by David Archer
Redford stared at him for a moment, then turned to Noah. “You and I both know this man never hurt anybody,” he said softly. “Do you really expect me to release Ralph, just because you got some drunk to take the blame for what he did?”
Noah looked at the sheriff in the eye. “Yes, I do,” he said, “because the alternative would mean Jimmy Morgan storming this place with a small army to get his son back. Now, that would obviously mean the end of his little empire, and it probably wouldn’t be long before the feds showed up to start tearing this county apart. Jimmy would probably go out in a blaze of glory, a big shootout with the FBI or whoever, but I suspect they’d manage to round up quite a few of his people before they were done. At least some of them will probably take the plea deal they get offered, a short sentence or maybe even just probation in return for their testimony against any local officials who cooperated with Jimmy. Now, in my experience, most people involved in criminal enterprises never really trust each other, so they tend to keep any kind of notes and evidence that will incriminate somebody else that they can. How much are you willing to bet that none of them have anything they can pin on you?”
Redford’s face remained calm, but the way his jaw clenched, Noah could tell that there was turmoil going on behind those eyes. He stood there for a full minute and a half, then carefully reached behind himself and pulled out a set of handcuffs. Without a word, he put them on Peter Wesley and then put an arm around him and walked him inside.
He turned and looked at Noah over his shoulder. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I’m going to release young Mr. Morgan into your care. I trust you’ll see that he gets home safely?”
Noah gave him a big smile. “Why, it’ll be my pleasure to be of service to the sheriff’s office,” he said.
It took an extra fifteen minutes to get Ralph dressed and out of his cell, but the boy looked at Noah with eyes full of affection when he was escorted out to the lobby. Noah warned him with a look not to say a word, then took hold of his arm and walked him out to the car. Marco opened the passenger door, and Ralph climbed willingly into the back seat.
“Oh, man, I can’t believe you did it,” Ralph said. “This is—man, I owe you one. You just tell me what I can do for you, and I’ll…”
“Shut up,” Noah growled as he started the car. “Do you have any idea how much damage you’ve done? What the hell made you think you could kill that boy and get away with it?”
“But…” Ralph’s eyes were wide, and the tears were trying to brim over. “I swear, I never meant to kill him. I don’t know what happened—I just lost it, I guess.”
“Dat’s bool shit!” Marco said. “You done made a fool out yourself, and out your daddy, too. If you was my boy, I make you bleed on your ass, dat how hard I whip you!”
“He’s right,” Noah said. “Your old man’s reputation took a big hit over this. Even with somebody else taking the fall, there are going to be plenty of people around here who don’t believe he did it. The stories about you being a killer are never going to go away, and people are going to be a lot less trusting of your father from now on. Word about this will spread throughout his territory, and you can bet the feds will be trying to get in on it. It’s quite possible they’ve already got a case coming together, and if that’s so, then you just handed them everything they need to put your dad away.”
“But—but my pa didn’t have anything to do with this,” Ralph whined. “They couldn’t pin anything on him, could they?”
“Not without finding several people who would be willing to testify against him,” Noah said, “and up until now, finding even one such person would have been difficult. Now? From what I understand, this boy David was pretty popular around here. You can bet that anyone who really cared about him will be more than willing to tell anything they know about your dad, and about you. The only way you’re going to come out of this is if we can make people believe you were honestly innocent, and the only way we can do that is by completely changing how people see you.”
“You gotta be a whole new boy,” Marco said. “You don’ be no trouble at all, you don’ let nobody see you get mad, nothin’. Dat gonna be de only way.”
Ralph sat back and looked out the windows, but Noah could see his tears in the rearview mirror. He waited a moment, then waved a hand to get the boy’s attention once more.
“Ralph,” he said, “tell me something. How did it feel when you realized he was dead?”
“Man, I told you, I never meant to…”
“Can that crap. You think I don’t know an act when I see it? You’re trying to be all sorry and contrite, but I think you actually enjoyed it. Am I right?”
Ralph stared into his eyes in the rearview mirror, and that’s when he realized that Noah was smiling at him. He continued to watch for a few seconds, and then a tentative smile began on his own face.
“It was—it was some kind of intense, man.”
Noah had watched his eyes, and he let his smile grow wider. “I heard there’s been rumors that you killed before,” he said. “It’s true, isn’t it? This wasn’t the first time, was it?”
“Man, screw you,” Ralph said, still grinning. “If I say it was true, my pa would beat me half to death.”
“Not if I never tell him,” Noah said. “Look, kid, one killer to another, I know that look in your eye. You didn’t lose control on that boy; you just didn’t want to stop beating him. You knew damn good and well if you didn’t stop he was going to die, but you kept on going. Don’t try to lie your way out of it with me. I know damn well I’m right.”
Ralph met his eyes in the mirror again. “Maybe so,” he said. “If I’d realized I’d lost my wallet and picked it up, they never could have even tried to pin it on me.”
“See, now that’s where you’re wrong. There were enough people who saw you and the kid go back behind the stadium, and then when he got found dead, that’s all they need to make you a suspect. If they really tried, considering your knuckles are split in a couple places, they could probably find DNA evidence on the victim or around where his body was found, evidence that would prove you were there at the time he died. Now, I’ve just fixed this mess so the sheriff isn’t about to dig any further, but the last thing in the world you want to do is ever give him a reason to suspect you of murder again. He’s walking a tightrope, right now, trying to keep his place with your dad, but also trying not to have the feds come in here and crawl up his ass. You give him any more problems, he’s going to probably hang you himself.”
“Fine,” Ralph said, and there was no longer any trace of remorse or tears in his voice. “He won’t be sheriff forever, though. One day, whoever wears that badge will be answering to me, and I won’t need anybody to save my ass then.”
“Yeah, but right now it’s your father we got to worry about. All of us, including you and me, we’ve got to depend on him keeping his power so we don’t end up losing everything. I guarantee you, I don’t want to go back to Beaumont. You screw things up bad enough for that, I’ll put a bullet through your head myself.”
Ralph smiled into the mirror. “You like to try to scare people,” he said, “but I don’t really scare that easy. You might want to stay on my good side, Rex. Might not be that much longer before I’m running things, and I might want to keep you as my right-hand man, same way Pa wants to keep you right now. You don’t want to mess that up, do you?”
Something in the boy’s words caught Noah’s attention. He slowed the car down and looked him in the eye in the mirror once more. “You think something’s going to happen to your dad?”
Ralph shrugged. “You just never know,” he said. “There might be somebody out there like Benny, somebody who might want to kill my old man. Guess who takes over if that happens?”
Noah drove in silence for several seconds, his eyes flicking from the road to the mirror and back again. Each time he looked at Ralph, the boy was staring directly into his eyes. At last, he said, “And what would somebody who tried that s
tand to gain?”
Ralph’s smile spread out across his face. “All depends,” he said. “I might just decide to make him my top man.”
“What about all the rest? All the other lieutenants? Do you really think they’d take their orders from you?”
“Oh, there’s some who would get upset about it,” Ralph said. “That’s why I’d want somebody like you right there with me. I’d even be willing to cut that somebody in for a nice share, say ten percent?”
Marco was watching Noah, and Noah caught the wink he tossed. He shot back a thumbs-up, his hand down where Ralph could not see it.
“No more BS,” he said. “Are you seriously thinking about trying to get rid of your old man? Ten percent—that’s an awful lot of money, and it definitely wouldn’t break my heart if I was the guy getting it.”
“No BS,” Ralph said, suddenly sitting forward and leaning in between the front bucket seats. “You think you could do it?”
“I could do it. What I want to know is how I’m supposed to trust you after you sit here ready to betray your own father.”
“Because it’s not a betrayal,” Ralph said. “It’s just business. I know I could do a better job of running everything, but Pa’s not going to let me take over as long as he’s alive. You get rid of him, and then you back me up against everybody else, and I’ll give you that ten percent.”
Noah slowed to make the turn toward Morgan’s house and stared into the mirror at Ralph for a few more seconds. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “You just keep your mouth shut for now, got that? I find out you said anything to anybody about this, it won’t be your father I blow away. Got that?”
“I got it,” Ralph said. “Same to you. Don’t you go telling anybody else I made the offer. I’ve got a few people loyal to me already.”
“I won’t,” Noah said, “and neither will Aubrey. Just understand that wherever I go, he goes.”
“Deal,” Ralph said. “Besides, I like the way he talks.”
Both Noah and Marco chuckled at that and rode the rest of the way without talking. By the time they arrived at Morgan’s house, Ralph was looking ashamed and red-faced once again.
The men standing out front stared in disbelief when Ralph climbed out of the back seat of the Charger, but then they smiled at Noah as the three of them walked up the stairs. Ralph opened the door without knocking and motioned for Noah and Marco to follow him in, but Marlene had heard footsteps on the porch and was already headed their way. When she saw Ralph, she let out a squeal and threw her arms around him.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said, “my goodness, my goodness. Oh, Ralphie, I can’t believe you’re home.”
“You can thank Rex for that,” Jimmy said, coming down the hall in a hurry. “Damn, Rex, you really pulled it off. How did the sheriff take it?”
“He wasn’t happy,” Noah said, “but I was able to make him see the wisdom of prosecuting Mr. Wesley for the murder. It’ll probably get reduced to manslaughter or something, but with Wesley offering an unsolicited confession as soon as he saw the sheriff, there really isn’t much else he could do.”
“Oh, Rex, he too modest,” Marco said. “He tell de sheriff, he say, you don’ want no war, you do what I say, yes? Sheriff, he say okay, he don’ want no war, den he go get your boy and bring him out.” He slapped Noah on the shoulder, making him stumble forward a half step. “Rex, back in de Beaumont, every time somebody tried to give him any trouble, he make dem back down. He tell dem all about how much trouble dey gonna have from ol’ Aubrey if anything happen to him, an’ dey always back down.”
Morgan smiled and shook his head. “Best day yet when you came along,” he said to Noah. “Come on, you guys want some breakfast?” He wrapped an arm around his son and took him down the hall toward the dining room.
Noah and Marco followed, making a show of being delighted to sit down and eat. Marlene happily brought them scrambled eggs and sausage patties, and they dug in.
“So, is this all done?” Morgan asked. “Is there anything else we gotta do about it?”
Noah nodded. “Yep, there is,” he said. “We’ve got to start on a public relations campaign. Now that somebody else is being charged with the murder, it’s time we work on Ralph’s public image. And for that, we’re going to need everybody you’ve got.” He shoved a forkful of eggs and sausage into his mouth, then swallowed before he went on. “What’s the chance we can get all your top people together so I can explain how this has to go?”
“Hell, that’s easy,” Morgan said. “You just tell me where and when.”
“Needs to be someplace where nobody else will be paying any attention to us,” Noah said. “How about that big shop building out at your junkyard? Would that work?”
“Sure, no problem. When do you want me to set it up?”
“The sooner, the better. How about this evening? Think you could get everyone to show up, say, around six thirty or so?”
“Six thirty it is,” Morgan said. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure everyone is there. Hell, I’ll even order in pizza.”
Noah nodded. “That’ll be perfect,” he said. “Just make sure nobody brings family with them. We don’t need any of this getting outside of your lieutenants.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When breakfast was over, Noah and Morgan went to the office, where Noah told him about his success in arranging truckloads of liquor.
“Matt says he can have the first deliveries coming by the beginning of next week,” Noah said. “I told him what you’re looking for, and he says he can handle it. He wants ten thousand a trailer, but there should be about a quarter million worth of product in each one.”
Morgan nodded. “That’s about what I thought,” he said. “And he can handle thirty trailers a month?”
“Actually,” Noah said with a grin, “he said that would be okay in the beginning, but he could probably raise that to fifty a month if you reach a point you can handle it.”
“Fifty trailer loads a month? You tell him to bring it on, I can handle it. That’s half a million dollars for twelve, maybe fourteen million in product. Oh, hell, yes. You tell him to bring it on.”
“I’ll let you tell him,” Noah said. “He’ll be driving the first truck when it comes in next week. He wants to meet you, and I figured you might want to meet him.”
Morgan shook his head. “Rex, I was serious when I said I don’t know how I ever got by without you. The way you handled this mess with Ralphie, I’ve never seen anybody could keep their cool and think like you can.”
Noah gave him a modest grin and shrugged. “It’s not that hard,” he said. “You just have to remember that most people aren’t all that smart, and those that are usually have something they’re afraid to lose. You can outwit the first ones, as long as you’re willing to put the fear into the rest.”
“And you did, you did. That damn Redford ain’t likely to ever want to cross me again, not after this.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at Noah. “So, what are you planning to do today?”
“I thought I’d take Aubrey out and kinda show him the lay of the land,” Noah said. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”
Morgan waved him off. “Sure, no problem. If he’s gonna be working with you, he needs to know what’s going on. I’ll go ahead and get this meeting set up for tonight, and you just come on down when it’s time. Make sure everybody you talk to knows to show up, and this will be a good time to let them know that I’m making you my number two.”
Noah let the grin spread into a smile. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll do my best not to let you down.” He got to his feet and shook hands with Morgan, then walked out and collected Marco on his way to the front door. They got into the car, and Noah waited until they were on the road before he turned to Marco.
“The meeting is set for six thirty this evening,” he said. “I’m going to tell Sarah and Neil to load up and head out now.”
He took out his phone and dialed Sarah, who answered on the
first ring.
“How’s it going, babe?”
“It’s going,” Noah said. “Remember last night, we were talking about you and your brother taking a trip to see your mom?”
“Yeah,” Sarah said slowly. “You think we should go ahead and go?”
“I think now would be a good time, yeah,” he said. “I’m going to be busy for a little while, anyway, so you might as well take advantage of the time while you can.”
“Okay, baby,” Sarah replied. “I’ll see you soon, then, right?” He could hear the concern in her voice, even though she was trying to keep it hidden.
“Yep. I’ll call you as soon as everything settles, and we can talk about when we’ll be together again then.”
They exchanged love words, and Noah ended the call. A moment later, he dialed Kate’s number and got her voicemail. He left her a message about having a migraine, then ended the call and dropped the phone back into his pocket, but it rang almost immediately.
“Hello?”
“Hey, bro, it’s Kate. You called?”
“Yeah,” Noah said. “I just wanted to ask you if you know of anything I can take for this migraine. It’s really a killer.”
There was only a second of hesitation. “Wow, sorry to hear that. Can you go home and sleep it off for a while?”
“No, not right now. I got something to do tonight, around six thirty, and then I can get some rest. I just thought I’d ask.”
“Well, I’m glad you called. I just wish I could do something to help.”
“No problem, sis. I’ll catch you later, okay?”
“Okay,” Kate said. “I hope you get to feeling better soon. Bye-bye.”
Noah cut off the call and put the phone into his pocket, and this time it stayed quiet.
He drove Marco out to the junkyard and pointed it out as they passed it. “That’s where Morgan got started,” he said. “I think it’s fitting that it’s the same place where it’s all going to come to an end.”
