“Really? Why is that?”
The fifteen years of difference between the newspaper editor and me suddenly seems an eternity. “Because the terrible truth is, all anyone accomplishes by doing that is getting himself sent to prison. I’ve seen it happen.”
Jamie thinks about this. “Well. I hope that’s enough to settle the Harvin brothers down. But I wouldn’t count on it. Are you coming back later?”
“I’ll be back. You keep your eyes open, Jamie. Your name’s on the website, too.”
The editor nods, then sets off again, slowly meandering toward the hospital entrance.
Climbing into my Audi, I start the engine, then switch on the AC and sit with my face near the central vents until my skin feels cold.
Will Keisha Harvin ever feel that again? I wonder.
Closing my eyes, I reach out and turn on the CD player by touch. Soon the cabin fills with “Capriccio Primo,” a solo cello piece played to perfection by Elinor Frey. As she bows the heavy strings, my pulse slows and my blood pressure falls. But deep within me, something like a motor has begun spooling up. I recognize the feeling now, from the day I heard Caitlin speaking from the grave, on the last recording she made before she died.
The day I killed Forrest Knox.
As the end of the piece approaches, I open my eyes, reset the track, and put the car in reverse. Don’t talk crazy, I told Jamie Lewis. But giving advice is a lot easier than taking it. Sometimes to move forward, we have to go back first.
I’m parked outside the Kuntry Kafé, the seedy diner where last December I confronted Randall Regan, who after our conversation ambushed me in the restroom. I don’t remember driving here. I do remember crossing the river, looking down at the muddy, majestic current of the Mississippi moving slowly toward Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and finally the great dead zone in the Gulf that lies off the mouth of America’s largest sewage canal. The warm spring sun made the river look red, and the ethereal cello coming from my speakers held my darker thoughts at bay as I rolled over the bumpy span joining Mississippi and Louisiana.
Unlike the stylish villains’ lairs portrayed in Hollywood thrillers, the dens of some of the most evil men in the world are surprisingly mundane. Carlos Marcello, the Mafia don who ruled New Orleans for decades, regularly met his minions in the Morning Call Coffee Stand in Metairie, one table away from silver-haired matrons having their morning café au lait. In the 1960s, the Double Eagle group met daily in the little restaurant of the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia. And according to John Kaiser, some of the old Double Eagle members still hang out in the Kuntry Kafé, which is the dining appendage of the Kuntry Inn, and not far from the old Shamrock. The diner is clearly a cousin of its predecessor, but it’s a dump, stinking of grease and sour milk.
I wonder if there are still Christmas bells hanging from the door . . .
If I were prudent, I would have asked Tim Weathers to meet me here, or Kirk Boisseau. But if they were here, they would limit my options. Unlocking my glove box, I take out the Springfield nine millimeter I keep there and shove it into my waistband, then pull out my shirttail so it hangs over the butt. With this addition I feel less naked than I would have with only the .38 on my ankle.
Five more seconds of the cello sets me up just right.
With the cooling fan of my Audi still running, I get out and walk up to the glass door. The diner is mostly empty, but three old men and a long-haired blond kid sit mumbling over mugs of beer at the back table. One of the men is Will Devine. They look up as I yank open the door, but they say nothing. As I move toward them, the blond kid stands and squares up to me like he means to fight. My shirttail still hangs over the butt of my Springfield, but I figure the old men at the table picked out the concealed weapons within two seconds of seeing me.
“Look here, boys,” says one of the white-haired men, a wiry old guy who reminds me of the deceased Sonny Thornfield. “We got the mayor of Natchez paying us a visit. To what do we owe the honor, Mayor?”
Earl Tarver, says the lawyer in my mind. Double Eagle, born 1936. Which makes him sixty-nine years old . . .
“Yeah,” says another man with a grin. My memory offers up a second name: Buddy Garland.
Will Devine says nothing. He’s staring down into his beer mug.
“I think he’s come over for an ass-whippin’,” says the blond kid, who is two inches shorter than I but has twenty years of youth to his advantage. With his light blue eyes, he looks like a recruiting poster for the Hitler Jugend.
Earl Tarver’s eyes travel up and down my body, then settle on my face. “Ease up, Alois. You don’t want to tangle with the mayor today. He’s got his dander up.”
“Like I give a fuck.”
“Look at his hands,” Tarver said.
I don’t look, but I can feel my hands quivering.
“Sit down, Alois,” Tarver commands.
The boy reluctantly obeys, his eyes electric with hatred.
“What you want, Mayor?” Tarver asks. “Where’s your buddy, the FBI agent?”
When I don’t answer, Tarver says, “That Kaiser got his nose rubbed in it by his boss, didn’t he? After that fuckup at the Concordia jail back in December, I ain’t surprised. I believe he told the Justice boys in Washington that Sonny was about to bust open every unsolved case left over from the Klan years. And then”—Tarver snaps his fingers with a pop—“Sonny went and hung hisself. Ain’t that somethin’? Couldn’t stand the guilt, I reckon. Turning traitor will do that to a man.”
I look slowly around the café. The only other patron is a thin, pale-skinned man in a booth in the back corner. He has black hair and he’s wearing a leather jacket with the letters VK visible on the arm I can see.
“I’m here because somebody threw acid in a young woman’s face today,” I say, my eyes still on the biker. “Blinded her.”
Nobody at the table looks surprised.
“Is that right?” asks Tarver. “What girl was that?”
“Nigger gal, I heard,” says Garland. “Nosy gal who worked for the Natchez paper.”
“That really why you’re here?” Tarver asked. “You running interference for the colored now? That what they pay the mayor for on your side of the river?”
I fix my eyes on Tarver’s. “Your old boss killed somebody that meant a lot to me.”
He sniffs and looks at his compatriots. “I think he’s talking about that newspaper publisher.”
Garland snorts a laugh and ducks his head in agreement, a grin on his face. “His old lady, Earl.”
“I heard a nigger done that, too,” Tarver goes on. “A poacher from down in Lusahatcha County. Found him dead behind a crack house in Baton Rouge, didn’t they?”
Garland lifts his mug and drains half the beer in it. “Yup. One less to worry about.”
While these comments ricochet around my neurons, I draw the Springfield from my belt, pull back the slide, and lay the barrel against the comedian’s temple.