27 Porter Hayes

The next morning, Darlene stopped Porter Hayes in the third-floor hallway outside his office. "You've got two men in suits waiting for you," she said, face flushed and talking fast. "They claim to be FBI agents, but I don't believe them for one hot second. One of 'em flashed their ID, but you can buy that shit on eBay. Just a couple of assholes off the street if you ask me. Kept on telling me to cooperate, give them any files we had on the McKellar case."

"Well," Hayes said, "that ain't happening."

"You think I don't know that?" she said. "This ain't my first rodeo, Buster Brown. I told them to get the hell out of our office, but they walked right past me and into your office. I was just about to call the police when I heard you coming up the steps."

Hayes nodded, removed the toothpick from his mouth, and headed straight through Darlene's outer office and into his. Two white men sat in his client chairs. One man was small, with a gaunt-looking face and slick hair; the other was chunky and wore an ill-fitting suit and a close-cropped beard. They stayed put as Hayes walked behind his desk, not even making a motion to stand up and introduce themselves.

"My secretary says you're both federal agents?"

"I'm a federal agent," said the smaller white man, making a big show about flashing his ID. Hayes made a motion to hand it over, which the agent did, and Hayes took a good, hard look. Yep, looked legit. F. Duane Bickett of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "I'm Agent Bickett and this is Mr. Sutton with the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance. They handle the licensing of all private investigators in the state."

"Oh, I'm aware what they do," Hayes said. "I hope y'all have a good reason to bust up all into my office this morning."

"No one busted into your office, Mr. Hayes," Agent Bickett said. "Your secretary told us we could wait here until you got back from breakfast."

"Now that's a black lie," Darlene said, hanging in the doorframe. "I told them they could wait for you out here, Porter. They walked straight on in like they owned the place."

Hayes stood up and lifted a window, setting a brick in the sill to make sure it stayed put. When he sat back down, Hayes didn't say a word. He just looked to both of them, waiting to hear what kind of bullshit web they were about to spin.

"The door was open," Agent Bickett said, shrugging and spreading out his hands. "It seemed like the most convenient place to wait."

Porter Hayes was seriously beginning to dislike this motherfucker, Agent Bickett. The other man, the one called Sutton, looked embarrassed and ill at ease. His ass too big for the wooden client chair. He clasped his hands in his lap while Bickett studied Porter's wall of fame, craning his neck upward to see the mess of awards and photos earned after nearly forty years in the business.

"You really know Jerry Lee Lewis?"

"I even know why they call him The Killer."

"And why's that?"

Hayes didn't answer. He just leaned back into his office chair, waiting for them to get to the damn point before he asked them to leave. No one spoke for a long while as he smelled the roasting from the Peanut Shoppe down the street mixed with the diesel from the morning delivery trucks. "Are y'all just going door-to-door selling Girl Scout cookies, or do you have some grown-up business here?"

"You work for Dean McKellar," Bickett said.

"Nope."

"Come on," he said. "Don't get yourself in trouble by shielding a man like that. Just tell us what you know, Porter, and we'll be on our way."

"Mr. Hayes."

"Excuse me?"

"I've been working this town since well before you were sucking your momma's titty," Hayes said. "And you will call me Mr. Hayes in my goddamn office."

Agent Bickett smiled big and glanced over at Sutton. The fat bureaucrat had grown even more nervous, knowing he was nothing more than a prop brought to show-and-tell. He glanced over at Bickett and then self-consciously straightened his striped tie.

"And who exactly is Dean McKellar?" Hayes asked.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah," Hayes said. "Seriously. Is he a local guy? Criminal? What's his deal? Why are y'all looking for his ass?"

"He's not local," Bickett said.

"But where's he from?" Hayes said. "What's so important about this man?"

Bickett looked over his shoulder at Darlene still standing in the doorway and then back at Hayes. His face widened with a smug little grin that reminded Porter of a cartoon weasel.

"I'm not here for you to ask me questions."

"Is that a fact?"

"It would be a shame for Mr. Sutton to get involved," Bickett said. "He might have to put your license under review for a month or two, you know, to find out how and why you're part of a federal investigation. Trust me. That stuff can take forever and ruin a man's reputation."

Hayes leaned back farther and placed his hands behind his head. "Oh, it's like that?" Hayes said. "And here I was feeling good this fine morning. Had me a platter of biscuits and gravy down at the Bon Ton, the sun finally coming out after three days of nothing but rain. But y'all had to go and fuck things up."

Bickett tried to give Hayes a hard look that Hayes had seen done meaner and a lot better. "I need you to answer a few questions and I want that file on McKellar."

"Like I said, I don't work for any Dean McKellar, and if I did, I don't have to show y'all shit," he said. "Now y'all can go nicely, or I can call up my man Bernie Gold on speed dial. You do know Bernie Gold, right?"

Bickett shrugged and shook his head, still amused as hell with the situation. Sutton looked at Bickett and then Porter Hayes before shaking his head, too.

"Y'all haven't seen his commercial?" Hayes asked. "When you're down and out and you need a plan. Don't you waste one minute because Bernie Gold's your man."

"Oh, yeah," Sutton said, sitting up in the chair. "Bernie Gold and Associates. He has those big billboards with big stacks of money and gold chains and diamonds."

Sutton grinned big, like a third grader answering a teacher's question, before Bickett shot a sour look his way.

"He's gonna love meeting y'all," Hayes said. "What with y'all already trespassing and throwing around threats."

Bickett shook his head. "No one threatened you," he said. "We came to inquire about your client. Mr. McKellar is connected to two extremely dangerous foreign agents who flew into Memphis this weekend. If you don't want to answer our questions, that's fine. I can easily get a warrant to seize your files and computers."

Hayes leaned forward in his chair and looked to Agent Bickett. A swath of morning light spread across his blotter where he saw a note from Darlene to call Addison McKellar ASAP and that means right away. "Let me get this straight," he said. "You want me to trust the damn FBI?"

"Any reason you shouldn't?" Bickett said.

"How long you got?" he said. "How about we start with surveillance on Malcolm X, Dr. King, killing Fred Hampton. Should I go on?"

"Lots of urban legends about the old days."

"Ever hear of a little program called COINTELPRO?"

"Ancient history," Bickett said. "That doesn't have anything to do with us."

"And just where were you in sixty-eight, Junior?"

"I was born in seventy-two."

Hayes laughed and reached into his right-hand drawer for a pack of Winstons. He shook one loose and set fire to the end. He exhaled a big plume of smoke and watched the men across his desk.

"I want to know why a Russian thug named Anatoliy Zub is in my town," Bickett said. "Along with a French national who goes by the name Gaultier. He has at least thirteen different identities and is on a watch list from INTERPOL."

"How the fuck should I know?" Hayes asked. "Maybe they're all crazy about Elvis. That's all you see down on E.P. Boulevard, European folks coming to pay their respects to the King."

Bickett shook his head. He glanced over to Sutton and then back to Hayes. Darlene had disappeared back to her desk and he could hear that she was already on the phone with Bernie Gold. A pushy federal agent's making threats against Porter and his license... oh, yeah? Well, he already told him to go fuck himself but that's not working.

"This all connects to Dean McKellar."

"Y'all already sent one of your agents to follow me around town," he said. "Did you ever see me with this McKellar man?"

Bickett looked at Hayes and shook his head. "That wasn't us."

"Young fella like yourself," Hayes said. "Black man who likes mirrored shades. Drove a Ford Taurus with government plates and calls himself Carson Wells."

"Never heard of him."

Bickett stood up and placed a hand on the edge of Hayes's desk, leaning in just a little. If he was trying to look imposing, he wasn't doing a very good job. Damn. Times change, but Quantico keeps on churning out the same model. The same misguided attitude with a touch of white privilege like they ran the whole show and could do as they pleased.

Hayes came around the desk and Bickett took a few steps back. Hayes walked to the door and ushered them out with his right hand. "Thanks for dropping by."

"If you're hiding or protecting Mr. McKellar in any way—"

"Why do you keep saying I work for this man?" Hayes said. "You want me to come across but won't offer me nothing but accusations."

"This morning we met with a Sergeant Jones at Memphis Police," Bickett said. "She said she knew for a fact you'd been employed by the McKellar family for the last few weeks and would want to stand up and do the right thing."

"She never said that," he said. "But it does seem like y'all lost this Dean McKellar fella. And can't find your asshole with a goddamn periscope."

Hayes drove to Nathan Bedford Forrest Park an hour later and took a seat at the edge of the bronze statue. Forrest arrogantly looked down from horseback, his saddle laden with a rifle and a saber. The inscription read: He fought like a Titan and struck like a god, And his dust is our ashes of glory. Before he'd been a Confederate general noted for massacring Black Union soldiers, Forrest had been a brutal slave trader in Memphis, and after the war he'd gone on to found the damned KKK. The statue was tarnished and old, the slave trader's and his wife's bones buried somewhere in the concrete pedestal.

A few minutes later, he spotted Lantana Jones getting out of her unmarked unit with the two tall coffees she'd promised. "That's too much sugar for a man your age," she said. "You trying to get diabetes?"

"Hell of a place to meet."

"I was working on a double homicide up in Smokey City and was headed back to 201," she said. "Figured this was better. I know how you hate the parking at headquarters."

"Who got killed?"

"Couple kids," she said. "One got shot last night and the other kid, the shooter, got killed early this morning still in his bed. Drugs. Bullshit. What else can you say? Turns your stomach. EMT got there and couldn't do a damn thing but sedate the shooter's mother, who was out of her goddamn mind with grief, running out of the house with blood on her nightgown and falling to her knees in the mud."

"I'm not gonna lie," Hayes said. "It wasn't much different when me and your daddy were on the job. But at least folks seemed to have a better reason for killing each other. What's the homicide count?"

"No too bad," she said. "Still hasn't hit a hundred this year."

"Wait till Christmas."

"I know."

"Nerves get jangled at Christmas," he said. "Too many needs and not enough money. Damn shame of it."

They sat and drank coffee. The day was unseasonably warm and Hayes had left his trench coat locked up safe in his Mercedes. Lantana had on her MPD uniform with sergeant's stripes on her shoulder and a Glock on her belt. Her nails were long and bright red, wrapping around the Starbucks cup like talons.

"Listen, Porter," she said. "I tried to call and warn you about that fed. Didn't you get my messages?"

"Not until too late," he said. "I'd been down at the Bon Ton, and when I got back found him and some man named Sutton sitting in my office."

"He didn't ask me about the McKellar case at first," she said. "He'd heard about a dead white man we'd fished out of some trees down at Riverside Park. A jogger spotted the body two days ago. We got a clean print and it came back to a former Marine sergeant named Dumas. Know anything about him?"

Hayes shook his head, taking a sip of coffee. Damn that Lantana Jones. She'd added in some of that Sweet'N Low bullshit.

"You know these feds," Jones said. "They think we work for them. Man wouldn't say jack shit about this dead guy. But I got the read on him that this man was something special to the feds. This boy, Agent Bickett, told me that Dumas was one of those military contractors, a solider for hire employed by something called the Warlock Group. What in the hell is somebody like that doing in Memphis?"

Porter sipped his coffee. "Good question."

"How's Mrs. McKellar?" she asked. "I tried her back last week and she told me her husband had come home. That it was all a misunderstanding. Her husband had been mugged in London. She seemed convinced of it, but it sounded like a bunch of bullshit to me. You sure that coffee is okay?"

"I can taste how much you love me, Lantana," he said. "Looking out for my health and all. Appreciate it."

Lantana Jones smiled even wider, a little wind kicking up by the statue, scattering an empty box of Popeyes and a few plastic bottles. As he turned, Hayes noticed someone had spray-painted Whoop That Trick on the horse statue's ass. Hard to take pride in a park that centered around a dead man with that kind of legacy.

"Well, I sure am glad that all is well at the McKellar house," Jones said, clicking her nails on the coffee cup. "And I guess that intruder she called about was just one of those random Memphis break-ins. Otherwise, I'd probably need to tell her that this body from the river, our dead international military contractor Jack Dumas, was missing an arm."

Porter raised an eyebrow. "Well, gotdamn."

"Only I wanted to talk to you about another missing persons report I just came across," she said. "Did you see in the paper about some old actress who had disappeared?"

"The one who worked with Elvis?"

"I'd never heard of that movie," she said. "Easy Come, Easy Go. Sounds fake to me. Only good movies that man made were Viva Las Vegas and the one where Elvis is a doctor, singing gospel and trying to get it on with that nun played by Mary Tyler Moore."

"Change of Habit."

"That's the one," Jones said. "Goddamn, that Elvis Presley was one handsome man. Momma would've taken good care of his ass."

Hayes shook his head, not comfortable hearing what turned on his goddaughter.

"Why'd you want to talk to me about that case?"

Lantana drank some more coffee and set the cup between them. "See," she said, "one of our detectives went out and talked to this woman's daughter. She was sharing an apartment with her momma down off Bill Morris at Winchester."

"So."

"So," Jones said, "the daughter told my guy that her momma had been knocking boots with a man twenty years younger. Can you believe that? All that age separation, Porter Hayes?"

She picked up her coffee and knocked his knee with her leg. He smoothed down his mustache and shook his head.

"Okay. Okay," he said. "What about this woman?"

"Apparently, she'd been the real deal back in your time," Jones said. "British, blond, looked good in a teeny-weeny bikini. All that shit. The daughter said the last time she saw her mother, she was getting into a car with a white man who resembles your Dean McKellar. Only this man's name was Collinson."

"Peter Collinson?"

"Yep," she said. "Said she didn't trust this man a lick and decided to write down the tag on his Land Rover. Want to guess who that car's registered to?"

"My man Dean."

"See," Lantana said. "You may be old, Porter Hayes, but you come along real quick. Can't wait to tell Daddy you ain't dead wood after all."