That’s when Hollice heard it Pulitzer Prize. And the sudden absence of accent from Shakespeare’s tongue. “What happened to your voice?”
The South Texas flavor returned with a smile. “My voice? Nothin’, far as I can reckon. Maybe you got a bug in your ear.”
“My hearing’s fine.”
“So what’s your answer?”
“I want to think about it”
“What time is it?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“Time’s up. It’s decision time.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“There’s more, you know,” teased the candidate. “We ain’t even talked about my life as a grown-up.”
The reporter’s pulse raced. If there was more, his natural instinct wanted to hear it all. But that would mean an answer in the affirmative. Then there was the threat. Vidor Kingman hadn’t yet bought the paper. It was only a rumor. Did Shakespeare know better?
Hollice resolved to lie. “Okay. I’m in. Could be fun.”
Shakespeare grinned his widest grin ever, popped his next beer, and took a hearty swig before the first gas could escape the can. Next, he pulled up his T-shirt to reveal a small tattoo just above his navel. “Get a good look at that. Good’n close if you have to.”
Hollice leaned forward, reading the first letter, T, which was crudely drawn in a Gothic script “What’s it say?”
“‘Time waits for me.’”
“What’s it mean?”
“To you? Nothin’. But to me? Just about everything. Where I got it’s the proof you’re lookin for,” said Shakespeare with an amused grin. “Taylor State Prison. Just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.”
Bingo. Hollice gulped. “You did time?”
Shakespeare pulled his shirt back down. “So there you have it. Your proof. That ties us up. You and me for the long haul. All the way to Washington.”
“How much time?” asked Hollice.
“Twelve years. Best time a man could do. Straightened me out. Set me on the path to reclaim what my daddy took from me.”
“And what was that?”
“My name. My destiny.”
“Prison taught you to run for office?”
“Prison taught me to stop runnin’ and hold my ground. Inside, you see, there’s no place to go. You either stand tall or take it up the ass. And I wasn’t gonna take it no more, if you get my meaning,” said Shakespeare in a sudden and somber voice. “Grifters—like my old man—they were always runnin’. Movin’ on before anybody could catch on to their coattails.”
“How’d you get pinched?”
“Oh, I’d been runnin’ this career scam up and down the Carolinas. Sellin’ opportunity overseas. Three-piece suit. Nice haircut. But with a different face.” He laughed.
“Country was in recession. I’d place an ad in the newspaper and charge two hundred and fifty dollars for a one-day seminar about jobs in exotic places like the Philippines and Saudi Arabia. Had this telephone set up on a speaker box and we’d call my partner in some godforsaken place and teleconference part of the meeting. Except I wouldn’t be calling overseas. I’d set the dialer up on the phone so the furthest it could call was the Ramada Inn a few blocks away. My partner would take calls from the fellahs in the room. Later I’d show some charts and give ‘em some bullshit IQ tests to assess whether they’re corporate material.”
“Lemme guess. They all passed.”
“You’re right with me. Anyway, I’d shake hands and take their deposits, making sure to close shop by two o’clock so we could make it to the bank and cash the checks before anybody got wind of us. Nightfall, we’d be in the next county.”
“But you got caught anyway.”
“Yup. My partner dropped a dime and gave me up. Best thing that ever happened to me. If I saw the rat bastard today, I’d probably give him a kiss,” mused Shakespeare.
“And this former partner?” said Hollice, hoping for some kind of lead he could run down.
“He’s dead. At least I’m pretty sure.”
“How would you know?”
“Cuz I know the fellah that killed him. Former cellmate from Taylor who thought he was doing me a favor. Sent me a letter. It was pretty descriptive,” said Shakespeare.
As Hollice’s stomach turned, he pressed on. “What about your prison records?”
“A little work and a lotta luck. First dollar I made after I got out went right back into the joint. I paid a trustee to lose my records in the incinerator. Pictures. Prints.”
“There’s got to be copies.”
“Dare you to find ‘em. Back then there weren’t no national databases for us criminal types. All that was left to destroy were the state and local records. A few dollars here, a favor there—”
“A little blackmail.”
“You’re catchin’ on. Not that hard to erase an alias. And before Taylor, all my arrests were juvenile. And those fingerprint records are sealed.”
“What about your face?” dug Hollice. “No pictures.”
“Somewhere, I reckon. But they don’t look like me.”
“Don’t tell me. You paid for plastic surgery.”
“Didn’t pay. Had me a little accident in the pen, so the state paid for the reconstruction. Dumb bastards never got a new picture before I was furloughed.”
Wiping his brow, Hollice slumped in his chair. It was all so overwhelming. Unbelievable. A totally tall tale, impossible to document with the exception of the tattoo. And Shakespeare could’ve gotten that anywhere.
“I know,” said Shakespeare. “It’s like swallowing a Big Mac in a single bite.”
“What am I supposed to do with this information?”
“Cure your curious soul.”
“I’m an atheist.”
“Of course you are!” Shakespeare slapped his knee. “You’re part of the God-forsaking cultural elite. Those that believe that the power of the pen is the only way to the ultimate truth.”
“I don’t analyze it that way.”
“Well, if you ever did, I’m here to tell you it ain’t so. Prison shows you that. There’s right and wrong, good and evil. And a jail cell is purgatory, where a man is given the choice to go one way or the other. Let’s take that Creole boy, Shoop de Jarnot, for example.”
“He didn’t choose. He died of food poisoning.”
“Sure he did. But there’s poison food and food that gets poisoned.”
“Excuse me? You saying he was murdered?”
“It’s a game in there. The guards as well as the cons. And money gets you just about anything you want. Cigarettes. Suicide hangings. Poison foods.”
“You killed Shoop de Jarnot?”
“I pushed the button. You see, I had this feeling he was gonna win that appeal that Dutton wrote for him. Not a whole lotta political play in that. Best I could do was make Dutton look like a good lawyer who couldn’t stomach capital punishment. Buncha intellectual hoo-ha a voter’d never get.” Shakespeare sat forward, thrilled at the prospect of sharing his genius. “But get Dutton to show up at a funeral for the murderin’ SOB, now, that’s a story I can make hay out of. Thanks to you, of course.”
Hollice swallowed hard. “But you’re confessing to murder here.”
“Good idea to know the fellah you’ll be serving.”
“Who do you serve?”
“Ain’t but two masters in the Grand Scheme.”
A flop sweat broke out on Hollice’s forehead, leaking through his thinning hair. His armpits swelled with fluid. How could a man confess to such an act? And where was the obvious flaw in Hollice’s character that would lead McCann to believe that he’d go along? Just like that. He’d never demonstrated that Machiavellian kind of ambition. Or had he? He suddenly had a mind to bolt, hit the road running, and stop the first damn cop he passed on the highway. Tell the whole story.
But Shakespeare killed Shoop de Jarnot. He could kill you.
Perspiration had darkened Hollice’s pink shirt to magenta. “
This is too much. You’re pulling my chain.”
“Am I?”
“You’ve had too much to drink. Let’s finish this some other time. Sober.”
Hollice stood to leave, but found Shakespeare’s boot stuck in his chest, shoving him back down into the couch. “Now, that wasn’t our deal. We’d talk as long as the beer lasts. Why don’t you dry off? Have another cool one and ask me some more questions.”
Questions?
Hollice feared another painful boot in the chest. The candidate was worse than a drunk. Alcoholic. The awful kind of drunk who turned sour and bitter at the first sip. A drunk who would lie for affection. It was chemical, hoped the reporter. He’d been late, the candidate had been drinking, and the booze in Shakespeare’s brain had left him contemptible, unbalanced, and irrational. Surely he would sleep it off, call Hollice the next day, and apologize.
It was all one big joke.
A benign question surfaced in time to kill the awkward silence. Words caught in Hollice’s dry throat, so he softened his larynx with a powerful gulp of the warming brew. “So why politics?” he asked, not giving a crap about the answer. He wanted out.
“Dumb question,” answered Shakespeare. “Fool’s question.”
And with that, the candidate’s relaxed posture slowly stiffened, the good ol’ smile diminishing to a smirk. Now, the right question? thought Shakespeare. It’d been there all along for him to pick out if the idiot had been listening half a whit.
It had been Shakespeare’s personal chore to push Hollice to the brink of the man’s personal code. Place him square in the middle of the moral crossroads and see which side he’d chose. Ally? Or enemy?
And Hollice had made his choice.
“Why politics?” answered Shakespeare in his best political persona. “Well, it’s the ultimate grift, ain’t it?”
“You want to put the con back in Congress,” Hollice tried to joke.
“I’ll do you one better. Politics is the only con where the mark wants to be had.”
And nobody puts you in prison.
Hollice followed up quickly, but his voice was faltering, filling with phlegm. “What about…You said something about truth. The farmer who broke open his own rotten melons?”
What about him?
“Truth is the greatest con of all,” remarked Shakespeare, whose mind flashed back to the books he’d piled in his cell. Books of self-awareness. Self-esteem. Philosophy. Religion. Each one of ‘em lamenting about the absolute truth. And not a one of ‘em agreed with the other. From Buddha to Nietzsche and every motherfucker in between. Liars all. Betrayed by their own conceited intellects.
“It took me a while, but I finally figured it. Ain’t no such thing as absolute truth. Only real truth is the way the other fellah sees it.” With his index fingers Shakespeare traced an imaginary frame around himself. “It’s like this. You see me. You hear what I say. You don’t know if it’s true or false. But it scares you. And once I know that you’re scared, that’s all the truth I need to know. Get me?”
Show me the politician that goes to jail and I’ll show you a dog with wings, an old con had told Shakespeare, wise and cement-hardened. They the ones that build the joints. Ain’t a one of ‘em ever bent over when he didn’t want it.
“Prison don’t teach a man,” continued Shakespeare. “It changes him into an animal that don’t know nothin’ more than four walls and the shiv under his mattress that keeps him safe. That’s why they always go runnin’ back.”
“But not you.”
“Not me,” said the candidate, popping open another beer and offering it to Hollice.
Half a can later, Hollice finally came up for air.
“Pretty thirsty, huh?”
“Dry out here.” But the brew that Hollice thought might calm his nerves made his heart flutter and put a buzz in his head. The reporter’s new tack was to keep the candidate talking until the man was drunk himself. A danger to nobody. Especially Hollice. Afterward the reporter would make a fast exit and be off to make copies of the tape and find himself a lawyer.
“What I don’t understand was how you figured to get in the race in the first place. Hammond was unbeatable, and now that I think about it, you didn’t beat him. If he hadn’t fallen off his horse…”
Shakespeare answered the question inside his own head.
I watched the old man. He was like a clock—he ‘d wake up drinking, work, drink some more, work, then rest. And when Hurricane was done resting, he ‘d drink himself into a stupor.
Hollice caught the sudden daze in Shakespeare. The faraway look. Hell if the alcohol wasn’t finally doing its dirty work. Hollice offered up another beer. “You empty? How about another?”
Those dogs. The old man loved those dogs. Couldn’t bear if they ever got away from him. So what I did was cut up two live stew rabbits and drag ‘em behind a rented horse. Those hounds, they took to that blood like it was stink on a turnip. I knew it wouldn’t be long before that ol’ mare got lathered and tossed ol’ Hurricane for a loop.
The candidate’s gaze was fixed and unwavering. Trancelike. Hollice was certain the booze had finally found the cerebral cortex.
The hard part was the embolism. Couldn’t guarantee if the mare threw the old man that he’d die. Tough old fucker, found him up against the tree and breathin’ hard. Probably the booze that saved him from a broken neck. Yet all I had to do was act like I was a doctor, and he let me do what I pleased. I found a scuff mark on Hurricane’s neck. Good spot to stick a needle. After that, wasn’t but a second before I found the vein and fired off a syringe full of air. Then bingo! It was over in a heartbeat.
“Mr. McCann?” asked Hollice, looking for some kind of response.
He was the incumbent. He needed to go.
“Fifteen primary points. That’s all Shakes McCann needed to get in the big race. Now look at me.”
Oh, Hollice looked. He looked dead-on at Shakespeare and finally saw what was coming, tracing the outline of Shakespeare’s dangling left arm. The one that had always held a beer ripe and ready for another swig. Only the beer was gone. Dangling from Shakespeare’s hand was a folding Buck Knife, locked open and twisting in his grip.
“I killed Hurricane because I couldn’t beat him,” whispered Shakespeare.
But I can beat Dutton.
Easing closer, he slipped the knife inside Hollice’s coat, pulling away the flap until the pocket and the tape recorder were clearly visible, including that little red light that indicated extended recording mode.
“It hurts being right all the time,” said the melancholy candidate.
“Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything—”
“Be quiet.”
Hollice obeyed, shuddering a nod. His eyes wide like a stupefied rodent caught in the blaze of oncoming headlights. Shakespeare stood slowly and eased across to the sofa. A warm stain appeared between Hollice’s legs as fear released his bladder. Then, speaking with a wispy inflection, he said, “I’m not a fighter.”
“I know,” whispered back Shakespeare, having sized up his mark long before he ever thought to strike. “Just relax. It’ll be over in just a little moment.”
Shakespeare straddled Hollice like a lover, his small frame suddenly feminine in the manner it sat astride his victim, his shadow casting a calming darkness.
Hollice never saw the blade again. Shakespeare simply pulled his victim’s head to his chest in a warm embrace and slid the knife just underneath the reporter’s skullcap. Hollice tensed but felt nothing. His spinal cord severed, all that was left were motor functions. His arms flailed briefly and his pelvis twisted under Shakespeare’s bantam weight. But medically speaking, Hollice was already dead.
He’d died knowing the truth.
All excepting that story about the house. It didn’t belong to Shakespeare. It was just an old slab and Sheetrock shack he’d known about since his photo-finishing days. He knew that the owner had passed away and the property was in permanent probate. He kne
w of the small generator in the garage that could power some light in the house. Most important, he knew of the dry well that was fifty paces off the back porch, covered by scrub brush and weathered two-by-sixes. He rolled Hollice’s rug-wrapped corpse in a rusted wheelbarrow, then dumped it down the hole. One hundred feet.
To erase the crime, all the house required was a lit cigarette taped to a beer can full of kerosene. The fingerprints were lost in a blaze that lit up the sky for miles around. It would be ashes before fire crews would arrive. By then, Shakespeare had rolled Hollice’s car into a nearby reservoir. His own car was parked inconspicuously at an all-night watering hole a mile farther up the highway. Only a fifteen-minute hike.
Heading back toward the Island, he completed his task. Dialing from a cellular phone, he added a message to Hollice’s Daily Mirror mailbox.
“Hello. This is Hollice Waters and you’ve reached my voice mail. Please leave a message.”
“Hollice, ol’ buddy. This is Shakespeare McCann. And the last time I got stood up, she was a helluva lot prettier than you. Guess you got a good reason. Hope she was worth it. Give me a call whenever you want that interview. I’m off to candidate’s slumberland. G’night.”
Inevitably the Cathedral PD investigators got around to replaying Hollice’s messages, finding the mailbox nearly at its electronic capacity. Amongst the cavalcade of usual rumors and tips, Shakespeare’s singular call was merely one of many, sandwiched in between the usual political hearsay, a confirmed credit card reservation at a Guadalajara hotel for that very same weekend, and a death threat from an alleged Dutton supporter.
The tangle left the investigators scratching their heads.
THREE
“MR. DUTTON. Along with donations from what might be called your average voters, back in July you were endorsed with a thousand-dollar donation from African-American activist Jamal La Croix. In a time when black role models such as O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, and Snoop Doggy Dog are suffering so many indignities in the press and the courts, how do you see yourself filling those shoes?”
Mitch made a smooth turn from the imagined questioner to the TV camera, giving himself a slight moment of thoughtful contemplation before answering. “In a country where we have over twenty-seven million African-Americans, a great many of whom are adults who get up every morning, send their children to school, and go to jobs, we have better than sixty percent of our African-American population living above the poverty level, a significant improvement over twenty years ago when it was forty percent. These good people are the role models of today—”
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