The Queen City Detective Agency: A Novel

1

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

On New Year’s Day of 1985, Turnip Coogan, facing twenty to life for capital murder, decided he’d have to be dumb as a post not to break out of jail, and his mama didn’t raise no post. That morning, as usual, the cells were unlocked to give the hundred inmates time to exercise, and due to a current heat wave, one of the trustees had opened a window by the mess hall. Turnip saw his chance. In poor testament to his mother’s child-rearing abilities, he didn’t bother getting dressed before climbing out the window, and in poorer testament to the intelligence of posts, he forgot the jail was located on the roof of the Lauderdale County Courthouse.

Turnip had nowhere to run, and even if he did, he’d be running there in a tank top, boxer shorts, and one sock.

Before and below him lay downtown Meridian, Mississippi, a railroad hub that billed itself the state’s Queen City but that had, over recent decades, become more of a countess or baronet. Strip malls in the northern hills, via two fangs, Poplar Springs Drive and Highway 39, had sucked the life out of the city’s downtown. What remained included a triptych of hospitals, donut shops to help fill them, churches praying to empty them, and lawyers’ offices trying to profit off them. Turnip blamed all those goddamn shit-brained lawyers for his present situation.

One in particular. William motherfucking Pickett. On the roof of the courthouse, as the alarm started to whine inside the jail and onlookers in the street below raised hands to brows, Turnip let his half-socked toes hang over the edge, thinking of all he would like to do to that asshole Will Pickett, the district attorney prosecuting his case.

Take a step on this roof and I jump! Turnip yelled at the armed guard whose short-brimmed hat bobbed like a fishing float at the top lip of the fixed metal cage ladder twenty yards away.

You got nowhere to run, Coogan! This ladder’s the only way down, besides that window you climbed out of, and there’s ten, twelve guards waiting inside it. Come back yonder ways, we forget all about it. All right now?

One step, okay? One step and I jump!

How long had Turnip been on the roof? He couldn’t say for sure. The day was turning into a real blue-moon scorcher, even for January in Mississippi, the roof’s black tar going glassy, the sun a giant interrogation lamp blasting down on Turnip. In the street three stories below, the crowd had grown. A police blockade cut off traffic. Patrolmen in short sleeves and aviators tried without success to disperse the people on cigarette breaks from the few offices that remained downtown.

Everyone, Turnip figured, was getting pushed around by this godforsaken city. Those folks down there knew a comrade in arms when they saw one. Their hands held to their temples were a salute, not makeshift visors what better to see the fun. Turnip was a hero, a symbol of oppression! If only his mama could see him now.

Soon the crowd even started to chant for him. Turnip’s bare shoulders slumped, however, when he realized what exactly they were chanting.

Jump, Turnip, jump! yelled the crowd, singsong. Jump! Jump! Jump!

With a grunt, Turnip sat on the edge of the roof, letting his legs dangle humpty-dumpty-style. He tried to ignore the chants by plotting his revenge. The prosecution, led by that son-of-a-bitch district attorney, claimed Turnip and an accomplice had killed Randall Hubbard, the rich-ass real estate developer responsible, if Turnip was being honest, for the death of downtown Meridian. Hubbard had built the strip malls draining the life out of this city. Hubbard made millions leasing space to greasy pizza joints, bargain shoe stores, nail and hair salons, liquor stores, dollar stores, record stores, and hippie-dippie head shops.

And what did he do with those millions? Build a house on a hilltop, marry a woman young enough to be his daughter, get fat, go bald, and take out a stupidly sizable amount of life insurance on himself. Of course his beautiful young wife had started to get notions.

I been framed! Turnip yelled to the crowd below. That bitch set me up!

The bitch in question was Odette Hubbard. Turnip never should have trusted her. Last year, she’d hired him as her bodyguard at the rate of $1,000 per week, which was a sight more than what he made driving commercial rigs. Turnip figured she hired him because she knew he was connected to the DM, a deduction he made when, a week after hiring him, she said, I hear you’re connected to the DM.

So, sure, Turnip thought, watching TV crews set up equipment on the street below, he’d made some calls to his people in the Dixie Mafia. Due to his cockfighting side hustle—he’d earned some of the high-ups in the DM piles of money with his secret method of sticking a cocaine-laced Q-tip up his bird’s asshole before the fight—Turnip had used code. Got a hen offering thirty-large for somebody to take out her rooster.

Soon as he got off this roof, Turnip would prove the murder had been Odette’s plan all along. He was a patsy. The news crews down there would hold up their mics to his face and he’d spill, goddamn it. Everybody would know the truth—about Odette and the DM, about the Meridian PD and city hall, about the whole goddamn rigged system of this whole goddamn town!

An updraft cooled Turnip’s feet and calves. He rubbed the lacerations on his wrists. Last night, he’d tried to get moved to the infirmary by way of a suicide attempt, but when the doctor saw the cuts Turnip had made with a plastic knife, he’d laughed in Turnip’s face and said, "Son, you’re supposed to cut on the underside of the wrist."

In the street, all the cars, whether parked or driving by, seemed to be tuned to Q101. Turnip could hear the radio from their open windows. Shit, he whispered after noticing what song was playing. When Van Halen’s Jump ended, the DJ said, This goes out to you, Turnip. Give those folks downtown a show! and the song started up again.

Had he only wanted to go to the infirmary? Turnip asked himself, rubbing his wrists, fingering the scabs. No. He’d wanted to go somewhere else, and he couldn’t even get that right.

Firemen set up a jumping sheet on the curb, locking the hinges of its circular metal frame and, each spaced a few feet apart, holding it above the hard concrete. They looked to Turnip like kids gathered around a trampoline. He appreciated the white sheet had a red bull’s-eye in its center. That way he’d know where not to aim if he took his last step.

Leaning forward, hands clamped to the ledge, Turnip let a glob of spit form against his parched lips. He watched it fall three stories to the sidewalk. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Miss— Two and a half seconds for three stories. Was that too long a stretch of terror? Turnip would rather die than live out his whole life in prison. Might as well ask for the death penalty, he figured, because he might as well be dead.

He cupped his hands to his mouth. Somebody stand up and say I killed Randy Hubbard! I want somebody to give me a motherfucking lie detector to prove I ain’t killed nobody. I may know who killed the worthless bastard, but I’m not going to rat on nobody!

From behind Turnip came the voice he wanted most and least to hear at that moment. I’m coming up, Coogan, yelled Will Pickett. The district attorney climbed over the top rim of the cage ladder. Hands raised, he said, The man behind me? That’s my investigator, Jake. He’s armed. I told Jake shoot you dead, you make a move.

You ugly son of a bitch. I’m sure you’d like that. Get rid of me, easy-peez.

Turnip stood. He looked over the ledge. News cameras scattered through the crowd peered back at him, sound operators beside them, raising boom poles above their heads. He guessed that at a distance of three stories they must be close enough to pick up everything he and Pickett said.

Did I mention fat? Turnip asked the district attorney, raising his voice so it would carry. "You are one fat, ugly son of a bitch."

Pickett, in pin-striped shirtsleeves, maroon suspenders, and an affected bow tie, said, Let’s go on back inside, all right, Coogan? His round glasses with cable temples reflected a pair of suns. Sweat drenched his chevron moustache.

You lied about my plea deal, Turnip said, the tone in the second-to-last word sounding, to his embarrassment, like what it was: a plea. Months earlier, after his offer to turn state’s evidence if the capital murder charges were dropped, Turnip had sent a letter to the local paper, declaring his innocence and his unfair treatment by the district attorney. Unfortunately, how Turnip concluded the letter, stating he could not have done more to get the court’s attention unless he’d threatened to kill Ronald Reagan, occasioned an entire week of questioning by unamused FBI agents.

Lewis, Pickett said, using Turnip’s given name. He inched closer, hands still raised, the old man behind him still gripping a revolver. You and I both know we never had a plea deal.

I ain’t killed nobody. You took everything I had when you put me in jail.

Not until he saw a line of wet drops on the roof’s tar did Turnip realize he was crying. He wiped his face with the hem of his tank top and, as his boxer shorts ballooned from his thighs and his one sock gripped the ledge, did a chicken dance, flapping his bent arms like two wings and making gobble-gobble sounds. The dance used to bring him luck before cockfights. Now he hoped it would keep the people down in the street from seeing his tears.

What are you doing, Lewis? Pickett was now close enough to reach out and touch Turnip. Think about your lovely wife. Think about that baby you got on the way.

Baby?

"She hasn’t told you. Shit."

Turnip’s wife, Molly, hadn’t visited him since he’d been detained at the county’s pleasure. He understood. In fact, he was happy she stayed away. At the initial hearing, when Turnip had been ordered to be held without bond, Molly had been shaking as she gave her testimony that she had met Turnip’s alleged accomplice in the murder, a DM hit man named Jacob Cassidy. Turnip’s heart had crumbled like old corn bread to see his girl so afraid of what Cassidy and the Dixie Mafia might do to her in retaliation for the testimony.

It was for the best, her staying away from the jail, but she could have at least called Turnip and told him he was going to be a daddy. Molly could have at least done that.

You took everything I have, Turnip mumbled to Will Pickett. My home, my truck. My family. His voice swelled—out of anger with himself and with this piece of shit who’d made him cry in front of the whole world. How’d you like it if I took away your family, Mr. Pickett? What if someone killed your wife, your son, that baby in your wife’s belly?

Down below, the group of uniformed police officers began to froth, talking into their radios and making hand signals to other officers. Behind Pickett, the old man with a gun stepped forward. Easy, Jake, Pickett said. Lewis was just puffing his chest. Isn’t that right, Lewis?

Turnip, sensing he’d gone too far, started to pace, his motion back and forth on the ledge keeping a lockstep with the motion back and forth in his mind. He was such an idiot. What kind of man couldn’t properly send himself to hell? Turnip got dizzy thinking about it. Even his stomach turned on him. A belch filled his mouth, tasting of bitter eggs and toast and coffee.

How can anyone win in this damn town? After he stopped pacing, Turnip continued swaying side to side, favoring one heel and then the other. He couldn’t help himself. The motion was still going in his head. The bitter taste was still in his mouth. Game’s been rigged my whole entire life.

Let’s go back inside. Pickett stepped forward. He was inches from Turnip’s back. He couldn’t see his face. We can sit down and have a little talk about a plea deal. How’s that sound?

They took everything I have, and I ain’t got nothing to lose.

Lewis!

To the people in the street below, Turnip, shadowed by the noontime sun and given fluffy white wings by the backdrop of two clouds, didn’t jump or fall so much as topple from the roof, arms at his sides and back straight, like a toy soldier nudged forward by a child’s finger. Collectively they gasped when his body hit the sidewalk. Parents held hands over their children’s eyes. Paralegals, secretaries, and nurse practitioners forgot to agonize, if only for a moment, about their overdue mortgage payments, about the tests that came back positive, about the liens on their Ford Escorts or Oldsmobile Cutlasses or Chevy Chevettes.

The rest of Meridian, Mississippi, did not notice. At Bill Gordon’s barbershop, young men thinking of joining up asked for flattops, demonstrating by holding one hand like a mortarboard to their heads, trying to tamp the quiver in their voices. At Merrehope, one of six homes left standing after General Sherman’s raid during the Civil War, a group of volunteers from the Junior Auxiliary dusted, polished, mopped, and swept in preparation for the two-o’clock tour. At Weidmann’s Restaurant, customers smeared peanut butter on saltines while looking over the menu. At the Threefoot Building, insurance salesmen read the paper while getting their brogans shined. At the Temple Theatre, students from Lamar School, a segregation academy named for the Confederate statesman L. Q. C. Lamar, took advantage of the New Year’s Day holiday by waiting in line to see Disney’s rerelease of Song of the South. A few of them sang Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah as an ambulance passed, headed to the courthouse to collect the body.

And later that evening, after Will Pickett’s pregnant wife and two-year-old son had been startled by a black-and-white police cruiser pulling up to their house—Only here as a precaution, ma’am, the officers had said—Clementine Baldwin, proprietor of the Queen City Detective Agency, sat in her office to look over a stack of unpaid invoices. She was pouring her third whiskey neat when the phone rang.

Queen City, she said into the shouldered receiver. Baldwin here.

Hello, came a woman’s voice, frail but bold, with a hill-country twang. My name is Lenora Coogan. My son is Lewis Coogan. I’d like to hire you to find the sons of bitches who killed him.

2

Queen City Detective Agency

Clem Baldwin woke the next day on her ratty office couch, as usual, still fully dressed, as usual, and, unusually, not hungover. After getting off the phone with Lenora Coogan, she’d left her office and walked the six blocks to the courthouse, where the scene of what authorities were officially calling an accident was cordoned off in brilliant yellow plastic. Clem, ignoring the bottle of whiskey tucked in a drawer of her desk, had spent the rest of the night watching TV news reports of the incident, which included unnecessarily and, she felt, unconscionably explicit footage of Turnip Coogan’s plummet to his death.

The eerie sight of Coogan’s body midair, with his arms by his sides instead of flailing and his legs rigid instead of scissoring, was lodged in Clem’s mind as she picked up her partner, Dixon Hicks.

Morning, Dixon said after shutting the car door, his long blond hair still wet from the shower, his beard smelling incongruously of aftershave. Clem handed him a cup of coffee she’d grabbed at a Super Stop on her way to his apartment complex. Did you remember the cream? he asked, an old joke Clem was embarrassed to still find funny.

Pussies like you can’t handle straight black. She used that line every time.

Dixon took a sip of coffee before finishing the routine in his heavy drawl. You never forget the sugar.

From Clem’s beat-down, soft-top Jeep, which she’d inherited after her father took on crop shares at Parchman Farm and which she now drove, she told herself, out of spite more than sentiment, Clem watched stock footage of her past life. It still hurt to see the police department on Twenty-Second Avenue, where, during her rookie year and maybe three of the five subsequent ones, she’d genuinely believed the boys in blue could be man enough to accept a woman. It hurt worse to see Highland Park, site of her career-making and, ultimately, career-ending collar, a serial killer the papers relished calling the Dentzel Carousel Strangler.

Are you still drunk? Dixon asked, waving his hand in front of Clem’s face.

What? Shut up. What?

I was asking you a question.

Then ask it again, God’s sake. Shit.

Dixon picked a piece of lint from his stonewashed jeans. Did the Coogan woman say why she called us first?

Because we’re the best?

Goes without saying.

It was a referral, Clem said. Apparently, she’s godmother to that runaway we tracked down in New Orleans.

New Orleans. Blessed, cursed New Orleans. Without that goddamn city, Clem figured, she’d be out of the job. Its proximity to Meridian, a three-hour drive away, and Meridian’s location in the east-central hills of Mississippi, two hours from Birmingham, Alabama, and four hours from Atlanta, Georgia, made Clem’s hometown a vital pit stop in the loosely affiliated crime belt of the Deep South, one nourished by Louisiana’s most notorious city. Thanks to New Orleans, Meridian had become a constellation, the stars of which included gambling, bootlegging, drug-trafficking, number-running, loan-sharking, election-rigging, racketeering, prostitution, extortion, protection, and assassination.

The more crime, Clem knew, the more people needed surveillance, background checks, and countless other services she and Dixon readily provided. Was your husband cheating on you? Signs pointed to yes, in a town with more brothels than bookstores. Had your business partner embezzled to pay down a string of uncovered spreads? Most likely, given the proliferation of bookmakers and the omnipresence of college football.

Game time, Dixon said as they pulled into a trailer park on Old Country Club Road, and of course, Clem noted, a banner by the front entrance read BIG EASY RV AND MOBILE HOME VILLAGE—THESE GOOD TIMES CAN ROLL, with purple and gold fleurs-de-lys separating the words.

In the crisp morning air, a reprieve from the recent winter heat wave, sloping brown-and-yellow hillocks, some with overgrown but clearly planed tops, testified to the surrounding pasture’s former use as a golf course. Cattle grazed around foreclosure signs noting the possibility to rezone. The trailer park looked new to Clem, though she couldn’t say for certain. More and more of them were appearing in and outside of town these days. Clem and Dixon passed a community mailbox hutch, on a column of which was posted a REMEMBER TO LEASH YOUR DOG notice. Its letterhead was from Hubbard Developments.

Your show, boss, Dixon said when they reached Lenora Coogan’s trailer.

After knocking on the door, Clem asked her partner, sotto voce, Why are you wearing aftershave? and in response, Dixon furrowed and unfurrowed his brow, rubbed his beard, and said, "Wife says it’s scratchy. She read in Mademoiselle aftershave works as a moisturizer."

Hello! You must be the private detectives. Please, y’all, come in, come in.

Lenora Coogan, while leading Clem and Dixon into her living area, pushed a finger to the bridge of her thick plastic glasses with lenses the size of drink coasters and retrieved a pack of Viceroys and a lighter from the pocket of her faded blue duster robe. Her slippers shuffled along a spongy carpet going gray with ash instead of age. She lit a cigarette and sat in a Barcalounger. Please, Lenora said, motioning to the sofa across from her.

On the sofa, seesawed a few inches higher than her partner by his good ol’ boy poundage, Clem took out a notepad and a pencil. Her cop brain did a quick survey of the room, cataloguing the spatial layout of the trailer, looking for signs of pets or boyfriends, determining Lenora’s age, height, weight, and real hair color, memorizing the shoe prints on the linoleum in the kitchen, noting the Betamax player on top of the twenty-five-inch TV. A rabbit-ear antenna sat next to an out-of-service cable box. It figured. Clem had spent a few years of her childhood in a mobile home not so different from this one. When these sort of folk hit a lick, the first thing they upgraded was the home entertainment, and when the money ran out, so did the cable subscription. Clem knew but too well the sting of that logic.

Can I offer you a Sanka? Sweet tea? Lenora said. Think I have a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid in the fridge.

No, but thank you, ma’am, said Dixon. He always knew when to defuse a situation, Clem had to admit. She’d barely had time to register the comment. You’ve a darling home, Dixon continued. I got kin live out this way. Sure quiet, these parts.

I’m fine as well, Clem said. Keep it business, she told herself. Nothing personal. We don’t want to take up much of your day, ma’am. Just a few questions.

Let me guess. Lenora pointed at Clem. She scrunched her eyes like a psychic pretending to peer into the past. You went to Wechsler.

Clem deadpanned, Quite a deduction. In her head, she heard lockers slamming and bells ringing, teenage gossip muffled by cupped hands and raised textbooks.

You know, I was proud, them opening the doors. But I reckon that was before your time.

Ma’am. Clem leaned forward, pencil pressed to pad. On the phone you said you want us to find the people who killed your son. What exactly did you mean by that?

I meant I want y’all to find the fuckers. That so hard to understand?

Clem glanced at Dixon. But, ma’am, your son wasn’t killed. He jumped off a roof.

Dixon jerked as though cattle-prodded. And our condolences for your loss.

My son didn’t jump off anything. Fall? Maybe. Pushed? More like. Lenora Coogan pulled the lever on the side of her recliner like a hangman at the gallows. Her legs were flung into the air, riding the catapult of the footrest. All I know is he did not . . . he would never kill his self.

Who do you think did? Clem asked, answering in her mind, The sidewalk.

His employer, ’course. The DM. Lewis knew too much about their operations for them to let his case go to trial.

Now they were getting somewhere with a bit of grip. During her time on the force, Clem had heard everything and nothing about the Dixie Mafia, how it was really just a group of semi-unionized hit men, that it was actually a branch of the Italian Mafia from New York City. The Dixie Mafia, according to the most believable stories, moved stolen goods, killed on contract, bribed public officials, and, in general, carried out dirty work for those averse to both work and dirt. To cops, they represented what many cases lacked: causality. If a well-to-do businessman was found dead in his home, bullet to the head, no signs of B and E, no items missing—the DM did it. If an antiques shop went up in flames, a clear case of arson but without any insurance policy to make arson profitable—the DM did it.

Our thing did not just become our thang. Clem had always had a hunch the Dixie Mafia was not only more ruthless but also more organized than its Italian forebears, that its genteel, lost cause name was part of its cover. She believed the DM had its own code of silence, a Confederate omertà, one enforced by violence or by money. God knew how many people in the department were in its pocket. Until this moment, though, Clem had never heard a direct, seemingly verifiable admission of the Dixie Mafia’s existence.

What exactly did your son do for the DM? Clem asked Lenora Coogan.

Oh, little of this, little of that. A mother doesn’t want to know, know what I mean? His work helped keep this roof over my head. But since my little Turnip went to jail, I’ve had to go on the food stamps! Can you believe? Like I was some damn, uh . . .

One eyebrow hiked, Clem watched, not without a touch of resigned amusement, as the woman shuffled the deck of words in her head. Clem asked, with the same resigned amusement, Like you were some damn what?

I do know one thing. Lenora put out her cigarette in a standing ashtray next to the recliner. Turnip handled the little birdies on the DM circuit.

Little birdies?

Cockfights.

Clem scribbled on her pad. Any known associates? With the little birdies.

Tell the truth, Clementine—

"Ms. Baldwin."

Tell a truth, Miss Baldwin, I was never partial to that alley of my son’s life. Lenora laced her forehead, her eyebrows knitting together. She swallowed significantly. Turnip could be hard to love, but he always took care of me. May he find peace at last.

The emotion in Lenora’s voice as she spoke those words shook a few drops of bitters onto the sugar cube that was Clem’s heart. It was typical, and she knew it. Given the amount of bourbon usually in