Dr Ambara said, ‘I shall do my best to find you an adept. That is sufficient.’
‘Well, it will have to do for now,’ Randolph replied. ‘But I won’t be able to see my way clear to paying out any money, not unless I know what you really want out of this.’
Dr Ambara suddenly turned and challenged Randolph with tear-filled eyes. ‘My wife, Mr Clare. That is what I want.’
‘Your wife?’
Dr Ambara nodded vehemently. ‘Her name was Muda. She died three years ago in an automobile accident on Poplar. I kissed her good-bye in the morning and then halfway through the afternoon, the Memphis police called me to say that she was dead.’
Randolph said, I'm sorry. You should have told me.’
‘You have quite enough grief of your own, Mr Clare.’
Randolph slowly rubbed his cheek. ‘So you want to get in touch with your wife just as much as I want to get in touch with mine?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Ambara.
‘Then why didn’t you? Three years is a long time. You had the contacts. Couldn’t you find an adept before this?’
‘Mr Clare, I simply couldn’t afford it. I contacted one man and he wanted half a million dollars. Another wanted less but had insufficient experience. I do not mind the risk to my own life, you understand, but I do not wish to die without seeing Muda again, and I do not wish to put her existence at risk.’
He blew his nose and then said, ‘When you came to the clinic, Mr Clare, you came to me as a possible hope in spite of your tragedy. If you perhaps could put up the money to hire a skilful adept, then I too could benefit. But I had to be cautious in my approaches to you. I did not want you to think I was soliciting money from you, or favours, or that this was some kind of elaborate confidence trick to take advantage of your grief. Also, I could not deceive you about the dangers involved, which are quite real.’
Randolph said, ‘I’m going to have to go home and think this over.’
‘I am not begging you,’ Dr Ambara told him.
‘No, I know that,’ Randolph said. ‘But what you’ve told me today … that’s a lot to digest. I lost my entire family this week, and yet in the same week I’ve been told that I can speak to them again even though they’re dead. I’ve also been warned about demons and witches and creatures with grey faces, like zombies. You have to admit, that’s a lot to swallow. It takes most people most of their lives just to accept that their loved ones have been taken from them, let alone any of this other business.’
Dr Ambara said, ‘Perhaps I have made a mistake.’
‘No,’ Randolph reassured him. ‘No mistake. But maybe a little more honesty would have helped.’
‘You are an American,’ Dr Ambara remarked, and there was more to this reply than was apparent.
They shook hands and then the doctor walked away, stiff-legged, through the mid-morning haze. Randolph watched him briefly, then crossed the parking lot to his gold-coloured Mercedes, opened the door and climbed in. As the buckle-up signal sounded, he was sure he heard someone speak his name but the voice was almost exactly at the same high pitch as the signal so that it was impossible for him to tell who it was, or even if he had really heard it at all.
He sat frowning, the ignition key poised in his hand, his ears straining, but he heard nothing more. He shook his head to clear it. Miles Linklater had warned him that he might experience hallucinations about Marmie and the children for a long time to come; he might hear their voices, glimpse them at crowded airports, feel their touch when he was half-asleep.
But nonetheless he had the distinct feeling that whatever the voice had said, however much of an hallucination it might have been, it was a warning, a message from Marmie to take care of himself.
He looked around. Tourists passed by, gaudy and solemn like saltimbanques from a disbanded carnival. A small boy skateboarded deftly between the parked cars. The tulip trees nodded and shivered in the fog, as if they were excited. There was something, somebody, around … some feeling that made Randolph hesitate for one more moment before starting the car.
Then he saw what it was. A motorcycle policeman in a khaki shirt and domed helmet, his eyes concealed behind mirrored sunglasses, watching him intently from the opposite side of the parking lot.
At first Randolph thought he must be mistaken. Why should a cop be watching him?
But as he started up the Mercedes and pulled out of the parking space, he saw the man turn his head to follow him. There was no question about it, Randolph was under observation. As he drove west along Park Avenue towards Lamar between trees that leaned over the highway like attenuated ghosts, he checked the rearview mirror and he could see that the cop had mounted his motorcycle and was riding attentively twenty yards behind.
Randolph deliberately gave no indication that he had spotted the policeman but drove straight back to Clare Castle by the quickest route. As he turned into the gateway, he saw the policeman draw up outside for a moment, then engage his clutch and speed off, back towards the city.
Charles opened the door for him, serious-faced, dressed in black. ‘Mr Clare?’ he asked, as if he could sense that something unusual had happened.
But Randolph simply stepped into the house, walked briskly across the hallway and asked, ‘Did you lay out my black suit? We have to be at the airport by two o’clock to meet the plane.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Charles answered, his voice constricted by sorrow. ‘I laid out your black suit.’
CHAPTER TEN
Orbus Greene sat like an emperor at his accustomed table at the Four Flames restaurant, steadily gorging his way through the house specialty of Chateaubriand Bouquetiere for two. Waiters hurried back and forth, bringing him fresh baskets of muffins, refilled gravy boats, dishes of sweet potatoes and buttered asparagus. Apart from his ever-present bodyguards, who ate nothing, Orbus was lunching alone, and that was the way he preferred it. So did most of those Memphis businessmen who had ever had the misfortune to join him for a meal. Even Waverley Grace-worthy had once admitted that watching Orbus eat was ‘not a pretty sight.’
Dancing and ducking like a worried welterweight boxer, the maitre d’ approached from the other side of the restaurant. ‘Mr Greene, is everything satisfactory?’
Orbus nodded with his mouth full and his lips glistening with butter.
‘I am sorry to have to interrupt your meal, Mr Greene, but …’
Orbus lifted the large white linen napkin that was tucked into his collar and dabbed at his mouth. His attendants raised their cold, empty eyes and stared at the maitre d’ as if it would take only one word out of place to precipitate instant death.
‘Well?’ asked Orbus.
‘I have been asked to direct your attention, Mr Greene, to the fact that Mr Graceworthy is waiting outside in his limousine. He would very much appreciate it if you could leave your table for just a moment and speak to him.’
Orbus shifted his enormous white-suited bulk in the oversized oak chair the management of the Four Flames had provided for him. His pouchy eyes rolled down towards his plate where his half-finished Chateaubriand lay waiting for him, bloody and rare, and then across to the restaurant window through which the front grille of Waverley’s Cadillac could be glimpsed, parked on the other side of Poplar Street.
Without a word, Orbus cut himself another slice of steak and chewed it with deliberation. Only when he had swallowed it and wiped his mouth again did he beckon to his boys and say, ‘Mr Graceworthy desires to have words. Let’s humour him, shall we?’
Nobody was fooled, of course. Not the maitre d’, who knew from crucifying experience what happened to anybody who tried to disturb Orbus Greene during the sacred piggery of lunchtime; nor the boys either, who were regularly called upon to exercise some of their least engaging skills on those who interrupted Orbus while he was eating. In uncharacteristic self-mockery, or in the sheer delight of insatiable greed, Orbus often referred to Memphis and its many restaurants as his ‘rooting-ground’ because it was only in Memphis th
at he could find the dry-barbecued pork ribs, the smoked duckling, the blackened redfish and the oysters Bienville that he considered the fundamentals not just of civilized life, but of life itself.
The bodyguards assisted Orbus to heave and sweat his way out of his chair. Then, covertly watched by the other diners, they escorted him with slitty-eyed overprotective-ness out the door and across Poplar, a procession that could have been painted by Brueghel. It was midday now, the haze had been burned away by the sun and the concrete pavement glared like desert sand. Waverley Graceworthy’s Cadillac, perfectly waxed, was close to the kerb, its bodywork a galaxy of reflected stars. Its engine whistled softly to sustain the air conditioning inside. All of its darkly tinted windows were closed tight.
One of Orbus’s men insolently rapped on the rear window with his knuckle even though he knew that he could be clearly observed from inside the limousine. Orbus stood on the sidewalk sweating until the Cadillac’s door swung open, a breath of chilled air rippled out and Waverley Graceworthy said in an elegant whisper, ‘Take a seat, Orbus. It must be hot out there.’
With his attendants clutching at his sides and his elbows to help him lower himself, Orbus struggled into the car. The suspension dipped and bounced. When at last Orbus’s right leg had been forced inside, the door was closed with a subdued click, like the door of a safe. The bodyguards assembled themselves untidily against a nearby wall, where they combed their hair and picked at their fingernails with knives.
Waverley Graceworthy looked a little peaked. He was dressed in the palest of dove-greys and he was sipping orange-flavoured Perrier water from a tall, frosted highball glass.
‘I’m so sorry to have interrupted your devotions,’ he said, and the word ‘devotions’ utterly sterilized any apology he might have been attempting to make.
‘Is it so urgent?’ Orbus asked, dragging out his huge green handkerchief and burying his face in it. He suppressed a belch and the entire limousine shuddered. Waverley looked the other way in thinly disguised disgust.
‘Randolph Clare is behaving unpredictably,’ Waverley began. ‘I don’t know what he’s up to but he’s been downtown to see some black character called Jimmy the Rib, and apparently Jimmy the Rib has told him about Reece.’
‘Has he connected Reece with you?’ Orbus asked, tucking away his handkerchief.
‘Not so far, but Reece is making absolutely sure that he doesn’t.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Orbus, ‘I think Reece has gone way over the top. I don’t disagree with the principle of having a little tame muscle around to make sure business runs smooth, but Reece is a homicidal maniac. I mean, look at what he did to Randolph’s family. He was supposed to scare them, for God’s sake, not massacre them. Marmie Clare was a pretty woman, a fine woman. If I had been a different kind of man, I would have appreciated a woman like that myself.’
‘What are you saying?’ Waverley asked testily. ‘That we should allow Clare Cottonseed to expand uncontrolled, let them snatch all the choice contracts right out from under our noses? You needed that Sun-Taste contract, Orbus. What are your half-year figures going to look like unless you get it? Before we know it, Clare will be bigger and more profitable than the rest of us put together and the Cottonseed Association is going to look like the sick man of Memphis.’
‘I still don’t know why you have to take such extreme measures,’ Orbus told him. ‘A few fires, fine and dandy. A couple of cockroaches introduced surreptitiously into the product. That’s all you need. That’s the way you dealt with Shem Owen when he started to act up. Brought him to heel in days.’
‘Randolph Clare is no Shem Owen, not by a long shot,’ Waverley retorted.
‘But we’ve got him begging for assistance already,’ Orbus reminded him. ‘When he called me yesterday asking the Association to help him out, he wasn’t playacting, he was serious. You could maybe make it a condition that we continue to supply him permanently, even after he’s made up the shortfall.’
‘He won’t agree to that,’ Waverley snapped.
‘In that case, he’s probably going to lose Sun-Taste anyway, so what are you so fired up about?’
Waverley stared at Orbus venomously. ‘What the hell do you think? Supposing he does lose Sun-Taste, he’ll still be alive, won’t he? He’ll still be in business and before we know it, he’ll be back up behind us again, breathing down our necks.’
Orbus frowned. He had never seen Waverley so agitated. He had certainly never heard him speak so openly and so emphatically about destroying one of his competitors.
‘You’re talking about murder here, Waverley,’ he said soberly.
‘I’m talking about survival,’ Waverley said, his cheeks beginning to mottle.
‘Is there something personal in this? I know you and Randolph don’t get along too good, but … but this is beginning to sound like something different.’
Waverley touched his face with his fingertips as if to make sure it was still on straight, as if it were a mask rather than a real face. ‘Chief Moyne is keeping tabs on Randolph. If he shows any signs of poking his nose in too far … well, Chief Moyne is keeping in touch.’
‘And what about this black man? The one who told Randolph about Reece.’
‘I told you,’ Waverley said. ‘Reece will make sure he doesn’t go spreading stories like that anywhere else.’
Orbus shifted his weight from one huge buttock to the other. ‘Does that mean I’m going to be reading about him in the Press-Scimitar tomorrow morning? “Black Man Found Dismembered With Chain Saw in the Meeman-Shelby Forest”? I have to tell you, Waverley, this is getting distinctly out of hand.’
‘Orbus,’ said Waverley coldly, ‘it’s Randolph’s life or yours, believe me.’
Orbus was silent. At last he asked, ‘What am I going to tell him about his Sun-Taste proposal?’
Orbus was tempted to say he would like to pass the message on to Randolph not to bother about making any deals because Waverley would have him killed before they could sign the papers, but he wisely surmised that Waverley had taken about as much sarcasm as he could stand for one day. He had always suspected that Waverley was a dangerous man; now he was beginning to see how utterly ruthless he could be.
Waverley said, ‘Stall him. Make some encouraging noises, as if we’re really considering it seriously. He has only seven days to make up his shortfall; the more time we waste, the less chance he’ll have to do any deals with anybody else.’
‘How’s the repair work shaping up out at Raleigh?’ Orbus asked.
Waverley smiled. ‘Slow, thanks to our friend. With any luck, they shouldn’t be back on line for another three days, maybe four.’
Orbus said, ‘All right then. What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to allow a decent period of time to pass after Randolph buries his family and then I’m going to reassess the business situation. That’s when I’m going to make my final decision. Our friend says that the half-year picture is even stronger than it looked last week, mainly because they sold off some of their docking interests and got rid of those warehouses up at Woodstock Industrial Park. Even if they do lose Sun-Taste, they could still be back up to ninety per cent of today’s production levels by August of next year, that’s the prediction.’
Orbus began to tug out his handkerchief again. Even with its air conditioning down to sixty degrees, the interior of the Cadillac was warm enough to make him sweat. ‘He’s a good manager, Randolph, you have to give him that.’
Waverley did not rise to that. Instead, he said, ‘Reece may be violent but he knows what he’s doing. He can make it look like suicide. “Grief-stricken Cottonseed Tycoon Decides to End It All.” You can read about that in the Press-Scimitar, my friend.’
Orbus wiped his face thoughtfully. He did not care for Randolph Clare. He disliked Randolph’s self-confidence, which he perceived as smugness, and he particularly disliked Randolph’s continuing refusal to become a member of the Cottonseed Association, which he p
erceived as arrogance. All the same, he was a less-than-enthusiastic supporter of Waverley’s strong-arm techniques, and even if he didn’t believe that other people’s lives were quite as sacred as his own, he still thought that they were reasonably sacred. There was nothing in the cottonseed-processing business, in Orbus’s opinion, actually worth killing for, although woe betide anybody who was stranded alone on a desert island with Orbus Greene and with nothing for either of them to eat.
He hooked one fat pinkie into the Cadillac’s door handle and opened the door.
Immediately one of his bodyguards leaped across and took his arm. ‘Everything okay, Mr Greene?’
Thank you, Vinnie, everything’s fine,’ puffed Orbus. ‘I think we can get ourselves back to that Chateaubriand now.’
‘Hey, I tell you what, Mr Greene, on account of you had to leave it midway and on account of it getting cold, I told them to knock up a fresh one for you.’
Orbus pinched Vinnie’s narrow, foxlike cheekbone. ‘You’re a good boy, Vinnie, you’re going to go far. Good afternoon, Waverley. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to keep me informed.’
‘You can count on that, Orbus,’ Waverley said, drumming his delicate fingers on the Cadillac’s armrest and wondering how long it would take for the smell of garlic and perspiration to filter away through the air-conditioning system.
Waverley Graceworthy disliked Orbus Greene so poisonously, and he was so obsessed with his own physical fragility and with the wrongs that he obsessively believed had been done to him, that he lived in a perpetual state of rancour. And lately his ire had increased, his bitterness had deepened. Two of his secretaries had resigned, one after the other, because of his caustic remarks. He was like a vituperative marionette, a vicious Charlie McCarthy. But no one had noticed that his ill temper had increased in direct and exact proportion to the rising success of Clare Cottonseed and the burgeoning wealth of Randolph Clare.
Death Trance Page 16
