The Whiskey Baron by Jon Sealy Page B

the walls were violent paintings. A ship at sea being tossed by a storm, green waves lapping up into the bows and wind rocking the sails. A close-up of an old man staggering on a sidewalk, pitched forward and leaning one hand against a fence rail. A rat scurrying across a burnt wasteland riddled with the shadows of corpses and pocked with bullet holes and bomb fragments.
    Tull followed the man down the hall to a yellow-lit dining room, where sat an elderly woman with a cup of tea. She smiled as he came in and took off his hat. Petite, gracious looking, you would neverpeg her for the largest supplier of liquor in the Carolinas. She had close-cropped gray hair, but her bright blue eyes shined like those of a comely farm girl without a care in the world. Her cheeks were red and rounded so that she somewhat resembled Herbert Hoover, if Hoover ever had a sense of humor. When she stood, she was no taller than five feet, and she spoke with the gritty voice of a woman accustomed to work.
    “Evening, Larthan, fancy seeing you again.”
    He took off his hat.
    “Sit down, sit down, have a cup of tea.”
    At those words, the man who’d let him in now upturned a cup on the table and indicated it with his hand. “No thanks,” Tull said, and sat in the chair across from her. “Not this evening.”
    “What brings you up here?”
    “I had some trouble in Castle this week.”
    “Ernest and Lee find them some gals to run off with, leave you to do your own business?” She chuckled as she said this.
    “No, they got shot in front of my bar last night.”
    She squinted. “By whom?”
    “I don’t know. Sounds like a man named Mary Jane Hopewell.”
    She nodded. “I remember him.”
    “My barkeep said they had some kind of argument. Seems they were plotting to cut into my business.”
    “I’ll be damned,” she said, and chuckled again. She topped off her cup of tea, said, “Let that be a lesson to you, Larthan. Business is one thing, but you got to expect repercussions if you want to hold a monopoly. Next time you might have some more intelligent competition.”
    “Says the tycoon.”
    “Heavy is the crown,” she said.
    “There’s more to it than that.”
    “Oh?”
    “Mary Jane owes me several thousand dollars. He’s been cooking up his own secret recipe, and I believe he might stop by here before it’s all said and done. Try to convince you to go into business with him. In fact, word is he may already have reached out to you.”
    She took another sip of her tea. “No, I’ve not seen him since he drove up here with your load. Must be a few years ago now.”
    He believed her. He could see her eyes calculating her next move and knew this information had been news to her. He said, “Mary Jane’s a nobody. He makes extra whiskey on his farm—good whiskey, I’ll give him that—but not enough to distribute on any scale.”
    “Oh Larthan, you know I’ll not be doing business with anyone else down there. You’re too good to me for that.”
    They both knew she was lying to him now, that for enough money she’d have him killed and not lose a minute’s sleep over it, but he knew she wouldn’t leave him to go into business with Hopewell. Hopewell couldn’t bring in the kinds of profits Tull did for her. Still, it had to be said. The man had five thousand dollars hidden somewhere, and Tull aimed to find it before Hopewell could invest it in something like a business deal with Aunt Lou. Once she got the money, Tull would never get it, and Hopewell was too stupid and inept to bring in enough profits to pay off Aunt Lou and Tull both, and Tull would be forced to kill him. Not that he had a problem killing the man, and the more Tull thought about it, the less he cared about the money. Hopewell was a dead man.
    He said, “I got your load this week, a little extra. Might have me some new runners by next week, but supply might be a little low until then.”
    “That’s fine, that’s fine. Next time, I might call and meet