Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) Page 2

  “Are we allowed, as a city, to support a candidate?” asked Nina.

  “Of course we are!” answered Jackson. “If the Bay St. Lucy city council says unanimously—and it will be unanimous—that we want to give a great deal of money to a candidate, because that candidate will advance the interests of our community—why there is no power in the state that could or would stop us.”

  John Giusti:

  “You’re a great public speaker, Paul. You were a great athlete, and that’s gold in Mississippi. You’re young. You’ve made no political enemies. There are people who disagree with your stance on standardized testing, of course, but…”

  Paul shook his head:

  “I’m not sure that would be a major consideration. I think, as an ex-principal, I can be certain of the support of all state teachers’ organizations. The question is, will that be enough?”

  Pause.

  “…and the answer is no. No, it won’t. I’m going to need vocal backing, and financial backing, from several other major powers. And Nina, that’s where you come in.”

  Nina, somewhat taken aback, could only look around the strange circle of people who had gathered in this manger-like setting.

  “What?” she found herself stammering.

  “I said I need the support of other major powers.”

  “And I’m a major power?”

  “No, but you have close contacts with one.”

  “What major power do I have contacts with? The Mississippi Cat Owners Association?”

  Smiles at this.

  Paul:

  “No. You have contacts with Gulf Coast Petroleum. They’re a billion dollar industry. One of the largest in the state, bigger even than any timber or agricultural organization.”

  She was beginning to understand.

  “Well. I did make some friends there.”

  “You saved the huge oil rig Aquatica. And in so doing, you saved their reputation, a hundred and fifty three of their employees—and maybe the whole eco-system of the gulf coast.”

  Jackson Bennett leaned forward:

  “Nina, I took the liberty of doing something this afternoon that—well, maybe I shouldn’t have.”

  She looked at him, thinking almost instinctively:

  Uh oh.

  Here it comes again.

  I’m going to get wrapped up in some incomprehensible and dangerous mess.

  On the other hand…

  …what kind of a mess could this be?

  One of my best friends has a great opportunity.

  Why not help him?

  If I can.

  And so, to Jackson:

  “What did you do, Jackson? And what do you want me to do?”

  “I called a friend of mine who’s one of Gulf Coast Petroleum’s attorneys. He’s based in Lafayette.”

  “As is,” she said, “the whole oil industry.”

  “That’s right. Anyway, I asked him if there was a possibility that you might fly over there and speak to someone higher up, on Paul’s account. Mainly to beg for their support.”

  “And?”

  “You have an appointment tomorrow afternoon with the CEO of Gulf Coast Petroleum, in their downtown offices. I’ve arranged for your air ticket.”

  And so, there it was. Nina Bannister was going to Lafayette.

  The ‘meeting in the livestock barn,’ as she now remembered it, had happened months ago, in February.

  Now it was Tuesday, March 15, night of the special election to replace Jarrod Thornbloom.

  Ten forty five PM.

  Nina, having just gotten off the phone with some newspaper or other, went outside.

  A group of smokers had gathered outside city hall.

  Margot Gavin had joined them, after having worked late in her shop, Elementals: Treasures from Earth and Sea. Helen Reddington, not having successfully given up cigarettes, was in the small circle. So was Tom Broussard, slovenly, hulking.

  The March sky was also slovenly and hulking, and a cool wind was whistling in from the gulf.

  A few cars prowled the street of Bay St. Lucy, which had not quite gotten itself ready for spring break.

  Tom made a comment about the weather.

  Everybody nodded.

  Somebody asked about his latest book.

  He answered something or other, forgetting for the moment that he never talked about his books, for the simple reason that no one really cared and had only asked for the simple reason that there was not much else you could talk about with Tom Broussard.

  Finally, Helen flipped the stub of whatever she was smoking into the gutter that stretched placidly a few feet from where she stood and asked:

  “So how far down are we?”

  That was in fact the question Nina had just been answering to the Biloxi Town Journal, and so she could say:

  “Three hundred and forty seven votes, as of two minutes ago.”

  “What’s left to report?” rumbled Tom.

  “Seven counties, all in the north. Desoto, Tippah, Alcorn, Tate, Marshall, Benton, Prentiss.”

  Margot huddled more tightly inside her Chicago Bears windbreaker and asked:

  “They’re rural, aren’t they?”

  Nina could not help smiling.

  “All of Mississippi is rural. Even the cities are rural.”

  They all stood for a time and watched the huge awful luminescent cross between a wrecked battle ship and a crashed jetliner that was their new modern city hall.

  It did not speak to them.

  And so Nina could only think back.

  That trip to Lafayette.

  The meeting with the CEO of Gulf Coast Petroleum.

  Who happened, to Nina’s great surprise, to be a woman!

  The corporation’s headquarters were housed in a building just as non-descript as any of the others in downtown Lafayette. There was nothing to distinguish it, save the letters GP etched primly in gray limestone above the doorway.

  She was led through the door.

  She and the tall blonde young man assigned to be her guide zigzagged though the ground floor of the building, rounding a deserted corner in what seemed to be a deserted hallway, entering a second elevator, and pushing a button for the second floor.

  “Here we are. If you’ll just step inside...”

  A heavy door opened before her.

  The office she found herself in resembled the inner sanctum of a cathedral. There was a great, stained glass window behind her desk…a window that might have come from any of the reliquaries of Chartres or Lourdes…and beatific light poured into the small room, making her appear as the Abbess of a nunnery as she bent, bespectacled, over what seemed to be ponderous account books.

  A diminutive figure rose up out of the shadows, rounded the desk, and strode across the room.

  “You must be Ms. Bannister.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Barbara Daring. I’m the Chief Executive Officer here at Gulf Coast Petroleum.”

  She could not, Nina estimated, have been more than four feet tall; but the most striking thing about her was her manner of crooking her head precisely at forty-five degrees (It seemed to be bent first one direction at forty five degrees and then another, without visibly making the transformation) and turning her head upon her neck at another precise forty-five degree revolution, so that she had the effect always of peeking outward and upward at the world from beneath an invisible fence.

  But her smile…

  The smile was perhaps more memorable than either stature or angularity. It was unchanging, unwavering, explosively, radioactively white. It took up half of her face, and exerted so much upward pressure that the eyes above it remained permanently squinted, small dark slits of mascara which ran down and away from her angular, slender, nose, at another forty-five degrees.

  She kept her gaze fixed upward and crookedly on Nina, an amazing feat, Nina concluded, for a woman with no visible eyes.

  She was a red and black woman, and ageless. There was too much make
up (also red and black) to perceive her skin, and too much brightness to examine her character or demeanor.

  She could have been the governor’s wife or a carnival ride.

  “Nina—I hope I may be allowed to call you Nina?”

  “Of course.”

  “Marvelous!”

  Her pronunciation of the word “marvelous” would have been worth the price of a theater ticket.

  It was a three generation pronunciation, and almost certainly a multi-continental one.

  It was the kind of pronunciation that seemed to bend the speaker’s body around it, inflate the soul responsible for it, and exalt humanity in general.

  It was a pronunciation to be celebrated, if never fully comprehended.

  “Thank you,” said Nina, ineffectually.

  “I took the liberty of reserving the small meeting room next door. Do you like caviar?”

  This was an unanswerable question, or at least unanswerable as a yes or no question. ‘Yes,’ implied that one actually had the chance of eating caviar regularly, which, of course, was ridiculous; and ‘no’ was like answering ‘no’ to the question “Do you enjoy having sex?”: vaguely unsporting, and, ultimately, a bit defeatist.

  “I love caviar.”

  “Marvelous!”

  Again! The Ziegfeld Follies and the Metropolitan Opera, bottled in tandem, and opened in an inner sanctum of one of the world’s great oil companies!

  “Let’s go over then, shall we? Just right through here…”

  Corridor corridor corridor corridor…

  Door…

  Unlock door, open door…

  The windows, Nina estimated, must be a foot thick.

  Either the oil industry did not like the outside world or it feared gunfire.

  Or both.

  There was a table in the center of the room. It was not particularly large, but it was solid and immovable. It was Odysseus’s bed, hewn from the trunk of a massive tree and left in place for the building to grow around it.

  “Please sit, Nina.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And so, Nina. I do know something of you, of your background. You were a teacher for a number of years, I believe.”

  “Yes. English teacher.”

  “I thought long and hard about going into teaching. Such a rewarding career.”

  “It has its good moments.”

  ‘I’m sure it does. I’m sure it does. As for myself, I hardly remember how I managed to wind up here. So many twists and turns.”

  “Were you in engineering?”

  “For a time. Then business administration. Somehow the two worked their way together. And you reside now in Bay St. Lucy?”

  “I do.”

  “How I envy you! I spent a delightful week there some years ago. I was staying with friends, but I still remember how perfect the beach was. And as for you––you were married to an attorney?”

  “Yes, Frank. He passed away some years ago.”

  “I am sorry. I myself never married. Too involved in the job, I suppose.”

  “I suppose at the level you’ve reached, it’s hard to have a personal life.”

  “It is. Some accomplish it; I wasn’t able to.”

  They were silent for a time.

  Then Nina knew it was time to get to the subject she had come about.

  “I have to talk to you about..”

  She was interrupted:

  “About Mr. Cox. Yes, indeed.”

  “I guess I should start by telling you that I’ve known Paul all my life. In my opinion, he’s…”

  “He’s an exceptional young man. I quite agree.”

  “You’ve found out some things about him?”

  A nod.

  “Oh yes. Yes, we received the unfortunate news about Congressman Thornbloom yesterday. And after your Mr. Bennett called one of our people, I was able to have some research done. We aren’t the CIA, but we have our sources for gathering information.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “About Paul Cox? One can only speak of him in positives. A young man, highly thought of in many circles in Jackson. A true reformer. Clearly, the man knows how to give a speech.”

  A pause.

  Nina:

  “But?”

  Barbara Daring shook her head:

  “Ms. Bannister, I’m now going to be telling you several things that I’m sure you already know. But I’m going to do so anyway. First, the coming election—not just this special election in March but the national election in November—is exceptionally vital in the history of our nation. It may, in fact, be the most vital election we have had. So many close battles, so many deep and bitter disputes, and so much riding on the outcome of every race, in every state. Control of the Senate, control of The House of Representatives—it all hangs in the balance.”

  “Yes. I’m aware of that. But I do think that Paul…”

  “The long and short of it is that the winner of this election in March needs to be capable of winning in November. We aren’t simply choosing a lame duck here. We need an exceptional person, who can keep going.”

  “I can promise you that Paul is such a person. At least, I believe he is.”

  “I’m sure he is. But, as I was saying, the interests of Gulf Coast Petroleum in these elections are huge. There are the questions of governmental regulations to deal with, of course; but more important are decisions that must and will be made about the Alaskan pipeline. Ms. Bannister, I will put this as succinctly as possible: our country can no longer afford to be dependent on oil from The Middle East. There is simply too much instability in the region. We are no longer certain that the people we are paying trillions of dollars to, are not converting that money into weapons to use against us.”

  Nina knew nothing to say to this.

  She simply nodded.

  Barbara Daring continued:

  “At first glance then, it might seem logical that the corporation might wish to throw all its support behind a Republican candidate. The Democrats have in the past seemed more receptive to environmental issues, and more passionate about preserving the wilderness, etc. But Nina…I may call you Nina?”

  “Of course.”

  “Nina, I’m not so certain that I want to base everything on party affiliation. That deep-rooted intransigence, that proclivity for saying ‘Our party believes x and yours believes y and we never compromise’—that proclivity is paralyzing our government, and, as a natural consequence, our nation.”

  “Yes. I read the papers. I know what’s been happening in Washington. Or not happening.”

  “I’m sure you do read the papers. I’m certain that you read a great deal more than that. Which is why I’m telling you that Gulf Coast Petroleum wants to back a very special person in this election.”

  “And that’s why I’m telling you that Paul will…”

  “Hush, dear.”

  She did.

  The woman opposite her continued:

  “We need someone who can see beneath the stereotypes. We need someone who genuinely loves the environment—but who understands how deeply we care about it too. We need someone who can help us make the bridge between the environmental lobby and our research laboratories. Laboratories that, I might add, are fixated twenty-four hours a day on meeting the energy needs of the nation, but in doing so with absolute safety.”

  Another pause.

  “Do you see what I’m saying, Nina?”

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  Then a smile.

  “Of course you do. You’ve already proven that you do. You already know how Aquatica runs.”

  “I thought I knew before I went out there. I thought you were all environmental villains.”

  “But you learned different.”

  “Yes. I learned different.”

  “And that is what, my dear, our candidate must be able to help the entire country to do. We must, in short, have a teacher representing us in Washington.”

  “But Paul is a teac
her! If Paul can’t do the job you’ve just described, who can?”

  Barbara Daring simply continued to smile.

  And Nina, finally, understood.

  This woman was talking about her.

  Within the week—because Jackson was nothing if not industrious—all necessary papers had been filed.

  Nina Bannister was running for Congress.

  Soon afterwards she found herself in an interior room of the Auberge des Arts, cameras focused on her, whirring lights shining in her eyes, and an audience of five people (Alanna Delafosse, Paul Cox, Jackson Bennett, Edie Towler, and Margot Gavin, who had driven down for the occasion) preparing to grill her with the kinds of questions she was sure to get in press conferences, and could also expect in the two statewide debates, the first of which was to take place March 7.

  The cameras in front of her were actually taking pictures, just as they would be in a live press conference.

  The microphones were actually recording.

  This is the way that it would be.

  Everything was ready.

  She, dressed as a principal, wondered if, seated primly at a table and facing the audience, she looked like Hillary Clinton.

  She was just wondering how she felt about that prospect when Paul rose from the first row and asked:

  “You ready, Nina?”

  She nodded.

  What if she looked like Nixon?

  “I’m ready.”

  “Remember. You’re among friends here. Take your time with answers. You just need to be sure of your positions.”

  “I know.”

  “If we need to help you with research, we’re all ready to do that.”

  “I know that, too, Paul. And I appreciate it.”

  “The main rule in this kind of thing is, don’t pretend to know something if you don’t. It’s better just to say, ‘I don’t know.’”

  “I understand.”

  “Ok.”

  He turned and looked at the group of people seated behind him, then asked:

  “Who wants to ask the first question?”

  Alanna Delafosse rose.

  “Nina, darling.”

  “Yes?”

  “What are your thoughts on the situation in the Middle East?”

  She answered immediately:

  “I think it’s very bad there.”