The Clan of the Cats

by Robert Adams

  It was at that point that the scarred man — who had insisted on phoning up a neighbor with a phone, then had had to wait while his wife was fetched to talk to him — returned to the room, saying, “Sher’ff, Depity Fontaine wants you to call him and so does Dr. Kilpatrick over to the hospital.”

  With a brusque “Thank’y, Billy; be back fast as I can, Milo,” the big man departed.

  Sipping at a beer — he did not smoke and had politely declined any of the whisky — Billy Crawford proved a veritable fountain of information about Sheriff Sherwood Chamberlin, and there was, Milo soon became aware, much to tell of his sometime comrade-in-arms.

  “My paw and Sher’ff Chamberlin, they come back to the county from the war ’bout the same time, Mr. Moray, sir. They both went back to work out to the gravel pits, but the sher’ff, he didn’t stay long, for all that Mr. Royal, hisself, offered for to up his pay and make him a supervisor if he would stay. Naw, he moved down to D.C. and went on the cops, there, found out he liked cop work and commenced at taking college courses in it.

  “He’d married Betty Wading within a year of coming home, but she just couldn’t seem to get to like living in D.C., so he took a little house out on Yellow Creek Road

  for her and come out here as often as he could to be with her. Long about ’fifty-two or -three, I think it was, old Sher’ff Quinn, his car blowed a tire on a wet road and rolled over three, four times and burnt up with him in it.

  “He’d been sher’ff since way back when, and at his fun’ral, old Mr. Royal took Sher’ff Chamberlin aside and tol’ him he wanted him to come back to the county and be sher’ff.”

  “To run for sheriff, Billy?” inquired Milo. “To leave a secure job and run for sheriff?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Moray, sir; you don’t unnerstand. See, back then, Mr. Royal, he owned this county — lock, stock and barr’l — just like his paw afore him, and his grandpaw and all. Aw, it was elections and all, for the looks of things, but everbody knowed that whosomever Mr. Royal was for, he was gone win whatever he was runnin’ for. And all the sher’ff would tell him, they say, was he’d think on it and pray on it and let him know ’bout it.”

  Milo chuckled. “That sounds just like the Chamberlin I knew, years back, Billy, damned if it doesn’t.”

  “Wal,” continued Crawford, “after a couple of months had gone on and the depities as was running things had fucked up real good and proper a Couple times and the fuckin’ state police had had to be called into the county one those times and still no word from the sher’ff, old Mr. Royal, he had hisself drove into D.C., had him a confab with some of the big shots the sher’ff worked for, then, then talked to the sher’ff.

  “I hear tell the sher’ff wouldn’t talk to Mr. Royal alone, naw, had a couple his D.C. officers with him and he laid it on the line to Mr. Royal, too, they say. He told the old man that was he to come out here and be sher’ff, he was gone be sher’ff of all the folks in the county, not just a fuckin’ errand boy for the Royal fambly, and that Mr. Royal had best get that straight up front and be ready to sign a witnessed contract that would say that and some other things or he could go back and make one his depities the sher’ff.

  “And what happened then, Billy?” asked Milo.

  The slight man grinned, took a sip of beer and shook his scar-shiny head once. “Wal, Mr. Royal, he won’t no way use to being talked to that way by hardly nobody and he invited the sher’ff to hell in a fuckin’ leaky bucket and stomped out and drove back out here, is what. But then that very next month, the guvamint mens, they caught a passel of moonshiners in the fuckin’ act . . . and two of them was county depities. The nextest day after he heard ’bout all that fuckin’ shit, Mr. Royal, he went back into D.C. and ate him a heapin’ helpin’ of crow. He signed ever’thing he was told to sign and when he come back, the sher’ff come with him.”

  Crawford took a real swallow of the beer, refilled his glass from the bottle and went on. “The sher’ff, he went th’ough his inher’ted hashup like a dose of salts, Mr. Moray, sir. Of the three depities was left, one was prosecuted and sent to jail for stealing from the county and the other two jest lit out for parts unknown. He brung in three retired D.C. cops to help him hold things down, then got Mr. Royal to twist enough tails to get the state police to take on my paw and four other fellers in the next trooper training class they run.

  “He made Mr. Royal buy custom police cruisers with lights and sireens and all, got radios put in them and in the office, laid out reg’lar p’trol patterns on a county map and talked Mr. Royal round to paying the depities enough so’s they didn’t feel ’bliged to steal and take payoffs from roadhouses and cook moonshine jest to make ends meet, no more. Got so, they use to say, ever time the sher’ff he’d call in for another ’pointment for to talk to Mr. Royal, the old man would take to pounding his desk and th’owing things and slamming doors and all and yelling that the sher’ff was out to plumb bankrupt him . . . but he allus saw the sherff and talked to him and most allus done whatall the sher’ff wanted, too.

  “Mr. Royal’s kids had all died before him. His eldest boy was kicked by a hoss and kilt while he was playing polo at some ritzy place in Upper Marlboro, back in the thirties. His next-oldest boy was a bomber pilot that was lost in Europe, somewheres in World War Two, and his youngest boy was kilt in training right at the tag end of that war. His daughter, after she’d got loose from two no-count men she’d married, took to drinking so heavy she’d done had to be locked up in some private sanitarium till she kilt herself one night. Old Miz Royal, she took sick and died ’long bout nineteen and fifty, too, so Mr. Royal didn’ have no close relatives nowhere, and ever’body just figgered when he come to die, too, it was gonna be some kinda bad shake-up all over the county.

  “I tell you, Mr. Moray, sir, it was some damn fuckin’ shocked and flat flabbergasted folks here’bouts when his will was read, I tell you, sir. For all he’d spent a lot of time in his last ten or so years yellin’ to ever’body could hear him ’bout how the sher’ff was the worstest mistake he’d ever made, was drownedin’ him and his corporation and the county in red ink, was mollycoddlin’ his damn depities and ridin’ roughshod over the better folks in the county, it was none other than Sher’ff Sherwood Chamberlin he left his controllin’ int’rest in all three his corporations to.”

  Milo whistled and shook his head. “So now Chamberlin owns this county, huh?”

  “Not really, naw, sir, Mr. Moray,” replied Crawford. “He could, and no fuckin’ mistake about er, was he a mind. But no more’n a week or so after he’d inher’ted ever’thing, he drove down to D.C. and talked to a lot of folks and then talked to folks the first bunch had sent him to and come back up here with a bunch more, one of them a perfessional county manager and the rest either from the state guvamint or the U.S. guvamint. He ’lowed as how it weren’t right and proper for no man to die and jest give a whole county and ever’thing in it to another’n, said it won’t democratic and that he’d fought a war for democracy and was willing to fight as many more as he had to, come to that. He ’lowed as how nobody should be sher’ff for life, neither, and said the next elections was gonna be honest to God real elections with no fixes on nuthin’ or there’d be hell to pay.”

  “And yet, I see he’s still county sheriff,” said Milo, puffing at his old pipe.

  “All he’s done and seen done for thishere county and all, Mr. Moray, sir,” said Crawford, with feeling, “it jest plumb ain’t no livin’ man anybody’d have for sher’ff but him, Sherwood Chamberlin.”

  As if on cue, Sherwood Chamberlin opened the door and came back into the private dining room. His face was solemn and his voice, when he spoke, grim. “Milo, Billy, I just got through talkin’ to Dr. Kilpatrick, over to County Gen’rul. Bubba Rigny was a DOA — dead on arrival at the emergency room.”

  Chapter XI

  Milo set down his pipe with meticulous care, laid both hands flat on the table and addressed the lawman. “It was self-defense, of course, Chamberlin .
. . not that I meant to do more than beat him insensible. I have an attorney in New York City. I’ll have to ring him up and get a local recommendation. Whatever the bond is, I can post it; even if I don’t have enough cash on me, my attorney can wire me the difference.”

  “I seen it all, too, Sher’ff, ever’ minnit of it,” said Crawford, soberly. “Bubba and Wally and Abner set out to beat Mr. Moray and he jest defended hisself, was all. Bubba’s beat me a whole hell of a lot worse than Mr. Moray beat him. I’ll swear on the Bible to ever’ bit of it, too . . .”

  Chamberlin picked up his glass of whisky and drained it off with a working of his prominent Adam’s apple, then said, “Relax, the both of you, jest relax, hear. If anybody kilt Bubba Rigny, it was Bubba Rigny. Seems he come out of it in the meat wagon, see, and beat up on pore Claude Tatum some kinda bad, then got the damn back door opened and jumped out the meat wagon that was jest then doing over sixty on the fuckin’ highway, That alone likely kilt the crazy fucker, but then too one my depities, Chuck Fontaine, was right behind in a cruiser and so close he couldn’t help but run right over Bubba’s body.”

  The lawman shrugged, and as he hooked a finger around the neck of the whisky bottle and began to pour more of the dark-amber fluid into his glass, he declared, “It’s gone hurt Bubba’s pore paw and maw and some others, likely, but not as bad prob’ly as it was sure as hell goin’ to if he’d lived long enough to do suthin’ would see him in the penitent’ry ’stead of jest in my lockup or the county farm, if not the chair or in a state boobyhatch for life. Bubba, he never was swung together too tight, see, Milo; he was a murder jest waitin’ to happun from the time he was jest a tad. He got some kinda charge out of hurtin’ other folks and animals and all; he was jest born mean, seemed like, and he dint never get no diffrunt or no better. Most his kin wouldn’t have ary a particle to do with him from the time he was no more’n ten or twelve; after he beat his pore paw near to death when he was ’bout fourteen, he was put in the reform school for a couple years, but all that seemed to do was make the fucker meaner.

  “Whin the war started up and all, lots the young fellers started ’listin’, but natcherly, wouldn’ any of the services take on Bubba, not with his record. The Marines come closest to takin’ him, but fin’ly even they turned him down, and that really tore his asshole, too, ’cause his paw had been a Marine in World War Two and had got shot up on New Georgia Island by the Japs.

  Now, Bubba Rigny’d done beat on Billy, here, afore — hell, big as he allus was for his age, he’d beat on jest ’bout ever’body he’d went to school with — and whin Billy come home on a leave afore be was to be sent over to Vietnam, Bubba went after him. But this was afore Billy’d done lost part his leg, see, and he’d been taught a whole hell of a lot of hand-to-hand and he ended up putting Bubba in the fuckin’ hospital in a fair fight was seed by a dozen or more people. And of course Billy’d done shipped out by the time Bubba was on the street again.

  That Bubba Rigny was jest no good, crazy, no-count; he was headed almost from the day he was borned for a lifer’s cell or the ’lectric chair or some pore cop’s bullet. This way, the way it went down’s for the best, his death cain’t be on nobody’s conscience, see. It was God’s will, is all.”

  * * *

  The copter that lifted off from his uncle’s pad beyond the outside swimming pool was not one of the senator’s; its three-man crew — despite their carefully tailored clothing and manners as carefully polished as their gleaming shoes — had security bodyguards written all over them in foot-high Day-Glo letters, and James Bedford would have been willing to bet ten years’ worth of income that the innocuous-appearing executive copter was not only well armored but was also fitted with a whole plethora of unpleasant and/or fatal surprises for any attacker to encounter.

  Soon after he had been seated and served a sealed sipper of hot, fragrant coffee, one of the crew had opened an underseat locker and produced what looked at first to be a small shoulder-strapped lettercase. Going through it slowly, he courteously showed Bedford just how to manipulate the buttons and catches to open it with a slight hiss and disclose a thickly padded interior.

  “Now, sir, when you close it back up, be certain to press one or both thumbs on these two buttons. After that, only the imprints of your thumbs will be able to release the lock until it is once more opened and reset with another print, you see; anyone who should attempt it will receive a most unhealthy shock.” The man allowed the ghost of a smile to flit across his face in indication of a species of grim joke.

  “You see, sir, as you most likely are aware, the effects of cabin pressurization and depressurization on explosive-tipped small-arms ammunition remains, despite all the advances in weapons technology of late, sometimes distressingly less than pleasant. In the air marshals’ cubicle on board the aircraft, you will of course surrender your personal weapons and spare ammo. At that time, you will place the weapons and munitions inside this case and personally secure the catches, then there can be no slightest question that anyone might tinker with your weapons or replace them with other similar ones en route to your destination. Please note down or record the serial number of this case to guard against duplication of cases, for all of this issue are otherwise identical.” He flitted another smile. “Government-issue.

  “Immediately the cabin has been depressurized. sir, the air marshal will return your cased weapons and you should at that time carefully check them and their loads, actions, et cetera, before reholstering them.

  “If, on occasions other than this morning, you are proceeding unescorted through normal airport security, you must report to the air marshal headquarters, display your identification documents and your federal authority to bear weapons, then submit your weapons, ammunition and this case for examination.

  “Procedures vary, after all, depending mostly upon the size of the installation. In some of the smaller ones, your weapons will be returned and you will be conducted either to the VIP section or to the plane, if it is ready to board; on board, you will encase your weapons for the on-board marshal as earlier outlined.

  “However, in larger installations, you will be expected to encase them in the airport headquarters of the marshals and will then be delivered to the VIP section or plane by way of guarded, armored transport — sometimes ground car or underground rail, sometimes copter.

  “Do you have any questions about anything I have described or discussed here this morning, sir? Please feel free to ask me about anything. Being certain that persons such as yourself understand all that must be done is a part of my function.”

  “Just one, for now,” replied Bedford. “What’s going to happen when and if I should actually feel constrained to shoot someone? How deep in the soup am I going to be, then?”

  The man suffused his voice and manner with infinite reassurance. “Sir, by now every VIP Security headquarters in the country if not the world has been in receipt of a printout of your name, your description, your authorizations and all other pertinent information. Therefore, should you determine termination of someone to be a necessary thing, do so; then you will present the laminated card you were issued to the first person on the scene who produces VIP Security Service identification. Do not surrender your weapon to anyone for any reason unless it is a federal marshal or a properly identified VIPSS representative or operative. Anyone else who demands your weapon without such identification must be considered hostile and so dealt with, up to and certainly including termination by gunfire.”

  “But what if I make an error of judgment and blow away an innocent party?” probed Bedford. “What happens if I make a snap judgment, say, and shoot one of those murderous little bomblets into a maid or waiter or some tourist asking directions of me?”

  The man grimaced, then shrugged. “Sir, were your particular life and well-being not considered to be of some degree of value to our nation, you would not be in possession of the cards or this case, nor would you be carrying weapons legally or, indeed, flying in this c
opter and guarded by this team.

  “In this twenty-first-century world, humankind are in no way, shape or form considered to be an endangered species and so are not, cannot be considered of comparable importance to someone like you, sir . . . not by anyone with my service or a federal marshal, and only our two services now have any real jurisdiction over you and your defensive actions.”

  In other words, Bedford thought with an apprehensive chill, I and anyone else with like credentials am now holder of a license to commit cold-blooded murder. Uncle Taylor is right — this world of ours is become a dangerous jungle and all of us now live under the law of a jungle. How the hell did our United States of America ever come to this?

  General Eustace Barstow, U.S.A., or Milo Moray could to some extent have enlightened him in regard to that question, but as the former had died before the turn of the century and the other was out of the county and he never had or was to meet either of them anyway, the question was never resolved in his mind.

  * * *

  Half asleep, Milo received a telepathic beaming from the mother cat in the den area: Leader of the two-legs, a mated pair of my kind are in the entry to my den. One of them is of my litter thrown the cold time before the cold time before the cold time before this cold time. They have been told of all you have done for cats, of how you do not seek to kill cats, of your hatred of wolves. They would come close to you and smell you that they better may know you, but you first must open the rock that you used to seal the entry passage.”