Stephen Hunter - Black Light

“Ah—” Duane’s eyes narrowed. His lips began to move.

“Never mind, Duane. Now, on the plus side, I see you did some associates of mine a favor now and then.”

“Yes sir,” said Duane Peck.

“You did some collecting and some enforcing?”

“Yes sir.” Sometimes Duane moonlighted on his debt problem by collecting for Ben Kelly, who ran a gambling crib in the back room of the Pin-Del Motel over in Talihina, Oklahoma.

“Hmmm, that’s good. You hurt anybody bad?”

“I busted some jaws and heads, nothing nobody couldn’t walk away from a week down the line. I had to break one boy’s leg with a ax handle. He got way out of line.”

“You kill anybody?”

Duane’s eyes went blank.

“No sir,” he said.

“I don’t mean since you joined the Sheriff’s, Duane, and I don’t mean headbops on crib debtors. No, I mean ever?” “No sir,” said Duane.

“Now, Duane, one thing you must learn, never lie to me. Ever. So I ask you a second time. You kill anybody?”

Duane mumbled something.

“Arco Service Station,” Red said. “Pensacola, 1977, June. You were just a redneck kid with a drug habit. A few quick hitters to raise the cash. But that night you popped a boy, right, Duane?”

Duane finally looked up.

“I forgot that one,” he finally said.

“Well, Randy Wilkes didn’t forget. He works in New Orleans for some people now. You do a job like that, you better come to an understanding with your partner. You don’t, it seems sloppy. You are sloppy, aren’t you, Duane?”

“Six ninety-two,” said Duane. “It’s 692.”

“No, Duane, but close. It’s 698.”

“Damn,” said Duane. “I can do it on paper.”

“This isn’t an arithmetic test, Duane. You’re clean now? You’re straight?”

“Nothing with real buzz,” said Duane. “I do like my bourbon on a Saturday night.”

“I like it then too, Duane. All right, now: I got a job for you. You interested?”

“Yes sir,” said Duane, who had been wondering why one so lowly as he had been summoned before so powerful a figure.

“A private job, just for me. That’s why you’re talking to me, Duane, not Ben Kelly or anybody in between you and me.”

“Yes sir.”

“Duane, your twenty-one thousand could disappear, you play it right.”

“Sir,” said Duane, stirring from his phlegmaticism, “I will play it right. You can count on that.”

“Duane, I’ll be honest. Wish I had a better man. But you got one thing I need and it makes you valuable to me.”

“Yes sir.”

“Not your big dick, Duane. Not that fine-tuned brain of yours. No sir. Your badge.”

Duane gulped a little.

“I need an inside boy to keep eye on a little situation that may be developing down in Polk. I send a stranger down, in that little place, people will notice. I got to have an insider, a man with the state’s authority who can go places and ask questions without attracting attention. You game, Duane?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Bama. You just say what it is.”

“It could get dicey,” said Red. “I might have you get your fingers dirty for me. I have to have your ultimate loyalty if I’m to give you mine.”

“Yes sir,” said Duane.

“You understand, I’m a fair man. If you end up doing joint time, it’ll be good joint time. You don’t have to be any big nigger’s fuck boy. You’ll be protected. Fair enough?”

Duane could do prison, he knew. For a shot at a place with the Man, just about anything was possible.

“Yes sir.”

“All right, Duane, you listen up. Many years ago there was a tragedy in Polk County. A heroic police sergeant shot it out with two very bad boys, killed them both. They killed him too. Mean anything to you?”

“No sir.”

“Not a history buff, eh, Duane?”

Duane’s face remained stolid: “history buff” as a concept was unrecognizable.

“Anyhow, I now have it on good authority a young Oklahoma journalist has decided to write a book about this event. You know, Duane, true crime, that sort of thing.”

Duane nodded dully.

“Ah—this is something that must be looked at.”

“Should I whack him?” Duane wanted to know.

Interesting question: key question, and Duane with his primitive’s craftiness got to the heart of it. The boy could be dealt with harshly, killed, destroyed, and things left as they lay. But that very act, by the law of unintended consequences, could bring catastrophe itself, an investigation, the asking of questions that had so long gone unasked.

“No, Duane, but let’s not rule it out. Let’s leave it at this. You are to keep me informed on what’s going on: who he sees, what he asks them, what he finds out. This may involve documents. Which documents? You may have to do very little except arrange for certain documents to disappear. It may involve more dramatic countermeasures, and if so, manpower won’t be a problem. But for reasons you needn’t know, and Duane, I suspect you wouldn’t understand, it’s important that this boy learn very little and that his book go unwritten. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

Red looked at poor Duane. He felt like a general sending a Boy Scout against the German Army. He had much better people. He had access to ex-CIA operatives, ex-Green Berets, longtime underworld troubleshooters, extremely competent, aggressive, experienced professionals. But all were outsiders and they wouldn’t know a damned thing about a dense little universe like Blue Eye’s and they’d stand out hugely. Duane, the most brutal and sociopathic of Vernon Tell’s deputies, was also the most corrupt; he would attract no attention and much respect. So: Duane it had to be, Duane carefully controlled and directed, Duane in the game of his life, and Duane capable, if handled correctly, of anything.

“Duane, I’ve got here a list of people this boy may consult and offices he’s likely to see. You’ll monitor them. Also here is an 800 phone number. You can call it free from any phone in America but I will get you a secure cellular with that number preset so all you have to do is hit one button. I want a detailed report every day. Then you will get further instructions from me. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” said Duane. “But I heard they can git taps on them cellulars easy. The Feds do it all the time.”

Good point. Red was impressed.

“No, this one’s secure at each end, can’t be intercepted without a preset descrambler. What they can do is subpoena the records so they can find out who was talking to who. But I don’t think the cellular company would cooperate with them, at least for years and years.”

“Why?” asked Duane.

“Because I own it,” said Red. “Now, Duane, be delicate. No bullyboy stuff. You have some charm, I’m told. You can be a backslapper, a laugher, a regular guy? Those are the colors I want you showing in this first phase.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now you must go. I’m behind schedule,” said Red Bama, looking at his Rolex, “and I want to get to my son’s soccer game.”

I n the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was not uncommon for armed men to ride into Fort Smith, Arkansas, the bawdy, bustling city nestled on the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers. Founded in 1817, it boasted a population of thirty thousand by 1875, perched as it was at the head of the long valley between Ozark and the Ouachita Mountains, and perched again on the border between Arkansas and what in those days was called Indian Territory and is now known as Oklahoma.

In those days, the city was nicknamed Hell on the Border. Fort Smith was the gateway to the savage and untamed West. In those days, civilization tried mightily to enforce its will upon the lawless, and the enforcers were federal deputies to the hanging judge, Isaiah J. Parker. Between 1875 and 1896, the judge sent his men into Indian Territory to carry out the law. They were of a type: lean, slit-eyed, exquisitely practical, without much in the way of larger views. All could shoot; all would shoot. For two decades Fort Smith was the gunfight capital of the world, sending its men out to bring back the desperados and outlaws who roamed Indian Territory. Of the marshals, 65 were slain in the line of duty; of the 172 men they brought back alive, 88 were hanged by the judge; no one knows how many outlaws perished in the territory at the hands of the deputies. In those days, such facts weren’t worth recording.