Second Chance (19 page)

"Ways of gettin' around that
kinda
shit."

"Yeah?" Keith let his voice get more intense. "What makes you so different from Rider? They
hadda
hire these fuckin' niggers and slants, even though they didn't know near as much as us white guys. We
carried
'em, and they're the ones that get the credit when
somethin
' good comes out of our work—'credits to their race' and all that. So what makes Goncourt so damn special?"

Hastings gave a shrug and shook his head, as if he couldn't say any more. Keith wanted to be careful not to push too far too fast, but at the same time he wanted to seem natural, and any natural man would have been curious at this point. "Y'all
doin
' government work out there?" he said softly, as though not wanting anyone to overhear.

Hastings shook his head again. "I said enough. But send 'em your resume. They won't toss it, you got my word. Now. How 'bout another beer?"

"Might's well," Keith said. "Cause I can't dance and it's too wet to plow."

The next day Bob Hastings went back to Goncourt for two weeks, and Keith Aarons lived the life of a chili cook in a cheap bar. He filled his days with sleep, classical music, and a strict regimen of exercise, and his nights with beef, chilies, and, afterwards, Sally. Though he passed the time with the customers at Red's, he was unable to establish any relationships that told him more about Goncourt Labs. Those who worked there were reluctant to discuss it, and those who didn't knew nothing, though they implied the opposite.

When Keith was alone with silence, his own thoughts assailed him as they never had before. He had been able to think of little else since he heard about the lab.

His was not an altogether solitary life. There were
armorers
, craftsmen of the underground, forgers of documents, purveyors of forms, and others, many of whom knew far more than what one could read in newspapers. It was from one of these that Keith had acquired the clues that brought him to Bone.

Four years before, and two months after the Valdez incident, Keith had used the services of an underground gunsmith to design and build the weapon with which he later assassinated the president of Exxon. The
armorer
, who lived in Atlanta, had also been a white supremacist. Sadly, it was hard to find weapons men who were true professionals, in the game for profit alone. Most had causes now, and often causes meant
vocality
,
vocality
meant official surveillance. This particular man was one of the most vocal Keith had met.

"So who's this for?" the man, who called himself Brown, had asked Keith when he ordered the weapon. Keith had looked at him coldly and not answered. It was not a question men of sense asked. "Don't blame you for not telling me," Harris said. “Just hope it's a nigger." Keith clenched his jaw. Next to despoilers of the earth, he hated bigots most. They despoiled mankind in their own twisted way.

But he didn't display his loathing to Brown. Instead he hinted that his vendetta was in some way connected to "the efforts of white Christians to liberate themselves from the domination of the mongrel races." The absurd phrase had been music to the gunsmith's ears.

When Keith had checked on him partway through the construction, the man had mentioned the lab, not by name, but as a place where "things were being done, the one place on the earth where everybody saw the danger and was ready to do something about it." When Keith acted sincerely interested, Brown went on, telling him about the
virological
research being done, genetic engineering to create microbial weapons capable of extinguishing entire races. "In fact," Brown said, "they got a virus you breathe in and out that'll wipe out
everybody
. The trick is to get it to wipe out the niggers and chinks. But they'll do it, you
betcherass
."

"I've heard about this before," Keith lied, "but then I heard it was all bullshit, just rumors."

The gunsmith shook his head. "Not rumors. I talked to a guy worked there, and he told me all about it. It's real all right. Real as the American flag."

"How could anything like that stay a secret?"

The gunsmith shrugged. "How do you and me stay secret, pal? There's money there too. Lots of it. Gotta have money today to fight the race wars, do the research. The government gives the blacks money and they fight the whites with it, so thank God that there are white people with money ready to give it to help fight the damn
blacks
."

"So where is it?" He tried to make it sound as offhand as possible.

"That's what a
helluva
lot of
people'd
like to know, isn't it?" The man who called himself Brown smiled, as if he knew but wasn't telling. Keith didn't know if Brown really knew, but he thought he knew more than he was telling. The supremacists were loose-lipped with the generalities of their hatred, but tight with details.

When, a week later, Keith returned to pick up the weapon and pay the second and final installment, he said nothing about the lab. But three hours later, after he had
cached
his new weapon, he returned to the gunsmith's shop and interrogated him for what further information he might have.

It wasn't much. Brown had met his informant at a white supremacist rally in Florida a year before, but had not learned his name, and knew nothing more about the lab other than that it worked in conjunction with a legitimate chemical laboratory. Brown didn't even know if it was located in the United States.

Keith believed him implicitly. The man's pain threshold was very low, and Keith killed him quickly, before he could come out of shock again. He did not go through the gunsmith's files, for any information Brown had on Keith could not be traced to the next person Keith would become.

A legitimate laboratory. It had not been much to go on, for there were thousands of such facilities in the country. Keith knew of many of them, since among his successful targets had been several executives of companies that had violated DER ordinances. But at least it was something.

Still, he had shuddered at the thought of beginning the search, as he shuddered now, lying in his bed in Bone, Texas, waiting for morning to come. If what the gunsmith had said was true, and if he was able to join the lab and breach the security, then the decision would be his to make, the most important decision that any man had ever made.

For once an airborne virus was free, you could no sooner call it back than you could catch the wind.

Chapter 17

The breakthrough came on the 28th of June. At last it was the chance for Keith to indicate in action what he had only said before.

It was the second full week that Keith had spent with Bob Hastings. Tonight Ted Horst and Al Freeman had come in with him, and the four of them were sitting together at a table near the front during one of Keith's breaks. At nine o'clock a black man walked into Red's Tavern, an event that didn't happen very often. Keith had only seen two blacks inside the bar in the four weeks he had worked there, and they had just bought a six-pack to carry out.

It wasn't that black people didn't live in Bone, it was just that they lived in one part of town, and didn't mingle much with the whites. Even in a town as small as Bone, they had their own bars and restaurants, their own churches, their own stores. So to have a large, young, and handsome black man come into Red's Tavern, sit at the bar, and order a beer and a bowl of chili brought a moment of disbelieving silence to the place. Keith felt like rejoicing. The man was big, but he had taken big men before. In a way he hated to do it. The black, sitting there with a quiet arrogance and pride Keith admired, looked like an ebony god among the leather thin and pasty whites. But it was his chance, and he didn't know when he might get another.

"Look at that," said Al Freeman. "You don't see that very often."

"Looks like that guy in the
Rocky
movies," Ted Horst said. "Not from Bone anyhow. Bone darkies wouldn't come in here and sit."

Bob Hastings made no attempt to conceal his aversion. "Stranger or not, who the fuck does that nigger think he is?"

The words were loud enough for the black man to overhear a few of them, and he turned and looked at the men at the table with a pleasant smile, as if to give them an opportunity to retract, if not the words, then their attitudes.

"He's
lookin
' at you, Bob," Al Freeman whispered.

"
Mmm
." Ted Horst nodded. "I think he likes you, Bob. Think he'd like to get into your pants."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Keith said loud enough to carry. "Hear black
studs'll
stick their dicks near anywhere."

The black man lost his smile, and looked at Keith for a long moment. Keith looked back, expressionless except for a gentle smile that curved the corners of his thin mouth. The black man took a deep breath, and turned his attention back to his chili.

"Damn," Hastings breathed, "I thought he was gonna come after you sure."

"He's a coward," Keith said. "They all are."

"Yeah," Freeman agreed. "Probably thinks we'd all jump him."

Keith shook his head. "No. He's just afraid of me."

Ted Horst snorted. "He's a heavyweight,
hoss
. You're just a little
ol
' middleweight."

"Doesn't matter. Even though they're bred for muscle, they're still genetically inferior and they know it. They've got an instinctive fear of us, not the other way around. They recognize their master."

The three men looked at Keith. "That's what you believe, huh?" Ted Horst asked.

"That's what I believe. Believed it enough that it cost me my job." Keith picked up his bottle and filled his beer glass all the way to the brim, then stood up. "Truth's hard to keep alive. But it's impossible to kill. That's known as a paradox, gentlemen."

Walking carefully, he crossed the several feet between their table and the bar until he stood directly behind the black man. He held his glass near the man's shoulder, and cleared his throat. When the man turned, his shoulder bumped the glass, making the liquid spill over the side and onto Keith's left hand. The black man frowned.

"I believe you
tumped
over my beer, buck," Keith said.

"Sorry. But you were
standin
' pretty close to me," the man said in a smooth tenor voice.

"All the same."

The black man smiled and sighed. "All right then, I'll buy you another one. What you
drinkin
'?"

"No," Keith said, "you won't buy me another one. I don't drink with you."

"Look, I said I was sorry, brother, can't we just let it go at—”

“You're not my brother. My mama didn't fuck orangutans."

The only sounds in the bar were the low roar of the refrigeration units and the air conditioner, and the higher pitched sound of the crowd at the Astros game on the TV.

"You know, I'd get down to the nut-
cuttin
' on you," said the man, "if you didn't have all your white buddies around.”

“Don't let them stop you, black boy."

The man's jaw muscles twitched. "You think they wouldn't?"

"
Goddam
it, Pete," Red Bates said, swatting the bar with a damp rag. "There's to be no
fightin
' in here. You let that nigger alone now."

"He
tumped
my beer, Red."

"I don't give a shit, you let him alone or you're fired!”

“Too late, Red. I just quit."

"Pretty brave with all your redneck friends behind you," the black man said.

"They won't touch you. You and me, that's all."

"Yeah, I really believe that."

"You've got the word of a white Aryan."

The black man laughed derisively. "Well, that ain't worth shit."

"You gonna fight, you sorry two-bit sack of ape crap, or you gonna try and talk me to death?"

"When I get done with you, motherfucker, you'll be
pissin
' your Triple X root beer out your—"

The black man never said which orifice Keith would be using to urinate, for he tried to take Keith by surprise, shooting out a huge right fist at his face.

Keith was ready for it, and slipped the punch, then pushed his own right fist into the man's throat. When he threw up his hands, Keith grasped them, pulled them to either side, and butted the man in the face with his forehead. There was a dull cracking sound when the nose broke, and blood gushed from the nostrils as the black man wheezed for breath.

He seemed to call upon some deep reservoir of strength, and broke Keith's grip, then threw a roundhouse right that grazed Keith's temple, staggering him so that he stepped sideways and bumped into a table at which a pair of old and stringy cowboys sat. They scattered as the table went over, flinging chili bowls and a pitcher of beer onto the wooden floor.

Keith fell into the mess, and looked up in time to see the black man, face dripping, throw himself at him. He rolled onto his back, wincing as a chunk of broken glass dug into his shoulder and his head struck the bar rail.

His opponent's left hand caught Keith's belt, and tried to drag him closer, but Keith grasped the bar rail with both hands, brought up his legs, and kicked hard. One booted foot caught the black man in the shoulder, the other in the face. The man moaned, and his grip relaxed long enough for Keith to pull away, get to his hands and knees, and leap on the man.