Three Classic Thrillers

by John Grisham

  He drove west, over the river into Arkansas, past the truck stops and dog track in West Memphis, and finally through the congestion and into the farm country. He passed the hamlets of Earle and Parkin and Wynne, where the hills began. He stopped for a Coke at a country grocery where three old men in faded overalls sat on the porch swatting flies and suffering in the heat. He lowered the convertible top and sped away.

  Two hours later he stopped again, this time in the town of Mountain View to get a sandwich and ask directions. Calico Rock was not far up the road, he was told, just follow the White River. It was a lovely road, winding through the foothills of the Ozarks, through heavy woods and across mountain streams. The White River snaked its way along to the left, and it was dotted with trout fishermen in jon boats.

  Calico Rock was a small town on a bluff above the river. Three trout docks lined the east bank near the bridge. Adam parked by the river and walked to the first one, an outfitter called Calico Marina. The building floated on pontoons, and was held close to the bank by thick cables. A row of empty rental boats was strung together next to the pier. The pungent smell of gasoline and oil emanated from a solitary gas pump. A sign listed the rates for boats, guides, gear, and fishing licenses.

  Adam walked onto the covered dock and admired the river a few feet away. A young man with dirty hands emerged from a back room and asked if he could be of assistance. He examined Adam from top to bottom, and apparently decided that he was no fisherman.

  “I’m looking for Wyn Lettner.”

  The name Ron was stitched above the shirt pocket and slightly covered with a smudge of grease. Ron walked back to his room and yelled, “Mr. Lettner!” in the direction of a screen door that led to a small shop. Ron disappeared.

  Wyn Lettner was a huge man, well over six feet tall with a large frame that was quite overloaded. Garner had described him as a beer drinker, and Adam remembered this as he glanced at the large stomach. He was in his late sixties, with thinning gray hair tucked neatly under an EVINRUDE cap. There were at least three newspaper photographs of Special Agent Lettner indexed away somewhere in Adam’s files, and in each he was the standard G-Man—dark suit, white shirt, narrow tie, military haircut. And he was much trimmer in those days.

  “Yes sir,” he said loudly as he walked through the screen door, wiping crumbs from his lips. “I’m Wyn Lettner.” He had a deep voice and a pleasant smile.

  Adam pushed forward a hand, and said, “I’m Adam Hall. Nice to meet you.”

  Lettner took his hand and shook it furiously. His forearms were massive and his biceps bulged. “Yes sir,” he boomed. “What can I do for you?”

  Thankfully the dock was deserted, with the exception of Ron, who was out of sight but making noises with a tool in his room. Adam fidgeted a bit, and said, “Well, I’m a lawyer, and I represent Sam Cayhall.”

  The smile grew and revealed two rows of strong yellow teeth. “Got your work cut out for you, don’t you?” he said with a laugh and slapped Adam on the back.

  “I guess so,” Adam said awkwardly as he waited for another assault. “I’d like to talk about Sam.”

  Lettner was suddenly serious. He stroked his chin with a beefy hand and studied Adam with narrow eyes. “I saw it in the papers, son. I know Sam’s your grandfather. Must be tough on you. Gonna get tougher, too.” Then he smiled again. “Tougher on Sam as well.” His eyes twinkled as if he’d just delivered a side-splitting punch line and he wanted Adam to double over with laughter.

  Adam missed the humor. “Sam has less than a month, you know,” he said, certain that Lettner had also read about the execution date.

  A heavy hand was suddenly on Adam’s shoulder and was shoving him in the direction of the shop. “Step in here, son. We’ll talk about Sam. You wanna beer?”

  “No. Thanks.” They entered a narrow room with fishing gear hanging from the walls and ceilings, with rickety wooden shelves covered with food—crackers, sardines, canned sausages, bread, pork and beans, cupcakes—all the necessities for a day on the river. A soft drink cooler sat in one corner.

  “Take a seat,” Lettner said, waving to a corner near the cash register. Adam sat in a shaky wooden chair as Lettner fished through an ice chest and found a bottle of beer. “Sure you don’t want one?”

  “Maybe later.” It was almost five o’clock.

  He twisted the top, drained at least a third of the bottle with the first gulp, smacked his lips, then sat in a beaten leather captain’s chair which had no doubt been removed from a customized van. “Are they finally gonna get old Sam?” he asked.

  “They’re trying awfully hard.”

  “What’re the odds?”

  “Not good. We have the usual assortment of last minute appeals, but the clock’s ticking.”

  “Sam’s not a bad guy,” Lettner said with a trace of remorse, then washed it away with another long drink. The floor creaked quietly as the dock shifted with the river.

  “How long were you in Mississippi?” Adam asked.

  “Five years. Hoover called me after the three civil rights workers disappeared. Nineteen sixty-four. We set up a special unit and went to work. After Kramer, the Klan sort of ran out of gas.”

  “And you were in charge of what?”

  “Mr. Hoover was very specific. He told me to infiltrate the Klan at all costs. He wanted it busted up. To be truthful, we were slow getting started in Mississippi. Bunch of reasons for it. Hoover hated the Kennedys and they were pushing him hard, so he dragged his feet. But when those three boys disappeared, we got off our asses. Nineteen sixty-four was a helluva year in Mississippi.”

  “I was born that year.”

  “Yeah, paper said you were born in Clanton.”

  Adam nodded. “I didn’t know it for a long time. My parents told me I was born in Memphis.”

  The door jingled and Ron entered the shop. He looked at them, then studied the crackers and sardines. They watched him and waited. He glanced at Adam as if to say, “Keep talking. I’m not listening.”

  “What do you want?” Lettner snapped at him.

  He grabbed a can of Vienna sausage with his dirty hand and showed it to them. Lettner nodded and waved at the door. Ron ambled toward it, checking the cupcakes and potato chips as he went.

  “He’s nosy as hell,” Lettner said after he was gone. “I talked to Garner Goodman a few times. It was years ago. Now, that’s a weird bird.”

  “He’s my boss. He gave me your name, said you’d talk to me.”

  “Talk about what?” Lettner asked, then took another drink.

  “The Kramer case.”

  “The Kramer case is closed. The only thing left is Sam and his date with the gas chamber.”

  “Do you want him executed?”

  Voices followed footsteps, then the door opened again. A man and a boy entered and Lettner got to his feet. They needed food and supplies, and for ten minutes they shopped and talked and decided where the fish were biting. Lettner was careful to place his beer under the counter while his customers were present.

  Adam removed a soft drink from the cooler and left the shop. He walked along the edge of the wooden dock next to the river, and stopped by the gas pump. Two teenagers in a boat were casting near the bridge, and it struck Adam that he’d never been fishing in his life. His father had not been a man of hobbies and leisure. Nor had he been able to keep a job. At the moment, Adam could not remember exactly what his father had done with his time.

  The customers left and the door slammed. Lettner lumbered to the gas pump. “You like to trout fish?” he asked, admiring the river.

  “No. Never been.”

  “Let’s go for a ride. I need to check out a spot two miles downriver. The fish are supposed to be thick.”

  Lettner was carrying his ice chest which he dropped carefully into a boat. He stepped down from the dock, and the boat rocked violently from side to side as he grabbed the motor. “Come on,” he yelled at Adam, who was studying the thirty-inch gap between himself and the
boat. “And grab that rope,” Lettner yelled again, pointing to a thin cord hooked to a grapple.

  Adam unhitched the rope and stepped nervously into the boat, which rocked just as his foot touched it. He slipped and landed on his head and came within inches of taking a swim. Lettner howled with laughter as he pulled the starter rope. Ron, of course, had watched this and was grinning stupidly on the dock. Adam was embarrassed but laughed as if it was all very funny. Lettner gunned the engine, the front of the boat jerked upward, and they were off.

  Adam clutched the handles on both sides as they sped through the water and under the bridge. Calico Rock was soon behind them. The river turned and twisted its way through scenic hills and around rocky bluffs. Lettner navigated with one hand and sipped a fresh beer with the other. After a few minutes, Adam relaxed somewhat and managed to pull a beer from the cooler without losing his balance. The bottle was ice cold. He held it with his right hand and clutched the boat with his left. Lettner was humming or singing something behind him. The high-pitched roar of the motor prevented conversation.

  They passed a small trout dock where a group of clean-cut city slickers were counting fish and drinking beer, and they passed a flotilla of rubber rafts filled with mangy teenagers smoking something and absorbing the sun. They waved at other fishermen who were hard at work.

  The boat slowed finally and Lettner maneuvered it carefully through a bend as if he could see the fish below and had to position himself perfectly. He turned off the engine. “You gonna fish or drink beer?” he asked, staring at the water.

  “Drink beer.”

  “Figures.” His bottle was suddenly of secondary importance as he took the rod and cast to a spot toward the bank. Adam watched for a second, and when there was no immediate result he reclined and hung his feet over the water. The boat was not comfortable.

  “How often do you fish?” he asked.

  “Every day. It’s part of my job, you know, part of my service to my customers. I have to know where the fish are biting.”

  “Tough job.”

  “Somebody has to do it.”

  “What brought you to Calico Rock?”

  “Had a heart attack in ’75, so I had to retire from the Bureau. Had a nice pension and all, but, hell, you get bored just sitting around. The wife and I found this place and found the marina for sale. One mistake led to another, and here I am. Hand me a beer.”

  He cast again as Adam dispensed the beer. He quickly counted fourteen bottles remaining in the ice. The boat drifted with the river, and Lettner grabbed a paddle. He fished with one hand, sculled the boat with the other, and somehow balanced a fresh beer between his knees. The life of a fishing guide.

  They slowed under some trees, and the sun was mercifully shielded for a while. He made the casting look easy. He whipped the rod with a smooth wrist action, and sent the lure anywhere he wanted. But the fish weren’t biting. He cast toward the middle of the river.

  “Sam’s not a bad guy.” He’d already said this once.

  “Do you think he should be executed?”

  “That’s not up to me, son. The people of the state want the death penalty, so it’s on the books. The people said Sam was guilty and then said he should be executed, so who am I?”

  “But you have an opinion.”

  “What good is it? My thoughts are completely worthless.”

  “Why do you say Sam’s not a bad guy?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We have fourteen beers left.”

  Lettner laughed and the vast smile returned. He gulped from the bottle and looked down the river, away from his line. “Sam was of no concern to us, you understand. He was not active in the really nasty stuff, at least not at first. When those civil rights workers disappeared, we went in with a fury. We spread money all over the place, and before long we had all sorts of Klan informants. These people were basically just ignorant rednecks who’d never had a dime, and we preyed on their craving for money. We’d have never found those three boys had we not dropped some cash. About thirty thousand, as I remember it, though I didn’t deal directly with the informant. Hell, son, they were buried in a levee. We found them, and it made us look good, you understand. Finally, we’d accomplished something. Made a bunch of arrests, but the convictions were difficult. The violence continued. They bombed black churches and black homes so damned often we couldn’t keep up. It was like a war down there. It got worse, and Mr. Hoover got madder, and we spread around more money.

  “Listen, son, I’m not going to tell you anything useful, you understand?”

  “Why not?”

  “Some things I can talk about, some I can’t.”

  “Sam wasn’t alone when he bombed the Kramer office, was he?”

  Lettner smiled again and studied his line. The rod was sitting in his lap. “Anyway, by late ’65 and early ’66, we had a helluva network of informants. It really wasn’t that difficult. We’d learn that some guy was in the Klan, and so we’d trail him. We’d follow him home at night, flashing our lights behind him, parking in front of his house. It’d usually scare him to death. Then we’d follow him to work, sometimes we’d go talk to his boss, flash our badges around, act like we were about to shoot somebody. We’d go talk to his parents, show them our badges, let them see us in our dark suits, let them hear our Yankee accents, and these poor country people would literally crack up right in front of us. If the guy went to church, we’d follow him one Sunday, then the next day we’d go talk to his preacher. We’d tell him that we had heard a terrible rumor that Mr. Such and Such was an active member of the Klan, and did he know anything about it. We acted like it was a crime to be a member of the Klan. If the guy had teenage children, we’d follow them on dates, sit behind them at the movies, catch them parking in the woods. It was nothing but pure harassment, but it worked. Finally, we’d call the poor guy or catch him alone somewhere, and offer him some money. We’d promise to leave him alone, and it always worked. Usually, they were nervous wrecks by this time, they couldn’t wait to cooperate. I saw them cry, son, if you can believe it. Actually cry when they finally came to the altar and confessed their sins.” Lettner laughed in the direction of his line, which was quite inactive.

  Adam sipped his beer. Perhaps if they drank it all it would eventually loosen his tongue.

  “Had this guy one time, I’ll never forget him. We caught him in bed with his black mistress, which was not unusual. I mean, these guys would go out burning crosses and shooting into black homes, then sneak around like crazy to meet their black girlfriends. Never could understand why the black women put up with it. Anyway, he had a little hunting lodge deep in the woods, and he used it for a love nest. He met her there one afternoon for a quickie, and when he was finished and ready to go, he opened the front door and we took his picture. Got her picture too, and then we talked to him. He was a deacon or an elder in some country church, a real pillar, you know, and we talked to him like he was a dog. We ran her off and sat him down inside the little lodge there, and before long he was crying. As it turned out, he was one of our best witnesses. But he later went to jail.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it seems that while he was sneaking around with his girlfriend, his wife was doing the same thing with a black kid who worked on their farm. Lady got pregnant, baby was half and half, so our informant goes to the hospital and kills mother and child. He spent fifteen years at Parchman.”

  “Good.”

  “We didn’t get a lot of convictions back in those days, but harassed them to a point where they were afraid to do much. The violence had slowed considerably until Dogan decided to go after the Jews. That caught us off guard, I have to admit. We had no clue.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he got smart. He learned the hard way that his own people would talk to us, so he decided to operate with a small, quiet unit.”

  “Unit? As in more than one person?”

  “Something like that.”

  “As in Sam a
nd who else?”

  Lettner snorted and chuckled at once, and decided the fish had moved elsewhere. He placed his rod and reel in the boat, and yanked on the starter cord. They were off, racing once again downstream. Adam left his feet over the side, and his leather moccasins and bare ankles were soon wet. He sipped the beer. The sun was finally beginning to disappear behind the hills, and he enjoyed the beauty of the river.

  The next stop was a stretch of still water below a bluff with a rope hanging from it. Lettner cast and reeled, all to no effect, and assumed the role of interrogator. He asked a hundred questions about Adam and his family—the flight westward, the new identities, the suicide. He explained that while Sam was in jail they checked out his family and knew he had a son who had just left town, but since Eddie appeared to be harmless they did not pursue the investigation. Instead, they spent their time watching Sam’s brothers and cousins. He was intrigued by Adam’s youth, and how he was raised with virtually no knowledge of kinfolks.

  Adam asked a few questions, but the answers were vague and immediately twisted into more questions about his past. Adam was sparring with a man who’d spent twenty-five years asking questions.

  The third and final hot spot was not far from Calico Rock, and they fished until it was dark. After five beers, Adam mustered the courage to wet a hook. Lettner was a patient instructor, and within minutes Adam had caught an impressive trout. For a brief interlude, they forgot about Sam and the Klan and other nightmares from the past, and they simply fished. They drank and fished.

  ______

  Mrs. Lettner’s first name was Irene, and she welcomed her husband and his unexpected guest with grace and nonchalance. Wyn had explained, as Ron drove them home, that Irene was accustomed to drop-ins. She certainly seemed to be unruffled as they staggered through the front door and handed her a string of trout.

  The Lettner home was a cottage on the river a mile north of town. The rear porch was screened to protect it from insects, and not far below it was a splendid view of the river. They sat in wicker rockers on the porch, and opened another round of brew as Irene fried the fish.