“I tell you, Mr. Moray, sir, it was some damn fuckin’ shocked and flat flabbergasted folks here’bouts when his will was read, I tell you, sir. For all he’d spent a lot of time in his last ten or so years yellin’ to ever’body could hear him ’bout how the sher’ff was the worstest mistake he’d ever made, was drownedin’ him and his corporation and the county in red ink, was mollycoddlin’ his damn depities and ridin’ roughshod over the better folks in the county, it was none other than Sher’ff Sherwood Chamberlin he left his controllin’ int’rest in all three his corporations to.”
Milo whistled and shook his head. “So now Chamberlin owns this county, huh?”
“Not really, naw, sir, Mr. Moray,” replied Crawford. “He could, and no fuckin’ mistake about er, was he a mind. But no more’n a week or so after he’d inher’ted ever’thing, he drove down to D.C. and talked to a lot of folks and then talked to folks the first bunch had sent him to and come back up here with a bunch more, one of them a perfessional county manager and the rest either from the state guvamint or the U.S. guvamint. He ’lowed as how it weren’t right and proper for no man to die and jest give a whole county and ever’thing in it to another’n, said it won’t democratic and that he’d fought a war for democracy and was willing to fight as many more as he had to, come to that. He ’lowed as how nobody should be sher’ff for life, neither, and said the next elections was gonna be honest to God real elections with no fixes on nuthin’ or there’d be hell to pay.”
“And yet, I see he’s still county sheriff,” said Milo, puffing at his old pipe.
“All he’s done and seen done for thishere county and all, Mr. Moray, sir,” said Crawford, with feeling, “it jest plumb ain’t no livin’ man anybody’d have for sher’ff but him, Sherwood Chamberlin.”
As if on cue, Sherwood Chamberlin opened the door and came back into the private dining room. His face was solemn and his voice, when he spoke, grim. “Milo, Billy, I just got through talkin’ to Dr. Kilpatrick, over to County Gen’rul. Bubba Rigny was a DOA—dead on arrival at the emergency room.”
XI
Milo set down his pipe with meticulous care, laid both hands flat on the table and addressed the lawman. “It was self-defense, of course, Chamberlin … not that I meant to do more than beat him insensible. I have an attorney in New York City. I’ll have to ring him up and get a local recommendation. Whatever the bond is, I can post it; even if I don’t have enough cash on me, my attorney can wire me the difference.”
“I seen it all, too, Sher’ff, ever’ minnit of it,” said Crawford, soberly. “Bubba and Wally and Abner set out to beat Mr. Moray and he jest defended hisself, was all. Bubba’s beat me a whole hell of a lot worse than Mr. Moray beat him. I’ll swear on the Bible to ever’ bit of it, too …”
Chamberlin picked up his glass of whisky and drained it off with a working of his prominent Adam’s apple, then said, “Relax, the both of you, jest relax, hear. If anybody kilt Bubba Rigny, it was Bubba Rigny. Seems he come out of it in the meat wagon, see, and beat up on pore Claude Tatum some kinda bad, then got the damn back door opened and jumped out the meat wagon that was jest then doing over sixty on the fuckin’ highway, That alone likely kilt the crazy fucker, but then too one my depities, Chuck Fontaine, was right behind in a cruiser and so close he couldn’t help but run right over Bubba’s body.”
The lawman shrugged, and as he hooked a finger around the neck of the whisky bottle and began to pour more of the dark-amber fluid into his glass, he declared, “It’s gone hurt Bubba’s pore paw and maw and some others, likely, but not as bad prob’ly as it was sure as hell goin’ to if he’d lived long enough to do suthin’ would see him in the penitent’ry ’stead of jest in my lockup or the county farm, if not the chair or in a state boobyhatch for life. Bubba, he never was swung together too tight, see, Milo; he was a murder jest waitin’ to happun from the time he was jest a tad. He got some kinda charge out of hurtin’ other folks and animals and all; he was jest born mean, seemed like, and he dint never get no diffrunt or no better. Most his kin wouldn’t have ary a particle to do with him from the time he was no more’n ten or twelve; after he beat his pore paw near to death when he was ’bout fourteen, he was put in the reform school for a couple years, but all that seemed to do was make the fucker meaner.
“Whin the war started up and all, lots the young fellers started ’listin’, but natcherly, wouldn’ any of the services take on Bubba, not with his record. The Marines come closest to takin’ him, but fin’ly even they turned him down, and that really tore his asshole, too, ’cause his paw had been a Marine in World War Two and had got shot up on New Georgia Island by the Japs.
Now, Bubba Rigny’d done beat on Billy, here, afore—hell, big as he allus was for his age, he’d beat on jest ’bout ever’body he’d went to school with—and whin Billy come home on a leave afore be was to be sent over to Vietnam, Bubba went after him. But this was afore Billy’d done lost part his leg, see, and he’d been taught a whole hell of a lot of hand-to-hand and he ended up putting Bubba in the fuckin’ hospital in a fair fight was seed by a dozen or more people. And of course Billy’d done shipped out by the time Bubba was on the street again.
That Bubba Rigny was jest no good, crazy, no-count; he was headed almost from the day he was borned for a lifer’s cell or the ’lectric chair or some pore cop’s bullet. This way, the way it went down’s for the best, his death cain’t be on nobody’s conscience, see. It was God’s will, is all.”
The copter that lifted off from his uncle’s pad beyond the outside swimming pool was not one of the senator’s; its three-man crew—despite their carefully tailored clothing and manners as carefully polished as their gleaming shoes—had security bodyguards written all over them in foot-high Day-Glo letters, and James Bedford would have been willing to bet ten years’ worth of income that the innocuous-appearing executive copter was not only well armored but was also fitted with a whole plethora of unpleasant and/or fatal surprises for any attacker to encounter.
Soon after he had been seated and served a sealed sipper of hot, fragrant coffee, one of the crew had opened an underseat locker and produced what looked at first to be a small shoulder-strapped lettercase. Going through it slowly, he courteously showed Bedford just how to manipulate the buttons and catches to open it with a slight hiss and disclose a thickly padded interior.
“Now, sir, when you close it back up, be certain to press one or both thumbs on these two buttons. After that, only the imprints of your thumbs will be able to release the lock until it is once more opened and reset with another print, you see; anyone who should attempt it will receive a most unhealthy shock.” The man allowed the ghost of a smile to flit across his face in indication of a species of grim joke.
“You see, sir, as you most likely are aware, the effects of cabin pressurization and depressurization on explosive-tipped small-arms ammunition remains, despite all the advances in weapons technology of late, sometimes distressingly less than pleasant. In the air marshals’ cubicle on board the aircraft, you will of course surrender your personal weapons and spare ammo. At that time, you will place the weapons and munitions inside this case and personally secure the catches, then there can be no slightest question that anyone might tinker with your weapons or replace them with other similar ones en route to your destination. Please note down or record the serial number of this case to guard against duplication of cases, for all of this issue are otherwise identical.” He flitted another smile. “Government-issue.