Tishomingo Blues (19 page)

Dennis said, "Land or territories?"

Robert didn't speak for a moment, looking at him.

"You know what you talking about?"

"Carla says Jerry's a gangster. She said, `I thought you knew that.' From my hanging around with you."

"Bad influence."

"You told me yourself you sold drugs."

"When I was a child."

"Young Boys, Incorporated," Dennis said. "I think you have your own young boys now, your own crew."

Robert was shaking his head. "Gangs, Dennis. You recruit the gang, walking around in their colors, nothing to do. They Young Dogs now I send on the road. Go to Fort Wayne, South Bend, Muncie, Kokomo. Was in the paper, two out of three dealers in Muncie, Indiana, are from Detroit. We move over to Ohio, set up Young Dogs in Lima, Dayton, Findlay. You ever hear that joke, the traveling salesman gets laid in Findlay, Ohio, and goes to confession?"

Dennis said, "And then gets laid in New York and goes? Yeah, I heard it."

"Canton, Ohio, man, there's a neighborhood there, projects, they call Little Detroit account of all the Young Dogs operating there. There's gangs from L. A. working into the same territories. It's how come you have your drive-bys. Mostly the trade is crack, 'cause you make more cooking and then cutting a hundred-dollar gram of coke into a hundred rocks you can sell for ten each. The Young Dogs go to a town, set up crack houses. It's like a franchise, Dennis, the McDonald's of drugs."

"What do the Dogs need you for?"

"The product, man. Where these kids gonna score it in quantity?"

"They could skim on the profits."

"I sell 'em the hamburger patties, the McNuggets. They sell it and come to me for more."

"Now you're looking at TunicaCounty? Working south, setting up your franchises?"

Robert said, "Dennis, you approaching your crossroads. You know what I'm saying? You come a long way, baby, and you almost there."

"Playing your stooge. I make your con game look legitimate. The con throws them off while you look into the drug business here."

"Having some fun with 'em. But listen," Robert said, "tonight I took Jerry and Tonto and Hector to Junebug's-"

"You took Tonto the other night."

"We didn't make it. Tonto saw a hooker in the hotel bar looked good to him. This is tonight, we sitting at a table talking to Arlen. Also the one you said was his shooter, Fish."

"Vernice said that."

"I accept her word," Robert said. "This young dude, the Fish, sits there, Tonto staring at him through his shades, Tonto seeing if the man would stare back. And he did, almost the whole time. You understand? The two of them getting on a personal basis. But see, what I wanted to know was if Arlen worked for Mr. Kirkbride or Mr. Kirkbride worked for Arlen."

Robert waited, giving Dennis time to think about it while bugs hit the screen going for the lamplight. All kinds of bugs making noise down here in the summer.

"You told me," Dennis said, "Kirkbride's a fool. I took that to mean harmless."

"It was a hasty call. See, then I got to thinking, this Arlen is too dumb to run an outfit. What's he do with all the money they make? I said to Arlen, we're sitting there-" Robert paused. "See, I had already fucked with the man's head, saying I knew he ran the Tunica drug business. I said to him, Junebug wasn't any loss, was he? Long as you had a man like Kirkbride with you."

"What'd he say?"

"Was what he didn't say. Mr. Kirkbride? You crazy? Any kind of shit like that. No, what he said, Kirkbride wasn't a bad guy to work for."

"He didn't get it. What you meant."

"He got it. I watched him. He skimmed over it and went to something else."

"You're telling me WalterKirkbride's in the drug business?"

"Yes, I am."

"And you're gonna take over whatever they have going?"

"Yes, we are." Robert paused and said, "You ready?"

"For what?"

"You at the crossroads, Dennis. I'm about to make an offer to buy your soul." Dennis said, "How much?" And Robert beamed.

"You're my man, Dennis. Hundred and fifty thousand the first year, two hundred the second and so on. Plus what you make off your business. That's yours, too."

"What business?"

"The one we set up for you." "I'm the front."

"You the Mr. Kirkbride of the deal. Look at him. Nobody knows what he's up to except one that knows one. You'd have the same deep cover. You the store that local business goes through. You take over Junebug's and clean it up, get rid of Wesley. Put a man in there wears a red vest, he's the seller.

You're playing golf, you don't know shit what he's up to."

"I run a honky-tonk," Dennis said.

"You keep an eye on things. But your main business ... You ready? You set up a traveling highdiving show, a big operation, Dennis
Lenahan
's Dive-O-Rama, bunch of young good-looking dudes, some cute girls that dive, but you're the name, World Champion Dennis
Lenahan
, been doing it twenty-two years."

"The diving show," Dennis said, "cleans the drug money."

"Distributes it here and there-that's something we'll get into later. Jerry wrote the book on how to do it."

"And went to jail."

"For not paying his taxes. He was into something else then, burning down buildings people wanted the insurance on. Jerry's good with high explosives, too. He put a man out of business was fuckin with his brother. I'll have to tell you about Jerry sometime."

"And the lovely Anne."

"You picked that up from Carla, didn't you? That Carla's as cool as Mr. Billy
Darwin
, you know it? I look at the two of them-they must have it going."

"They don't," Dennis said. "I asked her."

It brought Robert's smile. "You working in there? Never mind. But if you gonna be staying here and she's here ...?" He could see Dennis taking his time now, looking at the offer.

"I don't handle any product? Drive around with drugs under the seat?"

The man just got himself a car.

"What kind you want, Mercedes, Porsche? No, man, you never touch the product. Not directly. Tonto's the one gets it up from Mexico and Hector Diaz sees to where it goes. We get you a Dive-ORama accountant to handle the business, keep the books. I imagine the same as Mr. Kirkbride, if he knows what he's doing."

"There's still risk," Dennis said.

Robert liked him saying that, the man leaning, looking for a way he could accept the offer. Robert answered him straight. "Sure there's risk. That's why I picked you out. You know all about high risk, it's your friend, it's what keeps you going. Soon as I saw you up there on the ladder, the other evening, I said to myself, that's my man. I didn't even need to speak to you, I knew it."

"You sound like you already have the business here."

"It's sitting there waiting on us."

"How do you take it away from the Dixie Mafia?"

"That's the fun part," Robert said. "Remember you asking-we just met, I'm driving you home and you ask me, being funny, if I'm checking out the historical points of interest? And I said history can work for you, you know how to use it."

"I don't get it."

"We using the battle reenactment to put the rednecks out of business. Draw the motherfuckers into the woods and shoot 'em."

"But you'll be with them, playing a Confederate."

"So I can be close," Robert said. "I'm the spotter. I point out which ones to shoot."

Chapter
16

THEY HAD CHOSEN THIS ABANDONED farmland for the site and stood in the opening of a barn loft looking out at what would be the battlefield: John Rau, Walter Kirkbride and Charlie Hoke representing Billy
Darwin
, who couldn't make it: all three in shirtsleeves this sunny afternoon, at least ninety degrees out in that empty pasture.

Charlie listened to them deal with the weather first, Walter saying they'd sweat to death in their wool uniforms. JohnRau saying it wouldn't be any hotter than it was June 10, 1864, at Brice's. Walter saying he would leave his longjohns at home if JohnRau would and they'd keep it between them. JohnRau said, "I didn't hear you say that, Walter." Charlie didn't own a pair of longjohns and kept it to himself. He saw Walter now gazing out at the pasture again.

"You think it looks like Brice's?"

"A big open field," JohnRau said, "mostly, I believe, blackjack oak on one side, that old orchard on the other. Not as wide as Brice's but it'll do."

Walter said, "You don't know blackjack from a trash berry thicket and box elders. That's all that cover is, till you get toward the levee. It isn't nothing like Brice's. All you have is a field."

"In this case it's all we need," JohnRau said. "Walter, you know it has to be in plain view of the spectators. They'll be down right in front of the barn where the ground slopes. We have a good two hundred yards out there to play with. You send your Third, Seventh and Eighth Kentucky Mounted Infantry out of the orchard over there and charge them straight across the pasture. I'm over in the thicket with the Seventh Indiana Cavalry and my own Second New Jersey shooting you down with our Spencers. You fall back and regroup and come at us again, and that's the Sunday-afternoon show."

Sounding to Charlie like they were going to actually refight the battle.

"We stop there," Walter said, "it looks like the Federals won at Brice's."

"Charlie will be making the announcements"JohnRau turning to him as he said it-"right?" "Yes sir, I'll be happy to."

"And describe the action, who's who."

"I can do that."

"Charlie'll tell the crowd who won."

"I'll send skirmishers out first," Walter said, "and draw fire."

JohnRau said, "Don't you have those fellas that like to take hits with canister?"

"Some of Arlen's bunch. Yeah, they practice all of 'em going down together."

"Best diers," Charlie said, "I ever saw."

JohnRau said, "I hope that woman brings her cannon. I don't know her name. Wears the big straw, kinda fat?"

"Kinda?" Charlie said. "She's got a butt on her like a mule in a pair of bluejeans."

JohnRau said, "She'd have to be Federal to keep it authentic. Forrest didn't have cannon to bring up till late in the day."

Charlie said, "Who's gonna know that?"

And got a stern look from JohnRau saying, "Walter and I know it."

"When we did bring 'em up," Walter said, "we rode the limbers in close and raked you with grape."

Listen to him, like he was there. Charlie saw JohnRau nodding.

"That young cannoneer-what was his name?" "JohnMorton, my artillery commander, twenty one years old."

Now JohnRau was saying, "Did you know there was a woman fought at Brice's?"

"She the one went by Albert something?"

"Private AlbertCashier, Ninety-fifth Illinois, her real name was jenny Hodges. Everyone thought she was a man," JohnRau said, "till she was run over by a car in 1911."

Walter said, "It's too bad we can't put on a show in the thicket, along the Federal line there."

"The spectators wouldn't see anything."

"I know, but that's my favorite action in the battle. I send TyreeBell's troopers charging in there firing their Colt Navies. John, they had extra cylinders capped and loaded in their pockets. More firepower'n even your Spencer repeaters."

JohnRau said, "I did get hold of some Second New Jersey fellas, they're coming with their Spencers. I hope to have a couple of Illinois groups, the Eighty-first and One-oh-eighth Infantry. I talked to a fella may bring as many as fifty. He said, `You want Ninth Kentucky or First Iowa?' They do it either way. I said, `First Iowa, we're gonna need Yankees.' I told Billy
Darwin
about the Fifty-fifth and Fifty-ninth U. S. Colored Infantry. He said he'd dress as many of the hotel help as volunteers. And there's a fella staying at the hotel wants to be General Grant. Has never reenacted, though he does look like him."

"Grant wasn't at Brice's."

"Everybody knows that, Walter. I don't like it either, but you know people'll want to have their pictures taken with him. Is Lee coming-that fella always plays him?"

"I believe he died. I haven't seen him since Chickamauga. I got hold of the Seventh Tennessee and the Eighteenth Mississippi Cavalry. Some are coming, but hardly anybody's bringing horses. We let Billy
Darwin
rush us into this," Walter said. "We got started too late."

Charlie said to JohnRau, "I recall you lost a horse at one of these."

"Yellow Tavern."

"I'll be astride King Philip," Walter said. "Parade around on my sorrel and let the kids pet him. I never feel so alive as when I'm Old Bedford."

Charlie said, "I hear RobertTaylor wants to be in your escort."

"If he'll feed and wipe down King Philip," Walter said, and then to JohnRau, "Have you met this RobertTaylor? Colored fella from Detroit."