Dust in the Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  “Sheriff, this is Enos Bottoms.”

  The chair to Wilt’s right was occupied by the tall gray-haired man, the one with the long, lean face who’d been with Raymond Thorpe in the Bird and Bottle.

  Bottoms turned very slowly in his chair and stared at Wilt. He didn’t stand or offer his hand. He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small leather case. He opened it and dropped it on Wilt’s desk with the badge showing.

  Wilt sat down and pulled the chair forward and grabbed the I.D. case. He lifted it and read it slowly. Not Bureau. Bottoms was a Federal Marshal.

  Bottoms reached for the case but Wilt ignored the gesture. He read the I.D. a second time and even spent another minute or so studying the badge.

  Just when Bottoms lowered his hand, Wilt dropped the I.D. case on the desk. “What can we do for you?”

  “First of all, you can back off on Raymond Thorpe. That’s for beginners.”

  Wilt looked past Bottoms to Joe. “What do you think of his manners? Not even a comment about the weather or a how’s the family? Bam. Right to the point.”

  “You want manners,” Bottoms said, “Read Emily Post.”

  “And witty too, huh, Joe?”

  “I don’t have time to dance around with you farmers. All I’ve got for you is a message. Leave Raymond Thorpe alone. You’ve already mixed too much in things you don’t understand.”

  “You want to explain them to me?”

  “Explanation is not part of my job.”

  “I liked that line about us being farmers,” Joe said. “He’s cute, Wilt.”

  Wilt nodded. “What do you think we ought to do with him?”

  “I think we ought to show him where the door is.”

  Bottoms whipped his head toward Joe. “You’re not man enough.”

  “One way to find out,” Joe said.

  Wilt planted his elbows on the desk blotter. He turned his hands so the palms were up. The hands were slightly cupped. He looked at Joe. Joe nodded.

  Joe passed behind Bottoms, unlocked the gun cabinet and reached inside. He came out with a 12 gauge pumpgun. Turning, all in one motion, he swung the pumpgun and released it.

  The pumpgun flew past Bottoms’ head and shoulder and landed, with only a slight adjustment, in Wilt’s upturned hands.

  Wilt tilted the barrel upward and pumped a shell into the chamber. “Show him the way, Joe, I think he’s lost way out here in the woods with us farmers.”

  Bottoms flinched when the shell chambered. It took good control but he relaxed and the tension didn’t show.

  “Keep working me,” he said. “I can cloud up and rain all over you any time I want to. Try me. You see, all you hicks have got a common fault. You’ve all got sticky fingers. All of you take. And there’s the matter of the Blue Lagoon.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “The usual. You pressure and you take. It’s called corruption when you violate the oath of your office.”

  “Prove it,” Wilt said. He pumped another shell into the chamber. The discarded, unspent shell hit the desk and rolled across the surface until it lodged against a stack of papers.

  “We don’t have to prove anything. All we do is raise the question.”

  “You’re talking in front of a witness.”

  “Him?” Bottoms snorted. “He’s your man, your flunky. He’s no witness.”

  Wilt collected the shell from the desk and shoved it into the slot. He checked the safety and tossed the pumpgun to Joe. The butt of the pumpgun missed Bottoms’ chin by no more than a couple of inches. “You know what all this yelling and threatening is all about, Joe?”

  “I can’t say I do.” Joe righted the shotgun and held it at high port.

  “My guess is that this is one of the Federal Witness Protection guys.”

  The chair legs rasped as Bottoms pushed them away from the side of the desk. “I gave you your chance. You’ll never know what hit you. A Federal Task Force will be in Webster County before a week passes.”

  “Is Thorpe, whatever his name is, really worth all this trouble?”

  “It’s the bargain we made.”

  “A devil’s bargain.”

  “But still a bargain.” Bottoms put on the Irish tweed walking hat and whirled and left the office. Joe followed him to the doorway and stood there for a few seconds. When he turned back to Wilt, he said, “He’s gone.”

  “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.”

  Joe closed the door. He carried the pumpgun to the cabinet and racked it and locked the door. “That was some threat he made about the Federal Task Force.”

  “It’ll be here,” Wilt said. “Resign now and avoid the rush.”

  Joe appeared to consider that option. In the end, he shook his head. “No, I’ll stay around and see how you handle it.”

  Wilt nodded.

  “You may not believe it,” Joe said,” but I’m in your corner.”

  “Warms my heart,” Wilt said.

  The prospect of having Joe underfoot all afternoon was more than Wilt could accept. Around two, he sent Joe over to the grammar school to make sure that all the children were safe and safely boarded on their buses.

  Wilt locked the office door and switched off the lights and leaned back. There had to be somebody. Somebody in the right place who owed him a favor. The man at Motor Vehicles couldn’t get the information he needed and Harriman and his bunch at the Bureau w probably in bed with the Federal Marshals.

  Somebody not tied in, someone whose I.O.U. he held or someone who would hold Wilt’s I.O.U. until he needed to call it due.

  He dragged out a dozen names and rejected all of them. Wouldn’t get involved. Wouldn’t have the necessary access. Too much risk and this one wasn’t a risk-taker because his job would be on the line. And on and on. Half a dozen reasons and one or the other or even two reasons disqualified each source.

  Until he thought of Ellie Cooper.

  Captain Charlie Cooper’s widow.

  Charlie Cooper who was dead because he’d taken two steps off the cleared trail to take a whiz and stepped on a mine. One minute alive and the next moment spread all over the trail and the woods and pieces of him hanging from the trees.

  Later, in Washington, seeing Ellie again, Wilt hadn’t told it that way. He’d gift-wrapped Charlie’s death in self-sacrifice and honor. It was what Ellie needed then. And she’d cried on his shoulder in that fancy Washington hotel bar and believed him.

  Wilt forgave himself that lie. An honorable death might be absurd but it wasn’t as absurd as death with a full bladder, cock in hand, just about to whiz.

  Every few months he had a letter from her and there was a yearly Christmas card. And still a widow. Because, she said, she’d never found anyone who measured halfway to Charlie or the benchmark he set.

  She was a Washington career woman now. She put the time in and the movement was upward until she was executive secretary to Douglas Wingate, Chief of Planning of the National Security Office of the United States. It was a small but powerful shadowland that didn’t have to be accountable to anyone.

  Ellie could unlock Raymond Thorpe for him. If she would. If she thought his reason was as strong as the risk.

  The two dead little girls, that might tip the balance for him.

  He peeled back the cuff of his shirt to check his watch. Still too early. Two hours at least before he could call her. Better to call her at home. The home phone would not keep a record of the call. Home was better.

  If Ellie would take the risk.

  He thought she would.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  The National Security Office of the United States was created in the hysterical months that followed the death of John Kennedy. An influential Senator remarked, in passing, on a talk show that there should be an investigative arm of the government that had responsibility for keeping tabs on all potentially dangerous citizens, ones with grudges, with a capacity for violence. The N.S.O. would be funded by the government bu
t it would not and should not be under the control of any party or any elected official. It would remain neutral. It would have primary access to all police and justice department files and records.

  The fact that members of the House and Senate were told they might look upon themselves as likely targets in the future worked its magic: the N.S.O. was created and funding was almost immediate and more than generous.

  Ellie Cooper had worked for the office for almost ten years. At first it was “for” and then, in time, it was “with.” Ellie was bright and dedicated and, among her superiors, there was a sense of her that she wasn’t interested in another marriage, that the work she took to her would occupy her for the rest of her life.

  Wilt called her from the payphone at Guy Winston’s gas station and reached her just as she entered her apartment. There was a breathlessness about her at first and pleasure when she knew who he was. That made it even harder to make his request. As he expected, she was shocked at first. What he wanted violated the loyalty she felt for N.S.O. Only after he told her what he was up against did she soften and say that she would look into it quietly, if she could. She would have to do it by the numbers so that it wasn’t obvious that it was a private matter and not the usual N.S.O. check she was doing. It would take a good cover lie if she was found out.

  “I don’t want you in trouble,” Wilt said.

  She laughed. In his mind’s eye he saw the red hair and the freckles that even face powder couldn’t hide.

  “They won’t fire me,” she said. “I know too much. They’d have to shoot me.”

  When she had a pen and paper, he gave her all the information he had on Raymond Thorpe.

  When he was done talking, Ellie said, “I’ll get on this early tomorrow. There’s one thing you might not know, Wilton.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If he’s under the Federal Witness Protection Plan, and he’s pushed into a corner, they’ll move him from North Carolina without a minute’s notice. He’ll have a new identity and he’ll be settled in Fargo, North Dakota overnight.”

  “You give me all the good news.”

  The call ran longer than he’d expected, so the operator came on and he had to add another couple of dollars from the fistful he’d collected at the 7–11 store.

  When the operator was gone, Ellie said: “What’s wrong? You don’t trust your office phone or your home phone?”

  “With the Feds involved?”

  “Then we’d better set up a system for me to call you back.”

  They decided she’d call him at his office when she had information for him. They’d set a time for her to call back, and he’d give her a phone number with the last two digits reversed.

  There was almost a sad ending to the call. She said, “Come to Washington and see me.”

  “When I can,” he said.

  “How’s your love life?”

  “Improving.”

  “Awww,” she said, throwing it back at him, “now you give me all the good news.”

  A moments’s hesitation, a pause, as if she wanted to say something more. What she said, finally, was a wistful goodbye.

  The call from Ellie Cooper came in at one the next afternoon. Wilt hadn’t left the office all morning. All the coffee had given him a gut ache and the chopped barbecue sandwich had him queasy after a hurried lunch in his office.

  “I’ve got something for you.” That and nothing more, not a name or what the information concerned.

  As they’d arranged, he gave her the pay phone number at the gas station with the reversed last two digits.

  “Ten minutes?” she said.

  He said ten minutes was just about right.

  He got her on the line and she began telling him what she’d learned.

  Thorpe was Rayfield Bellows, a small-timer who’d grown up in West Virginia and moved to New York, just as soon as he could steal enough money for a bus ticket. He was sixteen and he never looked back. There was still family there in West Virginia but, as far as Rayfield Bellows was concerned, he was an orphan. Perhaps his family felt the same way about him.

  At first, Bellows was at the edge of the crime world. A mugging here and an armed robbery there when the rent was due or when he needed some walking around money. He’d even flirted with pimping but girls were not exactly his strong suit.

  “What was his taste?” Wilt asked.

  “Young girls. Two arrests in the early days for molesting children.”

  “Convictions?”

  “I think the parents were bought off or scared off.”

  “It happens,” Wilt said.

  “Bellows was on the way up.” He caught the eye and attention of Carlo Bennedetti, one of the minor underlords of the Gambesi family. To Bennedetti, Bellows looked like a comer, a smart boy with a good criminal mind.

  “That’s a funny way to put it.”

  “Some people have a good legal mind and go into law. Some have a good criminal mind and take up crime.”

  It turned out that Bellows did have a good criminal mind, what might almost be called a creative criminal mind. Working for Carlo Bennedetti, he came up with several new wrinkles and devised imaginative ways to separate fools from their money. There was one food stamp scam that cost the government ten million dollars before they were even aware they were being taken. That was the big one, but not the only one, and Ellie listed half a dozen more cons that Bellows created.

  “He was on his way up.” He wasn’t Italian so there would be a limit how far he could hope to go. But there was money and power and all that went with them. Then, a year and a half ago, it soured between Rayfield Bellows and Carlo Bennedetti.

  “You know what happened?”

  “Bellows was arrested again. He couldn’t keep his hands off young girls. This time, as with the others, it was fixed. But although Carlo is a crook, he wouldn’t tolerate attacks on little girls. Bellows had to go. Permanently. Bellows sensed what was coming and he made a run to the Feds. He made his deal. Protection for what he knew. And what Bellows knew would fill a phonebook.”

  With the information that Bellows furnished to them, the Feds broke Carlo and through him, the Gambesi family. Bellows testified and then he dropped out of sight.

  “And surfaced in Webster County, North Carolina,” Wilt said.

  “It looks that way,” Ellie said.

  “The bastard.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Federal Marshal, Enos Bottoms. He knew Bellows was a walking problem about to ruin some child’s life.”

  “What now, Wilton?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got to stir this soup and see what I come up with.”

  “Let me know what happens. I care about you and you know that.”

  “Likewise,” Wilt said. “Thank you for sticking your neck out for me.”

  “No thanks necessary,” she said. “This whole thing stinks and it needs to be set right. You’re the man who can do it.”

  Wilt ended the call and headed for his cruiser. Before he got to the car, Guy Winston came to the door and wiped oil from his hands. “Guess you didn’t pay your phone bill this month, Wilton.”

  “I can’t afford to on the salary you people pay me.”

  Guy waved at him and closed the door against the cold and the wind.

  One dangerous and tempting thought came to him as he drove back toward town. There was a safe way to rid the county of Rayfield Bellows. It was so safe and foolproof that the temptation filled the car as if it were a real shape with a real form and weight.

  The Feds were hiding Bellows. That meant that the Gambesi family was still looking for him. It would be easy to find a channel in North Carolina that get the word to them in New York. He could just sit back and wait until for them to act. Then he would take a drive to the guest house on Old Oak Terrace Road or to some field in the county where hunters had found the body of a man. A tortured body with a single shot to the back of the head when the sport was over.

  It was
safe but not completely clean. Three people would know.

  He would know, and maybe he could live with that, but the second person who knew would be the channel to New York and it might cost him. It could be used against Wilt. It could give someone leverage against him. And the third person, that was the hard one. Ellie would know. She’d be sure that Wilt had passed the word to the Gambesi family. She’d see the weakness in him, and the frustration and, because she was human, she’d understand or think she did. But she would never feel quite the same about him again. As if she’d lifted a flap on his chest and taken a good look inside. At the rotten heart with the maggots crawling in and out of it.

  No, that wasn’t a choice. It was a last resort, if everything else failed. And it would be an admission that he couldn’t do his job, that he couldn’t nail Thorpe or Bellows or whatever his name was, within the law.

  Time to line up the ducks. From the next roadside pay phone, he made three calls. The first one was to the Station. He talked to Joe and said that he had some of the information that he needed. Also, he would be taking a long lunch and he wasn’t to be expected at any particular time.

  “I’ll be there when you see me walk through the door.”

  He called Diane at her home. “You doing anything for lunch?”

  “I was staring at a can of soup.”

  “Put it back in the cabinet. How long will it take you to be ready?”

  “Half an hour if you’re picking me up.”

  “I am. Isn’t that what a gentleman does?”

  “I’ll be in the lobby.”

  The third call was to the Willows Restaurant. It was the new, expensive one in the area. The word was the food and wine carried a heavy price-tag to discourage the ordinary diner.

  Upstairs, entered from the rear of the building, there was an afterhours private club. In a public relations gesture to make sure there would be no trouble with the local law, both the Police Chief and the Sheriff were presented memberships. So far, Wilt had never used his card. It was, he knew, his stiff-backed way of saying that he couldn’t be bought or even nudged.

  He made a reservation for that afternoon at three. That was the main convenience of the Willows. It served late.