Reach the Shining River (24 page)

40
.

Mrs. Mac opened the door. She wasn’t smiling.

“Is he in?” Emmett said.

“Where else would he be?”

He stepped into the house. The hallway was overheated. Smells of sweat and antiseptic and something baking.

“How’s the patient?”

She didn’t answer. Brushing flour from her apron front, she walked into the kitchen. He followed.

“Are you not going to ask after your Ma?” she said.

“She’s here?”

“Not at the minute. But she’s still staying with us, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Emmett straightened his tie. More than once, when he was a kid, Mrs. Mac had smacked him on the butt with a wooden spoon when he needed it.

“Does she need any cash?”

She flapped her hands. “Sweet Jesus, you’re worse than your man,” she said, nodding towards Mickey’s bedroom. “Look at the state of you. I’m glad she’s
not
here. Offering money and looking like you slept in the gutter.”

“It’s been a rough week.

“Has it? Well, your Ma wouldn’t know that, would she?”

“It’s this case we’re on, Mrs. Mac.”

But she had her back to him.

“Go on,” she said, rattling dishes in the sink. “Go in to him. The pair of you deserve each other.”

Mickey lay on his bed, his broken leg resting on a pile of pillows and a copy of the
Star
spread across his lap. His face was lumpy and pale. A gray bandage covered his left eye.

“Someone looks like shit,” Mickey said. “What have
you
been doing?”

“Working.”

“Getting closer?”

“Too close.”

Mrs. Mac banged pots and slammed drawers.

“On her high horse again,” Mickey said. “You say something?”

“The Ma.”

“Don’t talk to me. They tell you they want you around and then all they do is complain. Like I’m good for anything except lying here. Can’t even get her to bring me a drink.”

“How are you?”

“How am I? How’s the
case
?”

“They carry you in here on a stretcher?”

Mickey nodded at a pair of crutches leaning against the wall. “I can just about get around. Emmo, what’s the matter? Talk to me.”

Emmett took the gun from his holster and laid it on the bed.

“Shit,” Mickey said, shoving it under the blanket. “Ma sees that, she’ll murder me.”

“When you told me what was in the locker, you didn’t mention a piece.”

“Didn’t stop you from taking it, I notice.”

“Big mistake.”

Mickey folded the newspaper and dropped it on the floor. He was unshaven and smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in weeks, but the sheets were fresh and his good eye was clear and sober. “How so?”

“I don’t like how it makes me feel.”

“God made man, Sam Colt made him equal.”

“Equally evil.”

“Goddamn it, Emmo, are you going to talk like a priest or let me know what the hell is going on?”

He closed the bedroom door. “It’s all over,” he said.

“You found out.”

“I found out.”

“Timmons?”

Emmett shook his head. “Bigger than that.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“The cartridge case,” Emmett said. “It was a plant.”

“What?”

“We were set up.”

“By who?”

Since pistol-whipping little Henry Conway, Emmett had been driving up and down the river road, watching the water flow and piecing together the narrative. It was easy enough to figure once he knew that Les Newton had been a step ahead of him.

He told Mickey the story. All the Perkins bullshit about the Pendergast machine had been a smokescreen. The brothers were dancing with the devil. And why not? With the judiciary, the state superintendent of insurance, and the governor in his pocket, Tom Pendergast held the key to the nine million. How much would it take to get him to free it up? Five percent? Even if Pendergast’s kickback was half a mill, it would be worth it. The insurance companies would get their windfall, and the brothers would structure the deal and build in fees that would make them and their cronies even richer than they already were.

Timmons was Pendergast’s front man, the money mover and the arranger. When the amount of the bribe was agreed, Timmons dipped into his stable of bagmen and told Bibb to send Rube Gilmore to collect. All went smoothly. So far so good.

But something went wrong. Irish Tom Pendergast was no gentleman. The way Emmett figured it, he got greedy. Knowing the size of the prize and seeing how easily the moneybag was filled, he held out for more. The Perkins boys stayed tight-lipped and played along, and when Timmons sent Eddie Sloan to collect the extra juice, the boys killed him, probably using hired muscle from Chicago.

The murder was a message. But Lloyd and his boys were Kansas City businessmen. They knew how to turn trouble into opportunity. Why not pin it on the machine? They got Roddy Hudson on the team, planted the shell, and roped in an ambitious and easily fooled young prosecutor with no ties to the city. With the Feds baying for Pendergast’s blood, it must have seemed like a perfect plan.

Mickey’s face was a whiter shade of pale. “Jesus. Emmo.”

“My own family, Mick. My wife was screwing God knows who while her old man was screwing me. And just about everyone else in the state of Missouri.”

“Go to the Feds.”

“Yeah? And tell them what?”

“What you’ve told me. It makes sense now. Motive and method. Round up Virgil and Conway and get them to testify.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy.”

“You think it’s better to wait until someone else is killed? Who the fuck you think would be next on their list?”

“I’ve had enough, Mick.”

He handed Emmett the gun. “At least protect yourself.”

“I don’t want it.” He stood up, took the canister of film from his jacket pocket, and threw it on the bed. “And I don’t want this either.”

“Where are you going?”

“For a walk.”

“You mean you’re running.”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

Mickey lifted the canister. “You don’t want to know?”

“I know too much already.”

“This isn’t you, Emmo.”

“Me? What is me?”

“Do the right thing.”

“That’s what’s fucked me over. Every time.”

He opened the bedroom door.

“Do the right thing!” Mickey shouted as he left.

He let himself out without saying good-bye to Mrs. Mac.

*

He drove home. Middle of the afternoon, middle of the week. Fay’s car was in the driveway. He found her in their bedroom, hunched over her dresser, rooting through what remained of her clothes. An open suitcase lay on the bed.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“I could ask the same of you.”

They faced each other across the bed like gunslingers. Her hair was done up like Joan Crawford’s and she wore a new ruffled blouse. But her cheeks were streaked with tears.

“You look awful,” she said. “Daddy told me you’re drinking again.”

“My chosen vice.”

She threw a few pieces of clothing into the suitcase.

“I’m only here to get a couple of things. Then I’m going straight home.”

“Home?”

“Daddy’s.”

“How’s he doing, anyhow?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He seems a little wound up lately.”

She lifted a handkerchief from the dressertop and blew her nose. Her hands were shaking. “What did you do to him, Emmett? Why does he hate you so?”

She didn’t know. Of course not. But who did? Lloyd had set the whole thing up with perfect deniability.

“Why does anyone hate me?” he said.

“He’s going to sell the house. This house. It’s in his name.”

“Good riddance. To the house, to you, and to your fucking old man.”

She was breathing heavily and her lipstick was smeared. He was reminded of the night she had disappeared during the country club party and emerged from the basement at the last moment, flushed and disheveled and triumphant. Though now she just looked abandoned.

Another mystery unraveled into narrative.

“He’s left you,” he said, “hasn’t he?”

“What are you talking about?”

Her narrowed eyes and tight chin told him he’d hit on the truth.

“The guy you’ve been fucking. He’s deserted you.”

“No wonder I hate you. You’ve become so vulgar.”

“But I’m right.”

She closed the top of the suitcase. “Daddy had you pegged all along. Careful about how you drink and speak, but Irish to the core.”

He watched her car float down the street. The brake lights winked as she turned the corner and disappeared behind a grove of trees.

He went downstairs and took a bottle of whiskey from the lower cupboard and emptied it in the kitchen sink. He didn’t want that where he could reach it. Not tonight.

*

In the morning, he showered and shaved and dressed in clean clothes. He ate a good breakfast. Checked his briefcase for all he needed. Drove to the Piggly Wiggly and gassed up the car. Then headed for the Federal offices on Summit Street. He would trust Mickey. Virtue was its own reward.

He asked to speak to the agent in charge. The young woman at the reception desk wrote his name on a yellow pad. “What is the purpose of your visit, Mr. Whelan?”

“It’s a private matter.”

She tapped the pad with her pen. “I have to write something here.”

“I’m from the Jackson County prosecutor’s office. I’m here on a jurisdictional issue.”

The agent appeared immediately and led him to a dusty office. He was a tall man in a blue suit with jug ears and oiled hair. He did not introduce himself.

He seated Emmett and left the room. It sounded as if he locked the door, but Emmett couldn’t bring himself to check. After a long time he returned with another agent in an identical suit. The new man’s jacket swung open as he entered, and Emmett saw the gun in its shoulder holster and a pair of handcuffs dangling from his belt. This man stood behind him while the agent in charge moved behind the desk and set a brown folder on its empty surface.

When neither of the agents spoke, Emmett said, “I’m here about the murder of Eddie Sloan.”

“We know that.”

“You know the case?”

The agent in charge opened the folder and fanned several pages across the desktop. Above his ear was a slash of skin where hair didn’t grow. He studied the pages. Emmett turned in his seat. The man behind him was staring at his partner, hands folded in front of him.

“I’ve been working on it,” Emmett said, “since Sloan’s death, six, seven weeks ago.”

“So this is a county case?”

“Not exactly.”

“You are…” – he glanced at the paperwork – “assistant prosecutor. Jackson County.”

As the agent spoke, Emmett noticed that the room had no windows and nothing hanging on the walls. The desk was bolted to the floor and he was seated in the only chair.

“Strictly speaking,” Emmett said, “it is not county. I
had
been working with Roddy Hudson, who heads the state criminal division out of Jefferson City.”

“He sent you down here?”

“No.”

“Not exactly, huh?”

He tried to stand up, but the agent behind him pushed him down by the shoulders. “Hey,” Emmett said.

“Take it easy, sport.”

“What’s going on here?”

“You tell me.”

“That file, who gave it to you?” The agent closed the folder without answering. “What my investigation has led to,” Emmett continued hoarsely, “is that Roddy... Roddy Hudson is the man you’re looking for.”

“Hudson? Looking for Hudson?”

“He had an involvement. Along with Lloyd Perkins.”

“Your father-in-law?”

“And Lloyd’s brother Robert. And a guy named Les Newton. I’ve put together the whole case.” He lifted his briefcase.
I’ve
got
the
evidence
, he wanted to say.
The
men
who
killed
Sloan
.
Feud
with
the
Pendergast
machine
,
see
?
I
can
lay
it
all
out
for
you
guys
.