The Triumph of Evil (12 page)

“I was going to go back again. I made an appointment. The only time it’s difficult to get into the building is late at night. At other times you just see any of the doctors there, and you’re inside.”

“You were going to take Karnofsky out during the day?”

“No, of course not,” he said, impatiently. “I was going to see the idiot doctor and then hide somewhere in the building until four in the morning. They watch the entrances and elevators, but they don’t check anything else. There were several apartments empty, tenants on vacation. I could have let myself in and had a nap until it was time.”

“And you’d do it while Karnofsky and the nigger were both asleep?”

“Of course. I wasn’t sure of method. I was thinking of insulin shock. That’s easy. Or an air bubble in a vein. He used a needle all the time, one more puncture wouldn’t have surprised anybody.”

“A damned shame. There are the stupidest rumors. That it was a power play within his union. That the Mafia rubbed him out. Stupid. You know, I couldn’t believe it was your work.” He laughed shortly. “Fifty dollars, a dollar a minute to tell some silly old Jew your troubles. And the troubles were not even your own!”

On a television set in another hotel room, Dorn watched an excerpt from a press conference called by Governor William Roy Guthrie to explain his declining an invitation to address a convention of New American Patriots in Milwaukee. “I’d certainly like to go up there and talk to those folks,” Dorn heard him say. “It does my heart good to see that people up North are beginning to see things the way we-all been seeing ‘em down here for years. But it’s my job to see to the problems of the good people of Louisiana. That’s what they pay me for, not to go flying all over the country. Besides, I’m not too sure how safe it’d be up there. I’d have to go and sit out in the sun through a lot of Louisiana summers before I felt secure in that part of the country.”

A reporter asked the governor if his decision stemmed from a reluctance to play second fiddle to James Danton Rhodine, already slated as principal speaker.

“You fellows come up with the strangest things,” Guthrie said. “I wouldn’t mind hearing Rhodine myself. Just because he’s seen fit to jump on our southern bandwagon is nothing for me to object to. I’d like to see all the good people in America jump on the bandwagon. There’s room for the lot of us.”

While in the microfilm room of the New York Public Library, Dorn had read a number of stories that had nothing whatsoever to do with Emil Karnofsky. One of these was a human-interest piece on Willie Jackson.

Willie Jackson was a 63-year-old Baton Rouge shoeshine boy. In his earlier capacity as commissioner of public highways, Guthrie had stopped every morning at Will Jackson’s post outside the State Office Building for a shine. Upon election to the governorship in 1962, Guthrie had sent instructions to Jackson to be at his office every morning at nine to shine Guthrie’s shoes.

Willie Jackson was not the sort given to voluble complaint. But he seemed to have said something to somebody, and one of the many reporters who despised Guthrie managed to come up with the story. It seemed that Jackson was not at all happy with his new post. The governor’s office in the State Capitol Building was a brisk ten-minute walk from his post outside the State Office Building, and after he had arrived, Guthrie frequently kept him waiting for as long as an hour before letting him apply wax to leather. As a result, Willie Jackson was being done out of a major portion of his income. Furthermore, according to the original story, Guthrie never gave him more than a dime.

The
Times
story went on to explain that when Guthrie had read all this he was enraged. As it happened, he was genuinely fond of Jackson and thought he had been doing him a good turn, that his appointment would lend him status with his peers. It had never occurred to him that he was costing the man money. Finally, and this was the sorest point of all, he invariably gave Jackson a dollar, which was considerably more than the average payment for a shoeshine in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Dorn suspected that Guthrie’s first impulse must have been to throw Jackson into a room with a naked white girl and let him die of shock. But the Louisiana governor had style. He immediately shot a bill through the state legislature appointing Willie Jackson official Louisiana Shoeshine Boy for life, and authorizing at taxpayers’ expense the erection of a permanent shoeshine stand on the steps of the State Capitol Building.

And every morning, as Governor William Roy Guthrie and his four-man bodyguard walked to the governor’s office, Guthrie stopped for a shine. Willie Jackson shined his shoes, and Guthrie gave him a dollar, and virtually every newspaper in America had ran, at least once, a photograph of this little ceremony. Some of the photos showed Guthrie standing with his hands on his hips, beaming around a fat cigar. In others he was depicted leaning over to rub Jackson’s nappy white head for luck.

Dorn loved the story, and had got to the point where he could not think of Guthrie without thinking of Willie Jackson. Periodically he found himself experiencing the same sort of grudging affection for Guthrie that he did for Eric Heidigger, and he suspected the reasons, whatever they might be, were not all that dissimilar.

On Dorn’s second and final trip to Baton Rouge, he took along his copies of the Black Panther newspaper, along with some of the contents of the parcel Heidigger had given him. He brought other supplies as well.

It was not so easy to move around unobtrusively in Baton Rouge as in a city like New York. Dorn devoted a few hours to following Willie Jackson after he had closed his shoeshine stand for the day. It was in his mind to secrete copies of the Black Panther paper in Jackson’s room, but the more he considered this the less advantageous it seemed. He ultimately buried the papers in a trash can.

He spent several more hours determining the pattern of surveillance in the Capitol area. The actual process of secreting an explosive charge in the base of the shoeshine stand took less than ten minutes, start to finish.

One item in Heidigger’s parcel that Dorn did not take to Baton Rouge was a squat plastic cube the size and shape of a pack of regular cigarettes. There was a button on it, set at a level with the surface of the device. When depressed, it would emit a high-frequency signal that would activate a companion device which was presently in Baton Rouge. One night in Willow Falls, Dorn used a knife blade to pry the device apart at the seams. He made an interesting modification of the device and put it back together again.

He spent the next day with Jocelyn. At one point she told him that he seemed to be in an unusual mood.

“It’s true,” he admitted. “I am apprehensive.”

“Of what?”

“I can’t remember the last time I had something to lose. The sensation is enervating.”

“Something to lose?”

“You.”

“You’re silly,” she said, kissing him.

He went back to Baltimore. It took him more time than he had anticipated to learn the name and find the apartment. It was late when he knocked on the door. A gaunt black woman with cautious eyes opened it.

He said, “Royal Carter?”

“What you want with him?”

“It’s private.”

She frowned disapproval but turned and went into another room. A few moments later the boy with the Afro haircut came to the door. He looked at Dorn without recognition.

Dorn tugged at the lobe of his ear, then put his finger to his lips. Royal Carter’s eyes narrowed for an instant. Then he nodded shortly.

Dorn said something inane about Methodist missionary activity in Botswana. While he talked, he held a piece of paper so that Carter could read what was written on it. It said:
Greyhound terminal men’s room 20 minutes.

Carter took in the message and nodded curtly. Then when Dorn paused in the middle of his speech about Botswana, he said, “I ain’t interested in missions, man,” and closed the door in Dorn’s face.

A long-distance telephone conversation:

“I’m in Egypt, man.’“

“No trouble?”

“No. Take forever to grow that hair back, that’s all that bothers me.”

“It’s for a good cause.”

“No complaints. Hate having to wait three more days. That’s all. But if an old man like him can hold up his end, I can carry mine. The way he stands there and toms, and then to deliver like this.”

“I hope you haven’t talked to him.”

“No, I’m cool. I just watch him is all. And I don’t hang around too much.”

“Good.”

“Thursday, then.”

“Good.”

Dorn did not like the waiting either. Too many things could go wrong and he could not control them. Royal Carter was alone in Baton Rouge with no one on hand to keep his nerve up. The plastic object in Carter’s pocket could be activated, through nervousness or accident, at any time. Many times in his career Dorn had had to run an amateur, and he had learned early to stay close enough to the runner to hold onto the reins.

This was not possible. It was very important to him that he not be in Baton Rouge when the shit hit the fan. It was, further, quite necessary that he be with Jocelyn, and this saddled him with the three-day waiting period. She was in New York, enduring a summit meeting with her father.

“He’ll play the heavy parent role,” she had said. “It’s no problem. I can handle him. I’ll be back by Wednesday at the latest. Will you miss me?”

“Perhaps a little.”

“And what will you do while I’m gone?”

“Rest,” he said. “And conserve my strength.”

He wanted her to be with him when it happened. It did not seem likely to him that she would make an association between his absences from Willow Falls and the violent deaths of prominent persons. He was gone frequently when nothing happened, and there were all too many violent deaths, unconnected with Dorn, that took place while they were together.

He occasionally wondered if she was having an adverse effect on his judgment. He knew that, but for her, there would be no need for this hectic running back and forth between Willow Falls and other parts of the country. He had to preserve this cover of his only because his relationship with her was a part of it. Otherwise he would simply have floated around, constantly mobile, like Heidigger with his Holiday Inns.

He decided that speculation was pointless. But for her, after all, everything would be completely different.

“That rotten fascist bastard. Oh, I hope somebody gets him. I’m not that nonviolent I think it would be worth dying, to get someone like Guthrie first.”

Q.E.D.

On Thursday morning, while Miles Dorn and Jocelyn Perry were weighing the desirability of breakfast against that of remaining in bed a little longer, Royal Carter was drinking coffee at a lunch counter across the street from the State Capitol Building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was so seated on his stool that without moving his head he could glance either out through the window to the Capitol steps or across the counter to the large flyspecked mirror. His eyes would dart first to the right and then to the left. When he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he had to repress the impulse to reach for his head and touch his hair, now uniformly cropped to within a quarter-inch of his scalp. When he looked out the window, his right hand, kept at all times in a pocket of his overalls, automatically fingered a plastic gadget the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes.

He rarely glanced at the clock. He kept wanting to, but didn’t. And when a glance out the window for the first time that morning brought him the sight of Governor Guthrie, he did not react in any visible way. Perhaps his heart speeded up, perhaps his blood pressure increased, but he gave no outward sign of excitement.

He remained cool throughout the ritual shining of the shoes, his eyes now fastened upon the ceremony, with no time off for anxious inspections of his mirror image. His right index finger located the button and caressed it with something akin to love.

Dorn had told him how it would happen. How Willie Jackson, the hair nearly rubbed from his head by all those years of racist patronage, would be affixing miniature explosive devices to the undersides of Guthrie’s insteps. How Jackson, who could not risk detonating the devices himself, would then remain in his stand, waiting. And how he, Royal Carter, would rid the world of an arch-pig without ever attaching the slightest suspicion to himself.

The shoeshine went on unendurably. It took all his effort to refrain from pushing the button now and getting it over with. Why chance Guthrie’s noticing that he had something stuck to his shoes? Why not do it now, and let Willie Jackson go out with him in a blaze of glory?

No, he couldn’t do that. Brother Jackson had paid his dues, year after year of dues, year after year of tomming his way through Hell. He had a right not only to live but also to enjoy this moment.

And so he waited, just as Dorn had told him to wait. Waited for the final bit of spit and polish, waited for the snapping of the buffing rag, waited for the rubbing of the white-thatched head, the good-luck rub.

See how good your luck is, Billy Boy!

(“The essential strategy is to minimize the possibilities of failure. Let him go just so far but no farther. The top of the first deck of steps. Not sooner, or Jackson would be in danger. No farther, however, because every step increases the likelihood of his noticing the plastic on his soles.”)

The cloth snapped, the head was rubbed, the dollar bill passed with a flourish. And Guthrie, flanked by his bodyguard (who, if they survived, would shortly find themselves without a body to guard) turned and mounted the Capitol steps.

One, two, three, four, five … .

When Guthrie put his foot upon the top step on the first deck, two things happened in a single thunderclap.

The permanently installed stand of the official Louisiana Shoeshine Boy disappeared.

So did a large portion of the lunch counter diagonally across the street.

“I’m sorry,” Jocelyn said. “I don’t feel sorry for him.”

“Nor do I.”

“I mean, I think it’s horrible for anyone to have his legs blown off. One at the knee and one at the hip. I get a little sick thinking about it. I flash on it and I look down at my own legs—”