“Hell, no. I thought he was dicking a white woman or something. Didn’t matter, though. I was so fucked up, I didn’t know nothing ’bout nothing.”

“Ike, listen . . . what you did was terrible, but—”

“Don’t you judge me!” he cries, the whites of his eyes making him look wild in the dark. “Don’t you cast no stone! I been torturing myself thirty years. After I realized the work Del was doing, I just about went crazy. The whole town was marching for him. I wanted to scream out what I’d done, what Presley made me do. But I didn’t have the guts. I couldn’t face my own sin.”

The diabolical irony of Ray Presley’s plan leaves me cold. He actually blackmailed a black man into committing a civil rights murder. He and Marston must have laughed for weeks over that one. They’ve been laughing for thirty years.

“Does Stone know this? Or does he really believe Presley killed Payton?”

“Stone? ’Course he knows. He came to see me back then. He had the whole thing dogged out.”

“Why didn’t he arrest you? Why didn’t he tell me about you?”

Ike seems only partially aware of what I’m saying. “I don’t know why. He was different, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this at the start?”

“What could I tell you, man? I knew what I’d done. I knew about Presley. But that’s all. I knew what happened, but I didn’t know why. And that was the only way you were gonna get Marston.”

“But how did you know Marston was involved? Did Presley tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me shit. A year after it happened, somebody called me on the phone. Wouldn’t say nothing. I was about to hang up when they started playing this tape. It was Marston and Presley, talking about Del being killed. Talking about me. I figured it was Stone. Had to be.”

Stone must have called and played Ike Ransom the copy he’d made of the evidence tape he’d sent to J. Edgar Hoover. And his reason, I suspect, was a dark one. “Thirty years, Ike. Thirty years. Couldn’t you figure a way to trade what you knew for immunity, or—”

“Who was I gonna go to, man?” Spittle flies from his mouth. “The FBI already knew what had gone down. And they didn’t arrest nobody! A few years later I tried to find Stone, but the Bureau had fired his ass. Portman was a U.S. attorney, and I knew better than to trust that Yankee piece of shit. And Marston was on the state supreme court! What’s a drunk nigger cop from Mississippi gonna do against people swingin’ that kind of weight? You tell me.”

“Then why tell me? Why try at all after thirty years?”