Dark End of the Street - v4 (22 page)

“Do you think they’d like me to do an impression?”

“Who?”

“Usual stuff. Sean Connery. Angry Chinese man. Scooby Doo’s country cousin.”

“Scooby Doo’s country cousin.”

“Really?”

“No.”

I punched a few buttons and for a while nothing happened. Just a few fat drops of rain intermittently began to pound the hood. Finally, the intercom crackled to life.

“I’d like a Whopper with fries. No, make that onion rings.”

“This is private property,” the voice said. Sounded like a woman.

“I’m here to see Jude,” I said, you know, using the whole first name thing. They’d think we played golf together, drank Heineken, and slapped each other’s butts in the shower.

“Sir, security has been called.”

“Everything’s under control. Situation normal. We had a slight weapons malfunction.”

Abby shook her head and kind of laughed, burying her face into her hands. I was laughing into the rain, too. Laughing at how damned stupid I suddenly realized I was for thinking I could knock on the front door of a house owned by a man running for governor. I’d put the Ghost in reverse, my arm on the back of the passenger seat, when three men holding shotguns blocked our path. They wore yellow rain slickers, hoods obscuring their faces.

My heart beat a little faster.

A man knocked the shit out of my window, so hard I remembered how much it cost to repair it. I rolled it down and looked at him, water twisting off his wide-brimmed cowboy hat. He had a gray goatee and hard blue eyes. A plug of tobacco in his mouth.

“No onion rings?”

He just looked at me.

“Not a Star Wars fan?”

“What?” he asked, just plain out aggravated we were wasting his time.

“You know Obi-Wan? Luke? Chewie? The Force?”

“Out. Get out of the car.”

“Sorry, I was just curious. Saw the road.”

“You lookin’ for Mr. Russell?”

I glanced over at Abby and she was shaking and staring at her shoes. Her back was hunched as if it would hide her from the men.

Pissed me off. Pissed me off these motherfuckers would do that to her.

“Hey man, fuck you. I came here to see Jude Russell and if he’s here, great. I got something to tell him. If not, kiss my ass.”

I heard the clack of a shotgun and he reached for my door handle.

Without thinking, really acting more stupid than brave, I pulled out the Browning and leveled it at his head. Other shotguns clacked around me as he dropped the gun and took a few steps back. His face white and his mouth open.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I said. “I have a message for Mr. Russell about Elias Nix. It’s something I’m sure he’d want to know.”

The man nodded slowly.

“Put down the gun, sir,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”

I did and the men jumped to each door pulling me and Abby out into the rain. The thunder cracked way over a cotton field as they opened the mammoth doors, yawning like a whale, and pushed us inside.

INSTEAD OF CUSSING out the men who stuck guns in our faces a few minutes ago or demanding to see Russell, I asked for a cup of coffee. I smiled pleasantly at these hard-core rednecks in flannel shirts and duck hunting boots and told them just three sugars would be fine. The man with the gray goatee, who had first pointed the shotgun into the car, then nodded to an old black woman. She left and reappeared a few minutes later with a steaming mug stamped with a Labrador’s face.

“Thanks,” I said. “Got a little wet during the whole Bataan Death March up to the lodge. Nice place though. Very Ralph Lauren meets Ted Nugent.”

I glanced around at the deer and boar heads on the wall. A full-sized black bear, various large-mouth basses on plaques, and even a bald eagle. Man had actually stuffed a bald eagle.

I sipped my coffee — not bad — at a hardwood table that sat about twenty. A black chandelier with thick unlit candles hung overhead, reminding me of paintings I’d seen of the Spanish Inquisition.

The man with the gray beard didn’t say much to me but had been nice to Abby. He’d immediately offered her a sweatshirt and a towel when we walked inside. She took the towel and was patting her hair dry when a momentary flash of lightning knocked off the lights for a second.

The man took a seat by me and finally introduced himself. Easy to remember. Royal Stewart. I shook his hand and sipped the hot coffee while the other men loaded up their guns among dozens in racks by the front door.

“Didn’t mean to scare you; we were all out hunting when we got a call,” Stewart said. Had a pleasant deep hum to his voice with a dose of Memphis in it. “Kind of my job to look out for the place and Jude. So, no misunderstanding. All right? Just finish that coffee and head on.”

“Didn’t come here for the coffee. But it is good. Do I detect a little nutmeg?”

“What is it?” Stewart asked, the pleasant hum with a mean quiver in it. “You want Mr. Russell to pay out for a little gossip? He doesn’t do things like that.”

I put down the coffee. “Tell him it’s about Sons of the South.”

Stewart laughed. He combed through his wet gray hair with his fingers and kept laughing. “That’s it? You want to tell us that Elias Nix is in with those nutcases? Don’t you read the paper? Hell, he brags about it.”

“Listen, let’s quit fucking around. All right? See that young lady over there? Her parents were murdered a few weeks ago. I found a hell of a lot of personal letters at her house that shows her dad was working for Sons of the South when he died, at Nix’s instruction. If I were a cop and I learned about that, I’d want to talk to him.”

Stewart scratched his goatee. “Let me see the letters.”

“Let me see Russell.”

“Shit. He’s running for governor in an election that’s two weeks away. He’s at a rally in Memphis right now with another scheduled for later tonight. He has television appearances and speeches. Don’t you read the paper? Besides, I’m sure whatever unfortunate thing happened to this girl’s parents is being appropriately looked into. Who are you anyway?”

Abby spoke up: “Friend of the family.”

I smiled. “It will be worth his time. Besides, wouldn’t he want to know before reading it in the paper?”

“What?”

“What’s in the letters. A whole box of them, from Nix himself.”

Stewart stood and left the room for several minutes. When he returned his face was reddened and he seemed a little more jumpy. He chewed at his cheek and twisted in his seat before finally leaning across the table. “If this is some kind of bullshit, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”

T
wo-and-a-half hours later, Jude Russell walked through the hunting lodge’s oak door and shook the rain from his slicker and removed a wide-brimmed hat. He was younger than I expected, or just seemed younger. Slender boyish face with a lot of lines through his deeply tanned skin. He had thin brownish-gray hair and amber-brown eyes. He wore frayed jeans and beaten work boots that he slipped out of at the front door. He smiled to everyone seated in the kitchen as he padded in and opened a mammoth stainless-steel refrigerator searching for a beer. He found one and came back to the head of the table where he propped up his bare feet, smiled again at everyone seated around him, and said, “Now what the hell is all this about?”

The room had a pleasant energy as most places do during a storm. It felt good just being inside as a true shitstorm pounded the trees outside and batted the hell out of the windows.

“Hey, wait. Royal? Tell Rance to go get Muddy out of the pen and bring him here. Hell. So, what is this all about? Who are you?”

I introduced myself and Abby. I briefly told him about Abby’s parents — trying to get through it without too many details — and how we believed that Nix was connected.

“So why come to me?”

“We want to know about him.”

“You want to know if he’s just a good ole boy or a fuckin’ — excuse me — Nazi,” Russell said as a fat Lab came into the room shaking its wet coat and rested its snout in his lap. Russell rubbed his head and picked up a towel to dry the dog.

“Who is he and who are the Sons of the South?” I asked.

“Christ. I drove about an hour out of my way and am gonna have to haul ass back to some rubber-chicken dinner tonight because you want to know about my opponent? Shit, Royal, way you were talkin’ made it sound like this boy might have pictures of Nix screwin’ a goat.”

Everyone around the table laughed except Royal, who looked a little pissed. Russell tossed the towel on the ground and leaned back in his chair. He placed his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling.

“Letters?”

In the rain, Royal and I walked back to my truck for the papers we’d found at Abby’s. And for the next thirty minutes after we returned, we sat around and read useless memos and congratulatory messages from Nix to Abby’s dad. I knew she felt invaded and uncomfortable, and I was sorry for that. But I also knew this was the only way to get him to talk.

“Well,” he began. “You want to tell me your deal in all this, partner?”

“I’m a friend of the family.”

“How’d you know her father?”

“I didn’t.”

Abby said, “He’s my friend.”

Russell was good, an old poker-player type who could watch a man’s face and see what was clicking behind the facade. But I was pretty damned good, too, and stared right back. JoJo had taught me well.

“She hire you?” he asked.

“No.”

“What do you do, Travers?”

“Loaf.”

He laughed.

“I teach blues history at Tulane.”

“No kidding,” he said, a big smile crossing his lips. “Been to the Sunflower Festival, I’m sure.”

“Yep.”

“You know we’re not too far from the Stovall plantation where Muddy made that record for that man with the Library of Congress.”

“Alan Lomax.”

“You know him?”

“I met him once in D.C.”

“He still around? I bet he’s got some stories goin’ back into Clarksdale in the day when white folks kept to their side of town.”

“He’s in Florida. Been pretty sick.”

Russell had gotten me way off subject. I was used to people answering questions with a question or trying to angle the conversation so they could learn about you. That kind of talk usually came from oily record company types who got pissed when I asked them about royalties for some of the blues players I’ve worked with. But this was different, Russell seemed to have a genuine interest in the history of the Delta and had apparently done more than just read a few liner notes.

The politician scratched the ears of his big dog and finished off his beer. He offered me one and I refused.

“So,” I said, trying to get back to Nix. “Is he a Nazi?”

Russell clenched his jaw and rubbed his bare feet together. One foot was bruised and swollen purple around the big toe. He looked over at Royal and the older man shrugged. Apparently he did more than just look out for the place. He was an adviser of some sort.

I smiled for a minute. I’d bullshitted my way into a lot of things, mainly to find musicians or people who owed them money. But here I was sitting with the man who could be the next governor of Tennessee and I had to keep smiling. My ole tracker mentor would be damned proud. Rule one: You can bullshit your way through anything.

A maid placed a silver tray of pickles, salami, cheese, and sausage in the middle of the table. We all took a few things off the tray and sat back while Russell seemed to contemplate me.

“Is she one of your students?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Girlfriend?”

“No.”

“So what does this have to do with blues?”

I thought about telling him about Clyde James and Loretta and my time in Memphis and the casino and everything leading up to the meeting. But it was one of those things that I knew would only make him more suspicious. It was better to keep it clean. Friend of the family. New information on Nix.

“She’s a friend, man. I don’t know what to tell you. The Oxford police aren’t listening to her and we wanted to know more about Nix and the Sons of the South.”

“And you thought, ‘Let’s just knock on the door of ole Jude’?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

He studied my face again.

“Well, nothin’ I can tell you can get me in trouble. I tell some of the media, ones I can trust, the same thing. First off, if you tell someone else what I say I’ll deny it. Not ’cause it’s not the truth but because it could get me sued.”

He sighed. Rain pattering on the metal roof the only sound in the room.

“Sons of the South is dangerous as hell and Nix’s connection to them scares me for our state. You care about blues and the heritage of black folks around here? Nix doesn’t see that. The South is white. The music. The culture.”

“Celtic.”

“Yep,” he said, pointing the nose of his empty beer at me. “Exactly. Their favorite word.”

“And—”

Royal broke in: “This will illustrate our point,” he said. Not even looking at Russell as he spoke. Almost like a father. “Two years ago there was some trouble in Biloxi during spring break. Remember? It was national news. Well, some black college students were accused of raping a white girl and tearing up a bar. Turns out the girl was in some wet T-shirt contest and had brought five men back to her room with her. I don’t know the particulars and don’t want to. But when it made the news, we know some members of Sons of the South went to Biloxi looking for the boys when they were released from jail. They dragged one behind their car on a country road and crucified him on a barn door with a nail gun.”

Russell looked at my face as I listened. He nodded and gave it the proper pause before speaking again, to let the weight of the story sink in to both of us.

“The thing that makes them dangerous,” Russell said, “is that the makeup of the SOS isn’t a bunch of truckers and pig farmers. We’re talking about college professors, lawyers. Big-time Nashville businessmen. You ever live in Tennessee?”

I shook my head.

“Tennessee is really like three states. You have the east around Nashville that is blue-blood and conservative as hell. Voted against Gore in the election. Then you have the west that’s more rural and usually aligned with us. Then you have Memphis. Memphis is another world. Mostly black. Democrats till they die. The worry comes from the swing Nix could have in those western counties. His speeches sound awfully good to the Bible-thumpers.”