and his two from his second grotesquely. Yet his father is something of a holy relic to him, that brilliant, tough man who fought his way up from the mud of Polk County to the heights of Fort Smith in a single generation, building an empire but, more important, creating a vision which would sustain the empire. Red has called him, to each of his wives, “the redneck Joe Kennedy.”
“Well, you ain’t no JFK,” his first wife shot back, “except when it comes to screwing around.”
“Never said I was,” said Red. “Just said I wouldn’t let my daddy down.”
At fifty-one, he’s short and powerfully built, with a faint spray of freckles, stubby fingers, deep blue eyes that are said to be able to see through anybody’s lies and a bald spot that he vainly tries to minimize by wearing his reddish-blond hair crew-cut. He favors gray suits with pinstripes, blue button-down shirts, red ties (Brooks Brothers, usually) and black Italian loafers. He wears a gold Rolex and never carries less than $5,000 on him in small bills but other than the watch wears no jewelry. He doesn’t carry a gun, never has. He loved his first wife, and loves her still, even though he divorced her when she got a little too old. She was the third runner-up in the Miss Arkansas contest of 1972. He loves his new wife, who is thirty-seven and blond and was the authentic runner-up in the Miss Arkansas contest of 1986. And that was back in the days when beauty contestants had real tits and beauty contests were about beauty, not about saving the whales and feeling the pain of the homeless and all the other feeble liberal do- goodisms that were ruining America. Ask Red about this one: he’ll tell you all about it. It’s a real sore spot.
He loves his children. He loves his wives. He gives his wives and his children and himself anything he wants.
On this day, a sullen man sits before him in the uniform of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department, as Red’s eyes hungrily eat up data from the gambling chits before him.
Finally, Red looks over. What he sees is what he was, what he escaped from, what his father heroically rose against and conquered. But Red knows it well. Some would call it white trash: dead eyes, a narrow, ferrety face, a lanky, still body, too much hair, the whole radiating both danger and craftiness and best of all, stupidity. Red knew that men with gifts for the larger issues were seldom any good in getting the nitty-gritty work done.
“So, Duane,” he finally said, “I got reports here both good and bad on you.”
Duane Peck said nothing, but made a small clicking sound, tonguing his dentures so that they crackled and snapped. It was a nervous habit, disgusting, but no one had ever had the nerve to straight up tell him about it.
“You do like to gamble, don’t you, Duane, and Lady Luck hasn’t been holding your hand of late.”
“Don’t suppose she has,” Duane said.
“I see you got paper out in most of the cribs in eastern Oklahoma. You owe Ben Kelly twenty-one thousand. Keno, Duane? That your weakness?”
“No sir,” said Duane. “More to any card game.”
“Duane, you got a card imagination?”
Duane’s narrow eyes squinted as he contemplated this notion, failed to get a grip on it and then emptied of emotion as he dispensed with any more thought on the issue.
“I mean,” said Red, “do the numbers or the faces stick in your mind? Are the suits very vivid? Do you sense the deck charging up or closing down? A feeling that what’s left is in your odds or against them. Not counting cards, that’s only for the pros, but just good card instincts. A feeling. Most good card players have a gift for that sort of thing. They also may have a good head for numbers. Duane, what’s 153 plus 241 plus 304?”
“Ah—” Duane’s eyes narrowed. His lips began to move.
“Never mind, Duane. Now, on the plus side, I see you did some associates of mine a favor now and then.”
“Yes sir,” said Duane Peck.
“You did some collecting and some enforcing?”
“Yes sir.” Sometimes Duane moonlighted on his debt problem by collecting for Ben Kelly, who ran a gambling crib in the back room of the Pin-Del Motel over in Talihina, Oklahoma.
“Hmmm, that’s good. You hurt anybody bad?”
“I busted some jaws and heads, nothing nobody couldn’t walk away from a week down the line. I had to break one boy’s leg with a ax handle. He got way out of line.”
“You kill anybody?”
Duane’s eyes went blank.
“No sir,” he said.
“I don’t mean since you joined the Sheriff’s, Duane, and I don’t mean headbops on crib debtors. No, I mean
“Now, Duane, one thing you must learn, never lie to me. Ever. So I ask you a second time. You kill anybody?”
Duane mumbled something.
“Arco Service Station,” Red said. “Pensacola, 1977, June. You were just a redneck kid with a drug habit. A few quick hitters to raise the cash. But that night you popped a boy, right, Duane?”
Duane finally looked up.
“I forgot that one,” he finally said.
“Well, Randy Wilkes didn’t forget. He works in New Orleans for some people now. You do a job like that, you better come to an understanding with your partner. You don’t, it seems sloppy. You are sloppy, aren’t you, Duane?”
“Six ninety-two,” said Duane. “It’s 692.”
“No, Duane, but close. It’s 698.”
“Damn,” said Duane. “I can do it on paper.”
“This isn’t an arithmetic test, Duane. You’re clean now? You’re straight?”
“Nothing with real buzz,” said Duane. “I do like my bourbon on a Saturday night.”
“I like it then too, Duane. All right, now: I got a job for you. You interested?”
“Yes sir,” said Duane, who had been wondering why one so lowly as he had been summoned before so powerful a figure.
“A private job, just for me. That’s why you’re talking to me, Duane, not Ben Kelly or anybody in between you and me.”
“Yes sir.”
“Duane, your twenty-one thousand could disappear, you play it right.”
“Sir,” said Duane, stirring from his phlegmaticism, “I will play it right. You can count on that.”
“Duane, I’ll be honest. Wish I had a better man. But you got one thing I need and it makes you valuable to me.”
“Yes sir.”
“Not your big dick, Duane. Not that fine-tuned brain of yours. No sir. Your badge.”
Duane gulped a little.
“I need an inside boy to keep eye on a little situation that may be developing down in Polk. I send a stranger down, in that little place, people will notice. I got to have an insider, a man with the state’s authority who can go places and ask questions without attracting attention. You game, Duane?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Bama. You just say what it is.”
“It could get dicey,” said Red. “I might have you get your fingers dirty for me. I have to have your ultimate loyalty if I’m to give you mine.”
“Yes sir,” said Duane.
“You understand, I’m a fair man. If you end up doing joint time, it’ll be
Duane could do prison, he knew. For a shot at a place with the Man, just about anything was possible.
“Yes sir.”
“All right, Duane, you listen up. Many years ago there was a tragedy in Polk County. A heroic police sergeant shot it out with two very bad boys, killed them both. They killed him too. Mean anything to you?”
“No sir.”
“Not a history buff, eh, Duane?”
Duane’s face remained stolid: “history buff” as a concept was unrecognizable.
“Anyhow, I now have it on good authority a young Oklahoma journalist has decided to write a book about this
