Turning Angel

Chapter 21

A few miles south of Natchez, Kingston Road forks away from Highway 61 and curves through rolling land that a century and a half ago made up thriving cotton plantations populated with hundreds of slaves. Beau Pré Road is a serpentine offshoot of Kingston Road, lined with one-story houses and aluminum trailers, some with bass boats sitting in their front yards. The houses are set far apart, with small ponds, outbuildings, and dog runs in the overgrown border land between lots.

It’s full dark as I round a long curve that should carry me to Sonny Cross’s house. From what the drug agent said in our brief cell phone conversation, it sounded like he’s discovered the holy grail of this case. My greatest hope is that he can prove that Cyrus White murdered Kate. Scanning the homes flashing past on my left, I see two gold numbers tacked to the wall of a house trailer.

Two sixty-nine.

I ease my foot off the gas and coast around the tail of the curve. A lone porch light appears in the trees to my left. Then the beam of my headlights hits a rutted dirt driveway that intersects Beau Pré Road on my left. As I turn onto the dirt, a yellow rectangle of light appears beneath the porch light. The black silhouette of a man walks into the rectangle, then passes through it, and the orange eye of a cigarette bobs along the driveway at a height of about six feet. When I reach the cigarette, I stop my car, turn off my engine, and get out.

Sonny Cross takes a deep drag off his cigarette. The orange glow illuminates his haggard face and glints off a silver stud in his left ear. Despite the fatigue in his face, I see excitement in his eyes.

”How much do you want to know?“ he asks.

”Everything.“

”Don’t be so sure. This is Dirty Harrystuff.“

”Tell me everything, Sonny.“

Another long drag. Smoke drifts into the night as he speaks. ”I was pretty upset this afternoon. You saw it when we talked. I couldn’t just sit around waiting for something to break.“

”What did you do?“ I ask, my gut tightening in anticipation.

”I decided to have a little talk with Marko Bakic. I picked him up outside the Wilsons’ house, easy as pie. Then I took him to, uh…an undisclosed location, where we had a frank and honest exchange of views.“

”A willing exchange of views?“

Sonny chuckles softly. ”There might have been a little duress.“

”Jesus, what did you do to the kid?“

”I just asked him some questions. But young master Bakic indicated an unwillingness to cooperate. He emphasized this with some well-chosen sarcastic remarks. He seemed quite pleased with himself, all in all. So I stuck my gun in his mouth.“

I shake my head in disbelief.

”To tell you the truth,“ Sonny reflects, ”even that didn’t rattle him much. I think that boy saw a lot of shit over in Bosnia, and guns by themselves don’t scare him. I don’t think he believed I’d really use it.“

”You didn’t, did you?“

Cross shakes his head slowly. ”No. But I convinced him I would.“

”How did you do that, exactly?“

An unguarded smile. ”Some things we must pass over in silence, my son.“

”Was that what I heard when I called you before the board meeting? You torturing Marko?“

”No. That was somebody else.“

”Who?“

”One of Cyrus’s guys.“

I’d like to sit Sonny down and have a talk with him about the niceties of the Constitution, but right now I have a different priority. ”Enough foreplay, Sonny. Give me what you got.“

”Marko’s basically Cyrus’s punk, okay? He registered in the student exchange program hoping to get New York, L. A., or Miami. Instead, he got Natchez, Mississippi. Imagine his dismay. Marko saw himself as the next Scarface, a young Al Pacino coming to America to take over the drug trade. But when he got here, he didn’t find Robert Loggia, an old dealer soft and ready to fall. He found Cyrus White, a kind of nightmare he’d never seen before. Cyrus recognized something in Marko, though, maybe because they had both seen war up close. He saw Marko’s ambition, and he used that to open up new markets. White markets. Through the older brothers and sisters of our high school kids, Marko made contacts in the white fraternities at LSU, Ole Miss, USM, Millsaps, Louisiana Tech…you name it. This network is far more extensive than I imagined. The Asians on the Gulf Coast wholesale to Cyrus, massive shipments moving north by several different routes. When it gets here, Cyrus sends out his boys to supply Baton Rouge, Jackson, Oxford, Ruston, Hattiesburg-all the markets Marko opened up. It’s a massive operation, Penn. Mind-blowing, really.“

The drone of an engine echoes through the trees, then a pair of headlights sweeps past us in a long arc.

”Why are we out here?“ I ask.

”My kids are inside,“ Sonny explains. ”My ex-wife hears any more about this cowboy shit, she’ll be asking the judge to modify our custody agreement. Mosquitoes getting you?“

”I’m good. Go on. You said you had something that would help Drew.“

Sonny grins. ”I know why Kate Townsend was seeing Cyrus. She was buying Lorcet from him. You know what that is?“

”Pain pills, right? Like codeine?“

”That’s right. She tried to buy it from Marko first, but he doesn’t keep Lorcet in stock. It’s more of an adult drug. The kids don’t use it much. Anyway, Marko goes to Cyrus and asks for some, but Cyrus won’t hand it over just like that. He’s curious by nature. He wants to know why Marko suddenly wants hydrocodone.“

The word ”hydrocodone“ triggers something in my mind, but I’m too interested in what Sonny discovered to ponder it.

”Marko tells Cyrus he’s going to use the Lorcet to buy the finest piece of ass in the city. Cyrus asks who he’s talking about. Dumb-ass Marko tells him, and that was that. Cyrus knew damn well who Kate Townsend was. Her picture’s been in the newspaper about twenty times over the past couple of years. Tennis, swimming, her scholarship to Yale.“

”Harvard.“

”Wherever. Cyrus told Marko that if Kate wanted Lorcet, she’d have to come to him to get it. Personally. That’s how all this started.“

”I don’t get it,“ I say softly, suddenly afraid that I do. ”Drew told me Kate never used drugs.“

”Then she was buying them for somebody else.“

Another set of headlights appears in the distance, moving slowly this way.

”Tell me about Kate and Cyrus.“

Sonny watches the lights come and go. ”Once a month or so, Kate would tell Marko she needed a new bottle. She was buying at the rate of a hundred a month. A hundred pills, I mean. She bought a hundred and fifty per visit, the last couple of months.“

”Would the medical examiner have tested for hydrocodone in Kate’s body?“

”They always do toxicology in a young girl like that, because suicide is so common. I already checked. No hydrocodone or metabolites in Kate. No drugs at all.“

”What about the sex angle? Did Marko say Kate and Cyrus hooked up?“

Sonny nods emphatically while drawing on his cigarette. ”No, but this is even better. Once Cyrus got a look at Kate, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Marko said every time Cyrus saw him he asked about her. Who she was talking to? Who she was fucking? Who had she fucked in the past? What music did she listen to? Everything. Every last detail. The guy was obsessed.“

”But Marko didn’t think they ever had sex?“

”No. She just drove Cyrus nuts, the way women like to do.“ Sonny gives me a conspiratorial smile. ”Marko thinks Cyrus killed her, man.“

A rush of excitement goes through me, but I try to stay calm. ”Can he prove it?“

”No. But here’s the gold, man. Here’s something you can throw right in Shad Johnson’s face.“

I feel blood pounding in my ears. ”What?“

”You know what that crazy Cyrus was doing?“

”How could I know, damn it?“

Sonny laughs at my impatience. ”He was tracking her cell phone. He wanted to know where she was all the time, right? Well, there are companies you can pay to digitally ping somebody’s cell phone every fifteen minutes. As long as the target person’s cell phone is on, this company can give you their GPS coordinates every quarter hour, and they’ll never know it.“ Sonny cackles with glee. ”It doesn’t evencost that much. These companies are all over the Internet, Penn. Paranoid spouses keep them in business.“

I don’t even bother telling Sonny that I knew about this technology. ”If I can prove that Cyrus was tracking Kate’s cell phone, especially on the day she died…“

”It’s looking like something just might stick to the Teflon nigger this time. And get this: Marko says whenever Kate left the apartment, Cyrus would be crazy mad. He told Marko he didn’t think it was him being black that bothered her. It was that he sold drugs. Which was crazy to him, since she was there to buy drugs.“

”Drugs she wasn’t taking,“ I murmur, my mind on Drew’s words in his car on the night he told me he was involved with Kate: Ellen’s addicted to hydrocodone… You can’t imagine Ellen popping Lorcet Plus like M amp;Ms? ”Goddamn it,“ I whisper.

”What is it?“

”Nothing.“

”Don’t bullshit me, Penn. If it’s something I need to know, tell me.“

”It’s not,“ I assure him, wondering if Drew could really have sunk that low. ”Give me the rest of it, Sonny.“

”You’ve got most of it. Except that Marko’s scared shitless.“

”Why?“

”Because Cyrus doesn’t need him anymore. Now that Cyrus has the contacts at the colleges, Marko’s just one more middleman he doesn’t want to pay.“

”That’s good,“ I reason, thinking like a prosecutor. ”Maybe Marko will testify against Cyrus to save his ass.“

Sonny grins. ”He’s considering that as we speak.“

As we stand in the silent darkness, I realize it’s not silent at all. The high-pitched drone of crickets is almost a scream, and a spring breeze rattles the millions of oak leaves surrounding us. Across the road, a car engine starts, and a pair of headlights clicks on.

”Slut,“ Sonny mutters.

”Who? Kate?“

”No. My neighbor’s got a teenage daughter over there, about fifteen. There’s a different boy over there every week. I’ve even seen a couple of black boys pick her up. One jig from the Catholic school showed up at my front door saying he was looking for a girl named Karen-that’s this girl. I said, ’The only black girl on this road lives about three miles down that way.‘ “ Sonny laughs. ”He didn’t know what the hell to say.“

The screech of a screen-door spring silences the crickets, and the yellow rectangle appears again on Sonny’s porch. Then a little boy’s voice calls into the night.

”Are you coming back in, Daddy?“

Sonny turns back to the house and yells, ”Just a couple of minutes, Kevin.“

Across the street, the car pulls slowly into the road. It’s a Lexus sedan, an older model but still expensive for Beau Pré Road. As I watch, the window on our side slides down, and the car slows as though its driver wants to ask for directions. He’s probably reluctant to pull into Sonny’s driveway without an invitation, so I start toward the road.

As I walk, I see a glint of metal in the open window. In one paralyzed moment adrenaline floods my body. I’ve been shot at before, and despite the darkness, I know what I’m looking at. ”Get down, Sonny!“ I scream, diving to the ground.

Night vanishes in a starburst of white light and thunder, the explosions coming too quickly to count. Automatic weapon.As the seconds dilate, I whip my head toward Sonny, who for some reason is still on his feet, standing in full view of the gunman.

He’s returning fire at the Lexus. Orange flame leaps from his pistol, but the reports are lost in the roar of the machine gun. I look back at the Lexus, and for one instant a screaming Asian face is revealed by a perfect circle of light. Two holes appear magically in the door below the face. Then another fusillade of bullets erupts from the rear window. An explosive grunt sounds behind me.

Sonny’s hit!

As the spinning tires scream, I roll back toward Sonny Cross. He’s lying on his back, his eyes wide, his mouth gasping for air. His right arm jabs his gun toward me.

”Take it!“

I do. But by the time I come to my knees with the pistol raised, the Lexus is fishtailing up the road. I empty Sonny’s clip at the fleeing car, then drop the gun and fall to my knees beside him. The blood on his white knit shirt tells me he’s been hit at least three times in the torso. His chest rises and falls erratically, and the wheezes coming from his throat and chest tell me death isn’t far away.

”My kids,“ he says in a guttural voice. ”Check on…my boys.“

”You first, Sonny.“ I pull my cell phone from my pocket, but as I dial 911, the front door of the house bangs open again.

”Daddy? Daddy, where are you?“

Panic in the voice. ”Daddy’s still out here!“ I shout. ”He’s fine! He’s coming in just a minute. Go back inside, boys!“

”911 dispatcher,“ says a woman’s voice in my ear.

”This is Penn Cage. I’ve got an officer down at two seventy-one Beau Pré Road. Multiple gunshot wounds. I need an ambulance, stat. Now, connect me to the sheriff’s department.“

Up on Sonny’s porch, two small silhouettes stand wavering in the yellow rectangle.

”Sheriff’s department,“ says another woman.

”Deputy Sonny Cross has been shot at his home. Multiple gunshots. Repeat, Deputy Sonny Cross. Get some paramedics out here. He’s critical. The shooter’s fleeing the scene on Beau Pré Road, headed toward Highway 61. It’s a black Lexus with at least three people inside. An older-model Lexus. You need to set up roadblocks immediately. The shooter is Asian, repeat, Asian ethnicity. Call Sheriff Byrd at home. Tell him Penn Cage reported it.“

”Hold on, Mr. Cage,“ says the dispatcher.

”I can’t. Two seventy-one, Beau Pré Road.“

One of Sonny’s children has left the porch and ventured about half the distance to his father. ”Daddy?“ he calls tentatively.

Even in his distress, Sonny manages to shake his head. ”Don’t let them see me like this. Don’t-“ A gout of blood erupts from his throat.

I jump up and run to the boy, snatching him into my arms and trotting back to the porch, where his brother waits. When I set him down, I try to reassure them both, but the faces in the glow of the porch light already know the worst. I drop to my knees and grasp a thin wrist tightly in each hand. ”Are either of you hurt?“

”No, sir,“ says the oldest, who looks like he might be eleven. ”Should I get my gun?“

”Where’s my dad?“ asks the other, who’s eight at the most. Tears are running down his face.

”Your daddy’s hurt, boys. But he’s going to be all right. The ambulance is on the way. I want you to go inside and call your mom. Tell her she needs to come right over here. Do you understand?“

”Yes, sir,“ says the older, who I now remember is called Sonny, Junior.

The younger boy doesn’t want to go, but Junior grabs his wrists and pulls him inside. I race back to the end of the driveway. For the first time, I notice a light lying on the ground beside Sonny. It’s not a flashlight. It’s a spotlight mounted beneath the barrel of his pistol. He must have flicked it on before he opened fire on the Lexus. That was the circle of light that showed me the gunman’s face. It may also have been what guided the shooter’s bullets to Sonny’s chest.

”Penn?“Sonny chokes, his hand grabbing at the air. ”Are you there?“

”I’m here, buddy.“ I use the gun light to illuminate my face. ”You hang on.“

His desperate eyes lock onto mine. ”My boys?“

”They’re not hurt. They’re both fine, and they know you’re fine.“

Somehow Sonny laughs, a wry sound that turns into a terrible coughing fit. ”Not…fine,“ he rasps. ”Not gonna make it this time around.“

”Bullshit.“ I take his hand and squeeze tight.

”Asian,“ he whispers. ”Shooter was Asian.“

”I saw him.“

”I’m cold, man. Just like the damn movies. Just like…“

”The ambulance is on the way, Sonny. Hang tight.“

”Too far. Know…response time. Tell ’em save the gas.“ With a sudden surge of strength, Sonny Cross raises his other hand, rolls into me, and grips my biceps like a claw. His eyes are straining out of their sockets, like the eyes of a dying martyr exhorting his torturers to have faith. ”It’s yours now, Penn. Cyrus…Marko…you gotta finish it. Do what you have to do…hear me?“

”I can’t do what you did today.“

He falls back on the ground, his eyes half shut now, but his grip still strong. ”Chris Vogel,“ he croaks. ”Mike Pinella…Kate. How many others? Family, man…all family.“

”I hear you, Sonny.“

His next words ride a deep exhalation of the kind I’ve heard too often before. ”Tell Janie I’m sorry, man. Tell her…I never meant-“

This time the silence is absolute. Not even the crickets disturb the transit of Sonny Cross’s troubled soul as it departs for wherever it is bound.

A high-pitched sob sounds behind me. I turn and see the two boys standing six feet away. They look at me, then run to their father and collapse with their heads on his chest. Then the crickets resume, and the high note of a siren wails Sonny Cross’s benediction.