Atlanta Extreme (12 page)

“Well, that woman stayed in politics one way or 'nother, and we saw quite a bit of each other at parties and rallies and such, and we'd always compete to see who could be nastiest. The woman had a tongue like a serpent, I'm tellin' ya. Keep me awake at nights just so's I'd have something clever to say the next time we meet. She'd say something like, ‘Well, Senator, if you disagree with me, why don't you stand up and speak louder so everyone can hear?' And, of course, she could see damn plain that I was already standing up. And I'd say stuff like, ‘Counselor, when they give you that diploma at Grambling, how many professors you have to ask before you found one that could read it to you?' I mean, Mr. Hawker, we'd say
mean
shit.

“It got to be kind of a game. And after a time it got so we both looked forward to seeing each other to see who could nail the other to the wall. Our little jokes got harder and harder, but we were really liking each other better and better. Found out later that the dang woman was bribin' one of my secretaries so as she could find out what parties I was gonna be at and where. Well, one thing about a Washington party, it's filled with stuffed shirts, assholes, and journalists—a journalist being a pretty even cross between the two, only they're more prone to drug use. At those kind of parties you got to watch what you say every minute. Can't trust nobody, so nobody has any real fun, except the journalists, of course, 'cause they're drinking free booze and using their drugs over in some corner, and nobody's gonna squeal on them, 'cause who would write the damn story? Well, got so this woman and I would spend most our time together at these parties 'cause, hell, we'd both said just about every nasty thing in the book to each other and didn't have no need for soft talk or bullshit. A person you can speak plainly and honestly to, Mr. Hawker, is a rare commodity these days. In Washington, D.C., a person like that is a regular damn auk. We both appreciated the break, you might say.

“So when I retired from the Senate, I hired this woman into the firm. It was a damn smart move on my part, 'cause it got us a lot of the black business in Atlanta, and if you haven't noticed, boy, there's a considerable population of those folk. Well, my wife, God bless her, passed away, and then I got into some personal trouble and, fact is, needed a woman. Only woman I could trust was this damn Negro agitator. She helped me more'n most of my white friends would've or could've, and that was her what just brought you your bourbon.”

“Sarah?”

“Miz Sarah, I call her.”

“How long since you've had a drink, Senator?”

Watkins chuckled. “You don't miss a trick, do you, boy? I ain't had a touch since thirteen months before Miz Sarah and me got married. It was the one stipulation she made: I had to stay off the Tennessee tonic for at least a year or she wouldn't have me. We got married three years ago.” The little man smiled. “It ain't easy being an alcoholic, Mr. Hawker. I still buy the bourbon for my friends, and I like to make sure they drink it, 'cause I buy the best and I, by God, love the smell of it. But being an alcoholic has helped me in a lot of ways too. For one thing, quitting the booze has given me one hell of a lot of respect for myself. It wasn't easy, especially 'cause I was never really convinced that I was an alcoholic until I'd been dry for about three months. Another thing, it's helped me to understand other people's problems better.” The senator looked up at Hawker shrewdly. “And that's why you're here, ain't it, Mr. Hawker? 'Cause some folks in these parts got troubles?”

“That's right, Senator.”

“Ol' Thy Estes is a real frank lady. Usually has no trouble speakin' her mind, but maybe you already know that, huh? Well, she told me that she trusts you one hundred percent. And she said that you could help us. But the weird thing is, she wouldn't say how. And you know what, Mr. Hawker? I don't want to know how. The law has become a strange thing these days. The more they legislate, the bigger the holes in the laws become. All kinds of reasons why bad men can't be put away. All kinds of legal reasons why hardworking, honest people have to put up with shit that no civilized people should have to put up with. I'm not interested in how you help us, Mr. Hawker, I'm interested in results. And Thy Estes says you produce results.”

“I try, Senator.”

“Good, boy, that's good to hear. Well, I'm a plainspoken man, Mr. Hawker, so before we even get started, tell me how much this help of yours is going to cost.”

“No cost, Senator. Not a penny. All I need is information.”

The little man's eyes bored into him, and in that moment Hawker saw beneath the easy-talking, good-ol'-boy facade of Andrew Watkins. He saw a tough, shrewd man and a cold, calculating intellect. Hawker wondered how many times the humorous facade had trapped his associates on the Senate floor and how many times those same associates had been made to squirm when Watkins turned that cold gaze on them. “You don't charge nothing? Don't want no kind of compensation or special favors? You just doing this out of the kindness of your heart, right, boy?”

“That's right, Senator.”

Watkins pushed the baseball cap back on his head. “Son, I've had business dealings with white men, black men, Eskimoes, Indians, Chinese, and two or three kinds'a midgets, but I ain't met anyone who would do something for nothing. Now what's your angle, boy?”

“No angle, Senator. You're thinking I might get rid of one problem, then become a problem myself, correct? Well, you're wrong. I'm not a shakedown artist, and I'm not a con man. Am I doing this out of the kindness of my heart? Almost never. But this case is an exception. I've been with Wellington Curtis in Masagua. I know what he is doing down there. He is slaughtering people. Not communists, not government troops, but villagers who have little more than sticks to fight with.

“Have you read his book,
The Killing Tree?
I have. I finished it last night. In it he writes about effective guerrilla warfare. He says that a guerrilla army, properly trained, can take control of an entire country with only an occasional direct firefight with opposing forces. The way to do it is through intimidation, through wholesale slaughter. Sooner or later, he says, the citizenry will have had enough and force their own government to relent.

“Of course, when he wrote the book, the idea was repugnant to him. But something happened to him in the jungle. He got caught up in it; he went insane. Shawn Pendleton and Greg Warren liked slaughtering people, and they helped him along. Now, when the government forces of Masagua attack his people, he retaliates by wiping out a defenseless village. He hacks down women and children and hangs their heads on a hillside for public display. He has thousands of heads, Senator. I've seen them.

“So what do I want to be paid? Nothing, Senator, not a damn thing. I'm taking this job because I want to. I am going to cripple Wellington Curtis's operation. And then I am going to eliminate Wellington Curtis.”

The older man whistled softly. “Mr. Hawker, when you get angry, you get a look in those gray eyes of yours that is purely like a nightmare. You ain't mad at me about my little cross-examination, are you?”

Hawker realized that his hands were clenched into fists. He relaxed them, smiling. “No, Senator. But I would like some information on Pendleton and Warren. I've heard that you've formed a group to try to resist their shakedowns.”

Watkins sat back in his chair and rocked. “Ain't much of a group, really. Mostly made up of folks who know the victims. The victims themselves are too damn scared to go to the law and too damn scared to fight. Pendelton and Warren match right up with your story about Curtis. From what I gather they are regular animals. They go to rural cotton and tobacco farmers, small businessmen, and they ask for donations to Curtis's little army. If the folks refuse, they come back later and kick the shit out of the man. If they still refuse, they go after the woman. Rape her, if she's pretty enough, cut her up if she's not. Not many refuse after that, but if they do, or if they threaten to go to the law, Pendleton and Warren threaten to kill the kids. Real slimy characters, those two. They put the folks on a monthly donation plan. If the money keeps coming, the beatings stop.”

“So what's your group done so far?”

“Not much. When we get wind of a new victim, we go and offer whatever help we can give. Try to convince them to go to the law. But when a man's kids are threatened, he's going to do everything in his power to keep 'em safe. And that includes keeping his mouth shut. So we keep chewing at the ass of the authorities to lock up those two bastards. No luck so far.”

Hawker thought for a moment. “Have you heard about any new victims? Anyone who Pendleton and Warren might favor with a return visit?”

Watkins nodded. “Matter of fact, there is. Over Blackshear way, little town 'bout forty miles from here, there's a young couple got a cotton/tobacco dealership. Jon and Cathy Sanders is their names. They buy, sell, and rent warehouses. You know the sort of thing. 'Bout two weeks ago I heard that Jon got the living bejesus kicked out of him. Wouldn't tell the law nothing. He's got a couple of kids, not even in school yet, so it adds up. I got in touch, and he wouldn't tell me no thin', either. I told him I knew who did it, but he said he'd handle it himself. Jon's a good boy. I knew his daddy. But he is purely scared to death that if he squeals, them two bastards are gonna come back and kill those kids.” The senator looked up. “He ain't gonna tell you nothing, either, Mr. Hawker.”

“He doesn't need to, Senator. But the next time Pendleton and Warren come around, I'll be there—if you'll help.”

Watkins turned unexpectedly and yelled, “Sarah! Damn it, Sarah, where the hell are you? Lazy damn coloreds! Mr. Hawker needs hisself another bourbon, woman!” The senator looked back and grinned, holding up his glass of iced tea as a toast. “You're goddamn right I'll help, boy—on the one condition that you come back here someday and we go out bass fishin' where there ain't no likelihood of wiretaps or bugs, and you tell me without leaving out a single bloody detail just what you did to them greasy bastards.”

fourteen

The dirt parking lot of Sanders & Sanders tobacco warehouses was illuminated by a single mercury vapor lamp. The lamp, from its high aluminum pole, threw a cold light over the outdoor auction booths; the loading ramps; a big new corrugated steel building; a smaller, dilapidated wooden building; the corner of a tobacco field with its broad-leafed plants that trailed away into darkness, shadowy in the pale glow of a quarter moon.

Except for one car in the parking lot—a Ford station wagon that had just pulled in—the place was deserted.

The car was owned by Jon Sanders, who waited alone inside the warehouse, unaware that, outside, the vigilante watched over him from the shadows.

James Hawker sat in the high limbs of an oak so big and old that it had probably been standing in the days when General Sherman marched his army through to Atlanta. Across his back was slung a short-barreled Colt Commando submachine gun. Strapped in the shoulder holster outside his black Navy watch sweater was a Smith & Wesson .45-calibre ACP. Attached to the webbed combat belt were five grenades, a pouch of plastic explosives, a UHF radio, and plenty of ammunition. Belted to Hawker's calf was his Randall Attack/Survival knife, Model 18.

The Randall had saved the vigilante's life more than once.

He was ready. And now he waited.

Waited for the vehicle he knew would bring Shawn Pendleton and Greg Warren to their meeting with Sanders, a meeting in which Sanders was to pay them five hundred dollars in protection money, his “donation” for the month.

The vehicle also brought them, Hawker knew, toward their rendezvous with death.

With the help of Senator Watkins, Hawker had spent two weeks in the little town of Black-shear. He had spent the days familiarizing himself with the area, learning the roads, but mostly resting and working out and honing his plan to destroy Wellington Curtis and his organization.

On his first night in town, staying in a cottage owned by one of the senator's friends, Hawker had gone to the road outside Sanders's pleasant rural home and found the telephone terminal. It was one of the tubular ones into which ran underground cable and drop lines.

Staying in the shadows to avoid the occasional passing truck, Hawker used a test set—a rubber-coated, hand-held telephone with alligator clips—to find Sanders's line. It was not difficult. He kept clipping onto pairs and dialing Sanders's number until he got a busy signal. When he hung up, the phone rang inside the house. Hawker was close enough to hear it. He watched a pretty woman carrying a baby cross behind the front window, and she answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Sorry, ma'am, this is the phone man,” Hawker said. “We had a report that some of your neighbors were having trouble, and we're just checking this cable.”

“We haven't been having any trouble until just now. The phone's been making real short rings, but when I answer, no one's there.” The woman had a soft Southern accent that was touched, Hawker noticed, with a little edge of anxiety.

“I'm sorry, ma'am, that was me.”

“Well, shouldn't you be doing this a little earlier in the day? You woke up my little girl.”

“I really am sorry, ma'am. All the complaints we've been getting have been at night, and we thought the dew might be causing a short. You know, only at night 'cause we couldn't find a thing wrong during the day. I think I've got everything cleared up now. I stuck in some temporary pairs, used some open colors, so you might notice that your reception isn't quite as good. But it's only temporary, like I said. No need to report it. We'll get new cable in just as soon as we can.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, sir, but I'd greatly appreciate your not calling so late anymore.”