“Can you do both? Get the bomber and the city council?”
“If this note is real, I might,” Virgil said. “The thing is, half the people in town believe the council sold out, and they may be right. And they’re looking for somebody to help. They deserve at least a look.”
“Fine. But keep the bomber on the front burner,” Davenport said. “If you can do the other… I hate that kind of corruption shit. It drags us all down. But they’re not killing anybody. Not yet, anyway.”
“Okay. I thought I’d check,” Virgil said.
“I okayed Sandy for some research time on anti-PyeMart sites,” Davenport said. “She’ll be getting back to you.”
“Good. Hell, I’m gonna push everything,” Virgil said. “I think I can crack the whole town open. The fact is, moving on the city council might get me closer to the bomber, too.”
“Good luck with that,” Davenport said. “Stay in touch. And stay out of the boat, goddamnit.”
“What boat?”
12
That evening, Virgil called the AmericInn and got transferred to Marie Chapman’s room. She’d just come through the door, she said, when she picked up. “Willard’s got his computer out, and he’s looking at spreadsheets, so I’m done.”
“Good. Can I buy you dinner?”
“Yes. Is there anywhere besides Bunson’s? I’m about Bunsoned out.”
“There’s an exceptional Applebee’s in Butternut,” Virgil said. “Mmm-mm.”
“Bunson’s it is,” she said. “Give me a half hour. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
Virgil did a quick run through the bathroom, showered, brushed his teeth, slapped a little Old Spice behind his ears, went outside, dropped the boat trailer, cleaned out the truck, and still had five minutes to get to the AmericInn.
On the way over, he questioned his motives: he was still attached to Lee Coakley, but had the feeling that Lee was drifting away, if not already gone. Should he push on Chapman a little, to see what would happen? With her rootless type of job, he didn’t doubt that she would be a little lonely, and sophisticated enough not to put too much importance on… what? What exactly was he doing here? And if he should hustle her into bed, or vice versa, what would that do for, or to, his soul?
Anyway, he got to her motel in three minutes, and precisely a half hour after he’d spoken to her on the phone, she walked into the lobby and said, “Right on the minute.”
She was wearing a turquoise blouse and black pants, with a Hopi silver necklace and earrings. “You look terrific,” Virgil said.
“You’re getting off on the right foot,” she said. “I require large amounts of flattery.”
“You came to the right guy,” he said.
On the way to Bunson’s, they chitchatted, and at the restaurant, got a quiet table. Virgil ordered a Leinie’s and Chapman got a margarita, and Virgil started filling her in on the lack of any new developments in the search for the bomber.
“The sheriff said something about doing a survey…”
“Yeah, I gotta go back there tonight and print up a bunch of letters and stuff them in envelopes and get them addressed,” Virgil said. “Gonna get the sheriff ’s deputies to deliver them tomorrow.. . and then tomorrow night, I’m going to put it all together.”
He explained the survey idea, and she said, “I’m familiar with the market concept, but usually, you need the players to bet on the outcome with some kind of pot they can win. Money. I could probably get Willard to put up some cash.”
Virgil was shaking his head: “No, no. The kind of thing you’re talking about, there’s got to be a payoff to get people to play, and be serious about it. With this one, the payoff is catching the bomber and keeping yourself from getting blown up.”
She said, “Maybe. You’re gonna have to sort thousands of different names.”
“I’m hoping not. I’m hoping there’ll be hundreds, or maybe only dozens. That everybody knows who the potential crazies are,” Virgil said. “The guy who gave me this idea thinks the bomber will be in the top ten.”
They talked about that, ordered dinner, steaks and potatoes, and talked some more about it, and then Virgil said, “You know, a lot of people think Willard bribed the mayor and city council to approve the zoning change for the store.”
“I know.” She said nothing more.
Virgil waited for a minute, then asked, “What do you think about that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She stopped talking as the food arrived, and when the waiter went away, she continued: “There was a situation in Indiana where a PyeMart construction expediter was charged with bribing members of a city council. This was four or five years ago. He was convicted and was sentenced to a year in jail. Willard said he didn’t know anything about it. I believe him, but…”
“What’s an expediter?” Virgil asked.
“PyeMart only goes into a town after a lot of market research-especially if there’s already a Walmart,” she explained. “Their target markets overlap somewhat. Margins are pretty low, and they want to make sure the store will make a profit. After the market research is done, if they decide that the market will handle the store, then an expediter is appointed. He fronts the company to the town-finds out what will be needed to get the store built. Local regulations, zoning, makes contacts with city officials and building-supply places. PyeMart tries to get the actual construction work done locally, and supplied locally, because that’s an economic point that the town will have to consider.”
“This guy expedited the store by bribing the city council?”
“Apparently. There was a slush fund in the construction department, and some of the slush got transferred to the councilmen,” Chapman said. “Willard said he never knew. I believe him on that exact point, but I also know that expediters are paid a lot of money-a lot more than somebody normally would be at that level. I expect some of that is risk money. Expediters are not expected to come back and say they can’t get the permits to build the store. They get the permits. Period.”
“So Willard doesn’t know of any specific case of bribery, but at some level, has to know that it goes on,” Virgil said.
“Willard can be a very sweet man and he’s tremendously loyal to his employees-but he is a ferocious businessman. He does what he thinks he needs to do.” She hesitated, and rolled the bottom of her margarita glass on the tabletop, making a tracery out of a couple drops of water. “We’re now getting into an area that I want to reserve for my book.”
“So he knows.”
“I can’t say that. I can tell you that the man, the expediter, who went to jail in Indiana, served eight months of the one-year sentence. When he got out, he landed on his feet: he got a great job with a major paper company, a maker of all kinds of paper products, everything from notebooks to paper plates.”
“Yeah?”
“A major supplier to PyeMart,” she said.
“So the guy got taken care of.”
“That would be for somebody else to say,” she said. Then, “Are you investigating Willard?”
“I’m trying to find the bomber,” Virgil said. “But you know there’ve been accusations of bribery… you were at the press conference, almost a fistfight there.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Virgil, I’ve said about as much as I’m going to say,” Chapman said. “I won’t betray Willard, or go sneaking around to find information for you. If you’re going to investigate him, you’ll have to do it on your own.”
“Be a good thing for your book,” Virgil said. “You know, if Pye got pitched into some kind of crisis.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then laughed, a short, choppy sound, and said, “The snake crawls out from behind the surfer-boy smile.”
