Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (47 page)

Franklin feigned
offense.
 
“Why?
 
Because I’m a lawyer?”
 
He chuckled.
 
His idea had given him a thrill he’d never experienced.

Big Bill smiled.
 
“
Well.
. . yeah.”

Franklin leaned
towards Big Bill and nodded like he had connections.
 
“As a matter of fact, I do know somebody.”

“Well, shit, you rascal, whaddya say?”

Franklin looked
at his partner with all seriousness.
 
“I
think it’s a damn good idea,” he said.
 
“I’ll take care of it and let you know the plan.”

Big Bill suddenly closed his eyes and stuck his fingers in
his ears.
 
“No, no, no.
 
I don’t want to know a thing about it,” Big
Bill said.
 
“I don’t care how you do it,
long as you can trust whoever it is, and long as you keep our names out of
it.
 
This ain’t
no
damn prank we’re talkin’ about.
 
This is
serious.
 
We can’t afford to mess it
up.
 
Just get somebody you trust to do
the killin’.”

84.

Franklin called
ahead and made arrangements to meet the man he knew would help.
 
He arrived at Estella’s around five, before
the place was open.
 
Otis was waiting for
him.
 
They sat in a booth and poured
sweet tea from an old plastic pitcher.

“How’s Estella doing?” Franklin
asked.

Otis pursed his lips and looked down at the table top, his
head shaking slightly.
 
“‘Bout the same, Mr. Peavy.”
 
He thought of her, lying in the hospital bed, unresponsive to his
voice.
 
“She’s got the weary dismals, but
she ain’t done in just yet.”

Franklin nodded
at the news.
 
“That’s good, Otis.
 
I’m glad to hear it.
 
Place ain’t the same without her.”

“No sir, it’s not.”
 
Otis sipped his tea, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
 
Ever since Mr. Peavy called and asked to meet
about something important, Otis had felt something ominous.

Franklin leaned
onto the table and put both hands around his glass of tea.
 
“Otis, you remember way back after your
trial, you said you owed me a favor?”

Otis nodded once.
 
“Yes, sir, I sure do.
 
And I meant
it.”
 
Lord, this was serious, he thought,
maybe even dangerous.
 
Small favors get
asked over the phone.

“I know you did, Otis, and I’m sorry this has to happen now,
with Estella in the hospital and all, but
now’s
when
I’ve got to ask.”
 
Franklin
could see that Otis sensed the seriousness of the matter.
 
His usually peaceful face had grown hard.

Otis took off his beret and rubbed the top of his head.
 
He tried to brace himself for whatever was
coming.
 
“Just name it, Mr. Peavy.”

Franklin felt
like God testing Abraham, knowing all along how things were going to turn
out.
 
Still, he wanted the drama to
convey the grievous nature of things, because no matter how good Franklin’s
idea was, they were still talking about killing somebody.
 
“Mr. Herron came to me the other day and
asked me to take care of some business.”

“Yes sir, what was that?”

“Otis, he asked me to find somebody to kill this girl.”

Otis felt his skin crawl.
 
After five hard years at Fort Pillow State Penal Farm, Otis swore he’d
never go down that road again, but he’d given Franklin
his word and intended to keep it.
 
He
looked at his hands.
 
“Is that what you
want me to do, Mr. Peavy?”

Franklin was
impressed.
 
Otis hadn’t flinched, at
least not outwardly.
 
Franklin
was used to dealing with weasels
who
routinely broke
even small promises, yet here was a man apparently willing to risk everything
to repay a debt.
 
Franklin
eased into a cunning smile.
 
“Well, Otis,
let me put it this way.”
 
Franklin
looked him in the eye.
 
“After Big Bill
asked me what he did, I got to thinking…”
 
He told Otis how his idea had come to him out of the blue and how he’d
worked out the details and how he was confident it would work.
 
Though obviously, it wasn’t without
risk.
 
On hearing the plan, Otis felt
some relief but still, it wouldn’t be easy.
 
Killin’ was killin’ after all.
 
And somebody wasn’t going to just walk away when it was over.
 
“But we gotta find somebody else to do it,” Franklin
insisted.
 
“Somebody to
keep us at arm’s length from the thing.”

Otis considered it for a moment.
 
“It’s a good plan, Mr. Peavy, but somebody’s
going to end up on the inside.”

“Maybe,” Franklin
said.
 
“But maybe not.
 
District Attorney’ll be willing to do a
little horse trading on something like this.
 
And either way I got a hundred thousand dollars a year that says whoever
you get will be taken care of.
 
You got
my word on that, Otis.
 
But whoever it is
has got to be willing to take the medicine if that’s what happens.”

“Yes, sir, I can see that.”

“And don’t worry,” Franklin
said.
 
“I’m going to take care of you
too.
 
I don’t expect you to do this for
nothing.
 
This is more than a favor.”

Otis seemed to chew on the inside of his cheek for a
second.
 
“All right.”

“It’s gotta be somebody you can trust with your life, Otis,
‘cause that’s what we’re doing.”
 
Franklin
punctuated his words by stabbing the table top with an index finger.
 
“This’ll work if it plays out right, but you
got to get somebody willin’ to stand in the hedge and take up the gap, you
understand?”

Otis nodded solemnly.

“Do you know somebody, Otis?”

“Yes, sir, I believe I do.”

85.

Atlas Publishing got Jimmy’s book on shelves faster than
anything since the
Starr Report
.
 
The
Long and Short of It —
The
Eddie Long Story
didn’t make any direct accusations, rather it enumerated a set of facts about
Tammy’s and the other deaths and simply let the reader draw his or her own
conclusion.
 
It was half biography, half
murder mystery and, as a result of its innuendo that America’s
biggest country music star had committed not just one, but several murders, the
book received a staggering amount of press coverage and uniformly great
reviews.

What followed was a scandal of colossal proportions that
arrested the nation’s attention.
  
The
debate over Eddie’s innocence or guilt consumed and divided the country more
than the gun control and abortion debates combined.
 
You couldn’t turn on CNN, MSNBC, Larry King,
Geraldo, Tim Russert, Headline News, VH-1, TNN or anything else without hearing
somebody talking about whether Eddie Long did or didn’t do it.
 
On Court TV, a panel consisting of F. Lee
Bailey, Willie Nelson, Gerry Spence, and Hank Williams, Jr., debated whether
Eddie should be honored at the Country Fanfare Awards or sentenced to
death.
 
Greta Van Sustren moderated the
panel with the seriousness one might accord discussions on the Middle
East peace process.

A spokesman for the Country Fanfare Awards issued a
statement.
 
“The awards show will
proceed
as scheduled on CBS at nine eastern, eight central,
with special appearances by Chuck Norris and John Schneider.
 
And of course we’re still going to honor Mr.
Long,” he said.
 
“These ain’t
nothing
but unfounded allegations.
 
We here at the CFA are shocked that a
reputable publisher, and I use that word reluctantly, that a publisher like
Atlas would go to print with such scurrilous charges.
 
In fact, I understand Eddie Long’s
representatives are filing a lawsuit of appropriate proportions in response to
the slander contained in this book.”

The CFA spokesman was right.
 
Herron and Peavy screamed bloody murder in the press as well the
courtroom.
 
They filed a $60 million
lawsuit claiming libel and defamation of character.
 
On top of that was a claim for another $30
million for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
 
Time,
Newsweek
, and
The Wall Street Journal
gave it front page coverage.
 
Franklin
Peavy, who had to brush up a little on these areas of the law, responded by
saying the claims in Jimmy’s book constituted a tortious act so utterly
shocking and outrageous as to not only meet, but to wildly exceed, the court’s
high standard for prevailing in such cases.

The lawyers for Atlas Publishing scoffed.
 
“They can scream as loud as they want,” one
of them said.
 
“Mr. Long is no longer a
private citizen by any definition.
 
He is
an established celebrity and as such he cannot recover any damages unless he
can prove Mr. Rogers knowingly wrote untruths about him.
 
It’s what the Supreme Court calls ‘actual
malice.’
 
And unless the great state of Tennessee
no longer recognizes the authority of the United States Supreme Court, I feel
certain we will prevail in this matter.
 
As to the claim that in writing this book Mr. Roger’s actions meet the
standards cited by Mr. Peavy in their claim for punitive damages, keep in mind
that in this day and age it takes a hell of a lot more than the mere
insinuation that one may have committed murder to qualify as utterly shocking
and outrageous.”

Thanks to all the publicity and the generally positive
reviews, The Eddie Long Story shot to #1 on the
New York Times
best-seller list its second week out.
 
Not surprisingly, sales of
Long Shot
surged as well.
 
According to SoundScan, the album sold
another 435,000 units the week following the book’s release.
 
People
who somehow
had managed never to hear of Eddie Long before now, suddenly had to hear the
songs by the guy who might turn out to be a serial killer.

The press naturally turned their attention to the police in
the cities where the crimes had been committed.
 
The police said their investigations had dead-ended and all their
evidence had been turned over to detectives with the National
Crime Information
Center.
 
The Feds would say only that they were not
free to comment on open investigations.
 
But one anonymous source with the NCIC said that after the book was
released, an investigator returned to Eddie’s old house but was unable to find
the container of Uncle Randy’s Meat Tenderizer that Jimmy cited in the
book.
 
According to the anonymous source,
it appeared that someone had recently broken into the house and tampered with
the crime scene.
 
The NCIC investigator
also returned to the Lytle’s property only to find the pesticide shack had
recently burned down in the middle of the night.
 
Asked about this, the local fire marshall
said, “We know it was arson.
 
We just
don’t know the arsonist.”

86.

“By God, you were right.
 
He’s a handsome kid,” Chester
said with more than a little pride.
 
“I
could see part of myself in him, ‘cept of course he’s better lookin’.”

Otis nodded.
 
“I’m
glad you got to see him.
 
You thinking
you’ll go back to talk to him?”

Chester rubbed
his chin, smiling wistfully.
 
“Can’t decide.
 
One
part of me wants to, but hell, for all I know he’d like to kill me for runnin’
out on him and his mama.
 
That’s not
really the way I wanna go.
 
But I hadn’t
ruled it out entirely.
 
I figure I’ll go
back, see him again, see if it feels right.
 
Maybe I’ll introduce myself, maybe I won’t.
 
Least I know where to find him.”

Chester and Otis
were sitting in the kitchen at Estella’s.
 
Otis had called Chester that
morning and said he might have some work for him.
 
Now it was late afternoon and the place was empty
except for the two men.
 
They’d been
sitting in the kitchen for a half an hour talking about Whitney and, before
that, about how Estella was doing.
 
Chester
could see the burden on Otis’s face.
 
Doctors had told him there’d been no change in Estella’s condition, no
brighter prospects for recovery.
 
“I’m
awful sorry to hear that,” Chester
said.
 
“She’s a fine woman, Otis.”

“I know it and I’m afraid I’m gonna lose her.”
 
The thought made Otis feel smaller than he
was.
 
He needed her all day and all night.
 
She started where he ended and if she was
gone, Otis might as well be too.
 
“I’ve
been spending time at the hospital,” he said, “just sittin’ with her, you know?
 
Thinkin’.”
 
Otis shrugged his narrow shoulders.
 
“Thinking about things she said to me that I
never listened to.”
 
He smiled halfway
and his little tuft of whiskers pointed at Chester.
 
“You know, she never much cared for old Bill
Herron.
 
I don’t know how many times she
told me I shoulda got more money outta that man for my records and everything
and, well, I probably shoulda listened, but you know I never listened as good
as I talked.”
 

Chester looked
across the table and wondered where all the time had gone.
 
He was thinking about how young and alive
they all used to be and how it all seemed to have passed in a wink.
 
He wanted to say something to prop Otis up
but he didn’t know what words to use.
 
“You let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Tell you the truth,” Otis said, “that’s why I called you.”

“Just name it.”

“Mr. Peavy came to see me the other day about something.”

“What’d he want?”