In the Blood (25 page)

“And what, pray tell, have we thought?” I asked.

“A good preacher speaks in word pictures, creating scenes in the minds of those who listen. But in the past year he sometimes lapsed into speaking of such images as if living them.”

“Like psychotic episodes?”

“Psychotic episodes. Yes, that could well be the answer. He seemed, well, almost delusional,” he said. “That’s the only word I have for it. I blame myself, of course.”

“For his delusions?” Harry said.

“I – we…those who loved him, should have confronted Richard about his problems. He was falling apart and we could have intervened.”

“You didn’t do anything for your good friend,” I said. “Why?”

“Richard had his delusions, we had ours. Our delusion was thinking he’d return to the Richard we knew.”

“Did you know Scaler was beating his wife?”

I expected a
What, me?
moment. But instead we got closed eyes and a slow-shaking head. “There were times when Patricia was late to a taping;
twice she was limping, once the make-up person worked half an hour to cover a bruise on her cheek. She said she’d fallen, bumped into the car door. I didn’t want to believe…” his voice trailed off. “Maybe it was part of Richard’s increasing anger. Or his delusions.”

We said we’d be back with more questions. Tut seemed happy we were leaving. He turned and began striding to the building.

I said, “Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes?” Spoken over his shoulder like he had to keep moving or turn into salt.

“Have you heard anything from Arnold Meltzer lately?”

He froze. Turned. Gave us a full frown with pursed lips.

Said, “Who?”

“Nothing. Just a name.”

Harry got behind the wheel and we pulled away from Kingdom College. Harry shot me a look.

“Indeterminate on the Meltzer ref, maybe he knew it, maybe not. And judging by the age of Scaler in that last video, Tutweiler was with the Rev. for more like thirty years. But what I really found interesting was how the once-immaculate Reverend Scaler seems to have gone from having a few problems to being angry and delusional.”

I nodded. “The man’s not even alive and he’s falling apart.”

“Where to next?” I asked Harry. He pulled a notepad from his pocket, studied a list of connections.

“A biker wannabe tried to abduct Noelle. Bikers tried to kill us on the return from meeting Sinta-pirininni, checking into Noelle’s start-point. Meltzer controls at least one biker gang. Do you think Ben Belker would have any more info on Meltzer?”

“You can bet he’ll have whatever there is. And it’ll go back years.”

While driving to Montgomery, Harry never mentioned the shrink or intervention or anything related, and I didn’t volunteer info, choosing instead to watch the scenery flashing by. I didn’t know if Kavanaugh was required to report to Tom Mason the details of our truncated session, but I’d done my part by showing up.

We pulled into the strip mall where the SLDP offices were located. Again, I saw the hulking
bubba type smoking in a battered pickup in the parking lot, hat low over his eyes. Same plaid shirt, same hard arms blue with tattoos. Same look shot our way.

I’d called and Ben was waiting. He brought Harry and me to his office, closing the door. “We know less about Meltzer than most of the movement leaders. He holds some of the ugliest ideas in a movement filled with ugly ideas, and he has lots of protection.”

“We’re interested in his past. Where’s Meltzer from?”

“He grew up in Noxubee County in Mississippi. Strict and confining childhood, from what I gather. His father was an itinerant preacher and handyman, more the latter than the former. Daddy Meltzer had odd ideas on child-rearing, and was prone to dress little Arnold in girl’s clothes and make him stand one-footed on a stool when he misbehaved. His mother worked as a clerk at Wal-Mart and didn’t seem to have friends. Little Arnie was very bright, but had a speech impediment that may have affected his schooling. His grades were poor.”

It amazed me how many serial killers and sociopaths had the same strange item in their backgrounds: dressed in clothes of the opposite sex.

“In high school Meltzer formed a group called the Alliance, a white, male-only club with secret passwords and handshakes and rituals. It seems adolescent, but…”

“But it gave him something he could control,” I finished.

“The recruits to his club were ignorant and poor. Arnold preferred strong, mean-spirited chest-thumpers. Together they made brawn powered by brains and beat the shit out of anyone who looked at them sideways.”

“He built a tribe,” Harry said. “When they became a tribe, they stopped being lone outcasts and losers, and became a force to be reckoned with. All held together by whatever ideology Arnold invented.”

Ben nodded. “Meltzer grew the Alliance like kids in 4-H grow gardens. After a few years it was a submerged but potent presence throughout a dozen surrounding rural counties; warriors for the white race. In his early twenties Meltzer branched out, writing and printing hate literature. Booklets and pamphlets and such. He’s authored several books. Meltzer’s managed to stay under the national radar, but if there’s a hate site on the web, chances are it’s traceable to him. Either he runs it directly, or has sponsorship.”

“Sponsorship?” Harry asked. “Like advertising?”

“He lets the owners run it free from his server network, offers graphics that put more slick in the sick. He promotes products on the sites. He also sponsors recruiting rallies and even retreats, if you will, where strategy and tactics are discussed. Like what politicians might be useful to the movement – again, under the radar – and deserve help getting elected.”

Harry suppressed a shiver. “You mention Meltzer writing books. Books I could find at the library?”

Ben reached to the bookcase on his wall, plucked out a softcover volume. He tossed it to Harry, who studied the cover.

“I saw this at Bailes’s trailer.”

“It’s a classic,” Ben said. “If you’re into Aryan supremacy.”

Harry held the book up for me to see.
Slaves By Nature
was the title, emblazoned above a color cartoon of blacks grinning, dancing, eating watermelons and, obviously from the position of the feet under a bush, having sex. The subheading was
The Truth at Last!!!

Harry opened the book and started reading:

“The black race is not a true race as such, but a subspecies that, when properly trained, is best suited for menial labor and low-thought operations such as simple assemblage in factories. As for constant revisionist bleatings about the injustices of ‘slavery’, both history and biblical reference instruct us that the Negro actually thrives in such an environment, needing constant oversight and a firm hand in matters of discipline. In this case slavery, far from being an impediment to development, actualizes the Negro…”

“That was Meltzer’s first effort,” Ben noted. “He’s penned a dozen others, all basically the same, all standard fare for the Aryan library.”

Harry tossed the book on Ben’s desk. “Meltzer make money at this?”

Ben shrugged. “Not a lot, given the limited market. But he also sells T-shirts, posters, flags, key rings –”

“Key rings?”

Ben scrabbled in his desk, tossed me a stamped-metal medallion with a key loop. I stared at it, a swastika over a WP: white power.

“Yours for $18.95 plus shipping and handling,” Ben said. “Everyone who’s anyone in the movement has a Meltzer key ring.”

“Costs maybe a buck to make,” I said. “Nice margin on Aryan nick-nacks.”

“As long as there’s a difference between races, Meltzer makes money on this shit. But it’s his dope muling that brings in the big bucks. Of course, he keeps himself removed from the drugs.”

“This rabbit ever pop from his hole?” I said.

Ben said, “Funny you should ask. Meltzer’s making a guest appearance tonight at a white-power rally near the border. He’s been uncommonly visible the last couple of weeks, this being his third rally in as many states. It’s unusual.”

“This like a Klan rally?” Harry asked. “Sheets and secret handshakes and burning crosses?”

Ben grinned. “Times have changed. Picture a rave, only with lots of hate and a median IQ of about twelve.”

“You have informants at the rally, Ben?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We know time and location, but penetrating a Meltzer rally is nigh on impossible. The only people invited are the inside
crowd who know one another. They’re suspicious folks. Or maybe a better word is paranoid.”

We raced back to Mobile with the lights flashing. Harry had a late-afternoon meeting with the District Attorney’s office about an upcoming trial. We discussed Meltzer on the high-speed run, wondering whether to pity the little boy in a dress made to stand one-legged on a stool, or hate what he’d become. Harry grudgingly opted for the former, I voted for the latter.

I dropped Harry at his car so he could run to the DA’s office. He leaned back in the passenger window.

“Where you heading, Carson?” he asked.

“Home,” I said. “Maybe take the boat out, paddle a bit.” I yawned against the back of my hand, did a tired look. “Or maybe I’ll catch a full night of Z’s, be fresh and ready in the morning.”

Harry looked dubious. “You’re not thinking about Meltzer’s rally tonight, are you?”

“Was it tonight?” I yawned.

“You’d get your ass caught. With no one to pull the wolves off your back.”

“Jeez, bro…” I shook my head. “You think I’m nuts or something?”

The rally was down a long country road, deep in the piney woods. A few guys on Harleys blew by me, did the white-power salute and I gave it back. There was another turn-off and I saw activity down the short piece of red-dirt road. I went two hundred yards past and pulled into a fire road in the trees.

Staying low, I moved through the brush until I was twenty yards from the activity. It was a checkpoint. I watched bikes and pickups and SUVs roll up, show a piece of blue paper to a half-dozen guys who looked like hell’s bellhops: greasy hair, gaps where teeth used to be, chains rattling on their boots, leather holsters holding serious ordnance. I figured the blue sheets were official passes, probably signed or somehow protected against copying. Someone smart at the top, like Ben had said.

I looked in the direction of the gathering, thinking of sneaking through the woods. I discerned a couple guys in camo among the trees,
holding rifles and smoking. Step on a twig and draw fire; no thanks.

It was the checkpoint or nothing.

Dark was falling. I crept back to my truck. It looked impossible to slip past the grimy crew at the checkpoint, but could I wangle an invite from someone less inclined to study me? How did the process work?

Nothing to do but find out.

I drove back to a spot a couple hundred feet from the turn-off, turned around as if aiming at the rally, pulled off the road. I got out and began rummaging through my glove box, throwing maps out on the road like they’d been tossed there in a rage. I saw a stripe of red beneath my seat: the ridiculous flag yanked from Beefer’s truck: Hank Williams, Jr. on a Stars’n’Bars. How would it play to this crowd – heroic icon or cartoonish blasphemy?

I hung it in the rear window as a big van roared up from behind, a half-dozen people in the rust-bucket vehicle, four burly men and two women. I shook my head and started jamming the stuff back in the box as the truck rumbled up beside me. My keychain dangled from my pocket, the WP medallion flashing against my jeans.

The van stopped and the driver yelled out the window.

“Problem, bud?”

I did childish rage. “I’m turning around and gonna miss the fuckin’ blow-out, that’s the problem. I’m stupid. That’s another problem.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“My pass. I thought I stuck it in the glove box, but musta left it in the saddlebag of my hog.” I kicked the tire, yelled, “Fuck!”

The guy driver jumped out and moved toward me. He was six four or so, Harry’s size. Wearing a pirate’s beard. Hard muscles all over, with wild hair half restrained by the bandana. He sucked from a bottle of Dixie beer and stared into my face. He scratched his beard and I saw the word KILL inked across the knuckles of his right hand.

“Where’d you get it?” he growled. “The invitation here.”

“Sonny Rollins,” I said, figuring these guys weren’t into jazz.

Suspicious eyes. “Never heard a him.”

“Sonny’s ramrodding the movement in Memphis. Sonny couldn’t make it but got me a pass; thought I might make good contacts. I know Sonny through Donnie Kirkson.”

The hard eyes somehow got harder. “How you know Donnie?”

“He got in Holman two months ’fore I got out. We helped keep the niggers off each other.”

His hands curled into fists and his eyes tightened to bunkers.

He yelled, “BULLSHIT!”

My heart stopped. I think everything stopped.

“Uh…what?”

“That was a goddamn
bullshit
charge. I heard the runaway looked at least eighteen. They been
after Donnie for years, finally used that goddamn bullshit charge to lock him up.” He calmed a degree or two, did concern. “Donnie doin’ all right, bro?”

“Puttin’ on a little weight,” I said, patting my gut. “Prison food. But he’s hangin’ tight.”

The guy flashed a look at my keychain. Studied the flag. A grin took his face. He sang, “Are you ready to par-teeee?” echoing a Hank Williams, Jr hit song.

“I was, but now I ain’t,” I said, climbing back in my truck. “Y’all take care and party hard for me.”

The guy started back into his van, thought a moment. “Come on in behind us, I’ll vouch for ya. One of the guys on security is my cuz. We all forgit shit now’n then, right?”

“I wish you’d stop forgettin’ to wear underwear,” the scraggly blonde in the passenger seat crowed out the window, provoking a chorus of hoots and catcalls inside.

“Thanks, brother,” I said. “Eighty-eight.”

“Fuckin’ yeah,” he grinned. “Eighty-eight. Fall in behind.”

The air at the rally smelled of beer and sweat and barbecued pig. I walked to a white tent bordering the woods where a hog was roasting in a pit and three guys were pulling beers from ice-tubs and setting them on the slat-board counter. Aryan Nation flags hung from the rear of the tent. I tossed down a ten-dollar bill, took away a can of Bud
and a half-cup of ’cue ladled over a grocery-store bun that was mostly air.