“The letter was addressed to me?” the old man said, his eyes laser-focused under heavy, untrimmed brows.
“Yes, sir.”
“And the envelope, when you found it, it was sealed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you opened it…?” the old man said, something undefinable in his voice.
“I had to make a judgment call,” Sherman Layne said, calmly. “I wanted to make sure I was doing right by you, Mr. Hoffman. Which is why I called you privately. My chief doesn’t even know. But this is a murder investigation. I had to look before I acted. And now I’m glad I did.”
“Do you have any suspects? In the Dioguardi homicide, I mean.”
“Suspects, sure. I can almost guarantee you that the Dioguardi killing was the work of Royal Beaumont. They’ve been feuding for a long time. Over territory. Beaumont’s territory, Locke City. Dioguardi was trying to move in. A while back, one of Beaumont’s men disappeared. A man named Hacker. Vanished without a trace. Then one of Dioguardi’s collectors gets himself clubbed on the head and left for dead. After that, two more of his men are gunned down in the street.
“Beaumont’s whole crew are mountain men, Mr. Hoffman. They take a feud to the grave. So, whether it was business or revenge, I couldn’t tell you. But it was Beaumont, you can take that one to the bank.”
“What’s your rank in the department, Detective?” Hoffman asked.
“You just said it, sir. Detective. Detective First Grade, actually. But that’s not a rank, all by itself. I draw a sergeant’s pay, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And the chief…?”
“Jessup. George Jessup.”
“Yes. Would I be wrong in surmising that he and Mr. Beaumont are good friends?”
“No, sir.”
“All right, Detective. You did me a real service this day. Mr. Cross will show you out.”
1959 October 10 Saturday 18:03
The man with the repaired harelip approached the front desk of the hotel.
“May I help you, sir?” Carl asked.
“No. I can help you. A good friend of yours wanted you to have this,” the man said, holding up an attaché case of black, hand-tooled leather. “A gift.”
“It’s beautiful,” Carl said. “But I don’t know anyone who would want to give me such a-”
“Look inside,” the man said. “When you’re alone. Don’t do it here.”
1959 October 11 Sunday 00:13
“Walker, you’re all dressed up. And I’m…” Tussy made a vague gesture toward her outfit, a lumberjack’s shirt over a pair of jeans. She was barefoot, face freshly scrubbed. “We’re not going out at this hour, are we?”
“No. I’m going away.”
“When will you be-?”
“I won’t be back, Tussy. Not unless… Look, I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I have to tell you my story,” Dett said. “You’re the woman I’m supposed to tell it to.”
“You’re scaring me, Walker.”
“You don’t have to be scared of me, Tussy. You’re the only person on earth who never has to be.”
“You’re really… going away?”
“Yes.”
“This story you want to tell me-is it that you’re married, Walker?”
“I don’t have anyone,” he said, very softly. “And I never will. Could I tell you? Please?”
1959 October 11 Sunday 00:28
“I’m not a real-estate man,” Dett said. He was seated on the couch, Tussy a cautious distance from him on the chair. “I think you knew that.”
“I didn’t at first,” Tussy said. “Now I know you must be some kind of a… criminal, Walker. But I don’t care. You can always-”
“Let me just tell you, please,” Dett said. “I… I waited a long time for this, and I need to get it right. The truth. Truth as pure as you. Let me just… talk, all right? When I’m done, you’ll know everything. Please?”
“Go ahead, then,” Tussy said, setting her jaw. She adjusted the lumberjack shirt tightly around her, sitting with her knees together, back straight.
“I was a wild kid,” Dett began. “Always in trouble, for one thing or another. Nothing big, but plenty of it. Mostly because I had a foul temper. When I turned seventeen, I went to prison, for robbing a store. That’s where I learned how to fight. Not like I had before, in a temper. This was the cold way.
“When I got out, I was twenty-one years old, and the war was on. I went in the army. Not to be a hero, or a patriot, or anything. Just to get away from everything I… didn’t have. They were taking anybody then.
“I served in the Pacific.” Tussy’s eyes started to flood. “That wasn’t it,” Dett said, sharply. “I’m sorry, Tussy. I didn’t mean to yell at you. But you need to understand-what happened, it didn’t have anything to do with the war. It was just me, what I did, later. Okay?”
Tussy nodded, lips pressed tightly together.
“When I got out, I was almost twenty-six, and I didn’t know how to do anything. But that’s no excuse, either. I could have gone to school. To college, even. On the GI Bill. I could have gotten a good job, bought a house… I could have been a regular person.”
Tussy opened her mouth to interrupt, but reached for a cigarette instead.
“I just… drifted,” Dett said. “But wherever I went, I was always in the same place. I’d work for a while-there was plenty of jobs: oil fields, timber mills, cotton crops-then I’d just sit around and do nothing. Have a few drinks, get into a fight, spend a couple of nights in jail. Three months on the county farm, once.”
Dett paused, lit a cigarette of his own. “Then I killed a man,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I’m not saying it was an accident, but I wasn’t thinking about killing him. It was just another fight. If he’d been a white man, my whole life would have been different.”
Tussy squirmed in her seat, as if awaiting a sign from Dett to speak.
“They took me down to the jail,” Dett said. “And that’s when it started. A couple of men came to see me. Government men. I say it was two men, but it could have been one; they were so much alike I couldn’t tell where one started and the other left off.
“They told me I might get off on self-defense, this being Mississippi and all. But I might not, especially with my record. I might spend a long time down at Parchman for what I did. They said everyone was watching now. They meant the whole world. It was right after that boy was killed for whistling at a white woman. They said the law might have to make an example of me. I was scared.
“Then they said there was a way I could make it right. They could fix things so I wouldn’t have to go to prison, fix it so nobody would even be mad about it. And what they wanted in exchange, they just wanted me to join the Klan.”
Dett took a deep drag of his cigarette, closed his eyes for a split second, then went on. “See, I was a natural, Tussy. Anybody checking me out, they’d find I was in prison before. The Klan wouldn’t care about that, the government men told me. What they’d care about was that I went to prison by myself. I never told who else was in on that robbery with me. So it was like a good mark on my record. And being in the army, overseas, that was a good thing, too. It showed I could… do stuff, they said.
“But the best thing, that was me killing that man. They said the Klan was mostly loudmouths. Brave when they were burning a cross, but just bullies, hiding behind sheets. You know, scared to fight a man fair. But me, I had done that. ‘You killed a nigger,’ one of them said. ‘In hand-to-hand combat. For the Klan, that’s a better medal than any you could get from Uncle Sam.’
“I would be like a federal agent, they said. I’d have to use my eyes and ears, and make reports to them. They said the Klan was a danger to America. A subversive organization, they called it. I would be like a spy, for the government. When I found out the names of the people who were doing the lynchings and burnings and bombings, I’d tell the FBI-that’s what they said they were, the FBI-and they’d move in and clean things up. Because it was for damn sure the local cops were never going to.