Greg Iles - The Quiet Game

After devouring my share of pizza, I deal with the messages that came in while I was in Crested Butte. Althea Payton called several times, but the most persistent caller was Ike Ransom. Dad says Ike is desperate to talk to me, and that he sounded both angry and afraid during their conservations. I call Althea and give her an encouraging update, editing the violence into a less frightening picture. Nevertheless, she tells me that Del Jr. wants to help me any way he can, and that she’s going to send him over to “help keep the no-goods away” until the trial. In less than an hour, Del arrives carrying a sawed-off shotgun, and takes up a post on the balcony of the slave quarters, overlooking the street.

Which leaves me Ike.

I am not particularly anxious to talk to him after the way he acted at Ruby’s funeral. Whatever the source of his hatred for Leo Marston, it has pushed him into unstable territory. Ike clearly has both a drug and alcohol problem, and since he is unwilling or unable to provide me with any facts that will help prove Marston guilty of murder in a court of law, I see no urgent need to call him.

I call Ray Presley instead. Dwight Stone’s revelation that Marston gave up Presley to the Feds as part of his deal with J. Edgar Hoover was music to my “lawyer’s ear.” Presley considers Leo Marston his friend, and loyalty is the supreme virtue to men of Presley’s ilk. But if Ray was to learn that the five years he spent in Parchman were courtesy of Leo Marston, his attitude toward the judge might change fast. But whether he will or not remains a mystery, because Presley doesn’t answer his phone.

I am working up the courage to call Livy when the telephone rings in my room. Somehow Ike Ransom has discovered that we’ve moved to Aquitaine, and he wants to see me. He got my phone number from the main house. I start to beg off, but he stops me cold. He has, he says, what we’ve been looking for since day one. Hard evidence linking Leo Marston to Payton’s murder. He will say no more, and he refuses to come to the B amp;B. He insists on a face-to-face meeting and says I must come alone. When I ask why, he tells me that no one can know he is the source for what he’s about to tell me.

“Where do you want to meet?” I ask, recalling the feeling of being shot at in the warehouse by the river and not liking it too much.

“You’re three blocks away from it,” he replies.

“Where are you talking about?”

“The old pecan-shelling plant.”

An image of a hulking brown brick building where I sold the pecans I collected as a boy comes into my mind. It is set right on the edge of the bluff, and as Ike said, it’s only three blocks west of where I am now.

“What about the surveillance on me here?”

“Slip out the back alley on foot. They lookin’ for that BMW. Or you could send your Jew buddy out first in the BMW, then come on in that Maxima your mama got.”

It’s nearly dark, and I want to refuse, largely out of fear. But Ike is offering something of which I have precious little: hard evidence. Dwight Stone’s testimony could be powerful, but without his FBI files to back him up, it will be his word against Marston’s (and Portman’s too, if the FBI director decides to honor my subpoena). Hard evidence is worth a three-block trip.

“When?” I ask.

“Thirty minutes. The place is an equipment-storage yard now. Drive around to the left side of the building. The chain on the gate’ll be cut.”

“I’ll be there.”

I hang up and speak to Sam Jacobs on the balcony, and Sam declares himself ready to draw off the surveillance long enough to get me clear of Aquitaine.

The old pecan-shelling plant stands on prime real estate in Natchez’s old warehouse district, a sort of no-man’s-land between the town proper and a sleepy residential area filled with Victorian gems. It has an unobstructed view of the river, and one day will probably be the site of a luxury hotel. At the moment it is an eerily lighted compound surrounded by a high fence and razor wire, with the rigid arms of great cranes jutting against the night sky.

As Ike promised, the chained gate on the left side of the building has been cut open. I nose the Maxima through it without getting out, and negotiate my way through backhoes, draglines, and D-9 bulldozers parked like Patton’s army marshaling for a campaign. I can’t see the river, but forty yards to my left, the bluff drops away to a vast dark sky, leaving the impression that I’m driving along the edge of a mountain.

Out of the blackness to my right, a pink and blue light bar strobes like a carnival, then vanishes. I slow nearly to a stop, trying to place the location of Ike’s cruiser.

There.

I turn right and idle toward the main building. As the black silhouette looms over me, the lights flash again. In their light I see that Ike has opened the old truck door of the plant and is parked in it. As I approach, he starts his engine and pulls forward, leaving me plenty of room to pull inside the building. I park the Maxima beside his cruiser and shut off the engine. Kelly’s Browning is in the glove box, but I don’t want to cause any kind of reflex reaction in Ike, especially if he’s wired on speed.

Ike is standing by my passenger door, between his car and mine. I get out and walk around the trunk of the Maxima, extending my hand to shake his.

“What have you got, Ike?”

He holds out his hand, but instead of shaking he grabs my wrist and jerks me to my knees on the concrete floor. As I try to look up, something slams into the top of my skull. The blow drives every thought out of my head, leaving only white noise. My first coherent perception is of something cold and hard pressed against my hairline.

“That’s a gun,” he says. “Don’t fucking move.”

The terror generated by the gun barrel is absolute, paralyzing. If any muscle in my body is moving, it’s the sphincter of my bladder. “Ike? What the hell are you doing?”

His breath is ragged above me, like a sick animal’s.

“Ike?”

“Where the fuck you been?” he shouts, and the reek of cheap whiskey rolls over me like steam. “Answer me, goddamn it!”

“Ike, what’s wrong? Let’s talk face to face, man.”

“I said, where the fuck have you been?”

“Colorado! I went back to see Stone.”

“I knew it! You sneaky son of a bitch. You been holding out the whole time. What that motherfucker tell you?”

“He told me what we want to know. He told me what happened here in sixty-eight. I’ve got Marston nailed, man.”

He twists around me and jabs the gun into my cervical spine. “What did Stone say happened?”

“He told me why Marston wanted Payton dead. It was a land deal… Marston stood to make a lot of money off some land, but he had to make an example of a black union worker first. He paid Presley to do it for him. Presley chose Payton.”

“Bullshit!” Another fog of whiskey blows over me.

“What do you mean, bullshit?”

“Don’t lie to me, goddamn it! Don’t you lie!”

He jerks back the slide on the gun, and everything inside me goes into free fall. My thoughts, my courage, my blood pressure. “Ike, please… I’ve got a little girl, man. Just tell me what the problem is and-”

The gun barrel rakes around my neck, under my jaw, up my right cheek to my eye. All I can see now is the taut belly of Ike’s brown uniform.

“Get up,” he says coldly. “Get up!”

The gun barrel stays screwed into my eye socket as I rise, but my terror abates slightly. The prospect of dying on my knees was as debasing as it was frightening.

Ike’s gun is shaking. As he pulls it out of my eye socket and lays the barrel against my forehead, I see his eyes, bloodshot and jerky, the eyes of a man in agony.