by Glenn Trust
“Seemed like the thing to do.”
“Why?”
“Good fucking question.” Marco shrugged and turned towards the door.
“Hold on asshole.”
Marco turned back to face Schulls, a hard look on his face.
“Don’t be givin’ me that Billy Bad Ass look, boy. Me and my friends here’ll be knockin’ it off your face.”
“I ain’t givin’ you no kind of look. Just not crazy about your choice of words.” Marco stood braced, ready for what might follow.
“That a fact.” Schulls smiled and took another step forward.
“Yeah, that’s a fact.” Marco’s eyes stayed riveted to Schulls’.
Henry turned to Big Luke. “This the one you said is called Bono, like the rock star?”
Luke nodded. “Yeah, he’s the one.”
“Givin’ you any trouble?”
“No. Bought dope a couple of times, hangin’ out, drinking, talkin’ up the girls, but he ain’t been with none of ‘em yet, far as I can tell.”
Schulls looked at Marco. “You queer, boy?”
“Naw. I ain’t queer, I’m broke.”
“Bein’ broke at Pete’s Place, that’s not good. Too much temptation around. Might give you ideas…get you in trouble.”
“Yeah, well, just the same, I’m broke.”
“Hmm.” Schulls looked him up and down again. “You good with your hands?”
“I can be.”
“You good with anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Gun, knife?”
“I can be…if I have to.”
Schulls looked up at Big Luke who stood quietly, waiting for Henry’s interrogation to end. “You use another hand?”
“Yeah, sure.” Luke jerked his head at Marco. “You mean him?”
Schulls nodded. “If you think you can use him.”
Luke stared into Marco’s steady eyes for several seconds making up his mind. “Yeah. I’ll give him a try.”
Schulls smiled and turned to Marco. “Okay, you’re not broke no more. You work for us.”
Marco relaxed and put his hands in his jeans pockets. “I get a choice in it?”
Schulls smiled faded. “No.”
Marco shrugged. “Sounds like a good deal then.”
Turning back to the door, he slid past Brenda face to face, brushing her breasts and their thighs touching for an instant. She smiled. Things were working out.
71. We’re Gonna Get By
“What are we gonna do?”
It was the question of the day, of every day, the one repeated a thousand times a day. Sharon looked at Fel. He was aging, changing almost daily before her eyes. Always thin, he looked hollow and empty, like a cicada husk left on the side of a tree. The life had moved out of him.
She was preparing their meals together in the house kitchen to make sure he had enough to eat, and that he ate. It was the place where his wife, Colleen, had cooked for him during their marriage. Twenty years had gone by since she had passed. Old Fel had pretty much given up on life, was waiting to die, when George came along. They had bonded in ways that Sharon did not completely understand. Maybe Fel was the father George couldn’t remember, and George was the son Fel and Colleen never had. Maybe. The definition didn’t matter. The bond was there.
Then Sharon appeared in their lives. Fel opened his arms and his heart to her. She made them, him and George, complete. With her, they were a family.
Now the family was broken. George was gone, facing a trial and the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence. The loss of George from their lives was beyond the old man’s comprehension.
“We’re gonna get by until George gets back, Fel. That’s what we’re gonna do.” She reached over and patted his arm.
They sat on the porch in the quiet of the early evening. Somewhere down among the azaleas a frog croaked and hummed. Crickets and insects chirped, gaining volume as the sun sank lower and the night came on.
Fel took her hand in his rough, bony fingers. “I know that he might not…come back that is.” His fingers tightened around hers. “I know you don’t want me to think it darlin’, but I know it could be that way.” He smiled a soft, old man’s smile, the one she had come to know. “I’m not that far gone in the head…not yet anyway. I know you try to protect me, not let me think about it, but I know it could be that way.”
Sharon put a hand to her eyes and shook her head. “He’s coming back. That’s what I have to believe.”
Lifting her hand to his wrinkled face, Fel kissed her fingers gently, the way you would sooth a hurt child. “I know. It’s what I have to believe too, but then I worry, what if he don’t come back.” He lowered her hand, letting it rest in his on the arm of the chair. “And if he don’t come back, I worry, what are we gonna do.”
Wiping at the tears in her eyes, Sharon said what she said a thousand times to the question of the day. “We’re gonna get by.”
72. The Ending
“Buy you a beer?”
“Can’t George. We’re on duty. You know that.” Agents Twilley and Simpson sat at the high top table in the hotel bar sipping Cokes.
George smiled. “Yeah, I know. Just hate drinking alone is all.” He lifted the longneck bottle in a toast. “Still, it’s good to have some company. Thank the attorney general for me when you see him.”
Twilley grinned. “We’ll do that, George, although I don’t expect we’ll be seeing him soon, if at all.”
“Hmm.” George sat the bottle on the table and looked around the bar. The hotel was in downtown Macon, and was not nearly as deluxe as the Buckhead establishment that Richard Klineman called home, paid for at state expense as a key member of the prosecution team. It was a business traveler’s hotel, mid-range and clean, not fancy. Porter Wright and other supporters back in Pickham County were footing the bill. George had refused at first, but the alternative was to report to jail. At Sharon’s urging, he had accepted, but only as a loan. He would pay it back, when this was all over. Wright and the other “Friends of George’, as they called themselves, had no doubt that George would be true to his word.
He looked at the two GBI agents. “Mind if I ask you something?”
“Fire away.” Bill Twilley leaned back looking into the deputy’s eyes.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Told you. We have orders.”
“Right. From the attorney general. But you work for the GBI.”
Twilley nodded. His younger partner, John Simpson turned, as interested in the answer as George.
“It’s complicated, George.” Twilley looked at the table thinking. “The GBI has a strong working relationship with the attorney general’s office. I imagine the Director could say no, refuse to assign someone to watchdog you, but that wouldn’t sit well with Swain.” He looked up. “So to avoid any…uh…political entanglements, we get the assignment.”
George grinned. “Lucky you.”
Twilley shrugged. “It’s not so bad.” He returned George’s grin. “You’re a pretty high profile person right about now. Fella could make a career hanging on your coattails…for good or bad.”
Agent Simpson sighed, sipping his Coke. “That’s just what I want to hear.” He shook his head. “Thought I’d be investigating the crime of the century, breaking it by now, not babysitting some deputy in the attorney general’s cross hairs.” He looked up. “No offense meant, George.”
“None taken. I don’t blame you. I’d feel the same in your place.” He sipped the beer. “So it’s politics. That’s why you have this assignment, to keep an eye on me.”
“Hell George. Everything is politics. You should know that.”
“Never been much good at politics.” George shook his head. “Being a deputy was all I ever wanted to do, I guess.” He took a long pull from the beer. “Don’t reckon I’ll ever be one again.”
“You don’t know that.”
George looked Twilley in the eye. “Yeah, I do, and so do you.
”
Twilley looked down at his Coke. There wasn’t much to say to the truth.
“Can I ask you a question, Deputy Mackey?”
Twilley’s head came up.
“Sure Agent Simpson. Ask away.” George looked at the young agent curiously.
“Did you do it?”
Twilley glared at Simpson. George smiled and looked him in the eye.
“I did it.”
“Just like that, like they say?”
“It’s never just like that,” George said softly. “There’s always more, but in the end, it’s like they say. I shot him. I knew he couldn’t get to his weapon in time, and I shot him anyway.”
“And he died.”
“He sure as hell died.” George nodded in agreement, taking another sip of beer.
“How did it make you feel? How does it feel now?”
Bill Twilley slammed the Coke glass down on the table. “What the hell are you doing?”
Simpson regarded his partner calmly. “I’m trying to understand why we’re here, why it all happened, and wondering if it could happen to any of us.”
“You’re goddamned right it could happen to any of us!” Twilley’s voice rose. “Even to some rookie agent fresh out of the academy!”
“It’s all right, Bill.” George spoke softly, thinking. “It’s okay. He has a right to ask…to know.” He looked at Simpson. “It didn’t feel like anything, John. I’ve replayed it in my head a thousand times. It all happened, that’s all. I went into those woods to end it, to keep it from happening again. It wasn’t revenge, or anger or fear. None of those. It was just an ending. It had to end.”
“And now?”
“If you’re asking do I have regrets, second thoughts…not about what happened in the woods. But since then, yes, I have my regrets and fears, a person I don’t want to lose.” He brushed at his face with the back of his hand and picked up the beer.
“If you could go back and do it again, would you…the same I mean.”
“Can’t do that, John. You can’t go back. People always say what they would do if they could do it again. But you can’t. Today, things might be different…maybe. But going back to that day…it would all happen the same. It would end.”
“So that’s how it’s gonna be…in court.” Agitated and annoyed, Bill Twilley leaned forward looking at George across the small table. “You’re just going to let them do it to you. Nobody wants you to go down for this, for ending it like you say, but you’re not gonna lift a finger to help them stop it.”
“I won’t make it worse by lying.” George shrugged. “Maybe it’s all part of the same ending. What happened, happened. I can’t change it. His ending was he died. Maybe my ending is this.”
73. No One Was Gonna Believe This
“I can’t do this.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Lonna MacIntyre came out of the bathroom in the motel room that Roy Budroe had provided for Vernon’s studies.
“I can’t do it.” Pale and trembling as always, Vernon dropped the sheets of paper containing the script that Budroe had provided on the bed. “It ain’t true. None of it.”
“What the fuck difference does that make?”
“It means if George Mackey finds out he might kill me.” He looked at her standing over him pleading with his eyes like a schoolboy not to be forced to do his homework. “Besides, I already talked to George…you know about Budroe and getting us out of things.”
“What you best figure on is this…Mackey might kill you, or throw you in jail, but you don’t do what Roy Budroe says do and he’ll kill you sure as shit.”
“I can’t…don’t know what to do, Lonna.” Vernon put his head in his hands, his bony shoulders shaking back and forth.
Lonna dropped the towel she had wrapped around her and crawled onto the bed, straddling Vernon. She lifted his head, cradling it between her breasts and began rocking back and forth. When she felt the rising erection she pulled his pants off and climbed on top taking him in and rocking back and forth until he trembled and let out a long, wheezing moan. She rolled off and lay beside him.
“There, now get back to learnin’ your words…the things Roy wants you to say.”
“Let me have another hit now. Just a quick snort.”
“Not now.”
“Please Lonna. I need it, you know…to help me focus.”
“You get to learnin’ them words and I’ll set you up a hit in a while.” She smiled and held her large breasts in her hands for him to see, teasing him. “Might let you have another go at me…if you’re able.”
“Please, Lonna…let me have it now.”
“Later.” She walked from the bed to the bathroom. “get to studyin’.”
Vernon picked up the papers. George Mackey on the payroll of Caribbean sex traders. Shit! No one was gonna believe that.
He began reading through the script that Budroe had provided, his lips moving slowly, fearful of forgetting any detail. Lonna was right, George would be pissed, but Budroe would kill him if he failed. Okay then, once more from the top.
The same nagging thought kept hollering at him from the back recesses of his panicked mind. Shit! No one was gonna believe this.
74. The Words Were True
“May I come in?”
Sharon looked up from the transcript of Ponce’s undercover report, ready for an interruption and a chance to clear her mind. Pieces were missing from the puzzle. The biggest piece was Budroe’s location. He had made one appearance at Pete’s, probably to satisfy his ego in some warped way and then disappeared again. They all believed he was in the area, orchestrating something. What? That was the big question.
“Yes, come in.”
The woman at the door smiled graciously and entered the small office, took the four steps to Sharon’s desk and put out her hand. “I’m…”
“I know who you are, Ms. Towers.” Sharon stood and returned the polite handshake. “Please sit down. There’s coffee down the hall in the file clerk’s office. May I get you a cup?”
“No, no. I’ve already had too much coffee today.” She smiled again. “I was up early.” Towers looked around the small space. “We certainly do have you packed in here. Pretty close quarters for the ace analyst of the governor’s Office of Special Investigations.”
“It’s all I need. The District Attorney provides the office, likes having access to the OSI from time to time. Mutually beneficial, he says.” She gathered up the files on her desk, stuffing papers inside. “I like the quiet down here in the basement. Helps me concentrate. So it works for everyone.”
“Yes, it does.” The smile faded from her face; the look in her eyes grew serious.
“What can I do for you Ms. Towers? I know you didn’t come here to talk about the size of my office.”
“Very good. Direct and to the point. Exactly the way Bob Shaklee has described you.” The smile was back. “Please call me Pamela.”
“Okay, Pamela.” Sharon let her own small smile play across her face. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m here on behalf of Governor Bell.”
Towers paused waiting for comment from Sharon. There was none, only a scrutinizing look, analyzing and assessing. The visual examination, coupled with Sharon’s apparent indifference to Towers’ position on the governor’s staff, made her slightly uncomfortable. It was an uncommon sensation. She cleared her throat and continued.
“He had me fly down in the executive plane this morning to speak personally with you.”
There was still no response from Sharon, only a slight nod of the head.
“We have concerns.” This time she stopped speaking, waiting for a response.
Several seconds elapsed before Sharon smiled and spoke. “What are your concerns, Pamela?”
“Deputy Mackey…George.”
The flicker of emotion that played across Sharon’s face was brief, a small moment, but it did not escape Towers. “What about, George?”
“We fear that h
e is setting himself up as a sacrificial lamb…a scapegoat so to speak. He will say nothing in his own behalf or try to explain the circumstances surrounding the…uh…shooting in Rye County.”
“It was a killing, Pamela. I know. I was there. I’m glad he did it.”
“Yes, well, we know that there is a good chance that the jury, at least some of them will be sympathetic, will want to find some way to soften the charges or find him not guilty. In this case, a hung jury would be as good as a win.”
“George would never accept a hung jury. If the prosecution didn’t request one, then George would demand a retrial. He won’t…he can’t allow things to remain muddied…unresolved. I know. We’ve talked about it.”
“Then a not guilty verdict…but that won’t happen if Deputy Mackey…George…sits there and allows the prosecution to paint him as a murderer…as a rogue cop who takes the law into his own hands.”
“That’s not the way it was.”
“You know that and I know that, but his refusal to work with the defense team…to accept that there were any mitigating circumstances is playing right into the attorney general’s hands.” Towers leaned forward looking deep into Sharon’s eyes. “He has given up and seems willing to give up everything…give up your relationship…” She waited while Sharon raised a hand and wiped at the tears that had formed in her eyes. “He will give up everything, Sharon, including you, rather than try to explain what happened…that there were extenuating circumstances.”
Sharon shook her head, the cool, analytical demeanor evaporated. “You don’t understand. It’s not that he won’t…he can’t. If he gave in…made excuses…said anything else…he wouldn’t be George anymore. He knows that.” She sobbed softly. “I know that.”
“So you are willing to lose him, to give him up to Colton Swain and Richard Klineman, for their political purposes?”
“No, no…” Sharon shook her head violently as she sobbed. “I don’t want to lose him. I would do anything…anything except change him. He couldn’t take that…neither could I.”
“Don’t change him. Speak with him. Let him know that what led up to the shooting…the killing…are as much a part of what happened as him pulling the trigger. Help him see that.” Towers paused, waiting for Sharon to look into her eyes. “You need him. He needs you. Don’t lose each other.”