Paper son, p.14
Paper Son, page 14
“Skinny? Smiley?”
“Anna Rae did tell us she knew Jefferson.”
“And went to games with him. Not to his apartment. In the company of Tolson Reeves.”
“It may not be either of them.”
“Uh-huh. And grits may not be groceries. Let’s go ask her.”
We were stymied on that plan, however. When we returned to the square and entered Café Café, we found Anna Rae Ferguson gone.
I called her cell phone, got voice mail, left a message in a neutral voice saying I had another question and could she give me a call back, and hung up without a lot of hope. I looked around.
“If Anna Rae’s shift is over, it must be past two,” I said.
“Yup.”
“And we haven’t had lunch yet, have we?”
“Nope.”
“Good. I have an idea. What can I get you?”
He checked the blackboard. Panini, wraps, salads: the universal food language of college coffee houses.
“Ham-and-cheese panini.”
I should have known; it was the thickest, gooiest, unhealthiest thing on the menu.
No customers were at the counter, but Darlaine, who’d taken over for Anna Rae earlier, was behind it. “Hi!” she said when I walked up. “Y’all looking for Anna Rae? Her shift’s done, she left already.”
“That’s okay, we’ll catch up with her later. But we’re hungry, so we thought we’d have lunch. Besides, I want to ask you something, too.”
“Me?”
I gave her our lunch orders. She passed them through a cutout to the fellow at the grill, then turned back.
“You don’t play Ultimate Frisbee, too, do you?” I asked.
Darlaine grinned. “Tried it once. Got hit square in the mouth. Gave that game up so fast! Don’t know what Anna Rae sees in it.”
“I’ve been hit in the mouth myself. Pretty unpleasant.” I didn’t mention that the occasional scuffles I got into in the course of business had nothing to do with Frisbees. “Anyway, that’s not really what I wanted to ask you about.” I’d led with that to determine if Anna Rae had said anything to Darlaine about the real subject of our conversation. It sounded like she hadn’t, so I went on. “It turns out I have a distant cousin here in Oxford, but I don’t know where to find him. I bet everybody comes into this place sooner or later, right? Do you know him?” I took out my phone and showed her Jefferson’s photo.
She wrinkled her forehead. “I can’t really be sure, because—” She stopped herself and threw me a quick, awkward glance. She’d so obviously been about to say, “y’all look alike,” that I almost finished the sentence for her, but instead I just cocked my head and looked hopeful. Clearly relieved, she said, “Yeah. I think I did see him, a couple of times. Matter of fact, last time was a few weeks ago, when Anna Rae’s brother was here.”
“Anna Rae? Wait, my cousin knows Anna Rae’s brother? Or you just mean they were here at the same time?”
“No, they came in together. Not the first time, either. I mean, if he’s the guy I’m thinking of.” She tapped the photo.
“Wow,” I said. “What are the chances? Anna Rae’s brother.”
Darlaine nodded. “Johnny. Anna Rae misses her big old dog, so Johnny brings it up here, time to time. Anna Rae’s people don’t live but an hour from here, down in the Delta, but she doesn’t go home much.”
No, only during truces. “And my cousin came here with Johnny and the dog?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She pointed to the sidewalk tables. “They sat out there. Because of the dog. Can’t bring it in here, law says so. Also—” She looked around; I followed her eyes and located the manager straightening the magazine rack. He couldn’t have heard us over Tom Petty from the speakers, but Darlaine lowered her voice anyway. “Also, because they were gambling.”
I dropped my voice, too. “Playing cards or something?”
Darlaine shook her head. “Online. DraftKings or FanDuel one. On your cousin’s laptop. They did it in here before, but Freddie said they couldn’t. Probably if he knew they were doing it outside he’d make them stop, too. Freddie doesn’t hold with gambling.”
From behind Darlaine, a bell clinked. She turned, picked up Bill’s panini and my salad, and put them on a tray. I got coffee and ginger tea to go with them. “You don’t have any idea where I could find my cousin, do you?” I asked.
“No, sorry. But I bet Anna Rae does. You’ll be talking to her again, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the tray. “We sure will.”
24
“So Jefferson Tam sits out in the sunshine and gambles online with Johnny Ferguson.” I’d recounted Darlaine’s story to Bill as we ate. “Both of them on one laptop. Sure sounds like a buddy movie to me.”
“Doesn’t prove they’re in the drug business together.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line? You say it looks like my cousin’s a drug dealer and I jump to his defense.”
“Sorry. It looks like your cousin’s a drug dealer.”
“You may be right,” I said glumly. “My mother isn’t going to like this.”
We finished our lunch in silence.
“Any other business we have here in Oxford?” Bill asked.
“Not that I can think of. I’m a little less charmed by the place than I was before.”
“In that case, let’s leave.”
We considered holding an auction for our parking place—it even still had eighteen minutes on the meter—but in the end we just drove off, leaving it to whoever had the best parking karma.
We motored down the highway, listening to hill-country blues on the radio. Bill explained the difference between that and the Delta blues Big Bone Stafford had played last night—fewer chord changes, more percussion, a kind of hypnotic effect—but though I enjoyed it, I couldn’t have distinguished between them.
At one point, a highway patrol car came up behind us. Bill was driving five miles under the speed limit. Unusual for him, but this is Mississippi. The cops pulled out and passed us soon enough.
We were almost back in Clarksdale, having rolled through the once obviously lovely, now picturesque in a ruin-porn kind of way, town of Marks, when another law enforcement vehicle slid into our rearview mirror. This time it was a Coahoma County sheriff’s cruiser, light bar flashing.
Bill pulled over beside a plowed and empty field. The cruiser stopped behind us and, surprise, Bert Lucknell and Tom Thomson climbed out.
Bill lowered his window. Lucknell sauntered over, bent down, and said, “Afternoon, folks. Find him?”
I leaned over. “Find who?”
“Jefferson Tam, ma’am.” Lucknell spoke with the patient air of a smart man humoring a woman who thought, mistakenly, that she was also smart.
“No, sir,” I said, paralleling his ma’am. “But I can’t deny we’d be happy if we had.”
“I imagine you would. If I found him, I’d be happy, too. I got to admit that what doesn’t make me happy, ma’am, is civilians interfering with a law enforcement investigation.”
“I completely understand, sir. And I assure you, we won’t do that.”
“Well, I’m pleased to hear it. Can I ask where y’all are coming from?” With each question, Lucknell looked at Bill, but Bill said nothing, leaving it to me.
“Driving around,” I said. “To see some of your great state.”
“Anyplace in particular catch your fancy?”
“No.”
“Y’all wouldn’t have been over in Oxford, chasing down that cousin of yours?”
“We did go to Oxford. I’d been told it was beautiful. And we stopped by Jefferson’s apartment. I wanted to get a sense of this cousin I’ve never met.”
“A sense. Did you get much of a sense?”
“Yes, sir. He plays Xbox and he really should take out the trash.”
Lucknell nodded. With no change in his tone, he said, “I’d be deeply obliged if from now on y’all would plan to stay as far away from this investigation as a person could think how to do. In fact, if y’all headed back to New York City tonight, that might be best. Go ahead and say goodbye to Captain Pete, and I’ll send over a police escort for the trip to the airport, how about that? In case there’s traffic, or any other kind of a difficulty.”
“That’s kind of you, sir. But Pete asked us to stay on for a while. My mother really wants the family to get to know each other. Sir.”
Lucknell’s steady gaze didn’t waver. “Ma’am,” he said, “please don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining. Call it ‘getting to know the family,’ or whatever else, but y’all were rooting around in my case. I do want to say that right now the only thing stopping me from running y’all in is your other cousin, the one who wants to be governor. I don’t care for him, myself, and crossing him wouldn’t lose me any sleep. But Sheriff Bradley, he wants to keep people happy, meaning Democrat Party people, because the sheriff’s got an election of his own coming up this fall. So it’s been suggested I make allowances for the fact that maybe y’all don’t know how we do things around here.”
I thought the wisest response to this was silence. Bert Lucknell took a long pause, too, and then said, “But I got an itchy feeling I might be running out of allowances. Y’all have a nice day.” He turned, lumbered back to the cruiser, and waited for Silent Tom Thomson to climb in.
Once Lucknell’s car was out of sight down the road, Bill started ours again.
“Wow,” I said. “We’ve just been threatened by a Southern sheriff.”
“Deputy.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel better? Can he really arrest us for going to Jefferson’s apartment?”
“He can arrest us for looking at him cross-eyed. He wouldn’t be able to hold us, but I have an itchy feeling the time between the arrest and the release might be long and leisurely.”
“And do you also have an itchy feeling they were lying in wait for us?”
“That, too.”
“Two questions, then. One, Coahoma County can afford to have its deputies just lounging around until their prey turns up? Okay, that’s not a real question. The real one is, how did he know where we’d turn up? And the corollary—did he figure we’d been in Oxford because that’s where this road goes, or did he figure we’d be on this road because it’s how you get back to Clarksdale from Oxford? In other words, because he already knew we’d been there?”
“I’d say the latter.”
“And you’d say that the highway patrol car that didn’t pull us over told him we were coming.”
“I would.”
“So he’s been keeping track of us, and asking his brothers in law enforcement across the state to do the same. And now he’s warning us off. The question, then, is why?”
“And the corollary—since he presumably knows there’s nothing to find in Jefferson’s apartment in Oxford, because his brothers in law enforcement already found nothing, what was he really warning us not to do?”
“That’s not actually a corollary, you just wanted to use my fancy word. But the answer would probably have to do with what else we did in Oxford.”
Bill glanced over at me. “Anna Rae Ferguson.”
“So. We are, once again, being warned away from the Fergusons. Did she call Lucknell, do you think, or did she call some other Ferguson, who called him?”
“Does it matter? It means Lucknell and the Fergusons are a little too close to make me happy.”
“I don’t imagine your happiness is one of their priorities.”
“As long as it’s one of yours.”
Route 278 came to an abrupt end, depositing us on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. I took out my phone to call Pete. Before I’d pressed a single number, it rang in my hand.
“Callie Leblanc,” I told Bill, and then answered the call.
“Ms. Chin,” the public defender’s clipped voice said, “can you come to my office? There’s something I want to discuss.”
“Now?”
“If possible.” And, the implication was, if impossible, try a little harder.
“We’re just coming into town. We’ll be right over.”
I told Bill we’d been summoned.
“That’s handy. We can talk to Tolson Reeves while we’re there.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
I called Pete.
“Well,” he said. “The detectives. How’d it go?”
“Not sure. We were on our way to pick you up, but Callie Leblanc wants to see us. Can you hang out at the store a little longer?”
“Seeing as I grew up here, I suppose I can. What does she want?”
“No idea. We’ll talk to her, and then we’ll be along directly.”
Bill shook his head sadly at my phraseology. We hit downtown Clarksdale and parked two doors up from the storefront office of the Coahoma County public defender.
25
The receptionist spoke over her headset to Callie Leblanc and then pointed us to a windowless conference room carved out of a corner in the back. I scanned the bull pen as we crossed it, but Tolson Reeves was not in evidence.
Bill and I sat at a battle-scarred laminate table. Through the open door I saw Callie Leblanc and a young, freckled black woman heading over. They joined us, the young woman closing the door behind them.
“This is Sarah Byrne, one of our attorneys,” said Callie Leblanc. “Lydia Chin—Jefferson Tam’s cousin—and Bill Smith.” We all shook hands, and the two public defenders sat across from us.
“We have a weekly meeting,” Callie Leblanc said, “to discuss the progress of cases. Other than that, we work independently, so I didn’t know Sarah’s information until now. Sarah?”
The young woman sat forward. “I have a client at Parchman Farm—the state penitentiary. Trevor McAdoo.” Sarah Byrne had clearly studied at the Leblanc School of Wasting No Words.
“We’ve heard of him,” I said. “He shot a deputy in the course of a drug arrest.”
Callie Leblanc tilted her head. “You’re well-informed.”
“Thank you,” I said, though I wasn’t sure she meant it as a compliment.
Sarah Byrne continued, “Trevor’s doing twenty to life, which is the best I could get him. A few days ago—Monday—he called me to come down. I went, and he had an odd request. He wants to speak to Reynold Tam.”
“He does? To Reynold? Why?”
Callie Leblanc said, “I’m correct that Congressman Tam is Jefferson Tam’s uncle?”
“Cousin,” I said. “Actually, first cousin once removed. Though that’s a distinction Chinese people don’t really make.”
“Mississippians don’t, either,” she said with faint amusement, the first trace of any emotion besides annoyance that I’d seen in her.
I asked, “What did he want to see him about?”
Sarah Byrne said, “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me, and he won’t put it in writing because anything he writes to go outside will be read by prison authorities, even if it’s being carried by his attorney. He said, ‘Just tell Tam he’ll be happy if he comes and sorry if he doesn’t.’ I warned him against threatening a congressman. He smiled and called for the guard. That was all—the meeting was over.”
“What did you do?”
“I conveyed the request to the congressman’s office, but I didn’t expect Mr. Tam to go and, of course, he didn’t. His office said they’d need more information to even consider it. I told Trevor that and he still refused to tell me any more.”
“So we don’t know what it’s about?”
“No,” said Callie Leblanc. “But I found it strange that a lifer on Parchman asked to speak to a gubernatorial candidate the day before the candidate’s cousin is murdered and another cousin is arrested for it.”
“I agree.”
“As an office,” Callie Leblanc said, “there’s nothing we can do. Or should do. We have two separate cases. In one the client’s disappeared and in the other the client won’t say anything more. I called you because I thought you’d want to have this information. Now we need to get back to work. Thank you for coming.” She stood, and Sarah Byrne stood with her.
“Thank you,” I said, standing also. “You wouldn’t mind if we went to see Trevor McAdoo?”
“He can have whatever visitors he’ll see. We don’t control that.”
“But,” Sarah Byrne added, “you can’t see him until next week. He’s back in solitary.”
“Why?” I asked, and Callie Leblanc also turned to the younger woman.
“For one thing, he’s a troublemaker who won’t keep his head down. For another, he shot a cop. Even with your head down, that can land you in a world of hurt at Parchman.”
The two attorneys stood waiting for us to exit their conference room. “Is Tolson Reeves around?” I asked. “We’d like to speak with him again.”
“He has a class tonight. He’s already gone to Oxford.”
Damn. I wondered if he’d see Anna Rae Ferguson and if she’d complain to him about us. Or if he’d complain to her.
The attorneys went back to their desks, and Bill and I crossed through the bull pen, where work showed no signs of slowing down even this late in the afternoon.
“Well,” I said once we were back on the street, “you sure were quiet in there.”
“Seemed like a women’s conclave to me. Didn’t want to disrupt the solidarity of sisterhood.”
“Noble of you.”
“That’s me, chivalrous to my core. And plus, psychic.”
“How so?”
“I know exactly what you’re thinking right now.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Uh-huh. Two things. One, this is even more interesting, though unfortunately maybe less strange, than Callie Leblanc knows. Trevor McAdoo’s bid at Parchman goes back to a connection to the Fergusons, and Jefferson, whose politician cousin Trevor’s asking to see, may also be involved with the Fergusons. Which makes the whole thing smell of blackmail.”
“I hate to be thinking that, but yes, you’re right. What else am I thinking?”
“That maybe we can’t talk to Trevor McAdoo until next week, but there’s someone else who might know what he wanted with Reynold Tam.”
“Anna Rae did tell us she knew Jefferson.”
“And went to games with him. Not to his apartment. In the company of Tolson Reeves.”
“It may not be either of them.”
“Uh-huh. And grits may not be groceries. Let’s go ask her.”
We were stymied on that plan, however. When we returned to the square and entered Café Café, we found Anna Rae Ferguson gone.
I called her cell phone, got voice mail, left a message in a neutral voice saying I had another question and could she give me a call back, and hung up without a lot of hope. I looked around.
“If Anna Rae’s shift is over, it must be past two,” I said.
“Yup.”
“And we haven’t had lunch yet, have we?”
“Nope.”
“Good. I have an idea. What can I get you?”
He checked the blackboard. Panini, wraps, salads: the universal food language of college coffee houses.
“Ham-and-cheese panini.”
I should have known; it was the thickest, gooiest, unhealthiest thing on the menu.
No customers were at the counter, but Darlaine, who’d taken over for Anna Rae earlier, was behind it. “Hi!” she said when I walked up. “Y’all looking for Anna Rae? Her shift’s done, she left already.”
“That’s okay, we’ll catch up with her later. But we’re hungry, so we thought we’d have lunch. Besides, I want to ask you something, too.”
“Me?”
I gave her our lunch orders. She passed them through a cutout to the fellow at the grill, then turned back.
“You don’t play Ultimate Frisbee, too, do you?” I asked.
Darlaine grinned. “Tried it once. Got hit square in the mouth. Gave that game up so fast! Don’t know what Anna Rae sees in it.”
“I’ve been hit in the mouth myself. Pretty unpleasant.” I didn’t mention that the occasional scuffles I got into in the course of business had nothing to do with Frisbees. “Anyway, that’s not really what I wanted to ask you about.” I’d led with that to determine if Anna Rae had said anything to Darlaine about the real subject of our conversation. It sounded like she hadn’t, so I went on. “It turns out I have a distant cousin here in Oxford, but I don’t know where to find him. I bet everybody comes into this place sooner or later, right? Do you know him?” I took out my phone and showed her Jefferson’s photo.
She wrinkled her forehead. “I can’t really be sure, because—” She stopped herself and threw me a quick, awkward glance. She’d so obviously been about to say, “y’all look alike,” that I almost finished the sentence for her, but instead I just cocked my head and looked hopeful. Clearly relieved, she said, “Yeah. I think I did see him, a couple of times. Matter of fact, last time was a few weeks ago, when Anna Rae’s brother was here.”
“Anna Rae? Wait, my cousin knows Anna Rae’s brother? Or you just mean they were here at the same time?”
“No, they came in together. Not the first time, either. I mean, if he’s the guy I’m thinking of.” She tapped the photo.
“Wow,” I said. “What are the chances? Anna Rae’s brother.”
Darlaine nodded. “Johnny. Anna Rae misses her big old dog, so Johnny brings it up here, time to time. Anna Rae’s people don’t live but an hour from here, down in the Delta, but she doesn’t go home much.”
No, only during truces. “And my cousin came here with Johnny and the dog?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She pointed to the sidewalk tables. “They sat out there. Because of the dog. Can’t bring it in here, law says so. Also—” She looked around; I followed her eyes and located the manager straightening the magazine rack. He couldn’t have heard us over Tom Petty from the speakers, but Darlaine lowered her voice anyway. “Also, because they were gambling.”
I dropped my voice, too. “Playing cards or something?”
Darlaine shook her head. “Online. DraftKings or FanDuel one. On your cousin’s laptop. They did it in here before, but Freddie said they couldn’t. Probably if he knew they were doing it outside he’d make them stop, too. Freddie doesn’t hold with gambling.”
From behind Darlaine, a bell clinked. She turned, picked up Bill’s panini and my salad, and put them on a tray. I got coffee and ginger tea to go with them. “You don’t have any idea where I could find my cousin, do you?” I asked.
“No, sorry. But I bet Anna Rae does. You’ll be talking to her again, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the tray. “We sure will.”
24
“So Jefferson Tam sits out in the sunshine and gambles online with Johnny Ferguson.” I’d recounted Darlaine’s story to Bill as we ate. “Both of them on one laptop. Sure sounds like a buddy movie to me.”
“Doesn’t prove they’re in the drug business together.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line? You say it looks like my cousin’s a drug dealer and I jump to his defense.”
“Sorry. It looks like your cousin’s a drug dealer.”
“You may be right,” I said glumly. “My mother isn’t going to like this.”
We finished our lunch in silence.
“Any other business we have here in Oxford?” Bill asked.
“Not that I can think of. I’m a little less charmed by the place than I was before.”
“In that case, let’s leave.”
We considered holding an auction for our parking place—it even still had eighteen minutes on the meter—but in the end we just drove off, leaving it to whoever had the best parking karma.
We motored down the highway, listening to hill-country blues on the radio. Bill explained the difference between that and the Delta blues Big Bone Stafford had played last night—fewer chord changes, more percussion, a kind of hypnotic effect—but though I enjoyed it, I couldn’t have distinguished between them.
At one point, a highway patrol car came up behind us. Bill was driving five miles under the speed limit. Unusual for him, but this is Mississippi. The cops pulled out and passed us soon enough.
We were almost back in Clarksdale, having rolled through the once obviously lovely, now picturesque in a ruin-porn kind of way, town of Marks, when another law enforcement vehicle slid into our rearview mirror. This time it was a Coahoma County sheriff’s cruiser, light bar flashing.
Bill pulled over beside a plowed and empty field. The cruiser stopped behind us and, surprise, Bert Lucknell and Tom Thomson climbed out.
Bill lowered his window. Lucknell sauntered over, bent down, and said, “Afternoon, folks. Find him?”
I leaned over. “Find who?”
“Jefferson Tam, ma’am.” Lucknell spoke with the patient air of a smart man humoring a woman who thought, mistakenly, that she was also smart.
“No, sir,” I said, paralleling his ma’am. “But I can’t deny we’d be happy if we had.”
“I imagine you would. If I found him, I’d be happy, too. I got to admit that what doesn’t make me happy, ma’am, is civilians interfering with a law enforcement investigation.”
“I completely understand, sir. And I assure you, we won’t do that.”
“Well, I’m pleased to hear it. Can I ask where y’all are coming from?” With each question, Lucknell looked at Bill, but Bill said nothing, leaving it to me.
“Driving around,” I said. “To see some of your great state.”
“Anyplace in particular catch your fancy?”
“No.”
“Y’all wouldn’t have been over in Oxford, chasing down that cousin of yours?”
“We did go to Oxford. I’d been told it was beautiful. And we stopped by Jefferson’s apartment. I wanted to get a sense of this cousin I’ve never met.”
“A sense. Did you get much of a sense?”
“Yes, sir. He plays Xbox and he really should take out the trash.”
Lucknell nodded. With no change in his tone, he said, “I’d be deeply obliged if from now on y’all would plan to stay as far away from this investigation as a person could think how to do. In fact, if y’all headed back to New York City tonight, that might be best. Go ahead and say goodbye to Captain Pete, and I’ll send over a police escort for the trip to the airport, how about that? In case there’s traffic, or any other kind of a difficulty.”
“That’s kind of you, sir. But Pete asked us to stay on for a while. My mother really wants the family to get to know each other. Sir.”
Lucknell’s steady gaze didn’t waver. “Ma’am,” he said, “please don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining. Call it ‘getting to know the family,’ or whatever else, but y’all were rooting around in my case. I do want to say that right now the only thing stopping me from running y’all in is your other cousin, the one who wants to be governor. I don’t care for him, myself, and crossing him wouldn’t lose me any sleep. But Sheriff Bradley, he wants to keep people happy, meaning Democrat Party people, because the sheriff’s got an election of his own coming up this fall. So it’s been suggested I make allowances for the fact that maybe y’all don’t know how we do things around here.”
I thought the wisest response to this was silence. Bert Lucknell took a long pause, too, and then said, “But I got an itchy feeling I might be running out of allowances. Y’all have a nice day.” He turned, lumbered back to the cruiser, and waited for Silent Tom Thomson to climb in.
Once Lucknell’s car was out of sight down the road, Bill started ours again.
“Wow,” I said. “We’ve just been threatened by a Southern sheriff.”
“Deputy.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel better? Can he really arrest us for going to Jefferson’s apartment?”
“He can arrest us for looking at him cross-eyed. He wouldn’t be able to hold us, but I have an itchy feeling the time between the arrest and the release might be long and leisurely.”
“And do you also have an itchy feeling they were lying in wait for us?”
“That, too.”
“Two questions, then. One, Coahoma County can afford to have its deputies just lounging around until their prey turns up? Okay, that’s not a real question. The real one is, how did he know where we’d turn up? And the corollary—did he figure we’d been in Oxford because that’s where this road goes, or did he figure we’d be on this road because it’s how you get back to Clarksdale from Oxford? In other words, because he already knew we’d been there?”
“I’d say the latter.”
“And you’d say that the highway patrol car that didn’t pull us over told him we were coming.”
“I would.”
“So he’s been keeping track of us, and asking his brothers in law enforcement across the state to do the same. And now he’s warning us off. The question, then, is why?”
“And the corollary—since he presumably knows there’s nothing to find in Jefferson’s apartment in Oxford, because his brothers in law enforcement already found nothing, what was he really warning us not to do?”
“That’s not actually a corollary, you just wanted to use my fancy word. But the answer would probably have to do with what else we did in Oxford.”
Bill glanced over at me. “Anna Rae Ferguson.”
“So. We are, once again, being warned away from the Fergusons. Did she call Lucknell, do you think, or did she call some other Ferguson, who called him?”
“Does it matter? It means Lucknell and the Fergusons are a little too close to make me happy.”
“I don’t imagine your happiness is one of their priorities.”
“As long as it’s one of yours.”
Route 278 came to an abrupt end, depositing us on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. I took out my phone to call Pete. Before I’d pressed a single number, it rang in my hand.
“Callie Leblanc,” I told Bill, and then answered the call.
“Ms. Chin,” the public defender’s clipped voice said, “can you come to my office? There’s something I want to discuss.”
“Now?”
“If possible.” And, the implication was, if impossible, try a little harder.
“We’re just coming into town. We’ll be right over.”
I told Bill we’d been summoned.
“That’s handy. We can talk to Tolson Reeves while we’re there.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
I called Pete.
“Well,” he said. “The detectives. How’d it go?”
“Not sure. We were on our way to pick you up, but Callie Leblanc wants to see us. Can you hang out at the store a little longer?”
“Seeing as I grew up here, I suppose I can. What does she want?”
“No idea. We’ll talk to her, and then we’ll be along directly.”
Bill shook his head sadly at my phraseology. We hit downtown Clarksdale and parked two doors up from the storefront office of the Coahoma County public defender.
25
The receptionist spoke over her headset to Callie Leblanc and then pointed us to a windowless conference room carved out of a corner in the back. I scanned the bull pen as we crossed it, but Tolson Reeves was not in evidence.
Bill and I sat at a battle-scarred laminate table. Through the open door I saw Callie Leblanc and a young, freckled black woman heading over. They joined us, the young woman closing the door behind them.
“This is Sarah Byrne, one of our attorneys,” said Callie Leblanc. “Lydia Chin—Jefferson Tam’s cousin—and Bill Smith.” We all shook hands, and the two public defenders sat across from us.
“We have a weekly meeting,” Callie Leblanc said, “to discuss the progress of cases. Other than that, we work independently, so I didn’t know Sarah’s information until now. Sarah?”
The young woman sat forward. “I have a client at Parchman Farm—the state penitentiary. Trevor McAdoo.” Sarah Byrne had clearly studied at the Leblanc School of Wasting No Words.
“We’ve heard of him,” I said. “He shot a deputy in the course of a drug arrest.”
Callie Leblanc tilted her head. “You’re well-informed.”
“Thank you,” I said, though I wasn’t sure she meant it as a compliment.
Sarah Byrne continued, “Trevor’s doing twenty to life, which is the best I could get him. A few days ago—Monday—he called me to come down. I went, and he had an odd request. He wants to speak to Reynold Tam.”
“He does? To Reynold? Why?”
Callie Leblanc said, “I’m correct that Congressman Tam is Jefferson Tam’s uncle?”
“Cousin,” I said. “Actually, first cousin once removed. Though that’s a distinction Chinese people don’t really make.”
“Mississippians don’t, either,” she said with faint amusement, the first trace of any emotion besides annoyance that I’d seen in her.
I asked, “What did he want to see him about?”
Sarah Byrne said, “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me, and he won’t put it in writing because anything he writes to go outside will be read by prison authorities, even if it’s being carried by his attorney. He said, ‘Just tell Tam he’ll be happy if he comes and sorry if he doesn’t.’ I warned him against threatening a congressman. He smiled and called for the guard. That was all—the meeting was over.”
“What did you do?”
“I conveyed the request to the congressman’s office, but I didn’t expect Mr. Tam to go and, of course, he didn’t. His office said they’d need more information to even consider it. I told Trevor that and he still refused to tell me any more.”
“So we don’t know what it’s about?”
“No,” said Callie Leblanc. “But I found it strange that a lifer on Parchman asked to speak to a gubernatorial candidate the day before the candidate’s cousin is murdered and another cousin is arrested for it.”
“I agree.”
“As an office,” Callie Leblanc said, “there’s nothing we can do. Or should do. We have two separate cases. In one the client’s disappeared and in the other the client won’t say anything more. I called you because I thought you’d want to have this information. Now we need to get back to work. Thank you for coming.” She stood, and Sarah Byrne stood with her.
“Thank you,” I said, standing also. “You wouldn’t mind if we went to see Trevor McAdoo?”
“He can have whatever visitors he’ll see. We don’t control that.”
“But,” Sarah Byrne added, “you can’t see him until next week. He’s back in solitary.”
“Why?” I asked, and Callie Leblanc also turned to the younger woman.
“For one thing, he’s a troublemaker who won’t keep his head down. For another, he shot a cop. Even with your head down, that can land you in a world of hurt at Parchman.”
The two attorneys stood waiting for us to exit their conference room. “Is Tolson Reeves around?” I asked. “We’d like to speak with him again.”
“He has a class tonight. He’s already gone to Oxford.”
Damn. I wondered if he’d see Anna Rae Ferguson and if she’d complain to him about us. Or if he’d complain to her.
The attorneys went back to their desks, and Bill and I crossed through the bull pen, where work showed no signs of slowing down even this late in the afternoon.
“Well,” I said once we were back on the street, “you sure were quiet in there.”
“Seemed like a women’s conclave to me. Didn’t want to disrupt the solidarity of sisterhood.”
“Noble of you.”
“That’s me, chivalrous to my core. And plus, psychic.”
“How so?”
“I know exactly what you’re thinking right now.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Uh-huh. Two things. One, this is even more interesting, though unfortunately maybe less strange, than Callie Leblanc knows. Trevor McAdoo’s bid at Parchman goes back to a connection to the Fergusons, and Jefferson, whose politician cousin Trevor’s asking to see, may also be involved with the Fergusons. Which makes the whole thing smell of blackmail.”
“I hate to be thinking that, but yes, you’re right. What else am I thinking?”
“That maybe we can’t talk to Trevor McAdoo until next week, but there’s someone else who might know what he wanted with Reynold Tam.”
