Lost Man's River(31)

“A preliminary hearing in Arkansas federal court. No indictment. Won’t hurt us a bit.” He slipped the Belle Starr documents into his briefcase. “All the same, we have to scrutinize any material that casts a bad light on our subject—discuss, I mean, whether it’s fair to put it in our book.”

Lucius disliked the possessive tone of “our subject” and “our book.” He wanted to insist, “My subject, and my book,” but not wishing to seem petulant, he held his tongue.

Arbie sat arms folded on his chest as if trying to clamp down on chronic twitches. In the silence, he demanded, “What’s in this thing for you?”

“I mean, it must be a lot of work,” Lucius added quickly, annoyed by Arbie’s rudeness, yet aware that the old man was asking questions he should have asked himself.

“Not a thing, boys, not one blessed thing.” Dyer sat back in his chair to beckon the waitress. “Call it nostalgia about Chatham Bend, call it my sense of fair play. I’d like to see the Watson family fairly compensated. Mr. Watson was lynched, and his property was appropriated by the community that lynched him. Yet his title to that property has never been waived by any member of the family—”

“Couldn’t waive it if they didn’t know about it,” Arbie snapped. “Or if it was never nailed down in the first place—”

“That’s where I come in, sir.” Dyer awarded them a self-deprecatory smile, then spiked the next question before Arbie could ask it. “No fee, no commission. The family won’t owe me one red cent.”

Lucius waved the waitress to the table. “Who needs a drink?” he said. “No liquor served here,” Dyer said approvingly. “Nice clean place. Fine old-fashioned fundamentalist family.” He observed Lucius’s dismay with satisfaction. “ ‘God is our Senior Partner’—they put that right here on the menu! I dine here whenever I come through.” He smiled at the contents of the bill of fare. “Take it from me, boys, the cheapest dinners on here are the best. Deep-fried chicken, deep-fried catfish—they do it up real nice. Crispy and golden.”

Lucius muttered “Crispy and golden it is!” But Arbie cursed loudly and stood up and left the table just as the poor waitress fluttered in to take their order. “What I need is a good hard piss,” he growled, as she backed away. When Dyer asked if they should order for him, he stopped short and turned, cocking his head. “You talking to me?”

“Might’s well get your order in,” Dyer said. That this man was calm in the teeth of the old man’s hostility was impressive, Lucius thought, and a little scary.

“Make mine the Cheap Golden Dinner,” Arbie told the waitress. He moved away between the tables, shoulders high and stiff, as if ready to fend off a blow.

Having ordered his meal, the Major lit a cigar and shuffled through more papers. “Professor, you make it plain here in your notes that the outlaw Cox was the real culprit, that E. J. Watson was a solid citizen …”

“Yes, in his way—”

“ ‘Fine husband? Excellent farmer and good businessman?’ You telling me now you don’t mean what you say here?” He snapped open some pages and read Lucius’s words aloud: “ ‘The great majority of these Watson tales are mere rumors for which there is little or no evidence. To those who knew him as a neighbor, Edgar Watson was an admirable husband and kind father, an excellent farmer and fine businessman whose reputation for generosity persists even today’ ”

“It’s not so simple—” Lucius stopped when he saw Arbie coming back. Arbie had sniffed out some hard drink, from the look of him.

“Listen, let me ask you something. In all those old interviews of yours, back in the twenties, you never learned of a single witness to even one of his alleged murders, right?”

“Hell yes, there was a witness!” Arbie interrupted, even before he sat down at the table. “His own son!”

Dyer contemplated Arbie until the old man evaded his flat gaze, looking away. Then he opened his briefcase and brought out some notes. “I understand from Professor Collins,” the attorney began quietly, “that you claim to have encountered Robert B. Watson back around the turn of the century? That you were present at Key West when Robert Watson turned up with his father’s schooner?” The attorney held each query until after Arbie had assented to the one before.

“What the hell’s all this about?” Arbie burst out, louder than necessary.

“And you say Robert B. Watson told you some wild story about how his father murdered somebody named Tucker?”