The White Road

IV


When [the angels] descend, they put on the garment of the world. If they did not put on a garment befitting this world they could not endure in this world and the world could not endure them.

—THE Z OHAR





17


I T WAS ALMOST SUNRISE .

Cyrus Nairn crouched naked in the dark womb of the hollow. Soon, he would have to leave this place. They would come looking for him, suspecting immediately some form of vendetta against the guard Anson and turning their attention toward those who had most recently been released from Thomaston. Cyrus would be sorry to go. He had spent so long dreaming of being back here, surrounded by the smell of damp earth, root ends caressing his bare back and shoulders. Still, there would be other rewards. He had been promised so much. In return, sacrifices were to be expected.

From outside there came the calling of the first birds, the gentle lapping of the water upon the banks, the buzzing of the last night insects as they fled the approaching light, but Cyrus was deaf to the sounds of life beyond the hole. Instead he remained motionless, conscious only of the noises coming from the loose earth under his feet, both watching and feeling the slight shifting as Aileen Anson struggled beneath the dirt and, finally, grew still.

*

I was woken up by the telephone ringing in my room. It was 8:15 A.M.

“Charlie Parker?” said a male voice that I didn’t recognize.

“Yeah. Who is this?”

“You got a breakfast appointment in ten minutes. You don’t want to keep Mr. Wyman waiting.”

He hung up.

Mr. Wyman.

Willie Wyman.

The boss of the Dixie Mafia’s Charleston branch wanted to have breakfast with me. This was not a good way to start the day.

The Dixie Mafia had existed, in one form or another, since Prohibition, a conglomeration of loosely associated criminals with bases in most of the big Southern cities but particularly Atlanta, Georgia, and Biloxi, Mississippi. They recruited one another for out-of-state jobs: an arson attack in Mississippi might be the work of a firefly from Georgia, or a hit in South Carolina could be farmed out to a contract killer from Maryland. The Dixies were pretty unsophisticated, dealing in drugs, gambling, murder, extortion, robbery, arson. The closest they ever got to white-collar crime was robbing a laundry, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t a force to be reckoned with. In September 1987, the Dixie Mafia had murdered a judge, Vincent Sherry, and his wife, Margaret, at their home in Biloxi. It was never made clear why Sherry and his wife had been shot—there were allegations that Vincent Sherry had been involved in criminal operations through the law offices of Halat and Sherry, and Sherry’s law partner, Peter Halat, was later convicted on charges of racketeering and murder connected to the deaths of the Sherrys—but the reasons behind the murders were largely inconsequential. Men who kill judges are dangerous because they will act before they think. They don’t weigh up the consequence of their actions until after the fact.

In 1983 Paul Mazzell, the then boss of the Charleston branch, was convicted with Eddie Merriman of the murder of Ricky Lee Seagreaves, who had robbed one of Mazzell’s drug deals. Since then, Willie Wyman had been the king in Charleston. He was five-four in height and weighed about one hundred pounds in wet clothes, but he was mean and cunning and capable of doing just about anything to maintain his position. At 8:30 A.M., he was sitting at a table by the wall in Charleston Place’s main dining room, eating bacon and eggs. There was one other empty chair at the table. Nearby, four men sat in two pairs at separate tables, keeping watch over Willie, the door, and me.

Willie had short, very dark hair, deeply tanned skin, and was wearing a bright blue shirt and blue chinos. The shirt was decorated with small white clouds. He looked up at me as I approached the table and waved his fork to indicate that I should join him. One of his men seemed about to frisk me but Willie, conscious of operating in a public place, waved him away.

“We don’t need to frisk you, do we?”

“I’m not armed.”

“Good. I don’t think the people at Charleston Place would appreciate their breakfast tables being all shot up. You want to order? It’s on you.” He grinned humorlessly. I ordered coffee, juice, and toast from the waitress. Willie finished devouring his food and wiped his mouth on a napkin.

“Now,” he said, “to business. I hear you kicked Andy Dalitz’s nuts so far up his tubes that he can scratch them by sticking his fingers in his mouth.”

He waited for a reply. Under the circumstances, it seemed wise to oblige.

“LapLand’s your place?” I said.

“One of them. Look, I know Andy Dalitz is a moron. Hell, I’ve wanted to kick him in the nuts for as long as I’ve known him, but the guys got three fucking Adam’s apples now because of you. Maybe he had it coming, I don’t know. All I’m saying is that if you want to visit one of our clubs, then you should ask, and ask nice. Kicking the manager so hard that he can taste his balls in his mouth is not asking nice.

“And I got to tell you: if you’d done that in public, in front of customers or the girls, then we’d be having a very different conversation now. Because if you make Andy look bad then you make me look bad, and the next thing you know I have guys thinking maybe my time has come and I should make way for somebody new. Then I have two choices: I either convince them that they’re wrong, and then I got to find somewhere to put them and we waste a day driving around with them stinking up the trunk until we find a place, or else I’m the one stinking up the trunk and, between you and me, that’s not gonna happen. We clear?”

My coffee, OJ, and toast arrived. I poured the coffee and offered Willie the option of a fresh refill. He accepted, and thanked me. He was nothing if not polite.

“We’re clear,” I assured him.

“I know all about you,” he said. “You could screw up Paradise. The only reason you’re still alive is that even God doesn’t want you near Him. I hear you’re working with Elliot Norton on the Jones case. Is there something I need to know here, because that case stinks like my kid’s diapers? Andy told me you wanted to speak to the half-breed, Tereus.”

“Is that what he is?”

“The fuck am I, his cousin?” He relented a little. “His people came from Kentucky way back, is all I know. Who knows who they were fucking out there? There are people in those mountains who are maybe half fucking goat because their daddies got an itch at a bad time. Even the blacks don’t want nothing to do with Tereus or his kind. Lesson over. Give me something.”

I didn’t have any choice but to tell him something of what I knew.

“Tereus visited Atys Jones in jail. I wanted to know why.”

“You find out?”

“I think Tereus knew the family. Plus he’s found Jesus.”

Willie looked unhappy, although not terminally so.

“That’s what he told Andy. I figure Jesus should be more careful about who finds Him. I know you’re not telling me everything, but I’m not going to make an issue of it, not this time. I’d prefer it if you didn’t go back to the club, but if you do have to go, keep it discreet and don’t kick Andy Dalitz in the balls again. In return, I expect you to let me know if there’s anything that I should be worried about, you understand?”

“I understand.”

He nodded, seemingly content, then sipped his coffee.

“You tracked down that preacher, right? Faulkner?”

“That’s right.”

He watched me carefully. He seemed amused.

“I hear Roger Bowen is trying to get him out.”

I hadn’t called Elliot since Atys Jones had told me of Mobley’s connection to Bowen. I wasn’t sure how it fitted into what I already knew. Now, as Willie Wyman mentioned Bowen’s name, I tried to block out the noise from the adjoining tables and listen only to him.

“You curious about why that might be?” Willie continued.

“Very.”

He leaned back and stretched, exposing a sprinkling of sweat under his arms.

“Roger and me go way back, and not in a good way. He’s a fanatic and he has no respect. I’ve thought about maybe sending him away on a cruise: a long cruise, strictly one-way to the bottom, but then the crazies would come knocking on my door and it would be cruises for everyone. I don’t know what Bowen wants with the preacher: a figurehead, maybe, or could be the old man has something stashed away that Bowen wants to get hold of. Like I said, I don’t know, but you want to ask him, I can tell you where he’ll be later today.”

I waited.

“There’s a rally in Antioch. Rumor is that Bowen is going to talk at it. There’ll be press there, maybe some TV. Bowen didn’t use to make public appearances too often, but this Faulkner thing has brought him out from under his rock. You go along, you might get to say hi.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He stood, and the other four men rose at the same time.

“I figure why should it just be me who has his day fucked up by you, you know? If you’ve got shit on your shoe, you spread it around. And Bowen’s already having a bad day. I like the idea of you making it worse.”

“What’s so bad about today for Bowen?”

“You should watch the news. They found his pitbull Mobley up at Magnolia Cemetery last night. He was castrated. I gotta go tell Andy Dalitz, maybe make him see how lucky he was just to get his nuts bruised instead of cut off completely. Thanks for breakfast.”

He left me, his blue shirt billowing, his four goons in tow like big children following a little piece of fallen sky.

Elliot did not turn up for our scheduled meeting that morning. The answering machine was picking up calls at his office and at his home. His cell phones—both his own and the clean one we were using for day-to-day contact—were off. Meanwhile, the papers were full of the discovery of Landron Mobley’s body at the Magnolia Cemetery, but hard details were scarce. According to the reports, Elliot Norton had been uncontactable for comment on his client’s death.

I spent the morning confirming the details of more witness statements, knocking on trailer doors, and fighting off dogs in overgrown yards. By midday I was worried. I checked on Atys by phone, and the old man told me he was doing okay, although he was becoming a little stir-crazy. I spoke to Atys for a couple of minutes, but his replies were surly at best.

“When can I leave here, man?” he asked me.

“Soon,” I replied. It was only a half truth. If Elliot’s fears about his safety were real, my guess was that we’d be moving him soon enough, but only to another safe house. Until his trial, Atys was going to have to get used to staring at TVs in unfamiliar rooms. Pretty soon, though, he wouldn’t be my concern. I was getting nowhere fast with the witnesses.

“You know Mobley’s dead?”

“Yeah, I heard. I’m all cut up.”

“Not as cut up as he is. You got any idea who might have done a thing like that to him?”

“No I ain’t, but you find out you let me know. I want to shake the man’s hand, m’sayin?”

He hung up. I looked at my watch. It was just after twelve. It would take me more than an hour to get to Antioch. I tossed a mental coin and decided to go.