“Anything else, Colt?” Freddie Mac said.
He shook his head. “But let me know about the autopsy.” When the two men from Freddie’s shop had made their way to them, bagged the body, and hoisted it for the walk back, he followed them up the grassy slope. He drove off wondering about Freddie Mac’s puzzlement.
HACK
He drove slowly down Elvis Presley Boulevard toward downtown. Traffic was light, even though it was a workday morning, and he took his time. He had spent the night, or what had been left of it by the time he’d gotten back from Mississippi, out of the city, in a hotel in Germantown, east of the city.
He hated Memphis, and this morning that hate complemented his already dark mood. He came to town only when he had to, which was whenever his employer, a man named Franklin Brooks, wanted him to. Lately, Mr. Brooks had required his presence more and more often. That displeased him.
He entered the city and immediately absorbed the gloom he felt around him in the crumbling neighborhoods, the heat, the inertia, the lassitude of a city that, for all appearances, seemed on its last legs. Mr. Brooks’s downtown office sat high above the city and its grime and desperation, and it offered sterile views of the Mississippi and the bridge leading into Arkansas, the Peabody Hotel, and the new baseball stadium. From his aerie, Brooks and his people could feel safe and distant from the malevolence and angst below. But down here, the hopelessness took hold like the razor wire and window bars on neighborhood businesses and even houses that might have once been homes.
This was not his place—out in the open, glaring asphalt spaces, and concrete shadows. He preferred to remain in the hills to the east, the hills that reminded him of his native Kentucky. In the woods and ravines he could remain an entity, a wraith both feared and revered, his judgment and wrath known by word of mouth, whispered about in the farms, hideouts, and small beat-down towns.
He steered the car through the narrow city streets and into the parking garage at the bottom of the building housing Brooks’s office, found a spot, and took the elevator out of the dank concrete cavern
The door pinged open, and he stepped into the carpeted corridor toward the double glass doors that led to Mid-South Capital Investments. The receptionist, a severe-looking older woman with silver hair and clunky black-framed glasses, spoke in low tones into the phone tucked between her shoulder and right ear. Her penciled-in eyebrows shot up as he entered the lobby, and she indicated with her eyes for him to go to Brooks’s office.
Franklin Brooks sat behind a simple wooden desk with his back to a wall of glass that presented a God’s-eye view of downtown Memphis. He clicked the door shut behind him, glanced around the spacious office toward the dark leather couch and low table, and finally to the man himself. He stood several feet from the desk and remained silent, holding a bulging white envelope in his right hand.
He never could figure out Brooks. The man wielded a startling amount of power and wealth, yet seemed to deny it in everything he did. Nearly everything. The office was spacious and comfortable, but hardly luxurious. The leather couch and table to the right were functional, not stylish. His desk could have come from any big-box store in the city, and its only decorative touches were the various documents scattered across the top, a camouflage-patterned coffee cup, and an ashtray that was clean except for the paper band of a cigar.
He knew Brooks had served in the army at some point many years ago, during the Vietnam era, but saw no evidence of the man’s service or patriotism on display on the walls. Instead, shelves filled with books on subjects from the Civil War to import laws lined the walls.
The only evidence he could see of Brooks’s fortune was in his appearance. There, it seemed, the man spared no expense—today, he sat comfortably in a charcoal-gray suit, perfectly tailored. Armani, he guessed. Blinding white shirt, pale blue silk tie, full Windsor knot. Plain but elegant cuff links—the gold looked brushed.
Even at seventy—he guessed the man to be just shy of that age—Brooks still had a full head of white hair that he combed back and wore longer than most men his age, but it worked for him. His pale face and small nose wore few wrinkles, giving him an eternally boyish look accented by blue eyes set in deep crow’s feet at the corners, the only hint as to his real age.
Brooks finished writing on the document in front of him and looked up. He pressed his lips together and gazed at the envelope.
“Good morning,” Brooks said.
“Morning, sir.”
“That was a hell of a lot of work for you for four thousand dollars. I trust that’s the amount in there.” He nodded at the envelope.
He placed the money on the desk. “Yes, sir, it is. And, yes, sir, it was. But the lesson will go a long way, especially over there.”
One side of Brooks’s mouth went up. He leaned back in his tall leather chair and looked him in the eyes. “Normally,” he said, “I’d agree with you on that.” His brow furrowed.
“Normally?”
“Yes, normally, something like this happens, we deliver a…lesson, as you call it, and everybody falls into line.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Usually, another one of our associates doesn’t get robbed before you can deliver the lesson.”
They’re fucking drug dealers, he thought. Just call them what they are: little dirtbags that sell your dope so you make shitloads of money.
He raised his eyebrows. “Sir?”
Brooks leaned forward on his elbows. He frowned. “The other night. Another one of our people—Rick Munny, something like that—got robbed by some idiot in a Halloween mask. Broke into his apartment in the middle of the night, beat the shit out of his girlfriend with a sledgehammer, pulled a gun, and made off with ten thousand dollars.”
He cleared his throat and voiced the thought that jumped to mind. “What the hell was the dealer doing with ten grand in the house? And how did this thief know there was that much?”
Brooks shook his head. “Don’t know that he did. And I don’t know why Munny had that much cash on him. Granted, these guys aren’t the brightest.”
“But still.”
“But still, nothing,” Brooks said. He sat up in his chair. “The point is that we got robbed again. I don’t like getting robbed, Mr. Hack. Your job is to ensure that we don’t.”
He stared back at the man who employed him, paid him well, and gave him a great deal of latitude without asking a lot of questions about how he went about his jobs. Franklin Brooks was interested in results. And money. His money.
“I understand that, Mr. Brooks.”
Brooks stared at him for a full thirty seconds, and then shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell is going on down there, but you better get a handle on it. This is the same damn county where the sheriff shot Kenny Jenkins a while back. God knows what that little shit said before he got killed.”
“I’m working on that,” he said. “I’ve made contact with some of Jenkins’s…associates in the hope of learning who might be doing this.”
“Doesn’t seem to be helping so far,” Brooks said, this time with an edge in his voice.
“What about this sheriff?” he asked.
“What about him?” Brooks said.
He shifted his feet, sensing an opportunity. “If he managed to turn Kenny—or any of his associates, for that matter—he may become a problem.”
Brooks sighed. “If he becomes a problem, then solve it. Again, that’s why I hired you.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“Please do,” Brooks said, “because, meanwhile, some dipshit in a zombie mask is ripping off my people.” The words came out of his mouth like a bitter lozenge, foul and unwanted. “And don’t come back to Memphis until you do.”
He met Brooks’s eyes. “Sir?”
Brooks’s gaze was like ice. “Hack, as I just said, your job is to ensure this doesn’t happen, whether it’s a sheriff interfering in our business or some little redneck shithead ripping us off. It�
�s the only reason you are in my employ. And well paid. One time is an anomaly. Twice in a month is enough to cause me concern about the validity of my investment. Not to mention the business with that other…that other incident.”
“That was an unfortunate and singular occurrence, I can assure you.”
“You think that makes it OK? An apology? Jesus Christ, man, you burned down an entire house in downtown Knoxville to cover your tracks! That was your best course of action?”
He glanced away, at the bookshelves, loathe to endure the hysterics of a man who had never seen the bloody business end of his empire.
“Couldn’t be avoided,” he said, looking back at Brooks. “The girl had so contaminated the room when she got free that it would have required a prohibitive amount of time to sanitize it.”
“You mean clean up the blood.”
“And other things, yes.”
Brooks stood, his face a crimson mask of fury, and pointed a finger at him. “Goddammit, Hack, I’ve just about had it with your flowery words and your goddam airs. That shit in Knoxville cost me more money that it made. You are on thin ice with me. You should take this as an opportunity to redeem yourself. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise what, sir?”
He thought Brooks might have a stroke.
“Otherwise,” Brooks said in a trembling voice, “you will end up in that river out there with a bullet in the back of your head. Now get out of my office.”
He felt his eyes narrow. He formed a thought, swallowed it. He said, “I understand, Mr. Brooks.” But the old man had already dismissed him and returned to the documents on his desk, as if he’d never been in the office, or even alive for that matter.
He left without another word. He passed the bitter bitch at the front desk with a nod and rode the elevator to the street, where he stepped into the gut of Memphis: hot, humid, loud, and confined. The air and the street sticky. The morning rush hour traffic clattered by, the cars creating vortexes in their wakes, spinning fast-food wrappers, newspapers, and programs from the baseball stadium down the street. He grabbed his phone from his jacket pocket and punched a number. The kid answered on the second ring, as he turned left on Union and passed Huey’s store on the way to the Peabody.
“’Sup, Mr. Freeze?” Dee said.
He stifled the urge to swear. He didn’t like Dee. At all. But the boy was useful, primarily because he was a young black male in the drug trade. And greedy. Thus, very useful.
“I thought we agreed, Dee, that the only way to address me was by my last name,” he said.
“Sorry ’bout that,” Dee said, sounding not at all contrite. “Jus’ tryin’ to, you know, have a little fun. What do you need?”
He stepped through the revolving door into the ornate lobby of the Peabody Hotel. “I need you to be ready to go to Mississippi as soon as possible.”
“Mississippi? The hell is in Mississippi?”
He stopped, closed his eyes. “Dee, I’m not paying you ask questions. Am I?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. I will call you tonight and tell you where to meet me. We’re going to be gone for a few days.”
“How soon we leavin’?”
“I’ll let you know. And while you’re at it, put that phone of yours to good use and see what you can find about the sheriff in Lowndes County, Mississippi.”
Dee was silent for a beat. He knew the kid was contemplating disappearing, weighing his options, counting his money. “You got it, Hack. Whatever it is, I’m sure you got your reasons.”
He hung up and walked to the hotel elevator. What it is is exile. I’ve been sent away. But I will be back when this is done, and Brooks will regret his condescension.
His anger rarely rose quickly, and it did not now. In due time. He was vain about the cultivation of his wrath, honed and cured over a lifetime, like a gardener tending rare orchids. He wore his wrath as a mask of silent menace, a cruel countenance that harbored neither mercy nor negotiation. In due time.
The thought reminded him to call the guy in Nashville regarding the now vacant safe house. He would have thought the guy would have been better at getting blood off the walls. He didn’t want to have to burn down another one.
COLT
When he opened the door to his office, the last thing he expected to see was himself.
But there he was, in a foot-tall black-and-white photo that looked so stern yet friendly that he thought it could easily be mistaken for a mug shot. Except that it took up the entire left half of the yard sign.
He sighed. Goddamn reelection campaign.
“Becky,” he said, still staring at the boxes piled high on his desk and attempting to avoid eye contact with himself. “Who ordered this shit?”
Becky looked up from her dispatch desk, pulled the earbud out, and wrinkled her brow. “Well, Colt, you did.”
He turned to face her. Her face a question mark. She’d gotten her hair cut, even though it was still long enough for the blond ponytail that had become a fixture in the office. Her hair looked nice, and he knew he should say something complimentary, but he never did, because he never knew what to say or how to say it without sounding like a complete ass, so he let it drop.
“I did?”
Becky nodded and tried to suppress a smile. She couldn’t. Her brown eyes danced.
“When in the hell did I do that?”
“About a year ago,” she said. “During a staff meeting, which, if memory serves, was probably the last staff meeting. I brought it up and said you needed to start thinking about your reelection campaign. As in starting your reelection campaign. You grumbled something about money being tight, and I told you how much you had left in the campaign fund and that I could get you some signs made. You said OK. Election’s in nine months, you know.”
He huffed, recalling absolutely none of Becky’s recollection, but not doubting a word of it. “I did, huh? Well, all right, then. But unless I also redesignated my office as the storage room, can we get them moved out of here?”
Becky folded her hands on her desk. “As soon as Joe Ray gets back from traffic duty.”
He nodded and stepped into his lair. Rigged up the fancy coffeemaker to brew a cup, and stared at the boxes while the machine wheezed and spat, generating an almost real cup of coffee.
The disarray unsettled him. The office wasn’t much, but it was his. The only view from the window behind his chair was the old cemetery. The government-issued furniture reminded him too much of the Marine Corps, and not in a good way. But inside this dim, still space, he could be alone if he chose. In his own sanctuary. Not much of one, but his, thanks to the voting public and government funding. And he guarded it like a fierce monk.
The last thing he wanted to think about was a goddamn reelection campaign. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to get reelected. His mind wrestled that slippery thought until he sat down with his coffee to read through the morning e-mails, notices, and alerts. He was halfway through his inbox when Becky appeared at his door.
“Colt. John’s on the radio. Said he needs you.”
He jerked his head around the computer. “Needs me? What’s up?”
She shrugged. Had she been wearing green and red, she would have made a pretty good Christmas elf. “Didn’t say.”
He sighed. “Well, where is he?”
“Steens.”
He rose. “All right. Tell him I’ll call him on his cell on my way over.”
She nodded and disappeared.
John answered as he was pulling out of the lot and roaring down old 82, the big Crown Vic bucking over the puckered asphalt of the ancient two-lane.
“This better be good, John,” he said, already grinning. Wasn’t like John to call him for help.
“Oh, you’re going to love it,” his deputy said. “You remember that bank got hit over in West Point two days ago?”
“Yeah, I remember. Somebody got away with all of seven hundred dollars.”
“Well, we got him.”
He one-handed a hard left and hit the gas, screaming north up a county road toward Steens. He hit his lights and siren, knowing the intersection coming up at the top of the hill a mile to his front. “Yeah? OK, so arrest his ass and bring him in. You didn’t need me for that.”
“Oh, I didn’t say we’d arrested him yet. You’ll see when you get here.”
He slewed the car through a zigzag turn at Highway 50 and nearly went airborne as he crested the highway. The Dixie Auto Parts store blurred past as he barreled onto Gunshoot Road and over the Luxapalila bridge. He blew past the Steens Superette, a squat gas station at a T intersection that was truly the last vestige of the hamlet. Even at eighty miles per hour, he felt a pang of nostalgia for the long-gone and forgotten cotton gin and school that looked like ancient ruins when he was a kid. Progress, he thought, erases just about everything.
About a quarter mile ahead, he saw blue lights flashing from two of his cars on either side of the road. Doors open, noses pointed toward a third car, a red Honda, on the right-hand shoulder. Driver’s door also open. No human activity discernible.
“Colt, watch it,” John yelled as he killed the engine and climbed out. John was ducked behind his vehicle, he could now see, weapon drawn. The new deputy, Moore, squatted beside him, hat off, Marine Corps Reserve haircut glistening in the too-hot sun.
He crouched and ran to the car. Slid beside John, who was all business. He knew from firsthand experience that this was not good for whomever or whatever was in the other car.
“What you got, John?”
“You ain’t going to believe this shit.”
“Try me.”
John nodded. “OK, so dumbass over there—” He jerked his head toward the red Honda thirty yards to the front. “Robbed the bank in West Point couple days ago. He’s flush with cash, right? Well, today dumbass runs out of gas. Walks to the gas station up the road there, pays for five gallons with a hundred, store clerk recognizes him from the news, calls nine-one-one. Chris and I get here about the time he finishes refilling the tank.”
Outside the Law Page 4
