The Quiet Game (24 page)

I start to get out, then stop. “You don't mind if I call your wife to confirm that story, do you? About her calling you to go get groceries?”

“Do what you want. I divorced that bitch thirty years ago. Just get the hell out of this ride.”

I climb out and walk to my father's car. The other salesmen are lined up against the showroom window, staring openly now. As Jones switches seats and pulls the Trans-Am toward the building, I start the BMW and drive quickly off the lot.

One cell phone call to my mother tells me all I need to know. Frank Jones's ex-wife still lives in Natchez. After a messy divorce she married the president of a local oil company, quite a trade up from Frank Jones. The “messiness” involved affairs Jones had trailed with several secretaries at the battery plant. I dial the oilman's home and ask for the ex-wife by her new name: Little.

“This is Mrs. Little,” says a rather prim voice.

“Mrs. Little, this is Penn Cage.”

“Dr. Cage's boy?”

“That's right. I—”

“I remember when you used to take the blood and X rays at your daddy's office.”

At least she didn't hang up. “Yes, ma'am. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, if you don't mind.”

“What about?”

“The day Del Payton died.”

A hesitation. “What about it?”

“I just talked to your ex-husband, and—”

“Sweet Jesus. What did that no-count say about me?”

Her anger sounds fresh, even after thirty years. “He used you for an alibi, Mrs. Little. He said he went out to the Triton parking lot on the night Del Payton died because you asked him to pick up some groceries.”

“That's a damn lie, pardon my French. He was in that parking lot because he was diddling one of his floozies.”

This remarkable statement stops me for a moment. “Are you . . . you're saying you think someone was in the lot with him that night?”

“Are you hard of hearing? That no-good tomcat came home that night and asked me to tell the police same story he told you. And I did, numbskull that I was.”

I'm not sure I'm breathing.

“The next morning I took the car to the grocery store—for real that time—and as I was loading the bags into the backseat, I found a pair of stockings. They weren't mine, and they were not in pristine condition—
if
you know what I mean. When I got home, I kicked that sorry sack right out of the house. For good.”

“Have you ever told this to anyone before today?”

“Sure. The police. I called them back and told them I hadn't been straight with them. That my husband made me lie.”

A car horn honks behind me. I pull into the right lane and accelerate to the speed of the cars around me. “What did the police say?”

“Not to worry. That I wouldn't get into any trouble. Everything was under control.”

Under control.
“Do you remember which officer you told?”

“Yes. He came out to the house. It was that cop they sent to Parchman later on. Ray Presley.”

No account of this meeting made it into the case report. “Was Presley alone when he came to see you?”

“Yes. He gave me the creeps, that Presley. Always did.”

“Did anyone from the FBI question you about this?”

Mrs. Little says nothing, but not because she has nothing to tell.

“Mrs. Little, do you remember an FBI agent named Dwight Stone?”

“Well, actually . . . I do, yes. But that's all I have to say. Good—”

“Please wait! Do you have any idea who your husband was with on that day? Which floozie, I mean? I know this is painful, but it's terribly important. The faster I get to the bottom of this, the less chance anyone is going to get hurt.”

“I don't like talking about this.” Her breaths are shallow, anxious. “If you get to the bottom of it, my ex-husband is going to come out of it smelling like a cowpie, isn't he?”

“Probably.”

“Betty Lou Jackson.”

“Ma'am?”

“That's the slut's name. She's married to some electrical contractor now. Beckham, her name is. Acts like she's as good as anybody, but she's a tramp through and through.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Little.”

“Don't thank me, because I never told you anything.”

The phone goes dead.

The nice thing about small towns is that it's easy to find people. Directory assistance has only one Beckham listed. I'm starting to feel like I might solve the Payton case without ever leaving the car.

“Hello?” A woman's voice.

“Is this Betty Lou Beckham?”

“Yes. I don't use the ‘Lou' anymore, though. It's just Betty. Betty Beckham. Who is this?”

“This is Penn Cage, Mrs. Beckham.”

Deafening silence.

“Mrs. Beckham?”

“I'm real busy right now, Mr.—”

“I just wanted to ask you a couple of quick questions.”

“I can't help you. I'm sorry.”

“You don't know what I'm going to ask you.”
Or do you?

“I saw the paper the other day.” Her voice is so tight that her vocal cords must be near to snapping. “It's about that, isn't it?”

“Mrs. Beckham, I realize this might be a delicate matter. I'd be glad to speak to you in person if you'd feel more comfortable.”

“Don't you come around here! Somebody might see you.”

“Who are you worried would see me?”

“Anybody! Are you crazy?”

“Mrs. Beckham, I really only have one question. Were you in that parking lot when Del Payton's car exploded?”

“Oh, my God. Oh, dear Jesus. . . .”

“I have absolutely no interest in what you might have been doing there, Mrs. Beckham. I just want to know about the bombing.”

How stupid did that sound? If Betty Lou was doing what Mrs. Little suspected she was doing in that parking lot, it might end up on the network news.

“Don't call back,” she pleads. “You'll get me in bad trouble. Yourself too. You don't know. You just don't know!”

She's hung up, but the fear in her voice was real enough to raise the hair on the back of my neck. She is afraid of more than memories. She's been living in dread ever since Caitlin's story ran in the paper.

As I turn into my parents' neighborhood, the cell phone rings. It's Althea Payton.

“I tried to call you earlier, Althea, at the hospital. But you were busy.”

“I know. I got this number from your father.” She sounds out of breath. “I think I've remembered something important.”

“Take it easy. I'm not going anywhere. What is it?”

“I was visiting an adult patient this morning, and his TV was tuned to CNN. I really wasn't paying attention, but then I heard your name. They were talking about that execution in Texas. How you were the lawyer who convicted that man.”

“Right. . . .”

“They showed you walking into the prison. And then, right after that, they showed another man. They said he was the head of the FBI. I didn't hear his name, but I watched again an hour later to see if they'd run the same thing, and they did.”

“I don't understand, Althea. What did you remember?”

“I knew that man. Mr. Portman. John Portman.”

“You knew him? From where?”

“From here. Right here in Natchez.”

“You've seen John Portman in Natchez?”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you. Remember I told you about Agent Stone? How he was nice and really wanted to help us?”

“Yes.”

“And I told you some of them didn't. How Mr. Stone had another man with him, a young Yankee man, who was cold and never said anything?”

My chest feels hollow. “Yes. . . .”

“That was him. That John Portman on the TV was him.”

“Althea, you must be mistaken. John Portman would have been very young in 1968.”

“It's him, I tell you. His hair's a little grayer, but that's the only difference. The second time they ran the story, I watched close. Ain't no doubt about it. It was him. A young Yankee man, cold as February. Chilled me right to the bone.”

Somewhere in my mind Dwight Stone is saying,
I knew Portman. He came into the Bureau a few years before I got out. . . .

“Don't say anything else, Althea. I'm on a cell phone. I'm going to check on this and get back to you.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don't want to speculate. Don't talk to anyone about this. I'll get back to you.”

“I'll be waiting.”

I hit End, then turn into my parents' driveway and park, leaving the engine running. Of all the things I could possibly have learned about this case, this is the most astonishing. If John Portman was in Natchez in 1968, a lot of things suddenly make sense. Dwight Stone's personal hatred of him. Stone's unwillingness to talk about the case. Maybe even the national security seal on the Payton file, although this is probably going too far. No one could have known in 1968 that Special Agent John Portman would wind up director of the FBI thirty years later. So that wasn't the reason Hoover sealed the file. But Portman almost certainly knows
why
the file was sealed, as does Stone. Given Stone's hatred of Portman—and Stone's dismissal from the Bureau while Portman rose through its ranks—that reason must have been something Stone could not stomach but which Portman went along with.
He was a good little German,
Stone had said of Portman.
He followed orders.
The question is, what was he ordered to do?

As I get out of the car, a middle-aged black cop in uniform walks around the corner of the house, one hand on the gun at his hip.

“Are you Penn Cage?”

“Yes, sir.”

He smiles and nods. He has the sad, drooping eyes of a beagle. “I'm James Ervin. Just keeping an eye on things for you and your daddy.”

“I'm glad to see you, Officer Ervin.” I reach out and shake his hand. “That gun loaded?”

He taps the automatic on his hip. “You bet.”

“Good man.”

“You sure got a pretty little girl in there. Reminds me of my girls when they was little.”

“Thank you. Do you know what all this is about?”

Ervin sucks in his upper lip and looks at the ground. “You trying to get whoever killed Del Payton, ain't you?”

“That's right. Did you know Del?”

“My daddy knew him.” He raises the beagle eyes to mine, and they are full of quiet conviction. “Don't you worry none. You ain't gonna have no trouble. Somebody come messin' 'round here, they on the
wrong side
.”

It takes less than ten minutes on my mother's computer to verify what Althea Payton told me on the cell phone. The FBI's official web page features a thumbnail biography of its new director. The bio boasts of Portman's first year as a field agent, one which he spent investigating race murders in Mississippi and Alabama. That year was 1968. A
Time
magazine writer hailed Portman's “year in the trenches” and stated that his “sterling civil rights credentials” were one of the major reasons the President had tapped the Republican federal judge to lead the FBI in a bipartisan gesture that shocked most Democrats. The Bureau had been wracked by racial problems for the past decade, and had been successfully sued by both African-American and Hispanic agents. Portman's Deep South experience sat well with minority political interests.

By my calculations, Portman was twenty-five when he visited Althea Payton's house with Dwight Stone. Fresh out of Yale Law. Stone was probably ten years older. Beyond this my facts are few. Portman rose swiftly through the Bureau's ranks while Stone was fired five years later. In Crested Butte I sensed that Stone felt his dismissal was related to the Payton case. But if that was true, why would Hoover wait five years to terminate him? Or had whatever happened in 1968 haunted Stone, fueling his alcoholism, until Hoover was finally left no choice but to fire him?

Unable to answer this question, I list the names of main players on the computer and stare at them a while.
Payton. Presley. Marston. Stone. Portman. Hinson.
One of the first things a writer learns is that the best way to solve a problem is to get out of the way of his subconscious and let it work. Following this dictum, I begin playing with the screen fonts and point sizes, switching from Courier to Bookman, from flowing Gothic to a tortured Algerian. As the fonts swirl and transform themselves before my eyes, it strikes me that men like Leo Marston and John Portman cannot be investigated by normal means, especially by a private citizen. Caitlin's status as a reporter lends us some theoretical authority under the First Amendment, but this means next to nothing in the real world. What is required is some creative thinking.

Kings and presidents can be brought down with the right weapons. The trick is to find their vulnerabilities. Men like Portman and Marston live for power. They hunger for it even as they wield more than most men will ever know. They act with certainty and dispatch, rarely allowing themselves the luxury of doubt. And so long as they operate from this fortress of psychological security, they are untouchable. Perhaps the way to bring them down is to breach that fortress, to turn their worlds upside down and force them into a
re
active mode. The way to do that seems obvious enough. Re-introduce them to an emotion they have not felt in a great while.

Fear.

 

My first thought when my father comes through the pantry door is that he looks ten years older than he did two days ago. He kisses my mother and Annie, then motions for me to follow him into the library. I shrug at my mother and follow.

He sits in his leather recliner and switches on the television, apparently to mask our conversation.

“Somebody just tried to kill Ray Presley.”

“What?” I exclaim, dropping onto the sofa to his left.

“His girlfriend was giving him the first few cc's of that Mexican chemotherapy he takes. He started complaining of angina and ripped the catheter out of his wrist. The girl called 911 and gave him CPR until the paramedics got there. He was having a coronary. He just checked himself out of the CCU against my orders.”

“What makes you think it was attempted murder?”

“The girl brought in the IV bag, and one of our lab techs ran a few tests. He thinks there's some potassium chloride mixed in with the cocktail.”

“Jesus. Did you call the police?”

“Ray told me not to. He was so goddamn mad he wouldn't let anybody but me close to him. He said he'd handle it himself.”

“I'll bet he will. How much damage did his heart sustain?”

“I don't have enough enzyme tests back to tell.” Dad drums his hands on the arms of the chair. “We've got another problem.”

“What?”

“You talked to Betty Lou Beckham today?”

“How do you know that?”

“She showed up at my office at four o'clock, half in the bag. Said she had to talk to me.”

I should have expected this. For years my father has acted as a confessor
to countless souls, particularly women, who have no outlet for their sorrows and anxieties other than their ministers or local psychologists, as Natchez has attracted only one or two psychiatrists over the past two decades, and none has stayed. In this vacuum, a compassionate M.D. fills the void as no one else can.

“Was she in that parking lot when Del Payton died?”

“Yes. She and Frank Jones were having sex in his car when the bomb went off, if you can believe it. She saw Payton walk out to his car. She actually saw the damned thing explode.”

“Christ. What else did she see?”

“When the bomb went off, Jones panicked. He started to take off, but Betty Lou reminded him that he was supposed to be working inside the plant. She was off that day, so she got into her VW to leave. When she was almost out of the lot, she looked up and saw somebody watching her from a pickup truck.”

“Who?”

“Ray Presley.”

A fist closes around my heart. “Presley was there
when
the bomb went off?”

Dad nods once, very slowly.

“So . . . he was involved in the actual murder.”

“It looks that way.”

“Did Betty Lou tell anybody she'd seen him there?”

“Not at first. Presley came to see her and explained that might not be good for her health.”

This scene is all too easy to imagine.

“Then Frank Jones's wife found Betty Lou's stockings in his car and kicked Jones out of the house. I gather that Mrs. Jones then told the police her husband had lied about why he was in the parking lot, because Presley came to see Betty Lou again. Gave her a harsher warning.”

“But she told the FBI, didn't she? Special Agent Dwight Stone.”

“Not at first. When Agent Stone found out Jones's wife had kicked him out the morning after the murder, he talked to the wife, and she led him to Betty Lou. Stone offered her money, but Betty Lou wouldn't talk. She was too scared of Ray. Then somebody shot at those FBI agents on the highway. Stone came back and told Betty that if she withheld evidence, he'd make sure she did time in federal prison. He convinced her. She's basically a good girl. She wanted to tell the truth all along.”

“She gave up Presley to Stone.”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. Betty Lou kept waiting for Presley to be arrested, but he never was. Then the FBI pulled Stone out of town. Presley showed up again, beat the hell out of her, forced her to give him oral sex . . . she was a basket case. She was about to skip town when Presley was arrested on the drug-trafficking charges that sent him to Parchman.”

I sit back on the sofa, trying to process it all.

“She's still scared to death of Ray. She's been working herself toward a nervous breakdown since Caitlin Masters's article came out. When you called this afternoon, she lost it. I gave her a shot of Ativan and drove her home.”

“Ray is the problem you were talking about. He's directly involved in the murder, but if I push him, he'll push back. He doesn't have your gun anymore, but he could still raise a hell of a stink if he wanted to.”

Dad sighs and leans back in his chair.

“It doesn't matter,” I decide. “Presley wasn't solely responsible for Payton's death. The fact that someone just tried to kill him proves that. Somebody's afraid he'll talk.”

We both look up as my mother slides open the library door. I assume she is summoning us to supper, but she says, “You've got a visitor, Penn.”

“Who is it?”

“Caitlin Masters.”

I wasn't expecting Caitlin, so she must have news. “Bring her in.”

“She's playing with Annie.”

When Mom disappears, Dad says, “How much does Masters know?”

“Nothing about the blackmail.”

“Don't tell her what happened to Ray. Not yet.”

Caitlin comes to the door carrying Annie in her arms, then passes her off to my mother and promises to be back in the kitchen in a few minutes. She's wearing black jeans, sandals, and a white pinpoint button-down with her sable hair spilling around the collar. She looks harried but also ready to burst with excitement.

Dad stands as I make the introductions, and as soon as Mom closes the door, Caitlin says: “I just hit the jackpot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I traced Lester Hinson. The guy in the article from the Leesville
Daily Leader
?”

“What's his story?”

“He's a small-time crook who spent most of his life in Angola Prison. He lives in New Orleans now.”

“You talked to him?”

Too excited to remain in one place, Caitlin begins pacing. “More than that.
I found out exactly how he ties in to the Payton case. In April of 1968 Lester Hinson and a supply sergeant named Earl Wheeler ripped off an arms depot at Fort Polk and started selling the stuff on the black market. A month later they were busted by the Army CID. That's what the article was about, right? Well, Hinson was a civilian, and he got a visit in jail from Special Agent Dwight Stone. Stone wanted to know if the pair had sold C-4 to anyone from Mississippi, particularly Natchez. They had. Stone had to get the charges pled down to find out who the buyer was, but he didn't mind that at all.”

“The buyer was Ray Presley,” I say in a monotone.

Her mouth drops open. “You're not guessing, are you?”

“No. We just placed Presley at the crime scene when the bomb went off.”

“How did you do that?”

“You finish first. I can't believe Hinson just spilled his guts to you.”

“He didn't. I did what cops do.”

“What's that?”

She grins. “I paid him. I told him what I wanted, then wired five hundred dollars to a Western Union office in New Orleans. I told him I'd wire him another five hundred if he told me what I wanted to know. He would have talked all day for that money.”

Dad gives Caitlin an admiring look.

“Forget that,” she says. “How did you put Presley at the scene?”

“You were right about what Stone was trying to tell us. There was another witness to the murder. One who never made it into the police report.”

“Who?”

“Her identity isn't important right now. What matters—”

“Not important!”

Caitlin isn't going to like this. “This witness can only implicate Ray Presley. Presley probably killed Payton, but he almost certainly did it for someone else. That's how he worked. And I don't want to move on Presley until we have the man who ordered the crime.”

Caitlin is shaking her head. “But that's how you get to the top guy, isn't it? You squeeze the little fish until they talk.”

“Usually, yes. But Presley's a special case. He's never scared easy, and now he has terminal cancer. He doesn't have a lot of fear of earthly punishment. So, he bought some plastic explosive in 1968. The statute ran out on that long ago. The witness who saw him in the Triton parking lot is a terrified woman who's now married and respectable, but who happened to be committing adultery in a car when the bomb exploded. I seriously doubt she would make a statement to the police, much less testify in open court.”

“Penn, I can't believe I'm hearing this. We now have means and opportunity for Presley to have committed homicide. The motive could be racial
prejudice. He's a lock for it. If we don't squeeze Presley, how can we get any further?”

“We've just been discussing that.”

She looks from one to the other of us, her green eyes probing. “You guys know something I don't. Right? Something about Presley. Something that's keeping you from going after him.”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I can't tell you. Not at this point.”

The familiar pink moons appear high on her cheeks. “What kind of bullshit answer is that? Are we partners or not?”

I trust Caitlin implicitly, but I cannot trust her with my father's secret. “If I could tell you, I would. But I have to ask you to trust me for now.”

“You ask me to trust you, but you don't trust me.” She looks at my father, who is staring pointedly at the floor, then back at me. “You think Leo Marston hired Presley?”

“Don't you?”

“There's no evidence of that.”

“Ike Ransom says it's Marston, and Dwight Stone said the same thing in so many words.”

“But neither of them will go public.”

“There's been another development as well.”

She sighs and looks at the floor. “I'm afraid to ask.”

“Stone lied to us in Colorado. He knew John Portman a hell of a lot better than he led us to believe.”

“How do you know that?”

I quickly explain Althea Payton's call about seeing Portman on CNN, and my subsequent verification that he worked in Mississippi in 1968.

Caitlin gropes backward for her chair and falls into it. “Holy shit. Do you realize what this means?”

“Tell me.”

“This story just went national. This story is
huge
.”

“Remember our deal. You print nothing until I say so.”

“When I made that promise, I didn't know you were going to obstruct the investigation for reasons you don't see fit to tell me.”

“There were no conditions on the promise. And I expect you to abide by it.”

She purses her lips. “Could I please point out a couple of things? One, we have no real investigative power. Two, the files we need are under government seal, and we're unlikely to get that changed without a protracted court battle. Three, the Payton case somehow involves the director of the FBI, who has practically unlimited power to interfere with us. Four, the case also
involves Leo Marston, the single most powerful man in this county, possibly in the state. Five, no one directly involved in the case wants to talk to us.” She holds up her hands in desperation. “What do you want to
do
? I think the media is the only weapon we have.”