Fifty-Three
HELENE MAYES TALKS for a good long while after that, stopping a couple of times to remind us that this meeting really isn’t happening at all.
I understand now why Tay didn’t want me to bring a date.
Not because she doesn’t trust Abby Wells, even though she’s never liked Abby all that much—or anybody else I’ve ever dated, for that matter.
Just because of the need to keep tonight’s gathering, and what’s being discussed here, contained.
Even if I had been allowed to bring a date, it wouldn’t have been Abby anyway.
It would have been Vince Tarplay, who I trust with my life the same as I do Burt and Taylor Webb, and Miss EmmaJean Tucker.
Special Agent Helene Mayes is now on that list, too.
Helene highlights some of the methodology she used in Jacksonville and Memphis: her careful use of criminal informants, how essential it was for no one on her team to leave any kind of electronic footprint, and how her creative use of burner phones became almost legendary.
She says that everyone here would learn to love them as much as she does.
She looks down at EJ, smiling at her.
“As for you, you’ll get intel on a need-to-know basis,” Helene says. “Same as we’ll get it from you, just because I’ve been informed nobody knows Cross Rivers better than you do. Which is why you’re here, ma’am.”
“Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me, missy,” EJ says, smiling one of her wicked smiles back at her. “I can take care of myself.”
“Wherever does Silas get that attitude?” Taylor asks.
“You may be tough, but you also have to be careful,” Helene says to EJ. “Keep your eyes and ears open, but just don’t act too eager doing it as we go forward.”
“Got it,” EJ says.
Helene reaches down with her fist and EJ bumps it.
“Damn straight,” Helene says.
She looks over at me now.
“As for you,” she says, “I’m going to take all the help you can give me, even if I might be turning you into a blocking back for the first time in your life and asking you to run interference for me, any time I need you to do that.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning that you already made it clear, in front of the whole town, that you want to clean it up as much as anybody,” she says. “And because you’re the most visible figure in Cross Rivers. If people are watching you, that means maybe they’re not watching me.”
“Got it,” I say.
Helene looks around the room one more time.
“Any questions?”
Mayor Claire Larson raises a hand now. “Just how many people other than the ones in this room are going to know about us turning ourselves into the Avengers? Will the other cops in Burt’s department be in the loop, for example?”
“For now, no,” Helene says. “Burt is essentially doing this off the books, as if he’s my special agent. Perhaps down the road I’ll have a better sense of who else I can trust in the Cross Rivers PD. But for now, the only local cop I’m trusting is Burt Webb.”
“And we all know we can’t trust anybody in that chump Nash Hader’s office,” EJ says, “as deep into Briar Crockett’s deep pockets as he is.”
I can see some smiles around the room as that one settles.
“‘Trust is hard to come by,’” Helene Mayes says. “‘That’s why my circle is small and tight.’ Anybody know who said that?”
Now I’m the one raising a hand.
“Eminem,” I say.
Helene says, “He also says that backstabbers are only powerful when your back is turned.”
She looks around again, one face to the next.
“Briar Crockett might not know it yet,” she continues, “but he better watch his back.” She pauses and says, “And his sorry ass.”
“Damn straight,” my grandmother says.
I feel my phone buzzing in the front pocket of my jeans then. I’d turned off the ringer during dinner and forgotten to turn it back on.
I pull it out and look at the caller ID, then hold up the phone for everybody to see.
“Speak of the devil,” I say, and then add, “Literally.”