The engine came closer. I dropped to the ground, wriggled beneath branches, flipped leaves over me as impromptu camouflage. The engine was loud and unmuffled and close enough for me to smell the exhaust.
The machine stopped two dozen feet away. I saw a tall and lean man on a four-wheel ATV. He wore a nondescript brown uniform, like that of a security guard. A semiautomatic pistol was holstered at his side. If he looked my direction, there was no way he’d miss me.
“You’re real cold,” the child’s voice giggled in the distance.
“Fucking moron,” the guy muttered. He cleared his throat, spat, put on a playful voice. “I’m coming to get you, Freddy.”
“You’ll never find me.”
The guy cranked the throttle and tore away. I let my breath out, stood on shaky knees, and began my retreat. I was halfway to the road when I heard a burst of laughter and returned the glasses to my face. Through the leaves I saw the man on the ATV, the chubby child at his back, holding tight with stubby arms, laughing. They were moving slow, puttering along.
I focused the glasses tighter, saw a beard line on the child. Not a child, an adult. His face was small and round, his mouth wide with delight. I turned to the road and my foot caught a fallen limb. I crashed hard to the ground, a dry branch cracking like the report of a. 22.
The ATV engine revved hard, clanked into gear, started my way. I ran the last leg, clambered over the fence, jumped into the car. I fishtailed away, looking in the rearview. No one at the fence line. But anyone caring to look would note the scrabbled-up leaves where I’d built my impromptu hidey-hole.
Three miles down the road from my escapade I pulled into a small grocery store, thirsty. The clerk was a heavyset black woman in her forties, hair bleached yellow. Her name tag said SYLVIA.
“You’re pretty close to the Kincannons’ place here,” I said, snapping a package of beef jerky from the rack.
“Yep,” she said. She shot me a wary glance. “You know them?”
“Heard of them’s all. Hear they’re big with charities, that kind of thing.”
“I guess.”
“They ever stop in here?”
“Some a the workers do. I saw a Kincannon onct, the one called Racey.”
“Racine?”
She nodded. “He come in wit’ a bunch a his buddies. I think they’d been shootin’ birds or somethin’ by how they was talkin’. They’d been drinkin’, I smelt it soon’s the door came open. One says to the other, ‘I don’t care. If my bag’s empty after an hour, I gotta ground-shoot something.’ Then they all took to laughin’ and slappin’ backs.”
“What’d they come in for?”
“Pick up a couple six packs, get rid of a couple others.” She nodded at doors toward the back, RESTROOMS hand-painted above.
“Good to know rich people use the john like the rest of us,” I said, walking to the counter with my purchases.
“Mebbe not like the rest of us,” Sylvia said.
“How’s that, ma’am?”
“They pissed ever’where but in the commode. Floor, walls, in the sink, acrost the stack of paper towels. Cleared out they noses on the mirror, too.”
“Maybe really rich people think that’s funny,” I said. “Ones like Racine Kincannon.”
Sylvia handed back my change. Her eyes were tired. “Devil puts his money where he gets the most back.”
When I got outside, a blue truck was sitting next to my truck, a dual-track monster idling like a diesel-powered dragster. A K in a circle was painted on the door, the same K I’d seen over the stone entranceway and on the sculpted bull’s flank. The man at the wheel was on the far side, a big guy in a uniform. The guy in the passenger seat was the raw, bone-hard guy from the ATV.
I walked between the vehicles to get to my door. The rawboned guy stared at me with small hard eyes. The patch on a muscled shoulder said PRIVATE SECURITY. I nodded, just a guy loading up on snacks. The guy kept up the cold-eyed glare. He reminded me of a coiled rattlesnake.
He said, “I just see you on that single-lane dirt road a couple miles yonder?”
“Must have been someone else,” I said. “Why?”
“That’s my bidness. Not yours.”
I tapped his door panel with my knuckle, said, “What’s the K stand for?”
“Keep your fuckin’ hands off the truck.”
“Have a nice day,” I responded, climbing behind the wheel.
My next stop in the Kincannon pilgrimage was an office park, a multiacred expanse of rolling, neatly tended grass with square brick office buildings every eighth of a mile or so. The buildings were auburn; from a 747 the campus would resemble red dice on green baize.
Every tributary from the central road held a brass sign pointing out address ranges and directions. I wound past two large ponds complete with high-spraying fountains in the center and white ducks on the shoreline, pulled beside a red box with coppery windows. A sign beside the entrance said KEI, KINCANNON ENTERPRISES, INTERNATIONAL.
There was a parking lot, but it was closer to park on the street, walk to the building. I pushed through a tinted glass door into a cool lobby smelling of plastic and rug shampoo. A building receptionist sat behind a U-shaped desk. A beefy security guard stood in the corner. He looked me over hard, hair to shoes, like he was expecting someone but wasn’t quite sure who.
“I’m looking for the building directory,” I said to the receptionist, a young woman who thought it would be ultrasophisticated to combine a British and southern accent.
“May I awsk what firm y’all looking for?”
“Just a building directory.”
The security meat moved over quick. “Help you with something, sport?”
He didn’t expect to be shown a gold badge by a guy in raggedy cutoffs and a shirt from a Key West fish joint.
“Directory?” I repeated.
“Why you need to know?”
“Am I hearing the beginnings of an obstruction charge here?” I said.
“The top floor is the KEI executive offices. The third floor is KEI administrative offices. Clarity Broadcasting is the second floor. The first is Magnolia Industrial Developments.” He said it like it hurt to move his mouth.
“There. Wasn’t brain surgery, was it?” I said, heading out the door.
Lucas finished the last of the moo shu pork, tossed the carton in the trash bag. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, then stood and bent to the floor, relaxing his spine. He opened the window blinds an inch and peered at the building across the way, corner office, top floor, Buck Kincannon’s office. Racine Kincannon’s office was to the right of the corner, Nelson Kincannon’s to the left.
A week ago his world was a bed and a room. Now he had his very own insecurities firm. Lucas leaned against the wall and struck a pose that had always amused him, arms crossed, head canted, mouth stern with decision-making. He started laughing, and the laughter brought a memory.
“Why are you laughing, Lucas?”
“Because it’s all so funny, Dr. Rudolnick.”
“What’s funny?”
“How much I scare them. How much it scares them.”
“What do you mean by it, Lucas?”
“Shall I do some calculations? Would you like a brief analysis of pork bellies?”
Lucas stepped from the wall, looked outside, saw nothing interesting. It was night when things got exciting, when the other people came and went, sometimes in a frenzy. Watching them was glorious to behold, jackets off, sleeves rolled, ties pulled loose. They spread maps on the conference room table. Vehicles came and went in the lot below. Sometimes a cop car floated past, stopped briefly.
The faces of the participants were always dark with worry. Even Crandell’s. Everyone was playing a role in response to the roles played by the others. But behind the roles…I, Me, Mine.
The night before, the whole crew had been in the conference room-the war room, in Lucas’s self-amusing terminology. He had used his new microwave to make popcorn, then sat in the dark and watched events like a movie. It became quite dramatic near midnight, a fistfight breaking out between Nelson and Racine, the others pulling them apart.