See no evil, hear no evil, Manny thought as she leaned her back against the picnic table and waited.
50
Four hours later, at just past 2:00 a.m. and approaching closing time, Greg Zorn said he was ready to leave. While the inebriated attorney was in the bathroom, Bo paid the tab and assured the bartender that he would see to it that “his friend” had a ride home.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Zorn said once he had returned from the head. He didn’t bother to extend his hand, and he brushed past Bo toward the exit. “Thanks for the drinks.”
“Wrong, Greg. Not yet. I’m going to drive you home, alright?” Bo followed on his heels, noticing that Zorn was having a hard time walking in a straight line. “I promised the bartender.”
“F-f-fuck him,” Greg said, his voice a drunken mess as he pushed the door leading outside.
The two men stepped into the salt air, and Bo was grateful for the gentle breeze he felt coming off the Gulf. He grabbed Zorn by the arm before he could take another step. “Greg, that barkeep has already notified the traffic cops on Perdido Key Boulevard to be on the lookout for your Porsche, which, by the way, stands out like me in this bar.”
Zorn smiled. “It’s a sweet ride, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s sweet alright,” Bo said, pulling the man forward. “Come on. I’m going to take you home and you’re going to tell me where you keep the copy of that change form.”
“The hell I am,” Zorn said. Then, realizing his gaffe, he whined, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bo heard faint footsteps behind him and looked over his shoulder, but no one was there. The wind, he thought, but he still felt an inner chill as he pondered the information he had just gleaned from Zorn and what Bully Calhoun might do to keep it hidden. If I can get my hands on that change form. Even if it’s a copy . . .
Bo clicked the keyless entry and the brake lights to the Sequoia flashed on. When they did, he saw that that front left tire was flat as a board. “Damnit,” he said. He had parked in enough gravel lots today to pick up a nail. Then he noticed that the back left tire was likewise flat.
“Shit, man, sss-someone did a number on your tires,” Zorn slurred, walking around the back of the vehicle. “The ones over here are slashed too.”
Bo knelt down and shined the light on his cell phone at the front tire. He immediately noticed the puncture mark and he felt gooseflesh break out on his neck and arms. He shot to his feet. “Greg!” he yelled, but the lawyer was now stumbling across the lot toward his Porsche.
“You ever driven a 911, Haynes?” Zorn said behind his shoulder. “It’s like sticking your prick in a virg—” He stopped dead still with his voice caught in his throat. When his vocal cords began to work again, the scream came out like the wail of a child. “No!” Zorn lunged forward and knelt on his knees in the gravel by the back tire.
Bo swept his eyes in all directions and walked in a crouch toward the drunken lawyer. Whoever cut their wheels might still be out there, and they were easy prey at this time of night. Ducks on the pond, Bo thought.
“Is everything alright?”
Bo wheeled toward the voice. A tan-skinned woman wearing a yellow sundress and a white cap was walking toward him. “Why is he screaming?” she asked.
Bo glanced at Zorn, who was still on his knees by the Porsche looking like he was about to pass out. “His tires were slashed,” Bo said, moving his eyes back to the woman. “So were—”
He stopped talking when he saw the muzzle of the gun rising upward.
Bo reached for the Glock tucked in the back of his pants but knew it was too late. His instincts had failed to fire when he’d seen the sundress. As his hands latched around the handle of the pistol, the woman pointed her gun, a nine-millimeter if Bo had to guess, at his head.
Bocephus Aurulius Haynes closed his eyes and an image of his wife Jazz holding T. J. and Lila’s hands on the first day of second grade and kindergarten popped into his mind. He held the vision and waited for his lights to be turned out forever. But instead of a pistol firing, he heard the unmistakable blast of a twelve-gauge shotgun.
Bo’s eyes flew open and the tan-skinned woman—Bully Calhoun’s enforcer, no doubt—was gone. He slowly turned to his right, his heart pounding in his chest, as he searched the darkness for the person who had just saved his life.
A half second later, he saw a figure in a T-shirt, jeans, and work boots approaching cautiously. The man had at least a week’s worth of stubble on his face and wore a dark cap pulled low over his eyes. As the man entered the light, Bo met his gaze while at the same time reading the letters on the hat.
Drake Farms.
“My believer,” Bo said, hearing his voice catch in his throat and never being so happy to see someone in his whole life.
Richard William Drake, holding a Remington 1100 shotgun in shooting position, looked past Bo to the restaurant and, beyond it, the beach. “I missed,” he finally said, the frustration in his voice palpable. “I had her in my sights . . . and I missed.”
51
After Bo and Rick scoured the beach and surrounding properties for thirty minutes without finding any clues as to where the sundress woman might have gone, they finally called the police. Two hours later, after Rick and Bo had completed handwritten statements, the investigating officer took their numbers and said he would call if they developed any leads. They thanked the policeman for his time, but both knew that any investigation would be a dead end. Bully Calhoun’s enforcer was gone.
Dust in the wind.
They crashed for the night at a beachside Hampton Inn. Turned out Zorn didn’t own the house on Ono Island. His ex-wife did, and Zorn had bequeathed almost all of his office furniture to her in the divorce property settlement. The attorney had met the moving crew at the house, assisted in getting the couches and tables to the upstairs den his teenage sons were using, and then split a pizza with the boys before heading to the Pink Pony Pub. On the way, he belted half of a pint of Jack Daniel’s he kept in his glove compartment in case of emergencies. Apparently, any time he had to spend more than fifteen minutes with his ex-wife, Jill, qualified as an emergency.
Once Zorn had safely passed out on one of the double beds in the room they’d rented, Bo and Rick sat in plastic chairs on the deck overlooking the ocean. To the east, the sun rose over the Gulf of Mexico. For several minutes, neither man spoke, the only sound the crashing of waves on the shore below. Finally, Bo slapped Rick on the back. “When did Tom call you?”
“About ten fifteen.”
“Last night?” Bo asked, not believing it.
Rick nodded. “He filled me in on Bully Calhoun’s enforcer and how she might have been the one who ran my dad off the road. Then he said he was worried that she might be following you, so . . .”
“You came.”
“Yep. I got into a similar scrape down on the coast last year and Wade bailed me out. Just paying it forward I guess.”
“Well . . . I owe you.” Bo yawned and rubbed his hands over his face, trying to fight off the fatigue that was beginning to set in. “How well did you see the woman?”
“Pretty well. Good enough to have a clear shot, but everything happened so fast.”
“Could you pick her out of a lineup?”
Rick frowned. “I’m not sure. Maybe . . . I can’t believe I missed that shot.”
Bo stood and placed his elbows over the railing. After a few seconds, he turned toward Rick. “Son, you were almost fifty yards away in a dimly lit parking lot shooting with a twelve-gauge that must be at least three decades old. You may not have killed the woman, but you sure as hell kept her from killing me. Thank you.” He leaned down and looked Rick in the eye. “You hear me? Thank you.”
Rick nodded but didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then, with his voice rising just above a whisper, he said, “It was my dad’s.”
“What?” Bo asked.
Rick stood and squinted at Bo as the sun rose behind
them. “The gun. It was my father’s.”
“Well, he’d be damn proud.” Then, smiling, Bo added, “I’m really . . . really glad you finally decided to join this party.”
Rick’s face broke into a smile, made even brighter by the emerging sunlight. “Better late than never.”
52
Manny called her boss from a gas station in Pensacola, some thirty-five miles northeast of the Pink Pony Pub. She had changed out of the sundress and now wore jeans, a blue blouse, and a painter’s cap. As she recounted the events at the bar, she watched the road, looking for any hint that the police were on her tail.
It took a lot for Manny Reyes to be shaken, but she was having a hard time regaining her composure after botching the hit at the bar and almost being killed herself. But for the reflexes she’d learned as a soldier, she’d be in a morgue.
“Are you absolutely sure that’s who it was?”
“Positive. He looked a little different with the scruffy face and cap, but it was McMurtrie’s partner, Drake. I’ve seen enough pictures to recognize him.”
“Lord have mercy,” Bully said. “Did either Haynes or Drake see you?”
“Sí. I was wearing a hat pulled low over my eyes, but . . . they saw me. Drake almost killed me.”
“Damnit,” Bully said.
Silence filled the phone line for almost two minutes as Manny waited for her instructions. When Bully finally spoke, she was again reminded of her boss’s ingenuity and flat-out nerve. The kills that had eluded her tonight would be hers in good time. She would just have to exercise one of her strongest virtues.
Patience . . .
53
At his two-story ranch house on the edge of the Sipsey Wilderness, Bully Calhoun gazed at a portrait that hung in his basement. Bear Bryant, wearing a white hat with a crimson A instead of his signature houndstooth, flanked on one side by Joe Willie Namath and on the other by Kenny “the Snake” Stabler.
Bully sipped from a glass of single-malt scotch poured neat and groaned. He was too old for this mess. He didn’t enjoy it as much as he had back in the day when he wore the powder-blue leisure suits and curled his eyebrows. He was seventy-four years old and, if he hadn’t ended up with a son-in-law that was pushing seventy and just as mean and ornery as he was, he’d probably be driving a grandson around in a golf cart and buying the kid Gatorades from the cute little cart girls.
Instead, his daughter had married the meanest rascal in the state, only a few years younger than Bully himself and long past the point that his junk could swim. And Bully was still chasing pickle tickles from the cute little cart girls anytime he thought one might be interested.
He was also dead broke, and he had spent the last year and a half holding off his creditors. His meth operation, which had boomed in the 2000s, had stalled as the cooks and suppliers he had relied on for years had died off or quit the business. Bully was out of options and needed a miracle.
And it came in the form of his son-in-law’s three-million-dollar life insurance policy. Like manna from heaven.
Bully smiled and sipped his scotch. Kat’s claim had been approved last week and she should receive the check in a few days. He had already had his attorney in Jasper draw up the dummy corporations for Kat to funnel two of the three million into. His daughter would still keep a cool million for herself, which would be ample enough money to ride on until she was able to latch on to another man with a sack full of cash.
With the two million he was taking, Bully could settle all his debts, pay Manny the money he owed her, and still have a go-to-hell fund if the meth business took longer to kick back up than he was expecting. It would all work out so long as he could keep Greg Zorn and Alvie Jennings quiet.
Things hadn’t been as clean as Bully had hoped. Life had stepped in and thrown a couple of curve balls, but Bully Calhoun had always been able to handle surprises. He could adapt and overcome as well as a Marine in the field of battle. He had made three fortunes and would make a fourth before he met his maker. He had survived four years in prison and five decades of being the alpha dog in one of the roughest and meanest counties in the state of Alabama.
And I’ll survive this too, he thought, draining the rest of his scotch. It would be messy and might lead to some temporary discomfort—the good things in life normally did—but he knew he would survive and thrive.
At the end of the day, Wilma Newton was going to be convicted of the capital murder of Jack Daniel Willistone, and Bully and Kat Calhoun would be three million dollars richer. There wasn’t anything that Tom McMurtrie, Bocephus Haynes, Rick Drake, or any damn body else could do about it.
As he walked upstairs, Bully was pleased with the plan he’d just communicated to his executioner.
“You must always remember the golden rule,” he whispered, chuckling as he recounted the soundest advice his late father had ever given him. “He who has the gold makes the rule.”
In Jasper, Alabama, where his own daddy had been a strip miner all his life and died working for the man, Marcellus “Bully” Calhoun had the gold. Sometimes he lost it, but never for long.
My town. My county. My gold.
My rule.
54
At 10:55 a.m., Rick dropped Zorn and Bo off at a Goodyear tire place in Foley.
“You sure you want me to head back?” Rick asked, tapping his fingers on the worn steering wheel of his fourteen-year-old Saturn.
Bo didn’t speak until Zorn had exited the car. “Yeah. Our cars should be ready in an hour, and it’ll give me a little one-on-one time with Mr. Zorn.”
“Ten-four,” Rick said, and Bo hopped out of the car. Leaning his head back through the passenger-side window, Bo winked at him. “Thanks again, kid.”
“No problem.”
As he watched the rusty gold sedan pull onto the highway, Bo heard Zorn’s voice next to him. “That’s one more piece-of-junk car.”
Bo looked at Jack Willistone’s onetime lawyer out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe. But the driver saved our asses last night.”
“I know,” Zorn said. “Kids these days have no respect. Slashing tires on both of our cars. You’d think the punks could get their rocks off like we used to do. Sex, drugs, alcohol.”
“Speak for yourself,” Bo said, glaring at the dull-eyed Zorn, who was clearly still feeling the effects of the whiskey and Long Island Iced Teas he’d drowned himself in the night before. “And I’m not talking about the tires. I’m talking about the woman who was about to shoot us both in the head before Rick fired his shotgun.”
“What?” Zorn turned and looked Bo straight in the eye. Sweat beads had formed on his forehead, and Bo had a feeling they weren’t just from the heat and his hangover.
“You were so drunk you don’t remember any of it, do you?” When the cops had arrived, the investigating officer had agreed with Bo and Rick that Zorn was too hammered to write a statement, so the lawyer had stayed in Rick’s car.
“Remember what?” Zorn asked.
Bo sighed. “There was a woman. Very tan. Yellow sundress. When you were crying over your tires, she pointed a nine-millimeter pistol at me and was just about to blow my head off when Rick saved the day.”
“What did she look like again?” Zorn’s eyes were now moving back and forth. He was coming out of his fog fast.
“Dark complected. Long legs. Exotic looking with a foreign accent.” Bo stopped, deciding to test Zorn. “I’d say she could be Mexican, but if I had to bet, I’d put money on her being from the Philippines.”
Zorn grimaced and the sweat on his forehead was now a clear sheen. “Mr. Calhoun is rumored to use a Filipino woman to”—he licked his lips—“do certain kinds of jobs for him.”
“Yeah,” Bo said. “The kinds of jobs where a coroner or medical examiner gets called in after she’s done.”
Zorn didn’t say anything. Instead he walked over to a bench and plopped down. Behind him and to the left, Bo saw his Sequoia and Zorn’s Porsche inside the covered garage being rai
sed up on pulleys while the mechanics installed brand-new Goodyear tires.
Bo turned his attention to Zorn, whose eyes were closed. “How’d you get messed up in this, Greg?” Bo asked, his voice soft as he took a seat next to the lawyer.
“Two words. Crystal meth.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yep. Have you ever tried that stuff?”
Bo shook his head. “Not planning on it.”
“Don’t, ’cause once you do . . . My paralegal Robin is who got me on it. We’d just won a big trial over in DeKalb County.”
“Fort Payne?”
“Yep. I have a cousin over there who referred me a murder case. After a week-long trial, the verdict came back at five thirty on a Friday afternoon. Not guilty. Me and Robin went nuts. It was one we weren’t supposed to win. You ever had one of those?”
Bo suppressed a smile. “I’m helping a friend with one of them now.”
Not getting it, Zorn continued. “We stopped in Birmingham on the way back and splurged at Bottega’s. Drank two bottles of wine and got too drunk to drive home. I got a room at the DoubleTree and texted my wife that I was still in Fort Payne and would have to stay the night because the jury hadn’t come back. It wasn’t a big publicity trial, so I didn’t think there was any way that she would find out I was lying. When me and Robin got to the room, we ordered another bottle of wine from the hotel bar and she broke out the crystal meth.” He raised his eyes. “Jesus . . . Christ, that stuff messed me up. The next twenty-four hours were a haze. I woke up the next day at four o’clock in the afternoon on the carpet floor of the hotel room.”
“Did you and your paralegal—?”
“We had sex,” Zorn said. “Not that either of us remember much of it. For the next week or so afterwards, I dabbled a couple more times with meth at the office with Robin. When she said her supply had run out, she mentioned that her dealer was from Jasper.”
The Last Trial Page 26
