Death Trance (14 page)

Orbus grunted. 'I was wondering when this day would come, when you would have to turn around to the Association and beg for help.’

'I'm suggesting a deal, Orbus. I'm not begging.’

'Your father at least had the wit to realize when he was licked.’

'Listen, Orbus, are you interested in the arrangement or not?’

Orbus understood that he had pushed Randolph too far. ‘I’ll have to talk to Waverley about it, as well as to some of the other members.’

'Call me back in twenty-four hours.’

'Do you realize that you don't hold any cards? Sun-Taste has already called us to talk about a possible backup if you can't meet their quotas.’

'Right now, Orbus, I'm holding a legal contract with Sun-Taste that contains provisions that allow me seven days to make up any shortfall in production. If you don't know that, your intelligence network isn't as good as I always imagined it to be.’

'My dear Randolph, I have a copy of your contract in my files.’

'Get it out then and read it because I promise you this: if the Association isn't interested in helping, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that one day I split it right down the middle. You want to talk about anti-trust laws? You want to talk about price fixing? You want to talk about bond washing, coercion and insurance fraud?’

'Strong words, Randy, for a man so recently struck by tragedy,’ Orbus said complacently.

'Well, you get back to me, Orbus, because I wouldn't like to think that this was the day when one tragedy began to breed another.’

'You're a difficult man, Randy. I'll be talking to you soon again.’

Randolph switched off the phone. He was breathing hard. He should not have called Orbus, he supposed, after drinking so many glasses of wine. Orbus always brought out the worst in him: his obstinacy, his hotheadedness, his blustering streak. It also occurred to him that if the Association had somehow been involved in the Raleigh fire and, God forbid, Marmie's murder, extending a direct challenge to Orbus may not have been the wisest thing for him to do.

Herbert knocked at the library door and came in. 'Mr Clare? You wanted a taxi this evening? You don't have to, you know. The limo's back.’

'No, no, I want to take a taxi. I have some business downtown and I prefer to go as discreetly as possible.’

'Whatever you say, Mr Clare. Do you want me to come with you?’

Randolph shook his head. There are one or two things I have to do on my own,’ he said, 'and what I have to do tonight is one of them.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Downtown, Stanley Vergo was driving west on Pontotoc Avenue towards Front Street when he was hailed by two men in business suits standing on the sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ.

It was humid and sweaty but Stanley had been trying to keep as close to Beale Street as possible so he could keep his appointment with Randolph Clare at nine o'clock. This was probably going to be the last fare he would have time to pick up before heading over to the Walker Rooms, or maybe the second-to-last, depending on how far these two button-down specimens wanted to go.

Stanley drew into the curb and leaned across the passenger seat. 'Where's it to be, gents?’

'Your name Stanley Vergo?’ one of the men asked.

'That's right,’ Stanley said, then, 'Hey, what goes on here?’ as the other man immediately snatched open the back door of the cab and scrambled across the back seat close behind Stanley. The man was big-faced and pale and smelled of Vaseline. His eyes were two tiny black pinpricks, with lashes as blond as a pig's.

'What goes on here?’ Stanley demanded. 'I have a right to refuse a fare, you know, if anybody starts getting funny.’

'You don't have no right to do nothing except to shut your facial entrance and drive where we tell you,’ the big-faced man told him.

The other man climbed into the taxi beside his companion and slammed the door. He was Italian-looking, with thick, crimson lips and a flattened nose. 'Better do like my friend here suggests,’ he remarked almost sweetly.

'I ain't drivin' you bimbos nowhere,’ Stanley said. He picked up his radio-telephone mike and called, 'Victor One, Victor One.’

The second man reached over the seat and Stanley felt a sharp, cold sensation across his knuckles. He dropped the microphone and stared down at his hand, streaked with blood. He looked up at the Italian in fright and outrage.

'The next time you try anything like that, it's the whole hand,’ the man informed him. 'Now why don't we stop fussing and get going.’

'President's Island,’ the first man instructed him. 'Take the Jack Carley Causeway as far as Jetty Street.’

‘I’m supposed to be meetin' somebody,’ Stanley said. 'When I don't show up, he's goin' to start worryin' about me.’

That's the general idea,’ said the big-faced man.

Stanley shifted the taxi into gear and headed out into the busy Friday-evening downtown traffic. He was sweating like a horse, and the back of his right hand, where the Italian had cut it, was stinging viciously. The blood had run down to his elbow and was slowly drying and tightening his skin.

He headed west towards Main Street, where he would turn off south, away from the centre of Memphis, and go down to E.H. Crump Boulevard and out to President's Island. The city was bright and noisy and normal. The restaurants were open, the sidewalks were crowded with shoppers and sightseers and there was that happy, dissonant mixture of jazz and automobile horns. He could smell pepperoni pizzas and as he sat in his cab and tussled his way through the traffic, he wondered if he would ever have the chance to eat another pepperoni pizza. He sniffed and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

'What's this all about?’ he asked in a cracked voice.

The big-faced man was staring out the window. 'You don't know what this is all about? Nobody told you?’

'Why should they? I ain't done nothin'.’

'Well, we don't know what you're supposed to have done. Nobody tells us nothing. All they say is, find this taxi driver called Stanley Vergo.’

'And then what?’ asked Stanley, glancing up at the man's reflection in the rearview mirror.

'What do you mean, "And then what?"‘

'Exactly what I said, "And then what?" You're supposed to take me someplace or what? You're supposed to kill me or somethin'?’

The man glanced across at his companion as if he were totally baffled. 'What's he talking about?’ he asked.

'Don't ask me,’ the Italian-looking man replied. 'I don't know what he's talking about.’

'What, you're goin' to take me out someplace and kill me?’ Stanley demanded, almost hysterical.

'Did we say anything about killing?’ asked the man. He leaned forward, close behind Stanley's left ear, and said, 'Nobody said nothing about killing, you got me? All we want you to do is to take us out to President's Island, down the Jack Carley Causeway as far as Jetty Street, which in any case is about as far as you can go.’

Stanley took a left on Main, waiting for a moment while a flock of nuns crossed the street in front of him. Then he drove slowly towards E. H. Crump Boulevard, looking nervously from side to side and checking every few seconds the implacable faces he could see in the mirror. A black family in a Ford station wagon drew up beside him at the next traffic signal and the wife put down her window and said, 'We're looking for Central Station.’

Stanley turned around. 'What do I tell them?’ he asked.

'Tell them how to get there, you meathead,’ the big-faced man ordered.

But the traffic signal changed to green and Stanley jerked away from the line with a squeal of tires and a bucking of the rear suspension, leaving the black family staring and amazed.

'What the hell's gotten into you? You're driving like an ape,’ the big-faced man shouted at him.

'Well, what do you expect, for Christ's sake? I'm scared,’ Stanley retorted.

‘I’ll kill you right here and now unless you do as you're told,’ the man threatened. 'You want to check out right now?’

'Will you give me a break?’ Stanley appealed. 'I never did nothin' to nobody. All I do is drive cabs around all day, I swear to God.’

'Sorry, friend, it's not up to us,’ said the Italian-looking man. 'All we was told to do was to find this taxi driver called Stanley Vergo. Same name as Vergo's Barbecued Ribs, that's what they said.’

'Mother of God,’ Stanley prayed but kept on driving south until they crossed the dark neck of land between the Mississippi and Lake McKellar, a muddy isthmus over which the Jack Carley Causeway carried them to President's Island and Memphis Industrial Harbor.

The glittering lights of downtown Memphis were behind them now, wavering slightly in the eighty-degree heat of the evening. Ahead, random lights dipped and glimmered in the broad curve of the river, the navigation markers of cotton and oil and chemical barges. They drove the whole length of the causeway, jouncing over potholes in the blacktop where the industrial fill had deteriorated. Across Lake McKellar to the left, the floodlights of the T. H. Alien generating plant glared in the darkness, bright and heartless and remote.

Eventually the first man said, 'Turn off here,’ and Stanley drove off the causeway onto a wide, flat area of ash and clinker, half-overgrown with strangely vivid green grass. In the bouncing beams of the headlights, Stanley saw a dark limousine parked about twenty yards away and five or six extraordinarily white-faced men standing about, but then the man said, 'Kill the lights. Now stop,’ and Stanley had to obey.

'All right,’ said the big-faced man. 'We're all going to get out of the cab and we're all going to do it real slow and easy and not make any sudden moves. You got that?’

Stanley shivered and nodded. He switched off the engine, jingled the keys sharply in the palm of his hand and then opened the door and eased himself out. He stood beside the cab feeling desolate and miserable while the two men stood on either side of him, not too close but obviously prepared to stop him should he try anything.

'I could use a leak,’ Stanley said. 'I been drivin' all afternoon. I was about to go to the John when you stopped me.’

'Will you shut your facial entrance?’ the big-faced man fumed irritably.

'I'm scared, for Christ's sake,’ Stanley muttered.

There was a noisy crunching of ash and then the white-faced men who had been standing by the limousine approached them through the darkness, all of them wearing ice-hockey masks. They were dressed in black nylon running suits and two of them were carrying sawed-off shotguns.

'Now this ain't no joke,’ Stanley stammered. 'Will you tell me what goes on here?’

The masked men said nothing. Somewhere out on the Mississippi a barge hooted mournfully, and nearby, birds rustled in the grass as if the hooting had disturbed their sleep. It was then that two more men appeared out of the darkness, one of them small and delicate, with white hair and glasses; the other burly, with a heavy, iron-grey moustache, three bulging layers of coarsely shaved chin and wearing the kind of short-sleeved khaki shirt common to bush rangers or police officers.

It was the little man with the white hair who spoke first.

'Are you Stanley Vergo?’ he asked. His accent was neat and precise, and very Southern.

'I want to know what goes on here before I start answerin' any questions,’ Stanley replied, trying to appear confident and challenging.

'Are you Stanley Vergo?’ the little man repeated as if he hadn't heard Stanley.

'What if I am? What if I ain't?’

'Well, if you're not, these two gentlemen are not going to be paid for bringing you here. In fact, they're going to be punished. And if I punish
them…
well, you can imagine what they're going to do to
you.’

'So I don't win whether I'm Stanley Vergo or not?’

'But you
are
Stanley Vergo, aren't you?’

'If you know, why're you askin'?’

'I suppose it helps to break the ice,’ the little man smiled. He rubbed his hands together as if contemplating a gourmet feast. 'And besides, I do like to be sure. It would be such a waste of time if I were to ask you lots of complicated questions when you didn't have a clue to the answers because you were somebody else.’

'What questions?’ asked Stanley.

'Well, all manner of questions. But mainly questions about the work you've been doing. I suppose you could call it investigative work.’

'I ain't been doin' no investigative work. I've been drivin' my taxi.’

'Oh, come now,’ the little man smiled. 'We're none of us here as dumb as we might appear. You have been doing some investigative work, for money, for Mr Randolph Clare.’

'I don't know what you're talkin' about. You mean Mr Randolph Clare of Clare Cottonseed? Handy Randy?’

'The very man. He paid you money to keep your ears open for him, didn't he? He wanted to find out everything he could about that fire out at Raleigh, isn't that right?’

Stanley remained silent. He looked around at the men in the masks, at the heavily built man with the iron-grey moustache, at the Italian with the flat nose and the big-faced man.

The man with the iron-grey moustache said, 'Do you know me, Stanley? Do you know who I am?’

'It seems like you're kind of familiar,’ Stanley replied. 'Darned if I could put a name to you though.’

'Well, the reason I seem familiar is because my name is Dennis T. Moyne and I'm the chief of police. It just happens that Mr Graceworthy here called me to assist him when I was off duty. No uniform, you see; that's why you couldn't place me.’

'You're Chief Moyne and this is Mr Graceworthy?’ Stanley repeated in amazement. Then what's this all about, you two draggin' me all the way out here and threatenin' me, and these fellers here with guns and all? And that Eye-talian feller cut my hand bad, for nothin' at all, no comprehensible reason whatever.’

'We just wanted to ask you some questions, that's all,’ said Mr Graceworthy. He walked around Stanley in a slow circle; Stanley felt almost as if a tarantula were crawling up his bare back.

'And you had better think about answering, and answering truthful,’ Chief Moyne added. 'Anyone who undertakes investigative work for money without a state-approved private investigator's licence, well, he's liable for quite a long spell behind bars.’

'You got nothin' on me,’ Stanley told him. 'Else why would you bring me all the way out here where nobody can see us? And who are these guys with the masks? This isn't legal, sir, whether you happen to be the chief of police or not.’

Waverley Graceworthy came around and stood in front of Stanley. 'Let me be straight with you, Stanley. Things happen in even the best-run cities that require swift and effective action, even though they may not be strictly against the law. Now, Mr Randolph Clare has been causing considerable financial and social distress in Memphis, especially in the cottonseed industry, and while his actions have not been
illegal -
you can't arrest a man, after all, for cutting his prices - they have caused sufficient harm to warrant some positive retaliation. Are you a native-born Memphian?’

'Yes, sir,’ said Stanley suspiciously.

Then you will know that the name Memphis means "the city of good abode." And in the city of good abode, we expect all our fellow citizens to abide with each other in peace and harmony. Unfortunately, Mr Clare does not seem to want to do that. For the sake of his own personal wealth, he is destroying all the careful and caring work the Cottonseed Association has contributed to the cottonseed business in particular and to the city of Memphis in general. And you -
you,
Stanley - you took his money and agreed to help him.’