Ophelia’s face contorted into an expression of scarcely veiled thwarted rage. “No,” she said reluctantly. “He didn’t say that.”
“I’m not saying I’m not going to check Mayor Waterford out,” Paxton said soothingly. “I am. I just can’t go arrest him right this minute. Furthermore, I have no authority outside the city of Albie and zilch-o-rama in Texas.”
Snarling, Ophelia went back to pacing. “He’s one of the few people who know that William Douglas McCall’s mortal remains were here,” she said after a moment.
“Again, not proof,” Paxton stated plainly.
“Dammit, Paxton,” Ophelia growled. “What do you want, a videotape?”
“It would be nice.”
“You know I don’t have video surveillance,” she said. “But I’m going to get some. I’m sure it’s tax deductible.”
Paxton said nothing.
“So exactly what are you going to do?” she asked, stopping before the chief and looking him in his eyes.
“Talk to the mayor, talk to Sawdust City’s chief of police, maybe talk to a few people in town. I’ll have my men checking the fingerprints to see if maybe we get lucky. Maybe it wasn’t Waterford at all. Maybe it was a flunky who left a print and will be happy to roll over on the mayor. Then we’ll talk to all the businesses around here and see if anyone was working around midnight last night and saw a vehicle.” Paxton ticked items off on his hand.
Ophelia stared. She wished she had her Taser back so she could stun the irritating police chief into submissiveness. However, the first thing that had happened upon the police arriving at Rector Mortuary was the confiscation of her weapon. Apparently, it was illegal to possess that model unless one was actually a police officer. “I had no idea,” Ophelia had lied unashamedly, while fluttering her eyelashes. “You understand how important William Douglas McCall is to Albie, don’t you, Paxton?”
Paxton sighed. “I understand how important Bayou Billy is to your cemetery project, Ophelia. I also understand how good tourism could be for this area. Maybe you should take that into account considering that Albie’s pretty well off compared to Sawdust City.”
“Considering who their elected officials are, I don’t think they understand economics all that well,” Ophelia said snidely. “Can we have his earthly vestiges back by Friday?”
“His earthly vestiges,” Paxton repeated. “Oh, you mean his body. Good God, Ophelia, what am I supposed to do, shit his corpse out my asshole?”
Ophelia stepped closer to the chief of police and glowered nastily at him. “Perhaps that’s exactly what you should do, Paxton. One way or another, I’m having that ceremony on Friday, and I will have William Douglas McCall’s monument in Albie Cemetery, and I will be vindicated. Do you understand?”
It was Paxton’s turn to stare. He couldn’t quite seem to find his voice. After a long minute he said, “Jesus H. Christ, Ophelia. Is that all you can think about? Bayou Billy in your pet project cemetery and your name on a monument? The everlasting fame of the glory of dead men.” He shook his head sadly, and added pityingly, “You really need to get laid.”
Chapter Fourteen
From an article in Deadman Detective, ‘I Killed 3 Men and 2 Women on the Ole Miss!’, August, 1971, written by William ‘Bayou Billy’ McCall, edited by George Hathaway, pg. 19:
I Confess!
I killed 3 Men and 2 Women on the Ole Miss!
Bayou Billy Tells All From Inside a Federal Prison!
The last person whom I killed was the sorriest of the lot. A cheap, lower than a snake’s belly in a rut, monkey-faced clump of cow droppings, pecker headed jughead. It was, I’m sorry to state to the good God above and to my fellow considerate readers, another woman. But unlike Mattress-Backed Mary, Emmalee Torrance was a bald-faced liar and who would just as soon stab you as soon as your back was turned. Late in 1939 or thereabouts, Emmalee and I had become acquainted. As she was a rough and tumble gal who worked at a factory cleaning floors, and I was a wanted outlaw, we got to talking and such, and before long she had invited me into her single room apartment, two blocks down from the French Quarter in New Orleans. It was a varmint infested dive in which no honest and God fearing man would be caught dead, but alas I was not honest and I was not God fearing. Dirty as Emmalee was, she was also very much a woman, with most of her teeth left, curves that would crash a Model-T Ford and a cooter that would squeeze a man like a wrestler at the carnival. And damned will be I if I don’t say that Emmalee had a certain specialty. As slatternly as she was, with her grime covered hands and her hair shorn by the rasp of a dull knife, her tongue curled and dipped like an exotic dancer from the Far East. We shared a drink of cheap wine and Emmalee set about her forte as if my John-Thomas was the last cock on earth. I was much admiring her technique and expertise when Emmalee descended into the deepest darkest nightmare that any man with a stiff peter could imagine. The foul temptress bit my tool as if she were apt to take it to her stomach. And I am not ashamed to admit that I bellowed like a maddened bull what has been prodded in the testicles. No man alive will ever admit that he enjoys a woman’s teeth on his pleasure organ. And normally that would be only a mere scrape over the tender helmet, certainly not an abominable, wicked creature who clamps down with all her might, tossing her head about as if she were a dog with a rat. Yes, I yelled. I yelled to the heavens above for the fetid whore to loose her teeth from my manhood. Then I struck her bodily about her head and shoulders in order to persuade her submission. When Emmalee would not let go, I proceeded to whale on her flesh. Of course, that was a miscalculation on my part as she bit harder and came away with some of my phallic member still in her mouth. She flew backwards and her head hit the floor with a mighty thud. I was otherwise occupied with holding my turgid bayonet together and did not notice Emmalee’s flailing arms. As it turned out, she had swallowed the bit of penis and choked to death upon it. But most importantly in her back pants pocket she had a wanted poster of one William McCall, also called ‘Bayou Billy,’ with a reward of one thousand stingy dollars. Truly, Emmalee wished to incapacitate me until authorities could be summoned and she attempted to accomplish the deed in the manner she knew best.
The Present
Tuesday, July 18th
Sawdust City, Texas
Pascal Waterford knew that the cat was out of the bag. Furthermore, the people at City Hall and his constituents knew that he knew that the feline had fled from the sack. He knew that they knew that he knew that the kitty had departed the tote. Everyone knew. But nobody was saying nothing to no one no how.
Just after ten AM the phones seemed to go off at the same time. Pascal could hear cell phones ringing in unison as if September 11th, 2001 were being repeated all over again. Then he started getting those looks, those certain sly glances out of the corners of various eyes that sized him up and down.
On an urgent search mission for Diet Dr. Pepper and the vital caffeine contained therein, Pascal happened to be threading through cubicles when the initial daisy cutter bomb dropped. As he heard bits and snippets and truthfully he didn’t know if he should be afraid or if he should laugh his ass off. As a politician he was morally obligated to play the game. The game was a tried and true method of playing stupid. If no one was dumb enough to confront him to his face, then he wasn’t going to rush out and admit to anything. In addition, he was going to pretend that nothing was happening out of the ordinary.
“Did you hear…?” “Bayou Billy’s…” “Someone took…” “I heard they molested the…” “Does that mean Sawdust City is going down like a porn star trying to play Hamlet?” “The mayor…” “Was he drunk as a redneck on payday?” “Shh. There he is.” “Uh-oh.”
“How you all doing?” Pascal said cheerfully. He smiled his brightest and nodded politely at a congregation of two secretaries, one janitor, one police officer, and Bobby Joe Bruce, the CFO of Sawdust City.
Big round eyes returned his look. Sets and sets of them. Like a pack of hyenas in the dark looking at
the campfire and waiting for their big opportunity, except they weren’t exactly sure what they wanted to eat. As he passed from view, agitated whispers began anew. “If Albie doesn’t have his body and we don’t have his body, then who’s getting a parade on Friday?” “Did the mayor actually…?” “No, not Pascal Waterford. He would never…” “So who stole…?”
Pascal stepped into the hallway and nearly ran into Edith McTavish. Edith was a sixty-three year old mother of three, and grandmother of five. Her husband had died in the late eighties of congestive heart failure. Edith was the sole supporter of two of her grandchildren and was counting on her city-funded retirement money to come as well as her income until she could retire at sixty-seven. With icy gray hair and round, steel rimmed glasses, she looked more like a librarian than a city manager. She also looked as though she had been crying. Her eyes were swollen. Her skin was blotchy. Snot ran from one nostril in a distressed dribble of destitution. A few tears had effectively annihilated her mascara.
Pascal looked around apprehensively. Either he was going to get brained by the older woman with an as yet unknown weapon that she was hiding behind her back or she was going to collapse in his arms bawling her guts out. Either one seemed as appealing as scraping one’s nails down a chalkboard. Getting kicked in the nuts with a reinforced work boot was equally appealing.
“Oh, Pascal,” Edith choked sincerely and buckled into his arms crying.
Pascal leaned left. No escape. He leaned right. Flat wall and no doorway. Not enough room to pretend he hadn’t seen or heard Edith. No cosmically induced, radioactive and sudden superhero power to turn invisible. So he sighed and said, “Edith, what’s wrong?”
A tear seeped out of her faded blue eye. She wiped it away with a handmade crocheted handkerchief. Just like my old granny used to make just before she’d put a few drops of perfume on it and then speak fondly of the good old days, Pascal thought wistfully and wanted to find a gun with which to shoot himself. Even better, he might be able to arrange to be drawn and quartered by four monster trucks while on live television. “Is it…true?” she asked waveringly.
Pascal swallowed. It was show time. It was time to put up his dukes and fight it out. It was time to bluff the poker players. It was the moment to find out whose cojones were bigger; his or that bastard reflection of his with the smart-assed mouth. “Is what true, Edith?”
“About Bayou Billy,” she whispered sadly, dabbing at her eyes. “About how Sawdust City isn’t going to get to bury him and we won’t get any tourism dollars and how we’re going to go bankrupt, especially…” she paused to suck in a pained breath, and then added with a subdued wail, “all the city monies, including the retirement fund, will go with it.”
“We’re clearing things up, Edith,” Pascal said firmly. His stomach lurched painfully. He needed a drink and a half dozen Tums in that order. “I’ve got a man on it.” I’ve got a corpse hidden and I’ve got Gibby Ross going to plead for mercy from Bayou Billy’s granddaughter. “You can rest assured that everything possible is being done so that Sawdust City will have its ceremony celebrating the life and existence of Bayou Billy on Friday.” Except I can’t claim we have his body until we have the legal right to it or I’ll be arrested for a felony of breaking and entering, transporting a corpse across state lines, and abuse of all morality and ethics that a mayor is supposed to have but so few actually do. “If it can be done, it will be done.” Because God knows I already done did it. Amen.
Edith stared at Pascal as if she was trying to read his mind. Finally, she patted again at the corners of her eyes with the soggy handkerchief and said, “Did you take Billy’s body, Pascal?”
Pascal crossed his fingers behind his back. “Would I do something like that, Edith? Come on, how long have you known me?”
Edith’s eyes narrowed. Abruptly she lost her air of tragic naivety and got down to the true concern at hand, making certain that Pascal Waterford was going to fulfill his ethically compelled responsibility. “You better have his body, Pascal, Goddamnit. A lot of people are counting on you. A lot more are going to be dirt poor without this city. This place will dry up like a tumbleweed and blow right down the road to Dallas. And I can’t start over.” Once she had finished her outburst of vitriol, the flow of tears started in earnest and Edith sobbed audibly.
“Tut-tut,” Pascal said soothingly, patting Edith on her back like the two elderly ladies at Rector Mortuary had patted his back when they thought he was in mourning. Then the words that he avowed steadfastly that he would never use in a million years came tumbling out and after they were uttered he wished he could shrink down to the size of an ant and crawl into a bottomless hole. He said, “Trust me.” Then he felt really icky, like he had picked his nose for an hour, come up with a fine looking specimen of a booger, rolled it into a ball, and flicked it at a flock of nuns nursing desperately ill, homeless lepers. Where’s a boiling shower of water when I need it to get clean?
Edith stared at Pascal some more. Finally, she nodded, disengaged from his loose grasp, sniffled wetly, and tottered off.
Pascal took a deep breath and hoped for some good news soon. He knew that he looked tired. He hadn’t had any sleep the previous night and he’d spent the morning acting as if everything was normal and he hadn’t spent half the night purloining a dead body, specifically an old smelly body which had been soaked in some type of solution that he couldn’t even pretend to understand. Then he had to spend time cleaning up because he had felt somewhat badly about the mess he’d made. Much of the remainder of the night was spent attempting to find a suitable place to hide his malodorous booty. Finally, he had to clean up the transportation he’d acquired because Bayou Billy was one sticky, nasty, dripping, stinky load of luggage and return the vehicle to where he’d borrowed it. He’d walked over to City Hall and did the best he could with a bathroom sink and some pilfered hotel soap, changing into a fresh suit and shirt that he always had at the office. By the time he was well and truly finished, staff were trickling into City Hall blissfully unaware yet of the significant events that had already taken place.
Lord, he thought. That sure as hell wasn’t easy. The old rat-bastard couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, but he felt as though he weighed a ton when I was carting him around. And Jesus-God-Christ, the stench.
•
Consequently, it was gone eleven and Pascal had nodded off in the middle of a conference call with two bankers, when the temp secretary interrupted him. She said through the intercom, “Mayor, hate to bother you, but…”
“Holy crap, where’s the fire!” he yelled, startled out of a half-drowsing state, nearly knocking over a row of Diet Dr. Pepper cans and three phone books. “Oh, sorry,” he said in a lower voice to the bankers. “My bad. My secretary just scared the hell out of me.”
There were slightly agitated murmurs on the other ends of the call. Pascal added, “Excuse me, gentlemen.” He covered the telephone speaker with his hand and said, “What is it, Deanna?”
“Chief of Police Elder is here to see you,” Deanna said hesitantly. “And some other people, too.”
Pascal heaved a heavy breath. “Yeah, send them in, and then set up another teleconference with the two men on line three, Deanna. Then bring a big pot of coffee. Big pot, Deanna. I really need the caffeine. Okay?”
“Okee-dokey, Your Honor,” Deanna said perkily, apparently glad that the mayor hadn’t bitten her head off for interrupting him.
Pascal had thirty seconds to run a hand through ruffled hair and make sure that his fly was zipped. He pasted his best, most impressive politician’s smile across his face and said, “Come in,” when there was a tap at the door. Deanna peeked in for a microsecond and then motioned three people in to see him.
Burt Elder was Sawdust City’s chief of police. He was fifty-odd years old, with a penchant for playing golf, and had been a police officer for most of his adult life. He and Pascal were agreeable on most subjects. As Pascal tended to support the police, Burt t
ended to support Pascal. He was an agreeable sort of person as well, polite to a cursing speeder as well to a lady walking down the sidewalk. For the moment he had an irritated expression wrinkling his features and a distinctly unhappy air hanging about him.
Behind him was Albie’s chief of police, Paxton Andrews. He was in his forties and the rumor was that he didn’t take shit from anyone, least of all Ophelia Rector. However, as the last person filing in was Ophelia herself, it appeared as though Paxton had, in fact, taken some degree of ass apples from her. Paxton didn’t look particularly joyful about the state of affairs, either, and he glanced meaningfully at Ophelia as they settled in front of Pascal’s desk.
Ophelia, on the other hand, didn’t merely look unhappy. Au contraire, ma frere, she looked pissed. Supremely, thoroughly, and utterly pissed. Pascal had been wrong about Edith McTavish. Edith wouldn’t have beaned him with a baseball bat or jumped on him like a cougar with an unwary rabbit. But Ophelia would do exactly that, cheerfully, abandonedly, with great happiness, and an unquenchable blood thirst, probably shrieking gleefully as she pounded away on Pascal’s inert, ensanguined flesh.
Pascal would have looked for an escape route, but he was afraid to turn his back on Ophelia. So it’s time to play the game again. Bigger stakes this time, buddy body. Don’t wing it. Just go with it.
“Where’s his fucking body?” Ophelia demanded immediately.
Deanna’s eyes widened and she hurriedly shut the door to Pascal’s office. Undoubtedly her ear was pressed up against the door, but Pascal didn’t think that she needed to get that close to hear what was about to happen.
“Now calm down, Ophelia,” Paxton said sedately.
Pascal gazed at the three with interest. “Whose body, Ophelia?” he asked calmly.
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 17
