“Bullshit you will,” Paul says in a low voice.
Knowing Paul’s explosive temper, I try to distract him. “Why am I supposed to have assaulted Max, Paul? What was my motive?”
His head turns slowly from Farner to me, and even the cops seem to be waiting to hear his answer. “You accused him of killing Buck Ferris.”
This is the last answer I expected, but it makes sense.
“When Pop denied it,” Paul goes on, “you accused him of killing my mother. Supposedly because she wouldn’t give him an alibi for the night Buck died.”
This is no place to argue Max’s lies. For the moment I have to be satisfied that Max turned Paul’s focus away from Jet.
“That sounds like you, doesn’t it, Goose?” Paul says, stepping closer to me. “You gonna deny it?”
I can smell the alcohol from two feet away. “Nobody here is interested in my denial.”
“Imagine that. You know, I’ve kept my distance tonight because Duncan’s close to dying. That’s what they said in the ER. But I want to hear you deny what you did to Pop.”
Something in Paul’s eyes doesn’t look right. It isn’t just the alcohol. He’s not all there. I fight the urge to glance at Jet. Something tells me she’s about to confess to being Max’s assailant.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Farner says, obviously more than a little worried about Paul.
“Backup’s on the way,” says the younger cop.
It’s only because I know Paul so well that I sense his punch coming in time to duck. He still manages to clip my skull above the ear, and white light explodes through my brain. When my vision returns, I find myself lying on my back, staring up into the streetlight, my cuffed hands crushed beneath my pelvis.
“Goddamn it!” Farner bellows. “That’s it! Get back, Paul, or I’ll arrest your ass, too! What the hell’s wrong with this family?”
As Paul stands over me, panting from exertion, the sound of helicopter blades cutting the air rolls over us, growing louder by the second. That distinctive whup-whup-whup always carries an overtone of Vietnam, but especially tonight, given the passenger that this medevac chopper has been summoned to carry.
“That’s Max’s ride to UMC,” Paul says. “Jet, come on with me.”
“Uh-uh,” Farner says. “Not this time. The lady stays.”
Paul looks at the cop, then runs his tongue around behind his bottom lip. He points at me. “There’s your outlaw, Jerry. Attempted murder. My wife’s just a little high-strung tonight. You know how that is.”
“We’re taking her in,” Farner says doggedly, glancing over at Nadine, who’s still filming.
“Nadine, turn off that camera,” Paul says.
Nadine hesitates, but Jet nods at her.
As soon as Nadine lowers her cell phone, Farner says, “Look, man, if you don’t like it, call Mr. Buckman.”
Max’s umbrella of protection for his daughter-in-law has definitely been removed. I don’t think Paul’s ever experienced this kind of resistance from Bienville cops. He sighs, looks at the ground for a few seconds, then steps within two inches of Officer Farner. In a voice so low as to be nearly inaudible, he says, “I’ll tell you how this is gonna go, Jerry. You can take Marshall there straight down to the pokey, but my wife and son are coming to Jackson with me.”
Farner stiffens and tries to step back, but Paul catches his arm and holds him close. The young cop clearly has no idea what to do.
“If they don’t,” Paul goes on, “you’re gonna be calling Roto-Rooter to fish your balls out of your septic tank. After I flush ’em down the toilet.”
Pale with anger, Farner lays his hand on the butt of his gun.
“Last thing you’ll ever do,” Paul says, never taking his eyes from the cop’s face. “Badge or no badge, I swear to God.”
Farner leaves his hand on his pistol for a few face-saving seconds, then pivots away from Paul, catches hold of my arm, and drags me toward the cruiser’s back door. The young cop jumps forward and opens it for him.
“We’ll have you out first thing in the morning,” Jet promises me.
“You leave that to Nadine,” Paul says.
As Farner’s big hand clamps down on top of my skull and forces me into the stinking backseat, it comes home to me just how dangerous Paul is. He just told a cop—in front of witnesses—that he’d beat the hell out of him if he disobeyed Paul’s order. And rather than wait for backup and arrest Paul, both cops decided to let it go.
Not the guy whose wife you want to sleep with . . .
“How you like it back there, Mr. Newspaperman?” asks Farner.
The reality of spending the night in a cell at the mercy of the Poker Club is settling over me. But not even that can bury the epiphany that hits me behind the metal mesh separating me from these fine officers of the law. Paul didn’t slug me because he thinks I hit his father with a hammer. Paul hates his father. He hit me because at some level he knows that, despite my denial earlier today, I am sleeping with his wife. He may not know that he knows . . . but he does.
“Hey,” Farner goes on as the squad car leaves the parking lot. “A week ago I’d have worried what you’d write about me in the paper. But you ain’t got no newspaper anymore. There ain’t no more Watchman. Not now. And when they reopen that rag, it’s gonna be under new management. Things are gonna get a little easier around here. A little looser, you know? Like the good old days.”
I give him nothing.
“I said, how you like it back there, boy?”
I should keep quiet, but for the thousandth time I picture Buck being dragged from the river by incompetent deputies. He was probably killed by a guy a lot like Farner.
“How do you like being Paul Matheson’s bitch?” I ask mildly.
Chapter 42
I’m drowning.
The more I gasp for air, the more water I suck down my throat. I’ve been blinded, and my arms are strapped to my sides. My mind is screaming, my vocal cords locked in spasm. A man is shouting in my ear, but the words make no sense. This nightmare is not happening in Afghanistan or Iraq, but in my hometown jail.
The city cops handed me over to a deputy who booked me, but I was never taken to a cell. The deputy led me, still handcuffed, to a group shower in the basement of the county jail. There I found good old Officer Farner waiting for me. City and county law enforcement usually coexist in a state of cold war, but apparently the Poker Club has the power to bring them together in common cause. Farner showed me that he had my wallet and cell phones. Then he locked me in the shower room, telling me on his way out that we were going to have a good time together soon.
An hour after he left, Farner returned with a second man wearing a hood. The new man wore jeans and a black T-shirt, not a city or county uniform. The two men used ballistic nylon straps to bind my legs, chest, and arms to the long bench. They wrapped a towel around my head and used duct tape to secure my head to the wood—to keep from bruising me, I guess. Then one of them started pouring water down my nose and mouth.
I figured I would hold my breath, but when I tried, they pulled the wet towel close over my face. I knew that when I gasped, there would be no air, and that knowledge drove the breath from my lungs and made me suck in with all my strength.
All I got was soaked cloth and water.
After ten seconds of blind panic, they stopped pouring. Until that moment, I had never understood what waterboarding was. The simplicity of the torture makes it incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t endured it. That’s how life is: in the simplest things lie the greatest joy and misery. Ask any hospital patient who can’t urinate or defecate without emergency catheterization or a forcible bowel evacuation. Ask someone dying of thirst the value of water.
Ask a drowning man about air.