CHAPTER TWELVE
While Reno and Trina took control of Washwater Eats , the other power player in town took note of them. That was because Otis Freeman, who lived in the house across the street from where the Gabrinis were staying, hopped into his truck and made the two-hour drive to Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, to a town called Tutwiler.
Nearly two hours away from Washwater, Otis parked his beat-up pickup in front of the upscale restaurant and hurried inside. But it would take another hour before he was told that the boss would see him.
Arthur Forshay, a white Cajun from Louisiana, leaned back in his chair and listened closely to what Otis had to say. Anything that happened in that town, Forshay knew about it because he had spies like Otis who told him, for a small fee, everything. But when Otis mentioned the race of one of his new neighbors, Arthur stopped rocking in his swivel chair and looked at his flunky. “A white boy? They white folks?”
“Just the daddy is. At least he was acting like he’s the daddy.”
“And they moved into that big house across the street from your house?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
Koshay was immediately intrigued. An interracial couple moving into Washwater, Mississippi when nobody, and he meant nobody, moved there, let alone an interracial couple? Something was wrong with that picture. “Okay, Otis,” he said as he continued to rock again, “this is what you gon’ do. Have a cookout, and invite them over.”
Arthur Forshay was the richest man Otis had ever known. It was his honor to be his flunky. But he expected to get paid for his flunky-ness. “You gon’ show up, too, Mr. Forshay?”
“Don’t worry about what I’m gon’ do. You just do what I told you to do, you understand?”
“Oh yes, sur.”
“A white boy show up in our black town, I wanna know why,” Forshay added, as if he wasn’t obviously white himself. Although he couldn’t care less what color they were. It was the why they were there and what they could expose while they were there, that concerned him.
Then he tossed Otis a three twenties, Otis was all smiles as he left, and Arthur immediately called his collectors.