by Jack Kerley
“It’s good,” Ms Tenahoe corrected in a bright, musical voice at odds with her first impression. “Not photographic. Let me take a peek.”
She studied the photo. Yanked her thumb for Ben to move from his desk so she could sit. She pecked keys, faces flying past on the monitor. I wondered if the SLDP had face-recognition software. They seemed to have everything else to gauge the whereabouts of people, not just in locale, but spanning decades.
The computer beeped and four photos unfolded on the screen.
“Here we go,” she said. “Your baby-snatcher’s name is Terry Lee Bailes. There’s not much on him because he wasn’t singled out for individual surveillance, meaning he’s not considered particularly dangerous.”
I looked at Harry, mouthed not dangerous?
“I’ve got a few photos of him peripheral to other investigations. Here they come.”
We leaned close to the monitor. In the first two pix, the man we now knew as Terry Lee Bailes was on a scruffy, dented Harley parked with a dozen other bikers outside a roadhouse. The third was the same bar, a different day, a few different participants.
“That’s the Southern Gladiators’ clubhouse over by Jackson,” Tenahoe said. “It’s a bar where a lot of the WR biker-types hang out.”
“WR?” Harry asked. “White something-or-other?”
“How’d you guess?” Tenahoe grinned. “White Riders. They’re a nasty lot. Not real organized, not real smart, but murderously mean and loving to prove it. They’re also allied with the Aryan Revolutionary Army, its security and enforcement wing.”
Something caught Harry’s eye. He leaned close to the photos, scanning between them. He pointed to something only he had seen.
“Look how their bikes are parked. The gang’s machines are lined up straight and so tight they’re almost touching, but here, five or six feet away, is Bailes’s bike. Both times.”
“He’s not part of the group,” I said, suddenly seeing it. “It’s subliminal. He couldn’t park his bike up close and personal to theirs. The physical distance reflects a psychological distance.”
Harry nodded. “He’s not fully accepted by the group.”
“Incredible observation,” Tenahoe said, staring at Harry with undisguised admiration.
The last shot was Bailes with two other guys, smoking and talking. One guy’s palm rested on Bailes’s shoulder, like they were buds.
“Who’s the guy with his hand on Bailes?” Harry asked.
“The guy the shots were meant to catch,” Tenahoe said. “Donnie Kirkson. He’s a low-life scuzzer who operated as a conduit between movers and shakers like Arnold Meltzer and the rank-and-file types like the White Riders. Kirkson’s nasty business: aggravated assault, breaking and entering, wanton endangerment, drug busts, sexual assaults. He’s not bright enough to be a chief, but he probably killed or kicked the shit out of someone Meltzer considered an enemy, so he moved up to the equivalent of middle management.”
“You said ‘operated’, past-tense,” Harry noted.
“Kirkson got caught having sex with a fifteen-year-old runaway. He befriended her, then loaded her with alcohol and dragged her to a motel for four days. Kirkson took a six-year prison fall. He went in last winter.”
I looked again at the spread of surreptitious photos, always amazed at the minutiae Ben and his people could garner.
“Anything else you need?” Ben asked.
I handed him the list of names Bailes had ranted at the camera.
“Lessee here,” Ben said, tapping the list. “You know Adolf, and you know 88 is Heil Hitler, right? The James is probably James Burmeister, who randomly executed two black people on the street. John is probably John King, who dragged a black man to death behind his truck –”
“I remember that,” Harry said. “The victim’s name was Byrd.”
“Right. Buford would be Buford Furrow, who opened fire on pre-schoolers at a Jewish community center. And Pastor Butler is Richard Butler, the founder of the Aryan Nation, a supposed man of God who proclaimed Hitler a prophet, Jews the descendants of Satan, and blacks as mud people.”
“So Terry Lee was giving a big ol’ shout-out to previous hatemongers?” I said, feeling sickened.
“A lot of these screwballs believe in Norse myths – the Aryan thing, right? – your boy Bailes was probably figuring he’ll get his name scribed on the walls of Valhalla, right beside Adolf, Buford, James and the rest of the glee club.”
Harry and I thanked Ben and Wanda Tenahoe and started to the door. Ben said, “Anything else you need, Carson, just ask. We’ve got decades of info on low-life scuzzballs, with more coming in every day. Plus a wide range of operatives, informants, and sympathizers who keep up on the whereabouts of the worst of the lot. Some of them, we can tell you what they had for supper last night. And what pizza company they called to deliver it.”
Harry stopped and turned. “You know when they make phone calls, Mr Belker?”
An uneasy smile from Ben. “We might have a sympathizer or two in the phone companies. Folks who slip us call records of certain nasty individuals. Unless that’s illegal, in which case this is all conjecture.”
“Must be conjecture,” Harry said, jamming his hands in his pockets and heading for the door. “Hell, I didn’t even hear it.”
Chapter 15
“That’s some network those folks have,” Harry said, putting the cruiser in gear.
“It’s been in place for years. Some of their operatives are dedicated enough to take heavy risks, like being undercover in dens of hate. And as Ben alluded, they’re not above edging around the law to get the job done.”
“Keeping tabs on white supremacists has got to be one of the stranger job descriptions. How’d Belker get into the gig?”
“You remember the twenty-year-old white guy who came down South in 1973 to register voters, unionize the factories – Thomas Belker? Ben is his boy.”
It was one more ugly act in a national history of ugly racial acts. After only a week of trying to unionize a paper mill in a small town on the Sippi-Bama border, Thomas Belker had been abducted and beaten severely. Like many of the attacks of the day, the perps were never found.
Though Belker had the fortune to survive, his wounds were crippling and constantly painful. He was an icon of the populist movement, the naïve but hopeful kid from New York City who went to the Deep South to fight the segregation and work abuses that had lingered into the seventies. Pete Seegar had written a song about Thomas Belker, and his name was invoked at civil rights commemorations.
“I remember the day it happened,” Harry said. “I was just a kid. When I got older, there was something in me that wanted to track down his address, say thanks. But then I’d wonder what I’d say, how I’d say it. And, of course, I never knew where to write.”
“Ben’s dad lives in Brooklyn,” I recalled. “Send a letter.”
“It’s a different time now,” Harry said quietly. “And I still wouldn’t know what to say.”
A little more checking revealed that Bailes had lived in a trailer on the southern side of Mobile. I expect the motor court had started out nice back in the fifties, but time and weather had taken a toll on some of the lots and units. Others were in decent shape with sculpted hedges and neat little lawns. I figured these were owner-occupied, the park a mix of owned and rented units.
Bailes’s trailer was a rental, not a surprise. I suspected it had been in place since the court opened, its lines blocky and tired-looking. It was green, which probably helped disguise the mildew, but not much. Paint isn’t generally fuzzy.
Harry and I walked rickety steps to the door and he slipped the lock in a five-count. The door bottom squealed across the warped floor, needing to be lifted to swing clear. We stepped inside to a smell that wrinkled our noses.
There were plates on the table with cigarettes stubbed out in unwashed food remains. Maybe Bailes hadn’t done the dishes because there was a motorcycle engine block in the sink. If there was a déc
or motif in the trailer, it was Empty Beer Bottles, the Miller Lite period. A secondary motif was Aryan: a “flag” made from a sheet and hand-painted with a black swastika, poorly, draped over a slumping couch. I figured it was a thematic venue for reading Mein Kampf. Except for the couch, it was all outdoor furniture, probably swiped from patios. The smells of smoke, beer, garbage and mildew fought, with garbage the easy winner until Harry set the overflowing can outside and we opened the windows.
I checked the cabinets, finding canned goods, packets of tuna, popcorn, a five-pound bag of instant mashed potatoes, all from cut-rate outlets. The fridge held beer and ketchup and a package of gray hot dogs. Harry took the bedroom, emerging after a five-minute toss.
“Nothing in there but a porn collection and white-power pamphlets and books.”
We found mountains of porn in our jobs. I used to regard the bulk of it with an ironic amusement, but the content had darkened and now there were widely available magazines and websites that made me avert my eyes and wonder if we were all the same species.
Harry got down on hands and knees to check under the couch. He rolled his eyes, muttered, “Oh shit.”
“What?”
He pulled out a mousetrap with a shriveled body dangling from the clamp.
“Looks fresher than the hot dogs,” I noted.
We finished up. Aside from the white-supremacist and biker trappings, Terry Lee Bailes remained a cipher. Stepping outside into clean air blowing up from the Gulf, I resisted the impulse to strip to my skivvies and let the sun burn away any vampiric bacteria from Terry Lee Bailes’s stinking trailer.
We heard the near rumble of motorcycle engines and saw a trio of bikers through a copse of cypresses acting as a windbreak between the trailer park and the road. They braked to turn into the park. I saw the advance biker look our way and shout behind him and the trio fired their engines and thundered away.
“Goddamn I hate them big motorscooters,” grumbled a voice at our backs.
We turned to see a tight, wiry guy in his seventies. Though small of frame, he had the shoulders and stature of a man who’d once been fit and hard, his carriage as erect as a fence pole. He wore pressed khakis and a white strap tee, a blurry blue anchor tattooed on a bicep. His hair was short and steel gray.
“You’re cops, right?” he said, narrowing an eye.
“As true as the day is long,” Harry said.
“Bailes in jail?” the guy said, looking hopeful.
“Bailes is in the morgue.”
For a split-second it seemed the old guy was about to clap his hands in glee. But maybe he was gonna play air accordion.
“Did you know Mr Bailes, sir?” Harry asked.
“Our biggest conversation came after he moved here few months back. Thought he was some big-ass Hell’s Angel or something, a tough guy. I worked as an oiler in the Merchant Marine since I was seventeen years old. I never gave anyone shit, but I never took any either, you know what I mean?”
“I expect I do.”
“He come a-roarin’ in here the first couple nights on that damn Harley, gunnin’ the engine outside my window so I couldn’t hear the tee-vee from two feet away. The third day I heard him coming and put my forty-five in my belt…I got a permit, you wanna see?”
“I’ll take your word, sir.”
“I jammed that hogleg in my pants and headed to the door. Bailes pulled up under my window. The sound was like a goddamn train wreck that kept going. When I stepped outside he put a finger in one nosehole and cleared out the other one on the ground. He gave me a shit-eating grin with that lopsided face and said, ‘Loud enough for you, Pops?’”
“Your reply, sir?” I asked, knowing it was going to be the highlight of my day.
“I pulled that pistol out and said, ‘Almost as loud as your screamin’s gonna be when I blow a hole through your leg and into the crankcase.’”
“Bailes’s response, sir?”
“From that day on he cut the engine when he got close, glided up between the trailers.” The old sailor shook his head. “Gutless little pissant.”
Chapter 16
“Gutless?” Harry said as we climbed back into the car. “Bailes creeps into a guarded hospital, fights a duel with a security guard, tries to hop out a window when cornered? Nuts, maybe. But not gutless.”
The computer in the car beeped and displayed an address. I shielded my eyes against the sun and studied. “Bailes’s mother, current surname Teasdale,” I said. “I’ll go tell mama her baby boy is gone. You want me to drop you off first?”
Given that Harry had fired the fatal shot, I didn’t know if he’d want to be there when I informed Bailes’s mama. He’d stay in the car, of course, but it’d still be an uncomfortable nearness.
Harry considered my offer for a couple of beats. “Thanks for the thought, bro. But I’ll be fine in the car. I’ll call the hospital for the latest on Noelle.”
“That’ll do the job, I suppose.”
Mrs Bailes/Teasdale lived in a scrofulous bungalow along a drainage canal. Vehicle carcasses lined the street, waiting for repairs the owners could never afford. The yard was dirt and weeds. A silver GMC pickup sat in the drive, tool chest in the bed, not generally a lady’s kind of vehicle.
I waited for a pair of motorcycles to roar down the street, knocked again. For a split-second I noticed a strange sensation, like my knocking made a kettledrum sound. I looked around, making sure no one was playing a big drum nearby, but nothing. I knocked harder, but the drum effect was gone.
“Who the hell is it?” a male voice barked from inside.
I held my ID to the window on the door, saw the curtain slide, eyes inspect. The door opened to a big muscular guy in his early forties, with sunbronze skin and a Fabio-style hairdo. The guy pulled a red crushed-velvet bathrobe around him, hair still wet. The bathrobe was probably an XX-Large and seemed to fit just right. I didn’t like him on general principles.
“Sorry to disturb you,” I said. “Does LaVernia Teasedale live here?”
He began swinging the door shut. “Never heard the name before.”
I put up my hand to stop the door. “Records show she pays utilities on this house. If Miz Teasdale is here, I need to speak to her. If she’s not, I’ll be back.”
“What would a cop want with LaVernia?” the hulk growled. His biceps rippled like fluid stone.
“That’s between me and her.”
“She ain’t here. I dunno when she’ll be back. Maybe next week.” He tried the door-close again, I did the one-finger doorstop. I looked across the room, saw the ashtray and pretty much knew by the smell what I’d find. I slipped under the guy’s arm and across the floor.
“Hey!” he barked.
“Wrong,” I said, holding up the half-smoked joint plucked from the ashtray. “Not hay, sport. Grass.”
“Aw fuck,” he said. “You gotta be kidding. An’ I ain’t never seen it before anyway.”
I pocketed the doob. The house was dark, curtains drawn. I saw discount furniture in the living room, a couple of porno mags on the couch. I heard giggling in a back room, female. It sounded like a voice on the phone.
“Didja like it?” the voice asked. “Was it all in focus?”
I could see into the dining room. Instead of a table and chairs, there was a king-size mattress on the floor, a couple pillows. A movie camera was tripoded in the corner. There was a still camera on a table. In the opposing corner a black tripod held a floodlight, also angled down at the bed. Wires ran from equipment to a laptop computer on a low stool near the bed.
The guy saw where I was looking. “Now what? You got a problem with people making home movies?”
I’ve never been opposed to sexuality. I’ve celebrated it with gusto when time and companion are right. And I don’t give a tinker’s damn what anyone does in the privacy of their home. But the keyword is private and beaming intimacies out over the internet for the entertainment of thousands of viewers seemed to defeat the word “intimate”. P
lus, given the appearances of most who mingled body parts for viewing, the programs were an affront to aesthetics as well.
“Here’s the way it is, star,” I said, tiring of the repartee. “Either get Miz Teasdale, or tell me where I can find her. Elsewise you are gonna find your ass in jail.”
He sneered. “My lawyer will pop me in ten seconds.”
“Indeed, star,” I agreed. “And I’ll happily put your ass in there for free. But your lawyer will charge five hundred bucks to get it out.”
He started to say some smart-ass thing. I was about fed up with star-boy. I waggled a no-no finger with my right hand, said, “Get the lady.”
He scowled but folded, looking to the back of the house. “Vernia!”
“What?”
“A guy wants to talk to you. Some cop.”
A door opened in a back room; bedroom, I assumed. A petite teenaged girl stepped into the shadowed hall wearing a white blouse and short plaid skirt, the kind of dress worn by parochial schoolgirls. She had on blue knee socks and patent-leather loafers. I was about to turn and bust bathrobe boy for statutory rape when the girl stepped into the living-room’s light.
I saw her youth was a façade of make-up, a lie of cosmetology. Squint and she was fourteen, open your eyes and she was forty-something. The effect was freakish, like a mummy with ten coats of pink paint, or something from a Ray Bradbury sideshow.
“I ain’t done nothing wrong,” the girl protested. Her whisky-soaked voice was three hundred years older than her appearance and suggested she’d done plenty wrong, but was pretty sure I wasn’t currently catching her at it.
“LaVernia Teasdale?” I asked, still spooked by the carnival face. “Formerly Bailes?”
“It was Bailes for four fuckin’ months. That was twenny-something years ago. Whadya want?”
“You’re Terry Lee’s Bailes’s mother?”
She lit a cigarette and let the smoke drift from her nose as she talked. “I ain’t seen that chickenshit kid in forever. Two years, mebbe.”
