Mississippi Blood

  Snake reached into his pocket and took out a quarter. He held it out to Toons.

  “What the fuck is that?” Toons asked.

  “Your life.”

  “What?”

  Snake tossed the quarter on the ground between them. Two seconds later, a rifle shot cracked through the darkness, and all five men in leathers hit the dirt. When no further shots sounded, they got to their feet, nervously looking around.

  “Where’s your quarter, Toons?” Snake asked.

  Toons looked down at the ground, then bent at the knee and plucked the deformed piece of metal from the dirt.

  Snake felt a little twinge of pride at his son’s marksmanship. Blood always tells, Frank used to say. “You can have the next one through your eye, if you like,” Snake said.

  “You made your point,” Lars muttered. “Who you planning on killing tomorrow?”

  Snake wasn’t about to answer this question. “That’s my business.”

  “Not the way things are going. We’ve got the FBI shaking us down from here to Texas. I don’t want you using my men to hit FBI agents.”

  This ponytailed bastard has good instincts, Snake thought. “I may not be killing anybody. I just need to remove a certain threat.”

  “And for that you need shooters?”

  “Have you got ’em or not?” Snake snapped, hoping his exasperation would forestall further inquiry.

  After a long look, Lars nodded. “You’ll get your men. Where?”

  “Here. Tomorrow, eleven a.m. I’ll need them for twelve hours.”

  “No problem. But let me ask you something. That trial. How come the mayor isn’t defending his father? I heard he was a hotshot prosecutor when he lived in Houston.”

  “His daddy don’t want him,” Snake said.

  “Why not?”

  Snake considered how much to tell Dempsey. At length, he said, “Daddy’s got secrets he don’t want his boy to know.”

  Lars nodded. “Don’t we all. Do you know what his are? The doc’s?”

  Snake smiled. “Good night, gentlemen.”

  Dempsey reached out and tapped Toons on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Lars turned and started back to the turnaround, but Toons didn’t follow. He remained rooted to the ground, scanning the tops of the great columns for any sign of a sniper. When he failed to find one, he jabbed a finger at Snake.

  “You and me ain’t finished, old man.”

  “You’re begging for a bullet, retard. Take some advice. Don’t be with the group coming tomorrow. You’re not cut out for real action.”

  Snake turned his back on the VK security chief and walked between two plinths into the darkness.

  Chapter 48

  Serenity and I are sitting up in the kitchen, drinking tea and waiting to hear from Quentin. Jenny just went upstairs with a migraine; Mom and Mia are watching television with Annie in the den. I’m trying to decide whether they smelled liquor on Tee and me when we came in from our meeting with Kaiser in the Corner Bar. I know Annie smelled smoke, because she mentioned it. If anyone smelled alcohol, it would have been Mia.

  “What’s the deal with Jenny?” Tee whispers, twirling her forefinger in her mug, from which she has not removed the tea bag.

  I shrug, my mind on the likelihood that the FBI will allow Devine to testify in Dad’s trial—and in time. “She gets migraines.”

  Serenity glances at the door to the den, as though Mia or Annie might hear her. “I mean, of everyone in your family, she seems the least like she fits.” Whatever my facial reaction, Serenity feels encouraged to go on. “And why does she live in England?”

  “It’s complicated. Jenny was seven years ahead of me in school, and she was a star. But she didn’t want to teach back then. She wanted to write. She majored in English lit and spent her first four postgrad years writing two novels that together sold about three hundred copies. I, on the other hand, never set out to be a writer. It was simply something I stumbled into after tiring of my career as a prosecutor.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “You can imagine the rest. When my first novel sold at auction, then hit the bestseller lists, Jenny began taking visiting professorships overseas. Ultimately, she married an Englishman and remained over there to raise her children. Jenny would say ‘rear’ her children, of course, but that kind of grammatical precision will get you a cup of coffee if you add three dollars to it.”

  “Do you feel guilty about that? Her reaction?”

  Before I can answer, my mother appears in the door that leads to the den. “How are you two doing? Is there anything going on with Tom’s case that I don’t know about?”

  Serenity and I share a look. Though she doesn’t change her expression, I sense she’s telling me to come clean with my mother. Without giving her too many specifics, I tell Mom that an original Double Eagle is about to turn state’s evidence against his fellow criminals, and there’s a chance that he could testify tomorrow in Dad’s trial.

  “If the U.S. attorney completes the plea deal and allows it,” I conclude, “I think that man’s testimony alone could constitute reasonable doubt and result in Dad’s acquittal.”

  Mom stares at me in silence for several seconds. “Is your tea still warm?” she asks.

  I pick up my cup and hold it out to her. “I’ve hardly touched it.”

  When she takes the cup, I see her hand shaking. Serenity gives her an encouraging smile, but in this moment I realize that my mother is barely holding herself together. She takes a long swallow of tea, then focuses in the middle distance.

  “Quentin did a fine job with his opening statement, didn’t he? He floored that jury. I—I think we’re going to have to trust that Quentin is still the legal lion he was when the whole world knew his name.”

  “He stunned them, all right,” I reply, and leave it there. I’m not about to make Mom face how risky Quentin’s strategy is.

  “I think I’m going up,” she says. “It’s been a long day. May I keep your tea?”

  “It’s yours now.”

  She gives me a guilty smile. “Good night, Serenity.”

  To my surprise, Tee gets to her feet. “Actually, Mrs. Cage, I think I’ll go up with you. It has been a long day.” She looks back at me. “And Penn needs a little time with Annie.”

  My mother nods pointedly, and I know then that Serenity has scored a point with her.

  “Good night, you guys,” I say wearily.

  They turn and walk into the hall together, without Serenity giving me the slightest signal that I might see her later. I can’t believe she’s going to go to bed without hearing Quentin’s report of his meeting with Judge Elder. And that, I suddenly realize, was her signal. She knew she’d never slip a wink or an intimate wave past my mother.

  She left it to me to figure out the obvious.

  An hour later, I’m staring up into Tee’s eyes as she labors above me with quiet persistence. Then she closes them, which I regret, but this allows my own eyes free rein over her body, which is miraculously new and strange. Her skin is indeed the color of a paper bag, but her nipples and areolae are the color of Hershey’s Kisses.

  “I—don’t—like—being—quiet,” she whispers with rhythmic frustration, working toward her second release. In the moment of cresting, her eyes flash open and find mine, and the urgency behind them pours into me, or rather, seems to pull something from me. Serenity’s orgasms, while long and powerful, seem not to satiate a deeper need that I feel within her, a hunger for connection that is only partly physical.

  As she shudders above me, closing her eyes once more, then falling forward until her face is pressed into my neck, I think of all the places she’s been, the experiences she’s had, so many of which she described in her book. All that—a story known to hundreds of thousands of people—is contained within the mind and flesh of the woman molded against me now, breathing deeply in my ear.

  “What is it?” she asks in a sleepy voice.

  “What?”


  “You want to ask me something.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Her eyes open. “Liar.”

  I feel such an eerie sense of having my mind read that I grasp desperately for any subject other than the one I was thinking of.

  “I was just wondering,” I begin blindly, “why . . . you haven’t asked me if you’re the first black woman I’ve slept with.”

  “Hah!” Serenity rolls onto her back and spits a sharp laugh at the ceiling. “Baby, please. I know I’m your first.”

  She’s gone from somnolent to wide awake in less than a second. Boy, did I pick the wrong question. “How do you know?” I ask.

  “The way you look at me, smell me, touch my hair. It’s a good thing your writing’s more subtle than your game.”

  “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  She rolls onto her side and runs her finger over my chest. “’Course, I’m just half black,” she says in a teasing tone. “Unless we’re going by the one-drop rule. Then I’m all black. But I don’t know if you could handle the real deal.”

  “Can we just skip it?”

  She runs her fingertip down to my abdomen, then farther still. “Next thing, you’re gonna ask me about penis size. That’s the next white-boy question.”

  I try to keep my face impassive, but Tee just laughs harder. When she finally stops, she says, “You want me to just tell you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She pokes me in the side, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Well. Just between us girls . . . beyond a certain minimum, it’s not how big it is. It’s how hard it is.”

  For some reason, this doesn’t comfort me much.

  “It’s killing you not to ask me, isn’t it?” she presses, her eyes filled with mirth.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. That certain minimum.” She reaches down and closes her hand around what is commonly called my manhood and whispers, “You made the cut, Mr. Mayor. Just.”

  While I process this answer, she squeezes me and says, “How ’bout you finish what you started?”

  Before I can do that, my cell phone rings. Serenity groans, then rolls over and grabs it off the bedside table.

  “Quentin,” she says, handing it to me.

  I click send and say, “You took long enough, didn’t you?”

  Tee presses her lips to my ear and hisses, “Speakerphone.”

  I hit the button.

  “Is anybody else with you?” Quentin asks.

  Serenity shakes her head.

  “Just you and me and God, Q. Or was that redundant?”

  Quentin chuckles. “I’m surprised. Where’s that hot little Nobel Prize winner you had with you before?”

  Serenity snorts a laugh, and Quentin says, “I thought so. I caught some vibe earlier tonight. You’re a lucky man, Penn Cage.”

  Tee rolls her eyes, but the smile doesn’t leave her face. “Did you do any good tonight,” she asks, “you old hound dog?”

  “Judge Elder and I had a frank and honest exchange of views. I think we’ll find him a little more amicable in court tomorrow. What about my potential star witness? Have you two been hanging with the Klan?”

  “We have. Everything may depend on John Kaiser at this point. They’ve promised to testify for Dad, but the witness is scared to death of Snake Knox.”

  “Rightfully so.”

  “I’ve promised to guarantee their security. I’d be more confident if Kaiser and the U.S. attorney could get a deal signed. Kaiser is grateful to us for turning the witness, so he’s glad for him to help Dad out. But there are a lot of moving parts.”

  “Always, always.”

  “What about Dad? Did you talk to him?”

  “I’m just leaving the jail now. I told Tom everything you told me—the possibility of deputies tampering with the hair and fiber evidence, everything—and he agrees with me. Don’t make any accusations against the sheriff’s department.”

  Serenity squints at me as though something is wrong.

  “Dad said that?” I ask.

  “Yes, and more. Tom said, ‘We have no proof of anything, and even if we did, it would only create a distraction.’”

  I’m incredulous. “Wait a minute. Dad said that even if we have proof of tampering, we should do nothing?”

  “Correct.”

  “Quentin, what the hell?”

  “There’s more. Tom also said to tell Jewel Washington to stop digging into whatever those deputies might have done.”

  “Why?”

  “You lost your fiancée, Penn. Do you really have to ask me that?”

  A wave of heat passes over my face. “Are you saying those deputies might kill the county coroner to cover up what they did?”

  “I’m saying it’s reckless to pretend we’re not in a very dangerous situation.”

  “Christ, man. If we could get proof that Billy Byrd’s deputies suppressed evidence implicating someone else in Viola’s death, that alone—”

  “Boy, listen to me! This case ain’t about hair and fiber. Do you hear me?”

  Serenity’s brow is knitted tight in concentration.

  “What’s it about, then?”

  “For me? Representing your father’s interests to the best of my ability. Now, I’ve got to go. Doris is waiting. The best thing you can do is get the U.S. attorney to close that plea deal and clear—”

  “Don’t say the name!”

  Quentin curses in frustration. “I was going to say clear my witness to testify tomorrow. But don’t make any other moves without checking with me first.”

  “Bullshit I won’t. Don’t you want me to come down there and brief you on what the witness knows about Viola?”

  “No. I’m not going to start getting excited about a witness who may or may not appear tomorrow. I’d be a fool to rely on that. Good night.”

  As I drop the phone on the sheet, Serenity says, “Did that sound right to you? About the hair and fiber?”

  “It sounds like the same bullshit Quentin’s given me from the start.”

  “I just don’t see the logic of your father’s position, other than he’s acting out of fear. And that doesn’t fit with what I know of him.”

  “I know. It’s not fear for himself, though. It’s fear for others.”

  I can tell Tee is ready for an intense discussion, but after today, I simply haven’t the patience or stamina for it. What I want to do is what she suggested before Quentin called—finish what I started before. Luckily, Tee is quick to read my mood, and once more she climbs astride me, this time sitting on my thighs so she can use her hands first.

  “Any more silly white-boy questions before we resume?” she asks with a teasing smile.

  “I learned my lesson.”

  “Good.”

  She reaches between us to slide me into her, then freezes.

  “Penn?” says my mother. “I couldn’t sleep for thinking about—”

  At that moment I realize Mom isn’t outside the door, but inside the room with us. Whipping my head left, I see her standing motionless with one hand on the doorknob, her mouth hanging slack, her eyes glassy. All three of us seem transfixed by some external force. The first person to move is Serenity, who reaches down and raises the comforter to cover her gently swaying breasts.

  “I should have knocked,” Mom cries, snapping out of her trance like someone hit her with heart paddles.

  “Mom, it’s okay!” I call, but the door closes on my words.

  Cursing under my breath, I lift Serenity off my midsection, roll out of bed, and grab for my pants, but she catches hold of my arm and says, “Penn, don’t do it.”

  “Don’t what?”

  I look back angrily, but Tee’s face holds only sadness and warning.

  “Your mama didn’t see us just then,” she says softly. “She saw your father and Viola.”

  Her words suck the breath out of my chest. Thinking about the pain my mother must be enduring right now is almo
st impossible to bear. On top of the trial and the gossip and all the rest of it—

  “Don’t,” Tee whispers. “Don’t do that to yourself. You can’t change their past. You can only change the future. Your future. Come back to bed.”

  “I don’t think I—”

  “Yes, you can.” Her dark eyes are no longer trying to pull something from me. They are pouring something into me. She reaches out and takes my hand, pulls me back onto the mattress. “Remember how we started?”

  “How?”

  “No talking.”

  After a few seconds I nod, not at all certain that we want or need the same things in this moment. But she pulls me to her, threading one leg around mine and running her fingers through my hair, her eyes never leaving my face. “Tonight let’s try something new,” she says, softly kissing my shoulder. “Tonight, you talk all you want.”

  She pulls the covers up to our necks, then over our heads.

  Thursday

  Chapter 49

  On Thursday morning, when Judge Elder asks Quentin to call his first witness, a retired army colonel named Karl Eklund walks into the courtroom from the back door and strides to the witness box with a soldierly bearing that would put Major Matthew Powers to shame. Eklund stands about an inch under six feet, but he has the chiseled features of a martial bust whose sculptor left no spare material on his work, and the colonel’s eyes have plainly seen more than most men ever will. It’s only after looking at Eklund for half a minute that I realize that something isn’t quite right about his face. It’s been worked on extensively by plastic surgeons, not to enhance his beauty, which is limited, but to reconstruct whatever existed before whatever happened to it happened. When Colonel Eklund takes the oath with his hand on the Bible, he gives the impression of a man who would cut off his right arm before breaking a vow.

  I half expect Shad to try to disqualify Eklund at the start, but the DA seems to sense that he would lose more points with the jury by trying to silence this man than by letting him speak. As Quentin rolls toward the podium, Shadrach looks worried.

  Looking from Shad back toward the witness box, I happen to catch sight of my father. For most of the trial I’ve seen only the back of his head, but now he has turned to face Quentin by the podium, and his face is almost bloodless. Dad knew that Colonel Eklund would be testifying this morning, yet he looks like he never expected to see the man walking and talking again.