I grinned. “To get at you.”
“Huh? I don’t follow you.”
“Think about it for a minute,” I said. “Let’s imagine that a crooked Dallas cop who’s suspected of killing his partner buys it while attempting an armed robbery with a gang of notorious hoods. And this crooked cop just happened to have been romantically involved with the daughter of a very prominent man who’s one of the state’s political kingpins. That’s one way it could have played in the papers and on TV. The other is that a retired deputy sheriff from Texas was killed at the heroic conclusion of a successful undercover operation against the Dixie Mafia. Which happens to be a nonexistent outfit Blanchard himself invented three years ago for publicity purposes. My guess is that he would have sat on things long enough to come up here the next day and let you have your choice of which way the story went.”
“But Wallace knew the truth,” he objected.
“Yes, but he couldn’t prove anything. Publicity-wise, the damage would have been done even if Bob did get a hearing in the press later on. But Blanchard never would have expected it to go that far. He thought you’d cave in and let him have his way.”
“That son-of-a-bitch!” he exclaimed. “But he couldn’t have possibly known that you and Nell were going to hit it off as well as you did.”
“No, of course not. But he could have suspected it because he’s very shrewd about people. And he was the one that threw us together in the first place by asking her to keep an eye on me. Then when he found out that I was interested in her, he encouraged me to pursue the matter and gave me a big song and dance about how emotionally needy she was. ...”
He nodded. “I see. Mr. Matchmaker.”
“And Nell says that you and I are a lot alike.”
He grinned. “Hell, I don’t know that either one of us can take that as a compliment.”
“Compliment or not, Blanchard is bound to have realized it and realized too that Nell would likely be attracted to any man who reminded her a lot of her father.”
He nodded. “I understand. He couldn’t have had it all planned out from the first, but he had a road full of possibilities ahead of him, and he’s good at grabbing opportunities and improvising as he goes along. Even if you survived the raid and he wound up with nothing to hold over my head, he’d still come out smelling like a rose.”
“Right,” I said. “He stood to profit no matter what. At the very least he could take credit for foiling the robbery and ridding the state of some very bad people.”
“To give the devil his due,” he said, “it’s really brilliant when you think of it. You create a mythical organization called the Dixie Mafia and blow it up big in the public mind. Then you kill a bunch of freelance hoods who’re supposedly connected with it, and when the smoke clears you announce that you’ve destroyed the organization.”
“Yes, it’s smart,” I agreed. “And on top of all that, he played Perp Smoot like a fiddle. But what I don’t understand is why. I know that Blanchard’s bound to have political aspirations, but what in the hell is he after?”
“There’s no secret about that. He wants to be governor of Mississippi in two years, and he wants my support.”
“Aha!”
Bigelow grinned. “Ambitious rascal, isn’t he? And he wouldn’t rule out the presidency either, if somebody offered him the nomination someday down the road.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
“It’s a long shot, of course. But Curtis and a lot of other people think that in the next decade or so a moderate southern Democrat has a good chance to capture the White House. I tend to agree with them.”
“How much would your support mean to him in the governor’s race?” I asked.
“Probably the difference between winning and losing if everything else went right. If I really hustled I could increase his campaign money by at least twenty-five to thirty percent and maybe more than that. But the endorsements I could get for him are even more important.”
“Then he must have approached you about this,” I said.
“Oh, sure.”
“And?”
“I put him off. I didn’t commit myself openly one way or another, but the answer would have ultimately been no even without knowing all this mess you’ve told me today.”
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, you were friends….”
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. At last he said, “Manfred, you have to understand the political situation over here. Like I told you earlier, Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the Union. We need everything, but the only way we can get it is through gradual, incremental progress. Now, the current governor has increased the state’s school funding substantially, and he’s found a little extra money for the colleges. He also managed to pass a bill to establish a good tech school, and he’s wrangled out a few bucks for the state hospitals. The next man in that office needs to be the same sort of person, a man willing to work long and hard for small rewards, a man willing to take the slow road that leads to real progress. Curtis is a grandstander, and that’s all there is to it. No matter what, he’ll always have his eye on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow instead of the job at hand.”
“Has he got anything on you?” I asked bluntly.
He swung around to prop his feet on his desk and laughed. “Hell no. That’s because there ain’t nothing to get.”
“I certainly don’t want to be insulting, but I heard some things about state paving contracts—”
“I heard the same story, and it’s all crap. I own controlling interest in the bank here in Greenville. It loaned that asphalt company some money so it could stay afloat until that Canadian outfit bought it out. The only thing that made it different from any other regular bank transaction was that I personally guaranteed the loan. I felt obliged to do that to protect the bank’s depositors. It was all risk and very little profit. Ask anybody that really knows and they’ll tell you I’m one of the cleanest businessmen in the state. I’m just damn good at making money, and so were my ancestors. But the question is what do we do about Curtis?”
“Nothing for the present. Let me snoop around a little and ask a few questions down in Biloxi. We need to be dead sure, and I intend to get the facts.”
“How do you plan to do that?” he asked.
“I’ve got something important to take care of when I get back to Biloxi that may take a day or two, but when I’m free I’m going to lean on Sam Lodke until he tells me what we want to know.”
He got up from his desk and went over in front of the fireplace. It was cold that day, and a brisk fire burned on the hearth. He was dressed in khaki once again, and in another flannel shirt, this one of dark green checks. His face was ruddy from whiskey and robust good health as he stood there and rubbed his big hands together in the glow from the burning logs. Then he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet for a few moments. “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll go along with that for now, but there’s going to have to be a reckoning someday. I don’t like to be used, and I really don’t like him using Nell the way he did.”
“Oh, there’ll be a reckoning,” I promised. “Never doubt it. But I want to make sure of all this before we do anything, and then we need to take our time and do it right. And I need to know how far you’re willing to go.”
He smiled and pointed at a military unit flag hanging on the opposite wall. “My outfit in World War Two,” he said. “Forty-third Infantry Division. Winged Victory, they called it. I was too old for the draft. I could have gotten a commission here in Mississippi, but I could tell they were never going to let me into combat if I went that route. So you know what I did?”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t hazard a guess,” I said with a laugh.
“I drove over to Monroe and enlisted under a phony name. Faked my age, too. And me with a six-year-old daughter, too. Can you believe it? Went to the Pacific as an infantry private and fought in New Guinea and the Philipp
ines. You see, I’m the kind of guy who’ll try to do the right thing in the right way, but if that doesn’t work, then I’ll do whatever will work.”
“I hear you,” I said.
He stared off into the distance for a while, seemingly lost in thought. Finally he said, “Don’t misunderstand me, Manfred. I’m glad you didn’t get hurt, but I kinda regret that he and I never had that confrontation. I don’t let people push me around like that, and I don’t blackmail.”
“What would you have done?” I asked.
His hard, piggy little eyes met mine, and his big face broke into a broad smile. “Why, I’d have just looked him right square in the eyes, and said, ‘Curtis, let the good times roll.…‘ “
Forty-five
Nell refused an engagement ring. “I’ve had two of those,” she said. “Let’s try something different.”
We bought a pair of simple gold wedding bands in her home-town jewelry store in Greenville, and her dad began planning for an April wedding at the house.
The day we returned to Biloxi papers all across the state were full of the news that the feds had come down on Eula Dent. She’d been arrested at her home and charged with numerous counts of filing false income tax returns and conspiracy to defraud the federal government.
“What’s going to happen to her?” I asked Nell.
“Her license will be suspended, and ultimately the IRS will confiscate almost everything she has.”
“Will she draw any prison time?”
“Oh, sure,” she replied. “She’ll probably serve ten or twelve years, and then wind up dying old and alone in a ratty trailer house somewhere.”
“Good enough,” I said.
The young state trooper almost died of blood loss, and then he developed peritonitis. But the prognosis was good. The kid was a Vietnam vet with a wife and a little baby, and he’d racked up a good record in his two years in the Highway Patrol. His wounding had been regrettable, but the publicity certainly hadn’t hurt Blanchard. No one was inclined to question his version of the events of that night, not with a brave young cop lying in the hospital struggling for his life. The official report said that a task force of Texas and Mississippi officers, acting on information from reliable informants, had foiled a massive robbery attempt. The fact that the robbers had “chosen” to fight it out with the law was viewed by the taxpaying citizens as something that saved them the cost of any number of trials and expensive legal wrangling on the part of the now-deceased defendants.
In the days following the failed highjacking there were details to clear up and reports to write. Bob Wallace stayed in town until all the commotion died down. He and I met for breakfast at the 45 Grill on the morning he was leaving for Texas.
“So what about Blanchard?” he asked as soon as we’d ordered. “I think it’s time you filled me in.”
“Did you know he had an outright slaughter planned?” I asked.
“Hell no. You know me better than that. Shit, I wouldn’t have been there if I had. Oh, I expected gunplay. Guys like that bunch don’t go down easy, but I thought he’d give them a chance to surrender.”
“So did I.”
“Hog, I don’t like being used,” he said. “And I know he used me bad. Now tell me about it.”
“He used a bunch of people,” I said, and gave him the whole story including my suspicions, plus what Nell’s father had told me about Blanchard’s political aspirations.
When I finished his face was grim and flushed brick red like Rio Grande mud. “Political ambitions?” he asked.
“That’s right. He’s already approached Mr. Bigelow trying to get his support for governor.”
“Could Bigelow help that much?”
“Bob, Mr. Bigelow could probably get him elected if he wanted to. Or he could defeat him. Or at least he could have before this carnival caper. The publicity Blanchard’s gotten from that and from his relationship with Smoot may have given him enough of a boost to get him over the top on his own. Did you know that Smoot’s show is going into syndication?”
“What in the hell does that mean?” he asked.
“That it’s going to be on a bunch of big independent stations all over the South. The Jackson station is just the first. They’ve already signed him for a two-year contract, and you can bet that he’ll be giving Blanchard a lot of free airtime from here on out.”
“Well, I’m not too surprised,” he said. “I began to realize how much Curtis craved publicity when he let Smoot do that damned interview. At the time I didn’t know why he wanted it. I just figured his ego was getting at him. The question is what do we do about it?”
“Nothing for the moment.”
“Bullshit—”
“Calm down,” I said with a grin. “First I’m going to squeeze the truth out of Sam Lodke. Then I’m going to talk to Mr. Bigelow and see what resources he may have.”
“I know what resources I’ve got,” he said hotly. “A size twelve Lucchese boot, and I’d like to drive over to Jackson this very minute and put it right up his sorry ass.”
“I was the one on the line that night, Bob,” I pointed out. “So let’s do it my way. If I can’t pull this off, then you have my blessing to do whatever you want.”
“Pull what off?” he asked.
“What I’ve got in mind.”
“Which is?”
“Believe me, Bob…you don’t want to know at this point. Afterward you’ll be able to figure it out.”
There came a long pause during which neither of us said anything. Finally he nodded. “You’re right. It was your ass on the line.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’re getting another bonus out of this, too, you know,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“Blanchard has reliable people telling the snitches that it was Billy Jack Avalon who ratted out the whole deal. That’s the story that’s getting out on the street.”
“Can that work?” I asked with surprise. “How do you explain me being there that night?”
“You weren’t there.”
“But—” I began.
“Who’s to say you were? Didn’t you notice that you weren’t mentioned in any of the newspaper stories?”
“Yeah, but you know I don’t like publicity anyway. I just figured you were protecting me on that account.”
He shook his head. “It’s being put out on the street that you and Weller pulled out right before the robbery and left town for a couple of days. Don’t you remember how I steered you away from the reporters that night?”
I nodded. “I noticed that at the time, but didn’t think that much about it. But how about Jasper? He knows I was there.”
Bob sighed and played around with his coffee spoon for a few moments before he spoke. “You know, I believe Jasper’s going to like our story well enough. It’ll keep his associates from knowing that he invited an undercover cop into this business on his own hook. He’s clear on the carnival robbery, and he’s figured that out by now. Blanchard’s going to let him slide on that because he doesn’t want him to ever be in a position to give his version of things on the stand. So as far as everybody is concerned you weren’t there, and neither was he. Besides, he’s got other problems at the moment.”
I nodded. It had been in the papers for days. Sparks was under heavy guard in the Jackson Hospital charged with Murder One. Apparently he’d had another job on his plate that January. Three days after the carnival robbery attempt, he and two thugs out of east Tennessee tried to rob the home of a wealthy wholesale hardware merchant in Jackson who was reputed to keep several hundred thousand dollars of untaxed cash in a floor safe in his den. The robbery went bad and ended in a shootout that left the merchant’s wife dead, killed by a stray round from a 9mm automatic. Like almost every other hood I’d known, Sparks could see the need for firm procedural rules in pulling off jobs, but he was too erratic and undisciplined to follow then. He failed to get rid of the gun that killed the woman, thus violating his own c
ode. It was found later in his car, and he himself had been badly wounded by the couple’s butler. The next day Curtis Blanchard walked into his hospital room with a TV camera crew in tow and personally served the murder warrant. On camera, of course.
The prosecutors were going for life. With two eyewitnesses and the presence of the murder weapon in his car added to the fact that one of his accomplices had rolled over and ratted him out, there was very little chance the state could fail to get it. In the Mississippi of that era, life meant life. It was a certainty that, barring possible prison breaks, Jasper Sparks would never again enjoy a day of freedom.
“But what’s Billy Jack going to say about being tagged as the snitch?” I asked.
“It don’t make no real difference what he says, but to make it look good they’re going to haul him back into court in about a week and go through some legal mumbo-jumbo and the judge is going to knock ten years off his sentence. ‘For his material cooperation in a major ongoing investigation of Dixie Mafia activities in south Mississippi’ is the way they’re going to phrase it when they do the press release.”
“That means he probably won’t live long after he gets back to the pen,” I said.
“Naw, I think he’ll make it,” Bob said. “They’re going to segregate him from the general population. But do you really care one way or another?”
I shook my head.
“And the feds are about to release the jewelry from Danny Sheffield’s last robbery, and our friends at the Dallas papers will see to it that you’re cleared of all suspicion on that business.” He grinned across at me. “No matter what else, you’re going to come out of this fine just like I promised you in the beginning.”
“Good enough,” I said.
“So when are you going to talk to Lodke?”
“Soon. First I got to go see a man about a horse.”
“Horse? Now what in the hell are you talking about?”
“Once again, don’t ask,” I told him.
He gave me a puzzled stare, then his face broke into a rueful grin. “It’s your show, Hog,” he said.
The waitress brought our food. We ate our breakfast in near silence and then strolled out into the parking lot. “You know, Bob,” I said, “this has been an interesting affair. And I really got to know old Hardhead Weller, too.”
The Sweet and the Dead Page 21