The Accidental Hero Chapter One
It was a hot Saturday night when Richard Greystone arranged the meeting that was worth several million dollars to him and half-billion to the other party. Of course, there was the unfortunate consequence that what they agreed to on this night would go a long way toward ensuring that thousands of people in Birmingham continued to suffer. But sometimes collateral damage was unavoidable.
There, on the top floor of the Regions Tower, it was almost as hot in Greystone’s office as it was outside. That was intentional. While air conditioners were blowing full-blast across Alabama, Greystone had the heat on, just enough to cause discomfort for the oily man who sat in a small chair facing him.
Three lamps glowed like a trinity of flickering candles, light in the otherwise dark room: the corner floor lamp, the iron and gold leaf lamp on the credenza and the banker’s lamp on Greystone’s great desk under which he was reading a brief, one he had written months ago that was no longer relevant, while ignoring the oily man, who called himself Cunny. Or Cutney, something like that.
Cunny cleared his throat before pointing to the Aleksandr Moravov that hung on the wall. “That’s a nice picture.”
“It’s a painting,” Greystone said from his desk, still focused on the brief.
“Oh, yeah, of course. I see those women are all wearing the same red head scarfs.”
“Those women,” Greystone said, finally looking up, and managing not to roll his eyes, “are Russian peasants. Have you read Dostoyevsky?”
Cunny or Cutney shifted in the tight seat. He shook his head.
“Dostoyevsky wrote a novel where a man killed an old woman. Just to see if he could. I find that fascinating.”
Oily Cunny let out a sigh. He had a wart on his forehead that might have been covered if he wasn’t balding. A few beads of sweat were circling the wart. The heat didn’t bother Greystone.
“My wife is at a fundraiser for the Alabama Symphony tonight. I should be there with her.” Greystone let out a wistful sigh. “But you needed me. So who is you favorite composer?”
“Songwriter? Um, I kinda like Toby Keith. He tells it like it is.”
Greystone rubbed his forehead, a perfect display of the earnest professor, dismayed at his obtuse student. He let go of the brief and looked at Cunny with a blank stare for a full minute. Then, appearing to rouse himself, he gave a single hand-clap. “So. You have a problem.”
“Well, not me, exactly.”
“I know. The entity you represent.” Greystone knew who the other party was and he was a bit insulted that they hadn’t contacted him directly, but he understood that they needed deniability. “You’re lucky you’ve come to me. I can solve the problem.”
Greystone stood and walked to the window where he gazed out at the Harbert building, twinkling in the night. How much electricity did that use? Behind him, Cutney or whoever coughed. Time to parry.
Greystone turned, his hands behind his back now, Richard Greystone, the Good Samaritan. He smiled, just enough. “This will require a good deal of effort on my part, and as you can imagine, my time is limited. And while I would love to help, just as a matter of friendship, I’m afraid I’ll need compensation.”
“Of course.”
“One-tenth of one percent of the company should be about right.”
Cunny sat forward and the small chair squeaked. “That’s impossible. It’s a five billion dollar company. One-tenth of one percent is… is a lot.”
Greystone’s smile broadened. Richard Greystone, the benevolent patron. “I would so like to help.” He walked back to his desk, this time slowly, as though he was disappointed. He stood, gazing down at the document that glowed under the desk lamp, the brief he had read so many times he could probably recite it from memory. “Maybe someone else can help.” He rubbed his chin. “But who? The grapevine says you’ve tried the right people in the legislature.”
“You’re asking for too much.”
“Am I? If this isn’t fixed, your friends will be out half-billion dollars. Do they have that much cash lying around?”
“They’ll never give up part of the company. Besides, transferring ownership, that would be public information.”
Greystone knew this, but he always asked for more than he wanted. Even a child knew how to negotiate. After a moment, still standing, he placed both hands on the desk and leaned forward, boring into Cunny’s shallow eyes. “I’m all you’ve got.”
Cutney shrank, seeming to be enveloped into the dark.
“Two million dollars, paid in advance.”
Cunny blinked. “I’ll have to get that approved.”
Greystone straightened up and shrugged. “Fine. Don’t wait too long.”
“But how can you do it?”
“I have a plan. I just need to find the right person. And I will.”
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On Sunday morning, Sam Becker was standing near Storyteller Fountain on one of the corners of Five Points, the big circular intersection that formed a five-pointed star on Birmingham’s Southside, just on the edge of downtown.
Sam rubbed sweat off the back of his neck. This early, and the heat was already beating him down. It was tempting to climb over the waist-high wall and jump into the fountain pool, but this morning Sam felt a little creeped out by the creatures that lurked there: the bronze ram-man that sat on an island pedestal reading a book to five animals, turtles, rabbits and frogs, each on their own pedestals spitting out rainbows of misty water.
Some people claimed Storyteller Fountain was satanic, something about five being associated with the devil, an urban legend that was ridiculous, if for no other reason than the fact that the fountain stood in front of a century-old church.
While Sam considered the fountain, a big-bellied man with long stringy hair lumbered over, took a guitar out of its case, and sat down on the fountain wall, leaving the case at his feet, open for dollar bills. He began to play something that might have been bluesy or might have been rockabilly, Sam didn’t know because he wasn’t paying attention. He was where he had been for most of the past week: that damned banquet hall at the Harbert Center. He had done his best to fit in with the occasion, wearing a dark suit and a tie that choked him. There was Lisa, big sis, nodding and smiling at all the other doctors, the hospital courtiers, and importantaires who waited their turn to congratulate her.
Sam realized that he wasn’t breathing and he shook himself. A handful of people had scattered around the fountain now, probably having wandered over from the Original House of Pancakes across the street, and they seemed to be enjoying the music. What was stringy-hair playing? Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms. What was that, Elvis? Some old guy. To Sam’s left, a hipster in a skull cap lit a cigarette. An older black man in glasses stood near the front, holding hands with his gray-haired wife.
The music stopped. Stringy-hair was looking at Sam, for some reason. “Do you pray?” he asked.
Sam glanced around. Was the man talking to him? He cleared his throat. “When I was young. But I never got what I wanted so I stopped.”
Stringy-hair scrunched up his face. “Huh?” He held up the guitar. “Do you play?”
“Oh. Well yeah, a little.”
“Come on then.”
Sam glanced at his phone. 9:40. He had to get moving. “Thanks,” he said. “Maybe another time.”
As he started up the long hill that was twentieth street, with the sixty-foot statue of the Vulcan towering above on the hilltop, the church bells began to ring, to peal, to ring and ring.
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It was about a fifteen minute walk to the heart of Highland Avenue, all of it uphill until Sam reached the level-ground peak, by which time his sweaty shirt clung to his back. He didn’t notice the early brunch crowd under the canopy at Bottega’s or the girl in yoga pants walking her collie or the joggers across the street, and he didn’t feel the strain in his balled up fists, none of this because he was back at the banquet hall, the damned banquet hall. It had been nothing new: his father had been putting him down on a regular basis since the first grade, and he had never known how to respond, but this humiliation was the block that crashed his Jenga tower.
There was Lisa in a smart business outfit, shaking hands, while their mother and father looked on with proud smiles and Sam fiddled with his tie. Did people know he was part of the family? Was anyone looking at him, wondering what he was doing there? He figured his dad was going to ignore him until suddenly when one of his colleagues nodded toward Sam, the old man stepped over, slapped Sam’s shoulder, and in his arrogant German accent said, loud enough for everyone in the cheap seats, “and this is my slacker.” Sam’s shoulder blazed with the pinch of that squeezing hand.
He stopped just then, standing on the tree-lined sidewalk. He choked down a wail. It was important to stay calm today, so he took three deep breaths and resumed walking. The road was easing downhill now as he neared Caldwell Park, the grassy bowl that dropped off the edge of Highland Avenue. And sure enough, there they were down in the park: several hundred people, some sitting on blankets like they were at a picnic, while others, most others, waved homemade signs, everyone chanting “no knock killers, no knock killers.” They had been here ever since Friday night when a little girl named Lyndale was accidentally shot by police who had crashed into her family’s apartment on a no knock raid. Lyndale was alive, thankfully, at UAB Hospital, but that didn’t assuage people’s anger, especially since the cops had busted into the wrong apartment.
Sam was standing at the top of the stone steps that led down into the park when he saw the gunman. Standing at the far end of the hillside that overlooked the park, the man, wearing a ball cap with sunglasses and a COVID mask, was holding some sort of military-grade gun.
Sam started down the steps, two at a time. The gunman was edging down the hill. Someone in the crowd saw the man and screamed, and that scream led to another, then another, an earsplitting echo of screams ringing off the hillsides. People scrambled up from blankets, others dropped their signs, parents grabbed children’s hands, all in a stampede away from the gunman, everyone rushing across the bowl toward the hillsides, the ground shaking underneath. Sam could feel the mass panic biting into his bones and he felt bad for that.
He was running across the bowl, straight at the gunman, fifty yards away. The man raised the gun, pointed at the flying crowd, and now from twenty yards, Sam saw the finger on the trigger, bigger than life, death, the only thing in the world just then. He left his feet and dove, a linebacker in a stadium, tackling the man, thudding him to the ground.
A young black guy had turned from the fleeing crowd, and was running toward Sam and the gunman, who were both still on the ground. “I got you,” he yelled.
The gunman bolted to his feet, grabbed the gun, and barreled away. He rushed up the hillside he had come from, onto the street, and in seconds he vanished, so suddenly that it was almost like he had never been there at all.
The black guy reached Sam. “Bro, you just saved a bunch of lives. You’re a hero.”
Sam nodded, hoping he looked humble. At that moment, a white cloud eased over the sun, and it wasn’t quite so hot.
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Richard and Silvia Greystone lived in Mountain Brook because if you were important in Birmingham, that’s where you lived. Just over the mountain from downtown, Mountain Brook was mostly old money, the decedents of the original coal and steel barons, with some newer rich mixed in – newer meaning sixty years young and big. Greystone’s money was old all right, but it was Connecticut old, which was fine since, after all, money was money no matter where it came from.
The original Greystones had settled on the island of Manhattan in the 1600s. Charles Greystone had taken the role that was appropriate to second sons of English landowners and became an Anglican Priest. Shortly after New Amsterdam was surrendered to the English, he was sent there with orders to establish a diocese. By the time Charles was made a Bishop, all of his sons were engaged in business around the city. The most successful of the bunch was Henry who was an active trader at the Wall Street slave market. By the time the slave trading was closed in 1762, Henry and his sons had migrated to trading securities of the new businesses that were cropping up on the island.
The Greystone family had moved to Connecticut several generations back, although they still maintained an apartment in Manhattan for when a Greystone man missed the train after a long day on Wall Street or when a Greystone woman wanted to doing some shopping in the city.
Richard was the first Greystone to venture out of New England, although that was not by choice. He and Silvia lived in a home that was hidden from the road by an acre of maple and dogwood. It had been built over one-hundred years ago with stone from The Dickens Quarry by John Williams, a coal magnate, an irony that, after last night’s meeting, was not lost on Greystone. Eight-thousand square feet was more space than necessary for two people, and it had always been just two, but Greystone understood that a large home was as important to success as a nice suit.
On the morning after Richard’s late night meeting with Cutney/Cunny and Silvia’s fundraiser at the symphony, the Greystones missed their regular service at the Cathedral Church of the Advent. Their spot in the third pew between the Fowlers – Jake was the CEO of a hospital chain – and the Ruffins – Candice ran a non-profit and Herman was a bank Chairman – would be empty, as no one would dare encroach.
Greystone was in the leather easy chair in his study, the walls paneled in deep wood, sipping a cup of coffee – pure black – while listened to Dvorak’s Symphony Number Nine, when Silvia stuck her head in the door. Her eyes held that faraway look.
Richard raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“I’m out. Meeting Margaret for brunch.”
“Wonderful. Have a nice time.”
Silvia blinked and then she was gone. Greystone switched the music to Flight of the Valkyries and flicked on the TV, scrolling until he found the Cage Fighting channel. His nostrils flared as he watched a black man kick a tattooed man in the face. The jawbone crack seeped the taste of blood onto his tongue.
The phone rang. Caller ID: Olivia.
“Hey.”
“Turn on TV.”
“To?”
“Local news. Any station.”
Greystone flicked on Channel Six. A lanky red-haired man, late twenties to early thirties, was standing with a blonde reporter. She held him with a big-eyed gaze, as though he had just come down a mountain with a scroll of commandments.
“Weren’t you afraid?” Her voice was breathless.
Red-hair shrugged. “You know, at that point, it’s just adrenaline. You do what you have to do.”
“He could have killed you.”
“The main thing is that everyone is safe.”
The reporter turned to the camera with a big smile. “There you have it. Sam Becker. A true hero.”
The man in the newsroom started bantering with the reporter, and Greystone muted it. “What do you have on him?”
“His father is Dr. Karl Becker.”
“Someone I’m supposed to know?”
“Sorry. I thought you might. He and his wife came from Germany over thirty years ago. Harvard Medical School. He’s been at UAB twenty years. Professor of Neurosurgery. Published some of the seminal research in the field.”
“Good for him. And Sam?”
“Woodwork.”
“I don’t think I heard you right.”
“Yes you did. He works with wood.”
“What does he do with it?”
“Sands it. Strips it. Refinishes.”
“With a physician father? What, is he lazy?”
“You ever sand an armoire? That’s hard work. And yeah, I haven’t either, but I can imagine.”
“So then he’s dumb.”
“I don’t know about that. Still some checking to do. I will say this, though: if he’s dumb, it didn’t rub off on his sister. She’s an orthopedic surgeon. A very good one, from what I hear.”
“The reporter on TV. She called him a hero.”
“Yes. And to our point, you know who he’s a hero to? This was at Caldwell Park.”
Greystone let out a sigh. “Olivia, please, get to the point.”
“There have been protests there all weekend because of the little girl who was hurt in a police raid. A little black girl.”
Richard Greystone sat up. He looked out the window at his tennis court, and just then, for the first time in years, he felt like running outside and swinging his racket. “Olivia,” he said. “Olivia, Olivia. We have our man.”