Black Light

by Stephen Hunter

  So Nick sat with a combination of self-loathing and anxiety in the school’s lab, as Mr. Bennington, a large man who peered at the world through flat pale eyes over the half-crescents of reading glasses, bore down on him like the bad news that couldn’t be avoided.

  The test was distributed.

  A word flashed from the text that terrified him: pith ray. Now, what on earth was a pith ray? It seemed somehow to touch something he knew, someway, somehow, but … pith ray? He felt his mind purge itself of its few torturously acquired biological concepts, yielding a great empty void.

  Yet suddenly there was a commotion and he looked up astounded to see the headmaster, Mr. Wilmot, and his stepmother, the beautiful Beth, Miss Runner-up 1986, as everybody called her behind her back, earnestly conversing with Mr. Bennington.

  “Mr. Bama?” spoke Mr. Bennington in his best fake English accent. “Your services are required.”

  Nick turned the test over and obediently trotted to the front of the room, the immediate envy of all the other non-biology geniuses in the lab.

  “Well, aren’t you the lucky boy?” said Mr. Bennington imperiously. “Saved from yet another brush with distinction. Madame, take him, he’s yours, is he not?”

  Beth didn’t know quite what to do in the face of this Continental hauteur, but she managed her best thing, which was a smile of such glacial, aching beauty that its failure to impress Bennington proved for once and all the man was homo, and she nodded to Nick and out they went.

  “Beth, is anything wrong?” he asked. “Is Daddy all right?”

  “Keep the long face up, hon,” she said conspiratorially, “I told them he was in the hospital. He’s as right as rain.”

  Beth ushered Nick through the signing-out-of-school process, down the dank, frosty corridors—“It looks like a morgue, Nicky,” Beth whispered, and it would, to a girl who grew up in a town called Frog Junction, Arkansas—and out into the sunlight, where her gleaming black Mercedes S-class awaited. Nick could see that he was the last pickup: Beth’s own twins, Timmy and Jason, were in the backseat, looking grumpy for having been pulled out of soccer camp, Nick’s older brother, Jake, lounging in the front seat, his hair a thistly un-showered mess, as if he’d just been roused from his bed (he had), and his oldest sibling, Amy, pert and pretty and perfect, looked, as usual, pissed off at being hauled out of her job at the tennis club by a stepmother who was closer to her own age than her father’s.

  “What’s going on?” Nick asked.

  “Oh, you know your father. He called me at nine and said ‘Get the kids. All of ’em! It’s time for a party.’”

  “A party?” said Nick.

  “Yes,” said Beth, “a party. That’s what he said. You know your father and his ways.”

  They drove through town and in twenty minutes Beth had driven them up Cliff Drive to Hardscrabble Country Club, of which their daddy was majority owner. It was a vast, baronial building, red ragged stone and gabled windows, set on the highest point in a lush kingdom of golf course and tennis courts and swimming pools. The doorman ushered them in.

  “This way, please,” he said mysteriously. “Mrs. Bama, Jeff will park the car.”

  The whole unruly, unwashed mob straggled in, through the foyer and into the banquet hall, making odd sounds of confusion and alarm. What on earth?

  What they saw astonished them.

  The long table had a groaning buffet on it, all the styles of eggs in the world, sausages, pancakes, mounds of fluffy grits, fruits, pastries.

  “Golly,” said Nick.

  And next to it: Nick blinked. This was the craziest thing his father had ever done. Next to it, a twelve-foot, fully decorated Christmas tree, heaped underneath with presents.

  “Is everybody here?” his dad said, stepping out of the kitchen. “Come on, let’s eat. Then we’ll open presents.”

  “Uh, hello?” said Amy. “Earth to Daddy: It’s August. I thought Christmas was in December.”

  “Oh, we’ll have one then,” Red said. “But I thought we’d have one today too.”

  “Red,” said Beth, “when did you start planning this?”

  “Believe it or not, less than three hours ago. I called the staff of the club to get them going, I called that Christmas All Year Round place out on Rogers and I called Brad Newton.” Brad Newton was the owner of Newton’s Jewelry, Fort Smith’s most exclusive store, sole Fort Smith importers of Rolexes.

  “But I—”

  “Honey, you have no idea of the power of cash money. Now come on, y’all, let’s dig in and then open our presents.”

  The family, all the kids, the new wife, the old wife, who showed up presently, and all the bodyguards, had themselves a fine old time chowing down, with the exception, of course, of Amy, the Smith freshman, who stood apart and would not participate because she considered such ostentatious displays of wealth and capital …

  “Vulgar,” she pronounced.

  “I am vulgar,” said her father, twitting her. “I admit it. Gauche, even. What about crude, overbearing, ostentatious, self-indulgent, selfish and boorish? But, honey, you have to admit: vulgar puts the food on the table. Lots of it.”

  “Daddy,” she sniffed, “you are so gross.”

  Then it was time for presents.

  “Each one of you,” Red said, as he took command of the assembly, “each one of you should have a Rolex. Life is much better with a Rolex than without one. So the theme of today’s Christmas-in-August celebration is: Rolexes for everyone. Even those of you who have a Rolex, now you have two Rolexes.”

  He walked among his children and wives with an armload of gift boxes.

  “Let’s see,” he said, “I think this one is for Timmy. Oh, and what do we have here, we have one for Jason. And, I … think … this … one … is … for … Jake.”

  At last he got to Nicholas.

  “Now, Nick, isn’t this better than biology?”

  “Yes sir, it sure is,” said Nick, gazing up at the loony tune who was his father.

  “Go ahead,” his father said, “open it.”

  Nick opened the package: yes, it was the Oyster Master Submariner with the day/date and the red and blue bezel.

  “You wear that on biology field trips and you’ll never get lost,” Red said.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I just want everybody to be happy.”

  He gave each wife, Miss Third Runner-up and Miss Runner-up, a diamond necklace. They oooohed and ahhhhhhed appreciatively.

  “Red, I don’t know what you just survived,” said Susie, his first wife, “but it must have been a honey of a fight.”

  “Sweetie, you don’t know the half,” he said.

  Then he turned to Amy.

  “I know you’ve got one. This one is different.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she said.

  “Go on, open it.”

  She opened it. It was different. It was solid gold.

  “How’s that for vulgar?” said Red. “Let me tell you, they don’t git more vulgar than that!”

  “What am I supposed to do with this? I can’t possibly wear it.”

  “Sure you can, honey. You’re a Bama. You’re the eldest daughter of Red Bama, you can wear anything you like. Or, if you want, since it’s yours, you can do with it what you want: return it to Brad Newton and give the twelve thousand to the homeless.”

  “Well,” she said, looking at it, “it is beautiful.” She decided she’d think about it.

  As he walked away to join his wives, Red looked back: well, well, well, wasn’t that just a smile on the face of dour Ms. Amy?

  Someone touched his arm.

  “Mr. Bama?”

  “Yes, what is it, Ralph?”

  “Telephone.”

  “Ralph, I’m with my family now. It can wait.”

  “Mr. Bama, it’s Washington. They say it’s urgent.”

  44

  I don’t suppose nobody’s hunting us now,” said Bob. “Let’s get some goddamned breakfast.”

/>   They pulled over at a Denny’s on 271 just south of Fort Smith and went in. It was about eleven now. All the ejected shells had been picked up, the Mini-14 had been dumped in a deep and remote part of the black Arkansas River and they were an hour north of the Ouachitas. The bodies would be found when they would be found: maybe in days, maybe in months, maybe in years.

  Russ was going on sheer adrenaline. He was out of the shock and numbness, which had been replaced by a burst of manic energy.

  “I feel great!” he proclaimed. “Denny’s! God, I never thought I’d ever be so glad to see a place in my life! I could eat a horse.”

  They ordered two big, solid breakfasts and reduced them to crumbs and grease slick. For Russ, life after a night as tense and dramatic as the one he’d just survived seemed especially poignant with meaning and sensation.

  He turned to Bob.

  “Twice you saved my life. You stopped us from getting sniped; you hit Peck in the head. Unbelievable shooting! My God, I thought my father was a good shot. That was unbelievable!”

  “Shhh,” said Bob. “Just relax. You’ve still got a gallon of adrenaline in you. In an hour, it’ll dump and you’ll feel like shit. We got to get you some sleep. And get them abrasions fixed. Russ, just for the hell of it, let me tell you this: you did good. Okay? Lots of people would have lost their heads out there. You did real good. Your old man would be proud of you, okay?”

  Russ said nothing.

  “Well, anyway,” said Bob. “Next move? Before your adrenaline dumps, and you whack out on me, give me the next move.”

  “You’re the genius.”

  “Okay,” said Bob, “we beat the man again. We got to find the man now and bring the fight to him.”

  “Who’s the man?”

  “Hell if I know. I know he’s there. I just don’t know who the hell he is. Any idea?”

  “No. The only people who could tell us are turning to fertilizer in the forest. We have nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Best bet,” said Russ. “Go back to Fort Smith. We have a few days when he thinks we’re out of it, when he thinks he’s won. We go back to the paper: I can get in and spend a day in the morgue. I can investigate the Fort Smith of 1955, where all this began. Maybe somehow I can—”

  But Bob wasn’t really listening.

  “What’s going on?” Russ wanted to know.

  “We do have a prisoner,” said Bob.

  He held up Duane Peck’s flip phone.

  “And I think I know how to make him talk,” he added.

  They found what they needed in the Central Mall, off Rogers Avenue, a dark cathedral to consumerism. One of the hushed devotional niches in the long corridor was dedicated to cellular phones, pagers, faxes and other new-age information technology. They entered and in a second Bob had selected the wannest and palest of the young men there to chat with, soon snaring him in fatherly power and sheer Marine Corps sergeant charisma.

  “Now, see, here’s our problem,” said Bob. “We were hunting in the woods, and we come across this here phone. Now I’m thinking, some important man needs this phone. I’d sure like to know how to return it to him. You have any ideas there, young man?”

  The boy took the phone and examined it: a Motorola NC-50, the very latest and most expensive thing.

  “Have you tried autodial?” asked the young man.

  “No, and I haven’t tried that redial either. Now, if I tapped that redial button, wouldn’t that connect me with his last phone call?”

  “It would,” said the young man. “Why don’t you just call and see what you get?”

  “Hmmm,” said Bob, “that would work, wouldn’t it? Let me ask you another thing. You been working around phones long?”

  “Ah, a couple of years,” said the boy. “I’m sort of into phones. Very interesting stuff.”

  “Know what?” said Bob, squinting up his eyes as if he’d just come up with a hell of an idea. “Bet if I hit redial and you listened to them tones as the number played out, you could read them for us, couldn’t you? You know the numerical values of the tones, right?”

  The boy looked a little uncomfortable.

  “I think that’s against the law,” he said.

  “Is it?” said Bob. “Damn, I didn’t realize that.”

  “It’s just to return the phone, right?” said the boy.

  “Yes, indeed. We definitely want to return the phone to its rightful owner.”

  The boy took the phone, held it close to his ear and pushed Redial.

  The phone issued a bleat of beep music, a chatter of robot tones. Before the call could connect, he broke it off.

  “Okay,” he said, “it’s an 800 number. Let me try again and concentrate on the last seven numbers.”

  He hit it again.

  “I get 045-1643. Let me try it again.”

  The beeps poured out.

  “That’s it. 1-800-045-1643.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “Ah—nothing. I never heard of an 045 exchange. I never heard of an exchange beginning with a zero. It’s not from around here. I never heard of that exchange.”

  “Do you have a CD phone disk?” asked Russ.

  The boy nodded his head, really into it by now.

  “Let’s see what we get,” he said.

  This took a bit of time, but in a minute or so, at a computer terminal the young man had a phone-finder running on CD-ROM and quickly learned that the 045 exchange was wholly unlisted anywhere in the United States.

  “What would that mean?” said Bob.

  “Well, these disks have a lot of unlisted numbers on them, but ever since deregulation, private exchanges, private companies, private information networks have sprung up all over the place, only lightly monitored by the FCC. My guess is this is somebody’s most private line, not immediately accessible to the public or maybe even to the government. It’s just a very, very private number. I still say: just call it.”

  “Well, for now, we don’t want to do that. Listen, thanks so much.”

  “Sure, not a problem.”

  They left the mall.

  “It was too much to hope,” said Russ. “He wouldn’t have been so sloppy as to leave something at risk that would point the finger straight at him.”

  “Damn,” said Bob. “What else do we know about this bird?”

  “Well, he must be rich, powerful and connected. If he was able to get Jed Posey paroled, if he was able to put together a team of hotshots, if he was able to get Jack Preece on the job, he’s got a lot of clout. He—he has an airplane!”

  Russ wasn’t sure where that popped out of; it just issued from his deep subconscious.

  “He has an airplane,” said Bob. “Presumably from around here. Now, if he’s in the air the day of the big shootout, didn’t he file a flight plan?”

  “Yes, he’d have to.”

  “That’s a public document, isn’t it?”

  “Uh, I think,” said Russ.

  “Now, whyn’t we go out to the airport and see if there’s someway we can get into the FAA records for that day. Maybe on that flight plan, he’s got to list a phone number. Maybe it’s this one or close to it?”

  “Goddamn,” said Russ.

  “Goddamn yourself, Russ. He has an airplane. You’re a goddamned genius.”

  At the airport, Russ himself did the deed. He went into the FAA regional office, pulled his Daily Oklahoman press card and explained that he was doing a big takeout on civil aviation, particularly the conflict between private plane owners and the commercial carriers in crowded aviation corridors. He spent an hour taking notes as a droning administrator explained the government’s position to him, two or three times in case he missed anything. Russ finally told the man that one way to do such a story would be to set it into the context of a single day in the American air (why hadn’t he thought of this before?) and it might be nice to profile who was in the air at a given moment as a kind of cross section of the problem. He seemed to
pluck a date out of his memory, which was in fact the date of the shoot-out on the Taliblue. He wondered if he could examine the records of that day and get in touch with some private plane owners who were aloft?

  Again, the minutes ground by, but in time he had a thick file of flight plans fetched from the files, and he peeled through them, recognizing nothing, until at last he came to a Cessna 425 Conquest twin-engine job, CN13467, registered to Redline Trucking, whose pilot had filed for Oklahoma City that day, leaving at 10:25 A.M. and landing at 5:20 P.M. That was very interesting, but what really caught Russ’s attention was the phone number that the pilot had listed on the plan: It was 045-1640, only three numbers off the mystery number and it had the strange 0 prefix.

  Russ realized that Redline Trucking must lease or own a whole bank of 1600 numbers for its various enterprises, under a private 045 exchange, of which 1643 would have to be one. He looked at the pilot’s name.

  “Bama,” he said the name aloud. “Randall Bama.”

  The next day, much rested after an eighteen-hour blast of sleep in a Ramada Inn south of Fort Smith, Russ and Bob went to the Fort Smith Municipal Library, where they accessed all the information that was in the record about Randall “Red” Bama of Fort Smith, Bama Construction, Redline Trucking, the Bama Group Real Estate Development, Hardscrabble Country Club, the Chamber of Commerce (president 1991-93 and 1987-88), the Rotary, the Opera Guild, and so forth and so on.

  It explained a lot: how three carloads of professional shooters and a deputy sheriff and a world-class sniper could be set up to hunt them down. But did it explain enough?

  They went back through the stacks and found as many references to his father, the great and notorious Ray Bama (1916-75), pawn king of Fort Smith, denizen of Nancy’s Flamingo Lounge, known compatriot of the big Little Rock and Hot Springs mob and rumored mob kingpin with ties to Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello in New Orleans and Big Jim Westwood in Dallas, whose life was ended in a mysterious car bomb in 1975.