“He knows we did it,” Jefferson said. “He also knows we can’t have that made public in light of our investigation. It was a rival drug faction that killed Renway, thinking he was Wesley. You heard about the drug wars in Central America?”
“Sure. Sometimes they make the papers.”
“Well, Wesley wants to stay dead as far as the killers are concerned, so he’ll be safe from another assassination attempt. I told you, Carver, these ain’t Sunday-school teachers. As much money as there is involved here, it brings out the animal in people. They get to be hogs, just like the ones at Wesley Slaughter and Rendering. Sometimes they end up the same way. And the ones that aren’t the victims are the killers.”
“Even DEA agents.”
“Don’t lay that guilt bullshit on us,” Palma said wearily. “Half the kids in this country got fried brains because of attitudes like yours. We’re in a war, we gotta fight it any way necessary to win.”
“I wouldn’t call Bert Renway a winner. He didn’t die for his country in wartime; he died because a couple of asshole drug agents got obsessed with their cause and became anything-goes zealots.”
Palma stood up slowly from the sofa, the expression on his face unchanging but his eyes bright and alive.
Jefferson moved with his smooth little shuffle so his bulk was almost between Carver and Palma. Said, “Ralph, why don’t you step outside for a while. Let me talk to Mr. Carver alone. Maybe convince him of a few things.”
Palma relaxed enough for the whiteness at the corners of his compressed lips to go away. He said, “Okay. That seems like a sound idea.” He buttoned his gray suitcoat, spun gracefully on his heel, and walked from the room. Carver heard his measured footsteps on the kitchen tiles. Heard the back door open and close.
Silence.
Jefferson looked at him almost pityingly. “We’re alone now, Carver. That cane, that gun in your pants, they don’t mean shit.”
Carver tightened his grip on his cane and thought, Here come some more unconventional methods.
Chapter 18
Jefferson said, “You oughta know this about me, Carver. I’m straight serious about what I’m doing. Not dicking around in the slightest. You comprehend?”
“Sure. I’m the serious type myself.”
“You think you’re jiving me, but I happen to know about you. Know you’re telling the truth about being serious. Least you’re the kinda guy has to be taken seriously.” Jefferson spread his feet wide and placed his fists on his hips, squarely facing Carver. “I wasn’t always a DEA agent, Carver.”
“I didn’t figure you emerged from the womb with a badge and read the doctor his rights.”
“I emerged from the womb in a shack down in Waycock, Georgia. Wasn’t no doctor present, neither; which is maybe why my mother died givin’ birth to me.”
What was this? Jefferson’s voice had changed subtly, taken on a hint of black street-talk tone. All of a sudden he seemed like a wealthy drug dealer jive turkey dressed as a Wall Street broker. This guy was a pip.
Carver said, “You gonna give me the poverty-stricken-black-who-made-good tale?”
“You are a hard sonuvabitch.”
“I’ll melt some. Go on with your story.”
“Naw, that’s been told too many times, and hasn’t been a honky-ass like you ever really understood it. My daddy was a hard-rock Baptist preacher.”
“Sounds like a song title.”
“Ain’t though. This was real, down in godforsaken Waycock. Full-time man of the cloth, part-time janitor at the county library. Back in 1968 when I was fourteen years old in a Deep South that wasn’t much like the South we got now, though in some ways there ain’t a bit of difference. Was a lot goin’ on then with the civil rights movement, an’ both blacks an’ whites was all riled up mosta the time. Got especially so when certain things happened, like the riots after Martin Luther King got himself shot in Memphis. Hell to pay then. Lots of demonstrations in them days.”
Carver was surprised to see Jefferson’s large brown eyes shine with moisture. Either he was an Academy Award-class actor, or what he was saying was wrenched from down deep and dragging painful memories up with it. Hard to say for sure whether he was faking it or really going to the well.
“My daddy decided to lead one of them demonstrations,” Jefferson went on. “Peace and equality and all that stuff it’s s’pose to be naive to believe in these days. Said it was his Christian duty and his mission on this earth.”
Carver said, “Maybe he was right.”
Jefferson’s Adam’s apple worked. He flexed his thick fingers, clenching and unclenching his hands into fists. “Could be. I’ve thought about that. But the thing is, the Klan figured their mission was to stop him.”
“Klan as in Ku Klux?”
“The same.”
“Did they stop him?”
“Yeah. Within an hour of word gettin’ out about his plans. They stopped him by hangin’ him from the big willow tree next to his church. Willow branches are real flexible, Carver; Klan had to find a big one, high up, but even then Daddy’s feet nearly touched the ground. I remember it. His big brown work shoes came to within a few inches of solid earth, but them inches made all the difference between here and eternity. I was hidin’ in the church like my daddy told me the night they came, just before it got dark. There was over a dozen of ’em, all drunked up, drivin’ their cars and pickups right up into the churchyard. Gunnin’ engines and spinnin’ tires till you could smell hot rubber. One of the bastards even parked his truck in the cemetery out back. Can you picture that? Knocked over a tombstone and didn’t give a shit. Couple of ’em tromped into the church and found me where I was curled up in the rectory. Hee-hawed when I got scared enough to wet myself. Dragged me out so I could see what was goin’ on. What they was gonna do. Few of ’em wanted to hang me alongside Daddy, but some of ’em said it wouldn’t work, the willow branch’d bend and touch the ground. Couple of ’em wanted to shoot the young nigger dead, but that ain’t their style so it didn’t happen. What they did, they held me and made me watch while my daddy kicked and his eyes rolled back and his tongue got all purple and slithered outa his mouth farther’n you can imagine, like some foul thing that’d lived in him an’ was seekin’ light now that it was the end.
“Then his bowels emptied out and he stopped twitchin’ an’ that was that. Some of the Klansmen laughed and hooted. One of ’em threw a beer can so it bounced off Daddy’s head, as if it made any difference by that time. I can still hear the sound it made, though. Don’t ever open a beer can that I don’t think about it. Then the ones holdin’ me tossed me aside like somethin’ used up and didn’t matter, and they all climbed back in their cars an’ trucks an’ tore ass outa there.
“I sat in the dark and cried till the congregation members with the guts to show themselves come an’ got me. Everything goin’ on around the country at the time, it was hardly noticed what happened that night in Waycock, Georgia, little shitpile of a place not even a flyspeck on the map. Not important.”
Carver tried to speak. Found he had to clear his throat. Said, “Important to you, though.”
“Uh-huh. Most important night of my life.”
“Guess it would be.”
Jefferson’s breathing was loud. Even and deep.
“What’s it got to do with now?” Carver asked. “You suspect Frank Wesley was one of the lynch-mob faces under those hoods?”
“Hoods shit!” Jefferson said. “They didn’t bother wearin’ sheets and hoods. Didn’t care who saw their faces. You don’t understand, killin’ a dirt-poor nigger back in them days in the South wasn’t much different from doin’ away with a dumb animal. Same thing, in lotsa people’s minds. Some people that part of the world still think that way. Last several years, things gone backward ’stead of forward.”
“Then you know who the men were?”
“Just recognized two of ’em. Never saw the others again.”