'There. I've written an endorsement that should keep them from hauling you in again.'
'That'd be nice,' Dover said, and then, belatedly, 'Thanks.' Maybe the endorsement would do some good, maybe it wouldn't. But at least the kid with the gold bars made the effort. Dover supposed a lot of Yankees would have laughed to see him get in trouble time after time. He put the papers back in his pocket.
'You're done here,' the lieutenant said. 'You can go.'
'Thanks,' Dover said again, and ambled off.
He got stopped one more time before he made it to the Huntsman's Lodge. This U.S. patrol didn't haul him in, so maybe the lieutenant's endorsement really did help. Stranger things must have happened, though Dover had a hard time thinking of one.
The Huntsman's Lodge was open for supper. That didn't surprise Jerry Dover; the fancy places always made it. Most of the customers were U.S. officers. Some of them were eating with pretty girls who definitely didn't come from the USA. That didn't surprise Jerry Dover, either. It was the way the world worked.
Most of the waiters and busboys were Mexicans. The ones who weren't were whites: a couple of sixteen- year-olds and a couple of old men. That was a revolution; in the prewar CSA, most whites would sooner have died than served anyone.
One of the Mexicans recognized Dover. The short, swarthy man came over and shook his hand. 'Good to see you again, Seсor,' he said.
'Good to be seen, by God,' Dover answered. 'Willard Sloan still running things here?'
'Sн-uh, yes. I take you to him.'
Dover grinned. 'You reckon I don't know the way, Felipe?'
All the same, he let the waiter escort him to the tiny, cramped office where he'd put in so many years. Seeing Sloan behind his battered desk was a jolt. The current manager of the Huntsman's Lodge was in his late forties, with a lean face, a bitter expression, and hard blue eyes. When he sat behind the desk, you could hardly tell he used a wheelchair. His legs were useless; he'd got a bullet in the spine during the Great War.
He eyed Jerry Dover with all the warmth of a waiter eyeing a patron sliding out the door without paying his check. 'Think you can take my job away from me, do you?' he said.
'That's not what I came here for,' Dover answered, which was at least partly true. 'Just…wanted to see how things were. I spent a lot of years here, you know.'
'Yeah,' Sloan said glumly. 'Owners know you're back yet?'
'No,' Dover said.
'Maybe I ought to plug you now, then.' Sloan sounded serious. Did he keep a pistol in a desk drawer? The way things had gone in the CSA, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. The cripple gave Dover another wintry stare. 'Or maybe I just ought to shoot myself, save somebody else the trouble.'
'Hey, I only want to get…started over.' Dover didn't want to say get back on my feet again, not to a man who never would. 'Doesn't have to be here.'
'But this'd suit you best.' Willard Sloan didn't make it a question.
'If you've done a halfway decent job since I left, the owners'll keep you on,' Dover said. 'I bet they're paying you less than they paid me.' Would he work for less than he had before? Damn right he would. But he didn't tell Sloan that.
'Yeah, they jewed me down pretty good,' the present manager agreed. 'What can you do, though?'
'Not much,' Dover said. What could he do? He could let the owners know he was around. He'd likely taken care of that just by showing up here. If they wanted him back, they'd get word to him-and too bad for Willard Sloan. If they didn't…he'd have to figure out something else, that was all.
T hick wire mesh in the Houston jail's visiting room separated Jefferson Pinkard from the new damnyankee officer the U.S. authorities had chosen to defend him. As he had with Isidore Goldstein, he growled, 'Dammit, I didn't do anything in your country. I didn't do anything to anybody from your country. I didn't do anything the people in my country didn't want me to do, either.'
The damnyankee-he was called Moss, and he was about as exciting as his name-shook his head. 'None of that counts. They're charging you with crimes against humanity. That means you should have known better than to do that stuff even if they told you to.'
'My ass,' Jeff said angrily. 'Goddamn coons always hated the Confederate States. They fucked us when they rose up in the last war.
Hell, first time I went into action, it wasn't against you Yankees. It was against Red niggers in Georgia. You reckon they wouldn't've done it again? Like hell they wouldn't. Only we didn't give 'em the chance this time around.'
Moss shook his head again. 'Women? Children? Men who never did anybody any harm? You won't get a court to buy it.'
'Well, shit, tell me something I don't know,' Pinkard said. 'You assholes are gonna hang me. Anything I say is just a fuckin' joke, far as you're concerned. Why'd they even bother giving me a new lawyer when Goldstein got hurt? Just to make it look pretty, I bet.'
'I wish I could tell you you're wrong,' Moss replied, which took Jeff by surprise. 'Chances are they will hang you. But I'll fight them as hard as I can. That's my job. That's what lawyers do. I'm pretty good at it, too.'
Jeff eyed him through the grating. He still wasn't much to look at: a middle-aged man who'd been through the mill. He did sound like somebody who meant what he said, though. Jeff knew professional pride when he heard it. He thought Moss would do the best job he could. He also thought it wouldn't do him one goddamn bit of good.
'Can you give me anything to show there were Negroes you didn't kill when you could have?' Moss asked. 'That kind of thing might help some.'
'Nope.' Pinkard shook his head. 'I did what I was supposed to do, dammit. I didn't break any laws.'
'How many Negroes went through your camps?' Lieutenant Colonel Moss asked. 'How many came out alive? How many had trials?'
'Trials, nothing,' Jeff said in disgust. 'Trials are for citizens. Niggers aren't citizens of the CSA. Never have been. Never will be now, by God.' He spoke with a certain doleful pride. He'd helped make sure of that.
'Even there, you're wrong,' Moss said. 'There were Negro citizens in the Confederate States-the men who fought for them in the Great War. They went into your camps just like the rest. U.S. authorities can prove that.'
'Well, so what? They were dangerous,' Jeff insisted. 'You leave out the ones who learned how to fight, they're the bastards who'll give you grief down the line. When we take care of stuff, we do it up brown.'
The Yankee sighed. 'You aren't making it any easier for me-or for yourself.'
'What the hell difference does it make?' Pinkard demanded. 'You said it yourself-they're gonna hang me any which way. I'll be damned if I give 'em excuses. I did what I was supposed to do, that's all.'
'Are you sorry you did it?' Moss said. 'You might be able to persuade them to go a little easier on you if you make them believe you are.'
'Easy enough to leave me alive?' Jeff asked.
'Well…' The military attorney hesitated. 'You are the one who started using trucks to asphyxiate Negroes, right? And you are the one who started using cyanide in the phony bathhouses, too, aren't you?'
'How'd you know about the trucks?' Jeff asked.
'There's a Confederate official in Tennessee named…' The lawyer had to stop and check his notes. 'Named Mercer Scott. He told us you were responsible for coming up with that. Is he lying? If he is, we have a better chance of keeping you breathing.'
Jeff considered. So Mercer was singing, was he? Well, he was trying to save his neck, too. Chances were he wouldn't be able to do it, not when he ran Camp Dependable after Jeff moved on to Camp Determination. The trucks first showed up at Camp Dependable. They made life a lot easier for guards than taking Negroes out into the swamps and shooting them. Was the mechanic who'd made the first one still alive? Jeff didn't know. It probably didn't matter. Other guards back at the camp by Alexandria would be able to back Mercer up. As for the cyanide, he had plenty of correspondence with the pest-control company that made it. If he tried to deny things there, he was screwed, blued, and tattooed.
And so, with a heavy sigh, he shook his head. 'No, I did that stuff, all right. I did it in the line of duty, and I don't need to be ashamed of it.'
