City of Heretics (3 page)

He’d been convicted on a single charge of first degree murder, given a hefty life sentence without parole. 

That much, everybody knew. It had been all over the papers, had even scored national headlines for a couple of months. But like any ugly media story, there was much more to Murke’s saga than that.

Crowe said, “An insanity plea?  That hasn’t worked in the state of Tennessee in, what?  Decades.”

“Whatever, that’s what they’re gonna try. They’re gonna transport him to the psychiatric hospital in Jackson. He’s gonna undergo a complete psych eval. It’s not gonna do them any good. Any shrink they can get to say Murke is too crazy to be convicted, the prosecution’ll come up with three more to say he’s sane as rain. But they’re going through with it anyway.”

“When are they transporting him?”

Rad sighed. “Jesus, Crowe.”

“When, Rad?”

“The third. Tuesday. Tuesday morning. What the hell are you gonna do about it?  Ambush the goddamn transport van?”

Crowe smiled. “Not a bad idea.”

Rad shook his head. “You’re goddamn nuts. Maybe they should take
you
there. Honestly, man, don’t even tell me what you have in mind, I don’t wanna know.”

“Did you think I was gonna share with you, Rad?”

Crowe found it all very interesting. Interesting, because one of Murke’s victims—his last, in fact—was Jezzie Vitower. Wife of Marco Vitower.

Opportunity wasn’t just knocking on the door. It was walking right in, flopping down on the sofa, and opening a beer.

He stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

Rad frowned and pulled out his razor again. “Well, you know, that’s something to look forward to, I reckon.”

“Dese boys,” the Hink said. “They been in the neighborhood, see. They been around, and they got no bidness here.”

“Outsiders?”

“Yeah. Dis new gang popped up in the last few years, while you was away. Bad Luck, Inc, dey called. Dese fellas wit’ dem.”

The Hink’s office was in the far back of the house, down a long crumbling hallway hidden by a ratty curtain. It was barely big enough for his desk and two wooden chairs, and there were no windows. He had a poster hanging on the wood-paneled wall of a Hispanic girl holding her large breasts up, as if waiting for an inspection. Several large stacks of money were on the desk; must’ve been close to fifty grand just sitting there.

“Lotsa new faces dese days, you know,” he said, and Crowe nodded. It had been happening since long before he got sent up, the slow infiltration of major gangs into Memphis from Chicago and L.A. The scenery was changing all the time. “But so far,” the Hink said, “we been okay. We do what we do, and they do what they do. Respectin’ borders, right?”

“But now they’re getting bolder.”

The Hink nodded. “Since Vitower been runnin’ the show, things got a little more stable. The new gangs listened to him, respected him, cuz he black, not like the Old Man. Dey made deals, shook hands. But dese new boys, Bad Luck, dey don’t care ‘bout none a’ dat. Dey come in, dey do what dey want. Down the South side, dey already runnin’ everything, and now dey movin’ north and east and you can’t hardly scratch your balls wid-out hittin’ one wid your elbow.”

“I’ll do what I can. But I don’t know what good you think it’ll do. It’s not like running them out of the neighborhood is gonna do much for you, long term.”

He shook his head, and a little flurry of dandruff floated to the desk top. He brushed it away from the stacks of bills. “I don’t care ‘bout no long term. I’ll be outta this block in another three weeks or so anyway, it’ll be time to move somewhere’s else. But for now, I need dem outta my hair.”

“You clear this with Vitower?”

“I don’t need to clear nuthin’ wit Vitower,” he said, frowning.

Crowe leaned back in the rickety wooden chair, mulled it over for a second. The Hink drummed his thick fingers on the desk.

“Okay,” Crowe said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The Hink grinned, an expression that looked painful for him. One big hand grabbed a stack of bills and handed them across the desk.

“Dat’s two grand dere, for your trouble,” he said. “Get yo-self a coat, why don’t you?  You too old to be runnin’ around wid-out a coat.”

Crowe took it, slid it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

From half a block away, Crowe could see her in front of the building. Even from the distance, he knew it was her. She wore a long gray wool coat with a white fur collar. Probably fake fur, but who could tell?  Her hair was the color of oxblood, wavy but not quite curly, long and flickering in the wind like the flame of a huge candle. He paid the cabbie off half a block away and walked the rest. She saw him coming but only stood there, hands thrust into her pockets, shivering.

Closer, and they made eye contact. He went over in his mind if he should just walk right past her or actually stop. Her pale cheeks were flushed with cold. Her nose, slightly too long, burned pink and her green-gray eyes, which he’d always thought were too big, were cradled by thick black eyeliner. She looked like a gothic raccoon.

Without really making the decision to, he stopped in front of her.

She said, very softly, “Welcome home.”  Her voice was just like he remembered, just like he’d remembered all those black, black nights in prison. Deep and dark, with that soft lazy accent that absolutely refused to commit to a vowel. Like many in Memphis, she was really more of a North Mississippi girl.  

He nodded. “Well, you know, it’s good to be back.”

She nodded back at him. And they didn’t say anything for a long moment.

Then, “You wanna invite me in?”

He shrugged and opened the door for her. She went in, past him, and he smelled
her
smell. That smell did something to him. He had a lot of memories tied up with it.

She paused in the vestibule and he didn’t look at her. He went up the stairs slowly and she followed.

Inside, she took off her coat, looked around for a coat rack, and finding none, tossed it on the loveseat. She wore a simple green tee-shirt, tight around the breasts, short enough to show just a peak of her midriff. Hip-hugger jeans. She was in her mid-‘30’s, had put on a few pounds since he’d seen her last, but the extra weight looked good on her. She’d always been too skinny.

She put her fists on her hips and looked at him.

The old thing came back, horribly. Take her. Throw her on the floor and take her. He’d thought about it often enough in prison. Pretty much every lonely fantasy he’d had involved her.

He said, “Okay. You want coffee?”

“I hate coffee.”

“I don’t have anything else.”

“Tea, maybe?”

“I don’t have anything else, Dallas.”

She walked past him, gazing around the room. Her eyes flicked over the narrow little bed and the beat up loveseat and the scarred coffee table. She sat in the easy chair by the window, just like her husband had the night before, and crossed her legs like she owned the goddamn place and said, “My letter. Did you get it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“I didn’t read it.”

“What?”

“I threw it away,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here, Dallas.”

She said, “If you’d read the letter, you’d know that this is exactly where I should be.”

“Well, I didn’t read it. I think you should go.”

He couldn’t read her face. But he never could. He remembered looking down at her, he remembered her body under his, and blue light coming from somewhere, her gazing up at him with those green-gray eyes half-closed and mouth part-open, sharp little teeth clenched, sweet breath against his cheek. And the smell of her. A flower, after the rain. Even then, he couldn’t read her.

They’d been sleeping together for almost two years before Crowe went to prison. They never talked about her leaving Chester or anything like that. They weren’t children, with stupid and unrealistic ideas about each other. What they had was nothing.

She sat there in his easy chair with her oxblood hair all crazy and wind-blown. Most women probably would have been touching it, trying to fix it up, but not Dallas. She didn’t care. She knew it looked good that way.

She said, “They released you on Christmas Eve, gave you a bus ticket back to Memphis and a hearty slap on the back. You stayed at a motel on Union your first night. And then you paid the first and last month’s rent on this place the next day. Are you out of money yet?”

He thought about the two large in his pocket, but said, “Just about. Why, you need a loan?”

She laughed without amusement. “I wouldn’t call it a loan, exactly, Crowe. I wish you’d read the letter. It would make all this easier.”

He stood by the loveseat, arms crossed.

She said, “A lot’s happened in the last seven years.”

“Yeah.”

Again, they went silent. After a few seconds, she said, “Maybe I will have some coffee after all. Do you mind?”

“You know what?  I just remembered. Chester was here last night and he drank up the last of it. You remember Chester, right?  Your husband?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, Crowe. What’s that all about?  Was that supposed to make me feel all ashamed?  All morally inferior to you?”

“No. It’s supposed to make you realize I’m all out of coffee.”

She laughed again, the same humorless version. Crowe sighed and plopped down on the loveseat next to her coat. Two visitors in two days. The place was turning into a veritable social Mecca.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s the story, Dallas?  Why are you here?”

She frowned and pushed her hair out of her face. She looked away from him. “You really are… unhappy to see me. Aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer her.

“Seven years,” she drawled. “That’s an awful long time, huh?”

“It’s a long time.”

“And things have changed an awful lot. I mean… my life is… different than it was before. And you, well. I can hardly imagine.”

She was doing the
sincere
thing now. He’d seen her do it before, but never to him. That had been, probably, the best thing about what they had; no deceit had been required. She’d never said anything like
I love my husband, I really do, but
… or
Chester doesn’t understand me
or
you make me feel things
… All of those things would have been lies, or at least pointless justifications. Neither of them was interested in any of that.

But now here she was, trying to use emotion against him, the way she probably did to Chester all the time.

She said, “Do you remember, Crowe… do you remember that time we drove down to Oxford?  You wanted to go visit William Faulkner’s house.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

She smiled and shook her head. “And I said, what are you, kidding me?  Faulkner’s house?  Like you ever read a book by William Faulkner in your whole damn life. And then you… started telling me about that one book… what was it?”

He said, “
Sanctuary
.”

“Right.
Sanctuary
. About that Temple Drake woman, right?  And she was supposed to represent, what was it, Southern womanhood?”  She laughed. “But poor old Temple wasn’t really such a sweetheart, was she?”

“I remember all this, Dallas.”

“Yeah. And then that brute, Popeye, rapes her.”

“I don’t remember going into that much detail about it.”

She shook her head. “No, you didn’t. But, after you told me about it, I went and checked it out of the library. It was a horrible book. I really hated it. What it said about us. About humans. The lawyer in that, what was he called?”

“Benbow, I think.”

“Right. Something like that. A decent fellow, yeah?  But so completely… ineffectual. Everybody in that book, all these horrible, nasty characters, were able to cause change, were able to make things happen. Everyone except him. The one decent person in the whole awful book. Jesus, did I hate that book.”

He said, “The Ladies Book Club isn’t until next week. You’ll have to come back.”

She grinned ruefully. “Sorry. It’s just that, well. I can’t think of you anymore without thinking about that book. And our drive to Oxford. It was such a nice drive. And Faulkner’s house, well… remember?”

“I remember. I was bored.”

“Yeah. And I was the one who actually got something out of it. I went and read that book, after you went away, and you know what?  It sort of helped me get over you.”

“Get over me, Dallas?  There wasn’t any goddamn thing to get over. Why are you feeding me a line?”

The whole time, she hadn’t really been looking at him, only casting her eyes here and there, fixing her gaze on his tie, on his hand, on the refrigerator. Now she looked at him and the playfulness evaporated. She said, “If it was just you and me, Crowe, you’d be right. If it was just you and me, I’d have nothing to get over at all. You were a good fuck. You were fun to be around. You didn’t talk a lot so that I’d have to pretend to be interested in what you said. It was pretty ideal. The only time you yapped too much was that one time, when you told me about William Faulkner and that god-awful book. And look what that got me. But it’s not just about the two of us.”

“If you think Chester—“

“And it sure as hell isn’t about Chester.”

Crowe was getting irritated. “Okay. Who else is it about?”

She said, “I wish you’d read the damn letter.”

“Who else?”

Her mouth went all hard and she took a deep breath through her long, narrow nose. She said, “I have a son now. His name is Tom.”

“What?”

“He’ll be seven years old at the end of this month.”

It got quiet then. He looked at her. Her gaze strayed away, focused on the refrigerator again, the stove, the sink. The muscles in her jaw clenched and unclenched.

She cleared her throat and said, “It was that night, when we went to Oxford. We spent the night at that cozy little motel in Holly Springs?”

He nodded, remembering it pretty well. The condom broke, and they had a few moments of tension before shrugging it off. He remembered her laughing uneasily, saying,
well… if I get knocked up, don’t expect me to name the kid after you. I don’t think Chester would dig that so much…