Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

Pappy closed his eyes.

‘Preferably dead.’

40

Parker and Griffin drove back to Cargill. They’d spent a further fifteen minutes outside with Jurel Cade going over the particulars of how the investigation should proceed. Now that he had his father’s imprimatur on progress, Jurel was more conciliatory than before, but it remained to be seen how that might reveal itself in practical terms.

By now the day was almost done, and the light had taken on a funereal tone; bare deciduous trees smeared the sky, and the forest was like an encroaching darkness on the land. Parker felt a familiar lassitude begin to descend. Evening and night were hardest for him. That was when he missed Susan and Jennifer most, and in a way different from morning. Waking, that dawning recollection of loss, was like the reopening of a wound, ferocious in the suddenness of its pain; night, by contrast, was a slow, dull ache that ended only fitfully with sleep, there to mutate into visions of the dead, dreams in which his wife and daughter spoke to him in a language he could not understand, and died over and over in ways that bore no relation to the truth of their passing. They drowned, they burned, they suffocated behind plastic, all the time their lips moving, enunciating words that had meaning only for them, as though in leaving one world for another they had inherited a new dialect, an idiom unintelligible to the living.

Yet in daylight, when he talked with his dead wife as he drove, when he addressed his lost child as he shaved, they were entirely comprehensible to him, and he to them.

But he feared that this latter discourse might be less real than the former.

Griffin spoke, tearing him from his meditations.

‘What?’ said Parker.

‘I said that you never told me why you came back.’

Parker barely gave the question thought.

‘To distract myself,’ he said.

Griffin chose not to ask him from what. He had no need.

‘Is that all?’

The briefest of pauses.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I never expressed my gratitude.’

‘Save it till later. Even then, you may not have cause to thank me when we’re done.’

Griffin tried to speak lightly – ‘You of a mind to cause trouble?’ – as Parker’s thumb explored his grazed knuckles.

‘It doesn’t matter whether I am or not. Either way, it’ll come once we start asking questions. The Cades won’t be able to prevent it, and neither will you, even if you had the motivation.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because you’re using me. If this investigation stirs people up, or endangers the Kovas deal, you’ll be able to blame some of the fallout on me. I provide an element of deniability – not much, but enough for you to survive if it all goes bad. I can also rattle cages that you can’t, and if anyone complains, you’ll be empowered to make sympathetic noises and promise it won’t happen again.’

‘That’s a hell of an accusation to make.’

‘Feel free to deny it.’

Griffin didn’t bother. He might never have expressed it in those terms, or even have admitted it to himself, but now that Parker had come out with it, he knew it to be true. He could only hope to make the local population understand that it was a question of degree: the potential harm this inquisition might cause to their hopes of prosperity versus the certain damage that would follow if another young woman died.

‘And the Cades,’ said Parker, ‘are doing the same with us. That’s why Pappy acceded so quickly to your demand for control of the investigation. He believes you’ll fail, and any harm you cause will rebound on you and your department. In the meantime, he’ll reassure Kovas in an effort to protect the deal.’

This, too, was unworthy of argument from Griffin. Pappy hadn’t conceded anything to them that he hadn’t already written off long before they arrived at his door.

‘What did you think of the Cades?’ Griffin asked.

‘I don’t like any of them.’

‘It’s a reasonable response.’

‘Is it the wrong one?’

‘That depends on what you require of them, but I’ll admit that none is without specific failings. Pappy is a pragmatist, but genuine in his desire to vouchsafe affluence to the county, if only for the sake of his own vanity. Jurel can be an astute investigator, but he’s his daddy’s instrument, if you hadn’t already noticed. He’s also selective in his inquiries, and immoral in his methods.

‘Delphia is her father’s eyes and ears in Little Rock, and takes care of the day-to-day running of the family businesses, but has no kindness in her, and is incautious about making political enemies. She’s the only one that’s married – to the Cade family lawyer, or one of the lawyers, although he tomcats around on her, and she cuckolds him in turn, so rumor has it. His name is Branstetter, but she never took it. There’s talk of a divorce on the horizon, with Branstetter currently calculating the price for his silence.’

‘Silence?’ said Parker.

‘Nothing down here is straight. Draw a line with a ruler, and it comes out crooked. Branstetter isn’t only a lawyer: he’s also a bagman. He’s smoothed out a lot of problems on the Kovas front, aided by a logroller named Charles Shire, who’s been looking after Kovas’s interests down here. Spousal privilege meant that the Cades had some protection should federal investigators have shown an interest in the more irregular specifics of the negotiations – unlikely, given that Arkansas owns the White House, but one can’t be too careful. I mean, look at Whitewater: no one is entirely safe, not even behind locked doors on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Cades have supported the Clintons since Bubba ran for the House against Hammerschmidt in seventy-four, and Pappy is owed favors in return, some of which he might have called in for Kovas. But if Branstetter were to roll over in the event of a divorce, well, there’s no telling where the indictments could end. So he’ll earn himself a nice payoff for all those years spent sharing a bed with Delphia Cade, and be thankful that he emerged at the end with his cock and balls still attached to the rest of him.’

‘And Nealus?’

‘Doesn’t look like much, does he?’

‘No, I can’t say that he does.’

‘Oddly, he’s the only Cade that the majority can abide without equivocation. He cared for his mother in her final illness, and now sits on the board of a couple of charities related to cancer and Parkinson’s, because Martha Cade suffered from a combination of both. He’s also heavily involved in environmental causes, not entirely unrelated to the fact that it annoys his sister and his old man. He might even qualify as a moderating influence on his father, if such a thing were possible.’

‘The Cades’ mother had Parkinson’s?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Interesting,’ said Parker.

‘Why?’

‘I think Pappy may also have it.’

‘Yeah, I saw the twitches. If that’s true, he’s keeping quiet about the diagnosis.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to admit to weakness, not with his precious accord so close to completion.’

‘That could be it.’

They passed the town line, and shortly after entered Cargill itself. Griffin drove Parker straight to his motel.

‘I had Billie make up a dossier for you,’ he said. ‘It should be waiting at the reception desk. It’s got local maps, a list of names of some of our more noteworthy citizens, phone numbers, whatever she felt might be useful. You think of anything else you require, you just have to ask. Keep receipts for expenses, and we’ve cleared a desk for you at the station house in case you want to use it. Tomorrow we can figure out a division of labor, but I’ll be guided by you as far as possible. After all, you’ve done this kind of thing before.’