No Truth Left to Tell

by Michael McAuliffe

  “That’s the last thing I’d do,” Rush responded. “I’ll be stopped on the tarmac and put back on the plane.’”

  “Lee said you’d be sulking.”

  “Sulking is what a kid does when his candy gets taken. I’m in full-on reckoning mode.”

  “I didn’t like what you did, but I’m not you,” McClure said. “I wasn’t around to talk you out of it.” He had been on disability leave doing battle with a liver in revolt.

  “Welcome back anyhow, Matt,” Rush said.

  “Thanks. It was like a vacation that lasted too long.”

  The day before the agents’ call, Rush had returned the departmental awards the attorney general presented to the Klan prosecution team. The naked spaces on Rush’s office wall served as a persistent reminder of his decision to confess his error and dismiss the case. The very same day, he also received a formal notice of a bar complaint filed by some unknown lawyer representing Daniels. And despite the recent progress in the Lynwood police investigation, the chief informed Rush he soon would be pulled off the Lynwood police case. Too much at risk, she said. For whom? Rush wondered.

  The telemetry of his rocket ship had shifted lower, remarkably so. Rush was somebody now, but it wasn’t what he had longed for or anticipated. He was falling all over again down an icy, slippery slope.

  “You guys call to actually ask me something?” Rush sounded like he had other plans.

  “We need you down here,” McClure said. “It’s about the asshole Bullock.”

  “I think we’ve had this conversation before.”

  “We have and we haven’t. You may remember, he’s still in state prison.”

  “That’s one of the few saving graces of last year.”

  “And he wants to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “About the death threats you got during trial.”

  “I’m already familiar with them.”

  “You only know some of it. Lee’s right here to confirm everything I’m telling you.”

  “Matt’s right, for once,” Mercer interjected. Rush was being tag-teamed through the speakerphone.

  “It’ll be worth it,” McClure promised. “See you when you get here. Bye.”

  “Goddamn it,” Rush yelled. “Don’t hang up on me.”

  “I won’t if you agree to come back to Lynwood.”

  “Before I agree to go anywhere, tell me what’s going on.”

  “Remember our secret summit?”

  “Remember it? I’m still unclear why I was naïve enough to go with you two to a vacant field to meet a Klansman.”

  “You showed up ’cause you wanted to make the case,” Mercer said. “That was your saving grace, I might add, so don’t walk away from it now.”

  “We weren’t shot at, so that’s one definition of success.”

  “Sometimes you plant seeds,” Mercer said, “and you wait to see if they grow.”

  “But Bullock didn’t cooperate,” Rush said. “He pled in an unrelated local domestic case, he got twelve months, and that was that.”

  “The soles of his white feet have been on very cold concrete,” McClure explained, “and after learning that his former exalted grand dragon got released, he naturally wanted to know why.”

  “Yeah—”

  “And he gets access to a phone.”

  Rush couldn’t contain himself. “I’ll tell you why. Because we were self-righteous gluttons, got full off the feast, and finally vomited up our sins. The grand dragon got spit up too.”

  “That’s not relevant to my story,” McClure said.

  “You asked the question—”

  “Just listen for a second, will you. Bullock says he’s got info we can use against Daniels.”

  “You reminded him the cross burnings case met an unnatural death and he missed his chance, right?”

  “Like I said, it wasn’t about the crosses. He wanted to talk about the threats against you.”

  “Like I said, I’m familiar with them.”

  “We’ve got evidence now,” Mercer said, “and it’s worse—I mean better—than we thought.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Daniels really did want to kill you. The extortionate threats you got were the idiot’s compromise.”

  “I guess I should feel relieved. How’d you get this?”

  “When we got his call, we went to debrief him with no promises, no assurances—and no lawyers. He talked to us,” McClure said, “not the other way around.”

  “Of course he did. He wants to get out,” Mercer added, “but he understands it’s all up to you to press the local DA.”

  “He’s shit out of luck then. What else?”

  “Bullock told us Daniels ordered a hit on you before the trial. He may not have used those exact words, but he wanted someone to find a bullet with your name on it.”

  “So he didn’t like me. I knew it. He never smiled back.”

  Rush’s attempt at humor hid the realization that he had been closer to harm’s way than he’d ever thought. The men in shadows in the Twins parking lot took on new and more sinister significance.

  “Remember you told us you thought you were being followed? You were. Daniels cruised the airport when he thought you were coming to town.”

  “How’d he figure out when I was coming?”

  “Can’t say we have an answer for that,” Mercer said. “We’ll ask Bullock once we get him back to Lynwood to testify.”

  “So you’re telling me I moved to free someone who was trying to kill me—”

  “Now you’re catching on, counselor.”

  “How do we know Daniels was behind the extortion?”

  “Bullock said Daniels ordered them because he wanted to get the Jew from DC.”

  “I’m not Jewish.”

  “You are to him.”

  “See the problem? The titan gives it up, but he’s the one putting it on Daniels. Might all be true, might not be, but he’s gonna want to get a pass on the extortion. Naturally, Daniels will turn around and tag it on Bullock.”

  “So we do nothing?”

  “I’m not saying that. You can play your hand,” Rush said, “but I’ve got to back off.”

  “We debriefed the guy thinking he would talk, and he did. We’re back in the game,” Mercer said. “You’ve got an obligation to stay in this thing.”

  “I can’t be both the prosecutor and a victim in the same case. I’m the witness in the extortion investigation.”

  “So what’s the move?”

  “Bring in an AUSA to look at it,” Rush said, “preferably someone who likes me.”

  “Like can be such a strong word,” Mercer responded.

  “Try.”

  . . .

  A local AUSA agreed to put evidence about the extortion before the new grand jury. Mercer got a writ for the US Marshal’s Service to bring Bullock in from state prison downstate to testify in secret before the grand jurors. No immunity for the titan and no lawyers, at least not yet. For now, the promise of a trip back home, even in shackles, was inducement enough. And Rush, now in the role of victim, also was Lynwood bound.

  He was headed back to Lynwood, but the mission wasn’t his own anymore. He avoided making eye contact with passersby for fear he might be recognized. He was no longer the Klan buster from DC, but an apologist for some inane legal principle that freed an admitted Klansman. Folks couldn’t understand how the Klan’s grand dragon got the benefit of the laws he abhorred, the very ones he rejected. The citizenry didn’t care about the details; all they knew was one day the Klansman was in prison, and the next he was out bragging to a reporter about how he forced the government to surrender, and that the new order was coming soon.

  The regional airline’s Cessna 402 arrived from Dallas fifteen minutes early after being carried along by a tailwind. Rush ignored the car rental counter, walked out of the building, and stood alone clutching his suit bag. A gust of wind upended his
hair while he searched the wide stretch of asphalt for the agents. The high exterior roof of the terminal extended out two feet and ran the length of the terminal. Rush squinted as the pitched roofline exposed his full face to Lynwood’s strong sunlight.

  When McClure and Mercer left the bureau office, they had two goals: get Rush at the airport and go to Parker Street BBQ for lunch. The former was an obligation, the latter a religious experience. McClure demanded the first stop after the airport be the legendary brisket joint with slabs of meat and long lines. Once seated, diners couldn’t help but gorge themselves, and nobody left until the plates were devoid of scraps.

  Mercer steered the car into the airport loop.

  “There he is,” Mercer said, pointing to a lanky, solitary figure. “That man used to be on a mission, but now he just looks lost.”

  “The damn detective’s to blame, not Rush,” McClure said. “When’d you realize Batiste was full of shit?”

  “The wire,” Mercer answered.

  “Really?”

  “Honest to God.”

  “We gotta get Daniels, or this whole thing’s a bust.”

  “Need more than Bullock’s word for that,” Mercer said.

  “They all put their boot heels on someone else when their luck’s down,” McClure opined. “Lynwood’s not lucky like it used to be.”

  “They’ll move to guns and bombs, and we won’t know it until after it happens.”

  Mercer stopped the car. Rush bent down to pick up his luggage, but instead of stepping forward, he backed out of the sun as if he hadn’t seen the bureau car.

  “Isn’t that—” McClure’s body shook. The spasm pushed toward his extremities and left through his fingertips. His personal Irish quake, he called it.

  “What?”

  “Look over there. Isn’t that—”

  “Who?”

  “Daniels’s wife. Isn’t that his freak’n wife?”

  “You hallucinating?”

  “Don’t be an ass.” McClure looked again for the heavyset woman with an angry face, but she was gone. “All right, maybe it wasn’t her.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “I only saw her when we arrested Daniels. Come to think, it’s not her. Why would she be here? They won, for God’s sake.”

  Rush stepped forward out of the shade and approached. He opened the door, pushed his overnight bag across the back seat, and settled in without a word.

  “Welcome back,” said McClure, buoyant with anticipation for the revelatory lunch to come. He intended to reintroduce Rush to the most attractive trait of Lynwood—southern food.

  “Appreciate you coming for me. Odd circumstances, but I’m here.”

  “Lunch?”

  “No thanks. I got something waiting at DFW.”

  McClure moaned. “No fucking way. You chose airport food over Parker’s?”

  Mercer gave McClure the look and said, “Let’s drop him off to check in, and we’ll go to Parker. Where you staying?”

  “Twins.”

  “The Twins?”

  “Travel agent keeps putting me there because it’s got a government rate.”

  “You know about the Twins’ past, right?” McClure asked Rush.

  “No.”

  “I never told him,” Mercer admitted.

  “Told me what?”

  McClure deferred to Mercer, who gave the history.

  “In ’65, a young black man, a porter at the Twins, disappeared. Never seen or heard from again. Never found a body. The story ’round Lynwood was he got caught with a white woman in a room, and the Klan got him for it.”

  “Christ. I’ve stayed at that place dozens of times.”

  “I thought that’s why you were there—to make a statement or something,” McClure said.

  “I’d say that’s more a reason not to stay there,” Rush suggested. “Even after everything, I don’t know much about this place.”

  “It’s heavy with history,” Mercer said, “and much of it not wanting to be remembered.”

  “But it’s got damn fine BBQ,” McClure said, trying to lighten the conversation.

  “Wish I had known. You go stuff yourself to the gills, and come get me to meet with the AUSA.”

  “You still trying to run the show?” Mercer asked. “Remember, you’re now just a civilian.”

  “I’m fully aware of my new status,” Rush said with no hint of humor.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know.” Rush returned the gesture to Mercer.

  “Gentlemen, shall we?” McClure asked.

  The agents delivered Rush to the Twins and went on to the culinary equivalent of basking in the midday sun. They might pay for it later, but it would be heaven for a while.

  Late afternoon came too soon for the agents, and they made their way back to the motel near comatose from consuming assorted heaps of meat, replenished on demand, and baskets of fried sides. McClure rolled more than moved. Mercer again drove.

  Rush waited for the agents on the Twins’ wide front step as if he were ready to be called onto a stage. The southern sun was still high and brutally hot. He was dressed in his lawyer suit but had taken off the coat and folded it over his arm.

  The motel was an apt backdrop to the town—a one-story winged building that didn’t judge its occupants and had no memory, just walls. Its paint was chipped in spots along the once solid-white trim, and the green shutters sagged at their anchors in double frowns. The parking lot was empty except for a scattering of vehicles, including an older-model Buick and a pickup positioned so that it occupied two spaces. It appeared to be another lethargic Lynwood late afternoon. The town was living in slow motion; it wasn’t dreamlike but closer to hearing a faint, recurring horn in a thick fog.

  “We should have made him go to Parker’s. He’ll never understand the South until he eats like a southerner.”

  “I believe Rush has had his fill of the South,” said Mercer.

  “Might be good to have him check in with Cristwell.”

  “He can decide that.”

  “We meeting in the lobby?” McClure asked.

  “Don’t exactly know.”

  The bureau car meandered up the street, with the Twins fronting the roadway beyond the next intersection on the right. They stopped at a red light. McClure’s eyes wandered aimlessly about the intersection, as he was focused on the upcoming meeting with the AUSA and Rush. Mercer would play diplomat, but it was up to McClure to be the agitator and ensure something got done. The assistant US attorney had informed the agents he’d put evidence of the extortionate threats before the grand jury, but he wasn’t close to being convinced the case needed to be charged. As he put it, why keep churning up the past? They were offended by the comment, given all that had happened, but the agents needed the new prosecutor’s cooperation now that Rush wasn’t on the case.

  “I’m stuffed,” McClure announced.

  “You really are a pig.”

  “I’m just a fat old white guy with an appetite. I’m nothin’ special. Difference between them Klansmen and me is I know what I am. They don’t.”

  “Don’t quit now.”

  “They got a different way of gettin’ supper. They steal it from someone else’s plate.”

  “Since when did you become so erudite in these matters?”

  “The BBQ sauce. It’s downright inspirational.”

  Mercer was the first to notice the man some sixty feet away on the opposite side of the motel’s entrance, moving fast.

  “You see that?” Mercer asked.

  “What?”

  “That guy—”

  “Who?”

  “The guy running.” Mercer pointed up ahead.

  “He sure as shit’s in a hurry,” McClure observed.

  “Christ. It can’t be. Is that Daniels?” Mercer yelled.

  “Don’t joke about that, just to get me back—”

  “I’m not. It’s him. I swear to God.”

  “What the hell’s h
e doin’ here?” McClure asked.

  “He’s got something—” Mercer said.

  “Mother of God. It’s a gun.”

  “We’re too far—”

  “He’s going for Rush. Daniels is gonna kill Rush.”

  Mercer gassed his car, propelling it forward with new purpose, its blistering siren wailing after a flip of a switch under the dashboard. The car sped through the intersection and hit the curb, causing its front right tire to blow out. McClure tried to grab his weapon but couldn’t as he tumbled around in the seat.

  “I’ll hit him,” Mercer said.

  Rush, looking startled by the siren, raised his coat to his chest in an instinctive, if useless, act of self-protection.

  The bureau car careened toward Daniels with Mercer fighting to keep control.

  Daniels raised his six-shooter revolver to his waist and continued his advance on Rush. The bureau car was within twenty-five feet when Daniels pivoted in the direction of the incoming salvo. He rotated his body, stretched his arm out level to his shoulder, and fired a single shot.

  At the same instant as the discharge, Mercer pumped the brakes to blunt his car’s final impact. The car hit Daniels on the side and lifted him over the front bumper. He bounced off the top of the hood and dropped onto the grassy area to the left. The car lurched on, coming to a full stop only when it hit the motel’s brick exterior wall.

  The crack of the gunshot was lost in the collapsing metal and crumbling concrete, the sounds all melded into a single horrific pronouncement.

  “Holy shit,” yelled McClure. “You got that son of a bitch!” McClure had closed his eyes on impact and didn’t see the car’s front window had a spider-web-pattern crack on the driver’s side.

  “Lee, you got him,” McClure said again as he looked over at Mercer.

  The car’s impact with the wall had jolted Mercer’s body forward, and despite having on a seat belt—the aged car had no airbag—his chest appeared jammed against the steering wheel. McClure pulled Mercer back in the seat. There was a trickle of blood below Mercer’s nose, and his neck and upper chest were soaked in liquid red.

  “Lee!” McClure lightly slapped Mercer’s brown, clean-shaven face. “Come on.”

  McClure put his other hand over Mercer’s throat, where blood was escaping in spurts, and held tight.

  “We need help!” he screamed. “Someone help! Help over here!”