by Greg Iles
My meeting with Claude Buckman and his buddies left me disoriented. I felt like a protester who’d walked into a boardroom to tell off a bunch of corporate execs and walked out with a thousand shares of preferred stock. I’ve always felt I had a pretty stable moral compass, but the magnitude of the bribe offered by the Poker Club has set that compass spinning the way an electromagnetic field would. My intention in coming to this ancient site was twofold: first, to ground myself with Buck’s memory; second, to have a quiet place from which to make telephone calls. During this brief period when Buckman believes I might agree to his proposition, I feel physically safe, and I’d rather make my calls under the warm May sun than from my office downtown.
I hadn’t touched Buck’s guitar since picking out that one tune for Quinn, right after he died. The simple act of tuning the big baritone, then playing some of the songs I used to play with Buck, has settled me quite a bit. I’ve got the Indian Village mostly to myself today, and that’s helped, too. About four hundred yards away, an elderly man is walking a golden retriever near a smaller mound. They’re my only company now. After about twenty minutes of fingerpicking, I set the guitar in its open case, push my earbuds into my ears, and call my mother.
When I tell her I want to ask my father a question, Mom goes into protective mode. She’s worried I might pester him about accounting issues at the paper or even bring up the car accident that killed Dad’s first family. When I tell her I only want to know something about the Poker Club, she finally relents. I could have gone to their house to question him, but if Dad’s going to make me a target of abuse today, I’d rather it be from long distance. He can’t hold a cell phone with any stability, so she puts him on speaker. And because of his speech limitations, Mom acts as his interpreter and megaphone. Thankfully, she mutes the television.
“Marshall?” I hear Dad whisper. “Are you there?”
“Yes, sir. I’m here. I’m working a story, an important story, and I need to ask you a question. It’s about the Bienville Poker Club.”
He grunts as though surprised. Then he slowly croaks, “Fire away. Beats watching these paid flacks pretend to deliver objective commentary on CNN.”
Mom must be holding the cell phone right against his lips.
“All the years you ran the paper,” I say, “I can’t find any stories where you wrote critically about the Poker Club. I’ve been all through the morgue, and so far as I can tell, you never attacked them.”
This time my mother answers, trailing just behind the hoarse whisper that remains barely audible. “Well . . . I imagine you’re right. I think I suffered from tunnel vision back then. Those guys weren’t involved in the racial violence, not directly, and that’s where my focus was. I didn’t realize then that their corruption probably hurt the black community a lot more than a few rednecks with burning crosses. It was those guys, above all—the moneymen who held the power—who maintained the status quo.”
“Were they friends of yours? Buckman and the others?”
“Not really. I liked Blake Donnelly all right. Wyatt Cash’s father was a decent fellow. But I never had many friends in this town. My buddies were in the army or overseas. Foreign correspondents. The Poker Club actually asked me to join once, but I never considered it.”
“Why not?”
Dad hawks and spits with laborious effort, hopefully into a Kleenex. Then my mother says, “Different breed.”
“It sounds like you were aware of their corruption, though.”
This time the silence stretches for a while. “So that’s what this is about,” Mom repeats finally. “I read your story about Buck Ferris being killed. And I believe he was. But here’s the hard truth, son. Corruption is a part of capitalism. It’s a by-product of the system. A necessary lubricant to make the machine work. Given human nature, I mean. Because that’s the motive force of capitalism: greed. It’s the most pragmatic system there is.”
Even after decades of hard drinking, Dad still has a way of reducing complex questions to a few empirical statements. That’s why his editorials were always so pithy. “You’re saying we have to accept a certain amount of corruption as the price of business getting done?”
“I used to believe that. Take this paper mill deal—leaving out the question of whether the Poker Club killed Buck or not. If that mill is built, it will surely rest upon a tangled web of felonies and misdemeanors. You dig around enough, you can probably cut some of the strands of that web, maybe even pull the whole thing apart. But should you? The town needs that mill, Marshall, and everything coming with it. Is it right to deny folks employment just so you can stop Claude Buckman banking another few million dollars?”
Would Dad be surprised to learn that he’s restated Buckman’s thesis for him, in almost his exact words? For a moment I wonder if the crafty old banker just got off the phone with my father. “Probably not,” I tell him. “But damn, I’d like to take those bastards down.”
“Of course you would!” Mom says for him. “That’s the newsman’s dream. It’s Jesus driving the money changers from the temple. John Wayne wading through the black hats with a shillelagh, taking no prisoners. But that’s not real life.”
“Maybe not. But right now, I have the power to do it. I’m close to it, anyway.”
“Are you? I’m impressed. But you know the old saw.”
I think for a minute. “With power comes responsibility?”
“Hah! Maybe I did teach you something all those years ago.”
“Maybe you did,” I concede. Maybe more than I realized, I add silently.
“Are we done?” I hear Dad say. “Your mother just changed the channel to Pravda, and I have some shoes to throw.”
Pravda is one of Dad's nicknames for Fox News. He often refers to CNN as Entertainment Tonight. “That’s it, Dad. I appreciate it.”
“Uh-huh. Over and out.”
After Mom says goodbye, I pick up my burner phone and text Jet, typing: I know you said not to call. This is important. Get back to me ASAP. Then I set down the phone and pick up Buck’s guitar again. Travis-picking in C, I marvel over the clarity and amiability of my father’s response. I figured getting him to speak civilly would be like pulling teeth, as it has been on most occasions when I’ve tried to draw him out during the past months. What explains the change? If anything, I’d expect worsening health to make him less amenable to giving me a coherent answer. And less able. Thinking back on what he said makes Dr. Kirby’s dire prognosis difficult to accept. Can a man who speaks with such enthusiasm be that close to death?
Of course he can, answers a cold voice in my head. An airplane engine can run perfectly until the moment it fails—
My burner phone is ringing. I snatch it up and hold it to my mouth. “Are you alone?” I ask.
“I’ve got three minutes,” Jet says in a taut voice. “What’s happened now?”
“I just met with half the Poker Club at the Bienville Southern Bank. Max wasn’t there. They made me an offer. I want your advice.”
“What’s the offer?”
“Pretty much anything I want.”
“Money?”
“Not just money. They said if I want a new public school, they’ll make it happen. Infrastructure, done. Community betterment fund, done.”
There’s a brief pause. “In exchange for?”
“Dropping my investigations into Buck and the Poker Club.”
“Of course. What do you want from me?”
“Tell me what you’d do in my place.”
Jet is silent for a few seconds. “Have you found Sally’s cache?”
“No. That’s another thing. They want it. I told them I don’t have it, but they assume I’m lying.”
“Well, all this is hypothetical then. Without the cache, they won’t give you anything.”
“Not strictly true. Turns out I have a couple of secret admirers. First, whoever’s sending me the game camera photos.”
“Photos, plural? You got another one?”
; “Yeah. This one shows Beau Holland with Buck. Same night.”
“Wow. Who’s this other source?”
“I don’t know. But I think they’ve sent me part of Sally’s cache.”
This time the silence lasts longer. “What’s in it?”
“Emails, deeds, bills of sale. It details some scams involving members of the Poker Club.”
“Enough to ruin the Azure Dragon deal?”
“It’s definitely a start. It might be enough to persuade Buckman it’s the cache. But assume I had the whole cache. What do you say? What would you do?”
“Burn them down. Stall them, play along, then rip them to pieces in the paper tomorrow. Crucify them. They deserve it, every one. ”
“You didn’t take long with that. What about the consequences for the town? Losing the mill?”
“Screw this town. I know that’s not how you feel, but I’ve lived here for the last thirty years. You haven’t. You romanticize this place, Marshall. But it’s rotten. Think about Buck’s murder. Think of all he did for Bienville. But after they killed him, who really gave a shit? They all wished he’d died a year earlier, so their precious new mill wouldn’t be threatened.”
The bitterness in her voice makes me want to argue, but she’s right.
“You said half the Poker Club was at this meeting,” she reminds me. “Exactly who was there?”
“Buckman, Donnelly, Sumner, Cash, and Arthur Pine.”
“That’s the old blood, the old Bienville families. Excluding Max shows they’re already worried about him putting them at risk.”
“Buckman stated that explicitly. And leaving out Holland and Russo?”
“Beau’s never gone out of his way to kiss Claude’s ring,” she explains. “Claude hates him. And Claude might know that Beau was involved in Buck’s murder, if he was. Also, Russo’s an outsider. Mob-tainted.”
“Why would Buckman care about that?”
“He probably doesn’t. The Italian heritage is probably more of an issue for Claude. Tell me how they put this to you. They said they’d give you anything you want?”
“Buckman told me to write a Christmas list.”
“Wow. Wait a second.”
My earbuds go empty all of a sudden, and I wonder if I’ve lost my connection. Then Jet says, “Don’t you see? This is our chance.”
“For what?”
“To get away clean! This is how we get custody of Kevin.”
She’s giving me whiplash. “Seriously?”
“Claude Buckman can do it, Marshall, like issuing a royal edict. With Donnelly’s support, nobody would dare cross him. Not even Max. No chancery judge, that’s for sure.”
“Wait. Two minutes ago you said screw the town, crucify them. Now you’re saying cut a deal, but make sure custody of Kevin is at the top of my list?”
“I’m saying take all the good things that Buckman offered the town. But make sure custody of Kevin and a pain-free divorce are included. Everybody wins. The town, Kevin, you and me.”
“And the Poker Club.”
“They always win,” she says irritably. “That’s practically a law of nature. Their ancestors outsmarted the Union army of occupation.”
“What about the video, Jet? Max has a knife to our throats.”
“Tell Claude about the video! He’s a sleazy old man, he’ll get it right away. You tell him to make sure that footage is destroyed, or you’ll nuke that Azure Dragon deal like Kim Jong Un. Claude will make Max eat that video.”
“Jet—”
“I’ve got to go.” Her voice drops to an urgent whisper. “Make it happen, Marshall. Please. We’ve got swords hanging over our heads, hanging by a hair, and Max is holding the scissors. If he shows Paul that video, not even the Poker Club can protect us.”
“You haven’t had any luck stealing Max’s phone?”
“No. Oh—”
“Jet? Jet . . . ?”
She’s gone.
Her breaking off like that leaves me with an image of Paul snatching her burner phone from her hand. She’s right: we can’t live like this any longer. If Buckman can force Max to destroy that video, then maybe I don’t have a choice about whether to accept their offer.
Still, I think, laying down the guitar and walking a circuit of the mound’s flat top. I came out here intending to ask for three opinions, and I still want to hear the third. Before I sell my soul to save my ass, I ought to at least speak to someone whose judgment I respect without qualification. Nadine Sullivan is the most objective person I can afford to speak candidly to about this situation.
Though I’ve used up most of my allotted hour, I text Nadine and ask if she has five minutes to discuss something important. She rings me back thirty seconds later.
“Darryl told me Tim Hayden buttonholed you this morning,” she says. “I’m sorry about that.”
“No, we had a good talk. I missed talking to you this morning.”
“I rode out to Belle Rose and spoke to Tallulah Williams. I wanted to check what Max had said about my mother. I learned some interesting things.”
“Like?”
“Later. You should talk to her, though. She’s seen a lot out there. Anyway . . . what’s going on with you?”
As quickly as I can, I summarize my meeting at the bank. I tell her nothing about Max and his video, of course, but she gets the basic dilemma.
“You know what I think,” Nadine says. “Or you ought to by now.”
“Which is?”
“You go first. What’s your gut telling you to do?”
“Honestly? I’d like to tear the Poker Club apart.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ve ruled this town too long. It’s a deep cancer.”
“Can you honestly say it’s not because you want to be the one to cut it out? You don’t want to break a story that could carry you back into Washington with a bang? Chinese money meets American desperation and corruption, a marriage made in hell?”
“Nadine—”
“I mean it. Are you sure that’s not it?”
“Yes, I’m sure! It’s Buck, goddamn it. They murdered him. Not Buckman and Donnelly, maybe, but the younger guys. Probably Holland and Cowart, maybe Russo as well. They shouldn’t get away with that.”
“No, they shouldn’t. But they’re prepared to pay Quinn a million dollars in compensation. Have you asked her what she thinks?”
“No,” I admit.
“Maybe you should. Here’s my philosophy: the greatest good for the greatest number. That’s my mantra. I practiced law for seven years, and I can tell you this: justice is rare and fleeting. This Azure Dragon deal will shower good things on this area for decades. That’s its own kind of justice. It’s not the moral justice that Buck or his wife deserve, but it’s still a blessing.”
This was neither the answer I expected from her, nor the one I wanted. “And what about the little matter of betraying my profession?”
“Most people sell their soul in small pieces, my friend. You’ve kept yours intact long enough to get a high price. Be glad of that. And do it.”
“I wouldn’t want that on my tombstone.”
“Hey, if they put up a fifty-million-dollar public school in this town, you’ll earn your soul back ten times over. You hear me?”
This is the Nadine I remember. “Thanks for that.”
“Who else did you ask about this?”
“My dad.”
“And?”
“He articulated both sides. But if it were up to him, I think he’d side with you.”
“Who else?”
“Jet.”
“Ah.” That single syllable communicates a new tension. “Did you give her her earrings back?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“I’m surprised. What did she say about your dilemma? Same as before? Blow up the deal?”
Tell him to make sure that footage is destroyed, or you’ll nuke that Azure Dragon deal like Kim Jong Un—“Actually, she agrees with you
today. Denying the town all the things the Poker Club offered would be criminal.”
“Maybe she woke up on a different side of the bed.”
I guess Nadine and Jet are never going to be friends. The conversation of a group of people ordering coffee and pastries comes through the phone. “You sound busy.”
“I have a book signing starting in ten minutes.”
“Oh, man, I’m sorry. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Are you going to accept their offer?”
“I’m close to saying yes. But sitting here now, I realize I’ve forgotten something. If they build that mill on the present site, they’ll destroy the Indian settlement that Buck meant to be his legacy.”
Nadine doesn’t answer immediately. At length she says, “I get that. Maybe you demand that they move far enough downriver to save the site.”
“I have a feeling that’ll be a deal-breaker. Buckman’s ready to give me whatever he can, but that would be up to the Chinese. And it’s bound to be complicated.”
“Don’t mess this up, Marshall. Save the site if you can, but work it out.”
I click off.
I should call Arthur Pine right away. My allotted hour expired two minutes ago. The thing is, I dread giving him the answer they want. I now have more rationalizations than I need to justify saying yes, yet still something stops me. What? Is it my contrary nature? Am I simply too proud to knuckle under? Does it mean that much to me to tell Claude Buckman and his cronies to go to hell?
I pack Buck’s guitar back into its hard-shell case, then pick it up with my left hand and start down the narrow wooden steps of the ceremonial mound. With my right hand, I take out my iPhone and search my contacts for Pine’s number. I’m pretty sure I have it from a couple of stories where I contacted him for quotes. While I try to maintain my balance on the steps, my burner phone starts ringing in my pocket.
