Chamberlain expressed disgust.
Elvis looked around for Nick. He wanted to make sure the car was in peak condition. He and Krokodil planned on hitting the trail tomorrow, and he didn't want to be stranded in the swamp with a burst tyre or a jammed minicannon.
Chamberlain grinned nervously. He was oily enough to get ahead in politics, but Harbottle and the Good Ole Boys could pour more dollars into his numbered bank accounts than the government.
"What the hell do you want anyway. Chamberlain?"
Chamberlain blew more smoke, and scattered ash on the tarmac. "Just a friendly li'l call, Colonel."
"You ain't no friend of mine."
"Aw, c'mon. Colonel. You know, what with this big ol' brouhaha up there in Washington D.C., all us Ops gotta stick together. We got us a whole set of interests to look after. Mutual interests, y'understand. There are damnyank politicians who just plain don't like law and order, y'know."
Elvis spat. "Yeah…well, the way some Agencies do business, I reckon I can understand how they feel."
Chamberlain stabbed the air with his cigar. Its tip glowed.
"You small-time guys really unsettle mah stomach, y'know? We got us a nice thing going here, and you just breeze in and dicker around with the situation like it don't matter whether you're eatin' 'taters or grits."
Elvis began to see what this was about. "Would you mind excusing me. Chamberlain? I've got some arrest documentation to file. I brought in a real scumjumper yesterday. Burtram Fassett. You ever hear of him?"
A deep red flush started at the GOB man's neck and filtered up over his face.
"You needn't bother doing the bytework, Colonel. Fassett hanged himself in jail last night.'"
"Ain't that a shame…"
"Yeah, you're the one to blame…"
"My tears will fall like rain."
The red reached Chamberlain's hairline, and crept into the roots of his dyed white locks.
"Burtram Fassett was a patriot of the New South, and you had no business turning him over to the damnyanks. No business at all."
Elvis was getting riled himself.
"Burtram Fassett was a psychopath, a dirtbag filth-hog, a disgrace to his state and should have been clapped in the pokey a long time ago."
Chamberlain snorted smoke.
"I wouldn't be right in guessing that there was maybe some little link-up between the Confederate Air Force and the Good Ole Boys, would I?"
Chamberlain didn't answer.
"Some of the hoodheads I tangled with out in the Delta were mighty well tooled-up for a bunch of fanatics. They had the kind of hardware only the Agencies are supposed to have access to."
"Presley…"
"Colonel Presley."
"Colonel, Field Marshal, Whatever-You-Like, you have to get with the big picture some time…"
"Are you gonna offer me a job with the GOB again?"
"The offer is always there. You're too smart to stay independent all your life, Colonel. Within the organization, there are plenty of slots for a smart cog like you. And soon, the New South will have a lot of use for gun-guys like you and me. Utah has gone secesh, and that sets a precedent. It's the War of Southron Independence all over again, y'know. Them fellers up there in Washington want to mess with our way of life."
Nick's assistant Gandy was working on a Studebaker across the workshop. He kept shooting Chamberlain dark looks. Elvis wondered if the mechanic had any kinfolk out in the boondocks who'd fallen prey to one of the CAF's indenture sweeps. He knew the black man was a worshipper at the hounfort down on Highway 51, and that the voodoo church had been turned over by hoodheads a couple of times. Gandy was hefting a heavy wrench, and looking at Chamberlain's long white hair, wondering about the eggshell skull under it.
"Maybe your way of life ain't so good, Chamberlain."
The GOB Op was really steaming now. His neck was bulging, straining his collar button and bootlace tie.
"Freak you. Colonel. Get with the programme, or get out of the business."
"If your programme means whipping and flogging and all that Southern-fried horsecrap, then you can take it all and shove it…"
"Why, you redneck white trash peckerwood. You're just a nigra wrapped up in a white skin."
"I've heard that said before."
The GOB had been getting fat off indenture for a few years, first hauling in the indentees, and then picking up fees from the corps for bringing back any absconding happy workers. None of the national Agencies—Turner-Harvest-Ramirez, Hammond Maninski, and the others—would touch the indenture system with a ten-foot electric cattle prod, and so the Good Ole Boys had a monopoly on slave-taking. Unofficially, GenTech had a fifty dollar bounty on the head of any able-bodied indentee brought back in a condition to work. And sometimes they weren't too scrupulous about examining the bytework, so, if the indentee you were after got clean over the state line or wound up crippled or dead, you could just pick someone with similar skin-colouring and slap the tagmarker on them. By the time anyone noticed the missing person, he'd have his own indentee status stuck on him and the New South had itself another gaily singing darkie in the sweatshops.
"Listen, guitar man. You've been scratching up some mighty important folks. This may just have been the last nice li'l talk you get. Mr Judgement Q. Harbottle himself asked me to be real persuasive. Y'know, him and Burtram Fassett went back a long way…"
"Yeah, I heard they were real close in kindergarten, loved dressing up for Hallowe'en in them white sheets and lynching all the other kids' kittens and puppy dogs while they burned those cute little wooden crosses on the porch…"
A couple of Gandy's buddies from the hounfort had shown up. There was often a knot of them hanging around Nick's workshop, doing odd jobs, swapping boasts about broads and cars, listening to Sovrock on the FM, shooting craps. Gandy was pointing at Chamberlain, and making ugly faces as he filled them in on the little man in the white linen suit. The Good Ole Boy hadn't noticed them yet.
"Go right on ahead and laugh. Colonel Presley, laugh all you like, and curl that thick nigra lip o' yours until it just plain sticks to your nose, why don't you. The South is changin', and you'd better change with it, or maybe you're like to find yourself out in some cotton field somewhere with all your nigra buddies singin' them ol' worksongs you used to wiggle your butt to…"
Gandy's half-brother Big Bill was walking over. Big Bill was not a small guy. Elvis had seen him single-handedly win a tug o'war with five members of the Union Avenue Bloods gangcult, and one of his party tricks when he had a few brews in him was to bite bullets in half with his eyeteeth.
"…or maybe you won't be in them cotton fields, guitar man, maybe you'll wind up under 'em. You think about that for a while, hey? And furthermore, I just reckon I might take it into my mind to drop in on that diner you're always hangin' around and give that fat old hash-slinger Cissy Smedley some o' that deep-dish lovin' she ain't been gettin' from you, you dried-up ol'…"
"Is this dude bothering you, Colonel?" Big Bill asked, his flipper-sized hand landing hard on Chamberlain's shoulder.
Elvis shrugged.
The Good Ole Boy looked up at Big Bill, and cowered. Big Bill smiled, showing off eighty-eight ivories. A diamond sparkled in one of his front teeth. Gandy and the boys had wandered over.
"Yo, Elvis," said the mechanic, stretching out his hand. The Op slapped it down, and raised his own palm to be punched.
"Yo, Gandy."
"How's ever' li'l thang?"
"Mighty fine."
Chamberlain was trembling now, and the angry flush was bleaching into a chickenbelly white.
Dollman Cleele, part-time priest of Santeria, pulled out a lump of hard wax, and started whittling away at it with a tiny switchblade. Big Bill angled Chamberlain's head from side to side so the Dollman could get a good likeness.