Atlanta Extreme (11 page)

The vigilante made a few notes, checked a phone number in the Atlanta directory, then stripped off his clothes. On the way to the shower he took a cold bottle of Stroh's from the little refrigerator room service had provided, then scalded and sudsed himself for fifteen minutes until a loud tapping at the door sent him scampering for a towel.

“Who is it?”

A woman's voice. “Mr. Hawker? Are we interrupting? If we are, I can stop back. I left a message, but the clerk said you didn't pick it up.”

Hawker recognized the voice. He pulled open the door. Senator Thy Estes stood holding a briefcase; big round glasses perched on the bun of red hair; heavy breasts and trim hips primly covered by white blouse and green tweed business skirt and jacket; strong, mature face with high Loretta Young cheekbones and a strong, full mouth. She seemed surprised to see him and stammered, “Oh, James … er, Mr. Hawker. I really didn't think you would be in. The man at the desk said you
weren't
in. I was going to slip this note beneath your door.” She held up the note for inspection.

Behind the senator stood a twiggy, bird-faced lady who was absolutely shapeless. She also wore business clothes, wire-rimmed glasses … and an embarrassed smirk. “I don't think you've ever met my secretary, Ms. Talis?”

As Hawker stretched to shake the little woman's hand he realized for the first time that he was wearing only a towel. “But I can see that you're busy, Mr. Hawker,” Senator Estes went on awkwardly. “We can stop back—”

“Come on in. I'll get some clothes on.”

“Don't bother”—the secretary tittered at this—“I mean, we don't want to rush you—”

“Now, Senator,” the secretary said in a Midwestern nasal whine, interrupting. “If you have business with Mr. Hawker, you just go right ahead. We don't have to meet with the mayor's committee for another hour, and I can go on down to the banquet room and stall them a bit if need be. I mean it. Go ahead and have your talk with Mr. Hawker.”

Thy Estes laughed in acknowledgment of the little charade and stepped into the room. “Thanks, Sally. Tell those stuffy bastards down there I'm out shopping for a new hat. That's all they think women do, anyway.”

“I'll do that, Senator.” The birdy woman came very close to winking. “And enjoy your meeting.”

Thy Estes stepped into the room, kicked the door closed, and immediately fell into Hawker's arms. She was laughing. “God, I thought Sally was going to faint when you opened the door wearing that towel. You are, um, a very big man, and that is a very small towel.”

Hawker gave her a kiss on the forehead, then on the lips. “Sorry, lady. You took me by surprise. I didn't know you were traveling with a friend.”

“We got to the hotel early so Sally could help me go over some of the material the mayor's going to want to discuss. And I was going to practice my speech. But then the man at the desk told me that you hadn't picked up your message, and I began to worry. I wanted to make sure you were taking me out to dinner tonight—”

“Dinner?”

“Yes, and don't try to crawfish out of it. You are taking me to the Top of the Town. We are going to order expensive food and wine, and we are going to eat and drink and play lewd little games with our feet under the table while we enjoy the lights of Atlanta.”

“You seem very sure of yourself, woman.”

“It's because I am very sure of myself, man.” With her arms still around Hawker she dropped her briefcase on the floor. She held her face up to be kissed, and when Hawker only grinned, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him fully. Then she reached up and shook her hair free so that it swung down over her shoulders and face. There was a glint in her blue eyes. “Did you hear my secretary say that I had only one hour? One short hour? Only sixty minutes—”

“I heard everything your secretary said, lady.”

Thy began doing something with her hands, and the white blouse she wore strained away, revealing her full breasts cupped within a sheer white, see-through bra. Her nipples were pale pink beneath the silky material, and Hawker slid the tweed jacket from her shoulders, and the blouse opened completely so that he could see the pale contour of her ribs and taut abdomen. “We don't have much time, Mr. Hawker.”

The vigilante kissed the woman softly, then harder, as his hands slid up her sides and began to massage the soft weight of her breasts. He felt her shudder. “Then we had better get down to business, Senator. But first I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything—in exchange for what I want from you.”

“Why is it that you politicians always have to get something in return?”

She kissed him deeply, communicating her demands with her tongue. “Do you mind so much? Besides, I've agreed, and I don't even know what it is you want yet.”

“I want a meeting with Andrew Watkins. I found his number in the book. Will you call him?”

The woman used her tongue to dampen Hawker's ear, neck, and chest. “I don't have to call him. I'll be seeing him this afternoon. At the conference.”

“Then it's a deal. You can set up a meeting for tomorrow morning?”

The woman began to move her hands over the vigilante's body. “Um, you're such a hard bargainer.”

“And you are so damn sneaky.”

“Sneaky? Me? Little old Thy Estes? Come, sir, I have nothing to hide. See?”

The woman reached both hands behind her, a gesture that drew the bra so tight that it seemed, for a moment, that the elastic would break, then she unsnapped the bra and slid it off, and her pale breasts expanded, took natural shape, wide, full, heavy, pink nipples elongated and pointed upward. She began to sway slowly back and forth, rubbing herself against Hawker's chest, head tilted slightly back, eyes closed, as her hands now found the towel that Hawker was wearing and stripped it away. She looked down at him. “My God, James, how you've
grown
.”

They both laughed, and the vigilante swept the woman up in his arms as if carrying a bride across the threshold. She seemed surprisingly light as the vigilante carried her across the room to the bed. As he did he slid one hand up her skirt, felt the sheer nylon of her stockings, felt the garter-belt strap on the inside of her thighs—and noticed something else.

“Christ, Thy, you're not wearing any underwear!”

The woman smiled vampishly. “Since I've met you, James, I've become a wanton woman. A damn wicked woman. I kept thinking of meeting you tonight at the restaurant and how I could surprise you, really please you. I decided to give you something to do with your hands while we were waiting for our food.”

As she spoke, Hawker's hand moved high to the inside of her thigh, and he watched the woman's face go blank, eyes round, as he touched her, then slid his finger inside her, feeling the hot, smooth inner wall of her body. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God, that feels so good, James, and I want you so damn badly.”

The vigilante dropped her onto the bed and slid the skirt up over her hips and began to torture the woman with his tongue as her hips lifted, wanting, demanding, pressing to satisfy her more quickly.

“Yes, James, do
that
, James, yes, yes, yes, faster, faster,
faster
…”

Hawker looked absently at his heavy Seiko diver's watch. He lifted his head and grinned. “Only half an hour until you have to get ready to meet the mayor and his committee, Senator.”

“You really are a bastard sometimes,” she said, groaning.

“I know the pride you take in being prompt.”

She grabbed his hair, and the vigilante let her roll him onto his back. “And I know just how I want to spend the next half hour,” she said, grinning back at him. The woman lifted the skirt up over her hips, straddled Hawker, used her left hand to position him, then slid down onto him, spreading her legs so as to take him as deeply as possible. “This is how I want to spend the next thirty minutes,” she whispered, head thrown back, hair hanging, eyes closed in ecstasy. “All thirty minutes, James, please.”

Already fighting not to spend himself too soon, Hawker pushed his hips upward. “Actually, twenty-nine minutes now.”

Thy Estes lifted, thrust in return, lifted, thrust, lifted and pushed harder, faster, demanding. “Twenty-nine minutes,” she moaned, “and counting.…”

thirteen

Andrew Watkins, former United States Senator, one of the wealthiest men in Georgia, and the leader of the small group of businessmen and farmers who were now trying to fight back against Wellington Curtis, lived in an authentic Southern mansion on the south bank of the Chattahoochee River. Hawker took busy Interstate 75 north, caught the bypass Interstate 285 west, then exited on the Johnson Ferry Road north into the red-clay country of central Georgia. There were flat fields of cotton shimmering in the heat; pine forests; wooden shanties with tin roofs; kids on bikes playing in sand yards.

Watkins's home was an oasis of Spanish-moss-draped oaks and green hedges. The mansion was down a long lane, a great white anachronism of the Old South: Roman columns supported the broad veranda with its brick floor, rocking chairs, hammocks, tables for bourbon and branch water; an upper balcony opened out from double doors from which could be seen the servants' cottage, the barn and pasture where horses grazed, the screened swimming pool, the bathing house on the Chattahoochee River as the river flowed swiftly toward distant rapids, green and silver in the sun.

Hawker went to the door, waited after the deep
bing-bong
of the bell. He expected Watkins to be of the new breed of Southerners, the Jimmy Carter type: soft, sophisticated, trendy, affected.

Hawker's preconceptions, to his great relief, were dispelled the moment Watkins opened the door.

“You Jimmy Hawker, the man Thy Estes sent to see me? Hey, come on out to the porch, boy. Set yourself down. That big red-haired lady give me a little more notice, I'd a worked up a good bass-fishin' trip so's the two of us coulda had something to do while we chewed the fat. Hell, nothin' fun about this type of meeting. Man who said you can't do two things at once was dumber than pig shit if you ask me. What you want to drink, boy? Go on, set yourself down.” Andrew Watkins, ex-Senator Andrew Watkins, was all of five and a half feet tall, weighed probably a hundred and sixty, and he wore baggy, paint-stained khaki pants, a soft brushed cotton shirt of the L.L. Bean variety, Wellington boots, and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He had a broad, humorous face, sun-swollen nose, Clark Gable ears, and wide, shrewd blue eyes. Everything about him was at once relaxed but energized. Hawker realized with some amusement that in just the short introduction Watkins had established himself as Hawker's friend, leader, and confidant.

The vigilante took a seat in one of the wicker rocking chairs. “I'd like some iced tea if you've got it.”

The older man made a face. “Tea? What are you, boy, some kind of Englishman? I got me some bourbon in there that's guaranteed twenty years old, smooth as a baby's bottom. Let me get you just a touch of that, how 'bout it?”

“Okay, Senator. Bourbon it is.”

“That's the spirit. Never trusted a man that don't drink. 'Cept an alcoholic, of course. Admire the hell out of an alcoholic that give it up. An alcoholic who does that's got the balls of a junkyard dog. A regular dang saint, and I ain't kidding.” The little man turned without warning and yelled, “Sarah! Sarah! Get your dark ass out here! We got company, goddamn it.”

A moment later a handsome black woman appeared on the porch carrying a tray. Though she was probably in her early fifties, she had the long legs, trim hips, and body of a much younger woman. She was startlingly attractive with skin the color of pale wood, and she looked fondly at the little man as she said, “Yes, Senator, I have everything you need right here.”

“Well, it's about damn time. Didn't you hear the door bell ring?”

The woman continued smiling. “Yes, Senator. That's why I got the tray ready.” She crossed in front of Hawker. “Bourbon for you, Mr. Hawker. Andrew said that's what you would want”—she gave him a sidelong glance—“and, of course, he's never wrong. And here's a little carafe of water, straight from the spring. He said you might like that too. Can I get you a little something to eat?”

“No, ma'am, I'm just fine, thank you.”

“See there, Senator? A man with manners. You might take a lesson or two.”

“God, woman, don't be getting uppity with me in front of company. Just hand me my drink and get back to your duties. The damn garden's 'bout eat up with weeds, and them bastard sand-spur have taken over the backyard. You got fieldwork to do.”

The woman handed him a tall, sweating glass topped with a twist of lime. “Now, now, Senator, let's watch our language. Here's your iced tea. I had the maid bruise some mint and add it to the water when she brewed it, just the way you like it.”

Andrew Watkins made a face. “Goddamn it, woman, I ain't ever liked tea, and I ain't ever going to like tea. Keeps me jittery and makes me pee. Why in hell do you keep bringing me this crap?” He shook his fist at her, and it was only then that Hawker realized that the two of them were enjoying an old and private game. “I can't sell you no more, but I can, by God, fire your black ass!”

The woman leaned over and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. “Yes, dear. Now drink your tea. And after Mr. Hawker leaves the trash needs taking out.”

Watkins was laughing softly to himself as the woman disappeared inside. “Women,” he said. “God, what strange things they make us do.” Hawker could only nod in agreement as the little man continued. “Twenty-five years ago Lester Maddox and me stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the restaurant holding ax handles to keep them Negro agitators out. I had plenty of good friends that was Negroes, but I believed that a man who owned a restaurant, who worked his ass off to keep it going, ought to have some say about who goes in and who stays out. Well, I still believe that, but things change, Mr. Hawker. With every bad change a little good sneaks right in with it. Them agitators had them a woman lawyer fresh out of Grambling. She was a beautiful thing to look at, and she could twist them Washington Yankee bureaucrats right around her little finger. They was anxious to feel guilty about bein' white, but they was even more anxious to get into that little girl's pants. She worked on their guilt without givin' away that other thing, and that one woman did more for the civil rights movement than all them Afro-haired dumb shits put together. And hate me? That woman hated me with a spittin' passion. Called me a Nazi on national TV. Brought suit against me in federal court and tried to have me disbarred. Campaigned hard for my opponent in the first election and cried like a baby when I won. Shit, she even snuck Tabasco in my drink at some damn convention and had an AP photographer hiding, ready to snap my picture. The cutline they used when they ran the picture over the wire was, ‘Senator Watkins reacts to passage of busing bill.' Just about made me look like a fucking idiot.