Quincy looked around the table. "Well, can you forget? Uh-uh. No, suh! White folks just trouble, and we always caught in the shit swirlin' round 'em." He looked around the room and stopped when his gaze fell on another white face in the audience. "And you been spending so much time on the crackers by the door, you ain'even mentioned the white boy over there." Quincy cocked his head. "Why's he got the pick of the spots? And look at Lena! She's pouring him the same good bourbon we got." Myers closed his eyes and shook his head, then opened his lids halfway and spoke. "Quincy, you got a real thing here and we'd all like you to keep those opinions to yourself. It ain't helping a thing. We all got our issues. But we have us here a problem we got to work right or your niece'll have a lot more on her mind than some horny white boy." The police chief and Pete Mandeville nodded then.
"All right," Quincy Thompson said reluctantly. "But answer me 'bout the white boy Lena's taking such good care of. I've seen him here befo'." They all watched as the leathery old singer went over and greeted the man.
"An' lookit! Even Pap's got to go over and lick the man's boots."
"Cut it out, Quincy!" Pete Mandeville's voice carried a leather-stropped edge.
"That's Steve La Vere. If it weren't for him, the rich record companies would've robbed ole
Robert Johnson's heirs blind. Man's spent a lot of his money to keep blues alive. The real stuff, not prissified tourist crap."
"Now don't you be knocking B. B. King again," the police chief said. "He's an Itta
Bena boy."
"Awright." Myers waved his hands. "Can we be done with this?" Mandeville and the police chief nodded. Quincy Thompson glared at them all in turn, slumped in his seat, and crossed his arms in front of him.
"Okay, Quincy. So tell us about this phone call," Myers said.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Quincy said reluctantly, then sat up. "That's why I went out to the old sharecropper shack. Shanker called me, said I might know where Jasmine would be. I had no idea when I arrived she'd be there in the white boy's bed in her underwear-" "Let it go, Quincy?" the police chief boomed.
"Uh-huh. Well, they're supposed to meet at Judge Stone's old cotton gin at three in the morning." He inclined his head toward the back of the room. Everybody at the table knew the old shuttered gin in a weed-covered lot about two hundred yards northwest of them.
"Didn't Pap used to work there back in the bad old days?" Myers asked. The police chief nodded."Most everybody worked for the Judge back then. I know my papa did." He paused for a moment. "The Holy Rollers got a tent set up across the street, little bit this way from it. They've had a revival there this time of the year for as long as I can remember."
"Why they meeting?" Mandeville asked. "With Shanker,"
Quincy shook his head.
"I got an idea or two," Myers said. "Most I picked up from looking into the
Talmadge case-and some I learned a lot from Vanessa. I'll tell you what I know and maybe we can figure out what to do."
CHAPTER 67
Beneath the fluorescent glare in the Greenwood courthouse offices commandeered by Homeland Security, David Brown sucked another Marlboro down to his fingertips as the encrypted wireless phone rang.
"Brown."
"We got something."
"Go on."
"The tap on Tyrone Freedman's ISP shows a lot of activity; it's encrypted and running through proxy servers outside our jurisdiction,"
"Isn't that illegal?"
"No, sir. Not yet."
"Well, we squeeze those bastards on Capitol Hill and make it illegal." Brown grabbed his Marlboro box. It was empty. He ran his finger hopefully inside the box.
Nothing. "Shit."
"Sir?"
"Nothing." Brown threw the box toward the wastebasket and missed. The red-and-white flip-top landed on the floor near two other empties. "So, if we can't figure out this guy's net traffic, what the fuck good is it?"
"It's coming from his trailer."
"So?"
"Freedman's at the hospital."
"Bring his black ass to me." Brown smiled.
"Sir! And something else."
"Speak."
"We have a make, model, and license plate for the dead blonde's new rental car." "APB everything."
"Sir!"
CHAPTER 68
By midnight, the full moon had slipped to the horizon as Jasmine brought us into Itta Bena along a one-lane dirt road. She turned the headlights out as soon as we left Highway 7 and navigated by the now-fading moonlight. We navigated an overgrown section where blackberry vines clawed at us. Then she stopped. Ahead lay a patched asphalt road lined with modest houses.
"Where in the world are we?" I asked.
"A little north of the gin."
I rolled my window down. The scent of night blooms and summer flowers rolled in with the moist, cool air. "Let's make a circle to look for bad guys, then find a parking spot."
"No problem." She accelerated slowly, turned left, and clicked the headlights on. Less than a minute later, we intersected the main drag right at the old Turnipseed house and turned right.
Miss Eve's house-I couldn't for the life of me remember her real name-passed by on the left. She had been a widow with a house full of yellow and green parakeets and chickens outside. I remember going through the coop with her often. There were hens sitting on hay nests, and she would collect brown eggs and put them in a straw basket she allowed me to hold the day I turned six. Next to Miss Eve's, someone had built a house on the lot the Judge's wife, Mamie, had used as a vast rose garden.
Shortly after Jasmine turned left by the little brick Presbyterian church, a small car with glaring blue halogen headlights and purple under-the-chassis neon rocketed by in the opposite direction. Moments later, we passed the gin. Instants later, an Itta Bena police car trawled past us in the opposite direction. My heart held still for a moment. I followed it and exhaled when it disappeared without making a U-turn. "Can you make a circle and bring us by the gin so it's on my side?"
She nodded and made a loop through a modest, well-kept block of houses. It took me a moment to recognize it as Balance Due. Gone were the unpainted, weathered shacks with ditches out front full of excrement and waste water.
"You know, there's a street named for my grandfather not too far from here." I shook my head. "Al Thompson Street? Really?"
"Really."
I thought about this for a moment. "He deserved a lot more as far as I'm concerned."
A persistent smile brightened Jasmine's face as she drove the SUV back around the gin clockwise. When we slowed for a right-hand turn short of the square, I heard somebody playing " Hard Time Killin' Floor. " And the people are driftin' from door to door Can't find no heaven, don't care where they go.
Whoever was playing the guitar was doing a damn fine job of emulating the open D-minor licks that had become a trademark for Nehemiah "Skip" James and the rest of the Bentonia bluesmen.
The singer finished off with a single note on the open second string followed by a D7 chord. It was one of James's trademark endings and brought thunderous applause.
"Skip James," I said. "One of my favorites."
"Mine too. The music's coming from Lena's. Real blues."
She turned right and made her way back toward Balance Due without driving past the police station.
"You'll have to take me there sometime."
"Yes, I will." Jasmine offered me her best smile. "I surely will."
Across the street from the gin and about a block down, I spotted a gas station and auto repair shop, closed for the night. Vans, cars, and pickups, obviously left for repair crowded its parking area and the concrete apron around the pumps.
"How about there?" I asked.
In moments, Jasmine backed the SUV up between two pickup trucks and turned off the lights. The space fit the SUV like a knife sheath, but offered a clear view of the gin.