Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

  She sags against the kitchen counter. “Oh, God. This can’t be.”

  I hug her tight against me. “Where would he go, Mom? Who would he trust with his life on the line?”

  “Oh, Lord,” she says into my chest. “Tom must have treated ten thousand people since we moved here. Three-quarters of them would probably help him if he asked, and ten percent would probably risk their lives for him.”

  She’s right. “That’s a thousand places to search, right there.”

  Her wet face nods against me. “Maybe he wasn’t so crazy to run. Maybe he’s sure they can’t find him.”

  “But they will, sooner or later. They have too much technology, and the Knox family knows this area like their own backyard.”

  Her arms clench me with the strength of near panic, and she shudders against my chest. After half a minute, I kiss the top of her head and draw back.

  “Mom, I don’t want Annie to see me this way. I need to look for Dad, even if the chance is slim. Please reassure her all you can. And whatever you do, don’t leave this house. Don’t even stand by the windows. I’ve called all the contractors, so no one should be showing up. If I decide to send someone to protect you, I’ll call you first.”

  She nods with grim determination. “I’ve got my pistol in my purse.”

  “I’ll come back as soon as I can. Tell Annie I’ll be back by dark. And call my cell if you think of any way I might be able to reach Dad.”

  Mom nods helplessly as I disappear through the back door, but she bolts it shut as soon as I’m outside.

  My cell phone rings when I take out my keys—a number I don’t recognize. Clicking the talk button, I say, “Hang on!” then climb into the Audi and start the engine. “Who is this?”

  “John Kaiser.”

  “Thank God. Have you got anywhere on being able to help my father come in?”

  “I’m working on it. The best we can hope for is a surrender to us on federal charges. But with a dead state trooper, the politicos down here are going to light up the phones in Washington if I try to take him away from them. I’m pressing for it, but my SAC has been fighting turf battles with the locals every day since Katrina.”

  I grit my teeth in frustration. “Please do what you can. I haven’t had any luck finding him yet, but I will.”

  “Watch your tail while you look. I checked up on Randall Regan. He’s a bad son of a bitch.”

  “I learned the hard way, as usual. Hey, have you got anything on the Big Ears yet?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’ve got Regan telling Brody Royal that you assaulted him in the restroom of a restaurant. He’s thinking of pressing charges.”

  “Is that all they said? No mention of what I said to Regan in the diner?”

  “Nope. He told Royal you sat down at his table and harassed a coworker he was with. Then he went into the restroom to take a leak and you attacked him. Two waitresses have already confirmed that story, by the way. If you go by what they said on the phone, Regan and Royal are as clean as a nun’s drawers.”

  “Damn it, John. They must have figured out my game. Regan didn’t say a word in the restaurant, like he expected me to be wearing a wire.”

  The FBI agent sighs. “You know the odds of getting quick results are low, especially pushing as hard as you are. You’re so keyed up Regan probably read you like a book. Setups always take time. Just promise me you’re not going to make the same kind of approach to Brody Royal.”

  Not unless I have no other option. “You can rest easy on that score.”

  “Good. Stay in touch.”

  Hanging up, I back my Audi onto Washington Street, then pull onto Broadway and drive along the bluff to State Street, wondering where to go next. Where would Dad run with his life on the line? Even if a thousand people would risk their lives for him, there can’t be more than a handful whom he would place in the line of fire. I quickly discard my first few ideas, but then a chill raises the hair on my arms and neck.

  Could Dad be hiding at Quentin’s house? When the old lawyer’s not working in Washington, D.C., he lives on seventy acres in Jefferson County, Mississippi, and I can hardly think of a more isolated sanctuary for Walt and my father to hide in. Whether Quentin would risk his law license to hide a client fleeing a murder warrant is another question. But of course my father is more than a client to Quentin. This half-crazy idea gives me the first hope I’ve felt since I learned Dad jumped bail, but the only way I can safely confirm it is to drive the thirty-five miles to Quentin’s place.

  Turning right on Franklin Street, I cruise past the turn to City Hall and continue north, half convinced I should make the drive right away. There’s not much else I can accomplish in the next couple of hours. Since my altercation with Randall Regan didn’t trigger any incriminating phone chatter, he and Brody are obviously smarter than I’d hoped. The only other thing that might push them to incriminate themselves is Sheriff Dennis hitting the Knoxes’ drug operations, which won’t happen for another eighteen hours, at the earliest. Why am I even thinking about that? Now that Dad and Walt have been painted as cop killers, everything else is academic—

  When my phone rings, I assume it’s Kaiser calling back, but it turns out to be Chief Logan of the Natchez police.

  “Don? What’s happening?”

  “I found what you were looking for. Are you still interested?”

  “Can you be more specific?” I ask, confused.

  “L.T.”

  Lincoln Turner. My heartbeat picks up immediately. “Where?”

  “His white pickup is parked at a juke joint out by Anna’s Bottom. It’s called CC’s Rhythm Club. Looks like your basic dump to me.”

  Having been thwarted on all fronts today, the idea of confronting the man who started this nightmare—and who’s been stalking my family—appeals to me. Moreover, Anna’s Bottom lies in roughly the same direction as Quentin Avery’s place. You could almost say it’s on the way.

  “Keep him there, Don. I’m on my way.”

  “Keep him there? He’s outside the city limits, Penn. I’ve got no grounds to detain the guy if he tries to leave.”

  “He’s in a jook house, right? If he tries to leave, give him a field sobriety test. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t even have jurisdiction out here! This is the county. Billy Byrd’s territory. Penn, wait. You don’t sound like yourself. I heard about that APB, too. What exactly you are planning to do?”

  “Just keep the subject where he is, Don. I’m on my way.”

  Hanging up, I whip my Audi left onto Martin Luther King Street and head out into the county, toward a bend in the Mississippi River. Before I cover a mile, a new thought strikes me with chilling power. Last night, when I was jotting down reasons that Dad might have jumped bail, I omitted one potential answer—probably because it was so primal and obvious. Of course, at that point I didn’t know Walt was with Dad.

  What if Henry was right the first night we talked? What if the Double Eagles have threatened violence against our family unless Dad takes the fall for Viola’s murder? If they have, I can easily imagine Dad and Walt going on the offensive, rather than letting Dad die in jail. He and Walt could have gone to the borrow pits in search of the men who threatened us. That dead trooper could have been one of them, a soldier in the secret army of Forrest Knox. If I’m right, then I made a terrible mistake by having the FBI eavesdrop on Brody Royal and his son-in-law. I may well have set up the technology that will record my father and Walt Garrity wiping out the men who framed Dad for Viola’s murder. With fear filling my mind, I press my foot to the floor and lean into the curves that lead into the thickly wooded hills above Anna’s Bottom.

  CHAPTER 72

  ANNA’S BOTTOM IS a vast, fertile floodplain that swells like a pregnant belly into the old course of the Mississippi River north of Natchez. For 250 years cotton has been cultivated in that plain, and black men and women have toiled there without cease. Though their equipment has changed, little else has, and
it’s on the high rim of those fields that Lincoln Turner has chosen to while away his hours this afternoon.

  The road to Anna’s Bottom winds through densely forested hills between Highway 61 and the river, and my Audi easily hugs the bulging curves at eighty. All this land was once part of plantations, and many of the big houses still stand amid cattle ponds and old slave quarters. Quite a few people make this drive purely for the exhilaration. The hills rise steadily above the river, the road narrows, and then at three hundred feet above sea level the blacktop plunges down the most precipitous slope in ten counties, snaking back and forth as it falls toward the bottomland. Your mind reels from the sudden change in perspective; the forest drops away, and your gaze flies out over the flatlands of Louisiana toward Texas, while far beneath you a couple of oil wells pump with lazy persistence, all that remain of the fifty that once sucked thirty million barrels of black gold out of these cotton fields.

  Today I will not make that plunge, for the “jook joint” that Chief Logan directed me to squats in the trees on the ledge overlooking that wild drop. It’s a juke, all right, just like the ones that used to dot Highway 61 all the way through the Delta. The Crayola purple cinder-block building has eight or ten vehicles parked out front, and a tin-roofed appendage spews smoke into the sky from a rusted vent pipe, spreading the mouthwatering smell of cooking pork for miles. The building’s black-painted windows have been covered with airbrushed paintings of martini glasses, Colt .45 Malt Liquor cans, and bubbling champagne bottles. Above this hodgepodge of images someone has splashed the words “CC’s Rhythm Club” in bold graffiti script. Most juke owners would have chosen CC’s Blues Club, which make me wonder whether the eponymous C.C. named his (or her) establishment after the infamous Rhythm Club in Natchez, where 209 African-Americans burned to death in 1940. This whole building could easily fit inside Pithy Nolan’s parlor at Corinth, but more human drama unfolds within these walls over a Labor Day weekend than has in Pithy’s mansion over the past twenty years.

  Lincoln Turner’s white pickup is parked on the right end of the line of vehicles—I confirm it by the Illinois plates—so I park my Audi on the left end. Given that Lincoln has no idea I’m coming, keeping a reasonably clear line of retreat seems prudent. I see no police car as I walk to the front door, and I don’t know whether to feel better or worse about that. Since CC’s stands outside Chief Logan’s jurisdiction, it’ll be one of Sheriff Billy Byrd’s deputies who responds to any 911 call made from here. Of course, most of CC’s customers don’t think of the police in terms of aid, so emergency calls are rare.

  When I walk through the door, the club’s patrons don’t turn to me and freeze, nor does the jukebox screech to a halt, as it does in schlock movies. About half the patrons glance in my direction, but most quickly go back to their business. Only the bartender stares, waiting to see what my intentions might be.

  I scan the room, searching for the man I’ve only seen up close in a pickup truck window, and for a brief time in the Justice Court. The interior of the juke isn’t as dim as I expected, but it smells like every other one I’ve entered in my life. The first wave of odors confuses the olfactory senses—a strange brew of delicious aromas and suspicious funk. Frying chicken, sizzling lard, baking biscuits, fresh corn bread, and onions battle dead fish, stale beer, old garbage, disinfectant, sugary wine, and cigarette smoke that’s permeated even the cinder-block walls. Eight tables with red-checkered cloths have been squeezed between the bar and the corner stage, and four more stand along the far wall beneath narrow windows that actually allow some daylight through. A painting of a naked and bejeweled black girl floating above a smoldering volcano serves as a backdrop for the stage, where a glittering red drum set awaits the next show. The flashing jukebox in the corner sends Bobby “Blue” Bland throughout the club with bone-shaking bass. I can guess the other artists in that machine without looking: Little Walter, B. B. King, Big Mama Thornton, Wilson Pickett, Muddy Waters, Irma Thomas, Robert Johnson, Beverly “Guitar” Watkins, Ray Charles, and probably a couple of tracks by Merle Haggard or Hank Williams to round out the list.

  No one in CC’s is younger than forty, except a tall, skinny busboy moving between the tables with a mop and bucket. It’s too dark to see faces clearly, so I try to differentiate Lincoln by his size. As I search the tables, a woman wearing jeans and a red bandanna tied around her head walks up and gives me a skeptical look. “What you lookin’ for? Your car break down or somethin’?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m Mayor Penn Cage, from Natchez. I’m looking for a man from Chicago. His name is Lincoln Turner.”

  She looks at me like I just announced I’m selling burial insurance. “Don’t know him.”

  “His truck’s parked outside.”

  “Well, you can look around, if you buy a beer.”

  “Budweiser.”

  She spins and heads for the bar.

  The scents of cooking food are emanating from the ramshackle kitchen beneath the vent pipe I saw outside. Only a greasy curtain separates it from the main room, and it’s near this curtain that I spy Lincoln Turner, sitting alone at a half-size table. Did he consciously choose the table with the shortest path to the back door? Maybe not. He’s sitting hunched over a Colt .45 tallboy, facing away from me, and he seems oblivious to my entrance.

  When the waitress places a sweating beer can in my hand, I move cautiously toward Lincoln’s table. He’s actually bent over a plate, not his beer, eating as though he hasn’t had anything for days.

  “Mind if I sit down?” I ask from four feet away.

  Lincoln doesn’t turn at first, and when he does, he turns slowly, as though already certain of what he’ll see.

  “Take a seat, Mayor,” he says, not smiling. “I can’t say I was expecting you.”

  As I slide into the chair opposite him, he says, “How’d you find me? Put your local Gestapo on the case?”

  I don’t answer, and it’s several seconds before I realize why. I’m searching his broad face for similarities to my father’s—or my own. I see no obvious resemblance, but it’s strange to search for your own features in a face of a different color. Lincoln is an imposing man, if not conventionally handsome. He has an oval face, as I do, but not the prominent jaw that my father and I share. His eyes are brown, like mine, but almost disturbingly dark. I don’t recognize his nose or cheekbones, and his hair is as nappy as that of any black man I ever knew. Only Lincoln’s high forehead strikes a resonant note and, if I’m honest, reminds me of my father. The lack of overall similarity comforts me, and yet … something bothers me that I can’t put my finger on.

  “I’m surprised you had the nerve to walk in here,” he says. “White boy like you in a black jook? Out on the edge of nowhere? Most white boys would be nervous as a whore in church.”

  “I’d be a lot more nervous in a shitkicking honky-tonk. People come here for the food and the music.”

  Turner chuckles. “You’re right. When rednecks drink, they want to fuck or fight, and not necessarily in that order.”

  I want to ask him what he was doing outside my house earlier this afternoon, but that might force our conversation to an abrupt conclusion. Better to learn what I can before confronting him. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”

  He looks around as though appraising the value of the place. “When I was a boy in Chicago, there were jooks like this on the South Side. No name, usually, just an address. Mississippi folks who moved up there re-created what they’d known back home. My stepfather did a lot of his business in corner jook joints. He’d sit there eating pork sausage and cat-head biscuits, running half a dozen scams from the pay phone while he ate. I guess I got to like it. The funk of it, you know?”

  My stepfather. I try to recall what Dad told me about the man Viola married in Chicago. The phrase “charming rogue” comes back to me.

  “I know why you’re here,” Lincoln says, his dark eyes suddenly serious. “I see you studyin’ my face.”

  “Why don
’t you enlighten me?”

  “No. I’ll let you tell your lie before I tell the truth. Why do you think you’re here?”

  “I came to find out why you’re trying to railroad my father for murder.”

  He shakes his head with confidence. “That’s no mystery. What son wouldn’t want vengeance on the man who killed his mama? That’s logic, plain and simple. No, Mr. Mayor … you’re here to answer a deeper question. And you’re scared.”

  “What were you doing parked outside my house an hour ago?”

  Lincoln shrugs. “It’s a free country, ain’t it?”

  “Oh, cut the shit. What ‘deeper question’ am I here to answer?”

  He seems to weigh the issue for a bit. “You ever hear that expression, ‘brothers from a different mother’?”

  My stomach does a slow flip. “I’ve heard it.”

  “That’s what we are.” He grins, showing his big teeth. “You and me. Literally. We got the same father.” His eyebrows arch expectantly. “Ain’t that some shit, Mayor?”

  “I don’t believe you.” I’m speaking truthfully, despite my doubts about my father’s honesty.

  “Yes, you do. The truth is already there, down deep in you. All I did was pick off the scab. Take a minute to adjust, if you need it. Nobody’s going to ask for our table.”

  “What year were you born?” I ask.

  “Nineteen sixty-eight, in December. Nine months after my mama left Natchez.”

  I’m reluctant to raise Henry Sexton’s explanation of this juxtaposition of events, but what choice do I have? Lincoln has forced my hand.

  “A lot of terrible things happened to your mother and her family in 1968,” I say in a neutral tone. “Her brother was kidnapped and murdered, for one thing. Viola had several good reasons to leave this town.”

  “None measure up to being pregnant by her white, married boss. A man she loved, but who would never leave his wife.”