John and I drove out on Opelika Highway, heading toward the Lee County line, where I turned onto a backcountry road that dipped up over a hill and followed a loose downward curve into a little private valley. The narrow road softly turned again, causing the car to glide and flow on its own, and we could see the massive brick ranch house set among long, wide wooden fences corralling Black Angus and a few quarter horses that pricked their ears as the car neared.
At the iron gate, I slowed, and a man carrying a hunting rifle tapped on the driver’s-side glass. I rolled down the window and told him who we were, and the man looked into the front seat and checked the back. He asked us to step out of the car and we did.
He patted both of us down, taking the.45 off John and checking the trunk.
Finally, he unlatched the gates and swung them wide to a long gravel road.
The house glowed bright, as perfect as a doll’s house, and we weren’t halfway up the concrete walk, landscaped neatly with a row of crepe myrtles and sweet-smelling gardenias, when Hoyt Shepherd shuffled outside.
He was shoeless in black trousers and a big Cuban-style shirt and he smiled and waved and walked toward John, offering him a big, meaty hand, a soft smile on his lips.
John looked to me and then back to Hoyt. Not knowing what else to do, he just shook his hand. But I could see it pained him, and he tore away as soon as making contact and Hoyt invited us inside.
Hoyt didn’t shake my hand. Only looked to me and grunted.
He asked us if we wanted a cocktail and we both declined, and he walked us through the house, past a big old stone fireplace with a big deer head over it holding an antique rifle and through all the modern, boxy furniture and out back to a kidney-shaped pool. A little record player on a drink cart played a rhumba.
Jimmie Matthews sat at a table under an umbrella, only a soft blue glow coming from the pool, and the light made Matthews’s face look strange and pale as he nodded to us and also offered his hand to both of us.
We sat in a loose grouping of lounge chairs, and Hoyt relit a dying cigar while I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket. Ripples of light from the water scattered across them.
“Ain’t you the fella from the fillin’ station?” Hoyt asked.
“That’s me.”
“I know your wife’s daddy. He sure is a pistol.”
Matthews was dressed in a blue pin-striped suit, white shirt, and no tie. He waited, his legs crossed and posture erect.
Hoyt got the stogie going and pulled an ashtray close. He smiled and grunted. That man really liked to grunt.
“Now, John,” Hoyt said. “I want you to know right off that I didn’t have a thing to do with what happened. I didn’t want another day to pass ’fore I said that to you.”
John nodded. The filter of the pool made whirring sounds in the silence. Matthews just looked into the face of John Patterson, meeting his eyes, and nodded along with Hoyt’s words.
Hoyt had grown fatter since I’d seen him last, and his nose had started to swell in that big Irish way. He lifted up a Scotch filled with melting ice and took a sip and alternated it with the cigar. He’d always reminded me of W. C. Fields with a Southern accent.
“Can’t I please get y’all somethin’? I know it’s been a heck of a day. But I’ve heard what all the newsmen have been saying about me and all those stories about me and Jimmie and the Bug and the nightclubs and all that ancient history. I never suspected you’d pay attention to it.”
John looked up at him, his jaw tight. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well,” Hoyt said, and grinned and then closed his mouth. His face flushed red. “Well, I mean, you know how things were between me and your daddy.” Hoyt turned to me. “Hey, you. You mind goin’ somewhere else while we talk?”
“I do,” I said.
“He stays,” John said.
Hoyt just nodded. He pulled a wet napkin from under his drink and ran it over his face and fattened neck.
“I know you did everything in your power to make sure that my father lost the election and the runoff,” John said. “I know you bought off every vote you could in Russell County and sent your men all across Alabama to do the same. How many tens of thousands of dirty money did you put out there?”
“And we both know that Monday he was set to tell the grand jury in Birmingham about every dirty penny,” I said. “He had folks who could prove it.”
“Boy, why don’t you go and scrape the grease from your fingernails?”
I smiled at Hoyt. “And to think I got all dressed up to impress you.”
Hoyt grunted. He smiled at me. It was like watching a bulldog pant.
The back of the ranch house was mostly windows, and, inside, Hoyt’s wife, Josephine, glided through the family room in a pink satin robe with feathered ruffles. She was blond and built like a brick house, a damn-near twin for Betty Grable, and when she appeared outside and came toward us it was brisk and upright on three-inch high heels that I soon noticed were made from a cheetah print.
A little dog yapped after her, a poodle trimmed in the traditional way and dyed a bright pink. (I knew she also liked to dye the dog blue on occasion.) “Can I offer you men a cocktail? We have some fresh cocktail shrimp.”
John didn’t even acknowledge her, still studying his eyes on Hoyt Shepherd and Matthews, and they exchanged glances.
“I don’t think these boys are stayin’, Josie.”
I thanked Hoyt’s wife and she smiled and winked politely and moved away, her shapely backside switching and swaying like a pendulum.
“You believe that woman married me for my looks?” Hoyt asked, watching her walk, and laughed till he coughed. He swigged down some more Scotch.
“Are we finished?” John asked.
“Just listen,” Hoyt said and reached out and touched John’s hand. “I may be a real sonofabitch and sometimes what many people may call a fool. And maybe I didn’t want your daddy becoming attorney general. I mean, can you blame me?”
“Yes,” John said.
I remained quiet and finished out a cigarette and crushed it under the heel of my shoe. I leaned forward, listening, watching the pool, watching Hoyt and silent Jimmie.
Jimmie looked to me and nodded with recognition.
“I’m not a stupid man,” Hoyt Shepherd said. “I know that the killing of your father wouldn’t do a thing but topple down my world. The man who did this just stopped business in Phenix City cold. What do we have now? No GIs in bars. Girls off the streets. National Guardsmen on every corner. That’s not something I ever wanted to see in my town.”
John watched him. Hoyt offered his hand, again.
Not caught off guard, he just looked at it. Out in the valley, the cattle grew nervous and groaned and called out, sounding almost like screams, and I could hear their heavy feet shuffling and brushing against each other, frustrated under the moon.
I started a new cigarette.
“Last night, that nutcase Si Garrett and his trained monkey, Arch Ferrell, hauled me into the courthouse at three o’clock in the morning,” Hoyt said. “Ferrell was as drunk as a skunk, and Garrett talked so fast I couldn’t even understand most of what he said. But most of what he said, Jimmie, correct me if I’m wrong on this-”
Jimmie nodded.
“They like both of us for this,” he said. “Garrett called us the crime lords of the den of iniquity. And I’ll be goddamned if I didn’t have to look up what that meant in the dictionary when I got home. And, men, it wasn’t good.”
“What do you want us to do about it?” John said, standing.
I joined him.
“Just keep an open mind,” Hoyt said. “I hear you’re aiming for your dad’s spot.”
John nodded. “I am.”
“I understand,” he said. “I wish you luck.”
