Holy City by Henry Wise

Author:Henry Wise
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2024-05-07T19:12:48+00:00

WILL TRACKED DOWN the poker players from Charlotte County. He found one owned the supermarket in Charlotte Court House that was called Supermarket, a dirty-looking grocery that seemed to have survived some 1950s apocalypse. The man was Tubby MacLean, and he was also the organist at the Baptist church down the road. He had three fingers on his right hand that looked like brown bananas, and you really noticed the missing fingers when he lifted his hand to take off his straw cowboy hat. Sure, he’d talked some smack after the game. He’d been drinking and had lost his money to that Tom Janders, and he still thought Janders might have been cheating. But after that, he left and came home to a wife who still didn’t know where he’d been. But she would say he got in about one a.m., which meant he’d left soon after the game and come straight home. The man appeared to be sorry Tom was dead.

“Let me ask you something, Deputy. Why would I stick a knife in that man’s back and burn his house?”

“Why would anybody? You’d lost money against him.”

“Well, that would mean I’d have that money now. Search my place up and down, check my bank accounts, see what I care. But don’t let my wife know I was playing cards. I get heated sometimes when the gin’s running and I’m seeing pretty girls and playing loose with cards. It’ll be hell to pay, she finds out.”

The other Charlotte man was Mose Rocker, who was a banker in Charlotte Court House. He said he followed Tubby back to town and went home to his wife, who was still up watching TV.

Will was able to leave at four o’clock that afternoon and met Bennico at the house closer to five. She was all done up, obviously ready to go, sitting outside with Sam, who was shelling black-eyed peas. Will felt as if he’d stumbled into something, out of place in his own home.

Will said to Bennico, “You look great. I’ll be just a minute.”

Sam followed him upstairs and waited in the hallway while Will changed.

“No,” Will said as he walked out of his room, before Sam could ask. “We said every other day. You need to wait till tomorrow.”

He pushed past Sam and went downstairs, where he argued with Bennico over whose car to take. Will lost to Bennico, who made the practical point that no one would recognize her car. Then, having won the argument, Bennico said, “If you’re going to argue, argue, damnit. I hate a man who accepts defeat as an option.”

They drove a little over an hour, passing a large building outside which stood a woodcutter’s stumps and totems, carved into figures and animals and Indian chiefs, a sign on the warehouse proclaiming “JESUS IS LORD” for all to read. They could hear, beyond the roar of wind through the open windows, the life buzzing and skittering out over the wide openness of the fields, ending in trees

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