Black Light

by Stephen Hunter

  It’s a beautiful office, some say the most beautiful in Fort Smith. It displays on one wall civic awards and family mementos, pictures of visiting dignitaries and political figures, examples of philanthropy and civic involvement, all signifying a solid career and a solider place in the community. Yet the office is almost always empty.

  Rather, Randall T. “Red” Bama prefers to spend his time in the back room of Nancy’s Flamingo Lounge, on Midland Boulevard in north Fort Smith, on an uneasy tribal border where the black district spills into a poor white one, where the city’s surprisingly large Thai population has begun to contest its more lengthily settled Vietnamese one, where a workingman can get an honest but tough game of pool and a shot and a beer, all for under five dollars, and a stranger can get a steely look that tells him to get lost fast. Perhaps such quarters are an unnecessary indulgence. To keep his empire running—or at least that part of the empire which the newspapers so regularly chronicle—Red must make dozens of calls a day to his middle managers, for of course he makes all decisions himself. It helps that he has a supremely organized mind and a special gift for numbers. It’s said he can add as many as eight three-digit numbers accurately in less than ten seconds, which qualifies him not quite as a prodigy but certainly as a man with a flair for integers.

  Red arrives at ten, parking his gray Mercedes S-600 on the street where it will not be molested, stolen, ticketed or even touched. He always drives himself, enjoying the time alone on his spin down from his family’s complex on Cliff Drive above Fort Smith, clearing his mind for the day’s tasks. But he’s preceded by two extremely professional men in a black Chevy Caprice who are authorized by the state of Arkansas to carry the SIG-Sauer P229 .40-caliber semiautomatics they wear in shoulder holsters under their jackets. They are tough, calm and decisive, excellent shots. Each wears Kevlar Second Chance body armor, capable of defeating all handgun and most shotgun ammunition. They are never far from Red.

  Red doesn’t say hello to Nancy because there is no Nancy and nobody can remember or cares much if there ever was. He makes his way to the back room, where he hangs up his expensive suit coat, sits at a navy-surplus desk and begins to drink black coffee out of Styrofoam cups from the bar while a continual stream of supplicants, acolytes, gofers, errand boys, emissaries and the summoned go before him for judgment or assignment. It is here that he receives reports on his nineteen pawnshops, his seven porno stores in the greater Fort Smith area, on his heroin dealerships and his crack franchises, mostly located in the black section of town, his six brothels and his seven rural gambling cribs, located across the river in Oklahoma, and the jewel of his night empire, the Choctaw Gentleman’s Club, in Holden, Oklahoma, five miles west on Route 64, where rubes pay five dollars admission and sit there drinking overpriced beer and slipping one-dollar bills between the plastic-engorged breasts of the strippers, who must give forty-five cents on the dollar to the boss man.

  His enforcers and district captains report in, with good news or bad, usually good. Occasionally, Red must order severe consequences for an infraction, not a pleasant task but a necessary one and one from which he has never and will never shrink. It is here that he conducts meetings when necessary with Armand Gilenti, the crime boss of Little Rock and Hot Springs, or with Jack Deegan, who runs Kansas City these days, and sometimes with Carmen St. Angelo, of the New Orleans organization and sometimes Tex Westwood, of Dallas.

  It is said that Red sticks to the old room in the back of the old bar and billiard parlor because that is where his father, Ray Bama, did his business and built, on a smaller scale, the brilliant organization which Red inherited upon his father’s death (car bomb, culprit uncaught, 1975) and so vigorously expanded upon.

  Perhaps, perhaps not. Red in other ways does not seem a man given to sentiment, being noted far and wide for shrewdness, sagacity, persistence and toughness, though he indulges his three children from his first marriage and his two from his second grotesquely. Yet his father is something of a holy relic to him, that brilliant, tough man who fought his way up from the mud of Polk County to the heights of Fort Smith in a single generation, building an empire but, more important, creating a vision which would sustain the empire. Red has called him, to each of his wives, “the redneck Joe Kennedy.”

  “Well, you ain’t no JFK,” his first wife shot back, “except when it comes to screwing around.”

  “Never said I was,” said Red. “Just said I wouldn’t let my daddy down.”

  At fifty-one, he’s short and powerfully built, with a faint spray of freckles, stubby fingers, deep blue eyes that are said to be able to see through anybody’s lies and a bald spot that he vainly tries to minimize by wearing his reddish-blond hair crew-cut. He favors gray suits with pinstripes, blue button-down shirts, red ties (Brooks Brothers, usually) and black Italian loafers. He wears a gold Rolex and never carries less than $5,000 on him in small bills but other than the watch wears no jewelry. He doesn’t carry a gun, never has. He loved his first wife, and loves her still, even though he divorced her when she got a little too old. She was the third runner-up in the Miss Arkansas contest of 1972. He loves his new wife, who is thirty-seven and blond and was the authentic runner-up in the Miss Arkansas contest of 1986. And that was back in the days when beauty contestants had real tits and beauty contests were about beauty, not about saving the whales and feeling the pain of the homeless and all the other feeble liberal do-goodisms that were ruining America. Ask Red about this one: he’ll tell you all about it. It’s a real sore spot.

  He loves his children. He loves his wives. He gives his wives and his children and himself anything he wants.

  On this day, a sullen man sits before him in the uniform of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department, as Red’s eyes hungrily eat up data from the gambling chits before him.

  Finally, Red looks over. What he sees is what he was, what he escaped from, what his father heroically rose against and conquered. But Red knows it well. Some would call it white trash: dead eyes, a narrow, ferrety face, a lanky, still body, too much hair, the whole radiating both danger and craftiness and best of all, stupidity. Red knew that men with gifts for the larger issues were seldom any good in getting the nitty-gritty work done.

  “So, Duane,” he finally said, “I got reports here both good and bad on you.”

  Duane Peck said nothing, but made a small clicking sound, tonguing his dentures so that they crackled and snapped. It was a nervous habit, disgusting, but no one had ever had the nerve to straight up tell him about it.

  “You do like to gamble, don’t you, Duane, and Lady Luck hasn’t been holding your hand of late.”

  “Don’t suppose she has,” Duane said.

  “I see you got paper out in most of the cribs in eastern Oklahoma. You owe Ben Kelly twenty-one thousand. Keno, Duane? That your weakness?”

  “No sir,” said Duane. “More to any card game.”

  “Duane, you got a card imagination?”

  Duane’s narrow eyes squinted as he contemplated this notion, failed to get a grip on it and then emptied of emotion as he dispensed with any more thought on the issue.

  “I mean,” said Red, “do the numbers or the faces stick in your mind? Are the suits very vivid? Do you sense the deck charging up or closing down? A feeling that what’s left is in your odds or against them. Not counting cards, that’s only for the pros, but just good card instincts. A feeling. Most good card players have a gift for that sort of thing. They also may have a good head for numbers. Duane, what’s 153 plus 241 plus 304?”

  “Ah—” Duane’s eyes narrowed. His lips began to move.

  “Never mind, Duane. Now, on the plus side, I see you did some associates of mine a favor now and then.”

  “Yes sir,” said Duane Peck.

  “You did some collecting and some enforcing?”

  “Yes sir.” Sometimes Duane moonlighted on his debt problem by collecting for Ben Kelly, who ran a gambling crib in the back room of the Pin-Del Motel over in Talihina, Oklahoma. />
  “Hmmm, that’s good. You hurt anybody bad?”

  “I busted some jaws and heads, nothing nobody couldn’t walk away from a week down the line. I had to break one boy’s leg with a ax handle. He got way out of line.”

  “You kill anybody?”

  Duane’s eyes went blank.

  “No sir,” he said.

  “I don’t mean since you joined the Sheriff’s, Duane, and I don’t mean headbops on crib debtors. No, I mean ever?” “No sir,” said Duane.

  “Now, Duane, one thing you must learn, never lie to me. Ever. So I ask you a second time. You kill anybody?”

  Duane mumbled something.

  “Arco Service Station,” Red said. “Pensacola, 1977, June. You were just a redneck kid with a drug habit. A few quick hitters to raise the cash. But that night you popped a boy, right, Duane?”

  Duane finally looked up.

  “I forgot that one,” he finally said.

  “Well, Randy Wilkes didn’t forget. He works in New Orleans for some people now. You do a job like that, you better come to an understanding with your partner. You don’t, it seems sloppy. You are sloppy, aren’t you, Duane?”

  “Six ninety-two,” said Duane. “It’s 692.”

  “No, Duane, but close. It’s 698.”

  “Damn,” said Duane. “I can do it on paper.”

  “This isn’t an arithmetic test, Duane. You’re clean now? You’re straight?”

  “Nothing with real buzz,” said Duane. “I do like my bourbon on a Saturday night.”

  “I like it then too, Duane. All right, now: I got a job for you. You interested?”

  “Yes sir,” said Duane, who had been wondering why one so lowly as he had been summoned before so powerful a figure.

  “A private job, just for me. That’s why you’re talking to me, Duane, not Ben Kelly or anybody in between you and me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Duane, your twenty-one thousand could disappear, you play it right.”

  “Sir,” said Duane, stirring from his phlegmaticism, “I will play it right. You can count on that.”

  “Duane, I’ll be honest. Wish I had a better man. But you got one thing I need and it makes you valuable to me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Not your big dick, Duane. Not that fine-tuned brain of yours. No sir. Your badge.”

  Duane gulped a little.

  “I need an inside boy to keep eye on a little situation that may be developing down in Polk. I send a stranger down, in that little place, people will notice. I got to have an insider, a man with the state’s authority who can go places and ask questions without attracting attention. You game, Duane?”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Bama. You just say what it is.”

  “It could get dicey,” said Red. “I might have you get your fingers dirty for me. I have to have your ultimate loyalty if I’m to give you mine.”

  “Yes sir,” said Duane.

  “You understand, I’m a fair man. If you end up doing joint time, it’ll be good joint time. You don’t have to be any big nigger’s fuck boy. You’ll be protected. Fair enough?”

  Duane could do prison, he knew. For a shot at a place with the Man, just about anything was possible.

  “Yes sir.”

  “All right, Duane, you listen up. Many years ago there was a tragedy in Polk County. A heroic police sergeant shot it out with two very bad boys, killed them both. They killed him too. Mean anything to you?”

  “No sir.”

  “Not a history buff, eh, Duane?”

  Duane’s face remained stolid: “history buff” as a concept was unrecognizable.

  “Anyhow, I now have it on good authority a young Oklahoma journalist has decided to write a book about this event. You know, Duane, true crime, that sort of thing.”

  Duane nodded dully.

  “Ah—this is something that must be looked at.”

  “Should I whack him?” Duane wanted to know.

  Interesting question: key question, and Duane with his primitive’s craftiness got to the heart of it. The boy could be dealt with harshly, killed, destroyed, and things left as they lay. But that very act, by the law of unintended consequences, could bring catastrophe itself, an investigation, the asking of questions that had so long gone unasked.

  “No, Duane, but let’s not rule it out. Let’s leave it at this. You are to keep me informed on what’s going on: who he sees, what he asks them, what he finds out. This may involve documents. Which documents? You may have to do very little except arrange for certain documents to disappear. It may involve more dramatic countermeasures, and if so, manpower won’t be a problem. But for reasons you needn’t know, and Duane, I suspect you wouldn’t understand, it’s important that this boy learn very little and that his book go unwritten. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Red looked at poor Duane. He felt like a general sending a Boy Scout against the German Army. He had much better people. He had access to ex-CIA operatives, ex-Green Berets, longtime underworld troubleshooters, extremely competent, aggressive, experienced professionals. But all were outsiders and they wouldn’t know a damned thing about a dense little universe like Blue Eye’s and they’d stand out hugely. Duane, the most brutal and sociopathic of Vernon Tell’s deputies, was also the most corrupt; he would attract no attention and much respect. So: Duane it had to be, Duane carefully controlled and directed, Duane in the game of his life, and Duane capable, if handled correctly, of anything.

  “Duane, I’ve got here a list of people this boy may consult and offices he’s likely to see. You’ll monitor them. Also here is an 800 phone number. You can call it free from any phone in America but I will get you a secure cellular with that number preset so all you have to do is hit one button. I want a detailed report every day. Then you will get further instructions from me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir,” said Duane. “But I heard they can git taps on them cellulars easy. The Feds do it all the time.”

  Good point. Red was impressed.

  “No, this one’s secure at each end, can’t be intercepted without a preset descrambler. What they can do is subpoena the records so they can find out who was talking to who. But I don’t think the cellular company would cooperate with them, at least for years and years.”

  “Why?” asked Duane.

  “Because I own it,” said Red. “Now, Duane, be delicate. No bullyboy stuff. You have some charm, I’m told. You can be a backslapper, a laugher, a regular guy? Those are the colors I want you showing in this first phase.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now you must go. I’m behind schedule,” said Red Bama, looking at his Rolex, “and I want to get to my son’s soccer game.”

  11

  In the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was not uncommon for armed men to ride into Fort Smith, Arkansas, the bawdy, bustling city nestled on the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers. Founded in 1817, it boasted a population of thirty thousand by 1875, perched as it was at the head of the long valley between Ozark and the Ouachita Mountains, and perched again on the border between Arkansas and what in those days was called Indian Territory and is now known as Oklahoma.

  In those days, the city was nicknamed Hell on the Border. Fort Smith was the gateway to the savage and untamed West. In those days, civilization tried mightily to enforce its will upon the lawless, and the enforcers were federal deputies to the hanging judge, Isaiah J. Parker. Between 1875 and 1896, the judge sent his men into Indian Territory to carry out the law. They were of a type: lean, slit-eyed, exquisitely practical, without much in the way of larger views. All could shoot; all would shoot. For two decades Fort Smith was the gunfight capital of the world, sending its men out to bring back the desperados and outlaws who roamed Indian Territory. Of the marshals, 65 were slain in the line of duty; of the 172 men they brought back alive, 88 were hanged by the judge; no one knows how many outlaws perished in the territory at the hands of the deputies. In those days, suc
h facts weren’t worth recording.

  Now, of course, all that has changed: there are no gunslingers, no bawdy houses, no rigid judges. Instead, Arkansas’s second largest city is a bit shopworn, its downtown, once the most sophisticated urban thoroughfare west of the Mississippi and east of Denver, fallen on hard and empty times, with the action having moved out to the suburbs where the Central Mall and the Wal-Marts are. Its skyline is dominated by two large grain elevators. City fathers have tried gamely to reclaim or re-evoke the glories of the past, and the old fort, Parker’s courthouse, a brothel called Miss Laura’s and many fine homes in the stately Belle Grove District of Victorian Houses have been restored, but they do little to disguise the fact that history has moved elsewhere. Now its parade-widened Garrison Street, a reminder of the days when it was an army post sited to keep the Cherokee and the Osage from tribal war, has the look of a beautiful mouth that has lost too many teeth to gingivitis. The most prominent downtown landmark is, in fact, the Holiday Inn on Rogers Avenue, a mock Hyatt with a nine-story atrium and a disco that blows loud, bad rock into the night. It is partially owned by the Bama group.

  So the men who come to Fort Smith from Indian Territory these days are unlikely to be federal marshals or gun-fighters. But still, some come on missions, and some are slit-eyed, hard and practical. One was Bob Lee Swagger, accompanied by his new young partner, Russ Pewtie, driving east on U.S. 40 in Bob’s green pickup truck. They reached the city near twilight. The lights were coming on as they approached it through the rolling land of Sequoyah County, Oklahoma, though they couldn’t see the Arkansas River off to their right, broad and flat but invisible behind a train of trees.

  “See,” Russ was saying, the folder of old articles from 1955 on his lap, “it just shows how crappy the newspapers were back then. We’re much better now,” he insisted, though Bob only grunted noncommittally.

  “These stories,” he argued, “they just don’t tell you enough. No reporter ever went to the sites, they just took the police handout and reprinted it. Jesus, I can think of a hundred questions I’m going to have to figure out how to answer. How do Jimmy and Bub get all the way from Fort Smith down to Blue Eye through the largest manhunt in Arkansas history? How do they just run into your father? Is it coincidence? Yet there’s no speculation here on these issues at all. Also, the bigger question: why? Why did Jimmy Pye on his first morning out after ninety days in jail go off on this thing, and why did poor Bub, who had no criminal record, why did he go along with him? And this bit here, stopping at a drive-in and eating a burger and flirting with the waitress? What was that all about? It sounds like someone who wants the world to think he’s cool. Also, why—”