Dead South (Mattie O'Malley FBI agent)
Page 7
“Some day, but not today,” Doctor Flint replied.
With Wade between them, Doctor Flint and Mattie helped him hop back to the Doc’s operating room in the back of the building. After putting Wade up on the operating table, Doctor Flint began to gather instruments out of drawers. For being such a tiny operating room, it was well equipped and very modern. All of the instruments were spotless and shiny. Every drawer was marked and every instrument in its proper place. Doctor Flint was working in a hellhole of a town but his care was top-notch.
“This won’t take long,” Doctor Flint explained. “He usually doesn’t hit any bones. He’s careful that way.”
Mattie couldn’t believe her ears. Here she was upset because the Sheriff had shot Wade and now Doctor Flint was telling her he did it all of the time. She was flabbergasted.
“He’s shot other people?”
“Usually two or three a year. He’s a good shot. Hasn’t hit a bone, nerve or major blood vessel yet. Most of the time he aims for the outside of the leg where there’s muscle, no big blood vessels and very few nerves. He shot the last guy out of here in the ass—winged it—leave a long furrow that will hurt like hell. I’ll be seeing the guy tomorrow or the next day.”
“Doctor Flint, cops don’t shoot people for breaking the law, they arrest them. You shoot people who are an immediate threat to you or the citizens around you. If I shot every person in Jackson who broke the law, I’d run out of bullets in five minutes. Where does it end if you shoot people who break the law? Do you shoot jaywalkers and let the pickpockets go? Or do you shoot everyone who commits a felony? It’s just plain-ass wrong.”
Doctor Flint stopped what he was doing to look at her. “This is the South, Mattie, the deep South. It’s not like anywhere else on earth. You can’t judge the Sheriff until you walk in his shoes. He has to be tough because if he isn’t, these people will eat him for lunch. The law doesn’t have a big foot hold here, it has a tiny little toehold. For the most part, people around here don’t like the law because it cuts into their criminal endeavors. If you stand on the main street and watch people go by, I can guarantee that at least three of any five people you see earn their money through moonshine. It’s the only way they can make money. Trust me, if there were other jobs they would take them, but the economy here is very slow and if you want to eat, you have to work and the only jobs are at the stills.”
“What if he decided to shoot you?”
“It’s not like that. If he shoots someone, they needed it. He’s very careful.”
“What about due process? Shooting someone takes away all of their rights.”
“A while back there was a new sheriff up in Bend County. He campaigned that if he won, he would shut down all of the stills. First day on the job, he disappeared. They found his car in the swamp a year later. He wasn’t in it. But there was a bullet hole in the windshield in front of the driver. Around here, the Sheriff is the judge, jury and executioner. If he settles something, it stays settled. His word is law. These people need an iron fist. It’s the only thing they understand.” He looked in a drawer. “Would you mind cutting off his pants leg. I’ve got some scissors here somewhere.”
“Don’t need them,” she said, pulling a long switchblade out of her pocket. Snap! She used the knife to slice off the leg of his pants. The sharp blade slid through the cloth like it was jello. When she pulled away the cloth, it revealed a clean bullet hole on the outside of his thigh. She used the sharp blade to pull a wad of cloth out of the wound.
“Owwwww!” Wade sniveled.
“Quit your whining. I’ve lost more blood shaving my legs.”
“Who was the last person he shot—before old Wade here?”
“Black drug dealer named Cain. Shot him in the back with a load of birdshot. I got most of the pellets out but he’ll probably die of lead poisoning some day.”
“What did he do?”
“Sold drugs too close to the school. Sheriff warned him. Next time he saw Cain he didn’t say a word, just shot him.”
Mattie looked at Wade’s leg more closely. It was coated with dirt and grease.
“Have you ever taken a bath? I’ve seen cleaner pigs.”
Insulted, Wade gave her an insolent scowl.
“Baths ain’t good for ya. My pappy didn’t take no baths and he lived to be a hunnert.”
“Hell, judging by the amount of dirt on you, you’ll live to be two hundred and change.”
“He isn’t alone,” Doctor Flint told her. “Most of the people around here only take a bath on Saturday night. Personal hygiene measures we take for granted won’t find their way here for another twenty years. Instead, they have all this folklore and home remedies. If you want to draw a bullet out of a wound, you smear it with pine tar. If you want to get pregnant, you wear garlic around your neck. If your child has a cold, you smear honey and mustard on his chest.”
“Sounds more like a salad than a remedy,” she grinned.
“It can go either way. One man’s cold cure is another man’s salad dressing. And by the way, salads aren’t a big thing here. You can get one if you ask but not many people eat them. They call it rabbit food.” He glanced at her. “Does this mean you’re going to be staying longer?”
“Against my better judgment, yes, it does. But it’s going to be a day-by-day thing. Given any chance, I’m gone.”
“Exact way I felt about this place until I got used to it.”
“When was that?”
“Next Christmas.”
She laughed. She really enjoyed talking to Doctor Flint. He was intelligent, open-minded and kind, plus a few other good things. He was everything her boy friend hadn’t been.
“If the shooting and killing are related, I stay. If not—“
“I hear you.”
“Where’d you learn to draw like that?” Wade asked.
“Like what?” responded.
But she said it over her gun that had magically appeared in her hand. One tiny, tiny microsecond to draw.
“Son of a bitch!” Wade exclaimed, his eyes wide with wonder.
“I second that,” Doctor Flint added.
She holstered her gun.
“Practice, practice and more practice,” she said.
“I never met no nigger lady like you before,” Wade said grudgingly. “You want to be on my team we shoot a course every two weeks out at the dump.”
“Thanks, Wade, but I’m not gonna be here that long.”
“Can I interest you in dinner at my place this evening? I cook a mean TV dinner.”
“Sure, anything’s better than eating at the café.”
“Hey, that’s where I eat,” Wade objected.
“No wonder I stuck to the chair seat,” Mattie adlibbed.
Doctor Flint put a thick gauze pack on the leg wound.
“Press down gently,” he said.
She did as he asked, lightening the force when she saw Wade grimace. After all, he had invited her to shoot on his team.
“What time?” she continued.
“Sevenish.”
An hour or so later, Sheriff Wilks returned. Wade’s leg was bandaged, the white gauze a sharp contrast to his dirty leg. She had tried to clean the area around the wound but it was like hosing off a driveway with a squirt pistol.
“He ready to go?” Sheriff Wilks queried.
“Almost as good as new,” Doctor Flint joked.
“I told your old woman you was going to be in jail for the next week. Want to know what she said? the Sheriff asked Wade.
“She said if I made you take a bath, she’d sleep with every man in town and name your first born after me.”
Everyone but Wade laughed. He glowered at them but wisely kept his mouth shut.
“So, as soon as you’re walkin’ again, I’m gonna take you down to the car wash and hose you off.”
“You can’t do that,” Wade said sullenly. “A man’s got a right not to take a bath.”
“As long as it doesn’t bother
everyone else and right now, I can smell you from ten feet away. If it makes you feel any better, I can get you one of them water toys to play with.”
“Sheriff, I’ll come over and check on Noonan. I don’t want him to start bleeding again,” Doctor Flint ventured.
“Fine.” The Sheriff looked at Mattie. “You said you could shoot better than you can draw? Guess you’ll have to show me before you leave.”
“Why not?”
Neither one of them had the slightest inkling that within a very short time, Mattie would demonstrate her shooting ability but it wasn’t going to be on bottles at the dump.
CHAPTER SIX
The land along the river was a maze of swampland, small lakes, thick trees and secret coves in both directions out of Kingswood. The men who fished the river probably knew the land the best because they saw it from their boats as they cruised the river, looking for fish to catch. Farmers who owned land adjacent to the river knew their land and maybe their neighbors’ land but no one really knew the entire area because it was just too big and complex. In addition, the river sometimes shifted its course and cut a new channel to follow, leaving the old riverbed to gradually become swampland. There were places along the river that had never felt the tread of human feet, places that begged to be explored. A few hunters had ventured into the thick underbrush, trees and swamp lands along the river but the vegetation was so thick, moving a quarter mile could take half a day. A few hunting guides from the area knew of secret places where the fish were big and the trophy deer roamed but they kept the information to themselves.
The people who probably knew the area the best were the moonshiners who drove their loads on the county back roads and occasionally sent a boatload of shine across the river for buyers in Louisiana. Each moonshiner knew his area so well that he could drive it in the dark, which made it hard for local lawmen to catch them. But the moonshiners were an independent bunch who seldom talked to their fellow entrepreneurs because the shine business was loaded with snitches. Had the moonshiners combined their information, it would have been a big help to all of them in eluding pursuing lawmen. Ironically, the men who made the best lawmen were men who had been moonshiners because they knew how the system worked. They knew how the moonshiners disguised their loads, what kinds of vehicles they drove, where they got their grain and how they hid their stills. Unknown to anyone in Kingswood, Sheriff Wilks had been a moonshiner for six years before being elected to his present post. He knew the back roads as well as any of the bootleggers, which is why he was able to find stills the feds missed.
Later that day, after jailing Noonan and Wade, Sheriff Wilks drove to an isolated river cove on a dirt road that connected two county highways. From the cove, Sheriff Wilks could see both highways so no one could sneak up on him. He could disappear in a half dozen directions before they could get to his position. It was his favorite spot for clandestine meetings. He was meeting Rafe and he could not afford for anyone to see them together, especially Mattie. She was just too damn nosey. She had surprised the shit out of him when she had shown up at Paxton’s place. Had she not done so, she wouldn’t have ever found out about Paxton’s murder. He would have made sure of that. But now she was ass-deep in the investigation, a fact that could potentially cause him all sorts of trouble. He needed to find a way to get rid of her. And soon. There was a lot of stuff going down in the coming weeks, stuff she didn’t need to stick her nose in.
He saw the expected vehicle turn onto the dirt road from the north county highway. Five minutes later a black Mercedes with blacked-out windows stopped next to his cruiser. After a few seconds, the driver’s side window hummed down to reveal Junior Barnes behind the steering wheel. A moment later, the back window hummed smoothly down. Rafe was a very careful man.
“How’s it goin’? Sheriff.” Rafe asked.
“It’s goin’,” he replied.
“Anybody else down here?”
“No one else knows about this place.”
Rafe got right to the point. “Someone poisoned Big Blue. Killed him right on the track.”
“So I heard,” Sheriff Wilks replied. He was very careful with Rafe. The man was a complete psycho.
“Son of a bitch cost me $100,000,” Rafe continued. “That’s not walking around money, that’s somebody’s dead money.”
“Are you sure he was poisoned?”
“Lips turned blue. Leroy’s seen it before,” Junior Barnes said.
“This here is the names of the three big winners in the race.”
Rafe handed a slip of paper to Junior Barnes who handed it to Sheriff Wilks who studied the names.
“Dusty Pew’s the only one I know. Never heard of the other two,” Sheriff Wilks said.
“Them other two are from Atlanta. I doubt if it was them. Had to be someone with a horse in the race.”
“Me and Leroy’s gonna cut ‘em,” Junior Barnes bragged.
“Shut up!” Rafe exploded. “Dusty’s horse won. That’s good enough for me. I want you to lean of him.”
“On or off the record?” Sheriff Wilks asked.
“Off. If it is him, I don’t want anything to connect us to him.”
“Ok.”
“What’s this I hear about that nigger lady backin’ down Jubal today?” Rafe asked.
“Jubal was out of line. He brought a bunch of Klansmen to Doc Flints to take Noonan. You did hear that someone killed Paxton? Shot him then dumped him in a baler.”
“Saved me the trouble. He ripped off Deacon for another load of shine. You sure Noonan offed him?”
Junior Barnes didn’t like being left out of the conversation but he knew better than to piss off Rafe again. Rafe had a habit of putting things that irritated him into sinkholes in the swamp.
“Noonan done it, ain’t no doubt,” Sheriff Wilks assured him.
“I want you to find my shine,” Sheriff. “Paxton didn’t have time to sell it. Probably out at his place.”
“I know where you can buy a baler real cheap,” he deadpanned.
Both Rafe and Junior Barnes laughed out loud.
“Better keep that baler handy, cause we may need it for the nigger woman. She sticks her nose in my business, it could come in handy. We don’t need the feds down here snoopin’ around.”
“I’m on it,” Sheriff Wilks told Rafe.
“You remember how I thought Jenny was cheatin’ me?”
Jenny was the whore who ran one of Rafe’s two whorehouses. One was in town while the other one was out in the county. One was a premium house for the more affluent in town while the other was more of a discount place for the common man. The discount place didn’t have a name but everyone called it Jenny’s Place. The premium house was called the Gentlemen’s Club although Sheriff Wilks couldn’t ever recall seeing a gentleman in the place. Although not especially pretty, Jenny knew how to package her assets. She wore short skirts, tight tops and ungainly high heels that made her another six inches taller. The Gentlemen’s Club was run by Sara Polone, a tough old madam from Georgia, who was the one thing in the club that wasn’t for sale. She ran a tight ship, didn’t drink, and wouldn’t tolerate drug use by her girls. Rafe had long suspected that Jenny was cheating him.
“Yeah.” Sheriff Wilks didn’t give a big green shit about Jenny or that she was cheating Rafe since he didn’t make a single penny off either of the houses. As far as he was concerned, she could steal all of the money. Bottom line was Rafe paid him to keep an eye on things not to do any of his real dirty work. Junior Barnes and Leroy did that. Rafe knew there was a line Sheriff Wilks wouldn’t cross.
“Last weekend I had Junior sit on her place Saturday and Sunday. Junior counted 121 Johns goin' in. She paid me for fifty. I can live with five or ten but seventy-one—not gonna happen.”
“Damn whores,” Sheriff Wilks said unenthusiastically, “They’ll cheat you blind. You want me to run her out of town?”
“No, I’ll take care of it. We’re gonna have a little going away party.”
“Here ya go.” Rafe handed Sheriff Wilks an envelope full of money. Sheriff Wilks took it with his left hand—leaving his right hand to keep his pistol pointed at Rafe but below the doorframe so the crime boss couldn’t see it. When it came to dealing with Rafe, Sheriff Wilks took a lot of precautions and always having a gun in hand was one of them. He didn’t bother to count the money. Rafe never short-changed him.
“Might be a good idea to lay low until the FBI’s gone. Stirring things up now might bring a lot more of them. Any more bodies turn up, she might ask for help.”
Rafe didn’t reply. With a whine from the window’s servo unit, the window closed, leaving Sheriff Wilks to look at his own reflection in the dark glass. Without a word, Junior Barnes drove away.
Sheriff Wilks holstered his gun then started the car. He didn’t deposit the money in his checking account. If anyone checked it, the cash deposits would be red flags that would demand an investigation. Instead, he would mail it to his sister in Flagstaff, Arizona who would deposit it in her business account. He had a nice nest egg stored up—one that he would be using in the not too distant future.
After leaving Doctor Flint’s office, Mattie drove out of town on her way to Paxton’s house. As she drove, she wondered what Doctor Flint was doing in such a hellhole when he could obviously make a lot more money and have a lot more prestige somewhere else.
She had a little trouble finding the right turn because many of the corners looked the same. Wheat. Wheat. Wheat. Wheat. All four corners. Four stop signs. How in the hell was she supposed to tell them apart? The one thing she had going for her was she remembered the turn had been about seven miles north of town, so as her odometer approached seven miles, she started looking closely at each cross roads. The first two didn’t look familiar and she started to worry that she had missed it but then she saw a mailbox that she remembered and made the turn on a road that went down to the river. After a couple of blocks she knew she was on the right road. For the first few miles the road arrowed through wheat and cornfields. What amazed her was she never saw anyone working in the fields. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t seen anyone working in any of the fields she had driven past. Where were the farmers? Where were their helpers?