass of water in hand. I felt an immediate surge of sympathy for Cricket, a small island with a big hurricane headed its way.
Padre shook his head in that direction. “I knew it was a bad idea letting him stay at their place.”
“Him who?”
“Lex.”
It took me a second to catch up. “Lex stayed with Cricket and Jackson?”
“It’s the hospitality rule of poets everywhere. If you don’t have a bed, somebody will find you a sofa. And you’ve got a sofa, you make it available to whoever needs it.”
“He didn’t live here?”
“No, he lived down the coast, near Brunswick. He only came up here for practice and slams. Jackson kicked him out yesterday, though.” He shrugged philosophically. “The boy had a way of stirring things up, for good or ill.”
This mess was getting more and more complicated. I could barely keep track of who was who and where they were sleeping. But I remembered Jackson’s anger.
“Was this about the missing money?”
Padre eyed me sharply. “How’d you hear about that?”
“I heard Lex and Jackson arguing. Violently.”
He shook his head. “I told Jackson it wasn’t Lex. I watched Lex put that money in the safe and close the door, then leave empty-handed and innocent. Of that particular crime anyway.”
He looked over my shoulder, and I turned to see the body being wheeled out into a waiting fire and rescue vehicle. Photographic flashes flared in the night, looking like some strange aurora borealis in the halogen street lights. Padre followed my eyes as I watched the car containing Rico pull away.
He patted my back. “One thing at a time, babe. I’ll talk to Cricket and Jackson. You make sure Rico’s okay. Okay?” He frowned. “Why are they taking him in anyway?”
“I don’t know. But it can’t be good.”
“Maybe they have a line-up. Or maybe they wanna do a police sketch.”
I shook my head. “No, something’s up. Rico never goes quietly. I don’t like it.”
“It’ll be okay, I’m sure. Tell him I’ll see him Sunday morning, okay?”
“For what?”
“Photo shoot. The team’s getting new head shots. You can come, if you like. I’ll snap one of you too.”
“Sure. If Rico’s up to it after all this.”
He patted my shoulder. “He will be. He’s a pro. And Frankie’s got one thing right—the show must go on.”
He ambled off Cricket and Jackson’s way, hands tucked in the pockets of his photographer’s vest. Trey watched him go. Now that the actual cops were on scene, he’d lost an active role in keeping things straight. Stuck with nothing to do, he’d retreated into stoic passivity.
His eyes narrowed. “Who was that?”
“I don’t remember his real name. Everybody calls him Padre,” I explained. “He got his start back in the seventies at the Nuyorican when it was only a bunch of poets in somebody’s East Village living room. Rico idolizes him.”
“What does he do now?”
“A little of everything—writing, teaching, photography. Rico says he’s the reason the documentary got greenlit so fast. Rumor has it he’s fetching a pretty penny for his part in it. A piece of spoken word history, that man.” I looked at Trey. “Why the curiosity, Mr. Seaver?”
Trey was still watching Padre, who by now had reached Cummings and was introducing himself. He looked like an anachronism,