The Sweet and the Dead

by Milton T. Burton

  “So you’re going under for us down in Biloxi?” he asked me with a grin.

  “It looks like I’m going to try,” I replied, returning the grin. “Bob can be pretty persuasive when he sets his mind to it.”

  He settled back in his high-backed executive’s chair and pulled a fine-looking briar and a pouch of Granger pipe tobacco out of his desk drawer. “There’s something in the works down there,” he said as he began to fill his pipe. “Something big. Some of the heaviest hitters in the South have been in and out of Lodke’s joints in the last few weeks.”

  “So what’s new about that?” I asked.

  “Well, when you’ve got guys like Hardhead Weller and Eddie Ray Atwell and Lester Trout and Bobby Dwayne Culpepper all clustered around Jasper Sparks at the Gold Dust, then something is brewing. Oh, you’ll have every one of those bastards in and out in a year’s time, but they’ve never all hit town together before. You’ve read the files on most of them, haven’t you?”

  I nodded. I knew Culpepper particularly well. He was a skilled residential burglar, armed robber, and sometime pimp. I’d handled him a couple of times while I was on the Sheriff’s Department, but he’d always managed to walk on the charges. Married to a fine-looking whore who ran the only bordello still operating in Texarkana, Arkansas, Culpepper was big, mean, and dangerous. They were all dangerous, every one of the men he’d mentioned, especially if you were at their mercy.

  “Are they actually living in Biloxi now?” I asked.

  He shrugged and touched a kitchen match to his pipe. “Sparks and Weller and Culpepper have apartments,” he said from behind a great cloud of smoke. “And the rest are around town too much to suit me. A few weeks ago the whole crew mobbed out together and went up to Hot Springs in three cars.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The story is that it was just a junket. Nothing but drinking, gambling, and whoring. But a big wholesale jeweler in Little Rock was burgled while they were up there, and I know they did it. The Arkansas State Police questioned them, but they were alibied out by a pair of Hot Springs deputy sheriffs.”

  “That’s par for the course,” I said.

  “Sure. Hoods have owned that damn town since the 1920s. Now, understand something, Hog,” he continued thoughtfully. “I can’t help you unless you have to pull out. And if things get dicey, that’s exactly what I want you to do. It’ll blow the whole thing, but that’s better than you winding up on a slab.” He quickly jotted a number on the back of one of his cards and pushed it across the desk. “It’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day hotline I set up just for deals like this. Give your name and location and we’ll swarm the place in a matter of minutes. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry,” I said, carefully pocketing the card. “Mostly I just plan to look around a little, maybe cultivate a few informants, and try to find me a good tarpon guide for next spring.”

  “Tarpon?” he asked enviously, then shook his head and grinned.

  “That’s my cover. A retired cop interested in fishing.”

  “Must be nice,” he said.

  “Hell, you’ve got more money than I do,” I told him. “You could quit this crap anytime you want.”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he fiddled around with his pipe for a few moments and then laid it gently on the desk. “You know, the fact that you left the Sheriff’s Department under a cloud is the only thing that makes this little operation of ours possible.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said.

  “Well, I feel bad for you on account of it, and about Benny’s death, too. He was a good man, and a damn good cop.”

  “Yes, he was,” I agreed. “You met at that Texarkana conference, didn’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, I remember him well. But my reason for bringing the subject up was that with all this worry you’ve had here lately, I think you’re entitled to know that the feds found the jewelry from Danny Sheffield’s last heist. All of it.”

  “Oh really?” I replied, feeling a wave of vindication sweep through me despite myself. Nobody outside the criminal world had put any stock in the story in the first place, but eventually they would have. It’s my firm conviction that when people hear something often enough they begin to believe it, regardless of the source. “Where?” I asked.

  “In an air express locker up in St. Paul.”

  That was no surprise. Sheffield had been known to rent air express lockers under phony names in a half dozen cities. Sometimes when he pulled a job he’d air freight the loot to himself as quickly as possible, then wait several months before he went near it.

  “That’s great news,” I said. “But it comes at a bad time.”

  “Don’t worry. The feds are going to sit on the stuff as long as we need them to. They’re not even going to notify the insurance company.”

  “Can they do that?” I asked. “Legally, I mean?”

  “Under the protection of a federal court order, yes, they certainly can,” he replied.

  Right then I felt the little cold feet walking up my spine once again. It was rare to get this sort of blanket cooperation from the feds. Someone, somewhere, with a lot of clout, was very irritated with Jasper Sparks and his friends.

  I rose from my chair. Blanchard rose also and extended his hand across the desk. “One more thing,” he said. “I’ve arranged you a temporary commission as a Mississippi Highway Patrolman just to make this all legal. I’ve got your badge and ID here in the safe, but I think that’s where they better stay if you don’t mind—”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I mean, Jasper or one of those guys could bribe a motel maid to let them in to search my room and there I’d be.”

  “Right. And you be careful. These are serious people.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” I replied dryly. “I’ve been dealing with their kind for the past ten years. The only thing that puzzles me is why you keep at it when you don’t have to.”

  “I’m a damn fool,” he replied with a broad smile. “How about you? You haven’t been retired much more than three months and here you are back in the game.”

  I shrugged.

  “Fun, ain’t it?” he asked.

  “It has its moments, yes,” I said, and opened the door to leave. Then I stopped for a few seconds in the doorway. “By the way, Curtis,” I asked, “what’s your title around here nowadays?”

  He smiled a serene smile and leaned back in his chair. “As long as Norman Fuquay is Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives my title’s just about whatever I want it to be.”

  “Buddy of yours?”

  He nodded. “Ole Miss backfield in the late ‘40s. First good team we had after the war. It’s what got me the slack to be a little more flexible on this operation.”

  “Really?” I asked. “And just why is the speaker taking a personal interest in nuts-and-bolts police work these days?”

  “This ain’t just nuts-and-bolts. That bunch in Biloxi is getting out of hand and something’s got to be done.”

  I was almost out the door when he stopped me. “Hog?”

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Like I said, you watch yourself down there.” He touched another match to his pipe and once he had it going good he gave me a rueful look. “It’s important but it ain’t worth getting killed over.”

  “What is?” I asked.

  Three

  I pulled into Biloxi in the midafternoon and found a decent residential motel right near the gulf. Passing up the beachfront rooms with their broad expanses of glass, I asked for one on the west side facing the sun because they each had only a pair of small windows mounted higher than a man’s head. The place had a kitchenette and a spacious bedroom with a queen-sized bed. After I unloaded my bags from the trunk of the car, I called Wallace’s office to give him the phone number, then piled onto the bed and slept until a little after dark. When I awoke I showered and shaved and got in my car and headed for the Strip.

  A lot of towns have a section they call
the Strip. Las Vegas has one that’s known all over the world. So does Hong Kong. And so do Bremerhaven, Germany, and Gladewater, Texas. For that matter so may Manhattan, Kansas, for all I know. The Strip in Biloxi amounted to a string of seedy nightclubs, shabby frame or concrete buildings with big fancy neon signs out front that probably cost more than the joints themselves. Besides the local trade, they catered heavily to the airmen from Keesler Air Force Base, which bordered the town on the west. And all of them were blatantly illegal since both liquor and gambling were forbidden by law in Mississippi in those days. But the do-gooders of the world have never learned that if a substantial segment of the population wants something—a segment surpassing 50 percent where booze is concerned—they’re going to get it, come what may. Gambling was a different matter, but from its very earliest days Biloxi has been a freewheeling town where officials could be induced to look the other way.

  Since I was in no hurry, I hit Lodke’s other two dives—the Tropicana and the Motherlode—just to get the feel of things. Then I walked into the Gold Dust and found what I was looking for: Jasper Sparks. He was installed in one of those big round corner booths, and there were three woman and two men with him. Two of the woman were obviously hookers, and both were good-looking in a cheap, frowsy kind of way. Both were peroxide blonds, dressed in clothes that were too tight in all the right places, and both wore too many cheap bangles and doodads. The taller of the pair was holding possessively on to Sparks’s arm and staring out at the world with that stupidly smug expression you often find on large-breasted women who are servicing the Big Honcho, whoever he might be. There was a third girl there that night, and she was the one that really caught my eye. She was slim and dark-haired and wore a black sleeveless cocktail dress with only a thin gold necklace. Aristocratic in appearance, she provided a tasteful contrast to the Beaujangles Twins sitting beside her.

  I took a stool at the bar and ordered a Pabst. A dozen or so airmen were visible in the place that night, and probably more in the gambling room at the rear. The rest of the clientele appeared to be local blue-collar types, young workmen payday-flush and looking for action.

  My beer had just been delivered when one of the B-girls sidled up beside me. “Buy me a drink?” she asked.

  “Flake off or you get to see my badge,” I said without really looking at her. Not that I had a badge anymore, but I didn’t expect her to want to see it, anyway.

  “Hey, you’re not no nice guy,” she said. “Most of the cops who come in here are nice guys.”

  “ ‘Nice’ is not an occupational requirement where I come from,” I told her.

  The bartender caught her eye and shooed her away. A moment later he came out from behind the bar and went over to Sparks’s table. When he returned, he said, “The gentleman over there wants to buy you a drink.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  He pointed. “Mr. Sparks. The guy in the center. So what’s your poison?”

  I was only mildly surprised that Sparks had recognized me. After all, I’d gotten my share of headlines, some of them for busting his friends. “Scotch,” I said, waving in thanks toward the corner table.

  Single malts were just then getting popular, and the bartender reached for the Glenlivet. “Nope,” I said, stopping him. “Teacher’s.”

  “Okay, how do you want it?” he asked.

  “Just straight up,” I replied.

  He set a heavy cocktail glass down on the bar and poured it two-thirds full. I thanked him, sipped my drink, and then walked slowly over to Sparks’s table. Both of the men with him were well-known police characters—Raymond “Hardhead” Weller and Billy Jack Avalon. The only thing that set Weller apart from a thousand other skinny, khaki-clad old geezers you’d find hanging around a thousand crossroads country stores or smalltown domino parlors down here in Dixie was the fact that he sported a pair of eyes so void of humanity they could have been found on a corpse. I knew that he owned a half dozen small honky-tonks scattered about northern Alabama, and he’d been big in moonshining at one time. But a part of his earnings had come from his position as one of the country’s premier hit men, and his rap sheet went back to the ‘20s. Though utterly non-descript, even shabby in appearance with his worn lace-up boots and faded KMart workshirts, he lived in a fine home in a nice Birmingham suburb and sent his grandchildren to the best private schools. I knew his background. He came from the lowest of the low, a family of poor white hill folk, people who were foreordained losers generations before they were born, and I couldn’t help but have a grudging respect for his refusal to humbly accept second-class citizenship as his lot.

  At almost seventy years of age, he’d spent nearly a third of his life in prison, and somewhere along the line he’d learned the value of silence. He said little that evening as he sat there sipping his straight bourbon and smoking his unfiltered Luckies one right after another, but his lifeless cadaver’s eyes missed nothing.

  The other man was a different matter. Imagine a pair of wrap-around shades and a smarmy, know-it-all smile plastered on Elvis Presley’s head and the whole business mounted on a big pile of rancid suet, and you have Billy Jack Avalon. Competent, even daring on occasion, he’d pulled off several flashy armed robberies and had a reputation as a skilled residential burglar. What kept him from being a really first-class criminal was his habit of compulsively babbling like the Oracle at Delphi to anybody who’d listen. In my estimation, he was like many people I’d met over the years, individuals whose greatest joy in life lay in convincing you that they had the secret lowdown on how things really work, the hidden inner knowledge denied to us lesser mortals. He also had to be a phenomenally lucky man to still be alive, considering the number of people he’d snitched.

  “Thanks for the drink,” I told Sparks. “But do I know you?”

  “I don’t know if you do or not,” he replied. “But I know you. You’re Tush Hog Webern.”

  “Some people have called me that,” I said, nodding. “And you’re? ...”

  “I’m Jasper Sparks.”

  “Aha!” I exclaimed. “Now I got it.”

  “Heard of me, huh?” he asked, obviously pleased.

  “Who hasn’t?” I asked, feeding his ego a little. He was in his midthirties and handsome with a full head of wavy brown hair that showed gold highlights. But if you looked closely you could tell that the years of booze and drugs and late nights were beginning to take their toll. He was a few pounds overweight, and it didn’t look like the healthy fat of a prosperous young lawyer who simply eats a little too much. His eyes were bleary and his face puffy, and the overall impression you took away with you was of a life that was beginning to fray around the edges.

  “I know you too, Webern,” Avalon said acidly. I could tell that he was in a frisky mood that night, no doubt emboldened by whatever he was drinking and his knowledge that I was no longer carrying a badge.

  I nodded. “We’ve had business together a time or two that I can recall,” I agreed pleasantly.

  “Yeah,” he spat. “And you killed a good friend of mine over in Dallas named Dooley Ragsdale.”

  “That’s okay, Billy Jack,” I replied smoothly. “You’d have ratted ol’ Rags out before long anyway, just like you eventually do all your friends. So you really don’t have anything to bitch about.”

  Sparks cackled, and even Weller’s impassive face broke into a smile. “Pull up a chair,” Sparks said.

  “Sure. Why not?” I said.

  I was looking around for a free chair when I heard Avalon say, “Hey, Jasper! I’m damned particular who I drink with.”

  I turned around and smirked at Avalon. “You know, that’s the problem with guys like you,” I said. “You snatch some old lady’s purse and then get a couple of drinks in you and you get uppity. But there’s a place in this world for your kind, Billy Jack…. Know where it is?”

  “You tell me, smart guy.”

  “The back of the bus.”

  “You sorry motherfucker!” he snarled, his fac
e reddening.

  Implying that he was a Negro or had Negro blood was the worst insult you could hand a man in his world, and normally I would have let his response pass since I’d goaded him into it. And I could have afforded to take a little lip off a real heavy like Sparks, but not a weasel like Avalon. In this environment, among these particular individuals, what he’d said was an implicit challenge, and I had to either do something or slink back to Texas with my tail between my legs. So I did something: I smiled at the other people at the table and carefully set down my drink. Then I reached out like lightning and took Avalon’s thick, oily hair in both my hands and slammed his head face-first down on the table. Reflexively, his whole upper body jerked backward, and when it did I helped it along and rammed his head back against the wall with a nice klunk. Then I slipped into the booth beside him and quickly reached back and pulled my snub-nose Colt .38 from its waistband holster and ground its barrel in under his rib cage right over his liver.

  His eyes were dazed and his nose and lips were beginning to bleed. I put my arm around his shoulders and looked him right in the face from a distance of about six inches and said softly, “Now, Billy Jack, in just a minute I’m going to move so you can get up from the table, and when I do you’re going to walk out of this building and stay the hell away from me from now on. Otherwise I’m going to have to kick your worthless ass every time you get near me.”

  He gaped at me with a face that was full of shock and pain. I slipped the .38 back in my pants and eased from the booth. “You go on now, Billy Jack,” I said as I took his arm and guided him to his feet. “Go on about your business like a good boy.”

  What little fight he’d had in him was now long departed. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and began to dab carefully at his nose as he stumbled off across the floor toward the door. I slipped into the place in the booth he’d just vacated and looked across at Sparks. His eyes were brighter now, and his face gleeful.

  “I guess we found out why they called you Tush Hog,” he said.

  “I reckon,” Weller responded dryly and sipped at his whiskey. “You sure took the bark off him in a hurry.”