I?m going to kill you.?
Santo Massimino waved his arms over his head and screamed something that no one understood or remembered later on. The phone call was cut off in the studio.
A roar, a roar or a groan, went up from the live audience.
The television audience heard a prearranged chorus of ?Yesterday.? It was the music used on the ?Noon? show. There was a ten-second delay on broadcast, so they never heard Poole.
Horn was back on with a Pi Delta from the University of Tennessee.
When the half-hour show ended, Massimino quickly detoured Horn through a back room full of videotape machines.
They walked through a room full of coughing generators. Then down a light flight of gray stairs.
?You don?t have to run,? Horn said.
Massimino didn?t answer. He was frightened.
The stairs led to a small, private parking lot. It was drizzling outside, and quite muggy.
A crowd of fifteen to twenty people had already gathered for a close-up look at Horn. In his rain-spattered pea-green suit, Thomas Berryman was among them.
Less than fifteen yards away his Ford was throwing smoke in the night like a factory. It was pointed out toward the state highway. This was a fairly dark country road. It went nowhere?north; and toward a maze of drive- ins and gas stations?south.
The crowd was predominately children. There were some women. And two hillbilly fathers.
Horn?s chauffeur, a short, bulldog black, stepped out of the Cadillac. It too was blowing smoke.
Berryman tightened his grip on a four-inch .38. He glanced back to make sure his car was still clear to the road. He looked around for police or more adults. Then he pushed his way to the rear fins of the Cadillac. Horn would have to pass right by him.
Massimino wasn?t letting the mayor shake any hands. He had him tightly by the elbow. He was marching him straight for the Cadillac.
Jimmie Horn was using his finger to windshield-wipe his dark glasses. Walking together, he and Massimino looked like businessmen on a hurried lunch hour.
Jap Quarry suddenly ran into the rain out the back door. He corraled Horn in a big friendly arm. He laughed and shook hands on the run, and quickly had Horn inside the car.
Berryman backed away. He stood nearby and clapped as the gray Cadillac slowly pulled out of the lot.
As Jap Quarry closed the electric back window, and Horn opened it a crack, Berryman was already conjecturing that the next time might be a little harder. At any rate, the Horn number had begun.
Life was understated inside the big gray El Dorado. The windshield wipers
gently, never
The air conditioner hummed pleasantly, like the machines some people use as sleep aids. The soft leather seats never creaked, just inhaled, exhaled.
No one in the car was talking and Santo Massimino nervously switched on the radio.
The song was ?Stand by Your Man,? and it seemed ridiculous to be playing Tammy Wynette in a car full of blackmen. For once in his life the young dissimulator was at a loss for the proper covering gesture.
He pressed the button on the radio?s far left and it was the one for the station that was already playing.
Horn?s little bulldog driver snorted through his nose; he switched road lanes with one hand.
?Don?t touch that dii-ll,? Jap Quarry put on a country and western voice in the back seat. ?You don?t never switch the dii-ll on Tammy, San-to?
The dog-faced driver thought that was quite funny too. Quarry reached up front and tousled Massimino?s hair to let him know the joke wasn?t purposely on him.
A lighter flared in the back and Massimino saw Jimmie Horn in the rearview mirror. In the brief light the mayor had seemed dazed.
?I don?t think I mentioned it, Jimmie,? Massimino finally came up with something to talk about, ?but we worked out a deal with Luby Cadillac today. With his son.?
?Myron,? Horn said from his rear corner. ?Myron?s all right.?
?Yeah, he really is. He?s giving us a car until November.?
Horn glanced over at Jap Quarry, then leaned forward, closer to Massimino. ?No Cadillacs,? he said in a soft voice, softer than usual, a dazed voice. ?I feel like Willie Stark or something in a Cadillac. It embarrasses my people.?
?We don?t agree,? Massimino said.
?Oh, OK, what
I feel like then, Santo??
?That?s not what I mean. We think it?s a bad move.?
?Why is it a bad move?? Horn asked. ?Jap, now why would it be a bad move if I didn?t drive around in a Cadillac??
