The trees, p.16
The Trees, page 16
He parked in the MBI garage and walked up the five flights of stairs to the office he shared with Jim and now also with Herberta Hind. Hind hastily put out her cigarette when he entered.
“Sorry,” she said, fanning the smoke.
“I don’t mind. Ever since I quit I kind of like the smell,” he said.
“I still smoke when I’m nervous,” Hind said. She pulled down a slat of the blinds for a better look out the window.
Ed sat behind his desk. “What’s got you so nervous?”
Hind looked at him for a couple of seconds and said, “Mama Z. Mama Z makes me nervous.”
“Oh yeah?”
“There’s something going on. I get that she doesn’t trust me because I’m FBI. Hell, I don’t trust FBI agents. But there’s something else. It was like she was trying to tell me something. Or was expecting me to know something.”
“She’s over a hundred years old,” Ed said.
“So?”
“She’s seen a lot. It might be hard for folks like us to read her. There are a lot of wrinkles there.”
Hind considered this.
“Think about it. She’s got sixty years on us. Her father was lynched. She lives in Money, Mississippi.”
“Yeah, okay.” Hind absently put another cigarette in her mouth, then pulled it out and looked at Ed.
“Go ahead. I won’t tell. In fact, let me have one.”
Hind tossed him the pack, then the lighter. Ed lit up.
“That old lady is up to something. I can feel it. Hell, I know it.”
“Whatever it is, she’s not running around killing these racist peckerwoods, and that’s our job, strange as it sounds. To catch the killer of killers.”
“That’s our job,” she repeated. “Have you heard from Jim?”
“Just a text. Said he’d call later.”
“Let’s call him now.”
Jim was sitting in O’Hare, at a bar, when his phone buzzed. He answered.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Ed said.
“Partner.”
“I’m here too,” Hind said.
“Are you smoking?” Jim asked.
Ed instinctively put the cigarette behind his back. “No. Why?”
“You guys sound like you’re smoking.”
Hind mouthed the word spooky.
“Have you two turned up anything?” Jim asked.
“Not much,” Ed said.
“No,” from Hind.
“Well aside from discovering that there is such a place as a cadaver factory, I have a name for us. One Chester Hobsinger was driving a truck that was hijacked a few months ago. The truck turned up, but the trailer full of dead folks did not.”
“Hobsinger?” Hind asked.
“Missing. I went to his house. It’s a nice place. I found a map of Mississippi there. Can you believe that? If you can, then you won’t believe this: the town of Money was circled with a marker.”
Ed whistled.
“Anything else?” Hind asked.
“The words blue gun were scribbled on the map. I think it’s blue gun. It could be glue gun for all I know. Anyway, I have a photocopy of his driver’s license.”
“Send me a picture of it and I’ll run it through the system,” Hind said. “Anything else?”
“That’s pretty much it.”
70
“It’s fucking Sunday and we’re driving on the fucking Sixty to fucking Corona. It’s not even in fucking Orange County. Hell, it’s not even in fucking LA County.”
“How many times you gonna say fucking?” Ho asked his partner. “It’s Riverside County.”
“Fucking Riverside County.”
“Captain says we need to see a scene, we go see a scene.”
“A fucking scene. Tell me, why are we cops? We’re competent guys. I’m good looking. We could be doing anything, making money. Hell, we would even make good criminals.”
“You wouldn’t last a day as a criminal,” Ho said.
“Why’s that?”
“You’re not smart enough.”
“Yeah, but you have to admit I’m good looking.”
Ho parked the car on packed red ground in front of a tavern. There were three Riverside County Sheriff’s rigs parked and two Corona city police cars. There was a saddled horse tied to a hitching post just outside the wooden deck.
“Where the hell are we?” Chi asked.
They showed their identification to the wall of a Corona cop at the door and walked into the bar. All the lights were turned on. There were a couple of boxes of doughnuts on a table just inside.
Chi grabbed a fritter. Ho looked at him. “What? I like fritters. You don’t see them every day. I’m hungry.”
“You won’t be for long,” a deputy sheriff said. “You the guys from Orange County?”
“Ho.”
“Chi.”
“Minh. Riverside Sheriff’s Department.” The woman shook their hands. “Can you spell grisly?”
“What you got?” Ho asked.
She led the way through the bar and into the office, where she stepped aside so they could see.
Chi took a bite of fritter. “Oh, this is some fucked-up shit.”
The body of a White man hung from a rafter, his face twisted, his tongue out, his crotch and thighs covered in blood.
“Somebody chopped off his nuts,” Minh said.
“It doesn’t sound so pretty when you say it,” Chi said.
“Might have been this guy.” Minh pulled back a sheet to reveal the body of a dead Asian man. He clutched something bloody in his fist.
“We’ve seen him before,” Ho said.
“What the hell?” Chi said.
“That’s why we’re here,” Ho said to Chi. “That’s the same guy, right?”
Chi nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”
“She said this would happen,” Ho said.
“What?” Chi asked.
“That FBI agent. She said we would see him again.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Chi walked around the body, studied the testicles in the man’s hand. “It’s the same fucking dude.”
“I need to make a call,” Ho said and stepped away.
“What is it?” Deputy Minh asked. “You know this man?”
“You might say that,” Chi said. “He was at a murder scene we processed two days ago.”
“And now somebody’s killed him,” she said.
“No, not exactly. He was dead then too.” He looked at her and then at the hanging man. “Dead Asian was at another murder, dead like I said, holding another dead man’s testicles in his hand. His body disappeared from the M. E.’s lab.”
“And he’s here?”
“Tell me about this guy.” He nodded toward the hanging man.
Minh looked at her notepad. “His name is Jesse Mendel. He’s part owner of this place and manages it. His partner is in the hospital.”
Chi questioned her with his eyes.
“Unrelated. He’s in there for some kind of surgery.” Minh went on. “The two bodies were discovered by Becky Wilmer. She tends bar here. They open at ten. She got here late, ten twenty. She’s sitting outside in my rig. Pretty shaken up.”
“I can imagine. Did she claim to know the Asian man?”
“Said she never saw him before.”
“Mendel married?” Chi asked.
“Divorced. I think there was something between this guy and the bartender. Just saying.”
“You think she had anything to do with this?”
Minh shook her head. “How’s that fritter?”
“Kind of losing interest in it.”
71
Ho to Hind: “What the hell is going on?”
72
Damon Thruff sat in a folding director’s chair on the wooden deck behind Mama Z’s house. Mama Z sat beside him in a bentwood rocker. Damon took a deep breath and stared off into the trees.
Mama Z snipped the ends of two cigars and handed one to Damon. Damon held it between his fingers and stared at it.
“You don’t have to smoke it,” the old woman said. “If you simply hold it I’ll feel like l’m not smoking alone.”
“Okay.” Damon fumbled with the cigar, put it between his lips, took it out, and looked at the label. “Are these Cubans?”
“They are.”
“Mama Z, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Why am I here?”
“Gertrude wanted you here. She trusts you. She says you’re smart.”
“All right, but that doesn’t answer the question.”
“She thinks you can chronicle this, have it make sense for everyone else.” She blew smoke away from the man.
“Chronicle what?”
“You’ll find out.” She pulled on her cigar and made it glow. “In good time, my young brother. We all figuring this out as we go.”
“I wish I had some idea what you’re talking about.”
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. “The records, that’s really something. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. Writing down all those names. It was too much.”
“No, it wasn’t. It isn’t. Too much is coming.”
“There must be six thousand dossiers in there. How did you do that? The amount of work.”
“Seven thousand and six,” Mama Z said. “And it wasn’t work. Every one of them has a name.”
“There are many unknown males. Those were hard to write down just like the names.” Damon closed his eyes tight for a second.
“Unknown Male is a name,” the old woman said. “In a way, it’s more of a name than any of the others. A little more than life was taken from them.”
“In all of those files I read, not one person had to pay. Not one.”
“One would like to think that payment is rendered on judgment day.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Even if I believed there was a god I wouldn’t believe that. Less than 1 percent of lynchers were ever convicted of a crime. Only a fraction of those ever served a sentence. Teddy Roosevelt claimed the main cause of lynching was Black men raping White women. You know what? That didn’t happen.”
“Why do you think White people are so afraid of that?”
“Who knows. Sexual inadequacy, maybe. An amplification of their own desire to rape, which they did.” Mama Z puffed out smoke. “But I think rape was just an excuse.”
“You think Whites are just afraid of Black men?”
“I think it’s sport.”
73
Sheriff Red Jetty sat in a booth in the back of the Dinah. He was tracing the yellow lines in the red Formica tabletop when he glanced up to see two of his deputies approaching. He dipped two cold fries into his puddle of ketchup and ate them. The men fell into the booth seat across from him.
“What now?” Jetty asked. “Your head cold, Brady?”
Braden Brady removed his hat.
“Everybody’s talkin’ about how that nigger detective been all over town talkin’ to folks,” Delroy Digby said. “Interviewin’ them like.”
“He’s doin’ his job,” Jetty said. “More than I can say about some folks.”
“What’s eatin’ you, Sheriff?” Braden asked.
“I don’t know.” The sheriff signaled to Dixie with his mug to bring more coffee. “I just feel something in the air. I don’t know what.”
“Like what?” Digby asked.
“I just said I don’t know.”
“I heard a rumor that that detective put the moves on Reverend Fondle’s old lady,” Digby said.
“Shut up, Digby,” Jetty said.
“My daddy told me that in the old days, a rumor like that would be enough to string a darkie up,” Brady said.
Dixie poured the sheriff another cup of coffee.
“Hey, Dixie,” Digby said.
“Deputy.” Dixie nodded. “You boys want anything?”
“Just coffee for me,” Digby said.
“Chili,” Braden said. “And a Diet Coke.”
“Comin’ up.”
When Dixie was away, Jetty said, “Your pappy didn’t have sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with the directions wrote on the heel.”
“Don’t you—”
“Hush up, Brady. You hate that man ’cause he beat yo ass with a razor strap.”
Brady said nothing.
“Still, are we just lettin’ them niggers take over?” Braden looked back at Dixie. “I heard tell that Dixie has got a drop in her.”
“We all got a drop in us, you stupid peckerwood. And take over what? Money, Mississippi? Who the fuck wants Money, Mississippi? Who the fuck wants Missi-fuckin’-ssippi?”
“Lordy, Sheriff, what’s wrong?”
“You haven’t heard?” Jetty asked.
“Heard what?” from Digby.
“In the dog-shit town of Hernando, Mississippi, maybe the only place anyone would want be in less Money, they found six dead White people and one dead old Black man.”
“I ain’t heard,” Brady said.
“Six dead White men with their fuckin’ balls cut off.”
“What the fuck?” Brady said.
“All strangled. In a fuckin’ locked room.”
“Did the nigger kill all of them?” Brady asked.
“Hell, man, I don’t know. And then I guess he killed himself. What I do know is that the world has become six gallons of shit in a one-gallon bucket. I don’t understand fuck, and I don’t like it.” Jetty looked at his deputies and shook his head like he was disappointed.
“What?” Brady asked.
Jetty stood, grabbed his hat. “See you back at the station.”
Gertrude was on the phone by the register. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and nodded a goodbye to the sheriff as he left.
He nodded back at her. “See you, Dixie.”
When he was out the door, she stole a glance back at the deputies and then spoke into the phone. “Something’s wrong. I just overheard Jetty talking. Something happened in Hernando. I don’t know what. But find out and get back to me and Mama Z.”
75
In Hattiesburg, Helvetica Quip, Herberta Hind, Ed Morgan, and Jim Davis sat at a table in the commissary of the MBI. All the other tables were empty. It was after six, and very few people ever dined there anyway. There were three or four barbecue joints just steps away in any direction. The four compared notes and drank coffee from a machine because they dared not eat the food there.
“You’ve been smoking,” Jim said to Ed.
Ed glanced at Hind. “Have not.”
Jim looked at the two of them. “Terrible liars,” he said, shaking his head. He looked at Helvetica.
“Terrible liars,” she repeated.
“What makes you think I’ve been smoking?” Ed asked.
Jim’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and looked at it. “The Captain,” he said. He stepped away from the table and answered.
“You smell like smoke,” Helvetica said. “Nobody smokes anymore, so it’s easy to smell it now. You should wear coveralls when you light up. Of course the odor will still get in your hair. I suppose you could wear a shower cap.” She looked at them in turn. “Is a cigarette worth a set of overalls and a shower cap?”
Hind and Ed thought about it, then they nodded together. “Yes, yes, pretty much,” they said.
“You could, of course, hang one of those cabbie Christmas tree deodorizers around your necks.”
“Might do that next time,” Hind said.
Jim came back to the table. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Ed asked.
“You too, Herberta. We’re going to Hernando. Seven dead men. Just like our other crime scene.”
“Where the hell is Hernando?” Hind asked.
“Just outside Memphis,” Jim said. “It’s a goddamn four-hour drive. Grab your go bags and let’s hit the road.”
“Am I invited?” Helvetica asked.
“Up to you,” Jim said. “Want to be out in the field for a while?”
“I might spot something,” she said.
“We can use all the help we can get,” Ed said. He let his shoulders sag. “I need to call my future ex-wife.”
“Want me to talk to her?” Jim asked.
“I’m sure that will make it better.”
76
The Bluegum restaurant didn’t look like much, but it was lit up in the night and bustling when Jim parked the state-issue sedan on the gravel parking lot. Ed’s chair was pushed back so that Quip was sitting knees to chest.
“Why are we stopping here?” Ed asked.
“Because it’s here,” Jim said. “Helvetica is being squished back there and we’re all hungry. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Hind said.
They fell out of the car, walked into the restaurant, and were seated by a young woman with a large Afro in a booth against the far wall. Recorded acoustic blues played from speakers in the corners of the ceiling. Blind Blake. Mississippi Fred Mcdowell. Robert Johnson. All of the clientele was Black; most were thirty or younger. There was a stage near the double doors to the kitchen, empty save for one microphone stand and an old amplifier.
“Quite the joint,” Hind said.
“I feel suddenly old,” Ed said.
“Handsome crowd.” Quip opened the menu. “Barbecue chicken and quinoa. You don’t see that every day. Jicama slaw, jambalaya, jalapeño poppers, and jerk chicken. That’s a lot of j’s.”
“No jive,” Jim said. “Sorry, couldn’t help it.”
The woman who sat them returned for their drink orders. Quip ordered a white wine and watched as the others asked for coffee.
“So I’m the lush,” Quip said when the waitress was gone. “You going to tell me you’re on duty, right?”
“No, I just like coffee,” Ed said. Ed saw Jim become interested in something across the room. “What is it?”
Jim nodded toward the door.
They all looked over. “Isn’t that Gertrude?” Hind said.
