The Sweet and the Dead

by Milton T. Burton

  Nell erupted in real belly laughter, something I’ve always loved in a woman. “I’m sorry,” she said once she’d caught her breath. “But it’s so funny.”

  “I know,” I agreed. I scooped up another big bite right out of the heart of the flounder. “One more?” I asked.

  “Tempter,” she said, and leaned over and opened her mouth.

  Thirty minutes later I paid the check and drove her back to the Gold Dust to get her car. It turned out to be a new white Thunderbird. As she got behind the wheel she gave me a quick flash of a black garter belt and a pair of long, well-tanned legs. “I had a nice time,” she said. “Thanks for the coffee. And you will call, won’t you?”

  “I promise. If not tomorrow, the next day for sure.”

  “Good enough,” she said, and glided off into the darkness.

  Five

  The next morning I found myself sitting on the side of my bed, thinking. As soon as I’d walked into the Gold Dust the evening before I’d begun kicking myself inwardly for letting Wallace talk me into coming to Biloxi. Until that moment I hadn’t been aware of how tired I’d been of all the outworn trappings of my job— the dim light of the cheap dives with their smells of spilled beer and yesterday’s cigarette smoke; the tinsel women and their bitter, once-sweet faces and their bad clothes and worse attitudes; the strutting hoods with their stale mannerisms and their endless posturing; the dress, the jargon, the very cadences of criminal life itself that now repulsed where once they had fascinated. But there was one bright light on my horizon, and that light was Nell Bigelow. Yet I had one worry: while I liked her, I didn’t like it.

  It, of course, being the whole situation. The way she’d battened on to me so quickly. The way she’d waited for me in my car. And above all, the lingering question in my mind: why would a classy, sophisticated woman like her whose father “owned half the Delta” associate with somebody like Jasper Sparks?

  I pulled on my shoes and coat and went down to the motel café where I ordered sausage and biscuits and a large cup of coffee, all to go. Once back in my room I called Blanchard’s office number in Jackson. It took some dithering and doodling, and I had to go through two layers of flappers, but after a couple of minutes I had him on the phone. “What can I do for you, Hog?” he asked, his voice full of good cheer.

  “I need to check out a woman named Nell Bigelow.”

  “So what about Nell?” he asked.

  That surprised me. I paused for a few heartbeats, then said. “So it’s ‘Nell,’ is it? Know her pretty well, do you?”

  “Sure. Everybody does. What do you want to know about her?”

  I thought for a minute. “Is she what she appears to be?”

  “I don’t know, Hog. What does she appear to be?” There was a leer in his voice. “The last time I saw her she appeared to be one damn fine-looking woman.”

  “Curtis, would you please cut the crap?” I said. “This girl seems pretty chummy with Sparks, and it concerns me just a little.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “I’d trust her with my life. Hell, she used to be an assistant federal prosecutor over in Dallas. In fact, she was one of the first women to prosecute on the federal level.”

  “She’s a lawyer?” I asked, astonished.

  “Yes, and a damn good one.”

  “What’s the story on her, Curtis?” I asked sipping my coffee and trying to take it all in.

  “Classic southern daddy’s girl. Her old man owns half the Delta—”

  “So people keep telling me,” I said dryly, interrupting him.

  He laughed. “Well, damn near half of it. Anyway, Nell’s an only child, and they’ve been butting heads ever since she was big enough to walk. Daddy wanted her to take up tennis, but she took up golf. He wanted her to learn to ride English tack, so she rode western. He wanted her to go to Vanderbilt, so she went to Ole Miss. He wanted her to go into something nice and ladylike, but she became a lawyer.”

  “I get it,” I said. “Mutual hatred.”

  “Absolutely not. Electra complex. They’re mad about each other, but they squabble a lot. She wins and he pays the bills. It’s a great arrangement all around.”

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  “Nell’s been married twice, Hog. Both times it fell apart because the husbands just couldn’t measure up to Daddy. Or hold their own with him, either. He’s a domineering old son-of-a-bitch. I have to say that even if he’s a friend of mine.” He paused for a few seconds, then asked, “Hog?…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think this might turn into an affair of the heart?”

  “I don’t see how, Curtis,” I replied, and felt my face reddening a little. “I mean, she’s—”

  “Beautiful and rich and stylish,” he said, finishing the sentence for me with a laugh. “And you’re like me. Aging and ordinary. But you’ve got one thing the other two didn’t have, and she’ll realize it pretty quick if she hasn’t already.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “You can hold your own with Daddy. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. And the reason I asked is that...” He fell silent, and I could hear the labored breathing of a man dealing with a subject he found a little embarrassing. Finally he said, “The truth is that Nell’s real needy in that regard. I don’t usually get off into this kind of Dear Abby crap, but I’ve known her for a long time and I’m awfully fond of her. If anything develops along those lines, be kind to her. Will you please?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I answered, puzzled. Dear Abby crap was right. “But her and Sparks—”

  He sighed. “She’s like a lot of us, Hog. Cops and prosecutors, I mean. Interested in police characters and comfortable around them.”

  He was right about that. The one thing a cop has in common with a hood is that they both know the score and the square doesn’t.

  “And Hog,” he continued, “you can trust Nell just like you would me.”

  “Now by God, that’s reassuring, Curtis,” I said. “I mean with friends like you ...”

  I heard a hard laugh come through the receiver, and then he said, “One final thing, while I’ve got you on the phone.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re in the right place at the right time. I’ve been picking up a little stuff on Benny’s death from some informants I’ve got.”

  “What stuff?” I asked, suddenly hyperalert.

  “Nothing firm, no names or anything like that. But I’ve got a guy over in Gulfport who runs a dive that’s a lot like Lodke’s places, and he’s been on the snitch to me for years. The man’s sorta connected, if you know what I mean. Does a little fencing and what-not, and his information has always been reliable.”

  “So what does he say?”

  “That Benny’s murder was definitely a Dixie Mafia hit.”

  “But who—”

  “That he doesn’t know, but it may well have been somebody from this Biloxi bunch that’s been operating around Dallas some in the last couple of years. And listen, Hog…I know how you felt about Benny, but if you tie it to somebody down in Biloxi don’t go off half-cocked. Let me know and maybe we can arrange a little something after all this business is over.”

  “I’m not going to fly off the handle and blow the operation, Curtis,” I said firmly.

  “Good. Take care, Hog.” There was a click and the connection was broken.

  I sat and pondered while I finished my sausage and coffee. I was just about to get in the shower when the phone rang. It was Bob Wallace. “I called a few minutes ago,” he said as soon as I picked up the receiver. “But your line was busy. You must have done found you a girlfriend.”

  I squeezed the handset for a few seconds in exasperation. It seemed that everybody wanted to horn in on my love life. Or lack of it. “I guess it’s just my fate to have to deal with all the rascals this morning,” I said. “I was hoping to be able to look into the fishing down here sometime today.”

  “You must have been talking to Curtis,�
�� he said. “Seeing as how he’s the only other rascal you know.”

  “That I have. Now what’s up?”

  “I just wanted to let you know there’s going to be some more street talk headed your way about that Danny Sheffield deal.”

  “Yeah? How come?”

  “Because I planted it myself to get it out there and working for us.”

  “Thanks, Bob,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Don’t mention it, Hog.”

  “You better run it down to me.”

  “Yeah. You remember Jacky Rolland, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I couldn’t forget him if I tried. Rolland and his partner, Lloyd “Bigfoot” Waters, were the only two cops in Dallas history to morph into full-tilt police characters while still carrying badges. That had been over ten years earlier, when both were among the youngest detectives on the Dallas force. Waters was the strong, silent type, but Rolland habitually ran out such a heavy line of con and hype that fellow officers started calling him Jacky-Jack Double Talk even before he went bad. Their first arrest had been for wholesaling some counterfeit money. Being lawmen and first offenders, they drew minimum time. Since then, however, they’d racked up numerous other busts and were known to run with such heavies as Bobby Culpepper and Lester Trout. “What about Jacky?” I asked.

  “We brought him in yesterday afternoon on an old gambling warrant and I told him that I knew that Little Danny had talked to him not long before he was killed. Furthermore, I told him I knew Danny had told him that he was afraid you were going to take him down on his next job. So you know how Jacky is….”

  “Yeah,” I answered with a sigh.

  “Right. He picked up the ball and ran with it. As always, he was determined to feed me what he thought I wanted to hear, and before he got finished he told me that you and Danny Boy even planned the job together.”

  “That’s great, Bob. Did we rob any banks while we were at it?”

  “Not that he mentioned, but we could haul him back in and ask him if you want.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Anyhow, Newt Throckmorton bonded him out late yesterday afternoon, and he’s back on the street running that mouth of his ninety-to-nothing. Which is exactly what I intended. I’ve already had two snitches call me up wanting to rat you out.”

  “Okay, Bob. I appreciate you letting me know.”

  “It’s for the good of the service, Hog. And it’ll all come out in the wash.”

  “You’re right. And it’s just the kind of thing Jasper Sparks needs to hear if this thing’s going to work.”

  “Glad you feel that way. Now—”

  “Bob?” I said, cutting him off.

  “Yeah?”

  “This stuff I can handle. But that business about me killing Benny—”

  “I know,” he said. “We’re putting out on the street that you’re clear on that and claiming that we have some leads to something coming out of one of his cases.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not a damn thing,” he said. “Have you heard anything?”

  I quickly outlined what I’d learned from Blanchard. “Try to find out which of these Biloxi people might have had contact with Benny in the last year, if you can,” I said. “Can you do that for me?”

  “Hell, yes, I can,” he promised. “And there’s two other Rangers on it, plus half the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office. You know, one of their own and all that business. I’ll get this information to them too.”

  “Thanks, Bob.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I replaced the receiver on the phone and sat staring at the far wall of my room for a few seconds. Then I decided to put them all out of my mind—Jasper, Bob Wallace, Blanchard, even Nell Bigelow.

  I showered, then got in my car and headed out to find a charter boat. It didn’t take long. It was the off season, and I managed to locate a hungry skipper in no time. Quickly we had a meeting of the minds on a per-day fee, and he agreed to take me out early the next morning.

  He also had plenty of heavy tackle, but I had an old 2-O Ocean City reel from the late ‘30s I’d found the previous year in a Dallas pawnshop. After a good cleaning and lubricating the thing worked as good as it ever had. If you don’t know, a 2-O reel is about half the size of a one-pound coffee can and perfect for medium-sized fish like king mackerel. But I needed a rod to go with it. I tried two sporting goods places where nothing appealed to me, then I wound up by accident in a junk shop that had a little of everything and lots of old tackle. The first thing that caught my eye was a beautifully refinished H. L. Leonard split-bamboo trolling rod from about the same time period as my Ocean City reel. It was a gorgeous thing, with mahogany grips and ivory eyelets, and I got it for a bargain-basement price. The notion of catching a nice fish on vintage tackle had taken hold of my mind, and I’d have coughed up a hundred bucks for it if the old fellow had asked.

  The sun was out that day, and a half dozen late-season sailboats were scudding across the bay. Gulls dipped and bobbed everywhere, and the smell of salt was always in the air. I drove around for a while, crisscrossing through the old residential part of town where the wealthy citizens had lived in their shady, shuttered mansions back in the days before the Civil War. Then I struck out westward and drove around Keesler Air Base on the far side of town. Just as I was turning back northward, a pair of jet trainers screamed over the highway at about fifty feet, right in front of my car.

  Back at my apartment I called Nell, and we had a nice hourlong chat about everything on earth. I stopped short of asking her out specifically, but I vaguely mentioned dinner the next evening. The signals I got in return were positive, and I promised to call her again the following afternoon.

  That night I dropped by the Gold Dust. Once again I was struck by how ordinary the place looked. Sparks was absent that evening, but Hardhead Weller invited me to sit down and have a drink with him. In the days to come I was to learn that while Weller generally remained silent when a group was present, one-on-one he would open up and talk. Or at least he talked to me. He said nothing about his current activities, of course, but much to my surprise he was completely free of the arrogance that plagued most of the other characters who hung out at Lodke’s joints. And he was well worth listening to—a walking compendium of southern criminal history. In his youth he’d mobbed out with an old hood who’d once been part of the gang that robbed the Denver Mint way back in 1922. He’d also run a lot of moonshine during Prohibition, taking loads of Alabama and Tennessee corn whiskey up to Newport, Kentucky, and thence on across the Ohio River into Cincinnati. He spoke of midnight chases and mighty gun battles with revenue agents; of high-powered touring cars screaming along twisting country roads, machine guns chattering. Yet he glorified none of it. When he told his stories in his droning hick’s voice they were illuminated only by occasional snippets of graveyard humor and a lively sense of the grotesque. I found myself liking him despite what he was.

  The next day I pulled in two good kingfish with my antique rig, and I caught a half dozen nice red snapper with an ocean spinning outfit that belonged to the captain. After we got a picture of me holding a big kingfish in each hand, we threw them back in. I let the crew take the snapper.

  We docked a little after one o’clock, and I was driving contentedly back to my motel when I was startled by the quick blast of a siren, and the red lights came on behind me. It was the Biloxi City Police and they meant business. A cop got out from each side of the prowler, and they had their guns drawn when they emerged. I sat motionless with both hands visible on the steering wheel and waited, my heart hammering away in my chest.

  Six

  Almost three hours later I was still waiting.

  They’d made me get slowly out of my car with my hands in front of me, exactly where I intended them to be anyway. I had been on their end of the scene enough times to know what not to do, and I didn’t do it. They were after my .38, and the taller of the two men knew exactly where to find it,
probably courtesy of information provided them by Billy Jack Avalon in revenge for the humiliation I’d bestowed on him a couple of nights earlier. Once I was disarmed they cuffed me and took me down to the city lockup, and after my phone call they installed me in a mesh cage adjacent to the booking desk.

  I called Nell. It was all I could think of to do aside from dialing Blanchard’s hotline number and blowing the whole operation. The phone was picked up on the third ring, and the first thing I heard was the slow, sultry voice of a black maid. This led to the aunt, a dotty old girl who went belling off like a fox-hound when I asked for her niece. Finally Nell came to the phone.

  “I’m in jail,” I told her.

  “So soon?” I heard her lovely voice say with an easy laugh. “That didn’t take you long.”

  I outlined the problem and asked if she could help.

  “Sure,” she replied. “But it may be a while before I get down there. I’m going to bring some heavy artillery with me.”

  She did. At four on the dot the front door swung open and she strolled in with Vernon Kittrel in tow. Trim, fit, six feet two inches tall, and not a pound heavier than he’d been fifteen years earlier when he was a star quarterback at Alabama, Kittrel was the Gulf Coast’s premier criminal lawyer. He had neatly styled ash blond hair and a handsome but mean-looking face. That day he was dressed in about a thousand dollars’ worth of silk suit that hadn’t come off anybody’s rack. His style was slash-and-burn, and when dealing with cops and court officials he never smiled and never said thank you.

  Things happened fast. A magistrate was quickly consulted by phone; a minimal bond was set; the bond was signed; towing and impound fees on my car were waived; a door was unlocked; and I stepped out into the sweet Mississippi air a free man. Altogether it hadn’t taken more than ten minutes.

  “This is a chickenshit deal,” Kittrel said as we walked toward his Mercedes. “They should have extended you the courtesy of overlooking the weapon since you’re a retired cop yourself. Most retired Mississippi officers go armed.”