Grass Roots

by Stuart Woods

  27

  Keane was back at the apartment complex in Marietta at eight sharp, determined to wait out his man, no matter how long it took. The Toyota was not in its usual place; Suzy’s Beretta was.

  Shit, Keane thought. The guy wasn’t even back yet. He settled in for the wait. Suzy usually left for work at eight-thirty sharp, but at eight-fifty, she had not appeared. Just after nine o’clock, a van appeared bearing the name of the complex, and the driver, carrying a toolbox, went to the front door of the apartment and rang. When no one appeared, he rang again, then opened the door with his passkey, closing it behind him. Less than a minute later, he burst out of the apartment and headed for the main gate at a dead run, ignoring his van.

  Keane, alarmed, got out of his car and, using a single crutch, hobbled toward the apartment. The door was still open, and he walked straight in. The living room was very neat; so was the kitchen. He started toward the bedroom, then stopped at the bathroom door. Suzy Adams’s brains were spread all over a mirror that had many cracks radiating from a single bullet hole. Suzy was on the floor, face up—what little was left of her face.

  Keane looked at his watch. He had, maybe, two minutes before the cops arrived. He went to the bedroom and began methodically searching it. One of the two closets was empty, also one of the two chests of drawers. He went over the room as well as he could without disturbing anything, then did the same to the living room.

  “Freeze!” somebody shouted, and Keane looked into the barrel of a uniformed policeman’s pistol.

  “I’ve got ID, okay?” Keane said, moving his hand slowly to his pocket.

  The patrolman relaxed a little at the sight of the badge; then he was brushed aside by a detective.

  “Who the hell are you?” the detective demanded of Keane.

  Keane showed his ID and explained what he was doing there. “The guard at the gate can confirm my story,” he said. “This guy, Ross, must have shot her last night. Either that, or he came back late and left early. My guess is last night.”

  “Okay, thanks for your theory,” the detective said, making a note of Keane’s address and phone number. “Now get off my crime scene.”

  Mickey left, and as he was about to get into his car, a brown sedan pulled up behind him. He recognized the FBI agent who had visited him in the hospital.

  “I should have known you’d be here,” the agent said.

  “Yeah? Well, you can chalk up another killing for the FBI—a nurse called Suzy Adams. How many more you going to let him knock off before you pull him?”

  The agent reddened. “Adams was ours; we’ve had her on a string for a year. I swear to God we didn’t know she had helped Perkerson set you up until after it was over. She didn’t know herself exactly what was going on until he told her, later.”

  “If you say so,” Keane replied. He believed the agent really felt bad about it.

  “She went a long way toward breaking this thing,” the agent said.

  “Breaking what thing?” Keane asked.

  “You’ll hear about it soon enough. We’re just tracking down loose ends now.”

  “Well,” Keane said, “go take a look in the bathroom of that apartment; one of your loose ends is lying in there with no face. Now move the fucking car so I can get out of here.”

  The agent looked at him for a moment without saying anything. “Hang on a minute.” He rummaged on the front seat of the car and came up with a photograph. “This was taken last week. It may be too little, too late, but maybe it’ll help. I owe you one, I guess.”

  Keane looked at the photograph; Perkerson was wearing his usual dark glasses, but finally Keane had a face to look for.

  “I know it’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment. We lost him last night, and the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department found the Toyota in the Chattahoochee River this morning. I don’t believe for a minute Perkerson was in it.”

  “Neither do I,” Keane said. “Thanks for the picture, anyway.”

  “You didn’t get it from me,” the agent said, then drove away.

  Keane sat in his car and memorized the photograph. What would Perkerson look like without the mustache and dark glasses? Now he had a complete picture of the man in his mind—size, gait, the way he held himself, a face. What should be his next move?

  A moment’s reflection told him what he had to do if he was to live with himself.

  Keane found a pay phone and called Dave Haynes at Atlanta PD Homicide. “Dave? I’ve got a new picture of my man.”

  “Yeah? How’d you get that?”

  “Never mind, but it’s the real thing. He’s had his face rearranged. I want an APB on him right now.”

  “Where are you?”

  Keane told him.

  “Then drive down here right away with your picture, and I’ll take it to the captain.”

  “Will he do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Three hours later, Keane sat in his old captain’s office.

  “Where’d you get this, Mickey?” the captain said, looking at the photograph.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Well, I’ve no way of knowing if it’s the real thing, do I?” The captain seemed to be making an effort to look concerned.

  “You’re not going to order the APB, then?” Keane asked.

  “I don’t see how I can, under the circumstances.”

  Keane struggled to his feet and got the crutch under his arm. “In that case, Captain,” he said, “everybody in Atlanta’s going to be looking for Perkerson except Atlanta PD.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the captain asked, his features darkening.

  “I mean that before I came here, I stopped at a photo shop and had a whole lot of copies made of that picture. Then I delivered them to the newspapers, the TV stations, and the network news bureaus. So, you just turn on the six-o’clock news, and you’ll see a Mickey Keane APB in action.”

  28

  Will got back to campaign headquarters at noon, after a midmorning stop at a shopping mall. There was a message from the Federal Aviation Administration waiting for him. Will dialed the number; the man’s name was Barran.

  “This is Will Lee, returning your call.”

  “Glad to hear from you, Mr. Lee,” Barran said. “I’m talking on a transportable phone from the site of your, er, incident this morning. You’ve got at least half a gallon of water in each fuel tank.”

  “That’s impossible,” Will said. He explained how he had checked for water in the fuel that morning.

  “I’m surprised you don’t know there’s an airworthiness directive out on the rubber fuel bladders in Cessnas. They tend to wrinkle when they’re old, and water collects in the wrinkles. I’m going to have to cite you for improper preflight procedure.”

  “Hang on, Mr. Barran,” Will said. “I’m perfectly aware of the wrinkling problem; that’s why I installed new bladders last year. They couldn’t possibly have wrinkled in this short a time.” He didn’t want to be cited this close to the election, and he wanted to know what was going on. “I’ll send a mechanic out there right now to pull the wings off the airplane and get to the bladders. I think you ought to inspect them before you go citing me.”

  “Fair enough,” Barran replied. “You’ll have to take the wings off to transport the airplane to the airport anyway. And you might as well order a crane, while you’re at it. Check back with me this afternoon. I’ll be at this number.”

  *

  Late in the afternoon, on the way to a campaign appearance, Will stopped by the building where he had landed. There was a crane being set up, and he could see half a dozen people on the roof, milling around the airplane, which was now without wings.

  When he emerged onto the roof, Barran introduced himself and walked him over to the airplane, where Will’s mechanic was draining the fuel bladders through a filter into jerry cans.

  “Nice piece of flying, Mr. Lee,” the mechanic said. “I paced off the roof; I make it about si
x hundred feet.”

  “I was lucky,” Will replied, “and the gravel slowed me down.”

  “These bladders are in very good shape,” the mechanic said. “No wrinkles at all.”

  “In that case,” Will said, “any water in the tanks should have shown up in the fuel when I checked them during my preflight.”

  “Should have,” Barran said. He bent over and picked something out of the fuel filter. “What’s this?”

  “It looks like the top of one of those plastic bags that zip shut,” the mechanic said. “I’ve found two of them in each tank.”

  “That’s very odd,” Barran said. “Unless … ”

  “Unless what?” Will said.

  “These things dissolve in gasoline,” Barran said. “Almost, anyway. You could fill them with water, put them in the tank, and they would slowly dissolve. Then, even if you’d checked thoroughly for water, as you say you did, as soon as the bag dissolved, you’d have water in your fuel again.”

  “Funny,” Will said. “When I arrived at the airport in Meriwether County this morning, there was a station wagon leaving. This was at dawn. One man in the car. He apparently had not just landed, either.”

  “Mr. Lee,” Barran said, “I’m not going to cite you; but I’m sure as hell going to call the FBI. It’s a federal crime to tamper with an airplane.”

  29

  Will and Tom were watching the six-o’clock news coverage of his campaign day, most of which was devoted to his forced landing that morning. There was no mention of the possibility of sabotage.

  Kitty Conroy brought a man into the room. “Will, this is Special Agent Davidson, of the FBI.”

  Will shook the man’s hand. “You heard from the FAA, did you?”

  “Yes,” Davidson replied, “Barran seemed convinced that the airplane had been tampered with, and we agree. It’s hard to think of any other reason for finding the remains of two plastic bags in each fuel tank.”

  “It’s funny,” Will said, “if the bladders hadn’t been so recently overhauled, then I would have attributed the water Barran found in the tanks to wrinkled fuel bladders and figured it was my own fault for not checking more thoroughly.”

  “Can you think of anybody who might want to kill you?” the agent asked.

  “No one person,” Will replied, “but I’ve just finished a pretty controversial trial, and it may have had something to do with that. There were some members of a white supremacist organization at the trial all week. They were pretty unhappy with the verdict.”

  “We’re familiar with them,” Davidson said.

  Will glanced at the television set and froze. A photograph of a man in dark glasses filled the screen.

  “This man, Harold Perkerson, is the subject of an all-points bulletin issued this afternoon by the Atlanta Police Department,” a reporter was saying. “Perkerson is wanted in connection with the murder of three adult-bookstore employees and the attempted murder of the store’s owner, Manfred Pearl.”

  An old photograph of Perkerson came on-screen side by side with the new one.

  “Perkerson is said to have undergone plastic surgery to change his appearance. The photograph on the left is how he originally looked, and the more recent photograph, on the right, shows how he probably looks today. The police caution that Perkerson is armed and very dangerous.”

  “Pretty big difference in appearance, isn’t it?” the FBI man said.

  “Mr. Davidson,” Will said, “I saw that man leaving Roosevelt Memorial Field in a station wagon about a quarter to seven this morning, just as I was arriving.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. His face was in my headlights for a second or two. I’m sure it’s the same man.”

  “What kind of station wagon?”

  “Dark—black or dark blue, something foreign, I think. Name some foreign station wagons.”

  “Peugeot?”

  “No.”

  “Volvo?”

  “Yes! I’m sure it was a Volvo station wagon.”

  “May I use your phone?” Davidson asked.

  *

  Harold Perkerson was sitting at the Varsity Restaurant in downtown Atlanta, enjoying a chili dog and watching the news on television. The Archon’s plan had worked perfectly, but Lee had survived anyway. No matter, he thought. I’ll get him. Then Perkerson’s picture appeared on the screen. He listened for only a moment, then abandoned his meal and left the restaurant, hoping that nobody would recognize him before he could get to his car. On the way out, he stopped and bought the afternoon Atlanta Journal from a dispensing machine. His picture adorned the front page. How the hell had they gotten that photograph?

  He sat quietly in the Varsity’s parking garage, trying to think what to do next. The first thing was the mustache. He reached into his bag in the backseat and got an electric razor. It was hard going, but soon he was clean-shaven again. A big difference, he hoped.

  He read the newspaper story carefully. There was no mention of his connection with Will Lee’s engine failure, nor of his newly assumed identity, nor of the Volvo. Then, at the bottom of the front page, he saw another story.

  “Candidates’ Plans for Election Day,” the headline read. Perkerson read the story carefully. Don Beverly Calhoun would be celebrating in the grand ballroom of the Atlanta Hilton, while Will Lee’s base for the day would be a suite at the Omni Hotel, next door to the World Congress Center. An election-evening party would be held for Lee’s campaign workers at the Omni on the mezzanine level. The candidate would make an appearance at six o’clock, then return to his suite until the results were known.

  Perkerson knew the mezzanine level at the Omni. He had once visited there when the level had been an amusement park, some years before. The Omni boasted a huge atrium, many stories high; the mezzanine level was under that, and many of the hotel’s rooms overlooked it.

  Perkerson thought hard. He could no longer be absolutely sure of being safe on the streets, and that made a hunt for Lee a bad idea; the Archon had told him not to hit the man at the church on Sunday. Perkerson started the car and drove out of the parking lot; he found a pay phone and called the Omni Hotel.

  “I’d like to book a room, please.”

  “When for, sir?”

  “I’ll be checking in shortly, and checking out on Wednesday morning.”

  “That’s five nights, sir. What sort of accommodation would you like?”

  “I’d like something comfortable overlooking the atrium,” Perkerson said. “Not too high up.”

  “Let’s see, I have a very nice suite on the fifth floor, right in the middle of the atrium, sir. The rate is two hundred fifty dollars a day.”

  “That sounds ideal,” Perkerson said. “I’ll give you a credit-card number to hold the room. I should be there in less than half an hour.”

  Perkerson got back into the Volvo and drove to International Boulevard, then straight to the Omni. He turned into the garage and gave his bags, except the briefcase containing the sniper’s rifle, to a bellboy. “I’ll park it myself,” he said to the garage attendant, handing him a couple of dollars. “It’s new.”

  He drove up the ramp to the very top of the garage and found a half-concealed spot in a corner. If they knew about the car, they wouldn’t be looking for it in the Omni garage, he reckoned.

  He found a drugstore in the building and bought a pair of nonprescription glasses with heavy horn-rims. Good camouflage. At the front desk he registered as Howard James, gave them one of his new credit cards, and signed a chit. When they checked it with the credit-card company, it would be good. He followed a bellboy to the fifth floor and was let into the suite; it was roomy, well furnished, and the view was outstanding.

  Perkerson held up a fifty-dollar bill. “Do you think you could arrange for me to have some female companionship this evening?”

  “I think so,” the bellboy said, smiling. “What time?”

  “Around nine, I think. I’ll want her for the rest of the evening. If she’s
really nice, there’s another fifty in it for you.”

  “You leave it to me, sir,” the bellboy said, backing out the door.

  Perkerson crossed the room, opened a window, and looked out into the atrium, down onto the mezzanine level, which was less than fifty yards away. Just perfect, he thought. And I’m off the street. The last place they’d look for me would be a suite at the Omni.

  He glanced at his watch. He’d better phone the Archon and check in.

  30

  Will sat at the front of the Holy Hill Pentecostal Baptist Church and listened to a man with a bouffant hairdo sing a “sacred” song Will had never heard before. Behind him a choir of a hundred voices swelled in song, and a seven-piece orchestra accompanied them. Will had never before seen a set of spangled drums in a church.

  The place was a riot of color, from the gold robes of the choir to the electric blue of the carpet, which ran, from where he sat, right up both aisles. The place was only slightly smaller than the Fox Theater, the 1920s movie palace in downtown Atlanta, and the decor was nearly as flamboyant.

  Will found it disconcerting, too, that half a dozen television cameras were dotted around the auditorium, and a floor manager in a headset was giving everybody cues from off-camera. The electronic church, Will thought.

  The singer ended his song with a flourish, and the congregation burst into applause. Will’s experience with church was mostly confined to the First Baptist Church of Delano and the Church of Ireland outpost near his grandfather’s house in County Cork; neither tolerated applause from its worshipers, let alone a set of spangled drums.

  The Reverend Ralph Beverly Calhoun, Don’s pimply son, stepped to the pulpit and talked for ten minutes about the importance of giving, while the collection plate was passed. He did not exclude the television audience, exhorting them to keep those little envelopes coming in, and offering a toll-free telephone number for those who preferred to give by credit card. Then he introduced his father.

  The Reverend Don Beverly Calhoun stepped into his former pulpit as if slipping into an old glove. “My friends, as you know, I have resigned the pulpit of this church, because God has told me to pursue, for the time being, a secular goal. But today, I return to introduce you to a young man who is pursuing that same goal.” He half turned toward where Will sat. “And I think I may say he is pursuing it with considerable zeal.”