“Bathroom,” Crail said. “Had to wash up.” He ducked suddenly when he thought he saw the green head of a large mallard flying straight at him. He straightened up and looked at Big Jim, wild-eyed. “You see that?”
Big Jim shook his head. “See what?”
“Never mind,” Crail said, looking around for more low-flying ducks. He pulled the envelope of cash from his pocket and counted some out. “You get that stuff?”
Big Jim opened his trunk and pulled a sack from one of his tackle boxes. He tossed it to Crail, who looked inside at the pills and the sparkly methamphetamine. It made him happy just to see it. He pulled one of the OxyContins from the bag and, rolling it between his thumb and index finger, said, “You know, these things come on kinda slow and last awhile, but they never really have a punch.”
“Yeah,” Big Jim said, rubbing his fingers together. “You gotta grind ’em up to get around that damn time-release thing. You wanna real buzz, you gotta snort it or shoot it.” He looked in a different tackle box and came up with a hypodermic. “You need a rig?”
“Naw, I’ll just chew ’em.”
“Cool.” Big Jim slammed his trunk shut and said, “So, where you headin’?”
He nodded south and said, “Vicksburg.”
BLIND BUDDY COTTON pulled into the parking lot, crushing the pork bones Crail had left behind. Pigfoot leaned forward and pointed at a late-model BMW, the only car there. “That’s his,” he said.
Buddy pulled into the handicapped spot, then got out and opened the door for his new boss. Pigfoot stepped onto the asphalt like he was the head of the mob. He made the others wait as he straightened his tie and buttoned his coat. When he gave the nod, the four men in their dark suits moved toward the building in a stately procession. Crazy Earl led the way, wearing the same suit he’d worn to his wife’s funeral. Crippled Willie brought up the rear, swinging his dead leg like a proud veteran from a forgotten war.
A minute later they were inside, standing at the door to Lynch’s office. Buddy’s head tilted back as he sniffed the air. “Smells like gasoline,” he said. They looked at one another, knowing something was wrong. Pigfoot gave another nod and Buddy pushed open the door.
Pigfoot went in first, the others followed. They stood there for a moment, surveying the damage, drawers open, files strewn about. The smell of gasoline and burned paper and carpeting filled the air. After a moment, Crazy Earl said, “Damn. This a mess.”
Crippled Willie kicked the empty Crown bottle and looked at the charred curtain crumpled on the floor. Absently he said, “Lord, Lord, Lord.”
Buddy walked around the desk and stooped to look at the pile of half-burned documents and the two melted reels of tape on the floor by the safe.
When Pigfoot came around the desk and saw the melted reels, he felt a knot tighten in his stomach. He picked them up and stared at them. They were destroyed. He stood there trying to imagine what had happened. The tapes were his salvation. Without them, he had nothing.
Crazy Earl leaned over and peeked into the unhinged safe. He said, “You think this about you, boss?”
Pigfoot couldn’t respond, rendered mute by his hopelessness.
“It’s about him, all right,” Buddy said, standing up. He was holding what was left of a burned file folder. The tab read: “Clarence Morgan—Trial Notes, Washington County DA.” He handed it to Pigfoot.
The words sucked the remaining life from his eyes. He knew what this meant. It felt like a knife twisted in his gut. He kept staring at his name, wondering how it had come to this, how his plans had unraveled so easily. The simple flick of a match had reduced his future to ashes. He leaned against the desk as if it might help him resist the gravitational pull of despair. After a minute he said, “That was it.” He shook his head slowly and pointed at the warped reels on the floor. “Man said those tapes, those files, was all we needed.” Pigfoot let go and the tab fluttered to the ground.
Buddy and Willie were both wondering if these were the tapes from that night they’d recorded together, though neitherof them said a word. But Earl did. He asked what was on the tapes.
Pigfoot said, “It don’t matter now, does it?”
After a moment, Crippled Willie put his hand on Pigfoot’s shoulder and said maybe the lawyer had made a copy of the tape and the documents. The others agreed that this made sense and they made a show of combing through all the files and drawers, hoping to buoy his spirits, but there was nothing to be found and finally Pigfoot said what they were all thinking. “Ain’t nothing here. Somebody beat me to it.”
Earl said, “What’re we gone do?”
Pigfoot took a deep breath and shook his head. “Earl,” he said. “I don’t know. That was all I had.”
Crippled Willie said, “Well, now, you don’t know that. Maybe the lawyer’s took the copies with him wherever he’s gone.”
Pigfoot turned and stared at Willie. “It look to you like that lawyer left here with anything?” He looked at his shoes and shook his head. “I don’t know what we gone do now.”
Buddy wanted to keep his mouth shut and let the whole thing end right there, get back in the Cadillac, go back home. But his conscience wouldn’t let him. It threatened to tear him in half, as he thought about what he’d done and all that Pigfoot had lost as a result. But it was more than that. It was more than the fear that had cracked in his bones when Pigfoot fired that rifle. And it was more than the trivial humiliation he felt every time he opened the door for Pigfoot and called him Mr. Morgan. They shared something stronger than all that bundled up with wire. The unrelenting assault on their dignity that had kept them in their place all their lives, that had kept them in fear and silence, was the deciding factor. They had a common enemy, and now they had a chance to strike back. Buddy reached into his pocket and pulled out Rick’s card. He said, “I got an idea.”
“DAMMIT!” LOLLIE HAMMERED the dashboard with her fist and said, “Why didn’t you stop me?”
“You were going too fast,” Rick said as he fishtailed the truck from Shelby’s driveway onto the highway, spinning Crusty’s carrier around on the floor. “Besides, I thought it was obvious we wouldn’t want him to know we’d identified Cuffie.” He shot her an incredulous look and said, “I can’t believe you did that.”
Lollie cinched her seat belt up a notch and said, “Yeah, well, looking back I can see how obvious it seems.” She hit the dashboard again. “God, I’m an idiot!”
“I wouldn’t say you’re an idiot,” Rick said as he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. “It’s more like you learn … differently from others.” She was about to respond when Rick held up a hand. “Mike? It’s Rick. Listen, I need a favor. There’s a file on my desk that says ‘BCC Reunion.’ It’s spot copy. Can you produce that, nothing fancy, just read it and get it on the air twice an hour? I’ll explain when I get there. Thanks.” Rick eased into the other lane and craned his neck to see around a slow-moving SUV in front of them. He ducked back just in time to avoid an oncoming combine harvester.
Lollie said, “What do you think he’s going to do?”
“It’s family,” Rick said. “I suspect he’ll warn her and do what he can to help her avoid the authorities.” When he saw an opportunity, Rick punched it and shot past the SUV and toward oncoming traffic. As the engine strained to pass, Crusty poked his head out of his carrier and looked at Rick as if he was crazy.
Lollie stomped on an imaginary brake pedal and said, “Slow down!”
“No can do. If we’re going to pull a rabbit out of this hat, we’ve got to move fast.” They could hear the horn of the oncoming car as Rick pulled back into their lane with few yards to spare. He looked at Lollie, who had turned a whiter shade of pale, and said, “Call Detective Cruger.”
She pulled her phone from her purse. “And say what?”
“Tell him to arrest Cuffie LeFleur.”
“On what grounds?”
“Conspiracy to commit murder.”
“But we can’t
prove it.”
“Please, work with me! Make it sound like we can.”
While Lollie tried to get Cruger, Rick hit redial on his cell. “Mike? Me again. Another favor.” He dictated a press release announcing the discovery of the legendary Blind, Crippled, and Crazy tapes. “WVBR is going to broadcast them for the first time in conjunction with a reunion concert featuring the original artists in a couple of days,” he said. “Get that to every radio and television station from Port Gibson to Memphis,” he said. “And every newspaper in the state. And fax a copy over to Smitty Chisholm at the blues museum, tell him to e-mail it to everybody who gets his newsletter. I need everybody in the Delta to know about this.”
Rick hung up and listened as Lollie tried to make the case to Detective Cruger. She told him about Doogan’s photographs and Lettie’s beauty mark and how Henry and Shelby had reacted to their questions. When she told him Rick had identified Cuffie as the woman who’d hired him, using Lollie’s name, Cruger agreed that it looked like she might have something to do with the deaths of Woolfolk and Suggs. But, all things considered, he said he wasn’t about to arrest Henry LeFleur’s granddaughter without more than that. He told Lollie they would check Cuffie’s phone records and, if warranted, try to contact her for an interview. She tried to argue with him, explaining that Shelby knew the whole story, that he was bound to tip her off, but Cruger just repeated his position and ended the call.
After Lollie recounted the conversation, Rick said, “That’s the best he can do? We serve up a prime suspect in an open murder investigation and he says he might interview her? Hell, they ought to be kicking her door in.”
“And I get the feeling they would be if she wasn’t one of the nuts hanging in the LeFleur family tree.”
“Son of a bitch!” He slammed the steering wheel. “She’s going to get a helluva head start, thanks to him.”
Lollie shook her head. “It’s not his fault,” she said. “I’m the one who screwed this up.” She turned and looked out her window, thinking about her grandfather.
Rick looked at her. She was right, and he was tempted to say so. They’d stumbled across the answer to their question, just had it land in their laps like a Christmas present. All they had to do was get back to the computer, track her down, and they’d have her. Case closed. But Lollie had tipped their hand and he knew now that the odds of finding Cuffie and her partner were going past slim and heading toward none.
But at the same time, Rick knew he was the one who had led the killers to Lollie’s grandfather in the first place, so he wasn’t in much of a position to be throwing stones about who screwed what up. Instead, he started singing. “Baby, don’t you worry, we gonna get them bad guys. I said, baby, don’t worry, we sho nuff gone catch them bad guys. We gonna thow ’em in the jailhouse, and let ’em sit there till they dies.”
28
SHELBY STAYED IN the sitting room for a long time, trying to decide what to do. He had two choices and he didn’t like either one of ’em. He wheeled his chair over to the drum table and sat there, staring at the picture of himself in the cotton field with his father, wondering what he would have done. He remembered how his dad had impressed upon him the importance of reputation, how it took a lifetime to earn a good one while a single bad decision could ruin it forever.
Sitting there under the gaze of all the LeFleurs, Shelby realized that for the first time in nearly a century, he felt old. His body had been failing him for decades, but that wasn’t it. It was this damn choice and all the implications, threatening his legacy and crushing his sense of propriety. He saw himself as an honorable man, principled and moral. Willing to do the right thing and accept the consequences.
But blood’s thick, so he picked up the phone and dialed. When Henry answered, Shelby spoke in grave tones. He said, “Son, we have a problem.”
This wasn’t what Henry wanted to hear just now. He was already having second thoughts about sending that twitchy Crail Pitts to kill that smart-ass disc jockey and his nosy little girlfriend. If Pitts screwed up and got caught, they’d have more problems than they could say grace over. And now his feebleminded father was on the phone with more. Henry took a deep breath and, though he really didn’t want to know the answer, said, “What kinda problem?”
“Cuffie’s got involved with something bad.”
Henry could taste the acid coming up his throat. “What’re you talkin’ about? Bad how?” When Shelby told him what had happened, Henry went ballistic. “Are you crazy? The hell’re you thinkin’ lettin’ them into your house? Talkin’ to strangers.”
“They said they wanted to talk about the radio station.” Shelby felt older with every word that came out of his mouth, like his bones were turning to dust inside him, like his teeth could crumble at any moment. “I didn’t know what they were after. And it was just a damn fluke that they saw her in the picture. We have to do something before they find her.”
“Goddammit, you old fool, what you mean is, you done made a mess and now I gotta clean up behind you.”
“Son, don’t you ever call me a fool.”
“I’ll call you worse,” Henry said, his voice rising. “And I won’t think twice about it.” He hung up without another word.
Shelby slowly lowered the phone until it rested in his lap. He was disgusted with himself and his son and everything else that crossed his mind. He looked around at the faces he’d known, the loved ones he’d buried and hoped to honor with a righteous life. And the longer he looked at them, the older he grew. And he stared at them until he felt ancient and found himself wishing he had died long ago so he wouldn’t have to know what happened next.
INTERNAL DERANGEMENT IS the medical term for joint dysfunction, and Crail Pitts was in the process of taking the term to a whole new level. The intense swelling caused by the infection had finally choked off the flow of blood. His knee, once red, bloated, and feverish, had cooled and turned a soothing tone of bronze. At this rate, it would be black in less than twenty-four hours.
Crail was parked in a magnolia’s shade by the border of the Vicksburg National Military Park. He was listening in fascination to the odd crackling sounds coming from his knee. The sounds were due to the accumulation of gas bubbles under the skin, caused by festering gangrene. The fascination was due to an internal derangement of a different sort, one stemming from the hallucinatory side effects of the sulfamethoxazole combined with the methamphetamine and OxyContin abuse, not to mention all the whiskey he was drinking to keep his keel even.
Looking down with waxy eyes, Crail gently poked his wound, coaxing a sweet-smelling watery discharge from one of the skin eruptions. He rubbed the liquid between his fingers before wiping it on the map of Vicksburg he had picked up at the visitors’ center on his way into town.
He had marked the location of the WVBR studios on the map. He figured it would be the best place to ambush Rick and Lollie, first because he knew they had to show up there sooner or later, and second because it was on the edge of town, surrounded by woods.
It was time to get moving. Crail lit a cigarette and snorted another line of meth. He turned on the radio as he headed for the station, where he planned to scout for a place to lay in wait. The guy on the air was playing a Van Morrison song Crail thought was for pussies. Not only that, but it sounded even worse since that busted speaker was reproducing sound about as well as a worn-out shop rag. He wanted to call and request something that really rocked, like some Molly Hatchet or Whitesnake or Sabbath, but before he could decide what he wanted to hear, the deejay said, “WVBR with Van the man’s version of ‘Mean Ole Frisco.’ Before that, the Allman Brothers with Elmore James’s ‘Done Somebody Wrong.’ Of course if you’re a blues fan,” the jock said, “you already knew that. And if you’re a blues fan, you’re going to want to tune in Friday night when Rick Shannon presents what is without question an historical program.”
The deejay played the spot Mike Rushing had produced for Rick. It opened with a scratchy recording of Sylvester W
eaver’s “Guitar Rag” before the voice-over started: “They were lost for fifty years. But now they’ve been found. The tapes from one of the most famous recording sessions in Mississippi history have been rediscovered. The legendary Delta bluesmen Blind Buddy Cotton, Crippled Willie Jefferson, and Crazy Earl Tate spent one night in a studio in 1953 and produced what some have called the truest blues ever recorded. The Blind, Crippled, and Crazy Sessions, coming to WVBR tomorrow night at nine.”
CUFFIE WAS BROWSING at the Outlet Mall with a bounce in her step. Crail had destroyed the tapes and Papaw Henry was taking him under his wing. Things were working out just fine. She was admiring a pair of Gucci knockoffs when her cell phone rang. Her nerves tingled when she saw Crail’s number. She wondered if he’d gotten rid of the lawyer. “Hey, baby,” she said. “How’s that thing going?”
Crail was still so bewildered by the revelation about the Blind, Crippled, and Crazy tapes that all he could say was “What thing?” Then it hit him. “Oh, that lawyer? Don’t worry, ain’t nobody gonna find his body.”
Cuffie dropped the bogus Guccis and, through gritted teeth, said, “Unny-hay? Ooo-yay eed-nay to be or-may airful-kay on the ell-say own-phay.”
Crail held his phone in front of him and assumed the expression of a befuddled dog. “Baby,” he said. “I think you’re breaking up.”
A second later she said, “Can you hear me now?”
“Oh, there you are. Anyway, listen, I got some bad news.”
“What do you mean, bad news?”
“Well, I’m down here in Vicksburg doin’ that other thing for your papaw Henry, right? So I was listenin’ to that radio station when they ran this commercial sayin’ they’d found the tapes of that Crazy, Blind, Crippled thing and they’re gonna play ’em on the air.”
Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5) Page 27