Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [89]
To be sure, a whole tragicomic parade of formerly anonymous people have lined up to testify for or against him in the criminal and civil courts of West Virginia. In addition, several adult-entertainment professionals have lost their jobs, and little roadside churches have had to defend themselves for accepting tithes from a guy who’s been treating metropolitan Charleston like his private saloon. His own granddaughter has lost friends because she can’t decide whom to trust. “She’s the most bitter sixteen-year-old I know,” Jack told the Associated Press.
At last check, Misty and Jeff and two separate trios of accused thieves were awaiting trial; the cops were still trying to track stolen Whittaker dough; prosecutors were preparing assault and DUI cases against Jack; two more women had sued, alleging that Jack had sexually affronted them between slot pulls; the owners and managers of Billy Sunday’s had hired lawyers to defend themselves in a suit Jack Whittaker brought against them; two other, completely different fellows had now sued Jack over another incident at another club (Jack supposedly became enraged over losing a coin toss or something); bartenders dreaded seeing him walk through the door; and Mike Dunn was still trying to get the Pink Pony’s liquor license back.
Robby, the Pony’s former cook, wound up behind the bar of another gentlemen’s establishment, in a mini-mall next door to a boarded-up adult bookstore. He looks a little wistful there one afternoon as he tends the empty club and its trio of strippers, who alternately work their poles and holler at him to turn up the fucking jukebox and to get them another Wild Turkey, goddammit. Robby misses the Pony. He liked his job, liked his boss, and probably would have kept on there if not for Jack’s shenanigans. Like most everyone else, Robby doesn’t say too much, because nobody cares to bad-mouth a guy with a load of lawyer money. “Besides,” Robby says, “in West Virginia, rats get hurt.” He did offer this, though: “People think money gives them power. But it don’t.”
The huge sign over the C&L Super Serve (THE BIG ONE SOLD HERE!) now seems less celebratory than ironic. Even Jack’s preacher, whose little Tabernacle of Praise is $7 million richer, doesn’t defend Jack so much as pretend he doesn’t exist. When asked about the drinking and fighting and strippers, pastor C.T. Mathews said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then, “What he does is his business. Here, we talk about our business and the Lord’s business.”
Lots of people around Scott Depot wish Jack had taken his business elsewhere. “I’ll tell you what he should have done: He should have taken that money and gotten the hell out of West Virginia,” one bartender said. “That’s what I’d have done. I’d have bought me an island.”
Jack’s biggest mistake, though, was probably a gross deficit of subtlety. In flashing his cash, it’s almost as though he wanted people to take it. Maybe he felt he didn’t deserve it. Or maybe the money made him feel invincible, like the badass he always suspected he was—or wasn’t. Maybe he was trying to simultaneously redeem and punish himself. Maybe he broke beneath the burden of divine good luck. But here’s the thing. Even though he has been arrested, sued, banned from bars, robbed, and ridiculed, is down $155,000 in Navigator losses alone, and stands to lose thousands more in legal fees, Jack Whittaker has another $100 million or so to lose. So if he should decide to go ahead and blow everything, he’ll have a hell of a long way to go.
God help West Virginia.
PAIGE WILLIAMS is a nomadic writer who currently lives in New York. Her story “The Accused” appeared in The Best American Crime Writing 2003.
Coda
On the surface this seems like a laughable story, the misadventures of a country goofball.