Of course they all knew him. He was Judge Atlee’s boy.
Ray was slowly realizing that his speedy exit from Clanton after the funeral would only be temporary. He would be forced to return very soon, to make a brief court appearance with Harry Rex and begin probate, to prepare an inventory and do a half-dozen other duties as executor of his father’s estate. That would be easy and routine and take just a few days. But weeks and perhaps months were looming out there as he tried to solve the mystery of the money.
Did one of those lawyers over there know something? The money had to originate from a judicial setting, didn’t it? The Judge had no life outside of the law. Looking at them, though, Ray could not imagine a source rich enough to generate the kind of money now hidden in the trunk of his little car. They were smalltown ham-and-egg lawyers, all scrambling to pay their bills and outhustle the guy next door. There was no real money over there. The Sullivan firm had eight or nine lawyers who represented the banks and insurance
companies, and they earned just enough to hang out with the doctors at the country club.
There wasn’t a lawyer in the county with serious cash. Irv Chamberlain over there with the thick eyeglasses and bad hairpiece owned thousands of acres handed down through generations, but he couldn’t sell it because there were no buyers. Plus, it was rumored he was spending time at the new casinos in Tunica.
As Harry Rex droned on, Ray dwelt on the lawyers. Someone shared the secret. Someone knew about the money. Could it be a distinguished member of the Ford County bar?
Harry Rex’s voice began to break, and it was time to quit. He thanked them all for coming and announced that the Judge would lie in state in the courthouse until 10 P.M. He directed the procession to begin where Ray and Forrest were standing. The crowd moved obediently to the east wing and formed a line that snaked its way outside.
For an hour, Ray was forced to smile and shake hands and graciously thank everyone for coming. He listened to dozens of brief stories about his father and the lives the great man had touched. He pretended to remember the names of all those who knew him. He hugged old ladies he’d never met before. The procession moved slowly by Ray and Forrest, then to the casket, where each person would stop and gaze forlornly at the Judge’s bad portrait, then to the west wing where registers were waiting. Harry Rex moved about, working the crowd like a politician.
At some point during the ordeal, Forrest disappeared.
He mumbled something to Harry Rex about going home, to Memphis, and something about being tired of death.
Finally, Harry Rex whispered to Ray, “There’s a line around the courthouse. You could be here all night.”
“Get me out of here,” Ray whispered back.
“You need to go to the rest room?” Harry Rex asked, just loud enough for those next in line to hear.
“Yes,” Ray said, already stepping away. They eased back, whispering importantly, and ducked into a narrow hallway. Seconds later they emerged behind the courthouse.
They drove away, in Ray’s car of course, first circling the square and taking in the scene. The flag in front of the courthouse was at half-mast. A large crowd waited patiently to pay their respects to the Judge.
CHAPTER 10
Twenty-four hours in Clanton, and Ray was desperate to leave. After the wake, he ate dinner with Harry Rex at Claude’s, the black diner on the south side of the square where the Monday special was barbecued chicken and baked beans so spicy they served ice tea by the half-gallon. Harry Rex was reveling in the success of his grand send-off for the Judge and after dinner was anxious to return to the courthouse and monitor the rest of the wake.
Forrest had evidently left town for the evening. Ray hoped he was in Memphis, at home with Ellie, behaving himself, but he knew better. How many times could he crash before he died? Harry Rex said there was a fifty-fifty chance Forrest would make it to the funeral tomorrow.
When Ray was alone he drove away, out of Clanton, headed west to no place in particular. There were new
casinos along the river, seventy miles away, and with each trip back to Mississippi he heard more talk and gossip about the state’s newest industry. Legalized gambling had arrived in the state with the lowest per capita income in the country.
An hour and a half from Clanton, he stopped for gas and as he pumped it he noticed a new motel across the highway. Everything was new in what had recently been cotton fields. New roads, new motels, fast-food restaurants, gas stations, billboards, all spillover from the casinos a mile away.
The motel had rooms on two levels, with doors that opened to face the parking lot. It appeared to be a slow night. He paid $39.99 for a double on the ground level, around back where there were no other cars or trucks. He parked the Audi as close as possible to his room, and within seconds had the three garbage bags inside.
The money covered one bed. He did not stop to admire it because he was convinced it was dirty. And it was probably marked in some way. Maybe it was counterfeit. Whatever it was, it was not his to keep.
All the bills were one-hundred-dollar notes, some brand new and never used, others passed around a little. None were worn badly, and none were dated before 1986 or after 1994. About half were banded together in two-thousand-dollar stacks, and Ray counted those first—one hundred thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills was about fifteen inches high. He counted the money from one bed, then arranged it on the other in neat rows and sections. He was very deliberate, time
was of no concern. As he touched the money, he rubbed it between his forefingers and thumbs and even smelled it to see if it was counterfeit. It certainly appeared to be real.
Thirty-one sections, plus a few leftovers—$3,118,000 to be exact. Retrieved like buried treasure from the crumbling home of a man who had earned less than half that during his lifetime.
It was impossible not to admire the fortune spread before him. How many times in his life would he gaze upon three million bucks? How many others ever got the chance? Ray sat in a chair with his face in his hands, staring at the tidy rows of cash, dizzy with thoughts of where it came from and where it was headed.
A slamming car door somewhere outside jolted him back. This would be an excellent place to get robbed. When you travel around with millions in cash everybody becomes a potential thief.
He rebagged it, stuffed it back into the trunk of his car, and drove to the nearest casino.
______
His involvement with gambling was limited to a weekend junket to Atlantic City with two other law professors, both of whom had read a book on successful crap shooting and were convinced they could beat the house. They did not. Ray had rarely played cards. He found a home at the five-dollar blackjack table, and after two miserable days in a noisy dungeon he cleared sixty dollars and vowed not to return. His colleagues’
losses were never nailed down, but he learned that those who gamble quite often lie about their success.
For a Monday night, there was a respectable crowd at the Santa Fe Club, a hastily built box the size of a football field. A ten-floor tower attached to it housed the guests, mostly retirees from up North who had never dreamed of setting foot in Mississippi but were now lured by unlimited slots and free gin while they gambled.
In his pocket he had five bills taken from five different sections of the loot he’d counted in the motel room. He walked to an empty blackjack table where the dealer was half-asleep and placed the first bill on the table. “Play it,” he said.
“Playing a hundred,” the dealer said over her shoulder, where no one was there to hear it. She picked up the bill, rubbed it with little interest, then put it in play.
It must be real, he thought, and relaxed a little. She sees them all day long. She shuffled one deck, dealt the cards, promptly hit twenty-four, then took the bill from Judge Atlee’s buried treasure and put down two black chips. Ray played them both, two hundred dollars a bet, nerves of steel. She dealt the cards quickly, and with fifteen showing she hit a nine. Ray now had four black chips. In less than a minute he’d won three hundred dollars.
Rattling the four black chips in his pocket, he strolled through the casino, first through the slots where the crowd was older and subdued, almost brain-dead as they sat on their stools, pulling the arm down
again and again, staring sadly at the screens. At the craps table, the dice were hot and a rowdy bunch of rednecks were hollering instructions that made no sense to him. He watched for a moment, completely bewildered by the dice and the bets and the chips changing hands.
At another empty blackjack table, he tossed down the second hundred-dollar bill, more like a seasoned gambler now. The dealer pulled it close to his face, held it up to the lights, rubbed it, and took it a few steps over to the pit boss, who was immediately distrustful of it. The pit boss produced a magnifying device that he stuck in his left eye and examined the bill like a surgeon. Just as Ray was about to break and bolt through the crowd, he heard one of them say, “It’s good.” He wasn’t sure which one said it because he was looking wildly around the casino for armed guards. The dealer returned to the table and placed the suspicious money in front of Ray, who said, “Play it.” Seconds later, the queen of hearts and the king of spades were staring at Ray, and he’d won his third hand in a row.
Since the dealer was wide awake and his supervisor had done a close inspection, Ray decided to settle the matter once and for all. He pulled the other three hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and laid them on the table. The dealer inspected each carefully, then shrugged and said, “You want change?”
“No, play them.”
“Playing three hundred cash,” the dealer said loudly, and the pit boss loomed over his shoulder.
Ray stood on a ten and a six. The dealer hit on a ten and a four, and when he turned over the jack of diamonds, Ray won his fourth straight hand. The cash disappeared and was replaced with six black chips. Ray now had ten, a thousand dollars, and he also had the knowledge that the other thirty thousand bills stuffed into the back of his car were not counterfeit. He left one chip for the dealer and went to find a beer.
The sports bar was elevated a few feet, so that if you wanted you could have a drink and take in all the action on the floor. Or you could watch pro baseball or NASCAR reruns or bowling on any of the dozen screens. But you couldn’t gamble on the games; it wasn’t allowed yet.
He was aware of the risks the casino posed. Now that the money was real, the next question was whether it was marked in some way. The suspicions of the second dealer and his supervisor would probably be enough to get the bills examined by the boys upstairs. They had Ray on video, he was certain, same as everybody else. Casino surveillance was extensive; he knew that from his two bright pals who’d planned to break the bank at the craps table.
If the money set off alarms, they could easily find him. Couldn’t they?
But where else could he get the money examined? Walk in the First National in Clanton and hand the teller a few of the bills? “Mind taking a look at these, Mrs. Dempsey, see if they’re real or not?” No teller in Clanton had ever seen counterfeit money, and by
lunch the entire town would know Judge Atlee’s boy was sneaking around with a pocketful of suspicious money.
He’d thought of waiting until he was back in Virginia. He would go to his lawyer who could find an expert to examine a sample of the money, all nice and confidential. But he couldn’t wait that long. If the money was fake, he’d burn it. Otherwise, he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
He drank his beer slowly, giving them time to send down a couple of goons in dark suits who would walk up and say, “Gotta minute?” They couldn’t work that fast, and Ray knew it. If the money was marked, it would take days to link it to wherever it came from.
Suppose he got caught with marked money. What was his crime? He had taken it from his deceased father’s house, a place that had been willed to him and his brother. He was the executor of the estate, soon to be charged with the responsibility of protecting its assets. He had months to report it to both the probate court and the tax authorities. If the Judge had somehow accumulated the money by illegal means, then sorry, he’s dead now. Ray had done nothing wrong, at least for the moment.
He took his winnings back to the first blackjack table and placed a five-hundred-dollar bet. The dealer got the attention of her supervisor, who ambled over with his knuckles to his mouth and one finger tapping an ear, smugly, as if five hundred dollars on one hand of blackjack happened all the time at the Santa Fe
Club. He was dealt an ace and a king, and the dealer slid over seven hundred and fifty dollars.
“Would you like something to drink?” asked the pit boss, all smiles and bad teeth.
“Beck’s beer,” Ray said, and a cocktail waitress appeared from nowhere.
He bet a hundred dollars on the next hand and lost. Then quickly he slid three chips out for the next hand, which he won. He won eight of the next ten hands, alternating his bets from a hundred to five hundred dollars as if he knew precisely what he was doing. The pit boss lingered behind the dealer. They had a potential card counter on their hands, a professional blackjack player, one to be watched and filmed. The other casinos would be notified.
If they only knew.
He lost consecutive bets of two hundred dollars, then just for the hell of it pushed ten chips out for a bold and reckless wager of a thousand dollars. He had another three million in the trunk. This was chicken feed. When two queens landed next to his chips, he kept a perfect poker face as if he’d been winning like this for years.
“Would you like dinner, sir?” the pit boss asked.
“No,” Ray said.
“Can we get anything for you?”
“A room would be nice.”
“King or a suite?”
A jerk would’ve said, “A suite, of course,” but Ray caught himself. “Any room will be fine,” he said. He’d had no plans to stay there, but after two beers he
thought it best not to drive. What if he got stopped by a rural deputy? And what would the deputy do if he searched the trunk?