Sam leads the way. I shake hands with several people as we move through the crowd, accepting compliments on my books and answering polite questions about Annie. The alcohol has loosened everybody up, though thankfully
not too much. As Lucy Perry promised, no one mentions the newspaper article. When I catch up to Sam at the bar, he’s chatting with two other men waiting for drinks.
“Hell’s bells!” cries a gravelly female voice behind me. “If it ain’t the Houston representative of the
N-Double-A-See-P
.”
Dread fills me as I turn, certain that I’m about to endure a public dressing-down for my comments in the paper. The speaker is Maude Marston. Leo’s wife is obviously drunk, as she has been for as long as I can remember. In response to the judge’s amorous adventures, Maude developed a sort of battleship manner, charging through her daily social round with prow thrust forward and guns primed for combat. Anyone who whispers malicious comments within her hearing risks a withering broadside salvo or, worse, depth charges dropped with stealth and unerring aim, that detonate days or weeks later, leaving the offender shattered and forever outside the inner social circle. I hate to guess what she has in store for me.
“Whassa matter, hotshot?” she drawls. “Cat got your tongue?”
I force myself to smile. “Good evening, Maude. It’s nice to see you.”
She stares with blank rage, as though the synapses behind her eyes have stopped firing. Maude was once a great beauty, but her two daughters are the only remaining testament to that fact. Her hair should be gray, but it has been bleached and hennaed and sprayed so often that it has acquired a sort of lacquered-armor look. The cumulative effect of that hair, the gin-glazed eyes, combative stance, and scowling avian face stretched taut by various plastic surgeries is enough to send any but the most stalwart running for the exits.
She pokes a grossly bejeweled finger into my chest. “I’m
talking
to you.”
“You’re drunk,” I say quietly.
She blanches, then pokes me again, harder.
“That’s assault.”
“You gonna have me arrested, hotshot?”
Over Maude’s shoulder I see Caitlin watching from the hall, her eyes flickering with curiosity. “No. I’m going to ask your husband to take you home.”
A harsh cackle bursts from Maude’s lips, and she wobbles on her feet. “You appointed yourself special protector of the nigras in this town or what?”
Sam Jacobs reaches between us and takes hold of my forearm. “Got the drinks! Let’s roll! Great to see you, Maude!”
As Sam pulls me away, Maude speaks softly but with a venom that makes me pause.
“You ruined my daughter’s life, you bastard.”
Then she throws her drink in my face.
A collective gasp goes up from the nearby guests. The drink is mostly ice. It’s Maude’s words that have stunned me. I have no idea what she’s talking
about. It has to be Livy, but that makes no sense at all. Before I can gather my thoughts for a question, Lucy Perry appears and gentles Maude away from the bar the way a trainer gentles a wild mare.
“Let’s blow this joint before somebody gets killed,” Sam whispers.
As we depart, Caitlin leans toward me. “I can’t wait to hear the story behind that.”
Perfect.
Sam Jacobs drives a royal blue Hummer, the civilian version of the military Humvee. He claims it’s the only way to travel in the oil fields. I cling to the window frame as the huge vehicle rumbles like a tank down State Street.
“Talk about a babe magnet!” he says, trying to hold his drink steady with his left hand. “More women come on to me in this thing than when I had my Mercedes.”
I nod absently. Maude Marston has popped the cork on a dark vintage of memory.
“Did you give Caitlin Masters a tour of the garden?” Sam asks, giving me a bemused smile. “You two had that
couple
look when you came in.”
“Did you hear what Maude said before she threw the drink in my face?”
“About ruining her daughter’s life?”
“Yes. She had to be talking about Olivia, right?”
“Had to be.”
“When did Livy’s life get ruined? Isn’t she still married to that sports lawyer in Atlanta?”
“Definitely fartin’ through silk, on the money side.”
I laugh, wondering whether the Jewish crowd in Manhattan would believe the Southern accent coming from Sam Jacobs’s mouth.
“How
ever
,” Sam adds, cutting his eyes at me. “My wife’s sister was in Atlanta last month for some kind of Tri-Delt alumni ball, and Livy showed up without her husband.”
“So?”
“The gossip of the party was trouble in paradise.”
“Not exactly a reliable source. Do they have any kids?”
“Don’t think so.” He glances at me again. “It would be pretty strange, the two of you being available at the same time. It’s like fate. Maybe history’s reversing itself.”
Not wanting to continue in this line, I stick my head out of the window as the Hummer roars up the bypass toward my parents’ neighborhood. The wind
is warm and wet in my hair. The downtown bars and riverboat casino will still be going great guns, but this part of town looks like Mayberry, R.F.D.
“Have you seen anybody?” Sam asks. “You know . . . since Sarah died?”
I pull my head back inside and look him in the eye. “Lunch with Caitlin Masters tomorrow is my first date since the funeral. If you call that a date.”
“Shit. I know it’s tough, Penn. I joke about fooling around, but if I ever lost Jenny, I wouldn’t know what to do.”
I take his cup from his hand and gulp a sweat-inducing shot of Laphroig.
“That’s the ticket,” he says, slapping me on the knee.
The Hummer jerks as Sam hits the brakes, then lets off slowly. “Would you fucking look at this?”
“What?”
“A cop. Looks like a sheriff’s deputy.”
I turn slowly. A sheriff’s department cruiser just like the one that tailed me from Shad Johnson’s headquarters has settled in twenty yards behind the Hummer. The sight throws me back to the shooting, glass exploding inches from my face.
“Sam, what do you know about Ray Presley?”
“Ray Presley? He’s sick, I heard. Bad sick.”
“What’s he been up to the last few years?”
“Same thing he was always up to. Being a sleazy coonass who’ll do anything for money.”
“Presley’s no coonass. He’s from Jones County. Who did he work for?”
“Old Natchez people, mostly.” Sam’s eyes keep flicking to the rearview mirror. “He did some things for a driller I know. Strong-arm stuff. I think Marston kept him on his payroll as a security consultant, if you believe that.” Sam accelerates, as if daring the deputy to pull him over. “You know what? I’ll bet the BASF deal is what set Maude off on you.”
“What does Maude Marston care about a chemical plant? She has more money than God.”
“But does she have
enough
? That chemical plant means more to the Marstons than anybody. Short term, anyway.”
“Why?”
“The industrial park isn’t big enough for the projected facility. You want to guess who owns the land contiguous to the park site?”
“Leo?”
“Yep. He’ll squeeze blood out of BASF for every square foot of land, or kill them on usage and access fees.”
“But that’s got nothing to do with Livy.”
Sam nods, then turns and looks hard at me. “Caitlin Masters’s article said
Ray Presley worked the Payton murder when he was a cop. Is that what this is about?”
“It’s nothing to do with that.”
Sam slams his hand against the Hummer’s steering wheel. “
Look
at this asshole! I hate it when they follow you like that.” He cranes his neck around and looks through the back windscreen. “You gonna stop me or what!”
“I don’t think he is. I think it’s the same guy who followed me from Shad Johnson’s headquarters earlier tonight.”
“Shad Johnson’s headquarters?” Sam shakes his head. “I’m riding with a crazy man.”
“Ten seconds after he passed me, somebody shot up my car with a rifle.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying that if this guy passes us, watch him close.”
Sam reaches under the seat, pulls out a holstered Colt .45, and sets it in my lap. “He’s fucking with the wrong vehicle if that’s his plan. This Hummer will drive right
over
that Crown Vic he’s in.”
“Take it easy. He’s just tailing us.”
“Why the sudden interest in Ray Presley?”
“I’ll tell you in a couple of days. Do you think we could find anybody who could testify that Presley has committed murder for money?”
“A lot of people could.
Would
is another question.”
Sam turns into my parents’ neighborhood, watching his rearview mirror through the turn. “There goes our shadow. Bye, bye.”
A minute later he pulls the Hummer into our driveway and leaves it idling. “I feel bad about mentioning Sarah. I guess time is the only thing that can get you past something like that.”
I swallow the last of the Scotch. “I’ll never get past it, Sam. I’m a different person now. Part of me is lying in that grave in Houston.”
“Yeah, well. Most of you is sitting right here. And your daughter needs that part.”
“I know. I keep thinking about Del Payton’s widow. Race doesn’t even come into it for me. For thirty years part of her has been buried wherever her husband is. We’re both wounded the same way. You know?”
Sam shuts off the engine. “Listen to me, Penn. Whoever blew up Del Payton was in their twenties then, thirties max. Kluckers full of piss and vinegar. Those guys have got wives and grown kids now. And if you think they’re gonna let some hotshit, nigger-lovin’
writer
take all that away, you’re nuts. That’s who shot at you tonight. And if you keep pushing, they’ll kill you.”
Sam has the Jew’s special fear of fanatics. During the civil rights era this anxiety caused many Mississippi Jews to keep as low a profile as possible. Some gave heroic support to the Movement; others, primarily in the Delta,
actually joined the White Citizens’ Councils, for fear of the consequences if they didn’t. Sam’s parents chose the difficult middle ground.
“Don’t worry, Sam. Caitlin Masters has given everybody the idea I’m a crusading liberal, ready to drag the town through the mud. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Bullshit. I know you when you sound like this. You’ll pull down the temple to find the truth.”
“I remember you sounding like this once. That time in junior high, when your dad hired us to clean out his attic?”
Sam gives no sign that he’s heard, but I know he has.
“Going through all those boxes,” I remind him. “We found that list. Two hundred names, all handwritten.”
He reaches out and toys with the Hummer’s ignition key. The papers we found had listed most members of Natchez’s Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Council. The Jewish community had maintained the list as a security measure, and more than a few names on it belonged to fathers of kids we went to school with.
“You remember how you felt when you saw those names?”
He picks up the drink cup and nervously shakes the ice. “Scared.”
“Me too. But it pissed me off more. I wanted to expose those assholes for what they were. So did you. Have you ever done business with anybody on that list?”
He looks up, his eyes hard as agates. “Not a fucking one. And I spiked them where I could.”
A side spill of headlights washes across my parents’ house.
“Would you look at this?” Sam mutters, looking over his shoulder. “It’s the same car.”
The sheriff’s cruiser sits idling in the street, fifteen yards behind us.
Bolstered by the confidence of being on my father’s property, I set the .45 in Sam’s lap, climb out of the Hummer, and walk toward the car. The passenger window whirs down into the door frame. It’s the black deputy who followed me before. I put my hands on the door and lean into the window.
“Can I help you?”
The deputy says nothing. He has a bald, bullet-shaped head dominated by black eyes set in yellow sclera shot with blood. He’s at least fifty, but he fills out his brown uniform like an NFL cornerback. Even at rest he radiates coiled energy.
“You were following me earlier tonight, right?”
The black eyes burn into mine with unsettling intensity. “Could have been,” he says in a gravelly voice.
“Ten seconds after you passed me, somebody shot up my car. You stopped. Why didn’t you help me?”
“I didn’t hear no shots. I saw you stop. I waited to make sure you started again. Why didn’t you report it if you was shot at?”
“What the hell is this about, Deputy? Why are you following me?”
He purses his lips and taps the steering wheel. “Get rid of your friend. Tell him I warned you off the Payton case, then go inside. After he leaves, meet me back out here.”
“Look, if this is about Del Payton—”