The Whiskey Baron (11 page)

“Evening, Larthan, fancy seeing you again.”

He took off his hat.

“Sit down, sit down, have a cup of tea.”

At those words, the man who’d let him in now upturned a cup on the table and indicated it with his hand. “No thanks,” Tull said, and sat in the chair across from her. “Not this evening.”

“What brings you up here?”

“I had some trouble in Castle this week.”

“Ernest and Lee find them some gals to run off with, leave you to do your own business?” She chuckled as she said this.

“No, they got shot in front of my bar last night.”

She squinted. “By whom?”

“I don’t know. Sounds like a man named Mary Jane Hopewell.”

She nodded. “I remember him.”

“My barkeep said they had some kind of argument. Seems they were plotting to cut into my business.”

“I’ll be damned,” she said, and chuckled again. She topped off her cup of tea, said, “Let that be a lesson to you, Larthan. Business is one thing, but you got to expect repercussions if you want to hold a monopoly. Next time you might have some more intelligent competition.”

“Says the tycoon.”

“Heavy is the crown,” she said.

“There’s more to it than that.”

“Oh?”

“Mary Jane owes me several thousand dollars. He’s been cooking up his own secret recipe, and I believe he might stop by here before it’s all said and done. Try to convince you to go into business with him. In fact, word is he may already have reached out to you.”

She took another sip of her tea. “No, I’ve not seen him since he drove up here with your load. Must be a few years ago now.”

He believed her. He could see her eyes calculating her next move and knew this information had been news to her. He said, “Mary Jane’s a nobody. He makes extra whiskey on his farm—good whiskey, I’ll give him that—but not enough to distribute on any scale.”

“Oh Larthan, you know I’ll not be doing business with anyone else down there. You’re too good to me for that.”

They both knew she was lying to him now, that for enough money she’d have him killed and not lose a minute’s sleep over it, but he knew she wouldn’t leave him to go into business with Hopewell. Hopewell couldn’t bring in the kinds of profits Tull did for her. Still, it had to be said. The man had five thousand dollars hidden somewhere, and Tull aimed to find it before Hopewell could invest it in something like a business deal with Aunt Lou. Once she got the money, Tull would never get it, and Hopewell was too stupid and inept to bring in enough profits to pay off Aunt Lou and Tull both, and Tull would be forced to kill him. Not that he had a problem killing the man, and the more Tull thought about it, the less he cared about the money. Hopewell was a dead man.

He said, “I got your load this week, a little extra. Might have me some new runners by next week, but supply might be a little low until then.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine. Next time, I might call and meet Hollis out in the fields before stopping by. They got me under an investigation, and I suspect a murder down in Castle is going to draw some attention from the big timers.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“I know you will, darling. I know it. You never did worry me with how you handled the law. I know you’ll lay low when you need to. You come on by any time you like.”

She lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the overhead light, which was his signal to go. He placed his hat back on his head and walked out the front door, the man Hollis following close behind. Tull backed out of the driveway, and the man followed him in a ’29 Model A. Together they caravanned out of the clean, swept streets of the east end, away from the street lamps and quiet elm-lined avenues
and out into the countryside south of town. They turned off the macadam and onto a gravel one-lane framed with tall rows of summer corn, on along the rutted and washed out path until they reached a clearing big enough for their vehicles. The gravel chirred as Tull slowed and turned in. When the Model A parked beside him, the headlights winked off, enshrouding them in near total darkness.

Tull got out and opened the trunk of his car. He’d upgraded from the old Cadillac to a gleaming black Studebaker Commander with a 354-inch engine that could outpower any other car in Castle County, and in the trunk was a hidden compartment for hauling whiskey. The back suspension was double framed to accommodate the weight of two hundred gallons of shine pressing down on the axle. The man stood beside him, a specter in the night, and he remained silent as they loaded the gallon cans of whiskey into the other car.

These were the evenings Tull was most comfortable with, loading shine under cover of moonlight, the wind in the corn and the chatter of crickets, the call of a whippoorwill. A V8 for a fast getaway. Somehow his business had gotten complicated of late. Brewing whiskey itself wasn’t hard, you just needed raw ingredients: corn, sugar, yeast, water. Make a mash, let it ferment in a barrel, boil it through a web of copper pipes, collect the condensed alcohol in gallon cans, and it was ready to go. In his youth in Knoxville, the challenge was always finding an out-of-the-way creek where the revenuers wouldn’t find you, but once Tull had taken over Watkins’s soda plant in Castle, he had access to the ingredients and a natural cover in the plumes of steam that rose out of the plant. His secret was to add some cola to the brew, which gave it a bit of color, helped with the flavor, and stretched his supply.

No, the liquor side of the business wasn’t that complicated. His real business was people. It didn’t take that many to run a small soda plant—twenty could do it—and he made sure they knew not to ask too many questions about what went on in boiler room three. But when you could brew a thousand gallons a week, more than enough liquor for three counties, you found yourself in business with the likes of Aunt Lou, always having to keep your guard up, not only against the tiger in front of you but also snakes like Mary Jane Hopewell, slithering through the grass at your feet. Men like him
had no respect for established businesses and must be dealt with, swiftly and harshly. Like a spot of rust in a machine, they must be greased and polished away so that the machine glided along without friction, as it was supposed to do.

After loading the Model A, Tull wheeled out of the clearing, down the gravel road and back toward Castle. In the rearview, the man’s headlights veered off and for a time Tull was chased by nothing but darkness. He crossed the state line, and somewhere in York County a siren wailed. From out of the blackness a police car pulled in front of him and cut him off. Tull jerked the wheel and drove two wheels onto the roadside while the car bucked beneath like an angry bronco.

He skidded to a halt before the cruiser, flexed his jaw a few times, waited. A county officer got out and sauntered over. Pants hitched up high and his white shirt tucked in. A billyclub and a revolver by his side. He had a jolly-looking face, enough jowls that the line between his chin and his neck was merely a wrinkle in the flesh. The kind of man you’d want to serve you eggs and coffee in a diner.

“Evening, officer.”

“Evening.”

Outside the window, the waning moon and the stars lit up the night a deep and blazing gray, and the chatter and hum of crickets sounded like a chorus across the empty farmscape. Tull said, “What’s the trouble here?”

“Name, please?”

“Jimmy Malone.”

“Well, Mr. Malone, what brings you out tonight?”

“I was up visiting a sick aunt in Charlotte. Heading back home.”

“Where’s home?”

“I work in the Bell mill.”

The officer looked up and down the length of the Studebaker. “Kind of late, isn’t it? Don’t the whistle blow at five?”

“Yes sir, but my aunt, she’s sick.”

“So you said.” The officer stepped back and took another look at the car. “Nice car for a millhand. She registered?”

“Yes sir, I got the paperwork right here.” Tull reached for the glove compartment but the officer tapped on the door with his billyclub.

“Why don’t you step out for a minute?”

Tull thought for a moment about paying the officer off. These hicks all had a price, but Tull was in no mood to negotiate. The door creaked as Tull swung his feet out, planted them in the loose chert. A chill in the air, the scent of cedars and earth. A shelf cloud hovered low in the distance, an anvil in the dark. Wind tossed nearby treelimbs, turned the maple leaves upward.

“Since you work at the Bell, I reckon you’ve heard about the murder that took place last night?”

“Oh, it was terrible.” Tull shook his head.

“The man that did it is somewhere out in the backcountry here.”

“You don’t say.”

“Mary Jane Hopewell. You know him?”

“I heard about him, but I never met him myself.”

“Never met him. Well. This state’s been having all kinds of trouble lately. Bootleggers and murders and men on the run. You wouldn’t be involved in any of that, would you?”

“Oh, no sir. Clean as a whistle, I am. In church every Sunday.” Tull could feel lightning in his veins, and he realized he was watching his moment for paying the man off slide away, but he didn’t care. Insects rattled in the fields, and the breeze blew against him. Somewhere, a toad bellowed. Off in the distance a spider’s web of lightning spun its way across the sky.

“Why don’t you open this trunk for me? I hate to call out a fellow Christian, but—”

“Oh, I understand, officer. Here.” Tull walked around and unlocked the trunk. Inside were a spare tire and an iron.

The officer poked his head in, felt around with his hand, and glanced at Tull.

“Seems this liner is a little loose,” he said.

The officer pulled the spare tire out of the trunk, the tire iron. He lay the iron on the ground before reaching in to pull up the lining of the trunk. Below it was empty, Tull having delivered his whiskey.

The officer said anyway, “Well, well. Mighty strange thing for you to have in a car. Trap door like this.”

Lightning moved out of the clouds and streaked across the sky,
flickered down in an angry, jagged shot. Cool rain began to sprinkle down on them.

While the officer still had his head in the trunk, Tull scooped up the tire iron from the ground. The officer pulled away and looked at him too late. Tull swung the iron into the man’s forehead, and it was as easy as striking iron in a forge. Again and again until the officer’s skull was stove in and sticky black blood pooled about the roadside, dampened the weeds that grew out of the gravel, spread into the grasses.

When he was finished, Tull wiped his hair out of his eyes and rubbed the iron over the man’s shirt. Blood smeared across his back. Then he reached down and pulled the pistol out of its holster, a Smith & Wesson 38-44. Brand new, looked like it had never been fired. Tull got back in the car and drove off into the approaching storm.

L
ight the color of blue dusk feathered into the room. Willie woke to the sound of his grandfather stirring and rising and limping outside to make water before enough light came out where the entire block would see him. Five months here and he still wasn’t used to indoor plumbing. Perhaps there were things in a man that became fixed at birth, and people lied to themselves until they grew too old for it to matter. Willie closed his eyes and wondered what it must be like to be an old man. Abel was cut from an ancient mold, conceived right in a Confederate battlefield, the way men weren’t made any longer. He could handle a rough mattress in a crowded room, he said, but he was seventy years old. There came a time. Willie wondered if the time were now. No one had noticed the old man addled and aloof when they came in last night. His father had shrugged them off and his mother—well, he didn’t know what she made of it all.

The man had fainted before and she had promised him to silence. Months ago, he and Quinn and their father had been in the garden, and Willie had come in for a glass of water. From the kitchen, he overheard his grandfather say, “I’m OK.”

“What happened?” asked his mother.

“I don’t know. I was here, and then I felt dizzy, and then you were here.”

“You ought to take a day off.”

“I can’t.” He coughed a wet loose cough, as if he had gravel in his chest. “Best not tell Joe. You know how he gets.”

Willie tried to sneak back outside, but his foot caught on one of the chairs, and the chair scraped across the floor. His mother ran in, and the two of them stared at each other.

“Willie,” she said. “Come in here for a moment. It’s all right.”

His grandfather sat on the bed, and he smiled at Willie. “Hey, boy.”

“Willie, your grandfather just fainted, but he’s all right. You can’t mention this to anyone, not even Quinn.”

“Why?”

“Because if someone thinks your grandfather is ill, he’ll have to quit work. Your father and Quinn, they both work so hard, and they’ve got a lot on their minds without having to worry about your grandfather. Promise me, Willie?”

“OK,” he said, and it was like a wall fell between them. When he went back to the garden, he debated for a moment whether to tell his father, or Quinn, but he had kept quiet. Now he wondered if there were anything he could have done, if he could have changed the course of history or at least prepared his family for what was looming. Had he told his father, perhaps they could have saved up. Done something. Years later he would understand there was nothing to be done. No single trigger, no instigating event. Life carried on and then it was over.

As morning crept in Willie struggled out of bed, got dressed, and shoved at his brother. “Quinn,” he hissed, but his brother lay there an unmoving lump. In the kitchen pots and pans clattered as Susannah
heated up the coffee and boiled a pan of hominy. An oil lamp burned on the table. His grandfather sat there with the same bleary look he always wore.

Joe came in and asked, “How you feel, Abel?”

“Another day.”

“That it is.”

His father took a seat, pinched his lips and widened his eyes like he always did when he had nothing more to say. They waited on Susannah to finish with breakfast. Quinn came in a moment later, nodded at the family, and sat next to Willie. Their mother put the plates in front of them and sat down. After saying grace, Joe looked over at his eldest, the boy dragging like a stubborn mule. Shadowed and bloodshot eyes and a sleepy gaze. Up to all manner of sin.