Dad had wanted Viola, but he hadn’t wanted everything that came with her. He did a lot to help black people over the years, but he wasn’t willing to join their ranks. Not in that way. So he took the best that Viola had to offer and refused the worst. In the end, he let things unravel in the way that they do when you don’t stop them. For Dad, that meant a little guilt over the years. But for Viola . . . it meant a lifetime of suffering and regret.
Before I left the visiting room, Dad made a general sort of statement, something I took as guilty rambling. Now, drunk as I am, I remember it nearly word for word. He said: Our country’s messed up, son. Mortally wounded. And I can’t for the life of me see how we’re going to heal it. Your generation can’t do it. Even you’re too old. The new ones coming along . . . that’s where the hope lies, if there is any. We’ve got to acknowledge what we did to those people. But I don’t think we ever will. People hate admitting guilt, but we can’t blame it all on the Knoxes of the world. We’re all guilty. Blacks are messed up, too . . . but how could they not be? White people fight this so hard because they know the truth in their bones. You know? You don’t get that angry unless you know you’re wrong.
“Is that why you’re going to prison?” I asked him. “You’re taking on the sins of your race?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not that ambitious. I’m only doing penance for my own.”
The rattle of hailstones hitting glass brings me out of a sound sleep or a drunken stupor. I must have passed out after remembering Dad’s jailhouse rant. Getting to my feet, I realize I’m on one of the basement cots the guards have been sleeping on, and that the “hailstones” are actually the sound of someone banging on one of the tall windows of my basement office. I figure some pushy reporter has slipped past my guards and dropped down into the light well that surrounds the house. But when I look around the corner, I see the dark face and intense eyes of Lincoln Turner willing me over to the glass. After cautiously moving to the window, I crouch and raise the sash, and he bends and clambers into the room where a week ago I had my first real conversation with Serenity Butler.
“What do you want?” I ask him.
Lincoln looks around the room, cocks his head at the bottle of Hendrick’s on my desk. “There’s something we’ve got to do.”
“We? What’s that?”
His smoldering eyes find me again. “You know.”
I try to think through the fog of gin, but I can’t identify any areas of mutual benefit. “Sorry. I don’t.”
“Think about it.”
This time, the obvious comes clear with a flash of memory of wild eyes in a face that reminds me of Ronald Reagan. “Snake Knox?”
“You get the prize, brother man.”
“Nobody knows where Snake is.”
Lincoln smiles strangely. “I know.”
“So it’s pointless to talk about.”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean I know. I know where Mr. Snake is at. I found his hidey-hole.”
This revelation blows away some of the gin fog. “How?”
“Don’t matter. We can talk about it on the way.”
“On the way where?”
Lincoln looks around my office again. “I said we can talk about it on the way. Get your shit.”
“What shit would that be, exactly?”
“Whatever you want to bring. Just make sure you bring a gun.”
Okay. I see where this is going. “Where is he, Lincoln?”
“Sorry. Not taking any chances on you playing Boy Scout and calling your FBI buddy. We’re past that now. Way past.”
Only now do I realize that my half brother is wearing black jeans and a black polo shirt. He smells like he’s drunk at least half as much alcohol as I have, and also like he’s been sweating for a while. Or maybe that’s the stink of homicidal anger.
“Look, what the fuck else you gonna do?” he growls. “Sit here and drink yourself into a stupor?”
“How far are you talking about going? Five miles? Fifty? Five hundred?”
“I’ll tell you on the way, goddamn it. We don’t have a lot of time. So get your shit.”
Maybe it’s the gin in my system, but his argument seems persuasive. “How many people does Snake have with him?”
“Two, to the best of my knowledge. But if we keep talking, he could be gone. Or we could have a dozen of those skinhead motorcycle freaks burning a cross for kicks.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Two guys on Harleys showed up while I was there. Not right at his place, but not far from it. I didn’t get the feeling they’re on the best of terms.”
“What kind of place is he hiding in?”
“A dump. Little two-room shack behind a house. Sitting in some poplar trees.”
I think about this for a while. “So maybe we let the VK guys take him out.”
“Can’t rely on that. They haven’t killed him so far. And it might go the other way. We can’t take a chance on him disappearing again.”
“Why are you so sure Snake’s about to rabbit?”
“FBI’s turned up the heat. Big time.”
“Then it might make more sense for him to sit tight where he is.”
“No. Snake’s fixing to blow this country.”
I walk to my desk, where my pistol lies at the moment, and mull over Lincoln’s suggestion. “I think Snake had some fantasy that he was going to be able to stay here. But not now. Kaiser’s got a witness who can finger him for a murder back in the sixties. A woman.”
“Then I’m right. We gotta move.”
“What’s your plan, Lincoln? You sound like you just want to execute the guy.”
“Sure I do. Did you not hear what he did to my mother? They tied her to a table in a machine shop and took turns raping her. They sodomized her with a goddamn Coke bottle. They tortured my uncle and his best friend, and then they killed them. And they would have killed Mama if that Presley guy hadn’t busted her out.”
“That’s a hell of an irony, you know? Because Ray Presley was a very bad guy. Take my word for that.”
Lincoln shrugs. “I got no problem with that. Most guys I grew up with were bad by any technical definition. Bad guys do good things sometimes. But you’re missing the point, man. I want to kill Snake, but you’ve got no choice. You have to kill him.”
Something in his voice chills me. “Why’s that?”
“Because once your father—and mine, as strange as that sounds—passes through the gates of Parchman, he’s a dead man walkin’. I doubt he’ll live a week. Snake will reach out to whatever Nazi gang is on top in there, and Tom Cage will die. And take my word for it—he’ll die rough. Is that what you want?”
I warned Dad of this very threat only hours ago. “I get that. But what I told you before is true. This woman Kaiser has, Dolores St. Denis, she can put Snake on death row.”
Lincoln isn’t impressed. “How long will that take? A year? Two? You think if Kaiser arrested Snake tonight, he couldn’t reach out from whatever jail he’s in and kill the doc? Man, what world do you live in? I thought you’d been a prosecutor in Texas.”
This guy is starting to piss me off. “Okay, let’s say Snake dies tonight. A certain threat to Dad may be reduced, but he’s still going to spend three years in jail.”
“So?”
“He won’t live to serve that time. He’s in heart failure now. Anything over a year was a death sentence.”
Lincoln turns up his palms. “We can’t change the sentence. What are you suggesting?”