We sat in a loose grouping of lounge chairs, and Hoyt relit a dying cigar while I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket. Ripples of light from the water scattered across them.
“Ain’t you the fella from the fillin’ station?” Hoyt asked.
“That’s me.”
“I know your wife’s daddy. He sure is a pistol.”
Matthews was dressed in a blue pin-striped suit, white shirt, and no tie. He waited, his legs crossed and posture erect.
Hoyt got the stogie going and pulled an ashtray close. He smiled and grunted. That man really liked to grunt.
“Now, John,” Hoyt said. “I want you to know right off that I didn’t have a thing to do with what happened. I didn’t want another day to pass ’fore I said that to you.”
John nodded. The filter of the pool made whirring sounds in the silence. Matthews just looked into the face of John Patterson, meeting his eyes, and nodded along with Hoyt’s words.
Hoyt had grown fatter since I’d seen him last, and his nose had started to swell in that big Irish way. He lifted up a Scotch filled with melting ice and took a sip and alternated it with the cigar. He’d always reminded me of W. C. Fields with a Southern accent.
“Can’t I please get y’all somethin’? I know it’s been a heck of a day. But I’ve heard what all the newsmen have been saying about me and all those stories about me and Jimmie and the Bug and the nightclubs and all that ancient history. I never suspected you’d pay attention to it.”
John looked up at him, his jaw tight. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well,” Hoyt said, and grinned and then closed his mouth. His face flushed red. “Well, I mean, you know how things were between me and your daddy.” Hoyt turned to me. “Hey, you. You mind goin’ somewhere else while we talk?”
“I do,” I said.
“He stays,” John said.
Hoyt just nodded. He pulled a wet napkin from under his drink and ran it over his face and fattened neck.
“I know you did everything in your power to make sure that my father lost the election and the runoff,” John said. “I know you bought off every vote you could in Russell County and sent your men all across Alabama to do the same. How many tens of thousands of dirty money did you put out there?”
“And we both know that Monday he was set to tell the grand jury in Birmingham about every dirty penny,” I said. “He had folks who could prove it.”
“Boy, why don’t you go and scrape the grease from your fingernails?”
I smiled at Hoyt. “And to think I got all dressed up to impress you.”
Hoyt grunted. He smiled at me. It was like watching a bulldog pant.
The back of the ranch house was mostly windows, and, inside, Hoyt’s wife, Josephine, glided through the family room in a pink satin robe with feathered ruffles. She was blond and built like a brick house, a damn-near twin for Betty Grable, and when she appeared outside and came toward us it was brisk and upright on three-inch high heels that I soon noticed were made from a cheetah print.
A little dog yapped after her, a poodle trimmed in the traditional way and dyed a bright pink. (I knew she also liked to dye the dog blue on occasion.) “Can I offer you men a cocktail? We have some fresh cocktail shrimp.”
John didn’t even acknowledge her, still studying his eyes on Hoyt Shepherd and Matthews, and they exchanged glances.
“I don’t think these boys are stayin’, Josie.”
I thanked Hoyt’s wife and she smiled and winked politely and moved away, her shapely backside switching and swaying like a pendulum.
“You believe that woman married me for my looks?” Hoyt asked, watching her walk, and laughed till he coughed. He swigged down some more Scotch.
“Are we finished?” John asked.
“Just listen,” Hoyt said and reached out and touched John’s hand. “I may be a real sonofabitch and sometimes what many people may call a fool. And maybe I didn’t want your daddy becoming attorney general. I mean, can you blame me?”
“Yes,” John said.
I remained quiet and finished out a cigarette and crushed it under the heel of my shoe. I leaned forward, listening, watching the pool, watching Hoyt and silent Jimmie.
Jimmie looked to me and nodded with recognition.
“I’m not a stupid man,” Hoyt Shepherd said. “I know that the killing of your father wouldn’t do a thing but topple down my world. The man who did this just stopped business in Phenix City cold. What do we have now? No GIs in bars. Girls off the streets. National Guardsmen on every corner. That’s not something I ever wanted to see in my town.”
John watched him. Hoyt offered his hand, again.
Not caught off guard, he just looked at it. Out in the valley, the cattle grew nervous and groaned and called out, sounding almost like screams, and I could hear their heavy feet shuffling and brushing against each other, frustrated under the moon.
I started a new cigarette.
“Last night, that nutcase Si Garrett and his trained monkey, Arch Ferrell, hauled me into the courthouse at three o’clock in the morning,” Hoyt said. “Ferrell was as drunk as a skunk, and Garrett talked so fast I couldn’t even understand most of what he said. But most of what he said, Jimmie, correct me if I’m wrong on this-”
Jimmie nodded.
“They like both of us for this,” he said. “Garrett called us the crime lords of the den of iniquity. And I’ll be goddamned if I didn’t have to look up what that meant in the dictionary when I got home. And, men, it wasn’t good.”
“What do you want us to do about it?” John said, standing.
I joined him.
“Just keep an open mind,” Hoyt said. “I hear you’re aiming for your dad’s spot.”
John nodded. “I am.”
“I understand,” he said. “I wish you luck.”
“You don’t mean that, Hoyt.”
The air smelled of chlorine and the gardenias and cow shit.
Hoyt smiled and kind of laughed, his face clouded in his exhaling breath. “Guess I don’t.”
“I haven’t been back in Phenix City long, but I know to watch where I step.”
“That’s not what this was about,” Hoyt said. “I just wanted you to know this isn’t my deal. I have no part in this. I didn’t leave my neck out for no misdemeanor vote fraud. We’re all hurting. Did you know the same night your daddy was killed, someone broke into my other house and blew a safe bigger ’an a truck? They ’bout cleaned me out.”
“What does that have to do with my father?”
“Everything,” Hoyt said. “You can’t trust a crook no more. There was a time when a man’s word meant something. This town has gone to hell.”
John simply nodded. He then looked over at Jimmie and said, “Good night.”
Jimmie gave a soft smile and both older men remained seated.
“You boys listen to me,” Hoyt said. “I will cut out my heart and place it here on the table if Bert Fuller and Johnnie Benefield didn’t have something to do with your daddy. Benefield is the most coldhearted, sadistic sonofabitch I’ve ever known.”
THEY FOLLOWED A LONG PATH INTO THE WOODS, PUSHING along a fat man in handcuffs, Fuller knocking him in the back of the head with a revolver when he’d slow down. The man wore pressed pants, no shirt, and a tie, his shirt torn away after they’d run his car off the road. Reuben walked between Fuller and Benefield, who wore a brown western suit with gold stitching.
There was a path, but it hadn’t been trod since hunting season, and Fuller swatted away branches that slapped back and hit Reuben in the face and eyes as he struggled along half drunk on Jack Daniel’s. He still carried the open bottle from Club Lasso, where he’d gotten the call, and quickly met the men in the woods.
Benefield had worked PC for years and had taken on jobs in Atlantic City and in Tampa for some Italian boys down there. He was a natural-born killer, loved the job, and had killed so many in Phenix City that Reuben had lost count. Benefield and Fuller were as thick as thieves, and, under Fuller’s protection, Benefield could do about whatever he wanted. The man’s eyes were black and soulless, and when Benefield smiled Reuben felt an icy prickle run along his back.