A Rented World (The Michael Parker series Book 3) - Softcover

Merle Temple

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0991147537 ISBN 13: 9780991147533

Publisher: Southern Literature Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

For readers across America who still love books written as keepers in a throwaway culture.  Merle Temple's character, Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Captain Michael Parker, dodged death in A Ghostly Shade of Pale only to find that the organized crime figures who tried to kill him were amateurs compared to the political criminals he encounters in A Rented World, book 4 in the series. Parker confronts an unholy trinity of politics, crime, and business, all humming the same secular hymn--"Everyone and everything is for sale." Parker exposes corruption in the corporate and political worlds and wrestles with the question of how far is too far to go to defeat them. Temple weaves a cautionary tale of how quickly all can be lost, but how threads of purpose can be found in blankets of crushing pain. Join Michael Parker for midnight meetings between governors and godfathers, conspiracies hatched in the smoke-filled nightclubs of the Dixie Mafia, the selling of souls in the shadows of corporate boardrooms, and for a trip on a winding road that leads him all the way to Congress and the White House.

About this title

About the Author

Merle Temple is the author of A Ghostly Shade of Pale and now the sequel, A Rented World. He lives in Tupelo, MS. and travels to book signings and speeches around the country. He hopes to have the final installment of his trilogy completed by late 2015.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE
“Satan, your kingdom must come down. I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Satan, your kingdom must come down.'”―Robert Plant
“After reading history...investigate the mystery of allegories, restrain their subtlety...so not to lose judgment in what they discern...”―Hugh of St. Victor

The club on the north end of Peachtree Boulevard was far from the gleaming lights of the Braves' stadium, the gold of the Capitol dome, and the venerable Fox Theater where locals swore they saw the ghost of Margaret Mitchell.
Patrons of Atlanta's Cougar Club could barely see the clock that registered 4:09 a.m. The incandescence of the stage footlights couldn't cut through the pungent odor and strange amalgamation of smoke, sweat, drug cookers, poor hygiene, casual intimacy, and broken hearts―a toxic stew in Hotlanta's most notorious strip club.
The antique air conditioner barely moved the dense air, creating an eerie churn of the combustible fumes that seemed to form the outlines of spirits which swirled into existence and then were gone. Some said they were ectoplasmic echoes of strippers and hookers lost to the hot shots of heroin, the hepatitis of bad needles, or the violence of jilted lovers.
The club with the emerald-green door and the peephole for admittance sat squarely in the middle of an area of cultural convergence that locals called the Twilight Zone. The TZ was bordered on one side by the Atlanta Museum and the Atlanta Symphony, on another by the large park that had become the central recreational site for the gay community, and on the other by several strip clubs and bars. The nightspots were the hives of peddlers of the forbidden that attracted the curious tourists of suburbia, professional politicians, and the Dixie Mafia.
At the apex of this triangle rose the peach tower and olive roof of the Peachtree Condominiums, standing like a modern Tower of Babel. It was home to all the worker bees of this cosmopolitan area. Elevators in the tower house seemed to go so high that passengers might kiss the balcony of heaven―that is, if they could see the Celestial City through the yellow-green haze of Atlanta pollution. A ticket to ride might mean sharing a car with concert pianists, strippers and enterprising hookers, military officers, wrestlers, professionals in demure business attire, or even older men with their concubines. From tuxedos to fishnet stockings and military surplus to wrestling tights, it was a cosmopolis where travelers did not speak the same language but moved past each other like ships in the night.
Billy Joe Estes was a portly man with a receding hairline, penguin body, and rosy-red cheeks that hinted of long hours, bad diet, and a penchant for hard liquor. He sat motionless and expressionless at a table filled with dirty glasses in the Cougar nightclub. Darlene Darling, an exotic dancer at the club, delivered a grotesque imitation of intimacy in an opera of the absurd where mechanical and contrived gyrations were passable for intoxicated patrons. Her moves were more or less choreographed to the beats of Carl Perkins on the jukebox: “It's almost dawn, and the cops are gone. Let's all get Dixie fried.”
Billy Joe had seen it all before as the gofer for “Big Jim” Martin, the undisputed boss of Georgia politics as Georgia's Speaker of the House―a man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Colonel Sanders.
Everyone called Billy Joe “Hoss,” not for his size or resemblance to Dan Blocker or his reputation as a “take no prisoners” political enforcer, but for a horse farm he invested in near Bonanza, Georgia. It was a front group buying old horses and selling them to glue factories, and it took all the speaker's clout to rescue him when the Feds found out.
Each time he was asked (for the umpteenth time) to explain his nickname, people hee-hawed, brayed, and then inquired, “Where's the rest of them Cartwright boys? Why'd they shoot Trigger and Buttermilk?” The double entendres and guffaws were endless. Billy Joe just hated it.
Tonight, Billy Joe was working―sort of. His job this night, as many evenings, was to ride herd on three drunken legislators who were unshackled from the restrictions and conventions of their home districts. Far from the front pews of the churches where these Pharisees parked on Sundays, they were free to indulge their proclivities for whiskey and wild women, to rub shoulders with the rich and famous who proved that money can't buy happiness.
They also collected “get out of jail free cards” from a local federal judge who frequented the club with a young female defendant he had shown leniency to in his court. To show her gratitude, she furnished him with her favors and all the cocaine he could ingest. At the Cougar Club, legislators and judges could take that anonymous walk on the wild side that they had only dreamed of before their call to serve the people.
Billy Joe, who wheezed now and then when he walked, was there on orders from Big Jim, who told him, “Just make sure these boys don't break anything, hurt any gals, or run afoul of the law. But if they do, it's your job to remind the local boys in blue that all our legislators are in session and, therefore, immune to the laws that we make for the common folks.”
Big Jim told him that the ancients of tender, state-government beginnings passed session immunity because adversaries were always having their rivals arrested by friendly gendarmes on the day of critical votes. In modern times, enterprising legislators pumped up with grandiosity and arrogance used their immunity as a weapon and a shield―the absolute power that Lord Acton warned could corrupt absolutely.
Some of these juveniles fancied themselves as supermen or demigods entitled to breach the rules of civilized society. It was difficult to cover up some of their addictions and excesses. Lots of money was paid to squelch rumors and to salve injured parties. If the people knew it, they would never stand for such abuses. The old arguments for immunity shields weren't that strong.
Billy Joe was shepherding three legislators from East Georgia, as well as Bill Cook, a newspaper editor from Augusta, who enjoyed the spoils of the boys he protected in his daily columns. Ricky Garcia, a rotund legislator from Augusta who looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy's long-lost twin brother, brought Cook to the party. Representative Joey Tomlin, a diminutive, baby-faced alcoholic with a penchant for crashing his car into Georgia Power Company poles, was along for the ride.
Steve Palmer, a silver-haired pharmacist and committee chairman, was there as well. He frequently warned women he encountered in Atlanta clubs that just because there was “snow on the roof” didn't mean there wasn't “fire in the chimney.” Palmer couldn't handle the pills he brought to Atlanta from his store back home―the same store he allowed enterprising drug dealers to burgle as cover for his inventory shortages that turned up when auditors came to call.
In the midst of the night's performance, Doughboy lurched suddenly toward the dance stage and Darlene, whom he nicknamed Honeysuckle. He thrust a wad of money into the young dancer's immodest outfit just above a slight roll of baby fat. The glassy-eyed, flaxen-haired child―that was what she was when the makeup was scraped away―was new to the game and startled by the move. Her fatuous smile showed more gum than teeth and contorted into a scowl, betraying the semi-permanent pout of her stage persona.
“Ow, Billy Joe! He pinched me!” the nubile dancer cried.
Billy Joe waved off Rex, the burly bouncer and former tight end for the Falcons. Coming out of the University of Georgia, he had great promise until he blew out his knee. Rex puffed his chest out in his too-tight muscle shirt, but deferred to Billy Joe and the reflected power of his patrons.
“Ricky, make nice with the dancer. No touching!” Billy Joe scolded.
“Aw, Hoss...I just wanted to show her some appreciation,” a contrite Ricky whined.
“Shut up, Ricky, and sit down. Big Jim needs you sober and ready to vote on the highway bill at ten this morning. You can't do that in jail, now can you?” Billy Joe admonished the baby-faced legislator as a distant grumble of thunder punctuated the moment.
Ricky swayed to and fro, almost fell, then bowed before young Honeysuckle and said, “I am so sorrrrrrrreeee, missee.”
Just as things seemed poised to return to normal, a red-faced, middle-aged man who apparently had a thing for the young dancer came from the rear of the club and charged the legislator. The man bellowed like an enraged moose and brandished a flash of cold steel from the knife suddenly produced from his back pocket. Veins swollen with blood protruded from his temples and forehead. He was infused with a rush of adrenalin and the righteous anger of a guy whose woman-girl had been wronged.
“That's my girl, you cheap suit,” he yelled as he reached for Ricky. Tables went flying, and shattering glass from the whiskey tumblers and beer mugs fractured the normal night-spot murmuring and chattering. The bouncer was too far away to stop him.
Patrons who didn't know Billy Joe were surprised by what followed. Seen by some as an unlikely intervener, he jumped into the path of the offended Romeo and hobbled the raging bull by stepping hard on the man's instep as he passed. He brought the thunder of the storm raging outside the club indoors with lightning-quick claps to both ears and an elbow across the side of the man's head. The anguished knight crumpled to the concrete floor of the Cougar Club with a thud, as a trickle of crimson blood oozed from his right ear.
Billy Joe bent to retrieve the knife, exposing the blue steel of his snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 beneath his belt. An antique watch of pitted gold had fallen from the man's pocket; it popped open on the scarred concrete floor and chimed a haunting ode to his “Beautiful Dreamer.” The Speaker's “babysitter of wayward legislators” snapped it shut and shot the crowd a challenging look. Hushed patrons, suddenly sober, looked on with wide eyes and raised eyebrows―exhibiting a new respect for Billy Joe.
The bouncer rushed in to make a show, muscles rippling, but the drama and theater was over. The local blue-and-white Atlanta police cruiser arrived as if on cue, and the officers, who were regulars on the strip club beat, asked the perfunctory questions with rote efficiency, strutting around as if they had never laid eyes on the usual suspects.
Carmen Rodriguez, the club owner of record and front for the real owners and investors, nodded at the bouncer, who slipped the senior officer a wad of Federal Reserve notes. Carmen was given the Cougar Club to manage, along with controlling interest in two others. He was rewarded for taking the fall for tax charges and Mann Act violations for both city politicians and Dixie Mafia members out of Biloxi. The Dixie Mafia laundered money through the clubs and used them as hideaways after armed robberies ranging from New Orleans to Miami. Carmen served eighteen months at the Atlanta federal prison camp for his silent partners, and they rewarded him as promised.
Billy Joe whispered sweet nothings in the second officer's ear. “The Speaker is eternally grateful for your help. Here's something for your trouble and some passes for you boys and your families to attend House sessions. You can even eat free in the section of the state cafeteria reserved for legislators.”
The man they nicknamed “Romeo” was cuffed amidst his protestations about the legislator from Augusta. The police dragged him to a cursory stop at Grady Memorial's emergency room, the depository for Atlanta's trauma cases, and then to a night in the drunk tank for disorderly conduct, where he was encouraged to forget it all.
Everyone settled down, tables were righted, and the music cranked up, just as the bartender announced last call and “a round on the house.” The rhythm of the dirty dance of the used and the users began again: actors taking their places and reciting their lines as the planet spun on uninterrupted.
Billy Joe finally loaded his legislative cargo into his van for a ride to the apartment the politicians shared while in Atlanta. As he drove, he thought of how he came to be in this sorry business.
He grew up in the Delta of Mississippi in rural Bolivar County near the village of Alligator. His folks were dirt-poor sharecroppers who lived in a small, white frame house weathered to gray. The shack sported a slightly bent, shiny silver television antenna. Because the Delta was so flat between Alligator and Memphis, Billy Joe could point it north and pick up WHBQ and WMC on a good day. When asked “Just how flat was it in the Delta?” he answered, “It was so flat you could sit on top of your house and watch your dog run away from home for two or three days.”
Billy Joe's golden-haired sister, who was a few years older, ran away from home after laying out their father with a shovel blade to the head. They found him unconscious and bleeding in the cotton field where she left him as she took money from her mother and made it to the bus station. They never told Billy Joe why she left, but years later she wrote and told him that she still had nightmares every night about their father and often awakened screaming.
Billy Joe picked cotton until his hands bled from the sharp and unforgiving blades of the cotton bolls. The furrowed rows seemed never-ending and miles long in the hot Mississippi glare, which had left his neck a permanent red-bronze. He felt the red neck stigmatized him as one of the great unwashed “crackers” of the South and would often wash and scrub his neck until it was raw.
Billy Joe got tired of poverty and equated his bad luck with indifference on the part of Jesus, who he felt didn't live up to the sermons and promises of the prosperity preachers. “I don't like boundaries,” he told people. “I seek other diversions that have all the advantages of Christianity but none of its restrictions and defects.”
So he left home as his mama cried and his daddy slept off a drunk from home brew on the front porch. After many misadventures and a short stint in the U.S. Navy, he came to work for the gangster Ace Connelly in his nightclubs around Memphis and North Mississippi.
Ace had pulled up one day in front of the National Guard Armory where Billy Joe worked after the Navy. There to hold a fundraiser to improve his image and buy protection from the local authorities, Ace spied Billy Joe and asked him if he wanted a job. Billy Joe was tired of the “weekend warriors” and his sergeant, whose motto was, “If it don't move, paint it!” So he left that day to become a gofer for Ace.
Ace asked him if he was crazy like people said. Billy Joe answered, “I know they say that I ain't right in the head, but they ain't proved me wrong yet.”
When Ace inquired as to his qualifications, Billy Joe said, “I left home like the Prodigal Son, but won't be back―the pig pen's fine with me.” That sealed the deal.
Everything was fine until Ace started dealing with the governor of Mississippi and that devil-worshipping freak Fredrick Hammel. He brought that narc, Michael Parker, down on them when he killed that girl in Memphis. Ace went to prison and left Billy Joe high and dry. Death followed Fredrick, and he almost killed Parker in Tupelo. The Grim Reaper claimed Fredrick instead. Fredrick was always talking about moving to a warmer climate, and Billy Joe figured he got his wish.
That's when he decided to head to Atlanta―too much heat; not the kind Fredrick spoke of but too many aggressive law dogs. Now and then he swore that he could still hear Fredrick in his head recruiting him.
The dimmycrats, as Billy Joe called them, had ruled over Georgia with an...

Edition details

• Publisher: Southern Literature Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0991147537
• ISBN 13: 9780991147533
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English