Dorn suspected that Guthrie’s first impulse must have been to throw Jackson into a room with a naked white girl and let him die of shock. But the Louisiana governor had style. He immediately shot a bill through the state legislature appointing Willie Jackson official Louisiana Shoeshine Boy for life, and authorizing at taxpayers’ expense the erection of a permanent shoeshine stand on the steps of the State Capitol Building.
And every morning, as Governor William Roy Guthrie and his four-man bodyguard walked to the governor’s office, Guthrie stopped for a shine. Willie Jackson shined his shoes, and Guthrie gave him a dollar, and virtually every newspaper in America had ran, at least once, a photograph of this little ceremony. Some of the photos showed Guthrie standing with his hands on his hips, beaming around a fat cigar. In others he was depicted leaning over to rub Jackson’s nappy white head for luck.
Dorn loved the story, and had got to the point where he could not think of Guthrie without thinking of Willie Jackson. Periodically he found himself experiencing the same sort of grudging affection for Guthrie that he did for Eric Heidigger, and he suspected the reasons, whatever they might be, were not all that dissimilar.
On Dorn’s second and final trip to Baton Rouge, he took along his copies of the Black Panther newspaper, along with some of the contents of the parcel Heidigger had given him. He brought other supplies as well.
It was not so easy to move around unobtrusively in Baton Rouge as in a city like New York. Dorn devoted a few hours to following Willie Jackson after he had closed his shoeshine stand for the day. It was in his mind to secrete copies of the Black Panther paper in Jackson’s room, but the more he considered this the less advantageous it seemed. He ultimately buried the papers in a trash can.
He spent several more hours determining the pattern of surveillance in the Capitol area. The actual process of secreting an explosive charge in the base of the shoeshine stand took less than ten minutes, start to finish.
One item in Heidigger’s parcel that Dorn did not take to Baton Rouge was a squat plastic cube the size and shape of a pack of regular cigarettes. There was a button on it, set at a level with the surface of the device. When depressed, it would emit a high-frequency signal that would activate a companion device which was presently in Baton Rouge. One night in Willow Falls, Dorn used a knife blade to pry the device apart at the seams. He made an interesting modification of the device and put it back together again.
He spent the next day with Jocelyn. At one point she told him that he seemed to be in an unusual mood.
“It’s true,” he admitted. “I am apprehensive.”
“Of what?”
“I can’t remember the last time I had something to lose. The sensation is enervating.”
“Something to lose?”
“You.”
“You’re silly,” she said, kissing him.
He went back to Baltimore. It took him more time than he had anticipated to learn the name and find the apartment. It was late when he knocked on the door. A gaunt black woman with cautious eyes opened it.
He said, “Royal Carter?”
“What you want with him?”
“It’s private.”
She frowned disapproval but turned and went into another room. A few moments later the boy with the Afro haircut came to the door. He looked at Dorn without recognition.
Dorn tugged at the lobe of his ear, then put his finger to his lips. Royal Carter’s eyes narrowed for an instant. Then he nodded shortly.
Dorn said something inane about Methodist missionary activity in Botswana. While he talked, he held a piece of paper so that Carter could read what was written on it. It said: Greyhound terminal men’s room 20 minutes.
Carter took in the message and nodded curtly. Then when Dorn paused in the middle of his speech about Botswana, he said, “I ain’t interested in missions, man,” and closed the door in Dorn’s face.
A long-distance telephone conversation:
“I’m in Egypt, man.’“
“No trouble?”
“No. Take forever to grow that hair back, that’s all that bothers me.”
“It’s for a good cause.”
“No complaints. Hate having to wait three more days. That’s all. But if an old man like him can hold up his end, I can carry mine. The way he stands there and toms, and then to deliver like this.”
“I hope you haven’t talked to him.”
“No, I’m cool. I just watch him is all. And I don’t hang around too much.”
“Good.”
“Thursday, then.”
“Good.”
Dorn did not like the waiting either. Too many things could go wrong and he could not control them. Royal Carter was alone in Baton Rouge with no one on hand to keep his nerve up. The plastic object in Carter’s pocket could be activated, through nervousness or accident, at any time. Many times in his career Dorn had had to run an amateur, and he had learned early to stay close enough to the runner to hold onto the reins.
This was not possible. It was very important to him that he not be in Baton Rouge when the shit hit the fan. It was, further, quite necessary that he be with Jocelyn, and this saddled him with the three-day waiting period. She was in New York, enduring a summit meeting with her father.
“He’ll play the heavy parent role,” she had said. “It’s no problem. I can handle him. I’ll be back by Wednesday at the latest. Will you miss me?”
“Perhaps a little.”
“And what will you do while I’m gone?”
“Rest,” he said. “And conserve my strength.”
He wanted her to be with him when it happened. It did not seem likely to him that she would make an association between his absences from Willow Falls and the violent deaths of prominent persons. He was gone frequently when nothing happened, and there were all too many violent deaths, unconnected with Dorn, that took place while they were together.
He occasionally wondered if she was having an adverse effect on his judgment. He knew that, but for her, there would be no need for this hectic running back and forth between Willow Falls and other parts of the country. He had to preserve this cover of his only because his relationship with her was a part of it. Otherwise he would simply have floated around, constantly mobile, like Heidigger with his Holiday Inns.
He decided that speculation was pointless. But for her, after all, everything would be completely different.
“That rotten fascist bastard. Oh, I hope somebody gets him. I’m not that nonviolent I think it would be worth dying, to get someone like Guthrie first.”
Q.E.D.
On Thursday morning, while Miles Dorn and Jocelyn Perry were weighing the desirability of breakfast against that of remaining in bed a little longer, Royal Carter was drinking coffee at a lunch counter across the street from the State Capitol Building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was so seated on his stool that without moving his head he could glance either out through the window to the Capitol steps or across the counter to the large flyspecked mirror. His eyes would dart first to the right and then to the left. When he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he had to repress the impulse to reach for his head and touch his hair, now uniformly cropped to within a quarter-inch of his scalp. When he looked out the window, his right hand, kept at all times in a pocket of his overalls, automatically fingered a plastic gadget the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes.