Only the Wicked (29 page)

With nothing particular to do, Monk decided to take the bus tour offered in town. The tour took you to Sun Studios, then to where Stax Records had been, WDIA radio, and other points of interest in the city's musical history. Monk had carefully salted away his Otis Redding Stax albums in the bedroom closet at home. The superstar R&B artist's rough-hewn voice and command of lyrics was a direct lineage to Patton's unpolished, driving style. And Carla Thomas' “Time is on My Side” still gave him a warm memory of the garage party where he first heard the song, and had his first slow dance with Tina Chalmers.

Later, at night, he sat on the enclosed porch with Malus Locke, the farmer who rented out the land his mother owned in Mound Bayou. The town had been settled after slavery. In a reverse of the usual white municipalities practices, the officials of Mound Bayou had turned down federal aid in the old days so as to not be forced to meet Washington's standards of integration, and thus keep the city's political infrastructure black.

Monk sat in a decrepit metal tube chair with a folded blanket for padding, Locke in his hickory rocker. The farmer was in his sixties, and wore thick lenses. He was black with Chinese mixed in on his father's side of the family. Several African-Americans with Chinese descent could be found in various parts of Mississippi, a reminder of the days of railroad expansion and the import of cheap Asian labor. At their feet between them was an open bottle of Ballantine's scotch whiskey, the only liquor Locke drank. The market he traded at in Shelby ordered it specially for him from Jackson.

“How were those pork chops, brother Monk?” In his pressed blue khakis and short-sleeved shirt he sipped from a red plastic cup. A pale yellow porch light caused more shadow than clarity for the two sitting figures. Locke called people brother not in the black bonding sense, but as in all men were brothers in the eyes of God. He'd been a deacon ever since Monk could remember, at the Mount Olive Holy Redeemer Church.

“Too good,” he admitted guiltily, pork being one of the things he was supposed to be eliminating from his diet. But damned if no sooner had he walked in the house when the irresistible smell of the smothered chops, simmering in brown gravy and onions, hadn't triggered forbidden desires in him. Add the mashed potatoes and fried okra Locke's grown daughter had prepared, he knew he had to get in a double workout at the Tiger's Den when he got back home.

“That's okay you had three,” the older man said by way of a dispensation for gluttony. “I won't tell 'em up there in California where you got to be chawing down on them sprouts and what y'all call them cubes they make from soybeans?”

“Tofu,” Monk said, smiling and enjoying his own scotch. “But I ain't big on that jive.”

“Good to hear it, brother Monk.” The rocker creaked and a lightning bug landed on the porch screen, flashing some insect code in its rear end for the benefit of the human onlookers. “Got a cigar if you'd like.”

Well, no sense tiptoeing into vice's embrace. “Sure, if you're having one.”

“I'm a pipe man myself, but I can blame you for my smoking to my daughter,” he said, getting up. Locke went inside and returned shortly with the goods. He eased the screen and front door open, moving quietly for a man his age. His small movements were meant not to arouse the suspicions of his daughter. The farmer handed Monk a cigar, which he was surprised to see was a decent Robusto. He also gave him a book of matches.

“I get a few in with my orders of scotch,” Locke answered Monk's unspoken question. He sat down and began packing his pipe from a worn tobacco pouch.

The men lit up and smoked for awhile, the cicadas' hind legs rubbing and humming in the fields beyond the porch. “You do all right with your detective work?” Locke eventually asked. His head was momentarily shrouded in blue smoke, as if he were a super-natural being come to puzzle mortals with riddles.

“Some years good, some years so-so, money-wise.”

“But you satisfied with it, ain't you? It's what you want to do, right?”

Monk took the cup away from his mouth. “I wouldn't know what else to do, Malus.”

“You choose it, or it choose you?” Creak, creak.

Monk laughed. “I answered her call.”

The older man didn't respond, there was only the sound of him drawing in on his pipe like a well-oiled respirator running in a small, closed-off room. Finally he said, “You makin' headway in this thing about your cousin?”

“Not especially,” he said frankly. Again silence, and Monk figured what little image the man had of him as a PI had been shattered.

“You say something at dinner about going to see Tigbee?” Locke asked after a few moments. He was fooling with his pipe, which had gone out.

“Yes sir, big daddy himself.”

Locke got his pipe relit and puffed into the air. “He's a slick old boy, but I guess I don't have to tell you that.”

“You ever meet him?”

“Interestin' enough, I have. He gave some of the farmers around here a hand when the big frost hit in 'ninety-two, wipin' out portions of a lot of good crops.”

Monk puffed too. “That include you?”

“Yeah, but I made sure it was a loan, brother Monk. I'll be payin' it off next winter, God help the rhubarb to rise.” They both laughed softly, several lightning bugs zipping by the porch's screen.

“He's a respected man around here, by blacks and whites?”

“We ain't all book learned, brother Monk, but that don't mean we got amnesia. There's plenty know his past. But he wasn't the first one, you know, like George Wallace did later on, who ain't changed a few spots.” He let that linger, then added cogently, “Or at least the leopard appeared to.” Creak, creak.

Monk stated, “This money must have come from something other than his foundation.”

“That's right. Tigbee set up a kind of relief fund with some other business fellas,” Locke said. “But his son administered it through another branch of that foundation of his.”

“His son Cullen?”

“Yeah, that's the second oldest. He was a starting forward at Mississippi Valley State.”

Because Grant had made him itch about the family's affairs, maybe Locke could scratch the curiosity. “The other two children also involved in Tigbee's businesses?”

“The youngest son, Daniel, I believe has some kind of TV station he owns down in Florida.”

“Seed money from dad?”

“Believe so.”

“And the third one, that be the oldest daughter?”

“What you on to?” A defensive tone had suddenly risen up in him as if Monk were probing an open wound with tweezers.

“Don't know until I get there, brother Locke.”

Locke rocked, holding the cup in his hand on the armrest. “You know the Lord don't tolerate a gossip.”

“I wouldn't want you to speak out of turn.”

They smoked and drank a piece.

“The oldest is in fact a daughter, Merrill,” Locke said from around the stem of his pipe.

“But she didn't stay close to her father?”

In the weak light, Monk watched Locke tap the bowl of his pipe against the leg of the rocker. “From all accounts she was very much her mother's daughter.”

Now Monk was following. “The first wife.”

“Dolly Lee,” Locke provided. “She left Tigbee.”

“How you come by all this, brother Locke?”

Locke rocked and puffed on his pipe. “Mind you, you got me gossipin' like some ol' hen at a beauty parlor.”

Monk toked on his cigar. “This is helpful information. This isn't just idle chatter to amuse the devil. You're helping me with my case.” That might not be quite accurate, but he wouldn't lose too much sleep over small inaccuracies.

Locke weighed his guest's comments and took a sip from his glass. “Seems like it was a member of the church, a rightful sister who used to clean the Tigbee house from way back. Seems like she got to tellin' the missus had left with the young daughter back in 'fifty-two or so.” He rocked some more and the country noises blanketed both of them.

“This sister say where Dolly and the daughter lit out to?” Monk ventured after a fashion.

“Yep,” Locke drew out, then rocked some more.

Monk puffed and listened to the night.

“Ohio it was, Youngstown, Akron, may have even been Yella Springs. I can't rightly recall now exactly where. Someplace she had relations. I believe this church woman I'm speakin' of over-heard one day as the missus was on the phone. 'Course that good sister went to meet the Lord in 'sixty-nine, so's she ain't around for you to cross examine.” His easy laugh originated in his throat and stayed there.

Monk held the Robusto up to his eyes. “Fine cigar there, brother Locke.”

“Thank you, kindly. Uh-huh.” He rocked some more.

“People still come around here looking for the ‘Killin' Blues'?' Monk belched, the taste scotch and tobacco heavy in his mouth.

“Oh yeah, you know they put up a marker for Patton over there in Holly Springs in the graveyard of the New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church.”

“Like to see that 'fore I go.” Monk was getting very comfortable slumped in the chair, his leg up on the porch railing.

“It ain't buried 'neath him nor stuck behind the cupboard in the church's kitchen, if that's what you're ponderin',” Locke advised.

Monk grinned. “I really didn't think so.”

“They caught a couple of fellas from Milwaukee a few years ago diggin' up 'round Patton's grave. The church made 'em weed and reseed the whole plot as their punishment.”

Out on the access road, an engine's transmission could be heard straining to get into a higher gear.

“You ever look for the album?” Monk inquired.

“When I was comin' up, the way I heard it was Patton recorded this ‘Killin' Blues' album when he was preachin'. You know, like Swaggart used to when he was bangin' out a tune on the piano, Patton would serenade the congregation with one of his songs while he played guitar.”

“With his wild-cat growl, I don't think serenade is what you'd call it.” Monk puffed.

“Right you is, brother Monk. Anyways, the way I understand it, and this came from a play uncle of mine who was a friend of my mother Coretta, he told about some fella from New Jersey had come down here to record Patton live. He made his recordings, signed a contract with Patton—you know he had some book learnin'—and was on his way back up north when the bus he was riding in skidded off the highway somewheres outside of Nashville. So he and some of the others are dazed, see?”

“I do,” Monk said, suddenly alert.

“So he comes to his senses and scrambles outside. Now the luggage compartment flew open, and this fella looks all over the spot where they'd landed, and the suitcase he had them disks in was gone. Only that particular case, see.”

Monk digested the tale as best he could. “That's kinda amazing, brother Locke.”

“It is indeed. Want a refill?”

“Well, I …”

“You can sleep in the front room, wouldn't want Nona's boy roamin' ‘round these parts liquored up, not knowing east from west, now would I?”

“You're mighty generous with your accommodations,” he praised his host, half dozing again.

“Ain't I though?” Locke ambled back inside quietly.

Out beyond the porch screen four lightning bugs zoomed up then down as if dive bombing in formation. The Robusto had nearly burned down to his knuckles, and Monk took his feet off the railing, stretching his legs out. His lower right leg, where he'd been shot, had knotted and he leaned over to knead the muscles. He fretted that in the years to come his collected injuries would stove him up, as his dad used to say. It would be just his luck to have children with Jill, and they'd have to roll the old man out to their softball games in his wheelchair. Suddenly cold from the certainty of his advancing years, Monk went back inside, shutting the front door in a futile effort to ward off inevitability.

Chapter 21

Monk shaved languidly, standing in the small bathroom in his boxers. He'd done several rounds of crunch sit-ups and push-ups and had even jogged through town, gathering several intrigued looks from working folk on their way to their jobs. It wasn't like Mississippi hadn't been touched by the health craze, but Clarksdale, where you could get grits and biscuits and gravy for lunch, probably wasn't the next town on the list for a Bally's outlet. He didn't believe he'd totally burned off the calories from the pork chops and booze, but the exercise did alleviate his guilt.

After the workout he'd walked over to the Laundromat and put his clothes in the wash. From a pay phone he made a call to his mother's house and talked with Grant. The older man had found out from McClendon that Dolly Lee Ryshell had obtained an uncontested divorce from Manse Arnold Tigbee in 1954. She then went to live in Akron, Ohio, with a half-sister, the sister's husband, and her and Tigbee's daughter Merrill. McClendon had used a friend still on his old paper to get the information from its archives.

“Of course in those days a southern woman getting a divorce was somewhat scandalous, particularly from a powerful man like Tigbee,” Grant had said. “By then he and his father were running the family textile mill over in Robinsonville, plus they had a large farm. And you know he saw action in the Normandy invasion.”

“Anything else on the ex-wife? Is she still alive?” Monk worked a kink out of his neck.

“Nothing else from the archives, according to McClendon. You think there's anything here worth pursuing? Like maybe Tigbee called his former wife after Creel's trial and confessed to rigging the whole thing?”

“I guess we couldn't get that lucky,” Monk allowed. “But the two sons seem close to the old man. The daughter Merrill isn't mentioned in anything I've read. Like he cut that part of his life off.”