nigger.?
Berryman spent the morning back in Amarillo, arranging for the visa in the name of Keresty. His supplier was an egotistical Mexican artiste who hand-lettered the document himself. For his morning?s drawing he earned three hundred dollars.
That afternoon, Berryman flew back to meet the man who was paying heavily to have Horn killed. This man was ex-Tennessee Governor Jefferson Johnboy Terrell.
Thomas Berryman was calm as a snake after its sunbath.
Nashville, October 12
This past October 12th, Columbus Day, was the kind of unexpectedly cold day mat makes grown men, like me, sleep through their alarm clocks.
That morning?a flat, gray, homely one?the state had its first frost.
That afternoon, ex-Governor Jefferson Terrell was driven into downtown Nashville to face a grand jury on the charge that he had paid over one hundred thousand dollars to accomplish the murder of James Horn the previous July.
Terrell?s car, a somber, black, 1969 Fleetwood, was chauffeured by a soldiery-looking man with short sandy hair brushed back like Nixon?s Mr. Haldeman.
Terrell?s new lawyer, a slick gray fox (also from Houston), was riding in the back seat with him.
The media coverage for the upcoming trial had by this time risen above the noise level of Procter and Gamble?s newest soap detergent commercials.
People would hear about the trial on the radio coming home from work; then find it staring up at them from the newspaper on their front porch; then get hit with it on both the local and network TV news programs.
People from the hills were already planning weekends around a Friday at the trial and a Saturday trip to Opryland.
Over three thousand of them greeted Terrell at the courthouse on the twelfth.
Johnboy struggled up out of the Cadillac, revealing patent leather loafers, then a gray banker?s suit, then a pasty, death-mask face.
Not that much had changed about Terrell?s general demeanor though.
He
one of his familiar dollar cigars instead of smoking it. But otherwise, it was the way he?d been around the capitol for all the years I?d ever seen him there.
He shook a few hands and gave a proper politician?s wave all around.
he answered a query from some well-wisher in a checkered bird-dog hat.
Then a little man in a gray raincoat got ahold of Terrell?s hand and wouldn?t let him go.
?Bad times,? the man was heard to say a few times.
?But it?s a good, strong country all the same,? Johnboy told him. ?Isn?t it a good country we?ve got here, my friend??
The eyes of the man in the raincoat blinked on and off. Then he let go of Terrell?s hand.
Johnboy then bulled his way up the forty-three courthouse stairs and disappeared inside without once looking back.
?He?d make a fine corpse,? Lewis Rosten muttered from somewhere behind me. ?Mr. Dickens, in his neat mystery
.?
During the secretive grand jury proceedings, the newspapermen and TV guys sat around the second floor of the courthouse drinking free Folger?s coffee.
Occasionally we?d get official word that
was happening. Some Nashville policeman had the job of coming in to tell us that nothing was happening.
His one big news break was the information that ex-Governor Terrell had taken some pills from a little black snap case just before he went in to meet with the grand jury.
A long-haired northern reporter stood up and said with a straight face, ?Sergeant, could you give us anything on the
of the pills??
That was the big laugh of the morning. In fact, that
the morning.
Just after lunch, though, we finally got a little surprise.
A Tom Wolfe-ish young man (the
Tom Wolfe) walked into the press room to make an important announcement for Mr. Terrell.
He was a little dandy, in a white suit and polka-dot bow tie. Yale, without any doubt. Word went out that he was Terrell?s own son.
?Contrary to the suspicions of many of you here,? he read from a small brown pad, ?my father is not planning to
