Third Degree: A Novel

by Greg Iles

  A cagey smile splits the weathered face. “I got ways, man. You got to be careful dealing with this class of people. Predators, I kid you not. They sense a threat, they react—BAM!” Tim claps his hands together. “No thought. Pure instinct. Like sharks in the water.”

  I start to ask him about the rumors, but he cuts me off before I can speak.

  “In fact,” he says, glancing back toward town, “we ought to get behind cover now.” He gestures toward the three-foot-high masonry walls enclosing the plots of the Jewish families who emigrated to Natchez in the early nineteenth century. “Just like high school, man. Remember smoking grass behind these walls? Sitting down so the cops couldn’t see the glow of the roach?”

  I never got high with Tim during high school, not up here, anyway. But I see no reason to break whatever flow keeps him calm and talking. The sooner he tells me what he came to say, the sooner I can get out of here.

  He vaults the wall with deceptive agility, and I climb after him. With a last anxious look up Cemetery Road, he sits on the cold ground and leans back against the mossy bricks in one corner. I sit against the adjacent wall, with my running shoes almost touching his weathered Sperrys. Only now do I realize that he must have changed clothes after work. The dealer’s uniform he usually wears on duty has been replaced by black jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Couldn’t come out here dressed for work,” he explains, as though reading my mind. What he read, though, was my appraising glance, and I realize that all the drugs he has taken throughout the years have not ruined what always was a sharp mind. I decide to dispense with small talk.

  “You said some pretty scary stuff on the phone, Tim. Scary enough to bring me out here at midnight.”

  He nods, digging in his pocket for something that turns out to be a bent cigarette. “Can’t risk lighting it,” he says, putting it between his lips, “but it’s good to know I got it for the ride home.” He grins affectingly. “So, what had you heard before I called?”

  I don’t want to repeat anything Tim hasn’t already heard or seen himself. “A few vague rumors. Celebrities flying in to gamble, in and out fast. Pro athletes, rappers, like that.”

  Tim is nodding again. “You hear about the dogfighting?”

  My hope that the rumors are false sinks. “I’ve heard talk there was some of that going on. But it was hard to credit, given what happened to Michael Vick. I mean, I can see some rednecks down in the bottoms doing it, or out in the parishes across the river, but not high rollers and celebrities.”

  Tim sucks in his bottom lip and gives me a bad-little-boy smile. “What else have you heard?”

  “I don’t want to speculate about things I don’t know to be true.”

  Jessup curls his lip in distaste. “You know you sound like a politician.”

  I suppose that’s what I’ve become, but I feel like an attorney, sifting the truth from an unreliable client’s story. “Why don’t you tell me what you know? The real facts. Then we’ll see how that matches with what I’ve heard.”

  He shrugs and takes the unlit cigarette out of his mouth, then studies it as though considering putting a match to it despite his fear. “Whores,” he says. “You heard that?”

  Jesus. “There’s always prostitution going on. Especially around casinos.”

  “Young whores.”

  “How young?”

  “Too young. And not all willing.”

  The flesh on my upper arms crawls. I had not heard that. “Is this rumor or fact?”

  “I’ve seen it, brother.” Tim winces like a man with an ulcer. “Bad.”

  “Is that the worst of it?”

  “Depends on your sensibilities, I guess. There’s the dope.”

  “I’ve heard that too. Forever.”

  “Not like this. They bring this stuff up from Mexico special.”

  “Special for what?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. All these rumors you’ve been hearing are tied together. This is a centralized operation, designed to pull the highest rollers down south. The whales from Vegas, especially.

  “Whales?”

  “Big players. The rap stars and pro athletes you already know about. Throw in the Arab playboys, Asian trust-fund babies . . . it’s a circus, man. And they love that dogfighting. Blood sport.” He shakes his head.

  “Is it working? To pull them in?”

  “Better than they ever dreamed. We had a jet fly in from Macao two weeks ago. This Chinese billionaire brought his own dog in to fight.”

  “Through the Natchez airport?”

  “Hell, no. There’s other strips around here that can take a light jet.”

  “Not many.” I want to stand and pace, but Tim’s paranoia is working its way into me: If I rise above the wall, I could be silhouetted in the moonlight. “Tim, you’re scaring me.”

  “If you’re scared now, you’d better tighten up the old bunghole. Because if dope and girls was all it was, I wouldn’t be here. They’d kill me if they knew I was talking to you, man.”

  Now we’ve reached the heart of the matter. Tim either has facts for me, or he doesn’t. “Who would?”

  Jessup plunges his right hand into his pocket and brings out a Bic lighter. “No names. Yet.” He flicks the lighter into flame and touches it to the end of the cigarette. He draws air through the cigarette like someone sucking on a three-foot bong, holds in the smoke for an alarming amount of time, then speaks as he exhales. “I’ve got a kid now, you know? A son.”

  I want to press Jessup, but I’ve dealt with enough criminals who turned state’s evidence to know when to back off. “I know. I saw him with Julia in the Winn-Dixie a couple of weeks ago. He’s a great-looking kid.”

  Tim’s smile lights up his face. “Just like his mom, man. She’s still a beauty, isn’t she?”

  “She is,” I concur, speaking the truth. “So . . . what moved you to risk all that? What trumps dogfighting and underage prostitution?”

  Tim takes another quick hit from the cigarette, then begins speaking letters aloud like we’re back in a grade-school spelling bee. “F-R-A-U-D, Your Honor.”

  “Come again?”

  “They’re screwing the city, Penn. At least I’m pretty sure they are. On the receipts, I mean. They’re shorting you on the taxes. Big-time.”

  Something has gone cold in me. Natchez had two casinos operating when I ran for mayor, and a third had won approval from the state gaming commission. I’d always been against gambling in Natchez, not for any moral reason, but because the casino boats primarily drain money from the local poor and transfer it to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. But the pressure was on to draw major industries back to Natchez, and I couldn’t afford to be choosy. What finally convinced me to allow the Magnolia Queen into town was the record-setting tax deal I negotiated with its parent company. From the day that boat went into operation, it has been paying—or was supposed to have been paying—the highest city tax rate of any casino in Mississippi. We put innumerable safeguards in place to prevent fraud, so I find it almost impossible to believe Tim’s claim. And yet . . . I’ve sometimes wondered if the company acceded too easily to my demands. Did they know all along that they would never fully honor their commitments? “How could they do that, Tim?”

  He expels a long stream of smoke. “Computers, brah.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “The casinos pay the city a percentage of their gross in taxes, right?”

  “Every month.”

  “There’s no way to steal money from discrete parts of the gaming operation, because everything’s so tightly regulated by the state commission, and by the company’s own security apparatus. Every square inch of the boat is videotaped around the clock, and wired for sound. State-of-the-art stuff. Military grade. The cameras are robotically controlled, and from Vegas, not Natchez. I saw Pete Elliot fingering his brother’s wife in the corner of the restaurant one night.”

  “Jesus. I don’t need to know that crap.”

  “I
’m just saying—”

  “I get it. Just get to the point.”

  “My point is, the only way for the company to rip off the city is to distort the gross. That way the city doesn’t ask questions. You guys see a big enough number, and your cut of that number, you don’t look any deeper. Right?”

  He is right, to an extent. “The gaming commission looks deeper, though. How much money are we talking about?”

  Jessup squints at his cigarette as though pondering an advanced calculus problem. “I don’t know. Not that much, in terms of the monthly gross of a casino boat. But that’s like saying a thousand years isn’t much time in geological terms. We’re talking serious money for an ordinary human being.”

  I realize that I am slowly wringing my hands. “Point taken. But where’s the upside in doing this? For the casino company, I mean. They’re practically minting money down there. Why risk killing the golden goose to steal a couple of extra million a year? Or even a month?”

  Jessup nods. “Now you’re thinking. Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well, let’s discount the fact that successful people—and companies—commit illogical crimes every day for greed alone. Let’s just assume that there’s a logical motive. What would it be?”

  I’m no stranger to bizarre criminal motives, but in this case my prosecutorial experience offers no solution. “I can’t see one. Not if I’m the casino company.”

  Jessup’s eyes flicker in the moonlight. “Exactly.”

  I wait for an explanation, but Tim just sucks on the cigarette until it’s dead, then lights another. The flame flares orange against the white marble gravestones of our walled haven. “What are you telling me, Tim?”

  “I think it’s one guy.”

  “One guy? Not possible. The casino companies never give an individual that kind of power.”

  “One guy with friends, I meant. A handpicked team.”

  “I don’t buy it. The casinos do everything in their power to avoid exactly that situation.”

  “You’re right. Everything in their power. And they’re good at it. But they’re not God. They make certain assumptions about people and situations, Penn, and that makes them vulnerable.”

  “Are you speculating here, or do you know something?”

  The bad-boy smile again. “A little of both.”

  “Clearly you have a suspect. Who is it?”

  “I told you, no names yet. But this guy has been with the company awhile. Long enough to put something like this together. And if anybody could do it, it’s him.”

  “And you’re saying he’s also behind the other stuff? The dogfighting and the girls?”

  “And worse. Absolutely. He’s single-handedly pumped up the monthly gross like you wouldn’t believe—well, I guess you would, since you’ve seen the numbers—but the point is, Vegas loves this dude.”

  A picture of Tim’s suspect is forming in my mind.

  “And while they’re patting him on the back,” Jessup continues, “he’s robbing them blind.”

  And my city, I think. “If that’s true, then your man is begging for a bullet in the head.”

  “No doubt about it.”

  “So, about the ugly side-action that brings in the big players. Where does all this happen? Surely not on the Magnolia Queen?”

  “Hell, no. It’s almost never the same place. They’ve used a couple of hunting camps more than once. One of them is on an island in the river. No law at all out there. Or what there is, the local bigshots own. Other times they’ve set up out on somebody’s farm, but always close to the river. You’d think the high rollers would want swanky surroundings, but they eat up the rustic Southern vibe. Especially when those teenage girls start talking like honey and molasses; the suckers think they’re Rhett Butler in the unrated version of Gone With the Wind.”

  As badly as I wanted to believe this is all a Jessup fantasy, it has the ring of truth. I know men who would like nothing better than to spend a weekend doing what Tim is describing. “Back to the mastermind behind all this,” I say, wondering if the well-spoken but reticent suspect I’m imagining could also be a psychopath. “Does he have a death wish?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I can’t figure him out, and I’ve been studying him awhile. The guy is cold, Penn. On the outside he’s like a mechanic.”

  “You mean a cardsharp?”

  “Right. He started as a dealer himself, years ago. He’s detached, clinical . . . a human computer with the dexterity of a magician. But there’s more to this guy than that. Or maybe less. There’s something missing in there. When the dogs are tearing each other to pieces, or some girl is screaming in the back of a trailer, he’s definitely taking it in, not tuning it out . . .”

  “So he’s into that stuff himself?”

  “Sometimes I think he’s just counting the money in his head. Getting off on running this whole show. But other times I think he’s like a high-wire walker who half wants to fall. Like he wants to see how far he can push the world before the world pushes back.”

  “I’ve known a couple of guys like that. I sent them to death row.”

  Tim stubs his cigarette out against the mossy bricks behind him, his face cold sober. “I think maybe that’s why I’m here. Penn, you are the only guy I trust in this town. And it will take some no-shit intestinal fortitude to take this guy on. He’s bought influence everywhere. And I mean everywhere.”

  I settle back against the cool brick wall. “You picked a hell of a week to come forward.” This is balloon-race weekend. We’ve got nearly a hundred hot-air balloons coming to town this year, and eight thousand tourists. “I’ve got the CEO of a major company coming in for the royal treatment, which I have to give him, hoping he’ll locate his new recycling plant here.”

  Tim nods. “I read about it in the newspaper. Sorry.”

  I shrug, picturing an industry executive with a fantasy of a nice little Southern town in his head. “This particular CEO wants Mayberry, R.F.D., not a den of dogfighting and white slavery.”

  Jessup chuckles in the dark. “Has the guy ever cracked a history book? They were gambling, selling slaves, raping Indian women, and cutting each other’s throats in this town before Paul Revere sold his first silver candlestick.”

  “That’s not the pitch I’ll be making this weekend,” I mutter in frustration. “Anyway, there’s not much doubt about what we have to do with your story.”

  Jessup is fishing for another cigarette. “What’s that?”

  “Take it to the state gaming commission.”

  He goes still. “You’re joking, right?”

  “No. What did you think we would do?”

  “Not that. Not yet. It’s too soon!” He forces his voice quieter. “Look, you want to arrest Mr. X for promoting dog-fighting? On my word? That bastard could get fifty people to swear he was on the Queen any day or night we name.”

  “I want him for that, yeah. And the prostitution. And the fraud. But it seems the fraud’s the best way in, isn’t it? Unless you don’t have any documentary evidence.”

  Jessup licks his lips like a nervous poker player. “I’m not saying I’ve got nothing. But I don’t have much. Not on him. I could hurt some of our friends from the old days, but what’s the point in that?”

  “Tim . . . what did you come here for exactly?”

  “I wanted you to know what’s going on. In case, you know . . . something happens to me.”

  A sense of foreboding has taken hold deep in my chest. “Wait a second. What do you think you’re going to do?”

  He does not reply, but there is a dogged look on his face that I don’t like at all. “Tim, you’re not on some kind of hero trip? That’s the way you get dead.”

  “I know that. I’m not an idiot. Despite what some people may think.”

  “Hey.” I reach out and tap his shoulder. “Nobody who makes a twenty-seven on his ACT is an idiot. But you could be lacking some common sense. At least in the risk-asse
ssment area.”

  His eyes seem to film and his gaze grows distant. “Oh, I’ve assessed the risk. You want to know what this guy’s capable of? Every week, he sends out four pickup trucks with cages in the back, a hundred miles in every direction. His men come back with those cages full of house pets—cocker spaniels, poodles, Dalmatians—and every one of those dogs gets torn to shreds before the week is out. The trainers throw ’em into a hole with starving pit bulls to teach the fighting dogs how to kill.”

  A shiver of revulsion goes through me. As I try to absorb what Tim has told me, I recall that a woman who lives three houses down from me lost her nine-year-old whippet last month. She let the dog out to do its business, and it never came back.

  “I got two dogs of my own,” Tim says. “Golden retrievers. I keep them locked in the house now. They’re both stir-crazy, but Julia knows never to let them out.”

  “Tim, I know this is bad,” I say gently, “which is exactly why you and I can’t take them on alone. We need your information, but then we have to let professionals handle it.”

  “Professionals?” He almost spits the word. “Didn’t you hear what I said on the phone? You can’t trust anybody around here.”

  “My own police department?”

  Jessup shakes his head as though incredulous at my ignorance. “They’re not yours. Those cops were on the job before you got into office, and they’ll be there when you’re gone. Same for the sheriff and his boys. To them, you’re just passing through. A political tourist.”

  His casual damnation of local law enforcement disturbs me. “I trust a lot of those men, Tim.”

  “For a smart guy, you can be pretty damn naïve sometimes. I’m not telling you all the cops are crooks. I’m telling you they’re human. They’re looking out for themselves and their families, and they like to have a little fun on the side, same as the next guy. How many guys do you know who wouldn’t look the other way in exchange for a snapshot with a star NFL running back? I’ve been to a couple of these barn burners, okay? I know who I’ve seen.”