A WHILE LATER, the three of us were sitting on the west veranda of L.J.’s house, watching the sunset and sipping bourbon over cracked ice.
“Well, you gentlemen are always acting so all-fired high and mighty,” Japheth said, “but you’ve yet to give me a single piece of information that I can use. Why don’t you start by sharing the names of the prosecution witnesses?”
“Watch out, L.J., he’s using one of his journalist’s tricks to get you to spill it,” I said.
“Me?” L.J. scoffed. “What do I know? I don’t know anything. I’ve been cut off by the entire town. I’m almost as much persona non grata as Mr. Nigger-Lover Corbett. Everybody from here to Jackson knows whose side I’m on. And you know any friend of Ben Corbett’s doesn’t have another friend between here and Jackson.”
I clapped his shoulder. “I appreciate what you’ve done, L.J.”
It was right then that we heard a deep tenor voice, with a hint of something actorly in the round tones, accompanying a firm bootstep down the upstairs hall.
“If you need a friend from Jackson, maybe I can fill the bill.”
We looked up to see a man whose appearance was as polished and natty as his voice. He wore a seersucker suit of the finest quality and a straw boater with a jaunty red band. He could not have been much more than thirty, and he carried a wicker portmanteau and a large leather satchel jammed with papers.
He introduced himself as Jonah Curtis and explained that he had been appointed by the state of Mississippi to prosecute the White Raiders.
“I had my assistant reserve a room at Miss Maybelle’s establishment,” he said. “But Maybelle took one look at me and it turned out she had misplaced my reservation. She suggested I bring myself to this address.”
“Welcome to the house of pariahs, Mr. Curtis,” said L.J. “You are welcome to stay here in my home for as long as this trial takes.”
“I do appreciate that, sir. And please, call me Jonah.”
Jonah Curtis was almost as tall as I. He was what anyone would call a handsome man.
And Jonah Curtis was one other thing besides.
Jonah Curtis was a black man.