Chiefs

by Stuart Woods

  “Yeah?”

  Howell leaned forward, absently stroking the puppy. “It reminds me of the floor in the morgue in Atlanta, in the room where they do the autopsies. The sort of floor that you can hose down, and it drains by itself. I’ve never seen a kitchen like that.”

  Tucker gave an involuntary shudder. “Neither has anybody else,” he said.

  When Howell had left for Atlanta with his puppy, Tucker sat quietly in his office for a while, thinking. He felt better now, with the Librium calming him. He got up and switched off the lights. As he passed through the squad room, Bartlett was returning from the lockup, tossing keys on his desk, shaking his head.

  “Something wrong?” Tucker asked.

  “It’s ol’ Pieback,” the policeman said. “I’m sure glad I won’t be on tonight when he wakes up. He’ll have the DTs, for sure.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “If he’s been on a big enough binge. You saw him this afternoon. He thought he knew you. I tell you, that guy’s brain must be pickled by now.”

  “Is he okay in there, do you think? Does he need a doctor or anything?”

  “No, he’s snoring like a sawmill, mumbling in his sleep. I’d hate to be in the next cell.”

  Tucker got into his coat. “I’m calling it a day, I think.”

  “Right, Chief. See you in the morning. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Tucker replied. He walked slowly into the chill dusk and got into his car. He felt reborn in some odd way. He had gone right to the brink and pulled back. But now there was something else he knew he had to do, something he had put off too long, something he had hoped he would never have to do.

  She sat at the kitchen table, her coffee gone cold, and stared at him. He could not avoid her gaze.

  “So,” she said, “what am I supposed to call you now? Willie? Am I Mrs. Cole now?”

  “I’m Tucker Watts,” he said. “You’re Mrs. Tucker Watts. Willie Cole is dead. He was hit by a truck in Alabama in 1932. Nobody even knows where he’s buried.”

  She continued to stare at him.

  “I’m the same man you married; the same man I’ve been since I joined the army.”

  “I know that,” she said finally. “And I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Nothing’s changed. We’re the same people. Mama is still Aunt Nellie. It will always be that way.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Why did you decide to tell me now, after all these years?”

  “Because this afternoon I nearly did something stupid, and it was because you didn’t know. Now you know, and I won’t ever again have to do anything to hide it from you.” He caught a whiff of roast cooking. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “Then let’s eat, Tucker Watts.”

  15

  TUCKER lived more easily with himself, now that Elizabeth knew everything. Pieback Johnson was an old drunk, anyway, and nobody would pay any attention to him. He lived less easily, though, with his thoughts of Foxy Funderburke. Having no sufficient grounds to visit Foxy’s place and search it, he tried another tack—an old police method.

  He began to question, almost idly, the people with whom Foxy did business. He spoke to the man who sold him gas for his truck; to the owner of the feed store who sold him dry food for his dogs; to the clerk at McKibbon’s who sold him hardware. He learned little, for these people knew little to tell, but eventually Foxy would learn that Tucker was asking questions about him, and it would make him nervous. If Tucker could not find a way to get at Foxy, then he wanted him nervous. Nervous men make mistakes, and although he had no idea what sort of mistake Foxy might make, Tucker was willing to wait to find out.

  Then, as he was sitting in his parked car on Main Street one morning in mid-March, someone tapped on the opposite window. Hugh Holmes opened the door. “Morning, Tucker, mind if I sit for a spell?”

  “Not at all, Mr. Holmes. I was just making some notes to myself for later in the day.”

  Holmes settled himself in the passenger seat. “I haven’t seen a lot of you lately myself, and I wanted to tell you what a fine impression you seem to be making on the community. The traffic situation on Main Street has improved a hundred percent, and everybody’s real pleased about it.” Tucker had submitted a proposal to the city council to make Main one-way and to repair all the broken parking meters.

  “I’m glad to hear it, sir.” Tucker was glad, but he had a feeling Hugh Holmes had something else on his mind.

  “The merchants were real glad to see those burglars caught, too. They were losing a lot of merchandise.”

  “I was glad, myself,” Tucker answered, and waited. He was surprised at what came.

  “I’m concerned, though, at some things I’ve been hearing.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s my understanding that you’ve been conducting some sort of investigation of Foxy Funderburke. Is that the case?”

  “I wouldn’t call it an investigation. I’ve just been finding out what I can about him. He’s a peculiar fellow.”

  “You have something in mind? Do you suspect him of something?”

  “I don’t have any hard evidence that he’s done anything wrong.”

  “But you suspect him of something, is that right?”

  “Well—”

  “I don’t mean to pry into police business, really I don’t. There’s no need to explain to me what you have in mind.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  Holmes gazed off into the middle distance. “Tucker, I know that Delano is a new sort of experience for you, a small town and all.”

  “Yes, sir, I suppose it is.”

  “Well, small towns, although they can be rigid in many ways, are tolerant of eccentrics. We’ve got our share of homosexuals in Delano, I expect, but people leave ‘em alone. There are retarded people and crazy people, and people that are just plain hard to get along with, but we make allowances. Now, Foxy, he’s been a thorn in the town’s flesh for a long time. He’s irritated people— me, among them—he’s insulted people, and he’s behaved oddly, but for the most part he collects his guns and raises his dogs and minds his own business. Oddly enough, considering the sort of person he is, he has some friends in this area, and some of them have been speaking to me.”

  “I see.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. If Foxy comes into Delano and runs a stop sign or something, he ought to be ticketed like everybody else. If he sticks up the Bank of Delano, he ought to be sent to prison. You say you have nothing concrete on him.”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Well, you’ve got to remember that, although he does a lot of business in Delano—and that business is appreciated, for Foxy’s not a poor man—he lives outside the city limits and in Talbot County. Now, a few weeks ago, for better or for worse, the people of Talbot County elected Bobby Patrick sheriff over there. If you believe Foxy’s done something, you have an obligation to take whatever evidence you have to Bobby, hard as that may be for you, and let him pursue it. Foxy’s his responsibility, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Tucker nodded wearily. “Yes, sir, I’d have to agree with that.”

  “I think you’re aware, too, Tucker, that Billy Lee is announcing for governor tomorrow, at the close of the legislature, and that the fact of your presence in Delano is politically a sensitive matter for him.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand that.”

  “Now, Billy seems to have got Skeeter Willis off your back— although I wouldn’t be a hundred percent confident of that—but if word gets around that you’re harassing an innocent citizen— and an eccentric citizen, at that—well, it could get to be an issue around here, and there are people just waiting for you to trip up, so they can embarrass Billy with it.”

  “I see your point, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Again, Tucker, if you get something on Foxy, by all means, do something about it, but go through channels. If you want to make some kind of move yourself, you just be sure you go through
channels, first.” The two men shook hands, and Holmes got out of the car. “Keep up the good work, Tucker. I’m proud of you.” Holmes strolled away toward the bank.

  Tucker sat and stared at a display in the drugstore window in front of the car. Holmes was right, of course, and pretty polite about it, too. He was lucky not to get chewed up one side and down the other. He drove slowly back to the station.

  In the squad room he asked Bartlett, “What part of those files you reckon you’ve got through? Back to what year?”

  “I’m not doing ‘em by year. I’ve got some of every year done. If I tried to do ‘em chronologically it would take me another couple of years, I reckon.”

  “How much longer will it take you the way you’re going?”

  Bartlett stared at the filing cabinets and shook his head. “I guess I must be about sixty percent through them. Say, another six months, unless you want me to drop everything and concentrate on that. We’d have to pull another man off the street and back in here, so I could concentrate on it.”

  Tucker knew they were spread thin enough as it was. He shook his head. “No, we can’t do that. Just do the best you can on them. And bring me the missing-persons stuff as you come across it.”

  “Right.”

  Tucker went into his office and sat down, cursing himself for his pride. He missed all the attention he had received when he had first taken the job, that was it. He’d had a taste of being a star, and he wanted it again. That was stupid. He was a retired army officer in a petty civil service job, and if he wanted to keep the top of his head on he’d better get back to traffic patterns and Saturday-night cuttings. That was the job he was here for and that, by God, was the job he would do. He opened his notebook, determined to put Foxy Funderburke out of his mind.

  16

  THROUGH THE SPRING and summer of 1963, Billy campaigned a steady five days a week, always spending the weekend at home, partly because he wanted to be at home and partly because that prevented him from accepting invitations to preach Sunday morning sermons at churches around the state. The thought repelled him, and he rejected many such invitations, always on the grounds that he would be at home, attending his own church.

  Billy worked the state relentlessly, south and north, urban and rural. He shook hands until his own was red and sore, and ate barbecue until bicarbonate was a steady part of his diet. Patricia occasionally joined him, if the event was likely to attract television coverage, but for the most part she stayed home and farmed, as she had always done. “If someday you should get to be president,” she told him, “you may have to buy me a farm in Virginia.”

  His Chief opponent, Jackson Mullins, fought a campaign riddled with code words—“states’ rights,” “preservation of our southern traditions,” “freedom of social choice,” and the like— while piously declining support from the Klan and other extremist groups. Billy used code words of his own, with references to “all the people” and such, while avoiding an out-and-out plea for racial justice. It struck him that he might be running in the last campaign in which a moderate candidate would have to shroud his appeal to people’s best instincts in code words. He hoped so; and once elected, he could speak more forthrightly, a Georgia governor being constitutionally barred from succeeding himself.

  On September 3 the Democratic primary was held, and the candidates and their supporters settled into their respective headquarters to drink bourbon whiskey and wait for the results, Billy at a suite in Atlanta’s Henry Grady Hotel and Mullins at the Dinkler, down the street. After an evening of still more handshaking and confident statements to the press, he gathered in a bedroom with Patricia, Will, Hugh Holmes, and John Howell, who had become, by this time, a friend of the family.

  Billy eased himself painfully onto one of the beds and stretched out. “Well, Mr. Holmes, what do you predict?” He had avoided asking the banker until now.

  “Well,” said Holmes, sprawling his long frame over an armchair, “I think we just might avoid a runoff.”

  Billy grunted. “By winning a majority or by losing it?”

  “That’s as far as I’d like to go,” said Holmes, and took a tiny sip of his bourbon.

  “You think you’ve got a runoff left in you, Billy?” asked John Howell.

  “Jesus, I don’t know. I’ll tell you the truth, if I won and had to start being governor tomorrow, I’d begin my term with a month’s vacation.”

  “I take it you’re not worried about the Republicans?”

  Hugh Holmes laughed. “One of the real rewards of being a southerner is you don’t have to worry about the Republicans. If Jack Kennedy can take Georgia against Dick Nixon, as he did, then we won’t have to worry about Republicans—not for a while, anyway.”

  “What percentage do you think a Republican could take against Billy in the general election?” asked Howell. “Assuming he wins the primary.”

  “Twenty percent, tops,” said Holmes. “The die-hard segregationists, meaning Mullins’s supporters, will stay home before they’ll vote for a Republican. There’ll be a real low turnout, but Billy’ll take eighty percent or better.”

  “I hope I have the opportunity,” Billy chimed in. “I go from feeling absolutely confident to being scared to death. What scares me is what this state will go through for the next four years if Mullins wins. We’ll have federal marshals and troops in here like it was Mississippi.”

  “I wonder what the exact effect of Tucker Watts was on this campaign,” mused Howell.

  “My guess,” said Holmes, “is that we’d have gotten the black vote, anyway, because they had no place else to go, but what I hope is that it will have the effect of turning them out in larger numbers. I’m encouraged by the registration drives they put on.”

  Returns began to trickle, then to pour, in, first from Atlanta and the cities, then from south Georgia and the rural areas. At eleven o’clock Billy was leading by ten percentage points; at half past midnight, by two; and at one o’clock, by slightly more than a point.

  Holmes finished looking at some figures. “That’s it, I reckon. We’ve got it, and you’d better be glad there’s no more county unit system, or the rural counties would have made Mullins a big unit-vote winner.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Patricia wearily. “I can never believe it when it’s finally over, even when we’ve won.” The television reporters were now, finally, giving the primary to Billy. The telephone rang. Billy picked it up and listened. He put his hand over the receiver and said to John Howell. “Okay, reporter, here’s where you have to decide whether to keep your mouth shut or leave the room.” Howell hesitated, then made a zipping motion across his lips.

  “Good evening, Mr. President, or perhaps I should say good morning.” Everybody in the room snapped to alertness. “It’s kind of you to call at this late hour.” Everybody stared at Billy, as if by watching they could hear both sides of the conversation. “Thank you, sir. It was close, but we seem to have it. The best advice I can get is that the Republicans can’t pull more than twenty percent in the general election.” Billy laughed at the response. “I agree. Thank you, and please give your family my best, too…. What’s that? Well, I don’t think they have much to worry about…. Thank you again, and good night.” He hung up the receiver.

  “Well,” said Patricia excitedly, “what did he say?”

  “Oh, about what you’d expect him to. He sent his regards to you, and then”—Billy cocked his head to one side—“he said, ‘I hear some of Lyndon’s staff have already started packing.’”

  “You’re kidding,” said Howell. “Jesus, did I promise to keep my mouth shut?”

  “No, no… it wasn’t like that. He was only kidding. Listen, John, just put that right out of your mind, okay? We can’t have any of that kind of talk circulating.”

  But Howell was pointing at the television set, blinking silently from across the room. “It’s Mullins,” he said. “He’s going to concede.” Somebody turned up the volume in time for the ponderous bass tones
of Jackson Mullins to fill the room.

  “I’ll bet you could stick your head out the window and hear him all the way from the Dinkler,” Will said. He had been asleep for most of the evening.

  “My friends,” Mullins was saying, “we have fought a long and hard fight to preserve our way of life in the state of Georgia—”

  “Yeah, yeah, Jack, now throw in the towel, and let’s get it over with,” said Howell.

  “—and I want you to know that, as far as I am concerned, the battle is not over.”

  Billy sat up. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  Across the room, Hugh Holmes removed his glasses and began massaging the bridge of his nose. “I knew it,” muttered Holmes, almost to himself, “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?” asked Patricia.

  “Shhh,” said Billy.

  Mullins continued. “I want the word to go out to every supporter, to every contributor, to every working man and woman who voted for me in this primary, that I will continue.”

  “What’s happening?” asked Howell, bewildered.

  “He’s going to try to throw it to the house,” said Holmes wearily. “I was afraid he might.”

  “I want each of you to know that on November fourth my name will be on the ballot as an independent candidate. This battle is far from lost, and with your continued help we can win it!” Mullins folded his notes and walked quickly from the podium. There was pandemonium at the Dinkler.

  “What is he doing?” asked Howell, astonished. “He’s lost! How can he throw it to the house?”

  Holmes slumped in his chair. “In Georgia there is no runoff in the election for governor. A candidate has to win an absolute majority in the general election, or the house elects the governor, one week after the election.”

  “Are you telling me that—”

  “I’m telling you that if the Republicans take twenty percent of the vote and Mullins can pull a fraction more than thirty percent, then Billy will not have an absolute majority in the general election, and one week after that the Georgia House of Representatives will meet and choose between the two leading candidates.”