Justice Lost (Darren Street #3)(20)
On the other hand, the only time I’d been active politically was during Morris’s campaign when he took down Ben Clancy. I’d done a lot of grunt work during that campaign, but I didn’t really know anything about how to play the game. I had no idea how to run a campaign. I had no idea how to organize. I had no idea where to even start. And I didn’t have a ton of money.
Still, I thought, stranger things have happened. The district attorney general was arguably the most powerful law enforcement officer in the district. The only people in law enforcement close to rivaling him were judges and the sheriff, because they were also elected, but if a judge or a sheriff told an elected district attorney to do something and he didn’t want to do it, he could tell them to go piss up a rope.
Why not give it a shot? I knew I might take a beating in the press if the cops started feeding them stories that I was suspected in a bunch of murders, but the natural response to that would be: “Is that right? Why haven’t they arrested me? Do they have a single shred of evidence?” It could backfire on them and put the cops in a terribly uncomfortable position, and it could backfire on Morris and make him appear vindictive and inept.
So again, why not try? I’d been bitching and complaining about the system screwing me for years. Why not become a powerful part of the system and see what happened? I didn’t know exactly what Granny wanted in exchange for helping me get elected, and I didn’t know how she planned to pull it off, but I was willing to give it a shot. Hell, I might even be able to do some good and start redeeming myself for all the killing I’d done. But if not, I’d just raise some hell and, like Granny said, have some fun.
I lay back on my pillow and stared up at the ceiling, a smile on my face.
“You’re crazy,” I said to the ceiling. “You belong in a loony bin.”
CHAPTER 11
Eugene and Ronnie Tipton were brothers, both roughly ten years older than I was. They bore the look of men who had seen more than their share of pain in their lives. They appeared tired, but they were tough, independent men, far from defeated by tragedy and the lack of opportunity typical of so many of the people who lived in the mountains around Knoxville, Gatlinburg, Sevierville, and Pigeon Forge.
Eugene was the older and bigger of the two. I believed he was two years older than Ronnie, but I wasn’t certain. Both were muscular and had dark, smooth complexions, black hair, and dark eyes. Their appearances, along with Granny’s near-black eyes, made me wonder whether they were somehow descended from the Cherokee Indians who inhabited Tennessee before the whites either killed them or drove them out. Both men were wearing denim bib overalls over short-sleeve white T-shirts.
Granny was sitting across from me at her kitchen table, her white hair pulled back into a ponytail and a green scarf around her neck. She was sipping on a cup of hot tea. Eugene, Ronnie, and I were all drinking beer. Now that the task of ridding the world of Fraturra had been completed, she’d invited me up to flesh out her idea of putting me in the district attorney’s office.
“I suppose you’d like to know why I want you to run for district attorney in Knox County,” Granny said.
“I have a lot of questions,” I said.
“You might say that law enforcement in Knox County is our enemy right now, but that could change very quickly, couldn’t it?”
“I’m not sure I’m getting you,” I said.
I looked at Eugene and Ronnie, both of whom had smirks on their faces.
“Knox County is as dirty as it gets,” Granny said. “Everybody is on the take, including the district attorney, and there’s plenty for the taking. The sex trade is strong in and around Knoxville, what with all the tourists coming in and out of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. The drug trade is strong and growing every day. Opioids are taking over the country. Heroin is now the drug of choice again in a lot of areas because it’s cheaper than OxyContin. Methamphetamine is everywhere in a bunch of different forms. It’s just wide-open. The feds can sound their trumpets all they want about fighting a war on drugs. They’re losing just like they always have, and they’ll continue to lose until they do something about the root of the problem, which is poverty. But the members of the United States Congress don’t care about helping people get out of poverty. They care about helping their rich friends and donors avoid taxes. They care about helping their rich friends and donors become richer. They care about making themselves richer. So it’s never going to end. Which means there is always money to be made, and lots of it. Knox County is a big market, Darren, and we want in.
“There’s also a ton of gambling. There’s cockfighting, dogfighting, and bare-knuckle fighting, not to mention the run-of-the-mill sports gaming and backroom casinos. We’re talking upward of fifty million a year, just in that county. The district attorney gets a small cut from everything, which doesn’t mean he gets a small amount, and so does the sheriff.”
“Stephen Morris takes dirty money?” I said. I thought about it for a second and decided it didn’t surprise me.
“Do you know where he lives?” Granny said.
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Let’s just say his living conditions have been considerably upgraded since he became the district attorney, and district attorneys don’t make that much. And guess who set it all up originally? I didn’t know this until a few months ago, but it makes sense now that I think back on it.”