The Dirty South - Charlie Parker Series 18 (2020)

by Connolly, John

  On this, Cresil empathized with Parker. As far as he could tell, Delphia Cade’s charms were negligible.

  ‘And that doesn’t dispose her to be more understanding?’ he said.

  ‘No, it does not.’

  They reached the outskirts of Cargill, passing on the left the body of water that gave the town its name, or some semblance of it. An early moon lay perfectly reflected on its surface, undistorted by the slightest of ripples, even though a wind was troubling the trees. Cresil had a vision of himself dipping a hand in the lake and watching blackness drip like oil from his fingers.

  ‘You know,’ said Cresil, ‘I think there’s something wrong with this county.’

  ‘That’s unfortunate, given the significant investment our employers are about to make in it.’

  ‘I wonder if it’s to do with that lake. The water’s not right. It may have poisoned the land, and the people along with it.’

  Shire took in the sight of the Karagol as they passed.

  ‘It’s just dark. Some might consider it beautiful.’

  ‘They’d be wrong.’

  ‘Once we’re done here, you won’t ever have to return.’

  ‘Music to my ears.’

  ‘Have you considered that the fault might lie not in the county, but in yourself?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Cresil.

  ‘You’ve lived too long with corruption and violence. They have infected you, and now you carry them with you everywhere, like a disease.’

  Cresil wouldn’t have taken this from anyone else, but Shire was a singular man. His distance from ordinary human emotion meant that even the subject of Cresil’s moral delinquency was something to be considered only in the abstract, as though it did not directly concern either of them.

  ‘And you?’ said Cresil. ‘Are you somehow immune?’

  ‘No, I am corrupt, but the corruption is entirely my own. I believe I may have been born peccant.’

  Cresil was minded to agree. He pitied Shire’s wife and children, and their ongoing exposure to this man – although the former at least had some choice in the matter.

  They swept through the town and pulled into the parking lot of the motel.

  ‘Will we be leaving tomorrow?’ said Cresil.

  ‘I have to report back on what’s been happening here. I’d prefer if you’d remain a few more days, just to monitor developments. Your proximity will also serve to reassure the Cades.’

  ‘All of them, or just Delphia?’

  ‘Delphia is the only one that matters. She’s going to become a very wealthy woman in the near future, and she’ll be adrift once the divorce goes through. You’re a single man. Her issues with her father make her an unsuitable mate for someone her own age. She requires an older, steadier hand. Perhaps you should reconsider your attitude toward her. I believe you might find some of her appetites amenable to your own.’

  Cresil was under no illusions about Shire’s knowledge of his appetites. They had worked together too long for that.

  ‘Wouldn’t that entail staying here?’ said Cresil.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Then I’ll pass. This is the worst place I’ve ever been. I told you: I’m going to retire to Florida and open a bar.’

  ‘You’re not going to retire, Mr Cresil.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Men like us don’t retire. We just die.’

  ‘If you make it to Boca Raton, you can look me up and I’ll disprove your thesis. I may even pour you a free soda.’

  Shire opened his door to get out. More cars were now parked in the lot than before. Shire didn’t look pleased to see them. More cars meant more people, and people were contaminants.

  ‘If you make it to Boca Raton,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay for your bar myself. Have a good evening.’

  Cresil sat in the car and waited until Shire was safely in his room. He’d meant what he said. Burdon County was oppressing him. The sky was too low and the air tasted sour. Whatever was debased in his own nature found no echo here, but rather shied away from a deeper, darker aspect in the land. Kovas might build in Cargill, but Cresil was of the view that it wouldn’t thrive, and neither would its employees. Cresil was sure that if he were to check back in five or ten years, he would discover a litany of broken marriages, alcoholism, abuse, and general domestic unhappiness. Not that he had any intention of doing so, because he would be in Florida, listening to tourists complain about the humidity, and recalling his time in Cargill only when the smell from the drains got to be too much.

  He turned off the engine, and checked that he had his wallet and room key.

  When he got out of the car, Charlie Parker was standing before him.

  77

  Jurel Cade put the phone down. In front of him was a sheet of notepaper with only a few scribbled words on it, because he had stopped writing shortly after Dr Ruth Temple mentioned the name Hollis Ward.

  ‘Are you sure it’s Ward’s fingerprint on the body?’ he asked Temple.

  ‘There’s no doubt.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Evan Griffin about this?’

  ‘I talked to him before I called you.’

  Cade noticed that she didn’t specify how long she had waited before contacting him, but her tone caused him to believe that she’d taken her sweet time about it. He had only met Temple on a couple of occasions and got the impression that she didn’t like him. Under ordinary circumstances, Cade tended to reciprocate dislike with dislike, but it paid to keep on the right side of the folks in the state crime lab, so he was forced to be polite to her.

  ‘I’m grateful for the courtesy.’

  ‘It’s my job,’ said Temple, and this time there was no mistaking the edge.

  ‘Have I done something to offend you?’

  ‘I think it would have helped the progress of this investigation had this lab been given the opportunity to examine Patricia Hartley’s body before it was consigned to the flames.’

  ‘That was the county coroner’s call to make.’

  ‘Was it? You enjoy the rest of your day.’

  Then the bitch had the temerity to hang up on him. Cade filed away that final slight for future reference. Down the line, he’d give Temple cause to regret it. Kovas’s investment in the state would buy the Cades a lot of influence and goodwill. Jurel thought he might use some of it to ensure Temple’s career path became one of briars and tangles.

  He considered contacting Griffin, but decided he’d learn more from a one-on-one conversation, or gain more personal satisfaction from shouting in Griffin’s face. He informed Sandi, the dispatcher, that he was heading for Cargill. He got in his car and began driving, only to pull over by the side of the road when he was barely outside town, because there were times when a man could think and drive, and times when he had to choose one or the other.

  Hollis Ward. Jesus. As far as anyone knew, Hollis Ward was dead. Pappy wouldn’t be pleased to hear that this assumption now appeared to be erroneous, because a deceased Hollis Ward had been best for all concerned, Hollis himself excepted. But that fingerprint on Donna Lee Kernigan’s body explained a lot, because if Hollis had returned with a grudge against the Cades then potentially undermining the Kovas agreement was a good way to go about indulging it. Pappy had overextended himself in every way to make Kovas happen – financially, politically, even physically, because his efforts had taken a toll on his health. Not only the future prosperity of the county but also the Cades’ long-term wealth and influence were dependent upon the agreement going through. If it didn’t, they’d be left with a lot of worthless land in Burdon County, a long line of disappointed investors, both actual and potential, and a family name that wouldn’t be worth the breath required to say aloud.

  But Jurel didn’t want to speak with his father about Hollis Ward, not before he’d had a chance to sit down with Griffin, and certainly not until he’d discussed everything with Delphia. His sister always said they should have killed Hollis themselves for what he’d done. When Hollis va
nished, Jurel even suspected that Delphia might have been responsible: not directly, of course – Delphia was a Cade, and Pappy had instilled in his children the importance of subcontracting illegal acts and using layers of middlemen – but it wouldn’t have been beyond her abilities to sow the seed of Hollis’s destruction in the mind of another. She had denied this allegation when Jurel put it to her, but he hadn’t wholly believed her. Now, it seemed, she’d been telling the truth after all.

  Maybe she was right, though, and they should have killed Hollis Ward when they had the chance. But if that was true, they should have killed someone else as well.

  They should have killed Pappy.

  The lights were out at the Rhine Heart when Kel Knight arrived, and the doors remained locked. Two cars were parked out front, and he recognized the drivers as a couple of Denny Rhinehart’s regulars, wondering why the bar wasn’t open.

  ‘Have you seen Denny around?’ Knight asked one of them, a guy named Leon Hornbeck who used to work as a metal fabricator but now stacked shelves part-time at the IGA. Leon’s brother, Milton, was a familiar face in local law enforcement circles, being always on his way to jail, from jail, or actually in jail. Without jail, Milton Hornbeck’s life would have been utterly without meaning or purpose.

  ‘His truck’s here,’ said Hornbeck. ‘I tried knocking, but I don’t think there’s anyone inside. I’m going to give him a few minutes more, then head over to Boyd’s. I got a thirst.’

  Leon Hornbeck always had a thirst. He’d once had a good job, a pleasant wife, and two kids that he saw each evening after work. Now he had a crappy job, no wife, two kids he saw a couple of weekends a month, and that thirst. Even if Kovas settled on Cargill for its facility, Knight thought it would come too late for Leon. He was lost. Eventually he’d wrap his car around a tree while driving drunk, or set himself on fire by falling asleep with a cigarette in his hand.

  Knight walked over to check out the interior of the bar. The shutters on the windows were closed, but through a busted slat he saw a single coffee mug sitting on one of the tables inside, and thought he could faintly hear music playing. He didn’t want to go breaking down any doors, not if Denny Rhinehart had been delayed somewhere. Then again, Rhinehart was, in Knight’s opinion, a slothful individual, and if he ever went anywhere, he did so behind the wheel of his truck. Also, he wasn’t in the habit of locking the back door when he happened to be inside, except at the end of the night when counting the takings.

  Knight decided to give Rhinehart another half hour. After that, he had a crowbar in the trunk of his car and the bar owner could bill the town for the damage.

  ‘If Denny shows up anytime soon,’ he told Hornbeck, ‘tell him to give me a call.’

  Hornbeck looked at his watch.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but he better not be long. I got—’

  ‘A thirst,’ Knight finished for him. ‘I know.’

  This town, Knight thought. This dying town.

  78

  Until earlier that day, Leonard Cresil had paid attention only in the abstract to the fact of Charlie Parker’s existence. As far as he was aware, the Cargill PD had engaged some passing deadbeat ex-detective, a guy who couldn’t make his nut in the NYPD, to help them with their case in return for beer money. As a former detective himself – although one who had managed to monetize his experience in a significant way – Cresil was aware of plenty of ex-cops who had gone down the private investigator route or hired themselves out as security. Some of them were good, but a lot weren’t, and even the ones that were up to snuff still didn’t meet Cresil’s idiosyncratic standards.

  And, yes, Parker’s story, once revealed, was different from most: a cop father with blood on his hands, who had taken his own life rather than face a prosecution for killing two young people, the reasons behind the shootings still unexplained; a career in the NYPD that seemed set to make up for his old man’s sins, even as the son began to inspire unease in those who served with him because of the odor of bad luck about him; the slaying of his wife and daughter, which appeared to confirm all those doubts; a resignation from the force that was neither entirely unexpected nor especially unwelcome; suspicion of involvement in the death of a pimp named Johnny Friday, the investigation into which remained open but was likely to slide for lack of proof and a general reluctance to pursue a man who had suffered so much already; and finally, rumors that he was hunting the one responsible for murdering his family, aided by information that might, just might, be coming from a rabbi within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Charles Shire’s money had bought a lot of information on Charlie Parker.

  Yet Cresil’s instinct had still been to dismiss Parker as an irritant, one that would, despite Cresil’s own reservations, be dealt with by whatever hillbillies Randall Butcher might round up to deliver a beating – though Butcher would undoubtedly be less willing to oblige were he to learn that he was effectively doing Delphia Cade’s dirty work, and that whatever resulted from the attack would doom him in the long run.

  But now, faced with Parker in the flesh, Cresil realized that he had been wrong to underestimate him. Parker might have been young – early thirties, according to the intelligence Cresil had received – but he carried himself like someone much older, although that was almost certainly a consequence of all he had endured. He radiated watchfulness without fear, and a self-aware intelligence. Cresil probably had about five inches and thirty pounds on him, but decided he wouldn’t want to face Parker in a fair fight. Parker might go down, but he wouldn’t stay there, and whatever demons impelled him would keep him coming until his opponent made an error, permitting the delivery of the killer blow.

  And if Parker lost, he wouldn’t care, because a part of him wanted to die. All this Cresil recognized in an instant, and understood that he was suddenly afraid of this man.

  Cresil leaned against the driver’s side door. He slid his left hand into a pocket of his pants, pushing his jacket back to reveal, almost casually, a gun in its shoulder holster.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ he said.

  ‘Your name is Leonard Cresil,’ said Parker. ‘The only reason you’re not behind bars is because police forces in three states were too embarrassed by your conduct to risk a court case, and instead quietly showed you the door. You’re a rapist and an abuser of women. You may have murdered a union organizer named Marvin Wright in Pensacola, Florida, and you left a federal witness, Enrique Figueiras, in a vegetative state after cracking his skull with a Louisville Slugger in Macon, Georgia, but they’re only the most recent of your victims. You work for the wealthy and powerful, and prefer your employers to possess even fewer moral scruples than you, which is a select group. Because of your actions, I believe you’re living on borrowed time. If you die in your bed, you’ll do so in a pool of your own blood.’

  Cresil made an odd biting gesture, an animal response to provocation that was both instinctive and quickly smothered, as though the feral core of his being had briefly been exposed to light.

  ‘And you’re Charlie Parker,’ he said, ‘a failed son, a failed husband, a failed father, and a failed cop. You killed an unarmed man in a bus station restroom because you can’t control your rage, and now you’re wandering aimlessly in the hope that, somehow, it will bring you closer to the man you’re looking for, and ultimately result in the termination of your own existence.

  ‘And wherever he is, the one who left you this way is laughing at you, because he took everything you loved and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. You couldn’t protect your wife and daughter, and you didn’t even have the decency to die with them. If you’re lucky, their killer will come for you, and put you out of your misery. But it may be that he’ll just leave you to suffer, and you’ll float from town to town while all that anger and grief eats away at you like a cancer.’

  If Cresil was hoping for a reaction, he was destined to be disappointed. Parker showed no anger or hurt, and Cresil knew that he had said
nothing to this man with which he had not tormented himself a thousand times over in the months since the loss of his family. It left Cresil feeling strangely angry with himself, as though even his own moral turpitude was unworthy of the words he had spoken.

  ‘So now we know each other,’ said Parker. ‘I hope it’s you that takes a run at me. I might be willing to put you out of your own pain.’

  ‘Perhaps I was mistaken,’ said Cresil. ‘I mistook you for one who had mastered his pride, but I was in error. You’re still young, which might explain it some, but you won’t live long enough to make an old corpse. I have a quarter of a century on you, all hard miles, and I’ve watched the dirt cover better men than you who thought they had the measure of me. When you die, I’ll read about it in the newspaper and struggle to remember what you looked like.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Parker. ‘In the meantime, you tell the Cades I said hello.’

  He nodded to Cresil and walked away. Cresil stared at his back and envisioned putting a hole in it. At the very least, he wanted this man to suffer the planned beating, but he mastered this urge. He’d call Delphia Cade and advise her to call the dogs off Parker. If she decided to proceed, let it be on her own head, because he knew now that it wouldn’t go well. In a few months, or even a year – assuming the man who had killed the detective’s wife and child didn’t decide to reunite the family – Cresil would come looking for Charlie Parker, and he’d deal with him in his own way: quietly, from behind, with the minimum of fuss.

  And then he would never think of him again.

  79

  Kel Knight didn’t have any luck finding Denny Rhinehart around town. He even swung by Rhinehart’s home, just in case he’d been forced to leave his vehicle at the bar for mechanical reasons, or due to some personal indisposition, but there didn’t appear to be anybody there. He called Ivy Muntz, Rhinehart’s cook, to find out if she’d heard from him. She hadn’t, because this was one of her evenings off, but she did have a spare set of keys for the Rhine Heart, and agreed to meet Knight at the bar so he could go inside and take a look around.