“So this is the family business.”
He nodded. “In Daddy’s time, only way for a black man to make money was preach or teach or bury the dead. Since he couldn’t read, and didn’t see all that much in Charleston that was holy, he went to Atlanta and learned embalming from a black mortician over there, then opened his own parlor in a chicken shack up the river. Bought a new car every year of his life after he opened the doors.”
“Tell me about the SNCC project,” I said.
His smile implied both irony and a faded passion. “I was field secretary. Paid ten dollars a week.”
“What were you doing, primarily?”
“Convincing black people that voting was worth getting shot at, or fired from their job, or burned out of their homes. Finding lawyers to file papers to make the crackers in the courthouse put them on the rolls once they got there. Trying to keep my staff from being hunted like skunks while they were out canvassing the community.”
“How was Seth involved?”
“Came down from up North for the summer.”
“What did he do when he got here?”
“Same as the others—went to every store and shanty and church in the backcountry to persuade folks it was worth risking everything they had to use the rights we’d fought for.”
“Was Seth the only white person on your staff?”
Morrison shook his head. “Seth wasn’t on staff, he was a volunteer. Had a dozen of them. Shitwork, mostly—young, and sappy and sorry for black folks.” His voice betrayed a hint of hurt. “They didn’t turn tail, I’ll give them that.”
“How did the blacks and whites get along? The ones that worked for SNCC, I mean.”
His lip stiffened. “Got along good, once they saw who was the chief and who was the Indians.”
“How was Jane Jean Hendersen active in all this?”
He shrugged. “Same as Seth—drove her Mustang down every road in Clarendon County, bringing folks in to register. Helped her daddy some, too.”
“Monty was helping with the lawsuits? Getting writs and stuff?”
“That’s right.”
I took a quick tack. “Did Jane Jean and Seth have a romantic relationship that summer?”
His face was impassive. “None of my business if they did or didn’t.”
I waited till he looked at me. “Did you have a relationship with her?”
He clenched his teeth and uncrossed his legs—for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. “What right you have to come to my house and say something like that?”
“I’m trying to find out if anything happened that would cause Jane Jean to carry a grudge from those days.”
“She was a volunteer. That’s all I know about it.”
“How about now? Do you have much contact with her?”
“Only when I need campaign contributions,” he said roughly.
“How about Seth? Did he have any other relationships while he was down here? With a black woman, maybe?”
“You’re talking to the wrong man again.”
I’d gone too far; Morrison stood up and walked to the door and waited for me to go through it.
“One last thing,” I said. “Is there anyone still around from those days? Anyone prominent in Charleston who worked for SNCC that summer?”
“Only one I know is Aldee.”
“Blackwell and you were colleagues?”
“Till he got more interested in pussy than civil rights.” The contempt in his tone was palpable.
“You fired him?”
He nodded. “After I whipped his ass.”
“The cane and the eye patch?”
“That’s right.”
“So sex was a problem in the group.”
“For some it was; for most it wasn’t. You need to excuse me now.” He adjusted his gown. “I got to get dressed and comfort people.”
THIRTY-TWO
Folly Beach was a charmless waterfront community just south of James Island, a pedestrian venue of seaside living for those who couldn’t afford the price of admission to Kiawah or Hilton Head. It took half an hour to get there, but in my state of benumbed exhaustion it seemed as if I were driving for a day.
The town had been badly battered by the hurricane, and some of its residents apparently lacked the wherewithal to reclaim their property from the leavings of the storm. I took a left when Highway 171 dead-ended at Arctic Avenue and another left on Fifth Street. In the second block from the corner, I came across a forlorn structure that fit Broom’s description of Bedford’s illicit hideout.
Befitting the Field Marshal’s militaristic bent, the house was built of concrete blocks and encircled by a Cyclone fence that the storm had transformed into concertina wire. The house had originally rested on six stone pillars that raised it some four feet off the ground, presumably to avoid sea surges during high winds, but Hugo had been so strong—up to 180 miles an hour, Seth had said, blowing over a period of fourteen hours—that it had been shoved off its stilts. It lay where it had fallen three years back, crumpled on one corner, elevated on another, off-center, off-kilter, and abject, as though it had jumped from its perch in an act of self-destruction of a mate to Colin Hartman’s.
The yard was a match to the house in degree of neglect, and seconded the message scrawled on every surface and pasted across the boarded windows—KEEP OUT. For their part, the three front pillars still stood guard over the crippled structure, a trio of stiff-backed sentinels who were hoping they wouldn’t be blamed for the calamity that had befallen their charge.
There was no sign of Bedford in or around the place. I circled the block and drove by again, this time inspecting more closely. What I thought I saw in the wooden windows were some ventilation slits cut in the plywood, and what I thought I saw running through the scruffy yard were some wires that could have been fallen phone lines or could have been the trip wires to a booby trap. I drove two blocks north and parked, then spent some minutes planning an assault on Bedford’s ersatz fortress. The tactic I finally opted for was brilliant—I walked to the front door and knocked.
When nothing happened in response, I banged the door again, this time with the heel of my hand. Although silence reigned in and around the building, my sixth sense told me someone was inside and I was being observed and evaluated, although for the life of me I couldn’t see how. After a third knock produced the same result, I turned my back to the house, sat down on the stoop, leaned against the door, and urged the sun to improve my pallor.
Cars drove past, slowed when they noticed me, measured my intentions to see if they seemed honorable, then hurried on when I appeared benign. I took out my notebook and reviewed the scribblings I’d made since Seth first told me of his tiff with ASP. Nothing took shape, no patterns emerged, the incidents and information remained stark and disconnected, even though my conversation with Monroe Morrison had given me an inkling of the provenance of the problem.
I was stuffing the notebook back in my pocket when something buzzed at my back. I stood up and knocked at the door. Again, no answer. But when I tugged on the knob, the door swung toward me after a lengthy groan of protest, as though I were the first visitor in years.
I expected to enter a foyer or even the living room, but what I confronted was a second door, this one made of sheet steel, as were the walls of the cubicle that encircled me. It was a mudroom of a sinister sort, a security system similar to the fortified entrances to crack houses I’d seen in San Francisco. Behind the cold steel doorway, Bedford doubtlessly had his evil eye on me. I waved and waited and wondered what he would do.
A moment later the steel door slid to the side and Forrest Bedford materialized in the inner doorway. He was dressed in a camouflage outfit of the type that he’d worn to the rally, his pistol nestled in a shoulder holster beneath a smirk of amused contempt that brought to mind the lubricious sneer of Goebbels. “Good morning, Mr. Tanner,” he said with smarmy friendliness. “Welcome to the Field Headquarters of the Purification Brigade.�
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I looked into the claustrophobic cavern at his rear. “The Vietcong had better dayrooms than this,” I told him.
“The brigade doesn’t rely on material allure, as you well know; the riches I offer are spiritual in nature.”
“Right. I was particularly moved by the ‘Thank God for AIDS’ signs at the rally.”
“God smites those who flout his law. The fates of Sodom and Gomorrah forecast the consequence of buggery.”
I looked at the flag on the wall behind him. “How about the fate of Hitler? What did that forecast?”
His lip crested in a curl of scorn. “You will come to regret your flippancy, Mr. Tanner. The battle lines are drawn. Tolerance and compromise have brought us to the brink of spiritual destruction. From now on, it is God’s white warriors against the forces of darkness and degeneracy. Be white and be right—it’s as simple as that.”
“I think I’ll pass, thanks all the same. The god you speak of isn’t anyone I’m familiar with.”
“That’s because you’re ignorant. A student of the Scripture has no choice—we do as the Word commands us.” His expression was a heady mix of moral rectitude and pagan pleasure. “Who told you where to find me, by the way? Colin, I presume.”
“Colin’s not talking at the moment. About you or anything.”
“How wise of him.” Bedford crossed his arms. “Well? Why are you wasting my time?”
“I think we should chat for a minute. About matters of mutual interest.”
He thought it over. “Normally I don’t allow civilians to enter the headquarters, but in your case I’ll make an exception. How is Colin, by the way?”
“Alive.”
“That’s too bad. I was hoping you might have taken him out.”
“To save you the trouble?”
Bedford only sniffed. “Please come in. I’m sorry I can’t provide refreshment, but my larder is rather Spartan. Without electricity the options become limited.” He stepped aside and let me enter his Carolina version of Berchtesgaden. “Take either chair you choose.”
The alternatives were a padded barstool and a faded director’s chair; I opted for the latter. After sliding the door to his lair into place, Bedford faced me at parade rest, his expression cool and imperious. But the corner of an eye was twitching with tension, and the flap on his holster was unbuttoned.
The only light in the room came from a Coleman lantern that was screwed into a propane bottle and set on top of an ammo can. What it illuminated was a bunker almost as impregnable as the one Bedford had taken me to some dozen hours earlier, but this time the walls weren’t concrete but sheet steel.
The room was lined with more than a score of steel plates, half an inch thick, the width of plywood sheets but longer. Propped along the walls of the house, they seemed capable of repelling everything from rocks to rockets. Eventually I realized what they were—Bedford had appropriated the lids the street and water departments use to cover the holes they dig and used them to feather his nest.
Stacked in front of the steel, in a series of precisely defined piles, were a cube of numbered boxes along with a score of plastic containers, some as large as rain barrels, others the size of milk gallons, filled with water and perhaps a cola—a wet dream for squirrels and survivalists. I guessed the barrels held bulk and dried foods, and that there was sustenance to last six months. I also guessed that the disaster Bedford was determined to withstand wouldn’t originate in nature.
The rest of the furnishings were minimal—two chairs, sleeping bag and foam pad, dented file cabinet, Coleman stove, plastic plates and spoons. The only concessions to the century were a transistor radio and a cellular phone.
“You could hold out for quite a while,” I said affably. “Let me guess. You’ve got sensors outside, to tell when someone’s coming. And Claymores in the yard—I saw the wires. I’ll bet you’ve got a tunnel out of here, too. In case they try to burn you out, the way they did with the SDS.”
His smile was arch and lazy. “Surely you don’t expect me to reveal all my secrets.”
“Plus you’ve got that.” I gestured toward the wall opposite the makeshift pantry, where Bedford had arrayed his arsenal. Propped against the steel were everything from Glock revolvers to Remington trench guns, MP-5 assault rifles to government-issue RPGs, even a long green thing that must have been a missile. Stacked to the side were crates of appropriate ammunition, two of which served Bedford as a desk.
I shuddered and looked away. “When do you expect them to try to take you?”
The light in his eyes was a clone to the light from the lantern mantles. “When we are poised to take control.”
“Of what?”
“The political process.”
“When do you expect that will be?”
“After the uprising.”
“By whom?”
“The Great White Race, to reclaim its birthright from the mud peoples.”
“Like The Turner Diaries, you mean.”
“Much worse than that, I hope. Mr. Pierce’s imagination was rather limited.” Bedford strolled to the weapons rack and looked over his store. When he turned to face me, he seemed to quiver with anticipation. “What brings you here, Mr. Tanner? Another bogus offer of support? Or are you the advance party for the forces of darkness?” He could hardly restrain his rapture.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Bedford; I’m all by my lonesome. I just came by to clip your wings.”
His eyebrows rose like gulls. “Really.”
“Afraid so.”
“How will you manage that? You aren’t even armed.”
I smiled and crossed my legs. “What do you know about Johns Island?”
He shrugged. “It’s about an inch away from Borneo. Other than that, not much.”
“By Borneo I take it you mean that a lot of black people live out there.”
“Take a drive someday—you’ll think you took a wrong turn and ended up in Kenya.”
“I took the drive about five hours ago.”
He blinked and frowned. “Why?”
“We’ll get to that momentarily. For now, the thing you need to know is that as of this minute, you’re to lay off the Hartmans. Colin and Seth both, as well as Seth’s clients. No more tapes, no more phone calls, no more notices of racial judgment, no more setups like the bunker. The Hartmans are off-limits, to you and everyone else in ASP.”
Bedford was laughing by the time I finished my spiel. “You seem confused about the balance of power, Mr. Tanner. Perhaps another look at the weapons along the wall will serve to remind you. The firepower I can bring to bear is stupendous.”
My eyes stayed locked on his. “You’re behind the curve, Bedford. Power doesn’t come from guns, power comes from information. I’ve got it, and you don’t. That’s why you’re going to do as I say.”
“What information?” For the first time, his swagger seemed to tilt.
To leave time for his nerves to sizzle, I stood up and strolled around the room. The stack of numbered boxes near the door contained something called the Gourmet Survival Pack, with a shipping label of a company called Health and Survival Products. In a separate crate were a variety of items that included several army MREs, packets of Mountain House freeze-dried foods, bottles of a potion called Colloidal Super Concentrate, and several jars of Food Tablets.
The box next to the survival pack was a library of books and pamphlets. The authors ranged from Henry Ford to Ezra Taft Benson; the subjects ranged from the effective use of plastic explosives to the origins of the Masonic Order; the titles ranged from Bible Law on Money to The Bondage of the Free.
I turned and leaned against the cold steel door. “I’ve spent the last two days trying to get a line on ASP,” I began. “Who’s behind it; what makes it tick; what it’s really after. And do you know what I’ve discovered?”
“What?”
“That you’re keeping such a low profile, no one knows much about it. You’re not taking on the system, not in any
way that might upset the powers that be; mostly all you toss around is rhetoric. As far as I can see, other than the puff stuff in the park last night, all you’re really doing is making life miserable for Seth Hartman and his clients.”
“You know nothing about our field operations. When the time is right, the potency of ASP will become apparent to all that stand in the way of the New Confederacy.” His words were fervent, but his expression was as bloodless as the gray metal that surrounded him.
“You haven’t done anything but whine,” I said nastily. “You and the person bankrolling you are being very careful not to do anything that would justify a police investigation. Smart, I guess. Safe, certainly. Cowardly, some would say. But safe. Definitely safe.” I took two steps toward him and stopped. “But I’m about to blow you out of the water, Mr. Field Marshal. I’m in a position to cause the law to come down on you like a pile driver on a post.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bedford wiped his brow with a camouflage hankie and rubbed his gun for comfort.
I walked to the wall at a leisurely stroll, then snatched up an automatic pistol from the end of the line of weapons and fiddled with the magazine. When Bedford drew his Walther and pointed it at me, I held up a hand in peace.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to shoot you.” I lowered the weapon to my side. “There was a cross-burning out on Johns Island last night.”
Bedford was relieved at the new direction. “Good.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“I know white people would be better off if there was a cross-burning every night.”
“I thought you said blacks weren’t the problem.”
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