Orchid Blues (13 page)

“The army trained me. It’s like roller skating; you never forget how.”

“I never knew anybody who could cut a cattail,” Harston said. “Peck told us about your shot.”

“I was in an outfit in ’Nam had half a dozen guys who could do that. It helps your accuracy if you’re shooting to stay alive.”

“I guess it might,” Harston said.

It helps if you practice every day, too, Ham thought.

Mrs. Rawlings went into the kitchen again for a few minutes, while the men chatted and the women remained strangely silent, then she came back. “Dinner is served,” she said.

Ham followed the group into a large kitchen, with a dining area at one end. A large table had been set there, and it practically groaned with food. Ham took the seat offered him and waited to see if someone would ask a blessing. No one did, so he dug in with the others. “This is very fine cooking, Betty,” he said, biting into a fried chicken breast.

“Betty’s the finest cook I know,” Peck said, biting into his own chicken.

The food was Southern—corn, collard greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread and biscuits, and of course the chicken. Ham ate well, but saved a little room.

“How about some dessert?” Betty asked, as she and the other women cleared away the dishes. “We’ve got some pecan pie.”

“I’d love that, Betty,” Ham said.

“Be right back.”

“The women’ll leave us after dessert,” Rawlings said, “then we can talk.”

Ham nodded as if he understood. Nothing about this evening so far was any different from a hundred other evenings he’d spent at the home of fellow soldiers, except there had been less drinking. He hadn’t been offered a refill after his first bourbon, and iced tea had been served with dinner.

Betty returned with the pie, and when that was gone, coffee. “I’ve put a pot in your den,” she said to her husband.

“Gentlemen, why don’t we go in there and have our coffee?” Rawlings said. He led the way across the living room and into another room that had been paneled in pine and furnished with leather easy chairs.

Ham looked around him and saw the largest private collection of weapons he had ever seen outside a military arsenal. There were hunting rifles and shotguns, but the bulk of the weapons were military—assault rifles, pistols, machine guns. The Barrett’s rifle occupied a place of honor over the fireplace.

Ham gave a low whistle. “Hey, Peck, looks like you’ve been shopping at your own gun show.”

Peck gave a little smile and indicated where Ham should sit. “I like to be well armed,” he said.

Ham laughed. “That’s an understatement.”

Peck poured everybody a drink from a decanter. “On the day,” he said, “it’ll all get used.”

The other men raised their glasses. “On the day,” they said in unison.

Ham didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about, but he raised his glass, too. Then everybody sat down.

Twenty-six

PECK RAWLINGS GOT THE BALL ROLLING. “WELL, Ham, tell me something: what do you think of our current president of the United States, William Henry Lee?”

Ham said nothing, but held his nose.

Everybody smiled a little.

“I guess you’ve got some support around here for that opinion,” Rawlings said.

“I believe somebody took a shot at him during the campaign,” Ham said. “Pity he wasn’t a better shot.”

“You think his opponent was the better man, then?”

“Yes, but not much better.”

“Who would you have preferred?”

“George Wallace, maybe, but he wasn’t running, and anyway, he was a little too far to the left for my taste.”

Rawlings seemed pleased with that assessment.

“And what do you think of our present form of government?”

“I think it was a great idea that got royally screwed up along the way, especially in the twentieth century.”

“I can’t say I disagree with you,” Rawlings replied.

Ham sipped his brandy.

Mack Harston leaned forward in his chair. “Would you change things, if you could?”

“Sure, but what could
I
do?”

“Maybe more than you think.”

“I’d be interested in hearing about that,” Ham said.

“It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” Jim said.

“So I’ve heard, but I’d prefer a flashlight.”

“Your proficiency with various weapons might represent a flashlight,” Rawlings said, getting up and taking a manila folder from his desk. He sat down again and opened it. “Your service record says you fired Expert with everything the army gave you.”

“My service record?” Ham said, genuinely surprised. “You’ve got my service record?”

“I have,” Rawlings said.

“How in the hell did you do that?”

“Let’s just say that we’ve got friends in useful places. I get the impression from reading it that you don’t have much compunction about killing.”

“I’ve never had any compunction about killing somebody who needed it, but I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life on death row. They say the death penalty isn’t a deterrent, but it sure is for me.”

“That’s a smart way to think,” Rawlings said.

The phone on the desk rang, but it was picked up somewhere else in the house. A moment later, Emily Harston came to the door. “It’s okay,” she said to her husband, then she closed the door.

Ham sipped his brandy. “You planning on killing somebody, Peck?”

Rawlings smiled. “Oh, I’m just speaking hypothetically.”

“Okay.”

Suddenly Rawlings stood up, placed the file on his desk and turned to Ham. “Well, Ham, it’s been a real pleasure having you out here.” The others stood up, too.

Ham figured he’d been dismissed, so he stood up, too. “I’ve enjoyed it. Please tell Betty for me that it was a real fine dinner, and I appreciate the trouble she went to.”

“That’s what women are for, isn’t it?” Rawlings said, leading the group out of the den and toward the front door. On the front steps, he paused and offered Ham his hand.

Ham took it.

“Thanks again for coming,” he said.

“Good night,” Ham replied and walked out to his truck. He got in, started it, backed out of the driveway and drove away. When he was back on the main road, he opened the glove compartment. His pistol was still there. He drove on slowly toward Orchid Beach.

Then, as he reached the outskirts of town, he saw a vehicle a couple of hundred yards behind him, lit by a streetlight but showing no headlights. “Why, I believe I’m being followed,” he said aloud. The vehicle followed him all the way to the turnoff to his little island.

When he reached the house, he went inside, and instantly, he had the feeling that someone had been there. He switched on some lights and walked slowly around the place. The chair where he watched TV in the evenings had been moved. He knew, because there were indentations in the rug where the chair legs had formerly rested. A phone was on the table next to the chair. First, he switched on the TV and found a noisy cop show, then he picked up the telephone receiver and, while holding down the flasher, unscrewed the mouthpiece, then removed the disk that rested there. Behind it was a small electronic something-or-other that had been soldered into place. His phone had been bugged. He gently replaced the disk and screwed the receiver together again.

He went into his little office, opened a desk drawer and found his portable cell phone. He unscrewed the cover and examined the insides. Apparently, they had missed it. He went back to the living room, then through the kitchen, and closing the door softly behind him, out to the little dock behind the house. He sat down on a post and called Holly.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. You been home all evening?”

“Yep.”

“Didn’t leave the house?”

“Only for a few minutes, to walk Daisy. How was your evening?”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” he said. “Lunch?”

“Sure. Your place?”

“No, not here. Your place, at noon. When I get there, don’t say anything until I’ve looked around.”

There was a brief, puzzled silence. “Okay,” she said finally.

“See you then.”

“Good night.”

Ham punched off, then returned to the house, turned off the TV and went to bed. When he had been asked to leave so soon after dinner, he had thought he’d somehow screwed up, but if they had tapped his phone, he was still in the game. He slept well.

Twenty-seven

HAM ARRIVED AT HOLLY’S HOUSE SHORTLY after noon, and there was a car outside he didn’t recognize. He let himself in through the front door and found Holly and Harry Crisp waiting for him. Holding a finger to his lips, he indicated that they could come outside through the beach door.

When they were outside Harry shook Ham’s hand. “What’s up?”

“I guess Holly told you I went to this little dinner party last night.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here. What did you find out?”

“I found out they kept me there just long enough to tap my phone.”

“No kidding?” Holly asked.

“I kid you not, kiddo.”

“What kind of tap?” Harry asked.

“They soldered something inside the talking end of the receiver.”

Harry nodded. “Was that the only one?”

“I have no idea. They didn’t seem to mess with my cell phone, though. Would a tap on the phone let them hear anything in the house?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to get somebody out there to go over your place, so we’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“Tell us about your evening,” Holly said.

“We had a drink and chitchatted, then we had a good dinner. After that, the other men and I went into Rawlings’s den and had a brandy and talked.”

“What did you talk about?” Harry asked.

“They were looking into my politics; I pretty much told them I’m to the right of George Wallace, and they seemed to like that.”

“What else?”

“They were interested in my weapons experience. Rawlings had a copy of my service record, can you believe that?”

“I can,” Harry said.

“Harry should know,” Holly said. “He has your service record, too.”

Ham laughed. “Everybody’s all over me. Does that mean they’ve got somebody in Records at the Pentagon?”

“Nah,” Harry said. “All it means is they’ve got somebody who can hack his way into a Pentagon computer and print out your record. Mind you, it would take a pretty smart hacker.”

“There was a computer in Rawlings’s den,” Ham said.

“What else did you talk about?”

“There was some talk of how my weapons experience might do some good for their cause, whatever that is, then it got cut short. The phone rang, it was answered in another room, then one of the wives came in and said everything was okay. Next thing I knew, I was being politely shown the door.”

“The call was from whoever bugged your phone,” Harry said, “reporting that the coast was clear. Why do you think they might have bugged Holly’s place?”

“I don’t know that, I was just being careful.”

“I’ll have somebody here before the day is out to go over both places.”

“Oh, they followed me all the way home, too. There was a car behind me with no headlights.”

“I guess they wanted to know if you were reporting to somebody when you left,” Harry said. “Did anybody follow you over here today?”

“I didn’t spot anybody, and believe me, I looked. These folks have a way of making me paranoid.”

“Just play it straight ahead; lead your life the way you usually do, and ignore them. Sounds to me like they’re interested enough in you that they’ll be in touch.”

“Tell me about the town and the house,” Holly said.

“Looks like something that Walt Disney might have designed. A general store and a couple of other little businesses on Main Street. The house is ordinary-looking, fairly new, middle-of-the-road furniture. Rawlings has the biggest collection of guns I’ve ever seen off a military base, and believe me, I’ve seen some collections.”

“What kind of guns?”

“Everything from antiques to handguns to military automatic stuff.”

“Where does he keep it?”

“In plain sight, on the walls of his den.”

“Be interesting to plow through it and see how much of it is illegal.”

“Is it legal to own a Barrett’s rifle?”

“What’s a Barrett’s rifle?”

“It’s a fifty-caliber sniper’s piece that can take out an armored personnel carrier.”

“I’ve never heard of it, but I’ll check it out.”

“We saw it fired the first time we were out there,” Holly said. “It was scary.”

“Anything else they talked about?” Harry asked.

“They sort of implied that somebody with my shooting skills could make a difference in the world.”

“You think they want you to shoot somebody?”

“The first thing they asked me was what I thought of the president.”

“And you said?”

“I just held my nose and expressed my preference for George Wallace. I thought Adolf Hitler might be going a little too far.”

“Ham, did you come away thinking that they wanted you to shoot the president?”

“It’s hard to say, Harry. Asking about the president might just have been their way of asking about my politics. Still, they were awful interested in how well I shoot.”

“And how well is that?”

Holly spoke up. “As well as it can be done,” she said. “And with anything.”

“I don’t like the reference to the president,” Harry said.

“Harry,” Holly said, “do you think we ought to bring the Secret Service into this?”

“Not yet,” Harry said quickly. “They’d be all over it, going in there with a search warrant, and we’d lose any hope of penetrating this group.”

“That sounds a little like interservice rivalry to me,” Ham said.

“Well, I guess it is, but it’s my call on when to bring them in. Don’t worry, I’m not going to let the president be put in jeopardy.”

“Or Ham, either,” Holly said.

“Of course not,” Harry said quickly. “I wouldn’t be using Ham at all, if I didn’t think it was the only way into this group.”

“Actually,” Ham said, “I’m kind of enjoying this. I’ve taken a real dislike to these people, and it would tickle me to blow them out of the water, whatever they’re doing.”

“Any other impressions of last evening?”