Black Light

2. Buy a Remington rifle, Model 740A, the new autoloader, in .30-06. He’d read about it in Field & Stream. Said they were building them even more accurate than the Winchester Model 70s, and you had that second and third shot automatically, without a recock.

3. Kiss his wife. Tell her how much he liked her strawberry pie. Buy her a present. The woman needed a present. Hell, buy her two presents.

4. Face it out with Edie. It had to be dealt with. Do it, put your house in order, clean up your mess.

5. See Sam Vincent. A policeman had to have a will. Sam could recommend a lawyer. Get a will, figure it all out.

6.

But at 6 an odd thing occurred. It seemed like time stopped for a second and Earl’s soul flew out of his body. He imagined himself floating through space. He watched from above as the black Arkansas woods and hills flew by. In the distance, beyond Board Camp, he saw a well-lit little house off by itself. He descended and flew through the window. His wife, June, was there. She was doing something in the kitchen. She was dutiful, erect, a little irritable, in an apron, looking tired as usual, and not saying much. He floated up to her and touched her cheek but his finger had no substance and sank through her. He stroked at her harder, but could make no contact.

Puzzled, he flew up the steps. Bob Lee sat in his room, trying to put together a Revell model airplane. It was a Bell P-39 Airacobra, very dangerous-looking, but Earl knew the pilots hated it and that it never flew after 1943. Bob Lee, still wearing that damned coonskin cap and that Crockett T-shirt, was bent earnestly into the effort, trying with clumsy boyish fingers to cement the clear plastic cockpit bubble to the cockpit frame, a tricky operation because too much cement could smear the transparency of the ersatz glass, ruining the entire illusion of reality. Usually, Earl did this job himself, though the boy glued the bigger pieces together and was getting better and better at it. Earl reached to help the boy, but again his fingers were weightless; they touched nothing.

Bob Lee, he called. Bob Lee, Bob Lee, Bob Lee, but Bob Lee didn’t hear him and struggled with the cockpit and somehow got it mounted. Earl watched as his boy’s face knitted in disappointment and fury, and he beat a single tear away. But Earl knew too the model was ruined. He ached now to take the boy into his arms, and say, now, that’s all right, maybe you didn’t do so good this time, but there’ll be other times. But when he reached he touched nothing.

7. Stop vomiting blood.

The blood was everywhere. What was happening? It spread across his chest and poured from his absolute center. When had this happened? It must have occurred in that split second when Earl went out of his body. It occurred to him that he had been shot and he looked out into the goddamned darkness and heard only the hooting of the owls and the stirring of other animals. It was so dark.

He had the consciousness of it all slipping away. He thought of a drain, of being whirled down a drain. His mind grew logy and stupid. He yearned to see his son again and his wife and his father; he yearned but it did no good.

20

R

ed was at an executive meeting for Redline Trucking when the call came, and he was almost happy, because Thewell Blackwell II, of Blackwell, Collins, Bisbee, over from Little Rock, was halfway through his briefing on potential complications if Interstate Commerce Regulatory Bill H.355 got out of the House Interstate Commerce Committee without serious reconfiguration, namely that the requirement for weight inspections at interstate borders be open on weekends as well as during the week, which had a long-term downsizing application in terms of routes serviced for out-of-state clients. It was all very interesting but Thewell was hardly the world’s most commanding speaker arid somewhere in paragraph 13, subsection II, subpoint C, Red began trying to decide whether he should go to a No. 8 shot for the long floater at Cherokee Ridge, where next year’s nationals were slated.

The buzz against his hip shook him from his reverie. He leaned over to Brad Pauley, his vice-president for legal affairs and liaison with Blackwell, Collins, Bisbee, and whispered, “Be back in a sec.”

Brad nodded, and Red smiled tightly and slipped out of the meeting, walking through the quiet hush of the suite that everyone assumed was the hub of his empire. He knew the name of everyone and everyone knew his name and as he moved toward the executive washroom just outside his fabulous corner office, he nodded and exchanged pleasantries with his employees.

But at last he was alone and punched in the number on his folder.

“Uh, sir, uh, I don’t know what this means,” the dull voice of Duane Peck, spy and idiot, reported, “but, um, I found out early this morning that Bob and that kid done reapplied for a Motion of Exhumation. I got to the cemetery and found out that they removed the body they wanted and it went to Devilin mortuary. They had that doctor come on down from Fayetteville to look at it. Don’t know what he told them, but he told them something. I don’t rightly know where they went. I drove by Bob’s place just a few minutes ago, but it was deserted, though the truck was there. Maybe they was out in the woods out back or something. So anyway: that’s what it is. I’ll spin on by the old man’s place later and see what’s going on.”

Red didn’t curse or stomp or do anything demonstrative: he was too disciplined and professional for such exhibitionism. But now he knew he had a serious problem and it must be dealt with swiftly, or the time would pass when it could be dealt with at all.

His first call was back to Duane.

“Yes sir?”

“Where are you?”

“Uh, I’se headed back to town.”

“All right. I want you to back off from Swagger and the boy. You’ll have no more business with them, for now.”

“Yes sir,” said Duane.

“Someone else will deal with them. Now, you concentrate on the old man. I have to know what he’s up to. You find that out, do you understand? But you have to do it easily; you can’t carry on like a goddamn hog with a corncob up its ass.”

“Yes sir,” said Duane. “I’ll be gittin’ right on it.”

Red disconnected. He didn’t like what came next. This business was tricky and always involved the immutable law of unintended consequences but thank God he’d thought ahead and had good people in place and it could be done neatly and professionally, with maximized chances of success. He thought his father would be proud, for this was an old Ray Bama trick: Avoid violence, avoid force, always negotiate. But when violence is unavoidable, strike fast, unexpectedly and with total commitment and willpower.

He dialed a number. A man answered.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know who this is?”

“Yes sir.” The voice had a familiar Spanish accent to it, Cuban probably. “The team is ready?”

“The guys are all in. It’s a good team. Steady guys. Been around. Solid, tough, know their stuff. Some are —”

“I don’t want names or details. But it has to be done. You do it. I’ll get you the intelligence, the routes, and you clear everything through this number. When you’re ready to move, you let me know. I’ll want a look at the plan, I’ll want on-site reports. No slipups. You’re being paid too much, all of you, for slipups.”

“There won’t be no slipups,” the man said.

The man on the other end of the phone, in a farmhouse just outside Greenwood in far Sebastian County, let the dial tone come up and then he consulted a card and began to dial pager numbers.

Nine pagers rang. Two, one right after another, went off at the Blood, Sweat and Tears Gymnasium on Griffin Park Road in Fort Smith, where two immense men with necks the size of lampshades were hoisting what appeared to be tons of dead weight at separate Nautilus stations. Each was olive in skin tone, with glistening black hair and dark, deep, watchful eyes, identical even to the tattoos that festooned their gigantic arms, though one had a