The Ways of the Dead by Neely Tucker Read Free Book Online

I don’t need a—a swarm of FBI and CIA and DEA paratroopers pounding the street out there for weeks on end, rattling brothers on warrants, on child support, on whatever. Some shit is going to pop out, they do that, and I ain’t in the shit-popping-out business. So I’ll ask around, keep you in the loop—yeah, alright, okay, I can use a story in the newspaper with the true facts in it, put a little heat on the feds to play straight. You, now, you’re going to let me know what you hear about them getting anywhere close to me.”
    They looked at each other, the place quiet. Sly knew far more about the killing of Sarah Reese than he was saying, Sully knew that. His was the best intel on the street, possibly better than any law enforcement agency had. But there was no way to know exactly what it was, who it helped or hurt, or how Sly would play it out. But there was the same lesson from the war zones he’d covered until he got blown up applied here: If you want to know what the bad guys were doing, stick to the guys with the guns. They know the shit.
    “Deal,” Sully said.
    “Good enough.” Sly clicked the remote and the television died. “You can go home now.”
    “I ain’t got the bike. Gimme me a ride?”
    Sly snorted. “You can walk up to Georgia and try to get a cab or you can flop out on the couch. You not calling somebody to get you here.”
    “I’ll flop.”
    Sly shook his head, heading for his bedroom at the back, still tense, still worked up. “I’d stay on the couch, I was you,” he said, flicking off the lights. “Donnell ain’t partial to drunks walking around in the dark.”
    Sully felt around on the back of the couch until he found a throw, laid back, and pulled it over him. He put one of the couch pillows under his throbbing knee and another under his head, then fished his cell out of his pocket, the thing bulky and awkward. He punched in Dusty’s home number. It went straight to voice mail.
    “Look at the news,” he whispered. “I didn’t just cut out.”

seven
    Breakfast was an important start to the day, so Sully had another Miller and scrambled eggs. Sly, sitting on a bar stool at the kitchen counter, skipped the eggs and was sipping coffee, reading the A section, open to an inside page. It was just after eight and it was misting rain. He had taken Donnell out for a morning walk and was dressed in a black tracksuit that zipped up the front with white piping down the sides and sleeves.
    “Says here Reese is a Republican,” Sly said.
    “From Texas.”
    “I got that he was one of those Southern crackers from the accent, the time I heard him in court.”
    “He’s an asshole but he’s not a cracker.”
    Sly did not look up. “Say that again.”
    “Texans aren’t crackers.”
    Sly grunted.
    Sully doused his eggs with hot sauce. “I done told you. Dipshits from Georgia, north Florida, the Carolinas,
those
are crackers. West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas? Hillbillies. Hicks from Mississippi, Alabama, and north Louisiana—and just up in that western part of Tennessee and just across the river in the Arkansas delta? Those are your rednecks. South Louisiana? Cajuns. Not even God can help you with them.”
    “Y’all all look the same to me.”
    “I can’t help you with your prejudices.”
    “Which ones are the poor white trash?”
    “The ones who’ll shoot your ass somewhere between you calling them ‘white’ and ‘trash.’”
    “Which one are you?”
    “The river is sort of neutral ground. Mostly we stayed on the Louisiana side.”
    “You got Creole to you?”
    “Not so much as I know.”
    “So what are Texans? You never said.”
    “Texans. They fucking think the sun rises in Beaumont and sets in El Paso.”
    Sly went back to the paper. “You people.”
    There was jazz on the stereo, a sax on the lead, but Sully couldn’t place it and wasn’t going to give Sly the satisfaction. He drained the beer. “So what are we saying about yonder judge and his