17 Porter Hayes

Porter Hayes stood up and looked out his office window facing Madison. And there he was: the same motherfucker in the same silver Taurus with the government tag. He thought about just walking down the street and tapping on the window, Hey, man. Who are you and what the fuck do you want, youngblood? Before he could, Darlene returned from lunch. She'd gone down to the Front Street Deli and brought Hayes a slice of their blueberry pie, a nice treat for a slow Wednesday.

"He still there?" Darlene asked.

"Sure is," Hayes said, sitting back down at his desk and setting the pie in front of him.

"That man is going to give you a crick in your neck."

"Got to be a man named Wells," Hayes said. "Lantana Jones told me about him. He'd been looking into Dean McKellar and now he's on my ass."

"Even though Dean McKellar is back home," she said. "And his wife fired your ass."

"Appreciate that, Darlene."

It had been a week since Addison McKellar had told Porter she no longer required his services. Three days ago, he'd received a handwritten note on monogrammed stationery thanking him for his time and interest in her family along with a check written for a thousand dollars more than the invoice. Hayes was a good detective, what some folks called a dogged detective, but he sure as hell wasn't about to stay on the McKellar case pro bono. Didn't matter if she was Sam the Sham's daughter or not. He did his job until she fired him. Only a fool would keep working for free.

"We ever turn up anything on that land in Marks?"

"You said you didn't care," she said. "Said it didn't matter anymore."

"Humor me," he said.

"Because of what you heard from that crazy Aron Taylor?" she said. "I wouldn't take the word of some peckerwood with a felony record as gospel. GI Joe training compound? Shoot houses? Sounds like a lot of horseshit to me."

"Maybe."

"Why do you give a damn?" she said. "The check cleared, Porter."

"But I still got a damn crick in my neck from that fed," he said. "And I'd like to know why."

"I say if Mrs. McKellar invited that son of a bitch back home, then it's her own goddamn problem."

"Aron Taylor told me some other things."

"Like what?"

"Two Mexican workers tried to shake down McKellar," he said. "And they just up and disappeared."

"You're not her daddy," she said. "You did your damn job."

The whole case was fucked-up and full of holes. His buddy Sawyer at the Post couldn't find any contracts between Dean McKellar or McKellar Construction and the DOD. Hayes had made his own inquiries, too, looking into McKellar's service record and hitting a wall; the only Dean McKellar who came up was a man from New York who died in 1992. Either McKellar was lying about his service record (a truly despicable act to a vet like Porter) or he'd come back from the dead. Then there'd been that one-armed man who'd busted into Addison's house looking for a fella named Collinson. Who may, or may not, be Dean McKellar. But connecting McKellar to Collinson had gone nowhere real fast, too.

Darlene set the thin file on his desk: a Lexis-Nexis report on both Dean McKellar and Addison, typed-up reports of his interviews with Alec Dawson and Aron Taylor, and a short expense report for mileage and four cups of gas station coffee. He flipped open the file to find the property records on a forty-acre parcel down in Marks. Porter recalled that Marks had been the place where Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy wanted to kick off the Poor People's Campaign in the spring of '68. They picked Marks because of its extreme poverty, the poorest pocket of America right at the edge of the Mississippi Delta.

The property report stretched back decades, but all Hayes cared about was the most recent owners. He ran his finger down the sheet until he got to 2004 and saw the land had been purchased by the Devlin Group. The report listed a suite address in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He reached for the background report on McKellar to see if there was anything listed about an associated company called Devlin Group. He found nothing but McKellar Construction LLC and something called SugarBabies Ltd., which he knew had been that candy shop Addison ran in East Memphis. Even rich white ladies like having a side hustle, although it hadn't made any money.

He called out to Darlene's office. "Can you get Sawyer on the phone for me?"

"Thought you said he didn't know shit."

"I said he didn't know shit about Dean McKellar," he said. "I just got an itch is all. Damn, Darlene. Can you call him up for me?"

"You forget how to dial the phone?"

"Damn it, Darlene."

Hayes used a pen to highlight the property record and wondered how long it might take to drive down to Marks. Maybe an hour, hour and a half. He'd burn up a tank of gas and his whole afternoon for a client who had fired him. Not to mention things had heated up on the Hightower situation, the righteous reverend filing a cease and desist on his ass, saying that Porter Hayes was trying to slander his good name.

"Sawyer's not in," she said. "I left a message."

"All right then," Hayes said, standing up and doing a little pacing.

Hayes's karate certificate from Kang Rhee was crooked and he walked over to straighten it. Hung by its side was a picture of Elvis, grinning wide, in happier times, with his arm around Porter's shoulder. Sometimes he felt like Elvis was still around. Same thing with his late wife, like maybe the ghosts of some bright souls walked with you, watching your back when things got tight. Or maybe his ass was getting old, a little more religious in his later years. Always telling his daughter she'd see him in church one Sunday, although that Sunday never seemed to come.

"I'm going out," he said, reaching for his leather jacket and tossing it over his right shoulder.

"Where?"

"Gay Hawk," he said. "Almost forgot they had fried catfish today."

"But you just ate a piece of pie," she said.

Porter Hayes looked down at his secretary of nearly thirty years and offered his best smile. She shook her head and smiled back.

"No crime in having your dessert first."

Hayes returned an hour later with a full stomach and a toothpick hanging from the corner of his mouth. Darlene looked up and told him Sawyer had called him back. "You want me to try him?" she said. "Figured you may be worn out from eating all that catfish and cornbread."

Hayes gave her a thumbs-up, walking back into his office, not even taking a seat before he saw line one's flashing red button. He picked up.

"You sitting down?" Sawyer asked.

"Working on it, but my knee's giving me hell."

"Darlene gave me the name and address of the company out of Virginia Beach."

"And..."

"What's it to you?"

"Do we really need to discuss balancing them scales?"

"Last time you sent me a nice bottle of Rémy," Sawyer said. "And I don't even drink Rémy."

"Man's got to have class to drink brandy."

Hayes could hear a lot of talking and typing and general newsroom chaos on the other end of the line. He pictured Sawyer, unshaven with uncombed hair, the phone cradled up to his ear.

"This Devlin Group's nothing but a shell," Sawyer said. "But I assume you already knew that."

"That's why I was relying on your infinite knowledge of folks who make their dime sucking on Uncle Sam's tit."

"Graft is my business."

"And trouble is mine."

"See, the thing is that Devlin connects with two other shells before it hooks up with Warlock."

"Like a fucking witch?"

"A male witch," he said. "But yes, a witch."

"All right then," Hayes said. "You gonna lay on the good stuff or you just going to keep up the suspense, bullshitting until I drop dead at my desk?"

"Oh," Sawyer said. "You never heard of Warlock?"

"Only Warlock I know was the one Paul Lynde played on Bewitched," he said.

"Uncle Arthur."

"Yeah," Hayes said. "Uncle Arthur."

"So let me lead you through this mess," Sawyer said. "Warlock is a beast of a contracting company."

"Dean McKellar builds shopping malls and office buildings."

"You're not hearing me, Porter," he said. "Warlock is a major military contracting company. You said they own some kind of training compound in the Delta? Didn't you read about the slaughter in that bazaar in Kabul a few years ago?"

"Yeah," Hayes said. "Some dumbass security guards opened up on a bunch of women and children. Said there was a suicide bomber and then tried to cover it all up. Wasn't there supposed to be a big hearing about it?"

"The esteemed congressmen lost interest fast," Sawyer said. "This is a huge multinational group. You want to tell me how all this is coming out of Memphis?"

"Just a missing person case."

"See, I can't find anything about a Dean McKellar or a Peter Collinson connected to Warlock," Sawyer said. "Not that these are the kind of people that throw up a website or send out press releases. They have offices in London, Paris, and Dubai, but I couldn't get past an answering service. I called up a guy I know at the Times. He'd been doing some reporting after the bazaar massacre and he said he couldn't even find that so-called office in London. I did find out the company was started back in the nineties by a guy named Whitman Chambers. Nasty piece of work. Ex-SEAL, soldier of fortune type. He died in a plane crash in Sierra Leone back in '95. Sierra Leone's president took credit for blowing up the plane."

"Well, goddamn."

"Listen, Porter?"

"Yeah."

"This isn't your regular old trouble in the 901."

"No shit, man."

"Things don't work out too well for folks checking into Warlock," he said. "One of the men set to testify in the hearing just up and disappeared one day. Two other guys responsible for that bazaar incident ended up dead up in Kandahar a few weeks later. Another helicopter accident."

"I'll promise to watch my ass," Hayes said. "Besides, I hadn't been up in a helicopter since February of sixty-six back in Nam."