down like a shotgun. She’s got that buttoned-up librarian thing goin’ on, like Shirley Jones in The Music Man. And I know you ain’t doin’ it justice.”
I walk over to the island and lean against it. Max is kicked back in my chair like he has all night to shoot the breeze. Right now I’d like to call Jet and tell her to set her Seychelles plan in motion. If it worked, Tommy Russo might put a bullet in Max’s ear by morning. I’m also thinking of the passwords behind Sally’s sapphire pendant. If those are the key to whatever cache Sally put together, then I’d like nothing more than to do exactly what Max has asked me to do—find it.
“What are you thinking, Goose?” Max asks. “Don’t get tricky on me.”
Nadine’s request bubbles up to the surface. “Tell me something about your alibi. Who told Sally that you’d slept with Margaret Sullivan?”
The levity goes out of his face, replaced by the animal cleverness that’s kept him above ground and out of jail all his life.
“Come on,” I press. “I mean, how many people could have known you were doing Margaret Sullivan?”
He’s clearly weighing the pros and cons of answering. “Why do you want to know?”
“What do you care? Unless the whole story’s a lie. Even if it is, I don’t work for the DA. Plus, you own my ass, right?”
Max nods slowly. “It was Tallulah, our maid. Tallulah Williams.”
An image of a tall, heavy African American woman comes into my mind. Whenever I spent the night with Paul as a boy, Tallulah was there until after supper and back first thing in the morning.
“She walked in on Margaret and me one afternoon at my house,” Max explains, “when Sally was out of town.”
“Tallulah,” I say softly, wondering if he’s lying.
“Yeah, she’s still kicking, though sometimes I think that old Electrolux will get the best of her.” Max is watching me like a dog that doesn’t trust the human it’s sitting with. “Tell me something, Marshall. Tell me I’m not misjudging you. Tell me you don’t already have this cache of Sally’s. That you’re not planning to print it in your daddy’s newspaper tomorrow. Because that would be a historically bad move, survival-wise.”
I flash on the photo of Dave Cowart with Buck Ferris that my secret source left me on that Lexar thumb drive. The Poker Club won’t be happy to find that in the Watchman tomorrow—or on our website tonight.
“If I did have it and I printed it,” I think aloud, “then you’d be dead. Right?” I give him a crocodile smile. “Maybe it’s worth the risk. Once the truth is out, it’s out. Hurting me wouldn’t help you at that point.”
Max looks deeply disturbed, so much so that it feels like a stranger has taken his place in the chair. “You know, I didn’t want to do this,” he says. “But you’re not leaving me any choice.”
“What are you talking about?”
“As a general rule, a man can push things pretty far in this life and still make out all right. Hell, I’ve spent my whole life pushing that old envelope. But when you go too far, when you test that outside edge too many times, nature balances things out. You get slung off the road, or you augur in from the clouds. That’s what your daddy did.”
A dull ringing has started in my ears. “What do you mean?”
Max stands and walks to the window, glances out, then looks back at me. “You know your problem? You went up north and turned into a superior son of a bitch. That’s one thing your daddy never was. Duncan could be righteous, but he wasn’t a hypocrite. And he wasn’t smug. Hell, you probably don’t know it, but your father was asked to join the Poker Club back in 1960. My daddy told me that. Duncan declined—he’s the only man who ever did—but nobody held it against him. Because he always cut us plenty of slack in the paper. Oh, he’d go on a tear every now and then, about civic responsibility and maybe even corruption, but he never stung us. Gave us a pass.”
The anger I feel is so all-consuming I can hardly raise my voice. “I don’t believe you.”
Max barks a laugh. “Ask him, then! Are you two speaking now?”
“Get to it, Max.”
“Duncan’s only problem was when he got the civil rights bug up his butt. Back in the sixties, before I shipped out. Ol’ Duncan wouldn’t let that