Johnston stares in horror at the obscene artifact.
“Handsome, isn’t it?” Brody turns it in the light, which reflects dully off the osseous material. “Frank Knox carved the blade out of that boy’s arm bone, and Snake tanned the skin of his cock for the handle. They made me a razor strop, too. White man’s skin on one side, black on the other. The black side is used for coarse sharpening, the white for finishing. I’ll use that on Pithy’s razor before I go see her.” He touches the duct tape on his neck. “I think it’s gone a little dull over the years.”
“How did Pooky die?” Johnston asks through clenched teeth, eyeing the gun that Brody still wields with his other hand. “You crucify him, like I’ve heard?”
“Not exactly. When I first heard he’d spilled his seed in my little girl, I told Frank I wanted that boy skinned alive. Well, they caught him quick enough. And they took him out to that tree in Lusahatcha County. The Bone Tree. But flaying a man’s a tricky business. To do it right, you need a knife called a dermatome. Snake didn’t have one. He tried his best with a Buck knife, but it turned into such a mess they couldn’t hold that boy still no matter what they used.”
Hearing the old man describe this atrocity with such clinical detachment short-circuits some part of my being, leaving me nearly paralyzed.
“You were there,” Caitlin intones.
The light in Brody’s eyes tells me that he was. “In the end, they just nailed him up to the tree. Frank said it had been done there before, back during the War Between the States.”
With a sound like the voice of retribution, Johnston says, “I know why you done what you did. Why you tore that poor boy up so bad. Your little girl not only loved Pooky. She was carrying his child.”
Brody jerks back as though the words had struck him physically. Then he smacks Johnston across the face with his gun.
Johnston staggers but holds his feet, his eyes filled with irrefutable truth. “You didn’t just kill Pooky. I know that child was never born. You killed your own flesh and blood. You might as well have killed your daughter, too. You killed her soul right then. And you damned your own.”
Mouth agape, Brody is clearly stunned that any black man would speak to him this way. He presses the gun barrel to Sleepy Johnston’s sternum. “You got anything else to say?”
When Johnston speaks again, his voice is filled with emotion I can’t quite read. Then I recognize it—pity. “You ain’t nothing, Mister,” he says softly. “All your money and land don’t make you worth the mud on Albert Norris’s shoes. And what’s more … you know it.”
Brody fires.
Sleepy’s body jerks, then drops to the floor. His blank eyes stare sightless at the low ceiling.
Brody wipes a sheen of sweat from his face, then turns to face Caitlin and me. The man I spoke to only a minute ago seems to have fled the body before me. Caitlin appears frozen, as am I. We might have been in shock before, but the cold-blooded execution has taken our desperation to a new level.
Henry, who seemed only half-conscious before, rolls onto his side and stares at Johnston’s body on the floor.
Brody points his smoking pistol at Henry. Caitlin screams, and I shrink from the imminent shot. Instead of shooting, though, Brody crouches so that Henry can see his eyes. “You spent thirty years trying to get me, boy, and in the end you delivered the only thing that could have destroyed me. Like room service. I do believe you’re the saddest white man I ever saw.”
Henry gazes up at Brody but says nothing. He looks more like a stroke victim than an active participant in a conversation.
“See that fire downrange?” Brody asks, pointing at the burning bucket and banker’s boxes. “Thirty years of notes and diaries? Nobody’s ever going to see it. Shit, son … don’t you realize we could drive back to Ferriday right now and start asking people on the street who Pooky Wilson was, or Joe Louis Lewis, and not three in ten would know? Not one in a hundred, if we asked people under thirty. And Ferriday’s ninety percent black! Thirty miles from here, nobody’s even heard those names. Nobody gives a shit, black or white. The nigras living in Ferriday now aren’t thinking about anything but how to fill their crack pipes tomorrow.”
Brody looks down at Henry as though waiting for agreement. “You know I’m right, son. You wrote all those stories, and what thanks did you get? Did anybody hand you the key to the city? Nobody cares but a few New York Jews and liberal, guilt-ridden princesses like Ms. Masters over there.”
With a last shake of his head, Brody straightens up and turns slowly back to me, his face haggard and finally looking its age. “Well, Mayor … nothing left now but the final act. But never fear. Nobody’s gonna leave the theater bored.”
“For God’s sake, Brody. You’ve got all the fucking money in the world. Just take it and go. Surely you’ve got some nonextradition haven somewhere? You can’t kill everybody who knows about you. You’re going to be found out. It’s inevitable. If you kill us, John Kaiser will never stop trying to nail you. Never. Go now.”
Royal looks at me like I’m mad. “Go? Why would I leave?” He kicks Sleepy Johnston’s corpse. “With this fool dead, I’m washed clean. ‘Washed in the blood,’ as they say. Henry’s dying, and his files are ashes. Katy’s gone, and those tapes, too.” He takes one step toward me, then another. “About the only thing in this world I have left to worry about is you. You and Princess there.”
“If you kill us, you’ll trigger the biggest manhunt in the history of this state.”
One eyebrow goes up. “You think so?”