Unwritten Laws 01(65)

Billy liked to think of himself as a redneck renaissance man. From humble beginnings, he’d raised himself to a plane where he was able to contemplate spending $250,000 to hire Jimmy Buffett to perform at his upcoming forty-fourth birthday party. Not many men could do that. The fact that he’d broken a multitude of laws to attain his present position was of no consequence. The lesson of history was that every great fortune was built upon a great crime, and great men from medieval popes to modern philanthropists had succeeded by taking this maxim to heart, just as Billy had done.

The drug trade had been Billy’s primary engine of success, but over the past five years he’d expanded into real estate, oil, timber, and hunting equipment. He also produced a reality hunting show for television, one carried on five separate cable channels. Top NASCAR drivers, NFL players, and country music stars had appeared on the show with him, hunting everything from alligators and razorbacks to the prize bucks that roamed the wooded hills of Valhalla. More than a few admirers had observed that Billy fit right in with that elite: with his dirty blond hair and ice-blue eyes, he looked like the lead singer of a 1970s southern rock band. He exuded a daredevil aura, much as his father once had, and society women found his charm irresistible.

At bottom, Billy thought of himself as a modern-day buccaneer, using his wiles to circumvent onerous, puritanical laws passed to keep red-blooded Americans from enjoying themselves. An avid reader of the maritime novels of Patrick O’Brian, he’d bought a thirty-five-foot sloop and christened her Aubrey to fulfill his most cherished fantasy. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina, however, the Aubrey now lay on her side in a pine barren north of Biloxi, wrecked beyond salvage. But today that was the least of Billy’s problems. For he shared more than his blond locks with Captain Jack Aubrey. Like Jack, whose Radical father caused him no end of problems by intemperate behavior in Parliament and in private life, Billy Knox had been cursed with a father who bowed to no authority but his own.

When Snake Knox finally walked into the study and sat across from his son’s desk, he wore a look of sullen resentment. That look had been his default expression ever since Billy ascended to the alpha position (at least nominally) in the Knox organization. Billy preferred to focus on Sonny Thornfield, who sat to Snake’s right and maintained an expression of sober deference, despite being more than thirty years older than Billy.

“We gonna discuss this?” Snake muttered. “Or we just gonna sit here and waste the fuckin’ day?”

Billy sighed with forbearance. At times like this, he wondered why he and Forrest bothered with geriatric crew leaders. Managing them often felt like riding herd on a bunch of old women, except old women didn’t generally kill people who backtalked them. On the other hand, old men made excellent managers for the front businesses required to keep a successful drug empire running. As a rule, the suspicion of cops and DAs operated inversely with the age of the men they encountered. The unprecedented expansion of the meth trade was starting to change this built-in biological bias, but on balance, geriatric family members beat the hell out of any punks Billy could hire on the open market. Besides, the trust factor alone was worth whatever hassle working with family brought with it. The loyalty of his father’s old Klan crew could not be questioned. Yet paradoxically, it was the fanatical loyalty of the Double Eagles that had created Billy’s current dilemma.

“Tell me again why you think the only solution is to kill poor old Glenn Morehouse,” he said.

“Glenn swore an oath,” Snake snapped. “Same as we all did, he knew the penalty, and that’s what he’s got to pay.”

Billy smiled enough to show his white teeth. “I hear you, Pop.” Pride meant a lot to these old men, so he tried to tread carefully around their feelings when he could. On the other hand, he couldn’t let antiquated notions of honor put his livelihood at risk. “Tell me more about this woman who told you Morehouse is talking.”

“Sandy’s a neighbor of Glenn’s sister,” Sonny said. “She lives at the head of the gravel road that runs over to Wilma’s place. She’s Duke Williams’s widow. Reliable.”

“And Wilma wasn’t at the house,” Snake repeated. “Glenn sent her on an errand so he could meet Sexton without her there.”

“That’s pure supposition,” Billy observed.

“Huh?”

“For all you know, Henry was staking out that road on his own hook, and when he saw the sister leave, he ambushed poor old Glenn.”

“You’ve got a point,” Sonny admitted.