Eastland said, “I’m telling you that the world has changed. I have several generals I deal with who are black. My CFO is black. I even have a close friend who’s black.”
“And I have black committee members,” added Huey. “And representing Mississippi I sure as hell have a lot of black constituents. Not that I agree with most of what they want, which are basically government handouts. But they’re there and they’re not going anywhere.”
“Bullshit, I bet you love ’em all right,” said McClellan dismissively. “Love ’em like they were white.”
“Of course we don’t,” said Eastland. “But we still have to deal with them. That’s the point.”
“We fought the good fight way back,” said Huey. “And unfortunately, we lost. We have to deal with that. It doesn’t change what we think, but it does have to change how we act. Otherwise I lose my seat and Danny loses his company. It’s a lot harder now, Mac. You know that. We have to account for that. We really do. But I do regret the killing. There were other ways to get our points across. We didn’t have to kill, not the kids anyway. I still think about that.”
“If your old man could hear you talking,” said McClellan disgustedly. “He’d be rolling in his grave. Now there was a man who knew his beliefs. You give an inch and they take a mile. And little coloreds grow up into big coloreds. And now it’s the homos and the lesbos. And the trans-freaks. You telling me you think this looks like America? Are you?”
“If the conditions on the ground change,” said Eastland, “I promise you, we’ll take action. I have the resources. It will get done.”
“I want to be there too,” said McClellan. He glanced at Huey. “But I doubt our fearless congressman does. He’s got too much to lose to fight the good fight anymore, right, Hugh?”
McClellan poured himself another drink as Huey and Eastland sat stonily in their seats. He held up his refilled glass. “Hell, boys, let’s at least go through the motions. To the Three Fuckin’ Musketeers.”
The other two men reluctantly raised their glasses.
McClellan drank his down, dropped his empty glass on the carpet, and muttered, “And let’s just kiss the good old US of A goodbye.”
He pointed a finger at Eastland. “But when the ground conditions change, and they will, fat boy is mine. He threatened me in my own damn office. Nobody does that and gets away with it. So Decker gets done by yours truly. Understood?”
Eastland said, “Trust me, he’s all yours.”
CHAPTER
68
YOU SURE HE’S not here?” asked Mars.
They were staring across at Roger McClellan’s modest home, which was set by itself on a heavily treed lot off a rural gravel road about twenty minutes outside of downtown Cain, Mississippi.
“He’s at a police chiefs’ convention in Jackson. He won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“How’d you score that info?”
“I do have the resources of the FBI behind me.”
“Alarm system?” asked Mars nervously.
“No. The guy’s the police chief. Who’s going to break into his house?”
“Well, apparently we are.”
“I can do it. You can stay in the car.”
“No, it’ll go faster with two.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, but let’s do it,” said Mars.
They climbed out of the car and swiftly moved across the gravel road and around to the back of the house. Decker flashed his light at the lock. “Just a single tumbler. I won’t need the heavy guns. Hang on.”
He inserted a pick tool into the lock, made a few manipulations, and the door swung open.
They moved inside and Decker closed the door behind them.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Mars asked.
“There was a picture missing from McClellan’s office.”
“Okay.”
“That’s what we’re looking for.”
“But what will that prove?”
“It’ll prove that there really was a swap.”
“But what does that mean?”
Decker looked at him strangely. “Let’s just find it first and then we can talk about it later.”
“But why would it be here?”
“McClellan is cagey. The guy has his plan. When he learned we were in town, I’m certain he took the picture down, because his strategy was to invite us in and have a ‘chat.’ After we left he wouldn’t put the photo back up.”
“Why? Would he think we’d break into the police station and try to steal it? That’s nuts.”
“No, because the son of a bitch is paranoid. He’s not even going to trust his own people. And he wouldn’t destroy it either. To him, that would be defeat. He’s going to bring that sucker home.”
They searched the lower level of the two-story house.
“Damn,” said Mars as they finished going through the books on a shelf. “The dude is definitely living in the past. All these books are about the supremacy of the white race, suppression of people like me, arming whites to take back their country.”
“I wasn’t aware that we’d lost it,” said Decker.
“Funny.”
“It’s actually not. A lot of these books were written in the last five years. So apparently there’s still a readership for folks hankering for the ‘old days.’”
Mars shook his head. “Are we ever going to get past this?”
“Couldn’t tell you. I just want the photo. Let’s head upstairs.”
There were only three rooms on the second floor. One was a bathroom, one was a bedroom, and the last was McClellan’s home office. It was about fifteen feet square. There was a computer on an old knotty pine desk. The shelves were full of books and magazines, and a black journal lay next to the computer. A globe was perched on one side of the desk. There was a landline phone next to it, and old-fashioned pens housed in a glass showcase box. An ink blotter and silver letter opener completed the items on top.
Decker studied the computer while Mars paged through the journal.
“Anything helpful?” asked Decker.
“Do you mean is there a signed confession in here? No. It’s mostly just crap. Mostly depraved crap. His thoughts on what the world should look like. And guess what? Folks my color don’t really have a place in it.” He put the journal down and started searching the desk drawers.
Decker sat down in front of the computer and hit some keys. “It’s password-protected. Understandable.”
He typed in some possible passwords. None worked.
Decker sat back and thought about this for a few moments while Mars started going through the contents of the shelf.
“Go page by page, Melvin, like we did downstairs. He might have taken it out of the frame and stuck it in a magazine.”
Decker kept trying passwords. “Got it,” he said finally.
Mars came to look over his shoulder. “What was it?”
“The segregation king, ‘George Wallace,’ all caps.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Let’s see what our fine police chief is into online.”
Decker opened a Web browser and looked over the man’s search histories.
“Well, he’s into white supremacy groups, vigilantism, and all sites that are basically not really into diversity of any kind.”
“What a shocker.”
“Now let’s look at emails.”
Decker came away disappointed. “Okay, the guy’s either really smart or just old-fashioned. No emails. I can’t even find an account.”
“Anything else?”
“Pretty clean hard drive. Not very much on it. He must use this principally to troll for crap from his bigoted buddies.”
Decker closed out of the computer and helped Mars go through the books and magazines on the shelf. An hour later they had gone through every page and had come up with zip.
Mars said, “I hope we didn’t waste a breaking and entering on nothing. Because if they catch us, I’m going back to prison. And you’ll be heading there too.”
“If McClellan catches us, going to prison would be a cakewalk compared to what he’d do to us.”
“Right.”
Decker looked around the room. “We searched everywhere.”
“Well, it might not be here. He might have another hiding place he uses.”
Decker said, “Maybe, but something tells me this guy likes to keep things close to home.”
“We’ve looked at everything that could hold a picture.”
Decker shot him a glance. “You know, you can’t hide something three-dimensional in something flat. But the reverse is not true.”
“What are you talking about?”