Thunder in the Blood (17 page)

His house, when I found it, was bigger than I’d expected, a sprawling two-storey place, brick-built in half an acre of ground. Grass lapped the house at the front. At the far end of the drive, beneath a carport, was the Lincoln. It looked, thank God, undamaged.

I walked to the front door and rang a buzzer. Inside, bells chimed. I waited in the warm sunshine, rehearsing my lines. I’d return the attaché case. I’d admit to reading the files. But I’d do my best to avoid discussing the Beretta. Whatever else happened, it was definitely staying with me.

After a minute or two and another go with the bells, I heard footsteps. Then a voice, slightly querulous.

‘Who is this, please?’

‘Sarah. Wesley’s friend,’ I hesitated, ‘from Tuesday.’

There was the scrape of bolts being withdrawn, two sets, and then the door opened. Grant was naked, apart from a towel. His
face was wet, his shoulders too, and as he stepped forward into the light I saw that the left side of his body was purple with recent bruising, a line of strange raised welts, lacing his ribcage.

Grant blinked at me. He looked younger without his glasses.

‘May I come in?’

He frowned a moment, his eyes on the street behind me, then nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said.

I stepped inside. The house was cool, sparsely furnished, bare walls. The only picture I could see was a photograph of a woman in her sixties, scowling out of a silver frame. I glanced back at Grant. He’d shut the door, pushing the bolts across, and now he was standing on the polished parquet flooring, two pools of water forming at his feet. He waved away my apology, finding him in the shower.

‘Where is he?’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Wesley? What’s happened? What did they do to him?’

I smiled, hearing the anxiety in his voice. I’m lousy at recognizing true love but I was sure, now, that I’d seen it in the restaurant. Grant wanted Wesley, whatever the consequences.

‘He went home,’ I said gently. ‘They deported him.’

‘
Deported
him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How come?’

‘He’s got AIDS …’ I hesitated. ‘I expect you knew that.’

Grant nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘First thing he ever told me.’

‘Well.’ I shrugged. ‘They knew, too. So they sent him home.’

Grant frowned, taking a tiny step towards me, looking up, no less concerned. ‘And they never touched him? Only those boys can be rough …’

‘No,’ I said, ‘they never touched him. Not once. Didn’t even try.’

Grant nodded, turning away, and I wondered again about the welts on his body. I’d never seen marks quite like them. I was about to ask him what had happened, when he started up the stairs, calling back to me.

‘Is he home yet?’

‘Should be.’

‘I’ll phone him. After I’m dressed.’

Grant talked to Wesley from a room at the back of the house. The call must have lasted half an hour. Afterwards, he joined me in the kitchen, a round, neat, eager little man, perched on a stool nursing a glass of 7-Up. For the second time in forty-eight hours, I realized how much I liked him. I apologized about the car, and the attaché case. I had the case in the Chrysler. I said I’d fetch it in before I left. Grant shook his head, barely listening.

‘He’s well,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that great?’

‘Wesley?’

‘You bet.’

‘Any message,’ I enquired, ‘for me?’

‘No.’ He shook his head, grinning to himself. ‘You know something, Sarah? About Wesley?’

I hesitated a moment, hearing his voice quicken, wondering what Wesley had told him on the phone, the way the conversation had gone. Wesley, as I knew to my cost, was far from straightforward. He laid bait. He set traps. He’d done it to me, the first time we’d met, that night in his flat, the audio cassette lying there beside the hi-fi stack, the little surprise he’d prepared to bring our evening to an end. The man looked for situations, adopted roles, played them with huge gusto. Grant, God bless him, would never have met anyone quite like it. Hence the spell.

‘Wesley,’ I said carefully, ‘is pretty special.’

Grant nodded vigorously. ‘Class of his own,’ he said. ‘Bet your life.’

‘Quite.’

Grant beamed up at me, getting off the stool, swilling his glass under the tap. From time to time, the bruising made him wince with pain.

‘You know something else?’ he said. ‘The guy’s out of his time, a hundred years out of his time. You know when he should have been born? What period?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said.

‘Eighteen-thirties, eighteen-forties, in time for the big battles.’ He paused a moment, drying his hands, staring out of the window. ‘I’ve studied the Civil War all my life,’ he said, ‘and I never met anyone closer to Jebb Stuart than Wesley.’

‘Who’s Jebb Stuart?’

‘Jebb?’ He looked at me, surprised. ‘Confederate brigadier.
Cavalryman. Helped lose the Battle of Gettysburg.’

‘Lose?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded, ‘lose.’

I frowned, confused now. ‘And Wesley?’

‘Same kinda guy. Brave as hell…’ he shook his head, ‘and totally outgunned.’

He hesitated a moment, then he took me by the hand and led me towards the door. I was doing my best to balance my coffee cup. It was still half full.

‘Where are we going?’ I said.

‘The den. The place I work.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll want to know about Beckermann.’ He smiled fondly. ‘Wesley’s idea. Not mine.’

Grant’s den lay at the back of the house. You stepped down into it from the hall. It was small, cluttered and cosy, and smelled of a certain kind of pipe tobacco. The walls were panelled in pine, tongue and groove, the wood stained a rich honey colour. There were a number of nicely framed lithographs on the wall, scenes from the American Civil War, and a long shelf over the desk was piled high with books. The books were mostly biographies – Ulysses Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee – and in the corner by the window stood a large Confederate flag. The room had an almost shrine-like quality, and looking round, taking it in, I began to understand the kind of scholarship that had gone into the Gulf War files I’d read. The man was a born historian. God knows why he’d spent his working life designing guided missiles.

Grant shut the door, then bent to a big steel filing cabinet. The bottom drawer was full of files, the same kind I’d found in his attaché case. He pulled one out from near the back, pushing the drawer shut with his foot as he did so. Inside the file were a number of photographs. He sorted quickly through them, a smile on his face. Then he held one out.

‘Harold J.,’ he said, ‘in his prime.’

I looked at the photo, recognizing the shape of the head, the thick bull neck. Beckermann was sitting behind a desk which looked too small for him. He was staring at the camera, his head tilted aggressively up, as if taken by surprise, one finger still
anchored on some document. He had a square, weather-roughened, outdoor face and a brutally short crewcut. Despite the setting, this wasn’t someone who belonged in an office. I glanced up at Grant. He was bending over the desk, filling his pipe. He looked at me, the same eager smile.

‘Some fella, eh?’

We talked about Beckermann for perhaps an hour. Grant had known him by reputation before he’d joined Extec, and what he’d found there had amply justified what he’d read and heard about the man. He was, he said, a born leader. He hated bureaucracy and loathed committees. He never hid himself away. Everyone who worked for him was allowed one mistake, and until that happened, he’d back you all the way. In short, he was exactly the kind of entrepreneur the nation needed. Without men like Beckermann, America was heading down the tubes.

‘You liked him then?’ I said drily, when Grant paused for breath.

‘Sure. Even if—’ He broke off. ‘Sure, no doubt about it.’

‘Even if what?’

Grant shook his head, ducking the question, but after we’d circled for a while, talking about Beckermann’s early days, his talent for spotting opportunities, his courage in taking on the major players, we returned to the man I’d seen, back view, in the
Dallas Star-Courier,
the older statesman, Mr Honorary President-for-Life.

‘You still see him?’ I asked. ‘At Extec?’

Grant glanced up, sucking on his pipe. He looked, if anything, confused.

‘I guess Wesley didn’t tell you,’ he said at last.

‘Tell me what?’

‘About me …’ he paused, ‘and Extec.’

I shook my head.

‘Well.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t work there any more, not since last week, anyway. They fired me.’

I blinked. ‘But you
were
Extec,’ I said, ‘as I understood it.
Scarab
? Laser designators? All that?’

Grant sat on the edge of the desk, both feet off the floor. ‘Beckermann’s Extec,’ he said. ‘Always was. Always will be.’

‘And?’

‘I let him down.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged, visibly miserable now. ‘He never told me, never spelled it out. I guess it was my fault. I guess I just pushed a little too hard. Who knows? You wanna do something well, something you believe in, you wanna finish it.’

I gazed at him, hearing Wesley in the slow Texan drawl, same sentiment, same philosophy, almost word for word. ‘I thought
Scarab
was finished?’ I said. ‘Ready to go?’

‘It is.’

‘Then …’ I frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

Grant looked at me for a long moment. Then he got off the desk and went to the filing cabinet by the door. He opened the bottom drawer again and stood to one side, letting me see the neat row of files.

‘A year’s work,’ he said.

‘About what?’

‘Beckermann. I was writing his story. The story of his life. A little monograph. A tribute to mark his retirement.’

‘He was
that
important?’

‘Sure. Not to me. To the folks out there. To America. I told you. The day I met the guy, I knew he had it. The more I found out, the more I had to tell the story.’

‘With his permission?’ I paused. ‘He knew about all this? He was helping you?’

‘Sure. It was taking a little time, but yes, sure. He used to give me stuff,’ he nodded down at the open drawer, ‘lots of stuff, letters, memoranda, old contracts, everything he’d kept. Here, look, see for yourself.’

I nodded, not moving, believing him, trying to get the chronology clear in my head, what Wesley would call the time-frame.

‘You started when? Exactly?’

‘Two years ago. Back end of ’89. I’d been up at Extec a couple of months. That’s all it needed. Meet the man and you’ll know what I mean.’ He paused. ‘I’m a single guy. I don’t go out at nights. I don’t watch television. I don’t do drugs. I don’t miss for company. You get to have a lot of time that way.’ He peered at me, intense, determined to make me understand. ‘I’ve been scribbling away since I was so high,’ he said. ‘I did it like other kids
play softball. Or go fishing. It’s a big part of me. A huge part of me. Talk to Wesley about it. He understands.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘So…’ He shrugged. ‘Writers need subjects. Even amateur guys, part-timers like me. Guy like Beckermann?’ He looked away. ‘Perfect.’

‘And you’ve spent a year on it?’

‘At least. Probably more. I was getting up to date when he fired me.’ He shot me a quick, nervous look. ‘Up to date in his life, I mean.’

‘Right up to date?’

‘More or less. Texcal bought the company in ’79. That was the big change. I’d got as far as drafting ’85. Research-wise, like I say, I was nearly up to date.’

I nodded. Eighty-five was right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. Eighty-five was when both sides started running out of stuff they needed to kill each other. Eighty-five would have been a tactful point to close the curtains on any half-honest account of Beckermann’s life. Assuming, of course, he had anything to hide. I was still looking at the filing cabinet.

‘Had he read anything you’d written?’ I asked. ‘Beckermann?’

‘Yeah, lots. I used to send him drafts, for his comments. He’d tell me where I’d gone wrong.’

‘And you’d change it? If he didn’t like it?’

‘Of course.’

‘So what did he think?’

‘Loved it.’ He smiled, rueful now. ‘Grade A loved it.’

‘So what made him …?’ I frowned. ‘I still don’t understand.’

Grant said nothing for a moment. Then he crossed to the desk and opened a drawer, taking out an envelope. He slid a letter from the envelope and read it briefly.

‘I’d been doing the research for Mr Beckermann’s last few years,’ he said, ‘off on my own for once.’

‘Where?’

‘Newspaper offices mainly. Cuttings libraries.’ He pulled a face. ‘I guess it wasn’t such a smart idea.’

‘Why?’

He said nothing, passing me the letter. It was handwritten. In six brief lines, it demanded the return of ‘all biographical
materials’. The stuff was to be delivered to the office of a Dallas attorney by midday, a week hence. Failure to comply would incur legal action. I looked up at the top of the letter. The address read ‘Fairwater Ranch’.

‘Where’s Fairwater?’ I said.

‘Out beyond Corsicana. About an hour and a half’s drive.’ He paused. ‘That’s where he lives. Big holding. Runs cattle.’

‘You know the place?’

Grant nodded. ‘Well. I was out there again this morning. I had to talk to him. I had to find out…’ He shook his head. ‘Letter like that, a year’s work, hell…’

‘You don’t want to part with it?’

‘No.’

I nodded. ‘And Beckermann? What did he say?’

‘He was out riding. Way over towards Two Rivers.’

‘But you found him? You talked to him?’

‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘In the end, I did.’

‘And?’

He looked at me for a long time. Then he crossed the room again, bent to the open drawer, straightened a couple of files, an almost maternal concern for neatness and good order. His precious child. His creation. Under threat.

‘What happened?’ I said again. ‘Out at the ranch?’

Grant didn’t look round. He appeared not to have heard the question. Then he sighed, easing the drawer shut, standing upright, his voice muffled, and I was suddenly back outside, standing in the warm sunshine, Grant semi-naked in the open doorway, his ribcage purpled with welts. Now, in the office, he glanced round. His eyes were moist.