Mississippi Blood

  Was it any wonder, then, that the eyes watching me from the truck window burned with such resentment? What galling rage must eat at his insides every time he thinks of the married white Mississippi doctor who impregnated his mother and abandoned her to the frozen Chicago ghetto? What must he see in my soft white skin and expensive clothes? In my reputation and my political power, however modest? In my lovely daughter with her blessed future? What did he feel, I wonder, when he heard that Caitlin had been murdered? One atom of sympathy? Or did he revel in unexpected schadenfreude and see Caitlin’s death as a gift in his quest to tear down all that my father has built in the years since he abandoned Viola Turner?

  “You got a mama,” Lincoln said bluntly. “My mama’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Contempt curled his upper lip. “Sorry don’t help her. Sorry don’t help nobody.”

  “Are you sorry that my wife is dead? Or my fiancée?”

  “I didn’t know the ladies. They were both rich, though, from what I hear. They had their time.”

  “You think money takes away the pain of life?”

  He barked a laugh, harsh and derisive. “Only somebody who’s got money could ask that.”

  “Is that what you want out of all this? Money?”

  “Everybody wants money. But there ain’t enough money in the world to take away my pain.”

  “What do you want, then?”

  “Justice.”

  “That’s a big word. It means different things to different people.”

  Lincoln shook his big head. “Only means one thing to me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Payback.”

  “You want our father to suffer the way your mother suffered.”

  Lincoln smiled then, and his smile was more frightening than anything he’d ever said to me. “The Bible says the sins of the father will be visited upon the sons, even unto the seventh generation. You and your little girl ain’t but two generations. But that’s a start, I guess.”

  My hand tightened on the pistol in my lap. “Are you threatening my daughter?”

  “Man, I don’t have to threaten nobody. Karma’s on its way around, all by its own self.” He glanced away, at the cars passing on the road beside us, then behind my Audi at the big Yukon. “Got your muscle back there, huh? You keep on paying him. He can’t protect you from what’s coming.”

  “I wouldn’t go back there and test him.”

  Lincoln’s laugh was deep and jolly. “You know, most of our lives, you and me didn’t know each other existed. But it’s like I told you in that juke joint out by Anna’s Bottom. We’ve been tied together as sure as twins separated at birth. We come from the same pair of balls, but you got blessed and I got cursed. Maybe you come from the left nut and I come from the right. What you think?”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “You’re wrong, bro. Hey, you ever been diving?”

  “Diving?”

  “Scuba diving.”

  “A few times.”

  “You and me . . . we’re like two divers tethered to each other, dropping down into an underwater cave. What they call a blue hole. Down, down into the dark, to a place nobody’s ever seen and lived to tell, where there’s no light and no oxygen, nothing but the bones of those who went before.”

  “You’re losing me, Lincoln.”

  “Oh, you’re with me. You know what’s at the bottom of that hole?”

  “What?”

  “The truth.”

  This got my attention. “And what’s the truth?”

  “Another big word, like justice. Maybe the biggest one of all. One truth is, you spent your life trying to measure up to a father who was a liar. And I spent mine trying to save a piece of shit I thought was my father, but he dragged me down with him like a drowning man.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this.

  “But that ain’t the bottom truth,” Lincoln said. “That’s just currents in the water.”

  “What’s the bottom truth?”

  “Oh, no, my brother. You don’t learn that till you get to the bottom.” He held up a thick forefinger. “And we ain’t near ’bout there yet.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go somewhere and sit down, just the two of us? We’ll drop the bullshit and come to some rational accommodation. How about it? These kinds of situations have been around for centuries, and people found a way to live with them.”

  “You mean bastard sons and rightful heirs sitting down and working shit out?”

  Money again. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  His eyes hardened into dark gemstones. “Man, you better wake the fuck up. It’s way too late for that.”

  “Is it ever too late to do the right thing?”

  “Ask my mama that.”

  This silenced me. I thought about driving away, but something held me in the parking lot, under that smoldering gaze. The anger in Lincoln Turner was to the hatred of men like Snake Knox as a blowtorch to liquid nitrogen. If Lincoln wanted Annie dead, he would cut her throat on the steps of a church and feel justified in the eyes of God. Snake might do the same, but he would do it in cold blood.

  “What did you say to my father when you visited him in jail?” I asked.

  “My father, you said? You mean our father, don’t you? As in, ‘Our Father, who art in prison, cursed be thy name . . .’?”

  The malicious edge in his voice sent a shiver along my arms.

  “What would you say?” he asked. “What would you say to a man who’d left you and your mother to die on the side of the road?”

  “Lincoln . . . he didn’t even know you existed until a few months ago.”

  His eyes blazed. “Boy, you’re like a blind mole burrowing through rich soil. Don’t know what’s behind you, above you, or beneath you. You’re fat and happy, right up till the moment the patient farmer hammers a spike through your head.”

  This image made my heart flutter. “Who’s the patient farmer? You?”

  Lincoln laughed once more, big rolling waves of sound that rebounded between our two vehicles. “Daddy, bro. Who else? Big Daddy. You and me, we’re out here suffering, not knowing shit. And he’s over there in a federal country club being protected by the FBI. You ’splain that to me, huh?”

  I said nothing. Lincoln had no interest in the agenda of John Kaiser or the FBI. He cared nothing about the Double Eagles or the Kennedy assassination.

  “But in three weeks,” he went on, “they gonna move him back here to the Adams County jail—to that cracker Sheriff Billy Byrd’s jail. Then ol’ Pop’s gonna get a taste of real prison life. Yes, sir. It’s gonna be sweet. Karma sho’ is a bitch. You think about that, my brother from a different mother.” Lincoln stabbed a thick forefinger at me. “And you have a blessed day.”

  He reached out and waved at Tim Weathers with mock friendliness, then put the truck in gear and peeled out of the parking lot with a shriek of rubber.

  I don’t remember what Tim said when he walked up to check on me. Even now, sitting at my kitchen table with an empty cereal bowl staring up at me, I’m not sure why this confrontation returned with such vividness. Maybe because I know that the message I was given by the VK biker will have to be transmitted to my father. And the only person who can do that is me. If I’m going to visit Dad tomorrow, after not speaking to him since before Caitlin’s death, a lot of memories like this are going to boil up out of the darkness at the bottom of my mind. I suppose Lincoln Turner came up first because he’s the living symbol of my father’s sin. His sin, yes, and perhaps also his crime. It was Lincoln who set in motion the murder investigation that ultimately led Shadrach Johnson to charge my father with first-degree murder. And now Lincoln haunts my city—and my family—like some dark, retributive spirit.

  “Penn? Are you okay?”

  I look up to see Mia Burke pad into the kitchen wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt that falls to midthigh.

  “I heard somebody moving aroun
d a while ago,” she says. “I thought it might be Tim or one of the guys.”

  “No. I just couldn’t sleep.”

  She gives me a knowing look. “How could you, after what happened tonight?”

  When I don’t answer, she picks up my bowl, takes it to the sink, and begins washing it. In the half light she reminds me of my wife, though Mia looks nothing like Sarah did. Mia is dark-haired, compact, and muscular, where Sarah was light-haired, lithe, and tall, just as Annie is growing to be.

  “You been watching that movie?” Mia says, not looking around.

  “Not really.”

  “There’s hardly any of the original Hemingway story left in it. But Faulkner wrote a lot of the script, I think. It’s kind of a poor man’s Casablanca.”

  This is typical Mia, who often sounds thirty rather than twenty, and sometimes a lot older than that. I cannot imagine how I would have handled Annie’s crisis without her.

  “I guess I’m going up,” she says, leaning back against the sink. “You want me to fix you some coffee or something? It’s not that long till sunup.”

  I give her a smile filled with more gratitude than an offer of coffee demands. “No, thanks. I’m coming up, too. I need the rest. I’m going to see my dad tomorrow.”

  This stops her cold. “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s time. But I’m not taking Annie with me. I’ll need your help to make that work out.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Thanks, Mia.”

  She walks into the hall first, and I switch off the TV and the light as I pass. We mount the staircase together, her a little in front, treading quietly so as not to wake Annie. At the top we pause, the moment slightly awkward, then with tight smiles we separate and go to our rooms.

  As I lie back down, I remember that once, long ago, Mia told me how Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall met and fell in love on the set of To Have and Have Not. He was forty-four, she nineteen. They married and remained happy until he died from cancer twelve years later. Tonight Mia did not remind me of that, but I do remember. It’s a strange life we have here, Mia and Annie and me. On some level, despite the disasters that made it necessary, I have enjoyed my time in this cocoon. But one thing is certain: it can’t go on forever. And something tells me that tomorrow, my visit to my father may set in motion the next act of our family tragedy.

  Unless the bullets I fired earlier tonight already did that.

  Chapter 4

  I don’t really want to see my father, but I don’t see that I have much choice. There are two federal correctional institutions at Pollock, Louisiana. One is a medium-security facility that houses violent felons. The other is a minimum-security country club for nonviolent offenders, and this is where John Kaiser chose to house my father during his period of protective custody.

  Relaying Snake Knox’s message to Dad meant driving back along the same rural roads Tim Weathers and I drove last night when the two VK bikers followed us, and where we ultimately killed them. Tim insisted on riding with me this time, and also on putting a chase car behind us with two more security men. Tim said he didn’t fancy being surrounded by a hundred Harleys on a country highway with only the two of us to make a stand. The guys in the chase car had some heavy weaponry that a motorcycle gang would not be expecting.

  I didn’t ask for details.

  After what seems an interminable drive, Tim turns the big Yukon into the prison entrance, we pass the gate, and I remember that Pollock’s not that bad, as prisons go. Nothing remotely like a state facility—Parchman, for example, which for a visitor is a shitty experience from start to finish, and for a prisoner can be hell on earth. The Pollock FCI feels more like an inexpensive but clean motel, one that happens to have bars, barbed wire, or mesh over every opening big enough for a human hand to pass through.

  Being processed in reminds me of my years as a prosecutor, and it also makes me wonder how Annie has felt going through this, week after week. But if experience has taught me anything, it’s that kids seem to do very well handling prison visits; it’s the adults who seesaw between high anxiety and depression.

  Before long, I find myself seated alone in a room the size of a large office cubicle. I was searched twice, despite my father being supposedly held in protective custody. But prisons have their procedures, and woe betide any guard who dares to break them—at least publicly. Annie and my mother must be very familiar with this sterile room.

  I’ve visited a lot of witnesses in a lot of prisons, but seeing my father in this place will not be easy. When I hear the door open, I turn, my neck and back painfully stiff from last night’s action.

  But it’s not my father who comes through that door.

  First I hear an electric whir. Then a wheelchair scoots through the opening, bearing a man who was six feet four inches tall when he still had his legs. Now a crocheted comforter covers his lap, and also the space where the lower extremities that diabetes took from him would normally rest.

  I wasn’t expecting Quentin Avery, since he divides his time between Washington, D.C., and a palatial home in Jefferson County, Mississippi, which is a good hundred miles away. But something obviously drew Quentin here today, and I’m pretty sure it was me.

  Expertly manipulating the wheelchair’s joystick, he rolls to within inches of my chair and gives me a fond smile. The tight white Afro and skin light enough for freckles always give his face a friendly cast, and his greenish eyes often have a twinkle in them. But I have also seen those eyes blaze with fire, and ice over into opacity. The voice usually emerges as a soft southern drawl, but this man has argued landmark cases before the Supreme Court, and in such venues he can call forth a booming God-from-the-burning-bush bass that shakes judges in their seats. Today, though, he’s my benign uncle Quentin, ready to dispense wise advice for those smart enough to take it. Or so he would have me believe.

  “I heard you had some trouble last night,” he begins, with a wink in his voice.

  “Little bit.”

  “You’re turning into a regular cowboy this year.”

  “I’m not here to see you, Quentin. Where’s Dad?”

  “Easy, Trigger. He’ll be out in a minute. I thought we ought to have a word first. What prompted this visit after all the distance?”

  “The guy I shot gave me a message last night. A message for Dad. And for you.”

  The green eyes register surprise. “A message from . . . ?”

  “Snake Knox. And I did not tell the FBI that.”

  Quentin rolls his tongue around his mouth, then swallows, as though drinking down this information. “What’s the message?”

  “Word for word, he said, ‘Your daddy’s nigger lawyer’s gonna try to blame that old woman’s death on Snake.’”

  “Colorful. Reminds me of my youth.”

  “Then he gave me Snake’s message: ‘Wives and children have no immunity.’”

  Quentin reflects on the words.

  “What does that mean, Q?”

  “It’s a threat, obviously. Against Peggy and Annie, I imagine.”

  “That’s all? Nothing more?”

  Now he looks blank. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. This was almost the last thing this guy said on earth. And I felt like there was more to it than a simple threat. He wanted to be sure I got the exact words.”

  Quentin reaches out and squeezes my hand. “You were in the heat of action, boy. You’d just shot a man. Your neurons were firing at a thousand times their normal rate. Don’t read too much into it.”

  I think about this for a while. “Is it true, what he said? Are you going to try to blame Viola’s death on Snake Knox?”

  Quentin looks down at the floor and sighs. “Penn . . . I have been specifically instructed not to talk to you about my case strategy.”

  “By Dad.”

  A nod.

  “Jesus Christ. Do you have evidence that Snake killed Viola?”

  He looks up again, empathy and regret in his face. “I can
’t talk about the case.”

  “If you have such evidence, why not give it to the police or the FBI?”

  “I can’t discuss it, Penn. But I will tell you this: There’s no way in hell that Snake or anybody else could have any idea of what my strategy is. Because I don’t know myself yet.”

  This silences me for a few seconds. “Then why is Snake afraid that you might try to pin Viola on him? If Snake’s afraid of that, that must mean either he killed her, or he was there on the day of the murder and he’s afraid you can prove it.”

  Quentin pushes out his lower lip. “All food for thought.”

  “Okay, Quentin. Okay. I get your position. But I have to ask you one thing. Given all the physical evidence I know about, I’ve worked through every imaginable scenario of what could have happened in that room on the night Viola died. Natural causes, suicide, physician-assisted suicide, and murder. And I know one thing for sure: unless the videotape stolen from Henry Sexton’s camera recorded the actual murder—and it exists somewhere and is played in court for the jury—nobody can say for sure how Viola died. Which gives you reasonable doubt. If you paint a convincing enough story, the jury should have no trouble voting to acquit.”

  Quentin is enjoying this like a law professor watching a student wrestle with a difficult case. “And which story would you choose, Counselor?”

  “Easy. Viola tried to inject herself with a lethal dose of morphine but only partially succeeded, due to physical impairment. That explains the botched injection. Maybe Dad was there when she did that, maybe not. But once he was in her presence, she suffered a heart attack. Naturally, Dad used adrenaline to try to revive her. In his zeal to do everything possible to save her, he administered a fatal overdose. Maybe that was excessive zeal, or maybe he picked the wrong syringe. But either way, if you tell that story right, no jury in Natchez is going to convict him of murder.”

  Quentin has steepled his long fingers. “You might be right about that. But here’s the problem. If that’s the way things happened, then why the hell didn’t Tom say that immediately after her death? Why didn’t he sign Viola’s death certificate and call for the ambulance or the coroner? Why refuse to speak? And worse . . . why skip bail?”