The Pickett County War
Part II
John Norman smoked a cigarette and sat on his couch. His stomach still ached from Parker's suckerpunch. Just like the goddamn police to throw a cheapshot. He blew smoke and flipped through the PCSD's file on Howard Beggs. His one listed known associate was Jeff Silvers. Of course, if this guy was a tweaker he'd know Jeff pretty well. Jeff ran a cookhouse near the McCormick County line. He and John were cousins in some farback way, one of John's great-uncles fucked one of Jeff's grandmas or something. He couldn't remember. Bloodlines in this county ran deep and ran confusing.
Bloodlines...
The Norman Family was once royal blood in this town. His great-grandaddy and his four brothers were legendary hellrasiers. They were a bunch of bad apples sired by an apple ten times as rotten as they could ever be. His name was Elijah or something. John didn't know for sure, he'd never asked and never really cared. He came to Pickett County around the turn of the twentieth century NS Nobody knew where he came from or why he'd moved to the middle of nowhere South Carolina. Talk over the years had him as everything from just a half-wit day laborer to a serial killer who roamed from town to town killing women. Whatever he was, he decided to put roots down in this tiny county just on the South Carolina/Georgia line. He was supposed to have been a real asshole, a drunk who beat on his wife and would start fights any chance he got. As bad as he was, though, it was the five kids he and his wife had that would put the stamp on the Norman name.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Peter Norman. Apostles who worshiped at the altar of violence and crime. In the twenties they ran all the liquor and 'shine through this part of the state. They partied, they fucked, they drank, and anybody who got in their way got killed. They married local women, bloodlines diffused. Subsequent generations were tough, but never as tough as the old breed. He shared his name with one of the old men. The first John Norman was a cop. He was a mean sumbitch that ran the Pickett town police with an iron fist. He killed three black men in the line of duty. He died of a massive coronary in the early seventies. It soon came out he'd sent six innocent black men to death row, those three other men he killed in the line of duty weren't so much of a threat as he made out like. Pickett town PD got shut down soon after.
Norman Family lore held that Billy Brown was the cost for their sinful ways. Divine retribution in the form of a sociopathic former millworker. In truth, it was the same story that had been told over and over since time immemorial. Empires rise and fall in both micro and macro. The Normans got sloppy and they got complacent. By the 80's they'd been running things in Pickett County for three generations and close to sixty years. A hungry new rival challenged them and they lost, inch by inch and bit by bit. The Pickett County War, they called it. Daniel Norman was one of the casualties. John was just a baby when he died in 1987. Officially, the case remains unsolved but everybody sure as shit knew who did him in.
And he was working for the son of a bitch that killed his daddy.
John sighed, stubbed his cigarette out. Those thoughts always brought him back to a bad place, a place where he just wanted to kill Billy and burn all that he had and all that he stood for. Instead of focusing on them he went back to the file. It said Beggs had been bailed out by Carol Johnson. Of fucking course Carol would be involved in this shit. It was just too perfect.
Thoughts of Carol only made John angrier. He sighed and looked out his window. Light was beginning to peak through the trees. Overcast skies meant for a gray and rainy day. It was just after six on a Sunday. Way too damn early to start, especially on a Sunday here in Pickett. John left the file on his coffee table and padded back to his bedroom to get some sleep.
DJ popped a Jolly Rancher. The clock on his dash said just after nine. Jim Brown dozed in the passenger seat. Or at least he seemed to be dozing. DJ knew that at a moment's notice he'd spring awake as if he'd never been sleeping at all. That little ability was just one of the many reasons DJ thought of Jim Brown as one of the scariest white men he knew. Yeah Billy could be mean, but he at least had human emotions. He could get mad or get happy. Jim Brown was always the same. He was bored and detached regardless of the situation. It didn't matter if he was asking about the weather or shoving a gun in a man's face, he always acted like he'd rather be somewhere else.
A slow drizzle came down through the clouds and scattered drops of rain on the windshield of DJ's car. They were parked down a narrow street in the Nelson part of Pickett. The house they were watching sat in the middle of the block. Like the rest of the homes here, it was small and block concrete on the outside. A black escalade sat parked in the driveway. DJ stifled a yawn and shook his head. He'd been up late last night. There was the basketball game in the afternoon then a few late night parties. For once everyone was talking up the basketball team instead of football and only football. That little Antwan could ball. He might have a shot. But then again, they said the exact same shit about him and here he was doing strongarm work on a Sunday morning.
Shitwork for Roland Spencer. Billy told both of them last night they'd be doing some collections for Spencer all day Sunday and into Monday. Fucking Roland, always talking that bullshit like he was doing the two of them a favor by letting them work collections. Like he had a choice in the matter, like he wouldn't have to start barking if Billy said speak. His business with Billy was loaning out money at insanely high interest rates, just one of the many community services they provided to the good black people of Pickett.
"There he is," Jim Brown said very suddenly.
Like DJ had figured, he was awake and sitting upright and watching Rayray Tatum waddle out of his house in his finest Sunday suit. DJ started up the car and sped down the block, skidding to a stop in front of his driveway and blocking his car. He and Jim Brown jumped out as Rayray came off the steps.
"Shit."
"Morning," Jim Brown said. "See you headed for church."
Rayray started to back up towards his porch. Before he could get too far DJ was on him and had his hands on the lapel of his suit. Rayray was big, but it was all mushy and soft. DJ got in close and played the bad cop.
"I always like the story of Saul and Paul," DJ said with a smirk. "Saul, that motherfucker was greedy. Like how you is greedy, taking and taking and taking from Mr. Spencer without paying him back."
"I can get the money," Rayray stammered. "It's just my momma's sick, and Wendell's Friday night game at the club I--"
DJ slapped him in the face with an open hand. Hard but not hard enough to draw blood. It was just hard enough to shut him up and make him worry.
"You know what happened to Saul?"
DJ shoved hard. Rayray tottered backwards and slipped on the soggy grass, falling down flat on the ground with a loud umph.
"Motherfucker fell off his ass and saw the light. You hear me, Rayray? Do you see the light?"
"I'll get him his money," Rayray mumbled. He wouldn't make eye contact with either man.
"See that you do," said Jim Brown. "If you ain't paid back what you owe plus interest, some two thousand dollars, we'll be back and we'll make sure the last fucking light you see is the flash of our guns."
DJ winked at Rayray and smiled. "God bless you, Brother Tatum. Enjoy the preaching."
They walked back to DJ's car and left a dirty and stammering Rayray in the dirt that was quickly becoming mud in the steadily increasing rain.
"Personally, I think it's the world's fault."
Scott Andrews watched through a two-way glass as Sergeants Mark Echols and Danny Johnson interrogated a skinny white boy with cuts and sores on his face. The boy sat at a bolted down table, smoking cigarettes, while Echols sat across from him. Danny stood by the door with his arms crossed and scowling. When it was a white suspect Mark played the nice guy, Danny the angry black man. When they had a black man Danny was their brotha and Mark played up his accent, the racist redneck peckerwood sheriff stereotype.
Echols shuffled paper and scanned over the boy's file before looking up. "Says here you never knew your daddy. Alcoholic mamma, it was your grandmamma that raised you. You didn't ask to be brought into this world, Pat. You inherited this shitty place and time from your shitty parents. You were given a raw deal the second you started breathing, son. How else were you supposed to respond but with anger?"
Scott smiled. Fucking Echols. He was an asshole for sure, but goddamn could he work a suspect over. Within a few minutes of talking to a man he could take their measure and figure out exactly what motivated them. He could employ just the right amount of hate and affection to get someone to tell their deepest, darkest secrets. The only other person even close to being like that was Billy. There was only one man Scott could ever remember not being broken by Echols, and that was Chew Lewis. The unstoppable force could beaten to shit by that immovable object.
Echols said, "We're all trapped by forces that we don't understand, son. You think I want to be in this room, talking to you about beating up an old lady for her welfare money? No. Fuck no. But here we are. You know DJ, right? Big DJ, runs around town getting into all kinds of shady shit? That's Sergeant Johnson's son."
Scott saw Danny bristle slightly. DJ went to work for Billy right after he dropped out of high school six years ago. Six years on and it still drove Danny crazy that his own son listened to Billy Brown more than he listened to his father.
"You're not the only one trapped by circumstance, Vincent. But you have a chance to break the cycle you are trapped in. Tell me about what you did. Confess and we can get you off drugs and get your life back on a right path, a path that will be of your choosing."
Scott shook his head and left just as the boy started to talk to Echols all about the shit he'd done. He walked through the halls of the sheriff's department. It's concrete walls painted pink and hard linoleum floor looked like so much school because it was. Old Pickett County High closed ten years ago and the PCSD took over the building. It was cheaper than having to renovate their old headquarters or build a brand new one. Scott's office was the classroom where he took Mrs. Chase taught him English in the 11th grade. He remembered Scooter Redman broke into the school one night and took a shit on Mrs. Chase's desk. Thankfully it was a different desk now.
He plopped behind it and logged into his computer. He found Howard Beggs' file. His listed address was somewhere across the state in Florence County. Said Carol Johnson picked up his bail. He knew Carol, she was one of Jed's women. There was a start there. Scott expanded the search to the state, see what kind of shit Beggs got up to outside of Pickett. He got nothing. He went wider. He got nothing in Georgia and North Carolina. Howard Beggs' arrest last week was his first stop. That bothered Scott a whole hell of a lot. The way he remembered Beggs, there was no way in hell that was his first pop.
Scott drummed on his desk for a few minutes before he stood up and headed towards the parking lot. He passed by the interrogation room on his way out. The boy was crying as he wrote a confession, Echols with a hand on his shoulder and saying comforting words as the boy condemned himself to at least five years in a state pen.
John Norman turned his pick-up truck down the dirt road that ran off Anderson Street near the outskirts of town. The truck bounced down the bumpy road road towards an empty, weed-filled lot that sat by train tracks. He knew there were eyes on him, watching his approach the tracks from more than one hidden vantage point. He pulled to a stop just twenty feet from the tracks and parked the truck.
A bird whistle sounded somewhere off in the distance as he got out and walked over the train tracks and towards the clump of woods on the other side. They'd know he was coming. Good, thought John, that'd make it easier. After a short walk through the woods he came out to a large, open field. A ratty old camper sat parked in the field without a truck hitched to it. The original white paint on the side of the trailer had faded so much it was now a bright gray and dents and dings ran up the side of the camper. The entire field had the faint smell of cat piss that often accompanies methamphetamine. The door to the camper opened with a rusty squeak and a fat man wearing faded blue jeans and a stained red t-shirt came out. He had the same dark brown almost black hair as John's, just a whole hell of a lot thinner on top. It was so thin you could see his scalp underneath the wisps of hair. John hid a smile. He'd been going bald since he was twenty. In another five years, he'd completely hairless up top. He scowled as John approached. His scowl faded some as soon as he recognized him.
"John," George Silvers said with a suspicious look. "The hell you doing here?"
"Guy can't drop in and see his kin without having a motive?"
"Not when he's working," he said with a thumb pointed back at the trailer. "C'mon, John, I got shit to do, man."
"Just want you to help me find someone."
"C'mon, John." George held his hands up. "I know you ain't law, but if it gets around that I'm helping snitch on my customers, it ain't gonna look good on me."
"George," John said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the photo of Beggs. "All you gotta do is tell me if this guy comes around to buy from you. If he does, that means he'll be back. All you gotta do is call me when he shows up. I'll stay back on Anderson and wait until he's far away from here before I make my move, okay? You do this and I'll owe you one. Here, look at the photo. Fella named Howard Beggs. Looks like he may be one of your patrons."
George scrutinized John for a few long seconds, looking at his face to try and see what he was thinking or if he was bullshitting him. Finally he gave up and started studying the photo. George hadn't asked why John wanted to find Beggs, and John didn't plan on tell him. George probably assumed it was a debt and left it at that. John figured that while Parker was an asshole and a dumb shit, he may be right about most people being open to talking to him over any of his deputies.
"Looks familiar," said George. He scratched the patchy stubble under his chin. "Can't place him right off, but I have seen him around. What'd he do?"
"He bout a quarter pound of weed from me" John lied. "Fucker said he'd pay half now and half later and that was a week ago."
"Fuck, John," George cackled. "You the dumbass then. Thinking this tweaker motherfucker is gonna pay anybody back."
John popped his knuckles and scowled. That shut George right the hell up. He clammed up and went back to the photo. George nodded and kept rubbing his chin. John let him stand there in silence, thinking of what to say next. He figured George was either coming up with a lie, which John would be able to call bullshit on right away, or actually trying to remember something.
"When he did come up to the camper," George finally said. "He had someone with him. Shit, what was her name? Uhh, damn. I used to know it... Carol something..."
"Johnson?"
"Fuck yeah," George said, snapping his fingers. "Yep, he was with Carol Johnson! She paid for it. See, unlike you Johnny I get the full amount up front. It's just good business."
John scowled. "Know whereabouts Carol is staying?"
"Can't say that I do," he said with a shrug. "I just make and sell the shit to 'em, I don't socialize with 'em."
John lit a cigarette. George asked for one and he told him to go fuck himself.
"If him or Carol come back here, you call me. You got my phone, right?"
"Sure do."
John nodded and waved to George.
"Later, cousin."
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