“Being entirely truthful with you, Lonnie didn’t have all that much. That’s because Lonnie isn’t much. A punk like him, he’s not what you’d call a man of his word. You can never be sure when he’s telling the truth. Here, see for yourself,” he said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his suit coat.
It was in ignorant scrawl, just the way someone like Lonnie would write it. But a college graduate couldn’t have written a clearer account of how our drug business worked. Had worked, that is.
“You’re right,” I told the cop. “There isn’t a word of truth in all this scribble.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” he said, when I went to hand it back. “That pack of lies isn’t worth a plugged nickel. Might even backfire on the DA if he tried to use Lonnie as a prosecution witness. Put a piece of trash like him in front of a jury, they’re not likely to believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”
“I can see how that might be true.”
“No disrespect, but I don’t think you do, Mr. Till. I told you, I came here hoping to be friends.”
“A man can’t have enough friends.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” I said. “And I don’t suppose there’s any reason why a man couldn’t be your friend and sell you an insurance policy, too.”
“Now, that’s your reputation proving itself, Mr. Till. Folks say you’re the smartest man around.”
“Would the premiums on this policy be weekly or monthly?”
“I do think monthly would be best. No reason for me to come all the way out here so often.”
“How much?”
“Well, I guess it depends on the amount of coverage you’d be wanting.”
“I think I’d want the maximum,” I said to him. “The full family plan. After all, you never know when something’s going to happen, do you? Why only buy fire insurance, when a flood’s just as likely?”
“That could end up being a very expensive policy, I have to tell you,” he said. “For that kind of coverage, the salesman has to split his commission with his supervisors. All the way up to the top, actually.”
“I understand. But that’s what insurance is, right? It can’t stop things from happening; it just covers you if they do. Life insurance won’t stop a man from dying, but it will help his family carry on without him.”
“That’s true.”
“Some folks, they pay insurance on their house for thirty years, and nothing ever touches it. Instead of being upset about all those premiums they paid, my thinking is they should be grateful nothing ever did happen.”
“That’s the way I look at it myself.”
“It just comes down to men being reasonable with each other,” I said. “If the premiums get too high, well, then, a man can’t afford them, and he lets the policy lapse. On the other hand, if the premiums are too low, the insurance company can’t make a living.”
The cop stubbed out his cigarette on the ground. Then he took out a little plastic bag, the kind with tops that seal themselves closed, and put the butt inside. It went into his pocket. There’s a dozen reasons he could have done that. None of them mattered to me.
“A thousand,” he said.
“Once a month?”
“Once a month.”
“And that’s for full coverage? For me and my family? Against anything that might happen to cause either of us any problem with your company?”
“Absolutely total.”
“Fair enough,” I said, reaching over to shake his hand.
He held on to my hand. Dropped his voice to a whisper. “Folks say you carry a magnum in that left armrest of your chair. Man’s got a right to do that. But you won’t mind if I look for myself?”
I let go of his hand, leaned back in my chair, and flipped both armrests open.
The cop found the magnum, all right. But he didn’t find the tape recorder I knew he was really looking for.
What he did see was about five thousand in hundreds. Plus some of those little packets of alcohol, bandages, stuff that a cripple like me might need.
“You mind?” he said.
I knew what he wanted. Let him feel all over my body, even lift the blanket off my legs.
“I apologize if I offended you,” he said. “But you understand—”
“I do understand. And you understand as well. That’s all that righteous folks need to make a contract: an understanding between themselves. When one man gives his word to another, it has to mean at least as much as anything you could write down on a piece of paper.”
“You have got my respect, sir.”
“Mutual.”
“I’ll be back—”
“One month from today,” I told him, handing over a thousand in nice crisp bills, pretending that I didn’t see the look of surprise on his face.
hat cop drove off, satisfied that we had an understanding between us. We had an understanding, all right. But that’s not the same as a partnership.
Which he’d learn only if he did something a lot stupider than Lonnie Manes ever dreamed of. That’s when he’d find out that searching me for a tape recorder had been a waste of time.
Around these parts, the one thing nobody is surprised to see on your house is a satellite dish. All the time we were in the yard, talking, that dish was zeroed in on us. When I played back the recording, it was as clear as high-def TV can be. And the sound quality was as good as in an opera house.
I saved it to my hard drive, then I sent it to my coded box, just in case.
If that cop ever turned on me, he’d end up putting his own gun in his mouth. Even if he needed some help to do it.
ike I said, I was already out of the drug business the second that cop had opened his mouth. But I had my plans, and having a tape of him not only taking a bribe, but outright admitting he had to cut a whole lot of higher-ranking cops in on such a take, that could be well worth the money.
The insurance money, I’m saying.
wo different mobs pretty much had things around here all divided up between them: gambling joints, strip clubs, loan-sharking, protection coverage, and, of course, the tax collections.
The white-lightning guys were even smaller potatoes than the dogfighters, but that’s not why they never paid taxes. There’s folks around here who’ll tell you there’s nothing like shine—hits you harder than anything you could buy in a bar. But there was no real money to be made from it, and the only men still in the business, they were old men.
And those old men, they kept to the old ways, too. They were very seriously opposed to paying tax. Didn’t matter who came collecting. Racketeer or lawman, he might well be buried on the same ground he was dumb enough to cross without permission. If you wanted to visit, the only way to make sure you’d be leaving would be to leave their business alone.
For the two mobs, the dividing line was where County Road 22 crossed Route 76. It was as clear as a border crossing with armed guards: 22 ran north and south, and each mob had its own side, east or west. If you wanted to set up an operation, what you paid was the same on either side, but who you paid was determined by where you wanted to set up shop.
There was some poaching, of course. Not enough to start a full-scale war, but more than enough to get more than a few men killed over the years.
Whoever crossed the line, the mob they came from would always say they were freelancing. That’s what stopped things from ever getting out of hand. Even if one mob knew the other one was behind the poaching, they didn’t have to take all-out vengeance to hold their pride.