Rick shook his head like a stunned cartoon character and said, “Yeah, I tell you what. Let me put you on hold until we get to that.” He punched the button, then took another call. It was Smitty Chisholm.
“Hey, you’re just the man I wanted to talk to,” Rick said. “How’re you tonight?” From the sound of his voice, one got the impression that Smitty was so excited he was about to wet his little curator pants. “So,” Rick said. “Did you hear that last call?”
“Yeah,” Smitty said. “And I just gotta say, that boy’s not listening to the music if thinks it’s all about deviations from the major scale. I mean, when I listen to the blues, I hear sweat and longing, joy and jealousy, anguish and envy and hatred and all the other human emotions and circumstances.”
“There’s some sex in there too, if I’m not mistaken,” Rick said.
“Well, a back-door man ain’t there to deliver the milk.”
Rick asked Smitty to tell the different stories that had sprung up around the legendary recording session and how the tapes had gone missing in the first place. Smitty told the tales with gusto, including biographical bits about the musicians.
Rick said, “Listen, if you’d like to join our discussion, give us a call at 800–800–WVBR.”
The phone number gave Crail a great idea. Maybe he should call and tell them to cut the chatter and play something that really rocked. He hadn’t heard any Deep Purple in a while, and boy, wouldn’t that be good? Hey, how about a classic, he thought. He started to hum “Smoke on the Water.”
Unaware that a Deep Purple fan was lurking outside the window, Lollie continued screening calls from the sound booth adjacent to the studio. She looked at Rick through the soundproof window between them and held up three fingers. “Let’s go to line three,” Rick said, pushing the button. “You’re on the air.”
“Yeah,” a man said. “Where’d you find them tapes at?”
Crail had reached the lyric about Frank Zappa and the Mothers being at the best place around when the caller on line three snapped him back to attention. He pushed the earpiece in deeper and listened. He knew that voice. He rubbed his eyes and peeked into the studio again.
“Well, you know, that’s a great question,” Rick said. “A lot of people have looked for these tapes over the last fifty years and, obviously, without much luck. But we tracked them down to a private collection right here in Mississippi. But the owners asked us not to reveal their names. So I can’t tell you exactly where or how we found them.”
“Well, lemme ask you this,” the man said. “You got ’em there at the station with you rat now?”
Rick hesitated as he and Lollie exchanged a glance. She gave a nod, acknowledging the familiar voice. Then Rick said, “You bet I have ’em, but we can’t play them until tomorrow. That’s the deal we made with the owners. They want us to promote it for a couple of days before airing them. You have a particular interest in the tapes?”
“Nope,” the man said. “Just curious.” Then he hung up.
“Well, all right,” Rick said. “Thanks for calling. I know for a fact there are folks out there who are more than ‘just curious’ about these tapes. But I tell you what, we’re going to take a break, and when we come back we’ll talk more about the Blind, Crippled, and Crazy sessions. So stay with us.” Rick started a Tampa Red record that opened with “You Can’t Get That Stuff No More.” He pulled off his headphones just as Lollie burst into the studio.
“That was Henry LeFleur,” she said, pointing at the phone.
Rick nodded. “Sounded like he was calling from his car too.”
“You think he’s coming here?”
“It’s possible,” Rick said. “But I’m wondering how he knew to call and ask about the tapes in the first place. Our signal doesn’t reach Moorhead, and, even if it did, he doesn’t strike me as a classic-rock fan.”
“He said he still has his feelers out,” Lollie said. “Somebody must’ve called and told him.” She paused, a curious look on her face. “But why would he ask if we have the tapes? He told us they don’t exist.” She looked a bit confounded as she said, “You think he’s the one who killed my grandfather?”
“Fifty years after whatever happened?” Rick shook his head. “Seems unlikely.”
“Should I call the cops?”
“And say what? That a man called the station after we gave out the number and asked people to call?” He shook his head. “We’re on our own until something happens.”
“Terrific,” Lollie said. “I’ll go paint a bull’s-eye on the front door while we wait.”
BASED ON THEIR urgent expressions, Crail figured Rick and Lollie had recognized Henry’s voice, though he wasn’t sure what that bought him any more than he understood why Henry had called in the first place. Hadn’t he hired Crail to do this? Why not just let him take care of it? Crazy old coot. Crail was trying to decide what to do next when he noticed a beam of headlights sweep across the trees behind him as a car turned into the station’s parking lot. He stuck his head around the corner of the building and saw a 1971 Coup DeVille nearly clip Rick’s truck before lurching to a stop. Who the hell was this? he wondered. Then it hit him. What if Shannon had lied about the tapes and this was someone delivering them? This could be his big chance. He twitched at the possibility.
The driver, a black man wearing a porkpie hat, stepped from the Cadillac and opened the back door. One by one, all the other doors opened until there were four old black men in suits, standing around the big car. None of them were carrying anything that looked like reels of tape. But, Crail noted, one of them was holding a rifle.
The four men climbed the concrete stairs to the landing at the front door of the station. The driver knocked and took a step back, waiting for someone to answer.
Rick was in the studio putting on his headphones, about to go back on the air, when Lollie burst in again. “There’s someone at the door,” she said with a slight panic in her voice. Rick decided to let Tampa Red go into his next song, then he went out to the front office with Lollie just as Buddy knocked again.
Rick triggered the intercom and said, “Who is it?”
“This is Bernard Cotton.”
Rick and Lollie exchanged a glance before Rick responded, “Blind Buddy Cotton?”
“That’s right. I got Pigfoot Morgan with me. Wanna talk to Mr. Shannon.”
As he was saying this, the sound of another car pulling into the parking lot came over the speaker. Buddy, Willie, Earl, and Pigfoot all turned to see who it was. Crail craned his head farther around the corner of the building for a better view. They heard the transmission as the driver slipped it into park. The car sat there, idling, its headlights shining on the blues quartet.
Rick hit the intercom again and said, “Who just pulled up out there?”
“Don’t know,” Buddy said. “Ain’t got out yet.”
Pigfoot raised his free hand to shield his eyes from the lights just as Henry LeFleur got out of his car. He was still wearing his camos and he had his chrome .38 in his hand, though he kept it hidden behind the car door. The way the men were standing, Henry couldn’t see the rifle in Pigfoot’s hand. And he figured they couldn’t see him with the lights in their faces, so he took his time before he said, “Well. Mr. Morgan. I see you done paid your debt to society.”
Pigfoot knew that voice. He remembered it from when it was telling lies about him in that courtroom fifty years ago. He tightened his grip on the Remington and said, “Paid somebody’s, that’s a fact.”
Buddy tilted his head down so the brim of his hat shaded his eyes. He stepped up behind Pigfoot and, in a low voice, said, “Sure wish you hadn’t taken my pistol.”
“It’s right in front of you,” Pigfoot said.
Henry brought his gun into plain sight, saying, “Wha’ chall talkin’ ’bout up there? Y’all here to make a request or you goin’ inside to record somethin’?” He smirked.
Rick and Lollie were listening to the whole thing on the intercom. “
That’s LeFleur,” Lollie said. “What do we do?”
“Not sure yet,” Rick said.
Crail wasn’t sure what to do either. He figured he’d have surprise on his side no matter what he did, so he could shoot the guy with the rifle if he wanted, but then what? He’d signed up to take care of Rick and Lollie but not these four men on top of that. What a bloodbath that would be. On the other hand, maybe if he stepped out and let them know they were surrounded, he could disarm the one guy and send them on their way before going inside to take care of the business he was hired to do. Before he could make a decision, Crail noticed the guy with the hat slipping a pistol from the back of the other guy’s waistband. He tensed, realizing it was all about to happen. He imagined Cuffie watching him as he stepped out from behind the building with his M21 and shouted to Henry, “They got guns!” Then he started squeezing the semiautomatic’s trigger, sending brass and bluesmen flying.
Crazy Earl and Crippled Willie hit the dirt, each man praying to a different power as they crawled toward the Cadillac for cover.
Henry yelled, “Son of a bitch!” as Crail’s shots cut straight through his radiator and lodged in his engine block. He couldn’t see through the cloud of steam spewing from the front of his car, but he fired a few shots anyway. One of them whizzed past Crail’s ear. The others ripped into the station, near where Pigfoot and Buddy had been standing. Henry figured he needed a better position, so he took off for the tree line at the edge of the parking lot as fast as his old legs would carry him.
The moment Crail had opened his mouth to yell, Buddy and Pigfoot had jumped off the landing to crouch next to the concrete stairs. After Henry turned to run, Pigfoot fired a couple of rounds in his direction. Then he turned to Buddy. “You get that one,” he said. “LeFleur is mine.”
30
INSIDE, LOLLIE JUMPED when one of Henry’s slugs shattered a clock on the wall behind her. She grabbed Crusty’s carrier and crawled under a desk. “Can I call the cops now?”
Rick pulled his gun and said, “Yeah, now would be a good time. Just tell them not to shoot me when they get here,” he said, putting his free hand on the doorknob.
She peeked out from under the desk. “Where are you going?”
“Outside,” he said.
“Are you crazy?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re shooting out there!”
Rick looked at Lollie like she was the crazy one. “What did you think was going to happen? The killer was going to show up to surrender and then we’d all go out for pie?”
“But”—she pointed, her fingers in the shape of a gun—“they’re shooting.”
“Yeah, well, why should they have all the fun?” Rick gestured at the phone. “Nine-one-one,” he said. “Then go play some more records. I can’t stand dead air.” He turned his attention to the door, trying to think of a clever strategy, but nothing came to mind. So he yanked it open only to find himself standing in the headlights of Henry’s car. He dropped to one knee and fired a few shots until he blew the lights out. In the darkness that followed, Rick stepped onto the landing and saw Buddy pressed against the front of the building, his gun trained on him.
Rick made a friendly gesture and said, “Hey, Buddy. How’s it going?”
Buddy coughed a bit and said, “Ain’t dead yet.”
“That’s good,” Rick said, looking around. “Who all we got out here?”
Buddy gestured with his hat. “Pigfoot went that way, after LeFleur.” He wagged his pistol at the corner of the building. “Somebody else shooting from this way. Didn’t give his name.” He looked over at his car. “Willie and Earl’re over there.”
“Okay. You go see if you can help Pigfoot. I’ll see where this other one went.”
“All right with me.”
After Lollie called 911, she crawled back into the studio and put on a John Lee Hooker CD. The signal shot out from the tower in all directions. That guitar riff coming out of radios all over the Delta, where the song had come from in the first place; that riff and the stomping foot that was the basis for everything from ZZ Top’s “La Grange” to the Stones’s “Shake Your Hips.” And then that voice, putting death in the air. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
A rifle shot rang out near the tree line.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
That was followed by the report of Henry’s .38.
Gone shoot you right down.
Lollie was crawling across the floor of the main office, heading for the desk, when several shots blew the knob off the back door.
Right offa yo’feet.
Lollie froze as the door creaked open. Looking up, she saw a wild-eyed man with yellow skin and open sores hopping into the room with a rifle. He aimed the M21 at her and said, “Where’re those tapes?”
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
“Who the hell are you?” She stood up slowly.
“I’m the guy looking for the fucking tapes!”
Looking into his yellowed eyes, Lollie knew this was the son of a bitch they wanted. She said, “Are you the guy who killed Tucker Woolfolk?”
“Yer damn right.” Crail fired a shot at her feet. “Now where’re the goddamn tapes?”
A haw haw haw haw.
She saw his knee and knew it was the answer. She just needed to get closer. Lollie pointed at it with a sympathetic expression and said, “What happened to you?”
A hey hey hey hey.
Crail seemed oddly touched by her concern and lost focus for a second. “Oh,” he said. “Guy stuck a fork in my knee.”
“Bless your heart.” Lollie inched closer, reaching out for the discolored joint as if she could heal it by the laying on of hands. Just as she came within reach, she felt the barrel of his gun touch the crown of her head. “I’m going to ask one more time,” Crail said, wobbling slightly on his one good leg. “Where’re the damn tapes?”
That’s when Rick stepped into the doorway and said, “Drop the gun.”
A haw haw haw haw.
It was a fleeting moment as Crail’s eyes darted one way and Lollie moved the other. In a single fluid motion, she swept an arm up, knocking the barrel of the gun toward the ceiling while simultaneously snap-kicking Crail’s bad leg. The gun fired as his knee folded like a jackknife, only backward. He keeled over sideways, cracking his head on the corner of a desk as he went down.
Heyyyyy, baby!
A HUNDRED YARDS away, near the transmitter tower, Buddy was listening for anything that would tell him where Pigfoot was. The buzz from crickets and cicadas was loud enough to drown out the sounds of men running in the woods. But the sudden exchange of gunfire off to his left rose above the din. Buddy turned and headed in that direction. As he drew closer, he could hear desperate voices. He said, “Pigfoot, where’re you at?”
He heard Pigfoot say, “You mine now.”
“You don’t put that gun down,” Henry said, “you gone right back to Parchman to die.”
“Not me,” Pigfoot said. “No, sir. Now, get on yo’ knees.”
Buddy pushed through a bramble of shrubs into the clearing, where Pigfoot was holding the Remington on Henry LeFleur, whose arm was bleeding where Pigfoot had hit him with a lucky shot. It looked like he was going to execute him, right here and now, with a shot in the ear. Buddy eased over to him and said, “Don’t do it.”
Pigfoot said, “Gots to.” And he squeezed the trigger.
“SAY WHAT? I can’t hear anything in this ear,” Henry said, holding his hand to the bloody wounded thing.
“I said you ought to be thankful I didn’t shoot the damn thing off,” Pigfoot said. He shook his head as he and Buddy frog-marched Henry at gunpoint back across the field, toward the station.
“Some people have hard time showing gratitude,” Buddy said.
They were passing the transmitter tower when they saw a line of squad cars and ambulances snaking down Porters Chapel Road and squealing into the parking lot, their lights and sirens shrieking. By the time Pigfoot and B
uddy got back to the studio with LeFleur, Rick and Lollie had explained the story to the cops. They arrested Henry as paramedics tended to his wound. They took photos of the scene and statements from Pigfoot, Willie, Earl, and the others. A moment later they brought Crail out of the studio, handcuffed to a gurney. He had regained consciousness and was babbling something about Grant’s XIII Corps advancing on the levee road.
While the police processed the crime scene, Rick called Smitty Chisholm to say, “You know that reunion concert we talked about earlier? Well, turns out it’s tonight.” He held the phone away from his ear as Smitty shrieked. “No, I’m not kidding,” Rick said. “Yeah, even Willie Jefferson. He’s agreed to perform since it’s a special occasion. Only one problem. We don’t have any instruments.”
Smitty arrived fifteen minutes later with a couple of harps and half a dozen guitars.
As they were loading Crail into one of the ambulances, a minivan came racing toward the station, honking urgently and weaving through the crowd. Henry, with hands cuffed behind him, looked out from the backseat of the squad car with a bewildered expression. He knew who it was, but for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what he was doing here.
The minivan came to a stop and Jessie got out. She went around to open the side door. She pushed a button, extending a short ramp to the ground. A moment later, with all eyes turned their way, Shelby came rolling down the ramp in his wheelchair. He stopped at the bottom and cranked his head back, looking for Rick and Lollie. Spotting them near the front of the station, his head flopped back down and he steered his chair in their direction with Jessie walking alongside for guidance.
Rick and Lollie watched them approach in silence. Finally, Rick opened his mouth to say something but Shelby cut him off. “You can stop pretending you have those tapes,” he said. “I know for a fact you ain’t got ’em.”
Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5) Page 29