The Whiskey Baron

the whiskey baron

Copyright © 2014 Jon Sealy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

First printing, April 2014

Cover and book design: Emily Louise Smith

Proofreader: Megan DeMoss

Cover photograph © Alex L. Fradkin / Getty

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sealy, Jon, 1982–

The whiskey baron / Jon Sealy.

pages cm

ISBN
978-1-891885-74-7 (cloth : alk. paper) —

ISBN
978-1-891885-79-2 (ebook)

1. Sheriffs—Fiction.

2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.

3. Distilling, Illicit—Fiction.

4. North Carolina—Fiction.

5. South Carolina—Fiction.

1. Title.

PS3619.E2551W55 2014

813’.6—dc23

2013032664

for Emily

Certain unexpected problems are involved in the rat problem […]. The rat serves one useful function—he consumes the corpses on No Man’s Land, a job which the rat alone is willing to undertake. For this reason it has been found desirable to control rather than eliminate the rat population.

—
MAJOR GEORGE CRILE
, draft report, 1916

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Acknowledgments

T
he end of August. A Saturday. Dog Days. The blush of the evening sun and the spatter of starlight and even still the summer heat weighed down on the piedmont like a furnace stoked by some night watchman. Sheriff Furman Chambers dreamt of horses:

He was young again, and brushing Whiskey, his prize horse, the same copper Arabian who reared up on him in his sixteenth year and shattered his arm. He brushed her while flies flickered nearby in the barndark, and farther off he could hear the gallop of horse hooves. A shaft of light from the half-open door caught motes of dust in the air, the line between light and no-light scored in the dirt by his feet. Through a pasture four men approached on horseback, each wearing dark overcoats and hats, too much for this heat. Furman himself, eyeing them while he continued to brush Whiskey, was shirtless and felt the scorch of the afternoon sun on his back. The barn door
creaked as he stepped out to meet these strangers. The three hung back and stared at their leader, a Swedish blond who raised a gloved hand to Furman. “Hep you?” Furman asked, and the man grinned but did not speak. He lowered his hands to the reins, and with that the sun began to darken and a surge of shadow washed across the land of living fire. The man on the horse snapped his fingers and the other three lunged for Furman and a ringing filled the air. A shriek that surely belonged in Hell. The horsemen carried him to their leader, who for his part grinned the grin of a madman as the shriek pulsed once again.

No siren call from Hades, no horsemen and no eclipse, nothing but a telephone thirty-two years into the next century.

Sheriff Furman Chambers, now sixty-seven and far off that farm, rose to answer it on the fourth ring. As he got out of bed, Alma rolled away from him and tucked her head under the covers. She’d slept through plenty of these late-night calls and likely wouldn’t even remember being woken. Such is the rest of a soul at peace with the world.

“Hello?” he rasped, his mouth dry and clotted.

“Furman, this is Depot Murphy. I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s a situation down here on Highway 9.”

Chambers leaned against the wall and the weary bones in his left arm crunched. He grunted.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, just my arm. What kind of situation?” He pumped his fist and tried to clear his head of the spiderwebs. Sleep had been a long time coming, and rousing up like this, mid-dream, he could feel it in his chest, something wasn’t right with himself.

“Two boys have been murdered out in the street in front of the Hillside Inn.”

“God almighty. What happened?”

“I don’t know for sure. I was behind the bar when I heard the gunshots. I walked outside and saw two boys laid out in the road. Folks is starting to crowd around now. I don’t know what exactly happened,” Depot said again, “but I think you best get down here.”

“I should say so,” Chambers said. He was still half asleep. Depot
was quiet on the other end, so he said, “Ah hell, what time is it? Never mind. Listen, go on out and tell the crowd to keep away. I’m going to wake up my deputy, and we’ll be out there directly. Is Larthan there?”

Depot paused, and Chambers thought he heard him take in a breath before he said, “I don’t see him right now, but I think he’s still here. You know he likes to keep a close eye on his business.”

“Well if you see him, tell him I’d like a word.”

“This is a real mess, Furman.”

“I know it. I’m on my way.”

Chambers returned to the bedroom and got dressed. Tucked his shirt into his trousers, scratched at an ingrown hair on his lower back. Moonlight slanted through the corners of the shade and gleamed on his belt buckle as he fastened his holster, checked his pistol.

Alma stirred under the covers, mumbled, “What was that about?”

He told her he had to go.

“It can’t wait until morning?”

“Not this time. Depot Murphy says there’s two boys got shot out on Highway 9.”

“Them’s all drunks and gamblers,” she said. “You’re too old to be messing with all of that.”

“I got to get on.” He leaned in to kiss her on the forehead. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

She didn’t reply.

On his way out, he saw the clock read two, and for a moment wondered whether to read it as early or late before stepping into the night. The summer had been hot, and dry, and the heat shimmered over the land even now in the darkest hour. The landscape was a spooky shade of blue, God’s dark uninterrupted by the constant glow of lights in town. He hated to break the night’s stillness with the rumble of his car, and he flinched when the engine caught. As a younger man, he might have been inclined to speed with lights flashing and squeal to a halt at the scene of the crime, but if nothing else, time had at least given him the blessing of patience. Whatever was waiting for him would be there.

The Hillside Inn was west of town, a wooden shack down in a gulch off Highway 9. Once a boardinghouse for folks passing through, everyone knew it was now just a front for Larthan Tull’s whiskey operation. Chambers parked in some loose gravel a ways from the tavern and killed the engine. Ahead of him, a small crowd stood in the road, huddled like beggars, the fires of kerosene lanterns burning at their sides. The Hillside itself was down from the road, far enough where passersby would miss it. Dim lights in the windows cut through the dark enough to reveal loose boards dangling at odd angles from the building. Shingles half-cocked, planks of wood strewn about by the front door. Leaning against an old water oak, hunched in the gloom, was Larthan Tull himself, solemnly sipping from a jar.

As Chambers approached, the men in the road parted around the two bodies that lay at their feet. Boys really, their flesh chewed by shotgun pellets. The men had been murmuring among themselves, but as Tull rose from the water oak and swayed over, they quieted and lowered their eyes.

Chambers could see Tull was drunk, but not out of control. He figured a man with as many responsibilities as Tull had would have to stay in control, especially in a business where the casualty rate was higher than average. A dapper slick businessman, Tull was big and lean, not much younger than Chambers, though he could pass for anywhere between thirty-five and sixty. He had Scots-Irish blood, a ruddy face with clean skin and a square jaw, cold eyes recessed in shadow.

“Furman,” he said.

“Jesus, Larthan. These boys employees or customers?”

“They work for me.” Tull took a sip from the jar and waited. His firm posture gave his body the appearance of being carved from the trunk of an old hickory. Even though he wasn’t as stout as Chambers, he had an almost military stableness about him, not a man to ever wind up in a brawl with, no matter how much he’d had to drink.

Chambers walked over to where the boys lay in the road and knelt by the first, who couldn’t be more than eighteen. The boy wore a plain white buttondown and slacks over a brand of cowboy boots he could only have gotten in Texas. His body was cold and stiff,
twisted so that his left arm was beneath him, the inside muscle torn and ragged. A hole carved through half his chest, ringed by pocks of shot. A puddle of drying black blood gelled around him and oozed along toward his leg before petering out.

Chambers stretched his own aching arm out to his side, pumped his fist a few times. Tull stood beside him with one hand on his hip, jar in hand, and said, “That one’s Harry Evans’s boy, Lee. Lived up on the mill hill with his pop.”

“I know his father.”

“A worthless man,” Tull said.

“Maybe not interested in your business, but that don’t make him worthless.”

“He wasn’t interested in his son, either. I took Lee out one night, and the boy was gone from home three days before his father started inquiring about him. Wasn’t for me, this boy would be scrounging around for enough bread to get him through another day at the mill, and his father eating meat and living large and not at all wondering about his son’s health.”

“Wasn’t for you,” Chambers said, “this boy wouldn’t be dead in the road.”

He turned to examine the other body. Someone had clearly unloaded on both of them at close range, and had taken off half of this other boy’s jaw. Where his cheeks and jaw should have been, rotten teeth, loose in their sockets, hung like fenceposts at the base of his skull.

“That one’s Ernest Jones,” Tull said.

“The boy the widow took in a few years back?”

“The same. His daddy used to come in here until he lost a lot of money in a card game and took off for out of state. When his momma died he went to live with the widow, but he was always hanging around here until I finally gave him a job.”