HOYT SHEPHERD CAME TO PHENIX CITY DURING THE DEPRESSION to make it in the mills built alongside the Chattahoochee. But instead he found out his talent lay elsewhere and joined up with a British-born hustler and cardsharp named Jimmie Matthews. Soon, the two learned they could make more money playing poker with soldiers at Fort Benning than they ever could working looms or in the hellfire heat of the foundries or delivering laundry, like Matthews had done. Hoyt Shepherd never even graduated high school, but he'd always had a peculiar - some said genius - way with numbers and figures and was the man to ask when playing the odds. He and Jimmie soon took over the Bug racket - the town's numbers game - and by the time the big war was in full swing, they were knee-deep in whores and cash and hoped to hell the good times would never end.

But it had been a decade since D-day, and the rackets game couldn't be played as wide open as the old days. Once again playing out the odds, he and Jimmie had sold off their interests on Fourteenth and Dillingham a few years back and parlayed their twenty-year hustle into some good real estate and a factory that made marked cards and loaded dice for saloons and casinos from Atlantic City to Havana.

John and I drove out on Opelika Highway, heading toward the Lee County line, where I turned onto a backcountry road that dipped up over a hill and followed a loose downward curve into a little private valley. The narrow road softly turned again, causing the car to glide and flow on its own, and we could see the massive brick ranch house set among long, wide wooden fences corralling Black Angus and a few quarter horses that pricked their ears as the car neared.

At the iron gate, I slowed, and a man carrying a hunting rifle tapped on the driver's-side glass. I rolled down the window and told him who we were, and the man looked into the front seat and checked the back. He asked us to step out of the car and we did.

He patted both of us down, taking the .45 off John and checking the trunk.

Finally, he unlatched the gates and swung them wide to a long gravel road.

The house glowed bright, as perfect as a doll's house, and we weren't halfway up the concrete walk, landscaped neatly with a row of crepe myrtles and sweet-smelling gardenias, when Hoyt Shepherd shuffled outside.

He was shoeless in black trousers and a big Cuban-style shirt and he smiled and waved and walked toward John, offering him a big, meaty hand, a soft smile on his lips.

John looked to me and then back to Hoyt. Not knowing what else to do, he just shook his hand. But I could see it pained him, and he tore away as soon as making contact and Hoyt invited us inside.

Hoyt didn't shake my hand. Only looked to me and grunted.

He asked us if we wanted a cocktail and we both declined, and he walked us through the house, past a big old stone fireplace with a big deer head over it holding an antique rifle and through all the modern, boxy furniture and out back to a kidney-shaped pool. A little record player on a drink cart played a rhumba.

Jimmie Matthews sat at a table under an umbrella, only a soft blue glow coming from the pool, and the light made Matthews's face look strange and pale as he nodded to us and also offered his hand to both of us.

We sat in a loose grouping of lounge chairs, and Hoyt relit a dying cigar while I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket. Ripples of light from the water scattered across them.

"Ain't you the fella from the fillin' station?" Hoyt asked.

"That's me."

"I know your wife's daddy. He sure is a pistol."

Matthews was dressed in a blue pin-striped suit, white shirt, and no tie. He waited, his legs crossed and posture erect.

Hoyt got the stogie going and pulled an ashtray close. He smiled and grunted. That man really liked to grunt.

"Now, John," Hoyt said. "I want you to know right off that I didn't have a thing to do with what happened. I didn't want another day to pass 'fore I said that to you."

John nodded. The filter of the pool made whirring sounds in the silence. Matthews just looked into the face of John Patterson, meeting his eyes, and nodded along with Hoyt's words.

Hoyt had grown fatter since I'd seen him last, and his nose had started to swell in that big Irish way. He lifted up a Scotch filled with melting ice and took a sip and alternated it with the cigar. He'd always reminded me of W. C. Fields with a Southern accent.

"Can't I please get y'all somethin'? I know it's been a heck of a day. But I've heard what all the newsmen have been saying about me and all those stories about me and Jimmie and the Bug and the nightclubs and all that ancient history. I never suspected you'd pay attention to it."

John looked up at him, his jaw tight. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Well," Hoyt said, and grinned and then closed his mouth. His face flushed red. "Well, I mean, you know how things were between me and your daddy." Hoyt turned to me. "Hey, you. You mind goin' somewhere else while we talk?"

"I do," I said.

"He stays," John said.

Hoyt just nodded. He pulled a wet napkin from under his drink and ran it over his face and fattened neck.

"I know you did everything in your power to make sure that my father lost the election and the runoff," John said. "I know you bought off every vote you could in Russell County and sent your men all across Alabama to do the same. How many tens of thousands of dirty money did you put out there?"

"And we both know that Monday he was set to tell the grand jury in Birmingham about every dirty penny," I said. "He had folks who could prove it."

"Boy, why don't you go and scrape the grease from your fingernails?"

I smiled at Hoyt. "And to think I got all dressed up to impress you."

Hoyt grunted. He smiled at me. It was like watching a bulldog pant.

The back of the ranch house was mostly windows, and, inside, Hoyt's wife, Josephine, glided through the family room in a pink satin robe with feathered ruffles. She was blond and built like a brick house, a damn-near twin for Betty Grable, and when she appeared outside and came toward us it was brisk and upright on three-inch high heels that I soon noticed were made from a cheetah print.

A little dog yapped after her, a poodle trimmed in the traditional way and dyed a bright pink. (I knew she also liked to dye the dog blue on occasion.) "Can I offer you men a cocktail? We have some fresh cocktail shrimp."

John didn't even acknowledge her, still studying his eyes on Hoyt Shepherd and Matthews, and they exchanged glances.

"I don't think these boys are stayin', Josie."

I thanked Hoyt's wife and she smiled and winked politely and moved away, her shapely backside switching and swaying like a pendulum.

"You believe that woman married me for my looks?" Hoyt asked, watching her walk, and laughed till he coughed. He swigged down some more Scotch.

"Are we finished?" John asked.

"Just listen," Hoyt said and reached out and touched John's hand. "I may be a real sonofabitch and sometimes what many people may call a fool. And maybe I didn't want your daddy becoming attorney general. I mean, can you blame me?"

"Yes," John said.

I remained quiet and finished out a cigarette and crushed it under the heel of my shoe. I leaned forward, listening, watching the pool, watching Hoyt and silent Jimmie.

Jimmie looked to me and nodded with recognition.

"I'm not a stupid man," Hoyt Shepherd said. "I know that the killing of your father wouldn't do a thing but topple down my world. The man who did this just stopped business in Phenix City cold. What do we have now? No GIs in bars. Girls off the streets. National Guardsmen on every corner. That's not something I ever wanted to see in my town."

John watched him. Hoyt offered his hand, again.

Not caught off guard, he just looked at it. Out in the valley, the cattle grew nervous and groaned and called out, sounding almost like screams, and I could hear their heavy feet shuffling and brushing against each other, frustrated under the moon.

I started a new cigarette.

"Last night, that nutcase Si Garrett and his trained monkey, Arch Ferrell, hauled me into the courthouse at three o'clock in the morning," Hoyt said. "Ferrell was as drunk as a skunk, and Garrett talked so fast I couldn't even understand most of what he said. But most of what he said, Jimmie, correct me if I'm wrong on this-"

Jimmie nodded.

"They like both of us for this," he said. "Garrett called us the crime lords of the den of iniquity. And I'll be goddamned if I didn't have to look up what that meant in the dictionary when I got home. And, men, it wasn't good."

"What do you want us to do about it?" John said, standing.

I joined him.

"Just keep an open mind," Hoyt said. "I hear you're aiming for your dad's spot."

John nodded. "I am."

"I understand," he said. "I wish you luck."

"You don't mean that, Hoyt."

The air smelled of chlorine and the gardenias and cow shit.

Hoyt smiled and kind of laughed, his face clouded in his exhaling breath. "Guess I don't."

"I haven't been back in Phenix City long, but I know to watch where I step."

"That's not what this was about," Hoyt said. "I just wanted you to know this isn't my deal. I have no part in this. I didn't leave my neck out for no misdemeanor vote fraud. We're all hurting. Did you know the same night your daddy was killed, someone broke into my other house and blew a safe bigger 'an a truck? They 'bout cleaned me out."

"What does that have to do with my father?"

"Everything," Hoyt said. "You can't trust a crook no more. There was a time when a man's word meant something. This town has gone to hell."

John simply nodded. He then looked over at Jimmie and said, "Good night."

Jimmie gave a soft smile and both older men remained seated.

"You boys listen to me," Hoyt said. "I will cut out my heart and place it here on the table if Bert Fuller and Johnnie Benefield didn't have something to do with your daddy. Benefield is the most coldhearted, sadistic sonofabitch I've ever known."

THEY FOLLOWED A LONG PATH INTO THE WOODS, PUSHING along a fat man in handcuffs, Fuller knocking him in the back of the head with a revolver when he'd slow down. The man wore pressed pants, no shirt, and a tie, his shirt torn away after they'd run his car off the road. Reuben walked between Fuller and Benefield, who wore a brown western suit with gold stitching.

There was a path, but it hadn't been trod since hunting season, and Fuller swatted away branches that slapped back and hit Reuben in the face and eyes as he struggled along half drunk on Jack Daniel's. He still carried the open bottle from Club Lasso, where he'd gotten the call, and quickly met the men in the woods.

Benefield had worked PC for years and had taken on jobs in Atlantic City and in Tampa for some Italian boys down there. He was a natural-born killer, loved the job, and had killed so many in Phenix City that Reuben had lost count. Benefield and Fuller were as thick as thieves, and, under Fuller's protection, Benefield could do about whatever he wanted. The man's eyes were black and soulless, and when Benefield smiled Reuben felt an icy prickle run along his back.

They wandered up a hill and through a rusted stretch of barbed wire that had been cut away by hunters. Most of the trees were young, planted on cleared land. In the glow of the fat flashlight Fuller carried, he saw a mammoth oak that seemed lost in the immature forest. The trunk as large around as an automobile, prehistoric and crooked. The men were drawn to it.

Reuben set down the bottle and stared up at the big tree and waited. Fuller pushed the fat man to the trunk of a nearby pine and lashed him to it. Benefield kicked up mounds of pine straw around the man's legs, covering him up to his shins.

The shirtless man was breathing hard, his back and shoulders covered in acne. Fuller pulled a little notebook from the man's back pocket and slapped him across the face with it.

The man's head turned and he was slow to look back at the men before him. Reuben lit a match against a thumbnail and stared at the man.

Fuller took in an audible lungful of air and walked over to Reuben and held out his hand. Reuben handed him the bottle and Fuller took a drink. He walked back to the man and then stared up at the night sky, thinking, contemplating.

Benefield caught the edge of a cigarette from Reuben's match.

"Why'd you put them lies in the newspaper?" Fuller asked.

"I didn't write any lies."

"I said admit it, goddamn you. You cain't come to a man's town and put them things in print. People think that garbage is the truth."

The man looked away. Fuller reared back and struck the man in the face.

"You wrote in that rag of yours that I was-" Fuller looked to Benefield, who reached into his pocket for a piece of folded-up newsprint. Fuller took it and read: "'The town bully. A common criminal who is a disgrace to the badge.' Isn't that your name at the top there?"

Fuller hit him again. Benefield took back the piece of paper, folded it dramatically, and placed it back into his pocket.

"I stand by it," the reporter said. His mouth bled.

"Say it to my face," Fuller said. "You goddamn Communist."

Fuller slapped him and the blow turned the man's head quick to the side.

"I'm not Communist."

"What would you call it when you come to a town and piss on the head of the law?"

Johnnie Benefield kicked up some more pine needles and checked the knot binding the man to the tree. He stared up through the branches of the forest at the summer sky and took a breath. The man spit out blood from his mouth.

Reuben took a long pull of the whiskey and then poured another out on the pine needles. Fuller adjusted the rig on his fat stomach and pitched his Stetson back with his thumb.

"How 'bout it, boy?" Benefield asked. "You gonna come to Jesus?"

"Excuse me?"

"Come to Jesus," Benefield said, answering, and plucked the cigarette from his mouth and touched it to a book of matches. He smiled to the man, looking him dead in the eyes, as the match caught to the other matches and the entire book began to burn.

The portly, shirtless man started to cry.

Almost casually, Benefield pitched the book into the dry rust-colored needles at the man's feet. The fire kicked up instantly, the needles starting to churn smoke and then crackle with flame. The man screamed and flailed and tried to pull loose from the lasso around his waist.

The fire caught in a ring about the reporter.

"I'll do it."

"Do what?" Fuller asked.

"Whatever you want."

Reuben stood next to Fuller.

"Cut him loose," Reuben said.

"Not yet," Fuller said. "Say what you did."

"I wrote lies."