Lightning Men

by Thomas Mullen

  “Did you see the tags?”

  “No, sir. Just heard a screech of tires and then some voices, so I looked through the curtain and saw it. Negro was on the ground by then and they were kicking him, one of ’em got down and threw some punches, and that other fella had the wood. Miracle that boy’s still alive.”

  “Barely alive.”

  “I don’t like that nonsense happening in my part of town. I don’t want no Negroes here, but I don’t want that, either.”

  “Was there anything at all noteworthy about them, sir? Was one of them particularly tall or short or fat? Could you make out their footwear?”

  “That’s all I got, and I’ve done enough. Good luck to you.”

  The sky was clear but the ground damp as Rake walked Charles Dickens. The dog sniffed at a patch of yellow and burgundy coreopsis flowers, lifting his leg in approval.

  Police received plenty of anonymous tips at the station, a good deal of them worthless. People who claimed to have seen crimes but were loath to leave their names sometimes had legitimate information, but more often they were neighbors with grudges, cranks venting nonsense. It was uncommon for Rake to get a tip called into his house, however. And the caller hadn’t pointed the finger at any particular person, so the grudge angle was out. That made the information more likely to be genuine.

  He was surprised, though. He wasn’t yet ready to rule out Knox Dunlow. And his main suspect had been Coyle and his fellow Columbians. Rake had spoken to some former colleagues from his time at the mill, where the Columbians had recruited years ago, to see if they were doing so again. They weren’t, as far as his old friends knew. And the lightning bolt signs had not yet reappeared. Still, he’d felt it was only a matter of time before they did something stupid again, hopefully leaving more evidence behind to implicate themselves.

  And of course he’d suspected the Klan, but their MO was to create a spectacle, inspiring terror in those they opposed. A quiet beating with no attendant publicity—not even a burned cross—did not seem their style.

  Then again, neither did Dale’s night ride. Maybe the Klan was changing tactics, becoming more secretive than before. What intrigued Rake most was the fact that the Hanford Park attack came so soon after Dale’s misadventure. If Malcolm had been attacked by Klansmen, they were likely repaying the neighborhood for Dale’s “work” in Coventry. Which meant Rake might discover the true reasons for Dale’s mission if he figured out who had attacked Malcolm. But how?

  The only other information he’d gathered from neighbors was from one man who lived a few doors down from Malcolm and claimed to have seen a trio of Negroes beating him. But this “witness” had been unable to give a description of their car or their faces, and his profuse usage of “nigger” in telling the tale gave Rake the distinct impression the man was just trying to blame Negroes for the trouble. It almost made Rake wonder if Helton had fed the man his lines.

  “Beautiful morning, isn’t it, Officer Rakestraw?” a voice interrupted his thoughts.

  Charles Dickens, who was revealing himself to be sadly lacking in basic canine protective skills, belatedly barked at two men crossing the street. Rake gave the leash a tug, harder than he needed to, and told the dog to hush.

  The men’s well-shined black leather shoes crunched on fallen leaves and acorn caps as they walked up to Rake. Both wore gray suits. One had the faintest amount of gray hairs along his temple, boyish blue eyes more than compensating. His partner was blond and couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than Rake. The one with a bit of gray reached into his pocket and showed off his badge like he was so very proud of it, then hid it again.

  “Georgia Bureau of Investigation. I’m Agent Tyson and this is Agent Bradford. Nice dog.” Rather than extending his hand to Rake, Tyson crouched down and offered it to Charles Dickens, who sniffed and licked it and was rewarded with some behind-the-ear head rubs.

  “What can I help you with?”

  Tyson stood back up. “We wanted to ask you a few questions about a shooting we’re looking into.”

  “Sure. There a reason you dropped by here and not the station?”

  “Happened to be in the neighborhood.” Which Rake smelled for bullshit.

  Bradford added, “And most of the folks at your headquarters hate us anyway.” Which Rake knew for truth. In addition to the inevitable turf disputes was the fact that the GBI’s sting against Atlanta’s Klaverns a few years ago had implicated several high-ranking Atlanta police officers. APD and GBI worked together on plenty of cases, but the partnership had been strained during Rake’s entire tenure on the force.

  “A man was beaten and killed in Coventry a few nights ago, and we have reason to believe the killers lived in this neighborhood.”

  Oh, he was so smooth, so smart. Mangling the facts that way: A man was beaten and killed, when in truth one man had been beaten and another man killed. A deliberate error to see if Rake might give himself away by correcting Tyson. Rake’s stomach was tight and he feared he could be facing adversaries smarter than him.

  “People I know?” Thinking, Just talk, be natural, don’t think about your reactions because then you’ll overreact.

  “We have some concerns about your brother-in-law, Dale Simpkins,” Bradford said. Unlike his partner, he edged back the slightest amount from Charles Dickens, whom he glanced at warily, as if awaiting an inevitable pounce.

  “Whatever you guys are thinking, just come out and say it. You won’t offend me.”

  “Three Klansmen attacked a man outside a roadhouse in Coventry—attacked a white man, actually, at a very out-of-the-way spot,” Tyson said. “They’d about killed him when the proprietor, a woman with a hell of an eye, shot one of the attackers dead with a rifle. The other two Klansmen escaped.”

  “What makes you think one of them was Dale?”

  “A few things. One of which is, he drives the same kind of car the proprietor says they fled in. She didn’t get the full tags but recalled a couple of letters, and his tags have them.”

  “She also may have put some bullets in it,” Bradford added, “and conveniently enough, Dale had his rear fender repaired the day after the shooting.”

  Rake nodded along with these new facts, which revealed how much work they’d already done. He asked, “So, do you want me to talk to him?”

  Tyson smiled. “No. We do not want you to talk to him. We want you to tell us everything he’s told you.”

  Charles Dickens started digging near the base of an oak tree. He kicked up dirt, some of which landed against the fine pant leg of Agent Bradford, who scowled and shook it off.

  “About this? Nothing. Look, I won’t insult your work by noting that the car he drives is a common one, or how many other tags must share two letters. I don’t see him as the kind of fellow who would drive up and beat on a stranger. But if you do, then go and question him. He’s my brother-in-law, but I’ll let you do your job.”

  “Who said it was a stranger?”

  Ooops. “Well, who was it?”

  “Small-town banker named Martin Letcher.”

  “Then shouldn’t you be talking to people the banker’s pissed off up there? What got you to Dale? It must have taken something other than the make of his car.”

  “He has talkative friends,” Bradford said, leaving it at that. Had Mott, the third member of their little goon squad, told anyone else? Rake had been meaning to question Mott, too, to see if he knew anything that might help Rake understand who had sent them, but he’d ultimately decided against it: he didn’t want another person to know he was investigating. And this conversation was justifying his paranoia. Was he too late, because Dale had ignored Rake’s advice and told someone else, either beforehand or after? Was Rake insane to think Dale could keep anything a secret?

  “Look, Officer Rakestraw,” Tyson said. “We know a lot about you. You seem like a smart, hardworking cop, on the fast track to detective. And we know you’re one of the rare cops who doesn’t have a Klan Kard. Bet you
have to put up with a lot of shit for that, right?”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Yes, you do seem like the kind of fellow who can handle things. My concern is that one of the things you can handle is helping your brother-in-law cover his tracks and making sure no other cop gets wise to his trail. You can handle it because he’s family and you’re a smart fellow, but then suddenly you’re handling just way too much, and it all comes crashing down.”

  His dog-fearing young partner added, “Especially that fast track to detective.”

  “Then I guess you don’t know as much about me as you think. Because I actually don’t like Dale all that much, to be perfectly honest, and if he did something that was going to get himself put away, I certainly wouldn’t help him out of it.” Thinking, Most of that is true, and I wish to God the rest was, too. What a fool he was to have helped the son of a bitch.

  “You’re right, we probably don’t know as much about you as we should. Like whatever happened to your first partner, Dunlow. Man completely vanishes and is later declared dead so his wife can get the pension money, and you know absolutely nothing about that, either, do you?”

  “And after his disappearance,” Bradford noted, “you get a better beat and a more competent partner, almost like someone was rewarding you for it.”

  Rake stepped closer to Bradford. Charles Dickens picked up on this, must have sensed the tension in his master’s muscles, because he moved beside Rake and eyed the strangers, very still, possibly issuing a faint growl at a register human ears couldn’t detect.

  “I deal with enough bullshit suspicion on that from other cops. I would think you guys were a bit smarter.”

  “We’re smart enough to know that obstruction of justice is a crime,” Bradford said.

  “I have a spotless record and I’m out walking my dog and you show up to accuse me of a crime. Why is this even a GBI case?”

  “Because we’re the ones who are so darn chummy with the Kluxers,” Tyson said, smiling. “We still have enough ears under the hoods to know what goes on with those fools.”

  “So what are your informants telling you?”

  “That it wasn’t a hit ordered by any of the Atlanta Klaverns, or the one in Coventry,” Bradford said. “There’s a couple other local Klaverns we still need to dig into, but this appears to be an unsanctioned attack, which makes it all the more unusual.”

  They still haven’t told me anything about Letcher, why he was targeted. They want me to ask, they want me to show how badly I want to know, and for that very reason, I can’t.

  “Well, get on and solve it, then. I’m not obstructing a damn thing. I hope Dale isn’t involved, and I don’t see why he would be, but if he is, do your job.”

  Tyson glanced at his partner and smiled. He turned back to Rakestraw. “You’re absolutely sure you have nothing to tell us?”

  Part of Rake wanted to pick a fight with them, let them know how he appreciated their effrontery at showing up and acting like they owned the block. The other part of him realized: This is how everyone else feels about me. They’re always thinking, “Damn cops boss us around, don’t show us any respect.”

  “Don’t piss away your career already,” Bradford said, and that was all the more insulting from someone so young.

  “If I hear anything, I will let you know.”

  Bored by this human, mostly inert contest, Charles Dickens turned to bark at a squirrel.

  “I’m disappointed in you, kid,” Tyson said. “We’d heard good things.”

  They’d been hoping to get something incriminating on Dale, he realized, but they’d also wanted a read on Rake. They’d been testing him, to see what kind of cop he was. He had failed.

  Then he had a worrisome thought. What if the mysterious Whitehouse himself was with the GBI? What if the whole affair was another sting, another attempt to take down the Klan? What if these two men before him had been a part of this from the beginning, and they mistakenly thought Rake was just another Kard-karrying kop?

  They took a few steps toward their car. Stung by their insults, and newly eager to show his anti-Klan bona fides, he called at them, “So if you have so many ears in the Klan, why haven’t you solved the beating that happened here last week?”

  “What beating is that?”

  He couldn’t tell if they were only playing stupid. “Negro by the name of Malcolm Greer was attacked when he was walking home one night.”

  “Who says it was the Klan?”

  “Call it a hunch.” He didn’t want to mention the anonymous tip, as it would sound thin.

  “Well, hunches are nice,” Tyson said, “but we prefer evidence. Anyway, we’re not here to give you information. Unless perhaps you have some information for us, and you want to have an exchange? Because so far I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall.”

  His partner added, to the dog, “And brick walls get pissed on, don’t they, pooch?”

  Rake wanted to tell Bradford not to address his dog, but he realized how absurd that would sound.

  “Stopping the Klan is mighty tricky when so many of them wear badges under those robes,” Tyson said, grinning tightly. Something about that grin sent alarm bells through Rake’s skull. When are they going to question Dale? How quickly will Dale confess to everything, and how quickly will he mention that his brother-in-law Rake had advised him to keep quiet?

  “Before you criticize us,” Tyson said as he walked away, “you might want to get your own house in order.”

  25

  IT WAS DIFFICULT if not impossible for a Georgia woman to own a business, and indeed the name on all the legal paperwork regarding the Lean-To in Coventry was that of Joe Bleedhorn, Hortense’s husband. But five years ago the Lord had seen fit to send some bolt of cerebral lightning into his skull; one half of his body had gone slack, his lips crooked, and the light in both eyes had dimmed substantially. He sat in a wheelchair now and managed to get himself some places one-handed, but for the most part he stayed in their house, where he was tended by a saintly aunt and by Hortense, when she wasn’t busy running the bar.

  She’d gone by the nickname Tense since her first years. It wasn’t terribly fitting. Far from high-strung, she projected a laid-back sense that all would be well so long as she was in charge. And she was. She served drinks, bossed around cooks, and kept the drunkest of her customers from causing too much of a ruckus. And whenever it appeared that causing a ruckus was on someone’s mind, well, Tense carried a Colt .45 in her belt and she was never far from the shotgun and rifle she kept hidden on the premises. The Lean-To’s regulars tolerated her occasionally surly demeanor and cut her extra slack on account of the misfortune the Lord had dropped on her husband, so she seldom had occasion to display those firearms. When she did, it was usually to deal with folks who weren’t regulars, truck drivers who happened to be stopping in town, salesmen looking to celebrate a big score, wayward souls on long, uninterrupted voyages of self-loathing and danger who assumed she was a madam or a whore, or both. She’d been slapped around, fondled, had a scar cut into her right forearm by a blade, and had resewn more than a few torn blouses, but she’d also shot three men and broken more bottles over skulls than she could remember.

  Walter Irons was the first man she had killed.

  She had lost no great amount of sleep over the killing. She had taken a man’s life, but she’d done so in order to save another man’s. Martin Letcher was a fellow she knew, friendly enough, funny when sober and funnier when tight and of course less funny when all-out drunk, as all men were, though they believed the opposite. His bank had helped her family out when her husband had first been struck and she’d been dumbfounded by the size of the medical bills. The man she’d shot, however, she did not know. No one did.

  That grated on her. As did the fact that he and his fellow assailants had been wearing Klan robes despite local Kluxers’ insistence that they didn’t know anything about the attack.

  Also bothersome was that Willa Mae Letcher, the wife o
f the man whose life she’d saved, hadn’t so much as telephoned to express her thanks. Not a letter, not a brief visit to the Lean-To. Perhaps Mrs. Letcher would not deign to lower herself by visiting such an establishment, which if that were the case, fine. Uppity women could not be talked down from their station, Tense knew. But no phone call, even?

  Tense typically opened for business at noon, arriving an hour early to get things moving in the kitchen. She swept some early-to-fall leaves and acorns from the front porch, gazing with approval at two butterflies alighting on the white turtlehead flowers that unfurled from green stalks in the shade cast by the oaks towering above. She looked up when she heard a vehicle crunching its way up the long driveway, which was flanked then as every autumn by thick hedges of orange lantana. An unfamiliar black Ford pickup parked alongside the oak at the base of which the Kluxer had been standing when she’d fired her shots. Two men inside the truck sat there for an unusually long time while she continued with her sweeping. She had been whistling to herself but something about the unexpected arrival made her lose the tune.

  Finally there emerged from the Ford two men who were very large indeed. Each of them six four at least, broad across the shoulders. Not portly or overweight, just keep-your-distance big. The driver had a thick beard and with his plaid shirt and overalls looked like a lumberjack in the wrong part of the state. The passenger had clean-shaven cheeks but the same dark hair and as she watched them she spied similarities in their cold blue eyes and the way in which they stared into her.

  “We ain’t open yet, boys. Gotta wait ’til noon.”

  “You’re Hortense Bleedhorn?” asked the one who wasn’t dressed quite so much like a lumberjack. He wore a blue denim shirt untucked over corduroys gone orange in the cuffs from Georgia clay. His voice was pure Bama, though, and a bit higher-pitched than she would have expected.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “I’m Morris. This is my brother Reece.”

  Reece was looking not at her but at the base of the oak. Something in his gaze suggested he knew where the man had fallen, as there was a forensic nature to it, a calculating of angles.