Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

‘I’m gratified, but I’ll have to decline.’

‘Because I’m a woman, or because I’m a Cade?’

‘Because I’m here only to investigate a series of killings. If I were to accept a position from you, I would be unable to continue in my current role.’

‘The investigation would continue without you.’

‘Probably, but my absence might be a hindrance to a successful outcome.’

‘My, aren’t you confident.’

‘No, I’m just an outsider, which means I’m not duty bound to any of you. I’d like to keep it that way. But thank you again for the offer.’

Delphia Cade’s mouth formed a near-perfect circle of hostility. Behind her lips, the tips of her teeth remained visible, lending her the aspect of a lamprey.

‘Did you really think I wanted to fuck you?’ she said.

‘It wasn’t an issue either way.’

‘Because you’re in mourning?’

‘It’s as good a reason as any.’

‘I don’t fuck the town’s hired help.’

‘Technically, I’m working for a bed in the honeymoon suite,’ said Parker, ‘but it’s a minor distinction.’

She flicked a finger in the direction of the lobby, and Cleon, who was doing his best to pretend not to be monitoring proceedings, and failing.

‘Go back to your fag,’ she said. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

‘Cleon’s waiting for someone, but not for me. Still, I believe he’ll find happiness long before you or I.’

Whatever Delphia Cade detected in his tone caused her anger to recede slightly, and a measure of sadness rolled in to take its place.

‘You ought to leave here,’ she said.

‘I know that, but I can’t.’

‘Neither can I, but I should have, long ago.’ She took a long, deep breath of the blue-exhaust air. ‘I understand a great deal about the workings of this county. I could probably help you with your work, but I won’t.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because I believe my father and Jurel are wrong to cooperate with the Cargill PD. It can only harm what we’re trying to achieve with Kovas. I’ve worked hard for this – we all have – and the investigation risks putting a torch to everything.’

Parker returned to the incident in the Cade house, when Pappy had dismissed this woman in a way calculated to demean her in a room full of men. Her reaction suggested that it was not the first time she had been degraded in this way. No matter how hard she worked, or what she achieved for the family, her father would never forgive her for not being born male.

‘Do you know what I think?’ said Parker.

‘Tell me. I’m curious.’

‘I think you want the deal to go through so you can use the proceeds to buy yourself out of this county, even this state. Kovas represents your best chance of escape, and no amount of dead girls can be permitted to tip the scales.’

‘How long have you been here, Mr Parker?’

‘Just a couple of days.’

‘A couple of days,’ she said, ‘and look how much you’ve learned. We’ll make a native of you yet.’

Delphia returned to her car, reversed from her parking space, and headed toward the highway, and Little Rock. She did not once look at Parker again, as though she had already excised him from her memory, even as he recognized the foolishness of hoping for any such absolution.

51

Jurel Cade didn’t boast personal contacts in New York to compare with Kel Knight’s, and the Cade family name held modest sway beyond the Arkansas border, but after being sent from pillar to post for a while by the NYPD, he was eventually referred to an internal affairs investigator named John Breen. Breen was interested to hear that Charlie Parker was in Arkansas, and pressed for further details, but Jurel was too smart to give something away for nothing – in that regard, he resembled his father – so he and Breen traded morsels of information until a portrait of Parker began to emerge. The final picture disturbed Jurel, but at least he was now better informed than before about the interloper.

Jurel Cade wasn’t an entirely phlegmatic man. He was engaged to be married to a schoolteacher, and intended to set about starting a family as soon as the nuptials were concluded. He could only pray that he, his future wife, and their children, should the couple be so blessed, would never experience any calamity like the one that had engulfed Charlie Parker. He felt sorrow for the man, but still wished he had decided to indulge his desolation elsewhere. His presence presaged no good.

Cade thought it interesting that Breen had seen fit to share with him particulars relating to the murder in New York of the degenerate named Johnny Friday. This, as much as a certain barely veiled hostility on Breen’s side, indicated that Parker was short on friends, which meant that little blowback could be anticipated if any further tribulations were to befall him while he was in Burdon County.

Cade picked up the phone again, called Pappy, and shared with him what he had learned.

‘Parker is jinxed,’ Cade concluded, using the very word that Breen also had chosen. ‘It could be that he’s brought his bad luck down here, and it will count against him.’

He waited to see how Pappy might respond. The silence went on for so long that Cade began to wonder if Pappy had fallen asleep. The old man had begun to do this more frequently in recent years, which was why Delphia now preferred Pappy to keep his distance from Little Rock, and show his face only when backslapping needed to be done. Having Pappy nod off during meetings with Kovas would not be conducive to easing any doubts the company might be harboring about the Cades’ abilities to fulfill their promises.

‘If what you’ve learned is true, he doesn’t need the quantity of his pain increased,’ said Pappy at last, ‘or not by us. Our arrangement with him and Griffin stands. You give them all the help you can, and stay with them every step of the way. But when you catch sight of the quarry, you move ahead and bring it down. And do it quick and clean, understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a good boy, Jurel,’ said Pappy. ‘Once Kovas gets to building, you’ll be looked after. We’ll sit down for lunch with the governor and talk rewards, once he’s finished saying grace.’

This was Pappy’s ultimate aim: to extend the Cade influence to the State House, and then Washington, DC. Delphia didn’t have the temperament for it, and Nealus was too flighty. That left Jurel, who was just bright enough to be a contender, but not so bright as to be perceived as a threat by those whose help they’d need if he were to succeed. The subject had come up occasionally in the past, but Jurel had remained noncommittal, which his father chose to interpret as quiet consent.

But Jurel had no urge to spend more time in Little Rock, or trade his sidearm for one of those Filofax organizers that Ferdy Bowers liked to carry around with him because he’d seen hotshots use them on TV. There was more of his father in Jurel than he cared to admit, even to himself. Like Pappy, Jurel was of Burdon County. It was in his blood, and he loved it, for all its poverty and pettiness. Where others saw ugliness, he saw the potential for beauty; what some called corruption, he called practicality; and in what the ignorant perceived as racism, he identified only the echoes of the past, reverberations that would fade in time but never entirely cease. This county was his birthplace, and eventually it would be his fiefdom. His desire extended no farther than to run it as he saw fit, and raise his children within sight of the Ouachita.

Jurel hung up the phone, and from his desk watched the darkness grow deeper. He had erred, he realized, in his handling of Patricia Hartley’s death. He had believed himself to be acting in the best interests of the county, but it might be that Griffin and his father were correct, and the balance had now shifted. Jurel did not place the same value on a black life as he did on a white, just as he accepted that poverty brought with it a diminution of consequence, regardless of color. He was the product of a particular culture and a distinctive set of historical resonances; it would have been foolish of him to pretend otherwise. But to recognize a hierarchy was not the same as to wholly abandon those in its lower reaches. Neither did Jurel wish to inherit a county in which a killer of women might find sanctuary, because that sepsis would ultimately infect the body entire.