Grass Roots

by Stuart Woods

  “Yeah, I had a look at his military record. That’s why I want everybody you can spare. This guy’s an expert with just about every weapon you can think of.”

  “I think I can get three or four deputies together, if I call some in who’re off duty.”

  “Thanks, that’ll be good. Please don’t tell ’em who we’re arresting. I’ve already screwed up once today, and I want it nice and neat this time.”

  “I understand. When you coming down here?”

  “How about we meet at the Moreland exit off 1-85 South at three P.M.?”

  “Okay, my men and I will be there. We’ll want shotguns, I reckon.”

  “That’s right, and one more thing: I’d like an ambulance.”

  “I’ll call the county hospital and get one out there.”

  Pittman thanked the man, then called the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Georgia State Patrol. Within an hour, he had a twenty-man posse together, with automatic weapons, tear gas, and flak jackets. He hung up the phone and looked at Keane. “Well,” he said, “if we don’t get him this afternoon, we’re fucked. As soon as this morning’s episode hits the tube, he’ll run.”

  *

  At two o’clock, Pittman gathered his force in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant on a highway outside Luthersville. He shook hands with Sheriff Dan Cox and introduced the GBI and State Patrol commanders.

  “I know the place where he lives,” Sheriff Cox said. “He bought it from a fellow I know about three or four years ago. My boy and his boy used to play high school basketball together.”

  “What’s the layout?” Pittman asked.

  Cox got a notebook from his car and began drawing. “The house is about a quarter of a mile off the road, behind a stand of pines,” he said. “There’s a barn and a couple of animal pens right behind it; there’s woods on three sides, here, and one side of the house faces a pasture.”

  “We can go in from the woods on three sides, then,” Pittman said.

  “Yep,” Cox replied. “I reckon we should park on the road and circle the house on foot.”

  “Right,” Pittman said. “Let’s saddle up.” He gave them a radio frequency; then the group got into their cars and drove the two miles to where Perkerson’s mailbox stood beside the road.

  As they got out of their car, Keane said to Pittman, “Chuck, how come this guy had a private mailbox in East Point when he’s got his name on his mailbox right here?” He looked into the mailbox and found it empty.

  “I don’t know,” Pittman said. “He gave the army the East Point box for an address, but he’s living down here, fifty miles away. It doesn’t make much sense.”

  “It bothers me,” Keane said.

  “Well,” said Pittman, “let’s just hope he’s at home today.” He assigned the GBI to the woods in front of the house, the State Patrol the side stand of trees; then he, Keane, and the sheriff and his men trudged around toward the rear of the house, making a wide circle so as not to be seen.

  Half an hour later, Pittman was making his way slowly through the pines toward the house, swearing under his breath at himself, because he had not brought any rough clothes. He was wearing his best suit, and the trousers were now full of cockleburs. He could see the back of the barn now, and he began moving stealthily from tree to tree.

  He stopped and lifted the radio to his lips. “This is Pittman; I’m in position about twenty yards behind the barn. Everybody ready?”

  He got acknowledgments from the GBI and State Patrol contingents.

  “We’ll move to the barn and check out the house from closer in,” Pittman said into the radio. “Hold your positions for now.” He turned to Keane and the sheriff. “I’ll go first, and if the area between the barn and the house is clear, I’ll wave you in.”

  Keane and the sheriff nodded.

  Pittman worked his way to the edge of the trees and took one last look around. Nothing moved. Staying low, he ran to the back of the barn, then worked his way around to the side, near the front. He could see the back of the house now, and a gray Chevrolet van was parked next to it. To his left was a small corral with a few bales of hay stacked beside it under a tarp. He turned and waved Keane and the sheriff’s men forward. In a moment, they were all flattened against the side of the barn.

  “Look at that,” Keane said, indicating the corral.

  Pittman had not noticed it the first time; the bales of hay had been in the way. There were two horses in the corral, and they were lying on their sides, unmoving.

  “They’re dead,” Keane said. “I don’t like this, Chuck.”

  “It’s weird,” Pittman said. “Why would he kill the horses?”

  The sheriff interrupted. “Let’s make a move here,” he said.

  Pittman fastened his flak jacket and spoke into the radio. “I don’t want to rush the place; I’m gonna move to the back of the house and see what I can see. If I yell ‘go,’ then move in fast, okay?”

  The GBI and State Patrol commanders confirmed his instructions.

  “Okay,” Pittman said, and sprinted the remaining twenty yards to the house and ducked under a window. Quickly, he popped his head up above the sill, and brought it back again. He had seen no one. Slowly, this time, he raised his head above the sill and looked into a kitchen. The room was empty; there were a coffee cup and a folded newspaper on the kitchen table. He pressed the transmit button on the radio again.

  “There’s nobody in the kitchen.” He had the odd feeling that the place was empty, and he made a decision. “I’m going in the back door alone,” he said into the radio.

  “Chuck, don’t do that,” Keane’s voice said over the radio. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

  “You’re too Irish, Mickey,” Pittman said. Keane was always going on about his hunches. He moved to the back door of the house. The door stood open; only a screen door separated him from the kitchen. He hoped it wouldn’t squeak. It turned out to be amazingly quiet.

  Pittman slipped out of his shoes and moved into the kitchen, holding the riot shotgun before him at port arms. He put his hand on the stove. Cold. The refrigerator came on, startling him. He took a few deep breaths and moved toward the door on the other side of the kitchen. Suddenly, a sound came to him, one he disliked. It was the theme music for a television game show. He hated them, hated the noise they made. The TV must be in the living room, he thought. He’d catch Perkerson sitting in front of it.

  He stepped through the door and into a hallway, and the music got louder, leading him toward the living room. There were no lights on in the hall, but he could see dimly by the ambient light from the kitchen and living room doors. Pittman started down the hall. Then there was a familiar smell, one that took him a moment to identify, because it didn’t belong in a house. In front of him in the hallway was a low row of objects. Curious, he moved forward. As he did, something thin and sharp came into contact with his ankle. Too late, he knew what the objects were: jerry cans; and what the smell was: gasoline.

  *

  Mickey Keane leaned against the barn and clenched his teeth. He didn’t like the dead horses, and he didn’t like Pittman going into that house by himself. He would have used the bullhorn and tear gas, himself. What the hell was taking Chuck so long? He peeped around the corner of the barn, and as he did, the side of the house facing him buckled outward, and a millionth of a second later the shock wave and the noise hit him. He flinched and pulled back; then, when the shock had passed, he looked around the corner of the barn at the house again. As he did, the van exploded, a giant orange fireball enveloped everything, and debris was flying everywhere.

  Keane drew back and pressed his body against the barn again, hoping it would hold, gritting his teeth at the pain caused by the fragments of debris that had struck his face, cursing himself for letting his partner go into the house. When the explosion subsided, he didn’t look at where the house had been; he didn’t need to. He sank to the ground and began to cry.

  BOOK TWO

 
; 1

  Will Lee stood on the steps of the Georgia capitol and waited for a television cue. The gold-plated dome of the building behind him rose and disappeared into the fog, and a light rain began to fall on the little crowd gathered there. He was dressed in his new H. Stockton blue suit, white button-down shirt, red necktie, and wingtips, and at the curb his new Chevrolet station wagon waited. Beside Will stood his father and mother, Jack Buchanan, Kitty Conroy, and, well to one side, Tom Black, the political consultant.

  As the rain started, Patricia Lee raised an umbrella and held it over Will’s head.

  “Mrs. Lee,” Tom Black called softly from the sidelines. When he had her attention, he shook his head, and Patricia closed the umbrella.

  “Coming up on six o’clock,” a man called from one of the television equipment trucks parked at the nearest curb. “Five, four, three, two, one …” He brought his hand down.

  Will looked out over the heads of the three television cameramen and spoke. “Today, I am announcing my candidacy to represent Georgia in the United States Senate. I run because I believe I am better qualified to do the job than any other person in Georgia—except one, who is not well enough to run.” He stopped speaking and continued to look at a point over the cameramen’s heads until he was sure all three cameras had stopped turning. Back at the stations, the anchors were beginning their newscasts with his candidacy as their lead stories. Will didn’t know how Tom Black had managed to get him at the top of all three newscasts, but he had done it. Now, as Tom had arranged, Will turned to the first camera and waited for his cue. He would give three interviews in tandem, and each would go out live on one of the three main stations.

  A reporter stood and pressed a hand to his ear, waiting for a cue. Having received it, he turned to Will. “Mr. Lee, you’ve said you’re better qualified than anybody in the state but one man; that would be Senator Benjamin Carr?”

  “That’s correct,” Will said. “I wouldn’t be running if the Senator were able himself to run again.”

  “But you do believe you’re better qualified than Governor Mack Dean?”

  “I do,” Will said emphatically, “for a lot of reasons, but for two principal ones: first, I have a real program to undertake in the Senate, an agenda of specific proposals that will help establish national priorities in defense, foreign policy, education, and social progress, among others; and second, I have behind me eight years of service and training at the side of the greatest senator our country has produced in this century, and if he were able, I believe Senator Carr would be here today to back me.”

  “When are we going to hear about this program of yours, Mr. Lee?”

  “As soon as you’ll give me more than two minutes of air time.” Will laughed. “I’ll be taking this message to every corner of our state over the coming months, and I believe the people of Georgia are going to like what they hear.”

  The reporter turned to his camera. “You heard it. Will Lee has kicked off his campaign by stating flatly that he is better qualified than Governor Dean to serve in the United States Senate. We’ll be getting the Governor’s reaction a little later in the program, but right now, back to the newsroom.”

  Tom Black stepped up, thanked the reporter, and began setting up the next interview, with the capitol dome in the background. Will repeated his performance with the other two stations, then spent five minutes with three print reporters from around the state. When he had finished, Tom herded him toward the station wagon.

  “All right,” Tom said, as they slid into the backseat. “Off to a good start. Now, on Sunday, we’ve got feeds set up for live, thirty-minute interviews with stations in Augusta, Savannah, Macon, Columbus, and Waycross. That’ll cover just about every TV household in the state.”

  Will mopped the rain from his face. “Well, I guess if I can get through what you’ve got planned for the next week, I can get through anything.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tom said, “it’s going to get worse, if you’re lucky.”

  They drove to Will’s new Atlanta campaign office on Spring Street. Inside the storefront building were a dozen desks, with volunteers looking busy. Upstairs was a large room with more desks, and offices for Will, Jack, and Kitty. Will sat down at his desk and Jack shoved a large stack of three-by-five cards in front of him.

  “Okay,” Jack said, “these are for each of the people on the personal acquaintance list you made. Each card has everything we know about the person—job, family, kids. Go to it.”

  Will stared at the top card. Willis Perkins, fraternity brother at the University of Georgia, twenty years before. “Here goes,” he said, dialing a number, while Tom Black listened on an extension. A small child answered, and Will finally persuaded him to call his father to the phone.

  “Hello?”

  It was a deep, rich voice, one that Will remembered immediately. “Willis, this is Will Lee. How you doing?”

  There was a brief silence before Perkins spoke. “Will Lee from school?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Will glanced at the card before him. “How’s the pulpwood business these days? You went into the family business, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right, and it ain’t bad.”

  “Listen, Willis, did you watch the six-o’clock news tonight?”

  “Nope. I was taking a nap. You woke me up.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but if you had been watching, you’d have seen me standing up there on the capitol steps, announcing for the Senate.”

  “The state senate?”

  “The United States Senate.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Will took a deep breath and forced himself to go on. “Listen, Willis, I need your help.”

  “Aha!” Perkins laughed. “Now I get it. You’re looking for a campaign contribution, right?”

  “You always were a quick one, Willis.”

  “You a Republican or a Democrat?”

  “I’m a Democrat, Willis.”

  “Then you’re out of luck, boy. I’m a born-again Republican. Jimmy Carter turned me into one.”

  “He damn near turned me into one,” Will said, pressing on. Why the hell did I say that? he wondered. It isn’t true.

  Across the desk, Tom Black drew his finger across his throat. “Forget it,” he mouthed silently.

  “Willis, I don’t want you to go against these newfound Republican principles of yours, but I want you to pay attention to what gets said in the campaign, and if you start agreeing with me, I want you to call me, all right? We’ll always be ready to welcome you back to the fold.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Perkins said.

  “Thanks, Willis. Good to talk to you.” Will hung up and mopped his brow. “That guy never had a brain in his head,” he said. “I don’t know what made me put him on the list.”

  “It’s time well spent,” Tom said. “Hell, you might hear from him. At least he’ll tell everybody he knows that you called him. He’ll be proud of that.”

  Kitty Conroy came into the room. “This was left for you earlier,” she said. “It’s marked ‘personal.’ ” She placed a large brown envelope on the desk.

  Will opened the envelope and looked at the papers inside. “Good,” he said. “This is the stuff my investigator has been rounding up for Larry Moody’s trial.” He went quickly through the papers and grinned. “Good stuff; I can use it.”

  “How long do you reckon this trial is going to last?” Jack Buchanan asked.

  “Three days, maybe five,” Will said. “We start jury selection Monday morning—that shouldn’t take more than a day. The prosecution will take a day to present; then I’ll take a day. There won’t be that many witnesses. Just to be on the safe side, don’t schedule anything for me in the daytime until the weekend.”

  “The good news about the trial is that you’re going to get TV coverage every day.”

  “Why is that so good?” Will asked. “If Moody’s found innocen
t, it will offend most of the black people in the state; if he’s found guilty, it’ll offend a lot of whites—and I’ll look like an incompetent, too.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Tom said. “Kitty’s getting the word out to the press that you had no choice about defending the guy. The main thing is, every night on the six-o’clock news, you’ll be walking out of that courthouse and talking to a bunch of cameras. Remember what P.T. Barnum said—’as long as they spell your name right.’ ”

  “I buy that,” Kitty said.

  “I’d worry about it if it were later in the campaign,” Tom said. “But early on, it’ll just get people used to looking at your face.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Will said, picking up another card from the stack before him. “Harry Maples,” he read aloud. “Banker? Harry?”

  “That’s what the University of Georgia Directory says,” Jack replied.

  “To tell you the truth,” Will said, “I never thought Harry would even get a job after college.” He dialed the number.

  “Hello.”

  “Harry Maples?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This is Will Lee. I—”

  “Will, how are you, boy? I just saw you on television. What can I do to help?”

  Will covered the receiver and looked at Tom Black. “Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad after all,” he said.

  When Will hung up the phone, he had Maples’s pledge of a thousand-dollar contribution and a promise to raise more from his friends.

  Kitty went to a large TV set in a corner and turned up the volume. “The Governor is going to be interviewed in a minute,” she said.

  Will put down his index cards and turned his attention to the set. After a moment, the anchorman switched to the capitol, and Mack Dean stood on the steps, in exactly the same spot where Will had stood.

  “Governor, Will Lee says he’s better qualified than you to represent Georgia in the Senate. What do you have to say about that?”

  A slow smile spread across Dean’s face. “Why, I’ve known Will since he was a little boy,” he said, “and he’s always been a real polite little fellow.” A tiny frown crept into Dean’s expression. “Course, young Will’s never run for public office before, and you have to wonder if maybe he isn’t biting off a little bit more than he can chew, running for the United States Senate first time out. I think Will ought to get some experience at a lower level, maybe his local school board, or something like that. Then, when he’s learned something about what folks want from their government, maybe he could take on a race for his county board of commissioners, or maybe even the state legislature.”