Page 3 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Alex’s expression – guarded, grooved with exhaustion – cleared, and he nodded, and stood, and headed for their table.

The blonde turned her head to watch his retreat, and her gaze collided with Ava’s. Ava wore shades, and knew herexpression was closed-off besides, but the blonde’s was anything but, brow furrowing and lips compressing. Worry? Or jealousy?

“Good God,” Tenny said, mildly. “He’s walking right up to us. Clueless tit. ‘Oh, your cover? What’s that? I’ve blown it? Aw, jeez,’” he said in a startlingly good impersonation of Alex, the New Orleans accent sanded down by his professional life.

“You could do the late night circuit with that trick,” Ava said.

“You know, I really think I could,” he said in his own voice. “I’ve got the looks for it.”

“Hm.”

Alex arrived at their table, and he looked like shit: haggard, face drawn, eyes shadowed by exhaustion and the burnout of excess emotion.

“Anything useful?” Ava asked.

He took a breath, and hesitated.

“That’d be a no,” Tenny said.

Alex’s glare was halfhearted, and crumpled quickly. He wiped a hand down his face, and Tenny, in a rare stroke of sympathy, hooked a chair from the neighboring table with the toe of his boot and dragged it over.

Alex collapsed into it and sat forward, shoulders hunched, elbows on the table. When Tenny slid his coffee over, Alex accepted it with an absent bob of his head. After a sip, he said, “She can’t help us directly–”

“So this was a massive waste of time,” Ava sighed.

“No,” Alex snapped, and then shook his head, and sipped more coffee. “No,” he said, heavy and tired again. “I had to try. They worked the case down here with Boyle when I left, and there’s still a chance they might know something valuable. They’re cautious – as anyone would be in their position – and it’s not unlikely that they think I’m off my rocker. Any good agent would want to steer clear of this mess, so I think the factthat they want to speaks to their…” He gestured limply. “Lack of corruption. Whatever. But she reminded me that thereisa cop in this city who’s a big fan of the Lean Dogs, and who doesn’t have so many pesky scruples when it comes to working off-book.”

Ava’s heart didn’t leap with hope – she was beyond that sort of feeling at the moment. But a littlepingof interest sounded in the back of her head.

Alex’s posture slumped a little further, this time with relief, she thought, in response to whatever her face did. “Dale Dandridge. He likes Mercy. He’ll want to help.”

Tenny took his coffee back and drained it. “Right, then. You’re not going to see him alone, though.”

Alex frowned. “What?”

“You’re dead on your feet, and someone has to have his wits about him.”

Alex looked unimpressed.

“Don’t do Jeff from Spring City,” Ava suggested.

Two

It had been too risky to go by the clubhouse, and so Bob had met them at the marina, down at the end of one of the more dilapidated docks, where nothing but small boats were tied up. The light at the end was on the fritz, and Bob had slumped against a pillar, only visible as the occasional flare of a cigarette cherry each time he took a drag, a lone red eye in the two-a.m. mist. As their boots clomped down the boards, made heavier by the bags of supplies they’d carried – guns, ammo, knives, Tasers, knuckledusters, and all manner of weapons brought from home and furnished from Devin’s mind-boggling personal cache, half of which was illegal, plus groceries and other sundries from a midnight Walmart run – the sounds echoed out across the water in a way that brought nostalgia roaring back.

Driving into the city had put a lump in Mercy’s gut, but this was different. Bittersweet, yes, and tainted, as all his memories were by the relentless knowledge of what happened to Daddy, to Gram. But no matter what tortures this city threw at him, he could never bring himself to hate the water. It had raised him alongside his father, the only mother he’d ever wanted or needed. There was water in Tennessee, sure, the Tennessee River, that fat black snake that curved around Dartmoor and slithered its slow way up to Neyland Stadium. But this was the swamp, and it smelled different, and it tasted different on his tongue when he opened his mouth to inhale, and it coursed through his bloodstream.

He didn’t realize he’d come to a halt until someone nudged him lightly in the back. He stood staring out across the flat, black stillness, the silhouettes of cypress tress like arthritic fingers along the far shore, clawing at the sky’s purple underbelly. Lightwas still hours off, the air at its coldest, the water steaming white vapor that looked like smoke.

“See something?” Devin asked behind him, unbothered. “I’ve always wanted to shoot one of those great lizard beasts.”

Mercy blinked, and started walking again. “Maybe you’ll get your chance.”

He hadn’t been sure how it would feel to see Bob again face-to-face. The last time had been almost nine years ago, when Bob came to rap on the half-open door of the dorm room that had been his home ever since his ill-fated return to New Orleans, heartbreak wafting off him like the smell of fresh blood. Bob was a tall man, broad-shouldered, self-assured in the way of the big-handed and strong-armed, always with obvious t-shirt tan lines, and a broad, white, slightly-crooked smile. He waseasy, like Daddy had been, like Mercy had styled himself, after much exposure.

But Bob had looked unusually sober that night. It was so rare to see him frowning that Mercy had startled when he glanced up and across the room.

“You busy?”

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