14 Porter Hayes

The work wasn't sexy. Never had been. Being an investigator involved a lot of phone calls, long nights in motel parking lots, and getting to know the courthouse clerks' favorite brand of cigarette or booze. A few things had changed, as Darlene was quick to point out. You could find stuff online in seconds that used to take days. Property records, arrest reports, and tracking known associates. At the moment, Darlene was trying to expedite Dean McKellar's service record while Porter dialed his old friend Sawyer who used to work for the Commercial Appeal before being called up to the big leagues in D.C. He and Porter kept in touch, connected forever by one big-ass case they worked together in '93 that changed both of their lives.

Hayes leaned back into his cushioned leather chair and placed his zip Italian boots on the window ledge, looking out at the fire escape. He spotted a dead spider plant in a coffee cup and an empty bottle of Rémy that his ex-girlfriend had given him two years ago. That Rémy had lasted longer than the relationship. "Hey, man," he said. "It's Porter Hayes in Memphis."

"As opposed to Porter Hayes in New York City?" Sawyer said. "Or Porter Hayes of San Francisco? Could Porter Hayes exist anywhere else?"

Sawyer had been a young, white hipster who found the world funny when Porter first met him. Now he was an aging hipster who still seemed to find the world a little bit humorous. Man had shaken a lot of trees in Memphis and uncovered a lot of dirty deeds during his time here. Back then, he was the kind of dude who lived on a busted-ass houseboat and wore ironic T-shirts with his sport coats. Old Chuck Taylor sneakers to funerals. Porter wondered if he still dressed that way.

"I need a favor."

Hayes laid out what he knew about Dean McKellar and the current situation. He gave Sawyer the man's date of birth and that he'd been told McKellar served as an army lieutenant in the first Gulf War and was honorably discharged as a captain. "His wife said he's from Upstate New York," he said. "She met him in New York City and then brought him back to Memphis where they married. Central Gardens. Country Club. Two kids. You've seen the movie."

"But never lived the dream," Sawyer said. "Is McKellar a bad guy or a good guy?"

"If I thought he was a good guy, why would I waste a favor?"

"Because I haven't heard from you in a few years?" Sawyer said. "Not even one of your famous Christmas cards."

"I quit on those Christmas cards, man," Hayes said. "Folks complained about me wearing a Santa hat and holding a Smith Wesson. Listen, I heard this man got hooked up with some big-time DOD contracts. Figured with all those bylines from Baghdad and Kabul, you could find out if that's fact or fiction."

"You have a deadline?"

"PIs don't have deadlines," Hayes said. "But this case does have what I call urgency. I'm working for the wife and she's getting some external pressure."

"That meaning?"

"Some one-armed motherfucker broke into her big-ass house and made some threats."

"Yep," Sawyer said. "That's pressure. How 'bout I call you back when I have something?"

The connection dropped and Hayes stared out the window at the old facade of the bank across the street. The building was a big block of pebbled concrete with mirrored windows and gold trim. He recalled when the bank was bustling, men in suits and ladies in hats coming through the glass doors that now had been shuttered and covered over in graffitied plywood.

Darlene walked in and placed a handful of message slips on his desk. He stood up and followed her into the anteroom, pouring out some coffee, and shuffling through the slips. Darlene sat back at her post, hammering away at a big blocky keyboard, reading glasses down on her nose. Lots of framed photos of her grandkids on her desk. Church functions and fishing trips down to Panama City, Florida. The World's Most Beautiful Beaches!

"I've found five of those associated persons," she said. "Three of them are still in town. Ran a Lexis-Nexis on all of 'em. Figured that's what you'd want."

Hayes added a little sugar to his coffee as the printer hummed to life and started riffling through multiple pages. When it quit, he picked up the hot sheets and ambled back into his office, searching for his own pair of reading glasses and settling in with what Darlene had found out. Jackson E. Kelly. Wilson R. Gregory. Aron T. Taylor.

He dialed up Kelly first. It went straight to voicemail, and he left a message.

He called Gregory and a woman answered. He left his name and number. The woman wasn't friendly or helpful and hung up quick.

Third time was a charm; a man picked up on Taylor's phone.

"Mr. Taylor."

"Yeah, this is Aron." The man's voice was guttural and countrified.

"Aron," Porter Hayes said. "You used to work for McKellar-Dawson."

Hayes said it just like that, not asking the man but telling him the information right in front of him. The man didn't answer but he could hear Taylor breathing on the line.

"Mr. Taylor?"

"Yeah, I heard you."

"My name is Porter Hayes," he said. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about Dean McKellar."

The line went dead quick. A loud hollow ringtone sounded in his ear before he set the receiver down on the cradle. The silence and hang-up told Hayes all he needed to know. He checked his slim Hamilton watch—five twenty-two—and stood up, walking over to his hat rack to pick up his leather jacket. The address showed a neighborhood way the hell out in Cordova. Shit. Traffic would be rough, but maybe he could get to the man before dark. Not to judge, but the man sounded like a genuine redneck and might greet a Black man with a certain skepticism.

On the way out, he told Darlene where he was headed.

"Aron Taylor expecting you?"

"Nope," he said. "But I thought I'd lay down the Porter Hayes charm anyway. Want to walk out with me?"

"Why?" Darlene asked. "You don't think a woman from Coldwater can hack it in the big city after twenty-five years? What the dang hell? You gone soft, Porter?"

"Okay then," he said. "But do me a favor. Run a background check on that man I told you about earlier. Alec Dawson."

"Why Dawson?" she said. "The man who helped y'all out?"

"Yes, ma'am," Hayes said, sliding into his jacket. "Remember what I always say."

"Don't trust no one?"

"The other one."

"Everybody got a side hustle in Memphis."

Hayes snapped his fingers. "That's it."

Ever since his last girlfriend, the esteemed councilwoman Harriet Frank, moved out, Porter did his best to not spend a lot of time lying about at home. Randy and Nina still came over for Sunday dinner, trying to convince him to sell the ranch house he and his late wife had bought in seventy-one and paid off in eighty-two. He resisted not just because it was stocked full of memories, 'cause there sure was a lot of that shit piled high in sagging boxes in the garage and up in his attic. But where exactly did they think he was going? Move into some sad Midtown apartment or go ahead and put a down payment on some retirement center? Go fishing in the damn Ozarks? He knew the kids loved him and were thinking of him, but Hayes damn sure wasn't ready to ride off into the sunset. Not now. Not yet.

Hayes punched in a cassette of Syl Johnson as he eased the old Mercedes out of the parking space and made a quick turn on Second. He spotted the tail before the car even started to follow him. At least he figured it for a tail, a young brother in mirrored sunglasses behind the wheel of a silver Ford Taurus (a rental for sure), and not bothering to turn on his lights until Hayes turned out onto the street.

Hayes glanced up into the rearview, Syl singing his damn ass off on "Any Way the Wind Blows." On the fly, Hayes decided to change things up and head toward the river instead of Danny Thomas, trying to see if he was right or just getting edgy. He found his way onto Front Street and down the cobblestones to the river, the Mississippi stretching far and muddy over to Arkansas. He did everything slow and deliberate, the man hanging two, three car lengths back, rolling south along Riverside at sunset, while Hayes took a cool and casual pace along the bluffs.

Hayes headed up into the bluffs toward the old Rivermont Hotel, the fancy hotel now some kind of sad-ass apartments (man, that place used to gleam!), and then made a slow and easy U-turn into a parking lot before heading across Riverside and into a stretch of new condos just being framed. Used to be nothing but crackheads and abandoned warehouses up there, now people were paying top dollar for a sunset view of the Mississippi.

When he glanced back, he appeared to have lost the tail. No need to keep the son of a bitch riding close all the way to Cordova.

Hayes took a few turns before he headed up South Main and was driving back toward downtown to hook up with Union and the interstate, when he saw the Taurus coming up fast and hard behind him. Son of a bitch. The man not even trying now, knowing he'd been spotted. Hayes didn't pay him any mind, grooving along with his open windows and letting Syl do his thing. He passed the empty and boarded-up Hotel Chisca, the Orpheum with its flashing marquee. "The Sound of Music Live." Syl's music always taking him back to Genevieve after she'd stopped touring, a long time before the cancer, and the days when they could enjoy what all they'd built. A family, a home, backyard parties with the neighbors, crazy-ass Rufus Thomas doing the funky chicken at a Fourth of July cookout. Willie Mitchell, the master producer himself, trying to convince Genevieve to get back into the studio, offering his new sound that ultimately went to Ann Peebles, Genevieve finding more meaning with Randy and Nina than hearing her voice on the radio or seeing her face on an album cover. She was kind and generous, infuriating and opinionated, cold and passionate, and damn, how he missed her. There had been other women since, but none could even come close.

He wound his way down Beale and over to Union, the man now two car lengths back as if that would make everything right. There was little doubt this man had been sent by the good Reverend Hightower, maybe one of his young deacons, to put the fear of God into him. Hayes crossed Union and drove past the Redbirds' stadium and then made a quick turn without a signal onto Madison, planning to head on up to Danny Thomas, where he knew he could lose the tail on the interstate. He glanced back again, now seeing only a pickup truck between them at a stoplight.

There were two other cases that might bring on a tail. But he sure didn't figure this to be connected to Addison McKellar, her missing husband, and some one-armed white man. Her story of the break-in reminded him of Spencer Tracy in Bad Day at Black Rock. He'd watched the whole thing as a young man at the old Palace on Beale, knowing the whole theater understood what that one-armed man was feeling, an outsider trying to find justice in a corrupt world. He believed in all that shit until he got shipped off to Fort Benning after graduation and the real world came into focus. Vietnam. The department. Dr. King. All of it. Helicopters beating overhead with the National Guard invading his city.

When the light turned green, Hayes drove up toward the Wonder Bread factory, the big neon sign glowing red and yellow at twilight, the windows down and the air smelling of freshly baked bread.

It was after five, and this section of town was an empty swath of cleared lots with commercial realty signs. He pulled up in front of a vacant lot across from the bread factory, knocked his car in park, and looked in his side mirror.

The Taurus slowed twenty or so yards away and came to a full stop. Hayes could barely make out the man's mirrored sunglasses, the fella probably thinking Porter's ass was on the phone and might pull back out onto the street to wherever the hell he was going. Best to stop things when they started. No need to get this man tied up in the McKellar case.

Hayes pushed in the lighter and fired up a Winston, keeping an eye on the Taurus.

Halfway through the cigarette, the sedan pulled out and raced around Hayes. Before the smoke had floated away, the man was gone. As he noted the plate, Porter knew he wasn't working for the Hightowers. The Taurus was a government car.

The damn feds. What the hell did they want with him now?