Marcus Dean picked up his fork, then dropped it. His hands were shaking and beads of sweat lined his forehead. On the other side of the table, young Nevin Noll was perfectly calm, even smiling. The second Bloody Mary arrived and Nevin hit the straw. He looked at the plate and asked, “You gonna eat all that toast?”
“No.”
He reached over, lifted half a slice of bread, and ate most of it.
Marcus Dean finished his drink and seemed to breathe easier. In a low voice he said, “Let’s be clear here. When I give you the cash, what happens then?”
“I leave, deliver it to Mr. Malco, the rightful owner.”
“And me?”
“You’re not worth killing, Poppy. Why bother? Unless of course you decide to return to the Coast. That would be a huge mistake.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going back.”
Nevin hit the straw again and continued smiling. Marcus Dean took a deep breath and said, almost in a whisper, “You know, there’s an easier way to do this.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Poppy looked around again as if spies were watching. At the nearest table a couple in their nineties stirred their oatmeal and tried to ignore one another. He said, “Okay, the money is upstairs in my room. Sit tight and I’ll get it.”
“I like it. Sooner rather than later.”
“Give me ten minutes.” Poppy dabbed his mouth and laid his napkin on the table.
Noll said, “I’ll wait here. No funny stuff. I have men outside. You get stupid and I’ll rub you out quicker than Fortier. You have no idea, Mr. Poppy, how close you are right now to a bad ending.”
On the contrary, Poppy had a very clear idea. He delivered the cash in an envelope and watched as Noll left the restaurant. He drank another Bloody Mary to calm his nerves, then left for the restroom, turned in to the kitchen, took the stairs to the basement, left through a service door, and hid in an alley until he was satisfied no one was watching. He got in his car, drove away, and couldn’t relax until he crossed the state line into Texas.
Chapter 11
The prosecutor for the Nineteenth District was a solemn and inexperienced young man named Pat Graebel. He had been elected four years earlier and was on the ballot, unopposed, in 1963 when his biggest case landed in his lap. He had never prosecuted anyone for murder, and the fact that Nevin Noll was such a well-known figure in the Biloxi underworld raised the stakes enormously. The citizens of Jackson County, the same voters who had elected Graebel as their district attorney, were proud of their law-abiding reputation and looked down on the riffraff next door in Biloxi. Occasionally the crime spilled over and they had to deal with the mess, which caused even more resentment. The pressure on young Graebel to get a conviction was enormous.
His case at first looked airtight. Rita Luten, the other victim and a solid eyewitness, was mending slowly but steadily. She was paralyzed and could say little, but her doctors expected her condition to improve. Mr. Bullington, the next-door neighbor, was even more certain he had seen Nevin Noll flee the scene. The ballistics expert from the state crime lab said the .22 caliber revolver found in Noll’s apartment was the same gun that fired the six shots. Motive would be harder to prove, given the vagaries of the underworld, but the prosecution believed it could produce witnesses from the Strip who would testify, under pressure, that the shootings were the result of a business deal gone sour. Another frightening tale of gangland violence.
Pat Graebel had no idea how thoroughly the mob could sabotage a case. One week before the trial was to begin in the Jackson County Courthouse in Pascagoula, Rita Luten disappeared. Graebel had not bothered to put her under a subpoena, a forgivable but major blunder. He assumed, as had everyone else, that she would eagerly show up and finger the defendant as the murderer who shot her in the face three times. She wanted justice all right, but what she needed even more was money. She voluntarily got in an ambulance late one night and was whisked away to a private rehab facility near Houston where she was admitted under a pseudonym. All contacts, as well as all bills, were directed to a lawyer working for Lance Malco, though this would never be proven. Three months would pass before she was located by Graebel, and by then the trial was long over.