in 1968, a lot of things suddenly make sense. Dwight Stone’s personal hatred of him. Stone’s unwillingness to talk about the case. Maybe even the national security seal on the Payton file, although this is probably going too far. No one could have known in 1968 that Special Agent John Portman would wind up director of the FBI thirty years later. So that wasn’t the reason Hoover sealed the file. But Portman almost certainly knows why the file was sealed, as does Stone. Given Stone’s hatred of Portman—and Stone’s dismissal from the Bureau while Portman rose through its ranks—that reason must have been something Stone could not stomach but which Portman went along with. He was a good little German, Stone had said of Portman. He followed orders. The question is, what was he ordered to do?
As I get out of the car, a middle-aged black cop in uniform walks around the corner of the house, one hand on the gun at his hip.
“Are you Penn Cage?”
“Yes, sir.”
He smiles and nods. He has the sad, drooping eyes of a beagle. “I’m James Ervin. Just keeping an eye on things for you and your daddy.”
“I’m glad to see you, Officer Ervin.” I reach out and shake his hand. “That gun loaded?”
He taps the automatic on his hip. “You bet.”
“Good man.”
“You sure got a pretty little girl in there. Reminds me of my girls when they was little.”
“Thank you. Do you know what all this is about?”
Ervin sucks in his upper lip and looks at the ground. “You trying to get whoever killed Del Payton, ain’t you?”
“That’s right. Did you know Del?”
“My daddy knew him.” He raises the beagle eyes to mine, and they are full of quiet conviction. “Don’t you worry none. You ain’t gonna have no trouble. Somebody come messin’ ’round here, they on the wrong side.”
It takes less than ten minutes on my mother’s computer to verify what Althea Payton told me on the cell phone. The FBI’s official web page features a thumbnail biography of its new director. The bio boasts of Portman’s first year as a field agent, one which he spent investigating race murders in Mississippi and Alabama. That year was 1968. A Time magazine writer hailed Portman’s “year in the trenches” and stated that his “sterling civil rights credentials” were one of the major reasons the President had tapped the Republican federal judge to lead the FBI in a bipartisan gesture that shocked most Democrats. The Bureau had been wracked by racial problems for the past decade, having been successfully sued by both African-American and Hispanic agents. Portman’s Deep South experience sat well with minority political interests.
By my calculations, Portman was twenty-five when he visited Althea Payton’s house with Dwight Stone. Fresh out of Yale Law. Stone was probably ten years older. Beyond this my facts are few. Portman rose swiftly through the Bureau’s ranks while Stone was fired five years later. In Crested Butte I sensed that Stone felt his dismissal was related to the Payton case. But if that was true, why would Hoover wait five years to terminate him? Or had whatever happened in 1968 haunted Stone, fueling his alcoholism, until Hoover was finally left no choice but to fire him?
Unable to answer this question, I list the names of main players on the computer and stare at them a while. Payton. Presley. Marston. Stone. Portman. Hinson. One of the first things a writer learns is that the best way to solve a problem is to get out of the way of his subconscious and let it work. Following this dictum, I begin playing with the screen fonts and point sizes, switching from Courier to Bookman, from flowing Gothic to a tortured Algerian. As the fonts swirl and transform themselves before my eyes, it strikes me that men like Leo Marston and John Portman cannot be investigated by normal means, especially by a private citizen. Caitlin’s status as a reporter lends us some theoretical authority under the First Amendment, but this means next to nothing in the real world. What is required is some creative thinking.
Kings and presidents can be brought down with the right weapons. The trick is to find their vulnerabilities. Men like Portman and Marston live for power. They hunger for it even as they wield more than most men will ever know. They act with certainty and dispatch, rarely allowing themselves the luxury of doubt. And so long as they operate from this fortress of psychological security, they are untouchable. Perhaps the way to bring them down is to breach that fortress, to turn their worlds upside down and force them into a reactive mode. The way to do that seems obvious enough. Re-introduce them to an emotion they have not felt in a great while.
Fear.
My first thought when my father comes through the pantry door is that he looks ten years older than he did two days ago. He kisses my mother and Annie, then motions for me to follow him into the library. I shrug at my mother and follow.
He sits in his leather recliner and switches on the television, apparently to mask our conversation.
“Somebody just tried to kill Ray Presley.”
“What?” I exclaim, dropping onto the sofa to his left.
“His girlfriend was giving him the first few cc’s of that Mexican chemotherapy he takes. He started complaining of angina and ripped the catheter out of his wrist. The girl called 911 and gave him CPR until the paramedics got there. He was having a coronary. He just checked himself out of the CCU against my orders.”
“What makes you think it was attempted murder?”
“The girl brought in the IV bag, and one of our lab techs ran a few tests. He thinks there’s some potassium chloride mixed in with the cocktail.”
“Jesus. Did you call the police?”
“Ray told me not to. He was so goddamn mad he wouldn’t let anybody but me close to him. He said he’d handle it himself.”
“I’ll bet he will. How much damage did his heart sustain?”
“I don’t have enough enzyme tests back to tell.” Dad drums his hands on the arms of the chair. “We’ve got another problem.”
“What?”
“You talked to Betty Lou Beckham today?”
“How do you know that?”
“She showed up at my office at four o’clock, half in the bag. Said she had to talk to me.”
I should have expected this. For years my father has acted as a confessor to countless souls, particularly women, who have no outlet for their sorrows and anxieties other than their ministers or local psychologists, as Natchez has attracted only one or two psychiatrists over the past two decades, and none has stayed. In this vacuum, a compassionate M.D. fills the void as no one else can.
“Was she in that parking lot when Del Payton died?”
“Yes. She and Frank Jones were having sex in his car when the bomb went off, if you can believe it. She saw Payton walk out to his car. She actually saw the damned thing explode.”
“Christ. What else did she
