Cold Vengeance

CHAPTER 31

Malfourche

NED BETTERTON DROVE HIS DENTED NISSAN DOWN the main street — the only street, really — of Malfourche. Although it was technically part of his beat, for the most part Betterton avoided the town: too much of that deep-bayou mentality. But the Brodies had lived here. Had… Grudgingly, Kranston was letting him follow up, only because the horrific double murder was so big it would have seemed strange if the Bee pretended it hadn’t happened. “Let’s get it over with,” Kranston had grumbled. “Quickly. Then we move on.”

Though Betterton had nodded agreeably, he’d no intention of getting it over with. Instead, he’d done something he should have done earlier — double-check the story the Brodies told him. Right away it fell apart. A few phone calls revealed that, while there was a B&B in San Miguel named Casa Magnolia, the Brodies had never run it, never owned it. They had only stayed there once, years ago.

It had been a bald-faced lie.

And now they’d been murdered — the biggest killing in the area in a generation — and Betterton was sure it was somehow connected to their strange disappearance and even stranger reappearance. Drugs, industrial espionage, gun-running — it might be anything.

Betterton was convinced that Malfourche was the nexus of this mystery. Malfourche was where the Brodies reappeared — and where they had been brutally killed. Furthermore, he’d heard rumors of strange business in town, some months before the Brodies resurfaced. There’d been an explosion at Tiny’s, the local and somewhat notorious bait-and-bar emporium. A leaking propane tank — that was the official story — but there were whispered hints of something else a lot more interesting.

He passed the Brodies’ little house, where not so long ago he’d interviewed them. Now crime-scene tape covered the front door and a sheriff’s vehicle sat by the curb.

Main Street made a gentle bend to the west and the edge of the Black Brake swamp hove into view, its thick fringe of green and brown like a low dark cloud in an otherwise sunny afternoon. He drove on into the sad business district, sullen-looking shopfronts and peeling signboards. He pulled up beside the docks, killed the engine. Where Tiny’s had been, the skeleton of a new building was beginning to rise from the wreckage of the old. A pile of half-burned two-by-fours and creosote pilings were stacked near the docks. Out in front, adjoining the street, the new front steps of the building had been completed and half a dozen scruffy-looking men were seated on them, loafing around and drinking beer out of paper bags.

Betterton got out of the car and approached them. “Afternoon, all of y’all,” he said.

The men fell silent and watched him approach with suspicion.

“Afternoon,” one finally replied grudgingly.

“Ned Betterton. Ezerville Bee,” he said. “Hot day. Anybody care for a cold one?”

An uneasy shifting. “In return for what?”

“What else? I’m a reporter. I want information.”

This was greeted by silence.

“Got some frosties in the trunk.” Betterton moseyed back to his car — you didn’t want to move too fast around people like this — popped the trunk, hauled out a large Styrofoam cooler, lugged it over, and set it down on the stairs. He reached in, pulled one out, popped it open, and took a long pull. Soon a number of hands were reaching in, sliding cans out of the melting ice.

Betterton leaned back with a sigh. “I’m doing a story on the Brodie murders. Any idea who killed them?”

“Might be gators,” someone offered, drawing hoots of derisive laughter.

“The police done asked us about them already,” said a skinny man in a tank top, his cheeks sporting about five days’ worth of stubble. “We don’t know nothing.”

“I think that FBI feller killed ’em,” one old, almost toothless man slurred, already drunk. “That sumbitch was crazy.”

“FBI?” Betterton asked immediately. This was new.

“The one come down here with that New York City policewoman.”

“What did they want?” Betterton realized he sounded way too interested. He covered it up by taking another slug of beer.

“Wanted directions to Spanish Island,” the toothless man answered.

“Spanish Island?” Betterton had never heard of the place.

“Yeah. Kinda coincidental that…” The voice trailed off.

“Coincidental? What’s coincidental?”

A round of uneasy glances. No one said anything. Holy mackerel, thought Betterton: his digging had almost reached the mother lode.

“You shut up,” the skinny one snapped, glaring at the old drunk.

“Why, hell, Larry, I ain’t said nothing.”

This was so easy. He could tell right away they were hiding something big. The whole damn brainless group. And he was going to know it in a moment.

At that moment, a large shadow fell over him. A huge man had emerged from the gloom of the unfinished building. His pink head was shaven, and a ring of fat the size of a small life preserver bulged around the rear of his neck, bristling with little blond hairs. One cheek bulged with what appeared to be a cud of chewing tobacco. He folded one hamhock arm over the other and stared, first at the seated group, then at Betterton.

Betterton realized this could only be Tiny himself. The man was a local legend, a bayou warlord. And suddenly he wondered if that mother lode was a little farther off than he’d anticipated.

“Fuck you want?” Tiny asked in a pleasant tone.

Instinctively, Betterton took a stab. “I’m here about the FBI agent.”

The look that came over Tiny’s face wasn’t so pleasant. “Pendergast?”

Pendergast. So that was his name. And it was familiar — wasn’t it? — the name of one of those wealthy, decaying antebellum families down New Orleans way.

Tiny’s little pig eyes grew smaller still. “You a friend of that peckerwood?”

“I’m with the Bee. Looking into the Brodie killings.”

“A reporter.” Tiny’s face grew dark. For the first time, Betterton noticed an inflamed scar on one side of the man’s neck. It bulged in time to the pulsing of a vein beneath.

Tiny looked around the group. “What you talking to a reporter for?” He spat out a ropy brown stream of tobacco. The audience stood up, one by one, and several started to shuffle off — but not before scooping out additional beers.

“A reporter,” Tiny repeated.

Betterton saw the explosion coming but wasn’t quick enough to get away. Tiny lashed out and grabbed Betterton’s collar, twisting it roughly. “You can tell that mother for me,” he said, “that if I ever catch his skinny, black-suited, albino ass around these parts again, I’m gonna bust him up so bad he’ll be shitting teeth for a week.”

As he spoke, he twisted Betterton’s collar tighter and tighter until the reporter could no longer breathe. Then, with a rough jerk of his arm, he threw Betterton to the ground.

Betterton sprawled in the dust. Waited a moment. Stood up.

Tiny stood there, his hands balled, waiting for a fight.

Betterton was small. When he was young, bigger kids had often felt free to knock him around, figuring the risk was nil. It started in kindergarten and didn’t end until his first year of high school.

“Hey,” said Betterton, his voice high and whiny. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving! For chrissakes, you don’t have to hurt me!”

Tiny relaxed.

Betterton put on his best cowering, cringing face and, scrambling a little closer to Tiny, ducked his head as if to grovel. “I’m not looking for a fight. Really.”

“That’s what I like to hear—”

Betterton rose abruptly and used his upward momentum to propel an uppercut directly into Tiny’s jaw. The man went down like a hopper of soft butter dropped on cement.

The lesson Ned learned as a high-school freshman was that, whoever it was, no matter how big, you responded. Or it would just happen again, and worse. Tiny rolled in the dirt, cursing, but he was too stunned to get up and pursue. Betterton walked quickly to his car, passing the men who were still standing around, their mouths agape.

“Enjoy the rest of the beer, gents.”

As he drove off, his hand throbbing, he remembered he was supposed to be covering the Women’s Auxiliary Bake-Off in half an hour. Hell with it. No more bake-offs for him.