McMurtrie and Drake: Between Black and White Part 16

"But he did," Helen replied, her voice devoid of any doubt. "The evidence is overwhelming. If I had any question about Bo's guilt, I would not be charging him, but . . . he did it." She paused, crossing her arms against her chest. "I'm sorry, but I have to do my job."

Kilgore nodded. Dej vu all over again, he thought. Then: "I'm sorry too."

36.

They left The Boathouse five minutes after Darla arrived. They were sitting too close to the band to be able to talk, and there weren't any other empty seats. Rick closed his tab, and then Darla led him by the hand through the crowd of people to the exit.

A few minutes later they were walking along the dock of boats that lined the harbor, the music from The Boathouse band still playing faintly in the background. Darla had yet to let go of Rick's hand, and Rick wasn't exactly sure how to take that. He felt woozy, his head spinning from the alcohol, the panic over having lost Burns, and fatigue and stress from the last few days. He breathed in the salt air, feeling his arms involuntarily shake.

"Thanks for coming," Rick said, trying to direct his jumbled thoughts back to his purpose for being here.

"You're welcome," she said, taking a seat on a white bench that looked out over the harbor. Rick glanced to his left and right, and they appeared to be alone. There were still a few stragglers drinking beers at the outside bar of The Boathouse, but they were well out of earshot. Still holding his hand, Darla patted the place next to her. "Pop a squat," she said, and Rick smiled. His mother used to say that when she wanted him to sit.

Rick sat on the bench, self-conscious of his right hand, which Darla was still holding, now with both of hers.

"You don't like holding my hand?" Darla asked, puckering her lips, feigning that her feelings were hurt.

"Uh . . . I . . ."

Darla punched his shoulder and laughed. "Relax, Counselor. I'm just joshing you." She turned to face him, propping her left knee on the bench so that it touched his side and wrapping his right hand again with both of her own. "I'm sorry, it's just a habit."

"What is?" Rick asked, looking at her. The breeze coming off the water flittered her hair, but she made no move to fix it.

"Being touchy-feely. I was a dancer for eight years and"-she paused, smiling at him-"you learn things about men."

"What things?" Rick asked.

"Most men want to be touched."

When Rick raised his eyebrows, Darla giggled. "No, silly. Not a s.e.xual touch. All men like that." She lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes, and Rick felt a warmth come over him that he tried to fight off.

"I'm just talking about physical touch," she said. "Like this." She held up their interlocked hands. Then she let her left hand slide up his arm, resting it on his shoulder. "And this."

Rick felt his cheeks reddening and was glad for the dark.

"Most men are starved to be touched like this," she continued, running her hand up his neck. "At least . . . the men that came into the club seemed to be."

"Was Andy Walton?"

The smile faded from Darla's face. "Very much so," she said. "Mr. Walton . . . was a very sad man."

"Sad about what?" Rick asked.

Darla shrugged and leaned into him, wrapping her arms through Rick's. "Everything. He was dying, did you know that?"

"Pancreatic cancer, right?" Rick asked.

Darla nodded. "He didn't tell me right off. The first few times he came in, we just sat in the back of the bar, talking. He really liked talking to me. And . . . I could tell he liked the way I touched him."

"How would you . . . ?" Rick's voice faltered. Questioning a stripper about how she touched a patron was not something you learned in law school.

"Just like this," she said, turning to face him. "I'd brush his hair, hold his hand, or wrap my arms through his." She leaned into Rick, and he blinked his eyes, trying to focus.

"Did you eventually, you know . . . ?" Again Rick faltered.

"Dance naked for him?"

"Yeah," Rick said, looking away from her.

"Of course," she said. "Eventually . . ." She shrugged. "My approach to dancing was different than most of the girls. Most of them would prance around in their G-string and throw their b.o.o.bs in the men's faces. Every few seconds they'd ask if they could give them a lap dance." She paused. "Larry always said he needed a few foot soldiers like that. Tall, horsey-looking girls with big b.r.e.a.s.t.s who could work the pole and get the small bills from the day laborers and the truck drivers who would stop by. That was important for the success of the club. It set the tone and allowed me to work my magic." She stopped and eyed him curiously. When he didn't say anything, she asked, "Don't you want to know what my magic is?"

"I . . ." Rick gazed into her brown eyes and then looked away, focusing on a boat floating slowly along in the water. "I didn't want to insult you by asking. I'm pretty sure I know what it is."

"Then tell me," Darla said, leaning into him and elbowing him under the rib cage. "Don't be shy, Counselor."

"It's . . . this," Rick said, shrugging. "What you're doing right now. The touching. The way you talk. The way you smell . . ."

"Do you like me?" Darla asked.

"Very much," Rick said.

She smiled. "That's the magic. Stripping at the highest level is no different than any other business. It's all about building relationships . . . and I'm good at that." Darla placed her elbow on the bench and let her hand drop onto Rick's shoulder.

Beginning to feel warm again, Rick tried to stand. One leg had gone completely asleep, and he stumbled, almost falling into the harbor. Jesus Christ . . .

Behind him, Darla was laughing.

Rick gazed down at her and wiped sweat off his forehead. He needed to regroup. "You said Andy told you about the cancer."

"You're a cutie, you know that?" She was smiling at him. "I bet you have a girlfriend."

"Ms. Ford, please . . . I . . ."

"Ms. Ford? Oooooo . . ." She narrowed her gaze and wrapped her arms around her left knee, her smile widening. You're starting to turn me on, Counselor."

Before Rick could protest again, Darla yawned and stretched her arms above her head. "There is a VIP room at the club," she finally said. "After Mr. Walton requested that I dance for him, I began to take him up there. The VIP dances cost a hundred dollars for thirty minutes, but Mr. Walton didn't care about the money. He'd let me dance with him for two or three hours. There were some weeks where he would be the only customer I'd have at night and I'd take home six grand, while some of the foot soldiers had done the pole all night along with ten lap dances and only had two hundred dollars to show for it." She paused, shaking her head and crossing her arms. "Anyway, after about a month he told me about the cancer."

"Do you remember when that was?"

Darla shrugged. "Wasn't that long ago. Maybe the beginning of summer. May, I think."

"Did he say how bad it was?"

"Just that it was terminal. I think at some point he said he wasn't sure how long he had left. Could be a year. Could be a few months."

Rick nodded. Keep her going . . .

"You said he was a very sad man," Rick began. "How so? Was it just the cancer?"

"No. That was a big part of it, but there was something else. Mr. Walton . . . had something weighing on him. A secret, you might say."

Rick felt his stomach catch and took a step closer to her. "A secret?"

Darla nodded and leaned forward on the bench, resting her elbows on her knees. When she didn't say anything, Rick prompted her. "Did he tell you this secret?"

"Not in so many words," she finally said.

"What does that mean?" Rick pressed, sitting down again on the bench.

She shifted her gaze to the water. "Mr. Walton said he had done a lot of bad things in his life and he was scared."

"Scared of what?"

"Of dying." She looked back at him. "He was scared of dying. He said the truth would die with him."

"The truth?"

"About what he had done."

They were going in a circle. "What had he done? Did he tell you about the bad things?"

This time Darla did shiver. "He said he done them when he was in the Klan, and a man got killed." She stopped and squeezed her knees together with her arms. "He said it was his fault. He was responsible."

"Did he say who he was talking about?"

Darla shook her head. "No, he didn't. But I've lived in Pulaski a long time. You hear things, and I knew the rumors about Bocephus Haynes's father being lynched on Mr. Walton's farm. So I asked him about it."

"How . . . did you ask him?" Rick asked, involuntarily scooting closer to her on the bench.

"I just blurted it out-not subtle at all. I said, 'Mr. Walton, is Bo Haynes's father the man that was killed while you were leading the Klan'?"

"What did he say?"

"He didn't say nothing at first," Darla said. "He just got the saddest look on his face I'd ever seen. Then he just started nodding." Darla paused, shaking her head. "It was weird, like I wasn't even in the room. Then . . ." She trailed off and stood from the bench.

"Then what?" Rick asked.

She wiped her eyes, and Rick realized that she had begun to cry. "Then he said he was going to confess."

Rick felt the blood almost go out of his body. "What?"

Darla turned to him, fresh tears running down her cheeks. "He told me that he was going to confess. That he wasn't going to let the truth die with him. Then"-she choked the words out-"he told me that he'd done something for me. Something special that would help me move down to the coast." She paused. "I had told him many times about my dream to move down here and open up an oyster bar. Anyway, sure enough the Monday after he died I got a call from his lawyer. Said I needed to come down to his law office and pick something up. When I got there, the lawyer gave me a manila envelope. He said, 'Mr. Walton asked that I personally deliver this to you.' When I got back to my car, I opened it, and there was were ten smaller envelopes inside of it. I opened them one by one when I was back in my apartment, and they all had ten thousand dollars in them." She paused. "A hundred thousand dollars." She stopped and looked at Rick. "I left for Destin the next morning."

For a moment Rick didn't say anything. Andy Walton had bequeathed a stripper one hundred thousand dollars. Probably just pocket change for a guy like that, but still . . . It was a n.o.ble act, Rick thought. Inconsistent with the view he held in his mind of the man. "Going back to the night he said he was going to confess," Rick began. "When did this conversation take place?"

Darla shrugged. "A couple weeks before he died."

"Did he say anything else to you?"

She nodded, and fresh tears formed in her eyes. "He gave me the same warning the last few times I saw him."

"Which was?"

"To not . . . tell . . . anyone." Her lip quivered with emotion, and Rick felt gooseflesh break out on his arm.

"Did you?" Rick asked.

Darla Ford crossed her arms tight around her chest and bit her lip, looking down at the ground.

"Ms. Ford, did you tell anyone that Andy Walton was going to confess to killing Roosevelt Haynes?"

Slowly, she nodded.

"Who?" Rick asked.

"Larry," Darla said, sniffling and leaning her head on his shoulder. "I told my boss. Larry Tucker."

37.

Bone watched them from the deck of The Boathouse. He held a Bud Light bottle that he had barely touched and was dressed in a "Fisherman's Wharf" T-shirt he'd bought while Rick and Burns were having a drink at the place next door, a tattered red cap with the cursive A of Alabama's Crimson Tide on the front, khaki shorts he kept in a duffel bag in the back of the truck, and a pair of old flip-flops. With his scraggly beard and his hat pulled down low over his eyes, he blended into the crowd perfectly.

This can't be good, he thought. Drake had talked with the stripper for at least forty-five minutes now, and the conversation had turned heated. For a while Drake had paced in front of the bench, asking her questions.

He's getting something out of this, Bone knew. He had placed calls and sent texts to his benefactor on a regular basis, and so far the instructions had been to follow and report what he saw. He took the cell phone out of his left pocket and texted, They've talked for forty-five minutes, and the kid seems to be excited. Bone returned the phone to his pocket and waited.

When Burns had snuck out of the restaurant alone while Drake was in the bathroom, Bone had thought for a moment that the kid had been taken for a ride. Burns had scampered off down the dock a ways, so Bone wasn't sure where he had gone. His orders were to stay with Drake.

He figured the night was probably over-a wasted trip no different than Drake's-until he saw Nikita emerge from the shadows of the front parking lot a few minutes after Burns had left.

Bone recognized her right off from his nights at The Sundowners Club. Nikita-Bone did not know her real name-had always dressed relatively conservative as far as strippers went, and this contrast made her stand out at the club. It also made her easy to recognize now.

The phone in his left pocket vibrated, and Bone grabbed it, never taking his eyes off Nikita and Drake. He looked down at the message on the screen and felt his body temperature drop a couple degrees.

Kill the girl. And the lawyer if necessary.

Bone felt his heart pick up a beat as he read and reread the message. Not exactly what he was expecting, but . . .