But not even that had calmed Frank down. When they’d driven into town yesterday for cigarettes, he’d used a pay phone to call some buddies and ask about national coverage. He came back to the car saying Cronkite wouldn’t shut up about the “national scandal” and all the big-city papers were riding the story hard. All weekend, Sonny had sensed that Frank was coming to some kind of decision. And if he was … that meant changes for them all.
Even Morehouse seemed unsettled by the anger that seethed through Frank’s pores like sour sweat. Sonny studied the two men with clinical detachment. The gentle giant had done his share of killing during the war, but Morehouse had quickly grown soft in civilian life, putting on eighty pounds of new fat. He stood with his thumbs hooked behind the straps of his overalls and masticated a blade of grass as though it required all his concentration. By contrast, Frank Knox still had a washboard stomach, ropy muscles with pipeline veins running along them, and eyes that Sonny had never seen more relaxed than when behind the sights of a .30-caliber machine gun.
Sonny didn’t push Frank for more information; whatever was coming would arrive in its own time. Keeping Morehouse’s body between himself and the sinking sun, Sonny sipped the Jax and watched Frank’s teenage son spray rooster tails out in the reddish-brown river behind his father’s souped-up bass boat.
“There’s reporters crawling all over Neshoba County,” Frank said, basting the gator meat with his special sauce. “Whole damn country’s stirred up, and it’s gonna get worse.”
Sonny took a bent Camel from his shirt pocket and lit it with a Zippo. “I heard they had navy divers up there, helping search for those corpses. You believe that?”
“Navy pukes,” Frank muttered, reaching out to turn up the volume on a GE transistor radio. Marty Robbins was singing “Girl from Spanish Town.” Whenever Frank saw a Japanese radio, he’d slam it into the nearest wall, and no one ever protested. “But it wasn’t any navy diver found them bodies,” he said.
“Who found ’em, then?” asked Morehouse.
“It ain’t who, Mountain. It’s how.”
Morehouse still looked lost, but Sonny’s eyes narrowed. “He’s saying they got rats up there just like we do down here.”
Frank nodded. “Federal informants, they call ’em. Paid Judases is what they are. Feds never would have found them bodies without help.”
“I heard the reward was twenty-five thousand dollars,” Morehouse said in an awestruck voice. “That’s enough money to buy a house and a truck and a boat besides.”
Frank speared him with a glare. “Would you sell out your ancestors for twenty-five grand, Glenn?”
Morehouse’s eyes bugged, and his cheeks filled with blood. “Hell, no! You know that, Frank.”
“My wife told me something weird this morning,” Sonny said thoughtfully. “Her sister lives up in Kemper County, and she heard some Italian bastard was going around Neshoba threatening people. She heard he beat up a Klansman, pulled down his drawers, shoved a pistol up his butt, and asked for the burial location. She said some Klan boys thought he was a mob button man.”
“When exactly did she tell you this?” Frank asked.
“This morning, in the camper. She talked to her sister just before we pulled out of town Friday.”
While Frank considered this rumor, Jim Reeves began singing “He’ll Have to Go.” “Gentleman Jim” had died in a plane crash near Nashville only nine days ago, and disc jockeys had been playing his records practically nonstop ever since.
“Bullshit,” Frank decided at length. “Not that the FBI hasn’t cozied up to the mob some, ’cause I know they did during the Cuba mess. Half the guns coming into our training camps in sixty-one were being supplied by Carlos Marcello’s people, and Trafficante’s Havana contacts were providing our intel for the invasion. Hoover knew all about that. The CIA ran the South Florida camps, but I met FBI agents down there, too. J. Edgar wouldn’t use a wop on something like this, though. If he wants a gun stuck up some Klansman’s ass, he’s got field agents who’ll do it for him. The Bureau’s got some hard boys, same as us.”
“Yeah,” said Morehouse. “They got southern boys in the FBI.”
Frank laughed bitterly. “You think there ain’t no tough Yankees? Have you forgotten that Irishman, McClaren, on Guadalcanal? He killed more Japs than I ever did, and he was from Boston, just like the Kennedys. Fighting alongside that crazy bastard showed me how we lost at Gettysburg.”
Sonny watched Frank like an interrogator waiting for a prisoner to crack. He knew his old sergeant had something to tell them. But hell could freeze over before Frank Knox would show you his hole card. After Sonny’s curiosity got the best of him, he said, “Come on, Top. You ain’t gonna let this Neshoba County thing pass unanswered, I know.”
Frank’s eyes shone with menace, like the glow of a tire fire in a dump, which could burn for fifteen years. “That’s a fact, Son. Today is a red-letter day. One you boys ain’t ever gonna forget.”
“How come?” asked Morehouse.
“Because today we’re leaving the Klan.”
Glenn gasped, and Sonny choked on the smoke in his lungs.
“Don’t know why you’re surprised,” Frank said. “The Klan we got now’s about as dangerous as the Garden Club. Every goddamn klavern in the state’s eaten up with informants. The whole organization’s useless. Worse than useless.”
Morehouse looked like a Cub Scout whose father had told him they were renouncing American citizenship. “But—but—” he stammered.
“But nothing,” Frank snapped. “We’re splitting off, and that’s it.”
“We can’t quit,” Sonny said. “You know that. Once in, never out.”
Frank laughed. “We’re not telling anybody we’re quitting. We’ll keep going through the motions, wearing the stupid robes and masks, kowtowing to the Dragons and Kleagles and Wizards and all that other Halloween bullshit. But that ain’t nothing but cover now. You follow? I’m forming a special unit. An action squad. A wrecking crew.”