The trees, p.13
The Trees, page 13
Hind nodded.
“I fell in love with my husband’s Southern accent. Can you believe that? A Mississippi accent.”
Hind laughed. “Well, Doctor Quip, I’m sure he fell in love with your exotic British accent.”
“My accent doesn’t seem to impress people down here.”
Hind considered this for a while. “My father hated that I ended up working for the Bureau.”
“Why was that?”
“He didn’t trust White people.”
“Yet he worked at the White House,” Helvetica said.
“Even he liked the irony.”
The computer behind Helvetica dinged. “It seems we have a hit, ladies and gentlemen.” She opened a screen and studied it. “The DNA of our second cadaver belongs to a Mr. Gerald Mister. Good name. It seems Mister Mister did a couple of years in Cook County Jail. Released quite a while ago. Died last year. Get this: His body was taken to Acme Cadaver Supply of Chicago. Same as our other body.”
“I guess that’s our next move.”
“Just what is going on, Special Agent Hind?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Quip. I don’t know.”
“I sent Davis to Chicago.”
58
It was extremely cold in Chicago, at least for Jim Davis. Jim was from New Orleans, and his body reminded him of this fact when the Chicago wind slapped him around. He thought he’d dressed properly, putting a wool overcoat over his wool suit coat, but he was wrong. Jim drove his rental car to the Brighton Park precinct station and walked into the overheated building.
He stepped up to the desk officer. “I’d like to speak with Detective Sergeant Daniel Moon.”
“And who the hell are you?” the fat cop asked.
“Special Detective Jim Davis of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation,” he said. He hated the way that sounded.
“Oh really?” the man said.
“I’m part of an interstate task force working with the FBI. Officer, may I have your name?”
The man retreated into his body and reached for the phone. “I’ll call Detective Moon. Have a seat over there.”
Jim sat in a chair against the wall next to a woman in handcuffs. He nodded a hello to her.
“I’m being booked for prostitution,” she said.
“Sorry to hear that,” Jim said. “Are they tough on that up here?”
“If you walk the streets,” she said. “They don’t care if you work the internet and go to hotels and such.”
“Is that right?”
“Oh yeah. Unless the guy at the hotel spots you and don’t like you. That’s what happened to me.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Jim peeled off his overcoat.
“Son of a bitch,” she said. “All because I would give him no cut.”
“Is that customary?” Jim asked.
The woman stared at Jim for a second and grew grim. “You know what, fuck you,” she said.
Jim nodded, let his head rest on the wall behind him.
“Who are you to judge me?” the woman said.
Without opening his eyes, Jim said, “Listen, sugar, I’m from New Orleans, Louisiana. Down there you can sell pussy to your heart’s content as long as you don’t roll somebody. So be cool.”
“Agent Davis,” a man said.
Jim opened his eyes to find a tall Asian man standing next to him. “I’m Moon. Come on back.”
Jim sat in the chair in front of Moon’s desk. Moon sat on the edge of his desk. “So, you’re interested in the Milam murder.”
“You observed the scene,” Jim more said than asked.
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Was there barbed wire?” Jim asked.
“There was,” Moon said.
Jim pulled a folded manila envelope from his overcoat pocket. “Was the scene similar to these?”
Moon studied the pictures and then stared back at Jim. “What the fuck is this? What’s going on?”
“Your scene look like these?”
Moon looked back at the pictures. “Pretty much exactly. Except there was only one body.”
“Was there any sign that another body had been there?” Jim asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you find anything strange?” Jim caught himself. “Besides the obvious. Anything that bothers you?”
“The criminalist did find some dark fibers that we can’t account for. There was no sign of a struggle, but the killer must have shed them. Lab said they were rotten.”
“Would you mind showing me the scene?”
Moon looked at Jim and then again at the photographs. “Yeah, I’ll drive you over there.”
“Thanks, Detective.”
“This is all pretty ugly, you know?” Moon said.
“Yes, I know.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I wish I knew.”
59
Ed Morgan was less clear on his assignment than was his partner. He was charged with learning as much about the four White victims as possible. The initial problem, as Ed saw it, was that the three men and one woman were so unremarkable that there was little to uncover about them. They were simple in the strictest sense, and not in a good way. It came as no surprise that in a town of such size that they would all know each other. In fact, Carolyn Bryant, Wheat Bryant, and the Milam they called Junior Junior were related by blood. The coroner, Fondle, was the odd piece. And so Ed decided to start with him. He went to the man’s house, knocked. Fancel Fondle called for him to enter. He found her filling a recliner in the living room.
“I apologize for disturbing you in this time of grief, ma’am, but I’m investigating the death of your husband,” Ed said.
“You ain’t no gawddamn deputy,” she said.
“No, ma’am, I’m not. I’m from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, down in Hattiesburg. I’ve been assigned to the case.”
“From Hattiesburg?” She appeared momentarily impressed by that fact.
“Yes, ma’am.” Ed decided to go with it. “Your husband being a government official, the Bureau has taken extra-special interest in the circumstances of his sad and untimely demise.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“I may be fat and White, but I ain’t stupid.”
“I apologize, Mrs. Fondle.”
“So, they sent you.”
“I’m a special detective, ma’am.”
“Well, sit yo ass down.”
The only other chair in the room was another recliner, not quite matching, a vinyl one, beside hers. It made an embarrassing noise as Ed sat on it. “Sorry,” he said.
“Everybody makes that sound when they sit there,” she said. “You know, you could stand to lose a little weight yo own self.”
“Yes, ma’am. I apologize if I ask some of the same questions you’ve already answered,” Ed said.
“Oh, that’s awright,” she said. She was younger than her husband, perhaps forty, but who could tell through the weight and rough life? She was slightly cockeyed. “You’re actually nice,” she said, “for a Negro. You sound educated. Are you educated?”
“Yes, ma’am. Tell me, do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt your husband?”
Fancel Fondle laughed softly. “Probably a whole mess of folks wanted him hurt, but not dead. He weren’t well liked.”
“I see.”
“He thought being coroner made him somethin’ special, and people around here didn’t take to that. He weren’t no real doctor, you know that?” She took an unwrapped mint from a bowl on the table by the arm of her chair and put it in her mouth. “But they called him doctor anyway.”
“Was he a reverend?” Ed asked.
“I suppose you could say that. I don’t know what makes some-buddy a preacher. He didn’t go to no school for it. He did preach. He weren’t no damn good at it. Always got the scriptures all wrong.”
“Maybe he was good at comforting people,” Ed said, because his mother always taught him to find something good and to say something nice.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Fancel Fondle said. “He was kinda an oaf. I think that’s the word. He always said the wrong thing.”
“Anybody hate him?”
“Nobody in particular, but plenty of ’em in general,” she said, shaking her head. “He sho hated enough folks.”
“Who did he hate?”
“He hated colored people,” she said. “Sorry.”
Ed shrugged.
“Lots of folks ’round here hate coloreds. He was just one of them.”
“It doesn’t sound like you liked your husband very much. Just why did you marry the man?”
“This is Money, Mississippi, Mister Detective. Leflore County, Mississippi. My husband weren’t much to look at or talk to, but he had him a steady job. I didn’t finish high school, I cain’t sing a lick, and I don’t look good with my clothes off. I was just tryin’ to have a life. Mine.”
He was sorry he’d asked the question, realized it was one he shouldn’t have asked. “Give me a couple of names of people he hated.”
“He hated Red Jetty,” she said. “Oh, Red wouldn’t have knowed it. Cad never hated him to his face. He was kinda scared of Red.”
“Why did he hate him?” Ed asked.
“Because of Red’s daddy.”
“Red’s daddy?”
Fancel Fondle studied Ed for a long moment. “Red Jetty’s daddy quit the Klan way back when Cad’s daddy, Philbert, was Grand Kleagle. Cad’s daddy just hated that, called him a traitor and all sorts of unsavory names. Anyway, a bunch of folks walked out of the Klan with him. That’s what really upset him, that he took a mess of folks with him. Some of that hate got passed.”
“Why did Jetty’s father walk out?” Ed asked.
“I don’t know. Something about a killin’.” She paused to regard Ed again. “I’m sorry to talk about this with you.”
“It’s okay, ma’am.”
“Something about a ni—Black man gettin’ kilt.” She loaded a couple more pieces of candy into her mouth. “This is why I’m fat.”
“Are you saying that your husband’s father killed a man?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.”
“Do you think a lot of people knew he killed a man?” Ed asked.
“It was one of them secrets what everybody knows.” She paused, pushed the candy bowl away from her. “Exceptin’ for my cleaning woman, Sadie, you the first colored person ever been in this here house.”
“Is that right?”
“You’re nice.”
“Was your husband a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Mrs. Fondle?”
She didn’t answer.
“Can’t hurt him now,” Ed said.
“Yes.” The woman looked ashamed.
“I’d better be going, ma’am. Thank you so much for your time.”
“Cad wasn’t real nice to anybody, colored or White,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t guess that makes too much of a difference to you.” She shook her head.
“No, ma’am.”
60
Damon Thruff read dossier after dossier, name after name. At first he was terribly careful to return a file precisely back into its place before selecting the next one. The first twenty or so were sequential, but now he was taking them willy-nilly from any drawer from any cabinet. And no longer was he bothering to return them, but rather many remained on the table, open to the air and light. What was most unsettling was that they all read so much alike, not something that one wouldn’t expect, but the reality of it was nonetheless stunning. They were like zebras, he thought—not one had stripes just like any other, but who could tell one zebra from another? He found it all depressing, not that lynching could be anything but. However, the crime, the practice, the religion of it, was becoming more pernicious as he realized that the similarity of their deaths had caused these men and women to be at once erased and coalesced like one piece, like one body. They were all number and no number at all, many and one, a symptom, a sign.
Mama Z came into the room and set down a plastic tray with black tea and little cookies.
Damon looked at the woman and then at the dim light outside the window. “Is it dusk already?” he asked.
“Dawn,” the old woman said.
“I’ve been at this all night?”
She hummed an affirmation.
“You did all of this?” Damon asked.
Mama Z poured the tea. “Yes.”
“It’s incredible,” he said.
“I have chronicled the work of the devil.”
“The devil?”
“I don’t believe in a god, Mr. Thruff. You can’t sit here in this room, touch all of these folders, read all of these pages, and believe in a god. I do, however, and I’m certain you do too, believe in the devil.”
“And hell?” Damon asked.
“And hell. This is hell, Mr. Thruff. Haven’t you been watching? Babies are smarter than us. It seems they’re always trying to kill themselves. That’s why we have to watch them every second, so they don’t swallow nickels or drink weed killer or eat Tylenol like candy. Then we get stupid and want to live.”
“What’s it like? Being over a hundred?”
“That’s a stupid question,” the old woman said.
“Sorry,” Damon said.
“I didn’t say it was a bad or unreasonable question.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Probably Gertrude,” Mama Z said.
Gertrude stood on the porch with Herberta Hind. Gertrude fumbled with her knock, at first too soft and then too hard. Hind made her nervous.
“This Mama Z,” Hind said, “she’s your grandmother?”
“Great-grandmother.”
“I never had a great-grandmother. Well, of course I did, but I never met her. It’s something, generations.”
The door opened and they stepped into the house. Mama Z was not nervous. “And who have you brought with you?” she asked.
“Mama Z, this is Agent Hind from the FBI.”
Hind shook the old woman’s hand. “Special Agent Herberta Hind, from the Washington, DC, office.”
“Oh my,” Mama Z said, feigning being impressed. “Herberta Hind,” she said the name to the air, as if looking for something. “I hope your parents didn’t give you the nickname Herbie.” She laughed.
Hind laughed politely. She showed no embarrassment but was markedly impressed by the quickness of the woman.
“Special Agent Hind is investigating those murders,” Gertrude said.
“Is she now? I didn’t know the FBI investigated murders,” Mama Z said. “I thought such things were matters for local authorities.”
“There might be some civil rights violations involved,” Hind said.
“Whose civil rights?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I ask because you have to have civil rights in order for the them to be violated.” Mama Z let that hang in the air. “I’m sorry. Forgive my manners. We can sit in here. Gertie, be a dear and make us some tea and bring some cookies. Make sure the cat doesn’t come in here and bother us.”
Gertrude nodded.
“I actually like cats,” Hind said.
“This one sheds like crazy,” Mama Z said. “Your suit would be a mess before you could say, ‘Mississippi goddamn.’” She didn’t quite sing the words.
“What is your last name, Mama Z?” Hind asked.
“Everybody just calls me Mama Z.”
“But for my notes.”
“Lynch. My name is Adelaide Lynch.” To Gertrude, “Go get that tea, baby.”
Gertrude left.
“Where does the Z come in?”
“I don’t quite remember,” the old woman said. “It’s easier to spell than Omega.” Mama Z looked Hind in the eye.
“How old are you?”
“One hundred and five.”
“You look great. Moving around like this. Do you live alone?”
“Yes.”
“That’s amazing. What’s your secret?”
“Venom.”
“What?” Hind asked.
“It’s what I call my nightly tea,” Mama Z said, then, conspiratorially, she added, “I mix it with bourbon.”
“I see.”
They sat silently for a moment.
“I’m told you know about almost everything that goes on in these parts,” Hind said. “I guess that comes with a century of life.”
“I know a little.”
“Do you know about the body of the Black man that turned up at three different murder scenes?”
“You are direct, aren’t you?”
“There’s really no other way to ask that,” Hind said.
“I heard about it. Confusing. Confounding? Would that be the correct word? It all sounds kind of magical, doesn’t it?” Mama Z opened the wooden box on the table and pulled out a cigar. “Would you like one?”
“No, thank you.” Hind stared at the cigar and the woman.
“I know it’s eccentric,” the old woman said. “I’ve had one a day for the last seventy-five years. They might just be the secret of my longevity. Along with the bourbon. Who knows? Have you ever smoked one?”
“No, I’ve never thought to try.”
“They’re frightfully expensive, but worth it, I think. These are Cuban. I probably shouldn’t tell you that.”
Hind waved off her concern.
“I wouldn’t want to put you in a compromising position,” Mama Z said.
“What can you tell me about the Bryants?”
“Well, you know Carolyn Bryant was the woman who accused Emmett Till of saying things to her.”
“Things she later recanted, I read,” Hind said.
“You can’t unfire a gun.”
Hind nodded.
“What that woman did to that child might not be forgivable even by one of them Christians or their god.”
“You’re not a Christian?” Hind said as a question.
