Tin Soldier: The Seven Sequels Read online

  The girl jumped from the motorcycle and pulled off her helmet. As she shook her hair loose, Webb saw that she was wearing a Bluetooth device around her ear.

  As the dogs approached, she commanded, “Sit. Any closer and I’ll rip your heads off.”

  All three stopped and whined.

  “Just joking,” she said. She set the helmet on the motorcycle and knelt. “Come here, boys.”

  She scratched their heads, and they rolled like puppies for her.

  Webb stood and stretched his legs. His guitar travel bag was still strapped to his back. He pulled off his helmet and set it on the motorcycle. He was in the type of bad mood that came from not understanding what was happening.

  He gave the motorcycle a closer look. What he’d thought was an eagle wing on the gas tank was the head of someone who could have been an Apache chief, and the feathers that flowed back in the shape of a wing were the chief ’s headdress.

  “That’s a 1946 Indian Chief,” she said to Webb’s back. “Seventy-four-cubic-inch flathead.”

  “Wow,” Webb said, turning to her. Even in the last light of the day, it was difficult not to get lost in a face that could have been on the cover of a fashion magazine. “Someone measured his skull?”

  “Huh?”

  “And calling him a flathead Indian is racist, wouldn’t you say?” It felt good to vent his dark mood, especially since she hadn’t realized he’d been mocking her.

  “Indian Chief is the name of the motorcycle,” she said in the tone of voice that made it clear she thought Webb was an idiot. “Flathead is the type of engine.”

  “Good thing you told me,” Webb said, “or I would have never figured it out.”

  “Like you didn’t figure out that the raised bar behind the seat is for the passenger to hold on to?”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Webb said.

  “Then why didn’t you use it instead of holding on to me all the way?”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Webb repeated.

  “Oh, I get it,” she said. “Because you wanted the thrill of holding onto a g-i-r-l? Or is spelling it out too complicated for you?”

  “At least you got the g-i-r-l remark. You missed the one about measuring the chief ’s skull.”

  She cocked her head, as if replaying their conversation.

  “Nuts,” she said with a sudden grin. “I did miss it, didn’t I? And that wasn’t a bad joke, now that I think about it.”

  It was a grin that made Webb want to roll over like the rottweilers.

  “Cool motorcycle,” Webb said. “I’m not going to be surprised if you’re the one who restored it.”

  He’d said it as a peace offering of sorts.

  She didn’t take it that way. “So now you’re trying to prove you’re not a jerk who makes stereotypical assumptions about women?”

  He fired back, “Just like you’re trying to prove you’re not a dumb girl and can see right through my feeble attempt at a compliment?”

  With a hand on her hip and her head cocked, she studied Webb for a few moments. “Not bad. We just might get along.”

  “Telling me who you are and what happened back at the Civil Rights Memorial would go a long ways toward that,” Webb answered.

  “I’m just a delivery girl,” she said. She pointed at the shack. Lights were on behind the windows. “He’s waiting for us.”

  SEVEN

  The inside of the shack was tidier and more luxurious than Webb expected. It was about the size of a school classroom. The roof and exterior walls of the shack were covered in sheets of tin, but the interior was smooth, clean drywall, painted brown, and a brown linoleum floor. Framed photographs of the girl filled one wall, some of them showing her in dirt-bike competitions. A second wall had photos of restored motorcycles, including the 1946 Indian Chief Webb had just ridden on, and a third wall displayed photos of soldiers in uniform. The fourth wall consisted of windows that overlooked the junkyard.

  Filing cabinets lined one wall, and a huge desk sat in the middle of the room. The computer monitor was angled so that the person at the desk could look at the computer screen but still have a clear view out the window. The desk had a couple of chairs in front of it. The surface of the desk was bare except for a single sheet of paper. Behind the desk, leaning back with hands clasped behind his head, sat a man with a long, ragged gray beard and matching thick, ragged hair.

  He wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and his biceps were massive. Snake tattoos wrapped around both of his arms. The T-shirt fit tightly, but not because the man was flabby. He might have been in his late fifties or early sixties, but Webb decided the man could probably still win a wrestling match against a bear.

  “Jim Webb,” the man said. Statement. Not a question.

  Webb nodded.

  “Blue Bombers,” the man said. He had a soft voice. “Air force?”

  “Football,” Webb said. Today’s T-shirt was the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Manitoba. Middle of the country. Forty-below winters and summers so filled with mosquitoes you wished the blizzards would return. The Bombers were sometimes east division and sometimes west division. Ten-time Grey Cup winners. Grey Cup. Not Super Bowl. Super Bowl was a party with some great football. Grey Cup was an endurance event with great football and three opponents on the field—two teams and brutal weather.

  The man leaned forward to take the tilt out of his chair and rose easily to his feet. He reached across and extended a hand. Webb shook it and decided the man could use his hands to tear a fender off a junker car.

  The man pointed at the chairs in front of his desk. “Feel like sitting while we talk?”

  Webb sat. With reluctance.

  “Ali?” the man said as he took his chair.

  She took the other chair.

  Webb waited.

  “I’m Roy Hawkins,” the man said. “And you’ve met my daughter, Ali.”

  Daughter. Webb thought it was a good thing she didn’t get her looks from her dad. Not the thing to mention though.

  Webb waited. Roy already knew his name, so Webb didn’t have to introduce himself.

  Roy said, “Are you actually as calm as you look?”

  “Don’t like talking about my feelings,” Webb said. “Don’t like people playing games with me either. I figured I’d listen to what this was about, and then I would go on my way.”

  “Might not be that easy,” Roy said. “Because someone has started a war. Maybe I don’t look angry, but you should know I’m ready to start ripping off heads, and you’re going to help me find the people with those heads still attached.”

  “I might not look angry either,” Webb said, “but someone just sent me on a nine-hour wild-goose chase to read a name on a memorial. A guy who lied by saying I was on my way to get parts for a Camaro. And I’m not real good at being told what to do. So if you want help, asking works a lot better.”

  Roy gave that some thought. “Fair enough. I don’t like being told what to do either.”

  “And if you’ve been talking to Lee,” Webb continued, “then you’re the one with parts for his ’72 Camaro. If so, I hope the parts are small enough to fit right where I’m going to tell him to—”

  “My daughter is beside you,” Roy said. “I’d prefer the conversation remain polite.”

  “If he offends me, Daddy,” Ali said, “I’ll take care of it myself. Not that your language is perfect. Think I didn’t hear your telephone call with Lee this morning?”

  Roy smiled sweetly at Ali. “I can use those words in front of you because I know you’ve never heard them before and you don’t know what they mean.”

  “Of course, Daddy,” she said. “Absolutely.”

  Webb had his phone out, looking down at it and ignoring the conversation.

  Roy spoke to Webb, now with a touch of anger. “Son, it drives me crazy when people check their phones in the middle of a conversation.”

  Webb didn’t lift his head. He’d done a quick Google search and the results were just coming up
.

  “Son,” Roy said. Now there was a real edge to his voice. “So far you’ve made a good impression. Don’t ruin it.”

  Ali reached from her chair and put her hand on Webb’s arm. “Really. You should listen. Nobody likes it when Roy gets mad.”

  Webb kept scanning his screen.

  “Son!” Roy slammed a fist on the desk.

  Webb started reading in silence.

  “Son!” Roy slammed the desk harder.

  Webb had seen enough on the screen. As if the fist slams had not happened, Webb slid the phone across to Roy. “I think you should look at this.”

  Roy’s jaw might have been clenched, but the beard hid it. But his upper face was tight, as if he was debating whether to lecture Webb again.

  Webb cut him off. “You don’t scare me, okay? So quit trying to push me around. You want my help, I’ve already started. It’s on the phone.”

  Roy grunted and pushed the phone toward Ali without looking at the screen.

  Ali said, “Daddy needs reading glasses. He hates wearing them with strangers around.”

  “Ruins the whole snake-tattoo, tough-guy biker look?” Webb asked Roy.

  “Roy,” Ali said, “this guy has a sense of humor. I like that.”

  Webb hadn’t been trying to be funny. It was just part of his bad mood.

  “I don’t,” Roy growled at Webb, but Webb could tell that Roy had wanted to laugh at Webb’s shot at him.

  Ali took the phone. She read for a few moments, then said, “Born to kill.”

  “That was a phrase soldiers had on their helmets in ’Nam,” Roy said.

  “But this is about a gang,” Ali said, holding up the phone. “He just googled tattoo and BTK and coffin and candles. It came up with a Wiki article about a Vietnamese street gang based out of New York.”

  Roy shifted his gaze to Webb.

  “Lee told you I’d be at the memorial,” Webb said. “That’s easy to figure out. I can even guess he was trying to teach me something by sending me to the memorial—”

  “Let me tell you,” Roy interrupted. “He said you had attitude, but he must have seen something in you that he liked if he cared enough to send you there on a detour. Lee’s a good man.”

  “He told me to send him a text from the memorial. That way, he could let you know that I was there. So you or Lee sent Ali to pick me up there and bring me here for the car parts. How am I doing so far?”

  “Almost right,” Roy said. “Ali was waiting there the entire time, looking for you to show up.”

  “What I can’t understand,” Webb said, “is how a guy from a Vietnamese gang knew I’d be there and who I was. Unless you or Lee told him. But if that was the case, Ali wouldn’t have needed to get me out of there. So I don’t think you or Lee sent him there. Which leaves me some questions. How did he know I’d be there? How did he know who I was? And what did he want?”

  “Those are my questions too,” Roy said. “Lee and I wondered if someone would show up. Ali was there to wait until someone moved in on you and see who it might be.”

  “You were using me as bait.”

  “You were safe. Ali was there.”

  Webb thought of the semi that had almost run them over when Ali did a U-turn on the motorcycle. Safe.

  “You were using me as bait,” Webb said again.

  His anger must have come out in his voice, because Roy grinned and repeated Webb’s words back to him. “You don’t scare me, okay? So quit trying to push me around.”

  “Why were you using me as bait?” A joke from Roy wasn’t going to improve Webb’s mood.

  “Last night,” Roy said, “someone burned down Lee’s house and his garage. To the ground. I’d say at this point, it’s looking like all this is happening because of the questions Lee asked about those identification cards you gave him.”

  EIGHT

  Two hours later, Ali swung the big rumbling motorcycle into a parking spot in front of a small café on the main street of a small town. She didn’t turn off the engine. She didn’t get off the motorcycle.

  Webb did. He set his helmet on the passenger seat of the bike. He groaned and stretched his legs. Then his back. They had gone about eighty miles on the Indian Chief, every mile at the speed limit because they couldn’t risk being entered into a computer for a traffic violation.

  As Webb completed his stretching, Ali snapped the spare helmet back into its strap.

  “Delivery complete,” Ali said, her words nearly lost in the deep throb of the idling engine. “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, thanks for—”

  Webb stopped, because he was speaking to exhaust fumes. She’d dropped the bike into gear and roared away from the curb. She was beautiful but obviously a pain. He told himself not to think about how her smile gave him the same boost as, say, a sunrise or a good song.

  Webb checked out his surroundings. The sign at the town limit had read Welcome to Historic Marion Est. 1817 “The College City.” She’d taken him straight downtown, past brick two-story buildings with advertisements painted directly onto the brick. He hadn’t seen a college.

  In front of him was Mack’s Café, with a small neon light inside the window that glowed OPEN.

  So, Webb thought, alone in a strange place. Again.

  Webb was accustomed to solitude. He was accustomed to taking care of himself. About a year ago, he’d been living on the streets. Still, it was unsettling to find himself in this situation. He had his travel bag with his guitar inside it, a hundred bucks cash, give or take, and a debit card for maybe six hundred bucks in savings.

  That was all he needed, right? He could walk away, find a sheltered bus stop to sleep in overnight, and find a way back to Nashville, where he would work on new songs.

  Or he could step inside the café and get more involved in something that had already resulted in arson and maybe attempted murder.

  Webb knew what he wanted to choose. A sheltered bus stop.

  But his grandfather, David McLean, had made it possible for Webb to get to Nashville in the first place. Webb owed a lot to his grandfather and to his memory. Webb had no choice but to try to clear his grandfather’s name.

  What if stepping inside the café only confirmed the worst about David McLean? He pushed aside the troubling thought.

  Webb told himself to trust his grandfather, the man he believed had done nothing wrong. Webb pushed open the door to the café. Sitting in a booth at the back was Lee Knox.

  Webb slid into the booth across from Lee.

  “Hungry?” Lee asked. There was a leather jacket folded on the seat beside him, and he was wearing a UT sweatshirt. “I’m buying. I suggest the meatloaf.”

  Webb wasn’t that hungry, but he nodded. Lee waved over the waitress, who took their order in silence. Webb ordered meatloaf. He was irritated with Lee, so it made him feel better to make the man pay for food that Webb wasn’t going to enjoy.

  “How was the ride?” Lee asked after the waitress left. “Lots of turns, like she was lost?”

  “Lots of fast turns,” Webb said. “Like someone was chasing us.”

  “Good,” Lee said. “Roy and I are acting on the assumption that people are going to try to track us. Ali was supposed to make sure she wasn’t followed.”

  “People?” Webb asked. How crazy was this? “What people?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Lee said. “Need to find out.”

  “People who can track us through, say, traffic violations?”

  “We’ll get to that,” Lee said. “But I have a story for you first. Nearly fifty years ago, in the kitchen right behind us, Alabama state troopers began clubbing a man on the floor. All he’d done was join some marchers who were going to stand in front of a jail and sing hymns for someone who had been arrested for helping to register black voters. State troopers busted up the march and chased people, including the man they trapped in the kitchen. Jimmie Lee Jackson, who tried to protect the man being clubbed.”

  Webb remembered the engraving on th
e memorial.

  26 • FEB • 1965 JIMMIE LEE JACKSON • CIVIL RIGHTS MARCH • KILLED BY STATE TROOPER • MARION, AL

  Lee stared at his coffee cup for a few moments. He lifted his left hand off the table and reached over with his thumb and forefinger to pluck and lift the loose skin on the back of his right hand.

  “This,” he said, “was the color of that man’s skin. Same as mine. Black. Some folks want to call us African-American. I’m okay with that, but I prefer black. It’s what I am. Black.”

  Lee looked Webb straight in the eyes. “Ever had people sitting in cars at an intersection lock their doors when they notice you on the sidewalk waiting for a light to change? Ever had store owners follow you up and down the aisles to make sure you don’t steal something?”

  Webb shook his head. When he’d been living on the streets, he’d worked hard to look groomed and clean. Otherwise, he supposed he would have faced the same thing.

  “It’s because you’re white,” Lee said. “Let me tell you, when that stuff happens, it feels like there’s acid sitting in your stomach. It sits there for a long time after too.”

  Lee took a breath. “Almost fifty years ago, the black man in the kitchen getting clubbed by troopers? He was eighty-two years old. His daughter, Viola, tried to pull the troopers away, and they began beating her too. That’s when the grandson stepped in and tried to help his mother and his grandfather. Grandson’s name was Jimmie Lee Jackson. A state trooper shot him twice in the belly, and they beat him with clubs as he staggered out of this café. Jimmie Lee Jackson died about a week later in the hospital. Nurse there said she saw powder burns on his belly. Trooper was that close when he pulled the trigger, it left powder burns. Grand jury back then didn’t feel there was enough evidence for the trooper to go to trial. A few years back, he finally did get charged with first-degree murder. He pled guilty to manslaughter and only got six months in jail. What a slap in the face of justice. I want you to give this a minute of silence, just to think about it.”