Natchez Burning (69 page)

“That’s always the way with whores,” Walt said with fondness and regret. “Never ends well. Some no-’count customer always does something stupid, or the whore does something stupid to save some no-’count. Same difference.”

Walt reached into a drawer and brought out a flat bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon. “How ’bout we take a snort of this, buddy?”

“You go ahead. I’ve got to watch my sugar.”

Walt did, closing his eyes as the fine whiskey slid down his gullet.

“At least that punk spilled gas on himself, too,” Tom said. “He had enough third-degree burns to see his life pass before his eyes before he went to prison.”

“So how did you get Viola out of town?”

“I didn’t. After Ray saved her, it was all I could do to keep her from going to the police. I knew those boys were dead. Viola was so upset, she didn’t care if she went to jail for murdering Frank Knox. She just wanted her brother found. The Eagles were still looking high and low for her, but she didn’t care. I’d give her elephant doses of Valium, and they’d hardly put a dent in her. Just as she was about to snap, Martin Luther King was assassinated. The whole town went crazy then. The FBI turned all its attention to that case, and the Double Eagles went to ground. I got Reverend Walter Nightingale, a black patient of mine, to go by and talk to Viola. Somehow, he got her to see reason. The next day, she left Natchez and went to Chicago, just like thousands of Mississippi blacks before her.” Nearly overcome with guilt, Tom reached out for the whiskey bottle and took a slug that burned all the way down. “And until the other night, I didn’t even know whether she rode the bus or the train.”

Walt shook his head with empathy. “Which was it?”

“Bus.” Tom took another slug of bourbon. “You know why so many blacks from Mississippi ended up in Chicago?”

“Why?”

“It was the cheapest bus or rail ticket they could get to a major northern city.”

“I’ll be dogged. It’s simple, when you think about it.”

“Most things are, once you understand them.”

Walt took back the bottle and let it hang from his weathered hand. “When did you next talk to her after she left?”

“Six weeks ago.” Tom lowered his head and wiped tears from his eyes. “I loved that woman, Walt. And I didn’t see or talk to her for thirty-seven years.”

“Goddamn, son. That’s rough.”

“I know you know it.”

Walt took a deep breath, then gave a long sigh. Tom knew he was thinking about a Japanese girl he’d fallen in love with during an R&R in Japan. She had haunted Walt for the rest of his life.

“I’ve got no right to say I loved her,” Tom said, filled with anguish. “How can you say you loved a woman you didn’t try to talk to for thirty-seven years?”

“Easy,” Walt said angrily. “Did you ever go a day without thinking about her? One goddamn day?”

Tom thought about it. “Not for the first ten years or so. But after that … yes, I did. I don’t think I could have survived otherwise. Not sober, anyway.”

Walt grunted with empathy. “How did it go for Viola in Chicago?”

“Not good.”

“That’s what I figured. The land of peace and plenty up north wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.” Walt took a sip of lukewarm coffee. “Did she ever try to contact you?”

“Not that I know of.”

Walt’s eyes glinted in the dim light. “You think maybe she did, and Peggy put the quietus on it?”

“Maybe. But I don’t think so. Viola had too much pride for that.”

“Pride don’t last long when you’re tryin’ to survive.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Tom said. “I sent her money.”

“How’d you know where to send it?”

“Viola sent a few letters to the office. Not to me, but to the girls, you know. I sent money to the address those letters came from. Enough to buy staples and pay the rent. She cashed the checks. It was her signature on the back. I knew her handwriting, but I checked it against one of the letters to be sure.”

“How long did you do this?”

Tom looked down at his coffee. “Thirty-seven years.”

Walt reached out and patted his shoulder. “Partner, you haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

“Does anybody?”

Walt smiled sadly. “Not in my experience. Did you ever tell Peggy about all this?”

“No.”

“She never found out you were sending the money?”

“I don’t think so. She handled our money, but I always kept one account for myself that nobody ever saw but me.”

“Jesus, buddy. This reminds me of some of the World War Two vets who looked after women they met while they were overseas.”

“Yeah. Gregory Peck played in a movie about that.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
.”

“I saw that!” Walt smiled. “Damn, we’re old, ain’t we?”

Tom took the whiskey bottle and looked at it, contemplating another swig. “Walt … when I first saw Viola after all those years, my heart seized in my chest. Literally. I remembered her as a perfect beauty of twenty-eight, and what I saw was an old woman a few steps from death’s door.” He took a sip of whiskey, but now it tasted like acid. “It wasn’t just the cancer that had done it. It was time and gin and cigarettes and God knows what else.” A lump rose into Tom’s throat, and he heard his voice break. “She didn’t have any
teeth,
Walt. Just dentures, and bad ones at that. I felt sick for two days afterward, every time I thought of her.”

“But you treated her.”

Tom nodded. “Hardest thing I ever did.”

Walt took the bottle and slipped it back into the drawer above the microwave. “You helped her, buddy.”

“I wanted to. I wanted to save her. But there wasn’t any way to—not by that time.”

Walt squeezed his shoulder. “I know. You know I know.”

Tom felt himself shivering. “That’s the only reason I can tell you.”

“Tell me, then. Get it out.”

“I’m tired, Walt.”

“Screw that. Get the monkey off your back. This is me, son. We squatted in the mud and the blood and shit together. You can’t get no closer than that.”

Tom began to speak in spite of himself. “It was like I told you on the phone. When I first called you. It was like the ambulance. Exactly like it.”

“Goddamn it,” Walt whispered. “I knew it.”

Tom jumped when his cell phone vibrated in his pants.

“What is it?” Walt asked.

“My cell,” Tom said, digging the shaking phone out of his pocket with difficulty. The LCD read
QUENTIN AVERY.

“I told you to keep the damned thing off! They can track you with that.”

“I know. I turned it back on at the Sonic to check for messages, and I guess I forgot to turn it off.”

“Jesus.” Walt thumped the side of his head. “Radio silence!”

“Quentin?” Tom said, holding the phone tight to his ear. “Are you there?”

“I’m here. Penn called me, and he knows I’m your lawyer now.”

Tom swallowed. His throat was dry. “What else does he know?”

“Nothing.”

“Does he know I’m gone?”

“
I
don’t know you’re gone.”

“Okay … okay. Good.”

“But I need to ask you about something.”

“What?”

“The Double Eagle group.” Quentin Avery said the name the way a German Jew might say “Schutzstaffel.” Hatred and contempt dripped from his tongue, but there was a trace of fear, too, even after all these years. “They attacked Henry Sexton tonight. He’s barely hanging on.”

“Oh, God.” Tom felt nausea in the pit of his stomach. The cheeseburger was trying to come up. “What happened?”

Quentin had hardly begun his story when Walt tapped Tom on the shoulder. “They’re moving, Tom. Snake and Sonny are headed back toward Natchez. I’m going to drive to the bridge and pick them up when they cross back into Louisiana.”

Tom nodded and motioned for Walt to start the van. “Sorry, Quentin. Are you still there?”

“Yeah. And I’m concerned that you seem to have forgotten your age. You and your buddy both.”

“We’re all going to have to forget that for the duration, Quentin. You included. Finish your story about Sexton.”

While Quentin told his tale of the assault on Henry, Tom saw an image of a worried little boy who’d stood by while Tom stitched up his mother’s arm after an accident with some kind of farming implement. Tom had met Henry several times as an adult, of course, while treating his parents, but for some reason Tom tended to remember members of the generation behind his own as children.

Unlike Tom, who had spent most of his life trying to distance himself from the 1960s, Henry Sexton had tried to resurrect them, and he’d paid for his efforts tonight—possibly with his life, if he succumbed to his injuries. As the Roadtrek jounced out of the KOA park and onto Highway 61 South, and Quentin Avery’s mellifluous voice filled his ear, Tom said a silent prayer for the reporter. It was an atheist’s prayer, a foxhole prayer, but that was the only kind Tom had been able to manage for fifty years or more.

He put his thumb over the mike on his cell phone and turned toward Walt. “Have you still got them on your scope?”

The old Ranger nodded, his eyes glued to the screen mounted on the dashboard. “Still coming north. You still think Sonny Thornfield is the one to hit?”

When Walt turned, and Tom met his old friend’s eyes, no words were necessary
.

“Turn that damned phone off when you’re finished with your lawyer,” Walt grumbled. “I don’t fancy spending the rest of my days in Parchman.”

“I will. You watch the damned road.”

BRODY ROYAL POINTED
through the windshield of his son-in-law’s pickup toward a small building at the end of the street.

“Dark as a damn speakeasy,” he said. “I doubt they even have crime scene tape up.”

Randall Regan braked, then tensed as the squeal of rotors echoed down the street. “I don’t see a soul. I figured after what happened to Henry, the sheriff would have posted a man outside.”

“Amateurs,” said Brody. “Just like your nephew and his crew. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They couldn’t drag one fifty-year-old man into a truck?”

“They didn’t figure on a secretary packing a pistol.”

Brody grunted and peered down the dark street. “This town’s dying. There’s nobody on this side, this time of night. Not during the winter, anyway. It was different back in sixty-four. That night we burned Norris’s store, the signal was the end of the last shift at the King Hotel. That meant Ferriday was shutting down for the night.”

“When did the King close down?”

“Oh, hell, thirty years back.”

“There’s not even a crack dealer back here,” said Regan, chuckling as he rolled toward the
Concordia Beacon
building. “They’re all over on the main drag. They sell their shit right on Wallace Boulevard.”

Brody shook his head with disgust. “We’d have strung them up from the lampposts in my day. One on every block. Slow down, Randall. Just ease right up to the door.”

Regan craned his head over the steering wheel.

“Nose your fender up there and just push the door open.”

Regan drove over the glittering shards of Henry Sexton’s rear windshield, then turned his wheel to the right and slowed the truck to a crawl. The weight and momentum of the fender shattered every inch of glass in the door, like putting a finger through a sheet of ice.

“Back up,” Brody said, reaching for his door handle.

Regan did.

“Get the Flammenwerfer.”

Regan moved quickly. He’d been practicing with the flamethrower for the past two hours, and he’d become quite adept with the heavy unit. He strapped the two cylinders on his back, then took the firing pipe in his hand and walked through the door of the newspaper office.

Brody followed him, his pulse quickening.

“Computers first?” Regan asked.

“No. We need to get his private workroom first, then work our way backward. My source tells me he calls it his ‘war room.’ If he taped Morehouse, that’s where the tape will be. Unless he had it at home.”

“War room?” said Regan, heading down a hallway. “I’ll give him his war.”

He tried a couple of doors but found only storage rooms. The third, however, opened into a small room with maps and photographs covering every wall. Brody stepped inside and whistled. He recognized most of the Double Eagles in the first few seconds. Other photos showed Dr. Robb, a Ku Klux Klan rally, and charts of various kinds.

“Pay dirt,” he said, searching for his own face among the photos taped to the wall.

“You think Forrest is gonna be okay with this?” Randall asked.

“You think I care?” Brody caught sight of his daughter’s face, tacked to the far wall. He almost crossed the room for the picture, but then he backed out of the doorway. “Burn it, Randall,” he said in a strangled voice. “Burn it all.”

“Yes, sir.”

Brody heard a clank and a hiss, followed by a roar that sent chills racing over his body. A jet of liquid flame reached out from the pipe in Regan’s hand, like Lucifer pissing fire on the world. Henry’s Sexton’s war room became an inferno, driving Brody back from the breathtaking heat.

Randall shouted with exultation at the destruction, but Brody just stared into the flames, recalling a time before he’d lost his daughter, when the life he’d always wanted still seemed possible, and his hands had held something more than money and power. Across the room, his daughter’s face curled and turned to ash. Brody stumbled back, his nostrils stinging with the petroleum reek of battle, and staggered out toward the truck.

TWO HUNDRED YARDS UP
Tennessee Avenue, Sleepy Johnston sat behind the wheel of a GMC pickup, his Detroit Tigers baseball cap pulled low over his face, and stared at the truck parked against the
Beacon
building. Squinting through the dim light thrown off by the streetlamp, he saw a sign on the truck’s door:
ROYAL OIL, INC.

Sleepy hadn’t been sure what the old man and his son-in-law were up to at first, not even after he saw the big man put on the heavy backpack and walk into the newspaper office. But Sleepy recognized the deep red glow coming from the shattered door well enough. He’d seen that same glow on the night they burned out Albert Norris. A small crowd had gathered to watch the landmark shop collapse into itself while the firemen vainly played their hoses over the ruins, and Sleepy had been among them.