Grass Roots (40 page)

“Oh, shit,” the voice said.

“His foot is jammed in there. Somebody get the man with the torch over here.”

“No,” Keane said weakly.

“What? Jesus, he’s awake,” the voice said.

“Oh, shit,” somebody replied.

“What did he say?”

“No torch,” Keane said. He could smell the gasoline.

“He’s got a point, Eddie,” one of the voices said.

“You’ll fry us all with the torch. Use the can opener instead.”

A sardine, Keane thought, trying to fill his mind with something besides the pain. Then they moved him again, and he passed out.

the lights were very bright when Keane woke again, and the pain was everywhere. People were all around, tugging at him, pulling at things.

He could hear clothing tearing.

“Morphine!” somebody said, and Keane felt a needle in his arm.

“Wait a minute,” he said, but too late. He wanted to tell them something, but the pleasant warmth came over him and made him forget.

the next time he woke, he knew it was for real. He wasn’t going to pass out again. He was alone in a hospital room, and there was sunlight peeping through the drawn Venetian blinds. He moved his left hand to his face to scratch an itch, and pain shot through his chest.

He lay still and let it itch until he couldn’t stand it anymore, then he moved the hand the rest of the way and let it hurt. The door opened and a nurse came in.

“Oh, you’re back with the living, huh?” she said.

“Am I?” Keane said, and that hurt, too.

“I can’t tell for sure.”

“Let’s get you a little elevation,” she said, cranking a handle at the bottom of the bed. The upper half of Keane’s body rose a few inches, and he could see Manny Pearl standing at the end of the bed.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Manny said.

“Not to worry.”

“You’re not gonna be okay,” the nurse said, “you are okay. You’re the luckiest man in the ward, maybe in the hospital.”

Keane could remember the crash now, or at least the part of it right before the car hit the bridge abutment.

“What’s broken?” he asked.

“Your ankle and your lower leg,” she said, rapping on a plaster cast that suddenly seemed to be attached to his leg, up to the knee.

“Good thing you were wearing a seat belt, or everything else would be broken.”

“What else?” he asked.

“Nothing else,” she said.

“You’ve been CAT-scanned from head to toe. Nobody can believe it.”

“I don’t believe it,” Keane said.

“I hurt enough for everything to be broken.”

“You’re just sore,” she said.

“There’s a detective outside who’s been waiting to talk to you. You feel up to it?”

“Why not?” Keane said.

“Can I have something to drink?”

She stuck a glass straw into his mouth and he sucked water, sloshing it around his mouth and letting it trickle over his whole throat. The nurse left the room.

“What happened?” Manny Pearl asked.

“Hang on a minute,” Keane said.

“Let’s see who this cop is.”

Shortly, Dave Haynes came into the room.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he said.

“You had a nice night’s sleep while everybody stood around waiting.”

“I didn’t know you cared, Dave,” Keane said.

“I don’t, I’m just curious,” Haynes replied.

“Listen, the traffic boys are going to be in here in a minute. I want to know what happened.”

“Me, too,” Manny Pearl said.

“Dave, this is my boss, Manny Pearl,” Keane said.

The two men shook hands perfunctorily.

“So?” Haynes asked.

“It was him,” Keane said.

“Shit, I knew you were going to say that,” Haynes said.

“Now life gets complicated.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Keane replied.

“You’re out of it. I’m just satisfying your curiosity.”

“That’s stupid,” Haynes said.

“If it was really him, give me what you’ve got, and I’ll get on it.”

“Nope,” Keane said.

“You want him yourself.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, and I know how to get him.”

“Let me help,” Haynes said.

“The captain doesn’t have to know.”

“Nah, Dave. You’ve got less than a year to go, right?

Stick around and collect your pension.”

“Isn’t there something I can do?”

“Yeah, maybe. Has the press got anything on this yet?”

“A TV crew got lots of shots of you in the car when they were trying to get you out. They don’t know who you are.”

“What hospital am I in?”

“Northside. It was the nearest trauma center.”

“You know anybody here?”

“A couple people.”

“Make me dead.”

“I don’t think they’ll do that, Mickey. You know how nervous hospitals are these days.”

“Nearly dead?”

“I’ll see what I can do. If you really think he’s going to try something else, I’ll get some people over here.”

“Brain-dead should do it,” Keane said.

“And keep those traffic people away from me.”

why are we meeting him here?” Will asked, looking around him. It was just after three in the afternoon, and the restaurant was nearly empty.

At the other end of the room, a woman was mopping the floor.

Tom Black sighed.

“Because I have some things to tell you, and I didn’t want to do it in front of your dad and Kitty and Moss.”

Will did not feel well. He was catching a cold, and he was tired, and now, he was scared.

“All right,” he said.

“Our latest poll shows Calhoun with forty-eight percent and you with forty-four—with a four-percent error margin.

We’ve picked up, and he’s dropped, but—well, it’s what I told you a while back: we’re going to peak a week after the election. That’s pulling out all the stops, using every dime of the money we have or expect to get before election day, and I’m including all our matching funds-everything.”

“So, what do we do?” Will knew what was coming.

“I’ll put this as bluntly as I can,” Tom said.

“We spend four hundred thousand dollars on television the last two weeks in the campaign, or we lose the election.”

“If we could just get some sort of break,” Will said.

“It’s true, we haven’t had any breaks since MacK Dean got it caught in his zipper,” Tom said.

“You’d think we were due for something, but it hasn’t happened. Oh, I suppose Dr. Don might be found in the pastor’s study with a Boy Scout, but I don’t think we can count on it.”

Will had avoided thinking about this moment for a long time, but, he admitted to himself, he should have known it was coming.

“Does this happen to every candidate?” he asked.

“Just about,” Tom said.

“Every one in a close race, anyway. Nobody ever has enough money but Republicans.”

Tom poked at the ice in his tea.

“I’ve got holds on the TV buys. I have to place orders with cashier’s checks by the close of business tomorrow, or we lose the buys.”

“All right,” Will said finally.

“I’ll find the money.”

“There’s something else. Will,” Tom said.

“What?”

“If we don’t get the money, we’ll lose; but if we do get the money, we still may not win. I’m not at all sure that we can.”

Will’s heart sank to his lower abdomen. He knew how to find the money, he always had known; but he had never really thought it would come to this. Now he was being told that, even if he did do this, it might all be for nothing.

Was it worth it? Only two people could tell him.

“Wait a minute, will you, Tom?” He rose and went to a pay phone, dialed the number, got both of them on the line, and said his piece, listened to their answer. Then he went back to the table.

“I’ll have the money for you tomorrow,” he said.

will sat and watched the man’s face as he looked over the papers. It was a face he had known since he was a boy, a man he had never liked much.

The man put down the papers.

“Are you absolutely positive you want to do this?”

“I am,” Will said, with as much conviction as he could muster.

“Have you really considered the consequences if you aren’t elected?”

“Yes, I have.”

“You understand that you don’t have the income necessary to effect repayment.”

“I certainly understand that.”

“And, since this is the case, we would have no recourse but to sell?”

“I understand.”

The man reached into his desk drawer and took out a form. He wrote Will’s name at the top, the amount of four hundred thousand dollars, and a due date ninety days hence. He made two Xs at the bottom, turned the form around, and handed Will the pen.

“We’ll have to do a title search, but I’ll expedite that.

Assuming the titles are sound, the money will be in your account by lunchtime tomorrow.”

Will signed in both places and stood up.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, extending his hand.

The man stood and gripped Will’s hand.

“You’re a braver man than I,” he said.

“Or, perhaps a more foolish one.”

“I hope not,” Will said. Then he walked out of the office, leaving the deeds to his family’s land on the banker’s desk—land that the first Lee in Meriwether County had begun buying in 1826; land that his grandfather had lost to the boll weevil, and that his mother and father, through a lifetime of struggle, had won back; land he had thought his children and grandchildren would live on one day.

In the car, on the way back to campaign headquarters, he wept.

mickey Keane sat on the bed and made the huge effort it took to get a sock onto his left foot. As he did so, every muscle in his back, neck, and shoulders cried out for him to stop.

“I wish you’d stay here another couple of days,” the doctor said.

“Why?” Keane asked.

“I’m not hurt bad, you said so yourself.”

“You were badly shaken up,” the doctor said.

“It takes time for the system to recover from an accident like that.

You’re only alive because that car folded up exactly the way it was supposed to when it hit an immovable object.

It doesn’t always happen that way.”

“Hurrah for Detroit,” Keane said.

“Fuck Germany.”

He had gotten the sock and shoe on and was trying to tie his shoelace.

“All right, go ahead and discharge yourself,” the doctor said, disgusted.

“I know there’s a heel on that cast, but you’ll have to use crutches for a few weeks, or you’ll screw up your leg. Come back in two weeks, and we’ll pull another X ray.” He started to say something else, then stopped.

“I just hope I don’t see you back in here,” he said finally. He turned and stalked out of the room.

Almost immediately, a man in a suit walked in.

Keane ignored him, struggling with the shoelace.

“Let me do that for you,” the man said. He walked over and tied the shoelace.

“Thanks,” Keane sighed.

“Who are you?”

The man produced a small wallet and flipped it open.

“I’m Bob Warren, FBI,” he said.

Keane bent over and untied the shoelace, then began the struggle to retie it.

“You guys investigating traffic accidents these days?”

“We’d like you to stay away from Willingham,” the agent said.

Keane got the shoe tied and sat back on the bed.

“Who?

Never heard of him.”

“No? Then how come you camped outside his house for three days?”

Keane looked at him.

“I’ve always liked the woods.”

“Look, Willingham may be important in a group we’re investigating. We can’t have you rattling him.”

“Yeah? I love you guys. What if he’s important in something I’m investigating?”

“I know what you’re investigating,” the agent said.

“I can tell you that Ferkerson will get brought in faster if you stay out of it. We’ve got a man on the inside. We know some of what’s going on.”

“What would you want with Ferkerson?” Keane asked.

“Murder isn’t a federal crime.”

“He’s part of something that is a federal crime,” the agent said.

“So why haven’t you arrested him?” Keane asked innocently.

He put a hand on one of his crutches.

“Because he’s more useful to us where he is than he would be in jail.”

Keane nodded.

“I thought so,” he said. He pushed off the bed, pivoted on his good foot and swung a crutch at the FBI man. It caught him full on the side of the head, knocking him down. Keane tried to put his weight on the foot in the cast, cried out in pain, and went down himself.

The agent scrambled to his feet, pulling his gun.

“You stay where you are, you crazy bastard!” he yelled, crouching and keeping the gun pointed toward Keane.

Keane struggled into a sitting position and leaned against the wall.

“Oh, I just love you guys,” he said.

“Ferkerson drove me into a concrete wall at seventy miles an hour, and you guys were probably taking movies the whole time. How long have you known where he was?

Long enough to have stopped those killings at the abortion clinic? Long enough to have stopped my partner from getting barbecued? Who else are you guys willing to get killed, just so you can make a few headlines?”

The agent stood up and holstered his gun.

“We have our own ways of working.”

“Yeah?” Keane said.

“Well, I have my own ways of working, too, and—”

“You want to kill Ferkerson, don’t you?” the agent asked. His face was turning red.

“You want to just put a bullet in his brain and screw up the investigation that’s been going on for two years, one that will result in dozens of arrests on conspiracy charges.”

Keane grabbed the bed and hauled himself to his good foot.

“I don’t know from conspiracy,” he said.

“I catch guys who kill people; you might call it my life’s work. I especially catch guys who kill my partner and try to kill me.” He shook his head.

“No, I’m not going to kill Ferkerson, not that I wouldn’t love to do it. I’m going to push his face in the dirt, put my knee on his neck, and handcuff his hands behind his back. Then I’m going to see him booked, printed, photographed, and arraigned, then tried for murder; and, eventually, if I live long enough, I’ll go down to Reidsville and sit in the gallery and grin while they fry the son of a bitch.”