The Tilted World Read Online Free

solid.
    “Think they could be bought?”
    “No. I don’t think so.” Ham paused as if remembering. “No.”
    “Well, they’re bought or they’re dead.”
    Neither Ingersoll nor Ham replied.
    “Problem is, boys, I’m responsible for this area now, and I can’t have any bad press coming out of it.” Hoover swiveled the chair around to slip the atlas back in its slot, then faced them again. “These agents have wives, and these wives have questions, so I can only hold off on this for so long. Pretty soon I’m going to have to announce these agents were killed.”
    Ham nodded.
    “Only thing that could make it better?”
    “Announcing you’ve found the killers?”
    “Bingo,” said Hoover. “Listen, they were onto something big. We don’t know what, exactly, but Wilkinson had told his wife they’d be in the papers for busting this still. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell her where the damn thing was. So I need you two to go in there and find it. And, better, I need you to figure out who all is connected. Get me names—buyers, distributors, crooked police, whatever. I want to break a big story, so big the two dead prohis are just a footnote, got me?”
    They nodded.
    “But the one thing I don’t need? Four dead prohis. So use caution,” Hoover continued. “Tensions are high there, and not just because anybody involved with the moonshine is running scared. The whole place is divided. Apparently, Hobnob was offered a tidy sum by a group of New Orleans bankers, cotton merchants, who approached the levee board, offering to buy out the town.”
    “Buy out the town?”
    “Indeed. Offered fifty grand to let its levees be dynamited. Hobnob is weak because of that big horseshoe bend, levees in danger of bursting anyway. If they were to burst, that would take the pressure off the levees down south, save those big columned mansions in the Garden District.”
    Ham gave a snort.
    “So it started out as a straightforward business arrangement,” Hoover went on. “Let us dynamite your levee that’s probably gonna blow anyway, and you all get a fresh start.”
    “And it ended up?”
    “Human. The people of Hobnob jumped at the offer, but then they couldn’t figure out how to divide the money. Some had more property. Some had better property. Some had no property at all. You can imagine the squabbles. In the end, they couldn’t agree, and the bankers withdrew their offer.” The secretary removed his glasses and put his thumb and index finger to the bridge of his nose. “Now we’re worried about saboteurs.”
    “Like Marked Tree.” It was the first time Ingersoll had spoken, and perhaps he shouldn’t have, as Hoover glanced at him above the tent of his fingers. Four saboteurs from across the river had been shot while planting dynamite on the Arkansas side, and now Ingersoll guessed that Hoover had tried to keep this out of the papers.
    “Yes,” said Hoover. “Exactly like Marked Tree.”
    He rose and walked to the window and looked out while the men chewed on what he’d told them, the train rocking as it gained speed. “The Corps has sent men to Hobnob, engineers and levee guards. Which gives you an in—you’re just more engineers sent to examine the levee—but it’s gonna be harder to get people to talk. They’re suspicious.”
    They nodded, though Hoover had his back to them. It was raining so hard that water was running down the inside of the glass, and Hoover removed a pocket square and wiped a swath free. The drowned landscape clacked by, rows of shriveled cotton combed by water. “Don’t linger. Infiltrate, telephone me for the go-ahead, bust the still, and then get out.” He turned to face them. “I’m giving you a week. Then I’ll have to announce the missing prohis. Don’t let me down.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    He walked to a coat tree and untied his sash and slipped the smoking jacket off and exchanged it for an army coat. Thumbing the buttons through their holes, he added, “We’ll be