That piece of information instantly caught my attention. “How were the eggs packed?” I inquired.
“You see? Now there’s an intelligent question. If more people asked the proper way to do things ahead of time, we wouldn’t have to deal with these problems,” she huffed. “Some idiot put them inside a foam container, which naturally broke. To make matters worse, the shipper didn’t even label the damn thing properly.”
A little bell rang in my head, clueing me in that I might have stumbled upon something interesting. “How was the package marked?”
“Just as seafood. There was nothing that said a bunch of squishy eggs were inside.”
“The consignor must have been pretty upset when they found out that their shipment was destroyed.”
“We weren’t able to notify them,” Gena said. “I tried to call, but it turns out their phone had been disconnected.”
To my mind, that translated into one thing—the eggs were being smuggled.
“What about through their credit card? Couldn’t you track down the sender that way?”
Gena arched a knowing eyebrow. “Sure, under normal circumstances. But in this case, ‘Mr. Ferrante’s’ credit card also happened to be bogus.”
This was getting better and better. “Out of curiosity, where was the package being shipped?”
“You’re gonna love this: some import company in Minsk, all the way over in Belarus. You know, one of those republics that used to be part of the Soviet Union.”
“Then the eggs that you saw weren’t really caviar,” Vincent said knowingly.
“What are you talking about? Of course they were.” Gena looked puzzled.
“Not in the true sense they weren’t.” Vincent explained: “Real caviar comes only from sturgeon swimming in the Caspian Sea. The eggs you found had to have been from fish caught here in the States.”
“I don’t care what kind of fish they were from; all I know is that they stunk, I had to help clean them up, and if I ever catch the joker who packed them, I gonna give him a good ass-kicking!” Our blues mama declared.
Gena had a way with words that I totally loved. “You didn’t happen to see this Mr. Ferrante, did you?” I figured he’d be easy to describe. A fat, pot-bellied, overalled skunk who walked around without any underwear.
Gena poured herself another glass of wine. “No, and I hope I never do. Otherwise, I just might have to kill him.”
This was my kind of woman. She’d make a hell of an agent if she ever wanted a seven-day-a-week, twenty-four-hour job.
After dinner, Terri, Vincent, and Gena decided to continue the party at a blues club on Beale Street. I begged off for once, and went upstairs to think about the money I’d received today from Woody. Charlie had said that working undercover would play with my head. That was all right. My mind was looking to take a little vacation anyway.
The City of New Orleans pulled out of the train station, whistling that it was time to go to sleep, as the Main Street trolley clanged by. The jangle of each note carried me deeper into the Land of Nod until I drifted off, dreaming that my head was resting on a cloud of tiny fish eggs. The billowy cushion sprouted a pair of wings, transporting me across the sky. I wondered where we were headed, and my answer came as one egg metamorphosed into a tiny fish that swam up close to my ear.
We’re off to the land where your grandparents came from. We’re taking you back to Minsk.
Five
Terri hadn’t been to bed by the time I awoke. Either that, or he’d forgotten to tell me that he’d be spending the night with a friend. I got up, showered, and scoured the kitchen for a Pop-Tart. But Terri’s evil twin had apparently thrown them all away. He was clearly in cahoots with Vincent to make me start eating healthy. Boy, were they in for a surprise. I’d had the foresight to prepare for just such a possibility.
I dug through my bedroom closet and victoriously pulled out three boxes of cereal: Cap’n Crunch, Frosted Flakes, and Froot Loops. There was just enough left in each box to combine them and end up with one decent-sized bowl of cereal. I polished off my essential quota of morning sugar and headed out for the day.
I knew Hickok would expect me to show up at the office, so I chose not to go. I was afraid he’d had plenty of time to change his mind, which meant the only thing for me to do was plant myself even deeper into the case. Woody had said he’d gotten the paddlefish eggs for his brother, Virgil. That seemed as good a place as any to start. I jumped in the Excursion and hit Highway 51, heading toward an area called Chickasaw Bluffs.
I hadn’t met Virgil before, and couldn’t say I was looking forward to it. He’d become some what of a local legend, having been locked up in jail several years ago after a blind date turned decidedly sour. Evidently, Virgil and the girl couldn’t agree on what to do for the evening. He wanted sex and she insisted on having dinner. Virgil brought the dispute to an end by raping his date and then throwing her off a bridge, after which he went and got himself some barbecued pork ribs.
Fortunately, the mud in which she’d landed was soft and the woman survived, enabling her to promptly ID her attacker. Virgil was thrown into jail, where every unsolved rape in the county automatically landed at his door, though he vigorously proclaimed himself innocent.
Deciding the odds were stacked against him, Virgil composed a note one night damning both dating and the legal system for turning him into a victim and making him an angry man. Then he bashed a guard over the head with his dinner tray, broke out of jail, and went on the lam.
When the guard awoke, he found the note. He immediately moved to Nashville, where he turned it into a successful country-western song. Soon every radio station in the South was playing “My Name Is Virgil Hardy and the World Done Me Wrong.”
Meanwhile Hardy eluded local authorities with uncanny ease, having disguised himself as a woman.
Months went by and still there were no tips as to where Virgil had disappeared, even though America’s Most Wanted aired the story. Then one day a sharp-eyed saleswoman spotted Hardy in her store, and promptly phoned the police. His downfall was that he’d attempted to shoplift a very expensive silk blouse.
Virgil served the remainder of his cell time reading up on copyright law, and he eventually sued his former jailer for unpaid royalties. Upon his release, he announced that he’d found God, deemed himself a preacher, and opened his very own church—the Dixie Rebel House of the Lord. Evidently Virgil had embraced a very tolerant form of religion; not only was his church a house of prayer, it also operated as the Sho Nuf Bar seven days a week.
I made a left onto Hobe Webb Road and headed there now. The country lane grew exceedingly narrow, and before long, the blacktop disappeared altogether and my tires crunched over gravel. Soon I was driving between two oceans of cotton fields, their rich, black soil turned over and ready for planting.
I passed a four-row cotton picker that appeared to have been abandoned. Nearby sat a dingy steel container with peeling yellow paint. Corrosive rust crawled up its walls, steadily eating away at the veneer. Clinging to the dirt below were discolored nuggets of snow that stubbornly refused to melt. I blinked my eyes and looked once more. They were renegade cotton bolls; the ground all around was littered with them.
The only relief from the endless miles of unbroken monotony were the occasional telephone poles. They brazenly ascended skyward, with arms out thrust, as if to say, This land that you’re traveling on is mine.
A shiver ran down my spine when I saw that a sharp knife had inscribed a message on each one of the poles. Three little letters spelled out KKK. I pressed down on the accelerator and raced away.
Before long, the gravel vanished and I was on a dirt path that sloped downward as I descended a steep bluff. Trees clustered together and closed in around me, making the day seem dark. Even more unnerving, each limb, each branch, each trunk was smothered in an impenetrable maze of vines. Though only sixty miles north of Memphis, I had entered a no-man’s land.
The ground suddenly v
anished off to my right in a precipitously treacherous drop. The only thing that would have softened my fall was the rampant kudzu blanketed about. One moment it resembled a witch’s tattered cloak, the next, the long, unkempt hair of a crone. It clung to everything it touched, creating an eerie twilight zone.
Originally imported from Japan, the vine has quickly taken over the South. It spreads as much as a foot a day, covering everything in its path. I’d even heard tales that the vine will suffocate a man if given the chance. Superstitious folks close their windows at night, lest the kudzu sneak into their house.
The path leveled off and I knew I was getting closer. There was no need for a sign to guide the way; empty beer bottles littered the ground. Virgil’s clientele clearly didn’t believe in the slogan “Help Keep America Beautiful.”
The track branched off and I veered to the right, following the Hansel-and-Gretel trail of bottles. Finally a white clapboard structure appeared up ahead. The only indication that I’d arrived at the Dixie Rebel House of the Lord was the large wooden cross haphazardly nailed on the front door. The notice posted beneath read, “The Sho Nuf Bar—No Niggers or Game Wardens Allowed.”
Talk about your warm, friendly greeting. There was only one way to deal with Virgil’s crude warning: I grabbed my gun, got out of the Ford, and ignored it.
I walked up to the front door, and pulled on the handle. Damn! Hardy’s church was closed up tight—lock, stock, and barrel.
Psst! Over here!
I could have sworn I’d heard a whisper coming from the window. Imagination is a wonderful thing—especially when it works in your favor.
I sidled over to a pane of glass smeared with enough dirt to have passed as “stained.” There are few things in this world that can’t use a little improvement. I kept that thought in mind as I spat into my hand and cleared away a circle. Then I peeked in to view a “church” with scuffed floors, a bar, and a couple of ramshackle tables. There wasn’t a single statue of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in sight, but a large fish with a bottle of Bud stuck in its mouth was mounted on the wall. I decided to mosey around to the back of the building, and see what other kinds of spiritual relics Virgil kept about.
The odor of dead, rotting fish was the first thing to hit me, its aroma growing stronger with each passing step. That made sense; the Sho Nuf Bar is situated along a tributary of the Mississippi. But there was a more acrid odor. I peered inside two trash cans and found the remains of rubber tires slowly smoldering. On the riverbank, stacks of inner tubes lay in the red Tennessee mud like a pile of putrefying corpses. But the highlight of the Sho Nuf’s backyard was a broken-down Chevy Impala, whose battered, rusted carcass looked like a victim waiting to be carted off. Empty bottles of beer were placed at the vehicle’s base like reverential offerings, and long straight lines were slashed into the Chevy’s hood. It looked as if stiletto sharp fingernails had drag-raced across the surface, turning the drab green paint into abstract art. Rumor had it, this was where the local boys came to cut their lines of cocaine. I wondered if they said “Amen” as they snorted up.
Having finished paying my respects, I returned to my vehicle to go in search of Virgil’s house. While the mini-tour had been interesting, it was the man himself I wanted to find. I headed back to where the trail forked and followed it in the opposite direction; it didn’t take long before an Air Stream trailer came into view.
The mobile home was a two-tone extravaganza, painted yellow on top and purple on the bottom. I parked near the makeshift porch, and saw that its interior was paneled in fake knotty pine. Decoratively tacked onto the walls were the skins of beaver, red fox, and mink. A single bulb dangled forlornly from the ceiling as if it had been lynched. On a nearby pole hung a Confederate flag. Adjacent to that was a paint-by-number portrait of Jesus. Casually slung over a peg was a pair of cammo pants.
Virgil’s heap of a car sat defiantly in the front yard. The Oldsmobile Delta 88 observed Hardy’s two-tone philosophy, touting those ever-popular shades of red rust and brown paint. Virgil must have experienced some trouble from folks who were envious; he’d slapped a sticker on the rear bumper that declared, “Keep Your Damn Hands Off! ’Cause This Car Ain’t Abandoned!”
I looked around for further evidence that Virgil was home, but the only sign of life was a pen filled with hogs. They paid no more mind to my presence than to emit a couple of loud grunts. Other than that, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary—not until I got out of my Ford Excursion, at least. That’s when a whirl of brown fur came racing across the ground toward me.
The small dog ran as fast as her four little legs could scurry, as if Death were nipping at her heels.
I didn’t have time to close the Ford’s door before the dog anxiously leaped up and jumped into the driver’s seat. Though I tried to scoot her back out, the pooch obstinately remained. She stopped any further action on my part by standing on her hind legs, placing a paw on each of my shoulders, and staring into my eyes as if desperately trying to communicate.
One pat on the head was all it took to launch the mutt into a frenzy of licking. Having finished covering every square inch of my face, the pooch attempted to clamber onto my chest, as if begging to be cradled. The next moment, I realized what she was trying to escape from. The bloodcurdling squeal of a hog shattered the air around us in a skin-prickling drizzle of terror and pain. I held my breath, awaiting the next harrowing sound, but what followed was even worse—the deafening shriek of silence. The stillness was soon replaced by a dull, steady, rhythm. WHOMP! WHOMP! It was the heavy, metallic thud of a cleaver systematically chopping through meat and bone.
The dog crawled into my arms, where she rolled herself into a tight little ball and shivered. All the panic and horror that had permeated the air settled into my veins with cold-blooded perseverance. It was as if I could feel the blade’s deadly bite ripping through my own muscle, and sinew, and flesh.
I held the dog until the wave of terror subsided within us, then gently placed her back down on the ground. Even the hogs had stopped eating long enough to tilt their heads and listen. I walked over to them with the pooch following close on my heels.
Hogs are highly intelligent creatures who happen to enjoy rolling around in the mud. They were busy rooting through the slop now in search of slivers of food, even though their trough still held remnants of barley, oats, and corn. Their bulky bodies bumped up against one another, each easily weighing well over three hundred pounds. I thought of all the barbecue places I’d eaten at since landing in Memphis, and wondered which little piggy was destined for someone’s plate next. They might have been pondering the same exact thing in their chorus of grunts, snorts, and groans.
I was so immersed in watching the hogs that I was startled by the sound of someone approaching from behind. I turned to see a giant hulk of a man slowly walking toward me, having emerged from around the back of the trailer. Half the carcass of a freshly slaughtered hog was tossed over one shoulder, and he bore the load as easily as if it weighed no more than a sack of feathers.
The man carried his large frame with the awkwardness of an overgrown boy. The rhythm of his movements was off-kilter, as though he hadn’t yet mastered how to handle his massive form and unwieldy limbs. He was attired in denim bib overalls and a fiery red flannel shirt, both of which must have been at least a size triple X. The clothes accentuated the choppy movement of his legs and arms, making him appear all the more robotic. What he reminded me of was a cross between Lenny from Of Mice and Men, and the trademark logo for Bob’s Big Boy Burgers.
Even his hair seemed surprised at finding itself on top of such a humongous body. The short, stubby bristles stood straight up in the air like an army of exclamation points. His eyes were unusually small and set far apart, topped off by wild, bushy eyebrows, while his nose was broad and its end pushed up, providing me with a lovely view into his nostrils. And that’s when it hit me: his nose was formed in the shape of a snout. Meanwhile, his skin was as pink as a newborn baby
’s. I looked once again at the hogs, and then back at the man who continued to approach me. There was no doubt about it. Amazing as it seemed, Virgil Hardy closely resembled a walking, talking, king-sized porker.
As he got closer, I saw that his milky-blue eyes were watery and unfocused. I also noticed the wooden cross that hung around his neck. The religious symbol had been crudely made by hand and was stained black. At first glance, it appeared to be branded into the pink skin on his chest.
“Something I can help you with, ma’am?”
His voice was as cold as a block of dry ice, and had a quality that pierced through my flesh. Each word felt as if it were rimmed with sharp little hooks.
“I’m Rachel Porter with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”
His eyes instantly clicked into focus and his demeanor changed, as if a storm had kicked up from out of nowhere. Thunderclouds gathered and flashed across his face. His pink skin intensified to a deep red, and an angry scowl rolled over his features.
It didn’t make me feel much better that the hogs had once again stopped eating and were now staring.
Virgil glared, seeming determined to conjure up the mother of all lightning bolts. The last thing he resembled was any type of preacher who exuded the milk of human kindness. He appeared to have more in common with a holy roller exhorting hellfire, damnation, and brimstone.
“I’m looking for Virgil Hardy,” I said, sure I’d found him.
“That’s me. Is there some kinda problem you got?”
Yeah—being forced to deal with a guy with an out-of-control pituitary gland, rather than being home with a piña colada in my hand.
Black Delta Night Page 5
