“Reuben, you stay away from Fannie Belle and Johnnie Benefield. You hear me? They will lead you down a path of blood and you’re too smart for that. Only reason Johnnie hasn’t wised up is because his mind is run by pussy, and that redheaded demon has the best pussy in the South.”
Reuben nodded and shifted in his chair.
“They’ve been reckless,” Hoyt said, smiling. “I don’t know what they got to do with killin’ Pat. But they sure as shit know who robbed me. There’s some money in it if you can find out about Benefield. That old safe I had was solid. A sweet Wells Fargo number that cost me nearly a thousand dollars. Let’s just say it took some real talent to bust her open.”
Reuben nodded.
“I’m not asking for much. I just want to know if Benefield was in on the job. I can take it from there.”
Reuben nodded again.
Hoyt watched him, studying his face, and then looked over at Jimmie.
Jimmie shrugged and finally tasted the whiskey, downing it without a wince. Hoyt slipped the beaten straw hat on his head and over his eyes and walked to the open glass doors. His voice sounded gruff and booming in the empty bar.
The rain had slowed to a patter, and Reuben could see the shape of his boy against the growing morning light.
“One more thing,” Hoyt said, turning. “The Guard put up your old buddy, Lamar Murphy, for sheriff.”
“He take it?”
“Don’t know. If he did, I’d watch my step.”
Reuben shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve known Lamar since we were ’bout Billy’s age.”
Hoyt looked up and then around the empty room. “You ever seen that cartoon with the sheepdog and wolf where both of them are friends until they punch the morning clock?”
Reuben shook his head.
“See, when that clock is punched and they are at work, they try like hell to kill each other. But then when the sun goes down and they punch out, they are as gooda friends as you ever saw.”
“Which one am I?”
“If you don’t know, then you got more troubles than I thought,” he said. “You let me know what you know about Benefield, you hear?”
Hoyt left with a tip of his hat. Reuben and his boy sat there in silence until dawn cleared and a soft, gray summer morning arrived at the last two chairs in Club Lasso. They could hear nothing but the soft patter of rain against Fourteenth Street and the running of rainwater down the gutters and along the soft slope of the street to the Chattahoochee.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO?” JOHNNIE BENEFIELD asked, tucking in his cowboy shirt and slipping into his boots.
“Does it matter?” she said.
Fannie Belle sat in the salon of her empty whorehouse, chain-smoking cigarettes, a pearl-handled.32 on the plush velvet seat next to her. The furniture and lamps in the other room reminded Johnnie of something from the last century.
“They just better not lay a finger on my Hudson.”
“You better worry about more than your car.”
“Once I get Bert, we’re blowin’ this town.”
“Cuba?”
“Does it matter?”
Fannie blew out some smoke and crossed her legs. Johnnie watched her, and walked back upstairs for his clothes and a suitcase he’d packed. She was at the landing when he returned, and she watched him as he slowed his walk and hit the first floor with his boots.
She kissed him hard on the mouth. And he pulled away.
“I got to get Bert.”
“He’s not going with you.”
“The hell you say.”
“He’s got a platoon of soldiers up and around his house. They believe he’s getting ready to split town, and they don’t buy his religious act.”
“Do you?”
Fannie just looked at him, cocking her head slightly to the side, and lit another long cigarette. She leaned her head back, pulling in the smoke, and drew a sweep of her red hair to one side.
“I want something from you before you leave,” she said.
He turned at the front door, suitcase in hand. She whispered into his ear, and her breath was warm and sweet.
“You got to be kidding,” Johnnie said. “You mention me and the Hoyt Shepherd job again and you gonna get me killed. Hoyt Shepherd will drop me in that ole river loaded down with logging chains just as easy as takin’ a mornin’ piss.”
And, with that, he opened the front door and walked out on the old rotted porch and out to the Hornet hid back by some privet bush. He tucked the suitcase into the trunk and turned to the bush, where he started to take a leak.
He heard her walking behind him and he started to whistle.
“Listen, they may not even find you, Fannie,” Johnnie said. “Hell, the Hill Top is two miles from the highway. You’re the only goddang thing out here.”
“Not far enough.”
He zipped up and turned to her, jingling the keys in his hand. The old, rotten Victorian behind Fannie looking to him like a haunted house from a picture show.
“Why do you say that?”
She didn’t say anything, only turned to the north and pointed to the dust buckling and rising from the dirt road. From the looks of things, a mess of cars was headed that way.
“Who else is in the house?”
“Few girls. Them twins. Some more from town that got scared.”
“Get back inside.”
“Why?”
“I said get the fuck back inside,” he said, popping his trunk again and pulling out a Winchester Model 12. “Get your clothes off and put on a robe. Something sexy. Tell the girls to stay in their rooms. I said now.”
Johnnie clenched his jaw, stocking extra shells in his pant pocket and down into the shaft of his pointed boots. He eyed a place up in the turret on the second floor, and looked to see the first flashes of the windshields of the approaching cars.
EVERY CLERK, PROSECUTOR, DEPUTY, AND JUDGE HAD BEEN cleared from the Russell County Courthouse. Only the Guard remained, with Bernard Sykes setting up command in Arch Ferrell’s old office and Sykes’s team from the state attorney’s office already tearing through Ferrell’s personal files and papers. General Hanna’s stepson, Pete – an eighteen-year-old kid working as the general’s personal driver – had taken us through the courthouse and out back to the brick sheriff’s office, where Hanna ushered me down into a basement storage room filled with dozens of cardboard boxes. “These look familiar?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Why don’t you call your buddy Britton and John Patterson down here? It looks like a mess of uncounted votes going back to 1945.”
“They kept them?” I asked.
“Sheriff Matthews may be everything else, but he’ll never be accused of being a genius.”
Thirty minutes later, we found more. In jail cells, we found car batteries hooked to head braces, horse whips, logging chains, and several fat leather belts fitted with silver dollars. Along the worn leather were traces of blood. Some of the cells had been fitted with iron shackles in the concrete, like something out of a medieval
