'Wouldn't be without it.'
'You keep it in a mojo bag?'
'Yeah, little bag made of flannel, has a draw string. You want to see it, don't you?' 'I wouldn't mind.'
'It's in the room. I'll show it to you.'
'What's the charm that's in it?'
'Strands of Madonna's coochie mop.'
'Strands? You're kidding.'
'Am I?'
Shit, this guy-Dennis kept his mouth shut. He swore he wouldn't get into it any deeper.
But then Robert said, 'You ever think about selling your soul?'
And Dennis bit; couldn't help it. 'How do you do that?'
'You stand up and say, when the time comes, Enough of this shit, I'm gonna do what I want. Or I'm gonna get me what I want. It's how you turn your life around.'
'What if you don't know what you want?'
'You have to be cool, wait for it to be offered. But when it comes, you only have the one chance to grab it. You know what I'm saying?'
'Like a job? What I've always wanted, a regular job.'
'You're feeling edgy now, huh? You like to be eighty feet in the air about to do your number-a thousand fans watching and you know you have 'em in your hand. And for that,' Robert said, 'they pay you three hundred a day?' He stared at the highway now as he said, 'Man, I can make you feel like you way higher than eighty feet. Up on an edge you won't believe.'
There was a silence, Dennis telling himself to leave it alone. But there was a question he had to ask.
'How'd you get it?'
Robert turned his head. 'What?'
'Your mojo.'
'I bought it.'
'How do you know it's the real thing?'
'I believe it. That's enough to make it work.'
14
WALTER KIRKBRIDE CALLED THE MEETING, in his office at Southern Living Village, Walter in casual clothes, his beard still gray, a Cuban cigar in one hand, a Confederate cavalry saber in the other. Arlen Novis, Eugene Dean, Bob Hoon and his brother Newton filed in and took seats: Arlen wearing his slouch hat, Eugene holding a sixteen-ounce bottle of Pepsi-Cola, Bob Hoon with a cigar stub showing in the thicket of his beard, Newton showing tobacco juice in his.
They all assumed this meeting was about the reenactment.
Walter corrected that notion. He brought up the hilt of the saber even with his eyes and hacked the blade down on his oak desk, hard, and their shoulders jumped, all four of them sitting right in front of the desk. Walter said:
'Do I have your attention?'
Loud, as they were looking at the new scar on the desk, next to the ones that had been varnished over. Walter lowered his voice but kept grit in it saying to Arlen, 'You shot Floyd telling me it was a personal thing that had to be done. You shot Junebug without telling me anything, and I want to know why.'
'Don't think I wanted to, Walter.'
'You had Fish do it?'
'He's my shooter.'
Walter said, 'Where is he?' looking beyond them, as if Jim Rein might be lurking back there.
Eugene said, 'He's minding my dog.'
Now Walter had to stare at Eugene. He heard himself say in his head, He's minding your dog? With a tone that required an explanation. He heard himself say, Minding your dog is more important than…? What he said was, 'I told all five of you to be here.'
Eugene said, 'My dog don't have somebody with her she chews up the house.'
Walter had never seen this dog and was curious, but kept to his purpose. He said to Arlen, 'Why Junebug?'
Arlen said, 'I had him put down 'cause he was getting drunk and talking too much.'
'But you let an eyewitness to your shooting Floyd walk down the street, do whatever he wants.'
'I set him straight. He knows what'll happen he's called and testifies.'
'And Charlie Hoke?'
'Charlie knows better.' Arlen cleared his throat and said, 'I don't see this has anything to do with business. It come out of our dealing with Floyd. So I don't see it has anything to do with you?'
'It's business,' Walter said, 'because it brings the police. I can say to myself there is nothing they can find that would tie me in with what you're doing, but I can never be absolutely sure, can I? What I think about is any one of you facing a convictiondoesn't matter what it is-could roll me over to get a reduced sentence. Or name all the names, all your friends and associates, to get immunity from prosecution.'
Arlen turned his head to Bob Hoon on one side of him and then to Eugene on the other. 'Walter sounds like he's running the business.'
Bob Hoon said, 'I thought he was,' and nudged his brother, Newton.
'As I see it,' Arlen said, 'we hired him.'
'At gunpoint,' Walter said.
The gun a photograph of Walter naked in color, Walter in a trailer tooting crack with a naked whore named Kikky. Some party till the camera flash went off. They showed him the photo and asked for two hundred and fifty thousand, saying they had taken over the drug business here and needed cash to buy product, buy sugar for the stills, buy the stuff you made the methamphetamines with.
'Listen to Bob Hoon,' Walter said. 'He's our in-house manufacturer of speed, the only one of you even close to knowing anything about business. You can't be the louts you are and exercise any good sense. How long did it take me to get your cash flow set up, show you the need to run a balance sheet, how to make a steady profit and hide it? What was the first thing I told you, Arlen?'
'I must've forgot.'
'I said get rid of your fifty-thousand-dollar automobile. You're a security stiff working for ten an hour.'
'We let you in,' Arlen said, 'and you felt right at home's what happened.'
'You know why?' Walter said. 'Because business is business. I said to myself, If this man is forcing me to become involved, then I'll study up on his trade and see how it works. Okay, then see how my expertise can make it work even better. The first thing I look at, what to do with the profits. Okay, why not launder it through my own subsidiary, Southern Living Village, Incorporated, and pay it to suppliers who only exist on paper.'
Eugene said, 'I never understood that part.'
'You don't have to,' Walter said. 'We have a
CPA who's one of the great chefs at cooking books. He has no idea where the money's coming from and doesn't want to know. You fellas are a bigger risk than he is. Now you're shooting people, bringing the police around. Arlen, what did I say to do with the nigger, this boy Robert? I said scare him, run him off.'
'What I was thinking,' Arlen said, 'have a deputy stop him out on the road and find that pitcher. Bring him in and accuse him of using it to con people out of money.'
'He doesn't ask for money.'
'We can say he did.'
'You want to testify?'
'Walter, you know it's some con he's working. The man on the bridge can't be both our grampas.'
'No, but it could be yours or mine. Didn't he know things about your family? Where your granddad worked? You
