Dark End of the Street

Abby shook her head and kind of laughed, burying her face into her hands. I was laughing into the rain, too. Laughing at how damned stupid I suddenly realized I was for thinking I could knock on the front door of a house owned by a man running for governor. I’d put the Ghost in reverse, my arm on the back of the passenger seat, when three men holding shotguns blocked our path. They wore yellow rain slickers, hoods obscuring their faces.

My heart beat a little faster.

A man knocked the shit out of my window, so hard I remembered how much it cost to repair it. I rolled it down and looked at him, water twisting off his wide-brimmed cowboy hat. He had a gray goatee and hard blue eyes. A plug of tobacco in his mouth.

“No onion rings?”

He just looked at me.

“Not a Star Wars fan?”

“What?” he asked, just plain out aggravated we were wasting his time.

“You know Obi-Wan? Luke? Chewie? The Force?”

“Out. Get out of the car.”

“Sorry, I was just curious. Saw the road.”

“You lookin’ for Mr. Russell?”

I glanced over at Abby and she was shaking and staring at her shoes. Her back was hunched as if it would hide her from the men.

Pissed me off. Pissed me off these motherfuckers would do that to her.

“Hey man, fuck you. I came here to see Jude Russell and if he’s here, great. I got something to tell him. If not, kiss my ass.”

I heard the clack of a shotgun and he reached for my door handle.

Without thinking, really acting more stupid than brave, I pulled out the Browning and leveled it at his head. Other shotguns clacked around me as he dropped the gun and took a few steps back. His face white and his mouth open.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I said. “I have a message for Mr. Russell about Elias Nix. It’s something I’m sure he’d want to know.”

The man nodded slowly.

“Put down the gun, sir,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”

I did and the men jumped to each door pulling me and Abby out into the rain. The thunder cracked way over a cotton field as they opened the mammoth doors, yawning like a whale, and pushed us inside.

Chapter 32

INSTEAD OF CUSSING out the men who stuck guns in our faces a few minutes ago or demanding to see Russell, I asked for a cup of coffee. I smiled pleasantly at these hard-core rednecks in flannel shirts and duck hunting boots and told them just three sugars would be fine. The man with the gray goatee, who had first pointed the shotgun into the car, then nodded to an old black woman. She left and reappeared a few minutes later with a steaming mug stamped with a Labrador’s face.

“Thanks,” I said. “Got a little wet during the whole Bataan Death March up to the lodge. Nice place though. Very Ralph Lauren meets Ted Nugent.”

I glanced around at the deer and boar heads on the wall. A full-sized black bear, various large-mouth basses on plaques, and even a bald eagle. Man had actually stuffed a bald eagle.

I sipped my coffee – not bad – at a hardwood table that sat about twenty. A black chandelier with thick unlit candles hung overhead, reminding me of paintings I’d seen of the Spanish Inquisition.

The man with the gray beard didn’t say much to me but had been nice to Abby. He’d immediately offered her a sweatshirt and a towel when we walked inside. She took the towel and was patting her hair dry when a momentary flash of lightning knocked off the lights for a second.

The man took a seat by me and finally introduced himself. Easy to remember. Royal Stewart. I shook his hand and sipped the hot coffee while the other men loaded up their guns among dozens in racks by the front door.

“Didn’t mean to scare you; we were all out hunting when we got a call,” Stewart said. Had a pleasant deep hum to his voice with a dose of Memphis in it. “Kind of my job to look out for the place and Jude. So, no misunderstanding. All right? Just finish that coffee and head on.”

“Didn’t come here for the coffee. But it is good. Do I detect a little nutmeg?”

“What is it?” Stewart asked, the pleasant hum with a mean quiver in it. “You want Mr. Russell to pay out for a little gossip? He doesn’t do things like that.”

I put down the coffee. “Tell him it’s about Sons of the South.”

Stewart laughed. He combed through his wet gray hair with his fingers and kept laughing. “That’s it? You want to tell us that Elias Nix is in with those nutcases? Don’t you read the paper? Hell, he brags about it.”

“Listen, let’s quit fucking around. All right? See that young lady over there? Her parents were murdered a few weeks ago. I found a hell of a lot of personal letters at her house that shows her dad was working for Sons of the South when he died, at Nix’s instruction. If I were a cop and I learned about that, I’d want to talk to him.”

Stewart scratched his goatee. “Let me see the letters.”

“Let me see Russell.”