Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders

by Bill Fitzhugh

  “I understand,” Franklin said. “Now what if you just tell me your idea.”

  “All right.” Big Bill looked around the park. They were alone. He leaned toward his partner and said, “The girl has to die.” He said it right into Franklin’s pocket. It was only when the words actually came out of his mouth that Big Bill truly embraced the callousness of his idea. “Think about it,” he said with a salesman’s enthusiasm. “First of all it gives Eddie the emotional turmoil he needs to write a decent song or two. Secondly, it gets her outta our hair for good. And the publicity?” He waved a hand in the air. “The outpouring of public sympathy for a man who lost his wife and now loses a lover? Betcha dolla that’ll sell some records.” A pained expression quickly clouded Big Bill’s face. “Course there’s no guarantee that just ‘cause we kill her Eddie’ll write a good song, but at least it guarantees that we’re back in control of the client.”

  Franklin sat there, his head nodding slowly. He was thinking about the nature of ideas. Where do they come from? he wondered. It must be like this for songwriters. You can be sitting around talking about one thing when BAM! an idea about something entirely different forms in your head. Franklin couldn’t help but smile. The idea he’d just had was a doozy. It had an immediate million dollar payoff plus a series of long-term payments that would elevate Franklin to the tax bracket in which he felt he’d be most comfortable.

  Big Bill interpreted Franklin’s smile favorably. He also figured since Franklin hadn’t responded to the idea with a gasp or an indignant speech they were still on the same page. He tapped his partner’s arm with the back of his hand. “Obviously it can’t be me or you since it’s not exactly our line of work. But I figure we can hire somebody to do it and I thought you might. . . know somebody.”

  Franklin feigned offense. “Why? Because I’m a lawyer?” He chuckled. His idea had given him a thrill he’d never experienced.

  Big Bill smiled. “Well. . . yeah.”

  Franklin leaned towards Big Bill and nodded like he had connections. “As a matter of fact, I do know somebody.”

  “Well, shit, you rascal, whaddya say?”

  Franklin looked at his partner with all seriousness. “I think it’s a damn good idea,” he said. “I’ll take care of it and let you know the plan.”

  Big Bill suddenly closed his eyes and stuck his fingers in his ears. “No, no, no. I don’t want to know a thing about it,” Big Bill said. “I don’t care how you do it, long as you can trust whoever it is, and long as you keep our names out of it. This ain’t no damn prank we’re talkin’ about. This is serious. We can’t afford to mess it up. Just get somebody you trust to do the killin’.”

  84.

  Franklin called ahead and made arrangements to meet the man he knew would help. He arrived at Estella’s around five, before the place was open. Otis was waiting for him. They sat in a booth and poured sweet tea from an old plastic pitcher.

  “How’s Estella doing?” Franklin asked.

  Otis pursed his lips and looked down at the table top, his head shaking slightly. “‘Bout the same, Mr. Peavy.” He thought of her, lying in the hospital bed, unresponsive to his voice. “She’s got the weary dismals, but she ain’t done in just yet.”

  Franklin nodded at the news. “That’s good, Otis. I’m glad to hear it. Place ain’t the same without her.”

  “No sir, it’s not.” Otis sipped his tea, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ever since Mr. Peavy called and asked to meet about something important, Otis had felt something ominous.

  Franklin leaned onto the table and put both hands around his glass of tea. “Otis, you remember way back after your trial, you said you owed me a favor?”

  Otis nodded once. “Yes, sir, I sure do. And I meant it.” Lord, this was serious, he thought, maybe even dangerous. Small favors get asked over the phone.

  “I know you did, Otis, and I’m sorry this has to happen now, with Estella in the hospital and all, but now’s when I’ve got to ask.” Franklin could see that Otis sensed the seriousness of the matter. His usually peaceful face had grown hard.

  Otis took off his beret and rubbed the top of his head. He tried to brace himself for whatever was coming. “Just name it, Mr. Peavy.”

  Franklin felt like God testing Abraham, knowing all along how things were going to turn out. Still, he wanted the drama to convey the grievous nature of things, because no matter how good Franklin’s idea was, they were still talking about killing somebody. “Mr. Herron came to me the other day and asked me to take care of some business.”

  “Yes sir, what was that?”

  “Otis, he asked me to find somebody to kill this girl.”

  Otis felt his skin crawl. After five hard years at Fort Pillow State Penal Farm, Otis swore he’d never go down that road again, but he’d given Franklin his word and intended to keep it. He looked at his hands. “Is that what you want me to do, Mr. Peavy?”

  Franklin was impressed. Otis hadn’t flinched, at least not outwardly. Franklin was used to dealing with weasels who routinely broke even small promises, yet here was a man apparently willing to risk everything to repay a debt. Franklin eased into a cunning smile. “Well, Otis, let me put it this way.” Franklin looked him in the eye. “After Big Bill asked me what he did, I got to thinking…” He told Otis how his idea had come to him out of the blue and how he’d worked out the details and how he was confident it would work. Though obviously, it wasn’t without risk. On hearing the plan, Otis felt some relief but still, it wouldn’t be easy. Killin’ was killin’ after all. And somebody wasn’t going to just walk away when it was over. “But we gotta find somebody else to do it,” Franklin insisted. “Somebody to keep us at arm’s length from the thing.”

  Otis considered it for a moment. “It’s a good plan, Mr. Peavy, but somebody’s going to end up on the inside.”

  “Maybe,” Franklin said. “But maybe not. District Attorney’ll be willing to do a little horse trading on something like this. And either way I got a hundred thousand dollars a year that says whoever you get will be taken care of. You got my word on that, Otis. But whoever it is has got to be willing to take the medicine if that’s what happens.”

  “Yes, sir, I can see that.”

  “And don’t worry,” Franklin said. “I’m going to take care of you too. I don’t expect you to do this for nothing. This is more than a favor.”

  Otis seemed to chew on the inside of his cheek for a second. “All right.”

  “It’s gotta be somebody you can trust with your life, Otis, ‘cause that’s what we’re doing.” Franklin punctuated his words by stabbing the table top with an index finger. “This’ll work if it plays out right, but you got to get somebody willin’ to stand in the hedge and take up the gap, you understand?”

  Otis nodded solemnly.

  “Do you know somebody, Otis?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe I do.”

  85.

  Atlas Publishing got Jimmy’s book on shelves faster than anything since the Starr Report. The Long and Short of It — The Eddie Long Story didn’t make any direct accusations, rather it enumerated a set of facts about Tammy’s and the other deaths and simply let the reader draw his or her own conclusion. It was half biography, half murder mystery and, as a result of its innuendo that America’s biggest country music star had committed not just one, but several murders, the book received a staggering amount of press coverage and uniformly great reviews.

  What followed was a scandal of colossal proportions that arrested the nation’s attention. The debate over Eddie’s innocence or guilt consumed and divided the country more than the gun control and abortion debates combined. You couldn’t turn on CNN, MSNBC, Larry King, Geraldo, Tim Russert, Headline News, VH-1, TNN or anything else without hearing somebody talking about whether Eddie Long did or didn’t do it. On Court TV, a panel consisting of F. Lee Bailey, Willie Nelson, Gerry Spence, and Hank Williams, Jr., debated whether Eddie should be honored at the Country Fanfare Awards or sentenced to deat
h. Greta Van Sustren moderated the panel with the seriousness one might accord discussions on the Middle East peace process.

  A spokesman for the Country Fanfare Awards issued a statement. “The awards show will proceed as scheduled on CBS at nine eastern, eight central, with special appearances by Chuck Norris and John Schneider. And of course we’re still going to honor Mr. Long,” he said. “These ain’t nothing but unfounded allegations. We here at the CFA are shocked that a reputable publisher, and I use that word reluctantly, that a publisher like Atlas would go to print with such scurrilous charges. In fact, I understand Eddie Long’s representatives are filing a lawsuit of appropriate proportions in response to the slander contained in this book.”

  The CFA spokesman was right. Herron and Peavy screamed bloody murder in the press as well the courtroom. They filed a $60 million lawsuit claiming libel and defamation of character. On top of that was a claim for another $30 million for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Time, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal gave it front page coverage. Franklin Peavy, who had to brush up a little on these areas of the law, responded by saying the claims in Jimmy’s book constituted a tortious act so utterly shocking and outrageous as to not only meet, but to wildly exceed, the court’s high standard for prevailing in such cases.

  The lawyers for Atlas Publishing scoffed. “They can scream as loud as they want,” one of them said. “Mr. Long is no longer a private citizen by any definition. He is an established celebrity and as such he cannot recover any damages unless he can prove Mr. Rogers knowingly wrote untruths about him. It’s what the Supreme Court calls ‘actual malice.’ And unless the great state of Tennessee no longer recognizes the authority of the United States Supreme Court, I feel certain we will prevail in this matter. As to the claim that in writing this book Mr. Roger’s actions meet the standards cited by Mr. Peavy in their claim for punitive damages, keep in mind that in this day and age it takes a hell of a lot more than the mere insinuation that one may have committed murder to qualify as utterly shocking and outrageous.”

  Thanks to all the publicity and the generally positive reviews, The Eddie Long Story shot to #1 on the New York Times best-seller list its second week out. Not surprisingly, sales of Long Shot surged as well. According to SoundScan, the album sold another 435,000 units the week following the book’s release. People who somehow had managed never to hear of Eddie Long before now, suddenly had to hear the songs by the guy who might turn out to be a serial killer.

  The press naturally turned their attention to the police in the cities where the crimes had been committed. The police said their investigations had dead-ended and all their evidence had been turned over to detectives with the National Crime Information Center. The Feds would say only that they were not free to comment on open investigations. But one anonymous source with the NCIC said that after the book was released, an investigator returned to Eddie’s old house but was unable to find the container of Uncle Randy’s Meat Tenderizer that Jimmy cited in the book. According to the anonymous source, it appeared that someone had recently broken into the house and tampered with the crime scene. The NCIC investigator also returned to the Lytle’s property only to find the pesticide shack had recently burned down in the middle of the night. Asked about this, the local fire marshall said, “We know it was arson. We just don’t know the arsonist.”

  86.

  “By God, you were right. He’s a handsome kid,” Chester said with more than a little pride. “I could see part of myself in him, ‘cept of course he’s better lookin’.”

  Otis nodded. “I’m glad you got to see him. You thinking you’ll go back to talk to him?”

  Chester rubbed his chin, smiling wistfully. “Can’t decide. One part of me wants to, but hell, for all I know he’d like to kill me for runnin’ out on him and his mama. That’s not really the way I wanna go. But I hadn’t ruled it out entirely. I figure I’ll go back, see him again, see if it feels right. Maybe I’ll introduce myself, maybe I won’t. Least I know where to find him.”

  Chester and Otis were sitting in the kitchen at Estella’s. Otis had called Chester that morning and said he might have some work for him. Now it was late afternoon and the place was empty except for the two men. They’d been sitting in the kitchen for a half an hour talking about Whitney and, before that, about how Estella was doing. Chester could see the burden on Otis’s face. Doctors had told him there’d been no change in Estella’s condition, no brighter prospects for recovery. “I’m awful sorry to hear that,” Chester said. “She’s a fine woman, Otis.”

  “I know it and I’m afraid I’m gonna lose her.” The thought made Otis feel smaller than he was. He needed her all day and all night. She started where he ended and if she was gone, Otis might as well be too. “I’ve been spending time at the hospital,” he said, “just sittin’ with her, you know? Thinkin’.” Otis shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Thinking about things she said to me that I never listened to.” He smiled halfway and his little tuft of whiskers pointed at Chester. “You know, she never much cared for old Bill Herron. I don’t know how many times she told me I shoulda got more money outta that man for my records and everything and, well, I probably shoulda listened, but you know I never listened as good as I talked.”

  Chester looked across the table and wondered where all the time had gone. He was thinking about how young and alive they all used to be and how it all seemed to have passed in a wink. He wanted to say something to prop Otis up but he didn’t know what words to use. “You let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Tell you the truth,” Otis said, “that’s why I called you.”

  “Just name it.”

  “Mr. Peavy came to see me the other day about something.”

  “What’d he want?”

  Otis told Chester the same thing Mr. Peavy had told him. Chester listened, disbelieving at first. But every word Otis said chipped away at the disbelief until there was a feeling of inevitability about the thing. “I told him I knew somebody who would do it,” Otis said, “but I never said your name, so you’re not obliged.” Otis paused a second. “I just thought you might at least wanna know about it.”

  Chester looked at Otis for a few moments without any expression. “How much time you think there’d be, Otis?”

  “Mr. Peavy thinks they’d be willin’ to negotiate pretty good after they hear that evidence he’s got, but there’s no guarantee. You still might go inside for a little while.”

  Chester sat back in his seat, his hands flat on the table top. He had to think about it, but he didn’t have to think for long. “That’s pretty good money, even if you had to do a nickle.”

  “That’s a long time, Chester. Longer’n you think.”

  Chester thought about the whole thing a little more. He took a deep breath, exhaled, then smiled. “Otis, I’d do it just for the satisfaction,” he said, “but I’ll take the money too.”

  87.

  Eddie was screaming into the phone. “Under control? How the fuck is it under control? There’s a goddamn book on the New York Times best-seller list says I killed four people! Including my wife! Christ on a crutch, how can he get away with that?” Eddie had been yelling so loud he was going hoarse. “My career’s over! And it barely got started.”

  “Relax, son. You’re spittin’ like a goose shittin’ by the moonlight. The guy never actually says you killed anybody. It’s all implied and nobody believes it anyway. Besides, look at, uhhh, I dunno, oh, what’s his name? Marv Albert. Press dragged that schmuck through the mud for what he did, but he was back on Network TV in no time. Nobody remembers these things.”

  “Godammit, Bill, they said he liked wearing panties, not that he killed four people. There’s a difference.”

  “Granted, but think about it, Eddie, the cops haven’t come to see you, right?”

  Eddie peeked out the window. “True.” He saw several television vans down at the gates of his estate, but no cops.

  “The guy’s just a damn
opportunist, Eddie. You gotta expect this sort of thing now that you’re a public figure. It’s part of the fame game. People just find ways to make money on your back, that’s all. And you know the old saying, ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity,’ right? Well we sold another 435,000 units thanks to this yahoo’s book. Hell, you oughta send him a thank-you note.”

  Eddie was pacing the living room of his Belle Meade estate, a beer in one hand, the phone in the other. “What about the Tall Cotton Award? What are the CFA people saying?” He peeked out the window again. “Are we still up for that?”

  “It’s under control, Eddie. I talked to the CFA people ten minutes ago. They have every intention of giving you the award as planned. Like I said, hardly anybody believes what’s in the book, and those who do are afraid of you, which is always a good thing. Now I’ve got a conference call with the attorneys at Atlas in about five minutes, tryin’ to get this whole thing resolved. I’m fightin’ for ya, Eddie. You just try to get some writin’ done. I’ll call you after the conference call and let you know what happened.”

  “Fine. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Eddie slammed the phone into its cradle then crossed the room to the glass top table where he had half a gram laid out in a series of lines. He snorted one, grabbed his guitar, and started pacing the room waiting for the inspiration to hit. But his mind was too cluttered with a stampede of paranoia. How the hell had this happened? He wondered. I worked my ass off to become a superstar and now this. My own manager is telling me not to worry about a best selling book accusing me of murder, a book written by a guy I thought was my friend. What the hell kind of management is that? What the hell kind of friend would write those things, even if he thought they were true? And what about the police? Even if Jimmy’s book didn’t prove anything, surely the Nashville police are about to come crashing through the front door. There’s nothing they love better than bringing down the rich and famous. Hell, it’s practically sport for those goons.