“Sam, what do you know about Ray Presley?”
“Ray Presley? He’s sick, I heard. Bad sick.”
“What’s he been up to the last few years?”
“Same thing he was always up to. Being a sleazy coonass who’ll do anything for money.”
“Presley’s no coonass. He’s from Jones County. Who did he work for?”
“Old Natchez people, mostly.” Sam’s eyes keep flicking to the rearview mirror. “He did some things for a driller I know. Strong-arm stuff. I think Marston kept him on his payroll as a security consultant, if you believe that.” Sam accelerates, as if daring the deputy to pull him over. “You know what? I’ll bet the BASF deal is what set Maude off on you.”
“What does Maude Marston care about a chemical plant? She has more money than God.”
“But does she have enough? That chemical plant means more to the Marstons than anybody. Short term, anyway.”
“Why?”
“The industrial park isn’t big enough for the projected facility. You want to guess who owns the land contiguous to the park site?”
“Leo?”
“Yep. He’ll squeeze blood out of BASF for every square foot of land, or kill them on usage and access fees.”
“But that’s got nothing to do with Livy.”
Sam nods, then turns and looks hard at me. “Caitlin Masters’s article said Ray Presley worked the Payton murder when he was a cop. Is that what this is about?”
“It’s nothing to do with that.”
Sam slams his hand against the Hummer’s steering wheel. “Look at this asshole! I hate it when they follow you like that.” He cranes his neck around and looks through the back windscreen. “You gonna stop me or what!”
“I don’t think he is. I think it’s the same guy who followed me from Shad Johnson’s headquarters earlier tonight.”
“Shad Johnson’s headquarters?” Sam shakes his head. “I’m riding with a crazy man.”
“Ten seconds after he passed me, somebody shot up my car with a rifle.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying that if this guy passes us, watch him close.”
Sam reaches under the seat, pulls out a holstered Colt .45, and sets it in my lap. “He’s fucking with the wrong vehicle if that’s his plan. This Hummer will drive right over that Crown Vic he’s in.”
“Take it easy. He’s just tailing us.”
“Why the sudden interest in Ray Presley?”
“I’ll tell you in a couple of days. Do you think we could find anybody who could testify that Presley has committed murder for money?”
“A lot of people could. Would is another question.”
Sam turns into my parents’ neighborhood, watching his rearview mirror through the turn. “There goes our shadow. Bye, bye.”
A minute later he pulls the Hummer into our driveway and leaves it idling. “I feel bad about mentioning Sarah. I guess time is the only thing that can get you past something like that.”
I swallow the last of the Scotch. “I’ll never get past it, Sam. I’m a different person now. Part of me is lying in that grave in Houston.”
“Yeah, well. Most of you is sitting right here. And your daughter needs that part.”
“I know. I keep thinking about Del Payton’s widow. Race doesn’t even come into it for me. For thirty years part of her has been buried wherever her husband is. We’re both wounded the same way. You know?”
Sam shuts off the engine. “Listen to me, Penn. Whoever blew up Del Payton was in their twenties then, thirties max. Kluckers full of piss and vinegar. Those guys have got wives and grown kids now. And if you think they’re gonna let some hotshit, nigger-lovin’ writer take all that away, you’re nuts. That’s who shot at you tonight. And if you keep pushing, they’ll kill you.”
Sam has the Jew’s special fear of fanatics. During the civil rights era this anxiety caused many Mississippi Jews to keep as low a profile as possible. Some gave heroic support to the Movement; others, primarily in the Delta, actually joined the White Citizens’ Councils, for fear of the consequences if they didn’t. Sam’s parents chose the difficult middle ground.
“Don’t worry, Sam. Caitlin Masters has given everybody the idea I’m a crusading liberal, ready to drag the town through the mud. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Bullshit. I know you when you sound like this. You’ll pull down the temple to find the truth.”
“I remember you sounding like this once. That time in junior high, when your dad hired us to clean out his attic?”
Sam gives no sign that he’s heard, but I know he has.
“Going through all those boxes,” I remind him. “We found that list. Two hundred names, all handwritten.”
He reaches out and toys with the Hummer’s ignition key. The papers we found had listed most members of Natchez’s Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Council. The Jewish community had maintained the list as a security measure, and more than a few names on it belonged to fathers of kids we went to school with.
“You remember how you felt when you saw those names?”
He picks up the drink cup and nervously shakes the ice. “Scared.”
“Me too. But it pissed me off more. I wanted to expose those assholes for what they were. So did you. Have you ever done business with anybody on that list?”
He looks up, his eyes hard as agates. “Not a fucking one. And I spiked them where I could.”
A side spill of headlights washes across my parents’ house.
“Would you look at this?” Sam mutters, looking over his shoulder. “It’s the same car.”
The sheriff’s cruiser sits idling in the street, fifteen yards behind us.
Bolstered by the confidence of being on my father’s property, I set the .45 in Sam’s lap, climb out of the Hummer, and walk toward the car. The passenger window whirs down into the door frame. It’s the black deputy who followed me before. I put my hands on the door and lean into the window.
“Can I help you?”
The deputy says nothing. He has a bald, bullet-shaped head dominated by black eyes set in yellow sclera shot with blood. He’s at least fifty, but he fills out his brown uniform like an NFL cornerback. Even at rest he radiates coiled energy.
“You were following me earlier tonight, right?”
The black eyes burn into mine with unsettling intensity. “Could have been,” he says in a gravelly voice.
“Ten seconds after you passed me, somebody shot up my car. You stopped. Why didn’t you help me?”
“I didn’t hear no shots. I saw you stop. I waited to make sure you started again. Why didn’t you report it if you was shot at?”
“What the hell is this about, Deputy? Why are you following me?”
He purses his lips and taps the steering wheel. “Get rid of your friend. Tell him I warned you off the Payton case, then go inside. After he leaves, meet me back out here.”
“Look, if this is about Del Payton-”
“This is about you, Penn Cage.” He spears me with a chilling stare. “And unfinished business.”
Unfinished business? A needle of fear pushes through my gut. Could he be talking about Ray Presley? Could he know something about what happened in Mobile in 1973? “Do you know a man named Ray Presley, Deputy?”
His jaw muscles flex into knots. “I know that motherfucker.”
“Does this have anything to do with him?”
“It might. You just be out here when I get back.”
He presses the accelerator, spinning me away from the car. After regaining my balance, I watch the cruiser disappear, then walk back to the driver’s window of the Hummer.
“What the hell was that about?” Sam asks.
“How many black sheriff’s deputies are there?”
“Nine or ten, I think. That was one of them?”
“Yeah. Fiftyish, but tough. Bald-headed.”