by Cole, Bobby
In warm weather, the area was home to water moccasins, timber rattlers, wild hogs, alligators, and enough chiggers and mosquitoes to drive the unprepared crazy. In November it was just cold, muddy, and desolate. Migrating waterfowl sought refuge in the shallow sloughs, and white-tailed deer bedded in the river-cane thickets. Beavers flourished, coyotes howled, and mythical black panthers were thought to inhabit the vast oak flats surrounded by half-circle-shaped old river sloughs. This was the ancient hunting ground of the Chickasaw Indians. The Spanish conquistador and explorer Hernando de Soto traveled these same woods on his journey to the Mississippi River. As the crow flies, just a few miles south was an Indian village that had been home to thousands. Now it was at the bottom of Columbus Lake, forever preserved, albeit under silt and river water.
The leafless trees were devoid of color in the truck’s headlights as Moon Pie pulled up to a locked gate on a seldom-traveled gravel road. Moon Pie knew this area well. He was familiar with every logging road, and he knew of a forty-acre pond that the Corps of Engineers managed strictly for ducks. On the river side of the pond was a corrugated steel pipe. The pipe was just wide enough to drop a man into it. It went straight down ten or twelve feet and then turned ninety degrees and continued another fifty feet under a manmade levee, discharging into another wetland. This pipe functioned to maintain a maximum water level so ducks could feed on the native plants in the shallow water. If the water level rose above the top of the pipe, it flowed down and out the other side.
This simple, effective water level control worked flawlessly, until beavers packed mud and limbs around the lip of the pipe, causing the lake level to rise several inches. Moon Pie knew the busy beavers had this lake holding at least six inches of water more than normal. He planned to stuff Jake into the pipe and leave him. Moon Pie would tear out some of the beaver construction, allowing the water to slowly drown Jake inside the pipe. Moon Pie relished the idea of Jake’s slow death. Even if he didn’t drown first, he would die from hypothermia. It didn’t matter to Moon Pie what the ultimate cause of death was just so long as it was slow and terrifying. Since the pipe was full of tree limbs and debris, Moon Pie thought Jake’s body—whole—would never flow out the other side. Moon Pie smiled at the thought of Jake stuck inside a dark pipe with ice-cold water washing over him, knowing that death was coming and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it, slow it down, or even speed it up.
Moon Pie realized that, since he was in Jake’s truck, he didn’t have his universal gate key—a stolen pair of Klein thirty-six-inch bolt cutters. He glanced back at Jake, who had started to come to on the drive, but another jolt from the stun gun knocked him out again. Moon Pie grunted as he opened the door and stepped outside to search Jake’s gull-wing toolbox for something he could use to cut off the lock.
“Damn Goody Two-shoes,” he muttered, slamming closed the lid after not finding anything helpful.
Moon Pie grabbed his pistol from under the driver’s seat and shut the truck door. The third shot disabled the lock.
The gunshots woke Jake. He was extremely disoriented and tried to sit up but couldn’t. His body wouldn’t respond. Each pistol shot made him flinch. What’s going on? Where the hell am I? he thought.
When Moon Pie opened the truck door, the dome light illuminated a pink Mississippi State ball cap lying on the floorboard that Jake had bought for Katy but hadn’t given to her yet. Jake’s mind immediately raced to the thought that he would never see her again. He wouldn’t see her first date or her high school and college graduations. He’d miss walking her down the aisle. Grandkids. He would miss sharing all of these things and more with Morgan. Oh God, Morgan and our baby!
Adrenaline flooded him, and he fought his restraints, the effects of the electrical disruption of his nervous system, and the confines of the small backseat. He then tried again to sit up, grunting loudly, but couldn’t.
“Oh, goody, you’re awake,” Moon Pie said excitedly. “Got any last requests, asshole?”
The words shocked him. “Let me go! You don’t have to do this!”
“I know I don’t. I ain’t gotta do shit. But you see, I wanna do this. Besides, I made a promise. And a promise is a promise, ya know.”
“I have a wife and a little girl—please.”
Moon Pie slammed the truck door. He pressed his hand against his wound and took a big swig of Jack with the other.
“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve seen ’em, remember? Oh yeah, that little Katy’s gonna be a hottie too, and you ain’t gonna be here to do anything ’bout all them guys that are gonna come sniffing ’round,” he said with a lascivious snicker.
CHAPTER 98
AFTER LEVI HAD driven through miles of the pine plantations and farmland of rural Mississippi, the giant glowing orb that sits high atop the Golden Moon Hotel and Casino in Philadelphia looked peculiar against the night sky. Since it was a Monday night before Thanksgiving, the resort’s parking lots seemed surprisingly full. Must be a big Monday Night Football party, he thought as he hurriedly parked.
Levi took the elevator to the top floor and walked quickly toward Bailey’s room. Before he stopped at her door, he looked both ways down the hallway to see if anyone was following. Bailey opened the door as soon as he knocked. As soon as the door shut, they hugged.
“Never open the door without knowing who it is,” he said, pulling back to look into her eyes.
“I could see you through the peephole. I’ve been standing there waiting since we got off the phone,” she said, wondering why he was so suspicious.
“Oh, okay. That’s good,” he said, locking the dead bolt and flipping closed the safety hasp.
When Levi turned around, Bailey pulled him close and said, “It’s so good to see you. I’ve missed you.” She kissed him.
Levi leaned into the kiss and pulled her tight. When they stopped, Levi said, “I know. It’s only been a coupla days, but I’ve really missed you too.”
“Us missin’ each other so early in a relationship…this is bad, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah, but in a good way,” he replied with a broad smile. “They say the heart knows what it wants.”
Bailey led Levi by the hand into the suite. She was wearing black sweatpants and a loose-fitting T-shirt from Reed’s bookstore in Tupelo. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. In the center of the main room of the suite was an oversize leather couch. Bailey fell back into it.
“Nice crib. I like the way you roll,” Levi said, looking around.
“I could live here. This is the nicest place I’ve ever been in my life,” she said. Then she added, “Which ain’t saying much, since except for goin’ to Memphis, I haven’t been out of the state.”
“Girl, we’ll have to change that for sure.”
Levi sat down on the opposite side of the couch and put his feet on the coffee table. Bailey turned to face him, sitting Indian-style.
Levi noticed that the exhausted look seemed to be fading and was slowly being replaced with relief and happiness. In response he said, “Babe, please tell me everything that’s been going on. Start at the beginning. Let me help ya.”
Bailey looked him dead in the eye, sighed deeply, and then, after several seconds of silence, started talking. She went into the specifics about her mother’s battle with leukemia and the resulting financial hardships, not going to college, her grandmother and her friends; she told about all the meaningful projects the old guys wanted to do and how they just wanted to be helpful to their families. She explained the Kroger situation, including Samantha, and how they now wanted to give the money back.
Levi was dumbfounded as Bailey gave the details of robbing the Gold Mine, counting the money, buying the travel bags to store it in, and how, when she saw Woody approaching the hotel, she grabbed the money and ran. She also explained how she had obsessed about the money all through the night.
It took Bailey twenty minutes to bring Levi up to speed. She circled back at the end to reemphasize Wa
lter’s story.
Levi never interrupted. He soaked it all in and marveled at the old folks’ ingenuity. He also understood their motives.
Bailey was relieved to have unburdened herself but was on the verge of collapse from carrying such a heavy load. She watched Levi for a response and could ascertain only that he was worried.
“I’m sorry to drop all this on you, and I really want you to know that we didn’t steal the money from you…we stole it from Moon Pie,” she said as she pushed her hair behind her right ear.
Levi finally asked, “Does your grandmother know that you’re okay?” He gently touched her face.
“No. I haven’t called. I didn’t want Woody to have any leverage.”
“They’re worried. I saw them earlier.”
“I’ll call.” As she hugged Levi, she asked, “So you’re not mad at me?”
He rubbed his face and then ran his fingers through his hair. He broke off the embrace, looked her in the eye, and said, “No, I’m not mad. Look, I ain’t gonna judge y’all. I can’t. I haven’t done right. Moon Pie’s as mean as a snake, and I’ve helped him steal and cheat. And worst of all, I’ve helped him distribute drugs. I know they’re ruining people’s lives, and I think about that all the time. I just ain’t figured a way out. It’s been really botherin’ me lately. The only reason I do it is ’cause it’s easy money, pure and simple. I’m smart enough not to use drugs…but I’m stupid enough to haul ’em. It’s crazy, and I’ve been tellin’ myself that it’s all about the money, and what’s bad about that is that I don’t have anything to really show for it. It’s crazy.
“What y’all wanna do has got some meaning and purpose. I’d love to see you have that dress shop. I know you’d be successful if you just had the money to get started. Bailey, I’m very impressed with you and what you did for your momma. You coulda run from those debts and problems, but you didn’t. Nobody woulda blamed you. I understand what y’all did and why. But you know that it makes y’all criminals…just like me and Moon Pie.”
He stopped talking when he noticed tears welling in Bailey’s eyes. She knew what she had done was wrong, and that had been haunting her. Her lip was quivering, and it was hard to speak. She didn’t like being called a criminal.
Bailey asked, “What are we gonna do? I don’t wanna be a criminal.”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking around the room, his eyes stopping on two rolling suitcases. He pointed at the bags and continued, “That money right there…that is some dangerous shit, bad dangerous. It’s gonna get somebody killed. You ain’t got a clue who all’s involved with that.”
Bailey started to tremble. Levi moved next to her and wrapped his arm around her. He noticed the time on a wall clock. It was 8:00 p.m., and he hadn’t eaten all day.
“Look, I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat and talk this through, see if we can’t find a solution.”
Bailey seemed to welcome the idea. “There’s a ton of restaurants here!” She handed him a brochure from the coffee table.
“Cool. Go get ready. We’ll go somewhere nice,” Levi said, opening the brochure.
“I’ll take a quick shower and be ready in fifteen minutes!”
Bailey jumped up, kissed him on the cheek, and grabbed a small travel bag as she ran into the bedroom and shut the door.
Levi stood, stretched, and walked to face the massive floor-to-ceiling window. Though the night was inky black, he couldn’t see any stars because of the giant parking lot’s orange lights. The moon also was nowhere to be seen. Levi remembered from the drive that rain clouds had been rolling in fast. The sound of the shower running and Bailey singing “Broken Road” brought his thoughts back to where he was. He turned to look around the room, his gaze falling on the suitcases.
He walked over to the bags and opened one to see the cash wrapped with rubber bands and neatly stacked inside. He smiled, grabbed a bundle, and then zipped the suitcase shut.
Seeing the money jolted Levi back to the fact that Moon Pie needed help. While he was looking at his phone to see if Moon Pie had texted him, the battery died and the screen went dark. An overwhelming sense of urgency hit him. He dropped a thousand dollars onto the coffee table, grabbed the suitcases, and headed for the door.
The last thing Levi heard before closing the suite’s heavy door was Bailey’s joyful singing in the shower.
CHAPTER 99
THREE HOURS EARLIER, Trance Moser and Yancey Fuller, two grave robbers, had been dropped off at the eastern edge of the vast river-bottom swamp by one of their wives. Inside their backpacks were black tarps, small shovels, wire screens to shift the dirt for artifacts, and a variety of other tools and accessories. They carried one loaded AR-15 rifle and two four-foot sections of metal rod that they would push down into the earth until they felt something solid, and then they would dig.
While scouting a few weeks back, they had discovered an Indian mound along the edge of an old river run. The mound was inconspicuous to a layman, but these two easily recognized the slight rise in the terrain. It appeared to them to be unexplored, and they eagerly anticipated digging. This area of Mississippi was known among artifact hunters for the presence of long ceremonial-spear points that brought top dollar.
The grave robbers retrieved the waypoint of the Indian mound from their handheld GPS and started hiking toward it.
These guys had perfected their illegal activities. They dug only at night, arriving after dark and leaving before daylight. They preferred winter, when the soil was moist and easier to work; plus, there were no snakes, and the insects weren’t a nightmare. Following their new approach, last year they had sold over $95,000 worth of illegal artifacts to private collectors, mostly from Japan. Lately several law enforcement officers, tasked with protecting sacred Indian artifacts, had come close to catching them. Consequently, they now had to be dropped off and picked up to facilitate their concealment.
When they finally reached the mound, they spread the tarps to build low, tentlike structures over the area they wanted to dig. With this setup, they were able to use small battery-powered floodlights to illuminate their immediate work area. Inside, it was brighter than midday. Unless you were a few yards away and heard the shovels, you would never know that an excavation was occurring, about to unearth a Native American buried deep in the past. The grave robbers could not have cared less about the Indians. They just wanted the cache of beads, arrowheads, spear points, and ceremonial pieces buried with them for use on the other side.
Tonight had been a slow dig, so Trance stood outside the tarp, smoking a cigarette and thinking. His wife had recently left him for the UPS delivery guy, and he was having trouble focusing on the task at hand. He had almost finished the cigarette when he noticed vehicle lights on the other side of the lake. He immediately called to his partner, Yancey, to turn off the lights. Paranoia struck deep, and for a long while, they both stood stock-still but ready to flee, abandoning their project.
“Game warden?” Trance whispered nervously.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Yancey responded as he looked through binoculars, watching the vehicle’s lights bumping down a logging road several hundred yards away. They could hear the engine rev and mud and water splashing.
“Well, at least they’re on the other side of the slough.”
His buddy didn’t respond as he intently glassed the truck.
“Sheriff?”
“Nah.”
“Corps patrol?”
“No.”
“Well, who the hell is it, then?”
“I don’t know. I can’t make it out. Just shut the hell up so I can think!” Yancey shot back.
CHAPTER 100
THE MEXICAN DRUG dealers had an interesting night. After casing the police station and the Henry Clay Hotel and not learning anything they didn’t already know, they decided to eat supper. Julio wanted to experience the local vibe and cuisine. He felt this was the only way to connect, albeit indirectly, with the target. Based upon the alm
ost-unanimous recommendation from everyone in town they asked, they pulled up to the front of Anthony’s Market. From the outside, it appeared to be a dive. Once inside, however, Julio loved the atmosphere. He ordered one of every Cajun appetizer on the menu, just to sample it. The men gorged themselves on spicy food and drank nearly a case of Corona while watching Monday Night Football on a huge flat-screen. Guillermo had kept his laptop powered up, monitoring the movements of Moon Pie’s ankle bracelet.
Full as ticks, and feeling bulletproof, the Mexicans decided to follow the GPS tracking of the ankle bracelet as it moved from Chocolate City. They asked for the check and then spoke quickly to each other in Spanish so no one would understand. Both watched the red dot on the screen as it traveled closer to them. When it stopped moving three blocks north, Julio dropped three hundred-dollar bills on the table and thanked the waitstaff as they walked out. At the front door, Julio’s stomach rumbled once and then again before he got to the car. He paused and considered going back inside to use the restroom, but the anticipation of the chase overpowered his guts.
As the Mexicans approached the location of the tracking device, they noticed that the street was lined with run-down shotgun-style homes. The beer had contributed to Julio’s conviction that he understood the dynamics of the neighborhood. He believed that they had the element of surprise on their side and didn’t have to worry about a big crowd. They drove by once and saw the purple car pulling into the yard. Only a few lights were on inside the house. Turning around, they turned off their headlights and rolled silently to a stop, putting the purple Cadillac between them and the house. Julio grabbed his pistol and Guillermo his laptop as they silently approached the house.