terrible. And you couldn’t risk her turning on you after all these years. You couldn’t risk people finding out what you really are. Or maybe you just couldn’t stand Sally knowing whatever it is.”
Another change has come over him, like a storm cloud passing over a tree. The darkness in his eyes masks his thoughts from me. “All you need to think about,” he says in a dangerous voice, “is my son’s face when I show him the video of Jet grinding on your cock. Everything else is academic.”
“We’re done, Max.”
“For now. Just remember this: if Paul kills you . . . you deserved it.”
“Bullshit. I paid him back for saving my life. I compromised myself to do it.”
Max isn’t buying it. “Keep telling yourself that. You’re only breathing air right now because of him.”
With that he turns his back on me and walks to the front door. I trail him to make sure he doesn’t veer down the hall to where Nadine is hiding. He doesn’t, but as he touches the doorknob, he sings out, “Na-dine! Is that you?” Then he laughs and walks through the door, slamming it behind him.
Hurrying to the back window, I watch him round the house and stroll across my backyard like he’s thinking of buying it. Shame and fear boil through me, but above all, rage. What he told me about my father’s first family is something I never even considered. But when I think of Jack Kirby’s earlier warnings, it seems obvious. Max’s story of their murder typifies almost everything I hate about the South. A few uneducated assholes wrecked a man’s life for trying to help those less fortunate than himself. They murdered his wife and child and never paid for it—were never even accused of the crime. The community I was born into tacitly allowed that murder as a punishment for bucking the system. Just as it will allow the murder of Buck Ferris as punishment for threatening the paper mill and the new interstate—
“Motherfucker,” I mutter as Max vanishes into the trees.
Remembering Nadine, I trot down the hall and call loudly, “It’s Marshall! He’s gone! All clear! Nadine?”
After about ten seconds, I hear a click through the wall. Five seconds after that, Nadine’s voice comes through the bedroom door.
“Marshall? Say something only you would know.”
“You kissed me at the industrial park.”
The door opens, revealing Nadine standing with her mother’s gun in her right hand. “I hated that,” she says, her eyes wet with tears of anger. “Hiding like that.”
“I’m sorry. Did you hear any of our conversation?”
“Stuck back here? Hell, no. I’d rather have come out and jammed this gun into his balls and demanded the truth.”
“Max would have enjoyed that. He’d have given you chapter and verse on your mother’s sexual preferences.”
“And I’d have blown his balls off.” There is steel in Nadine’s voice. “I need more vodka,” she says, starting down the hall. “Am I crazy, or did I hear somebody sing part of the Chuck Berry song?”
“That was Max on his way out. He knew you were back here. He saw you arrive.”
“Was he following me?”
I don’t want to get into the issue of Jet. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”
“Did you ask about his alibi? Who told Sally that he slept with my mother?”
“Tallulah Williams, he claimed. The family maid.”
Nadine stops in the kitchen and turns back to me. “I’ve met Tallulah. I can see her knowing about an affair. I’m not sure I can see her telling Sally something that would hurt her, though.”
“I may go talk to her about it. Tomorrow.”
“Did Max tell you anything else?”
“Let’s get that drink first.”
She goes to the freezer for the Crater Lake, then drinks straight from the neck of the bottle. As I mix myself a gin and tonic, I tell her that Max admitted responsibility for the break-ins at her store and home. Then I give her a quick explanation of Sally’s data cache. Finally I tell her what Max said about the murder of my father’s wife and daughter.
“These guys,” Nadine says, practically grinding her teeth in fury. “Their time is so over. They need to be erased.”
“I thought you were a bleeding-heart liberal.”
She looks up sharply. “Boy, have you got me wrong. I’m for social justice, sure. But I’m for moral justice above all. And those Poker Club bastards belong in jail or in the ground.”
She takes another swig of vodka. “Have you told me everything?”
Everything except the blackmail video of me