Grass Roots Read online

  Manny moved his plump shape slowly toward the door of the club, watching the customers and the waiters. It was Christmas Eve, and the place was a lot less than half-full. Still, he couldn’t complain about business. Smooth as silk, it was. He’d cleared better than half a million bucks out of this place in the past year, and it was only one of three. The bookstore, though, that was another thing altogether. He’d go lock it up and be back with Lauren in no time. He stopped by his office and picked up an envelope with the checks in it.

  In the parking lot, he inhaled the scent of the Mercedes leather interior once more, then started the car and moved off toward the bookstore, only a few blocks away. The car was new, less than a hundred miles on it, and he still felt the euphoria of ownership every time he got into it. He had paid cash for it; he paid cash for everything these days.

  It was a damn shame about the bookstore, he reflected as he drove through the Atlanta streets, shiny with rain. It wasn’t working. The rent was too high, it took too many people to run, and, worst of all, the place had been getting picketed lately. It was that goddamned TV preacher, Calhoun, sending his wild-eyed troops of housewives and children around with their signs, followed by the TV cameras. Then, when the local stations had tired of filming this ritual, Calhoun had sent his own cameras out and was showing the footage on one of his television programs.

  What the hell? Manny thought, pulling into a parking spot outside the store. Why would guys want to buy pictures and videotapes of girls when they could come to any one of his three spots and see the real thing? He fished the envelope out of his pocket and looked at the three checks again. He was giving every man a month’s pay in addition to what he had coming. That was generous, wasn’t it? None of them had worked for him a year yet. A lot of employers would have just booted them out and shut down, even if it was Christmas Eve.

  He swung out of the Mercedes and started for the door, glancing at his watch. Five minutes to four A.M., which was closing time. He’d make this short and sweet, get back to the club, give Lauren a quick hump, and be home in bed next to his wife by five. His daughter and her husband, the bum, would be over for Christmas dinner tomorrow.

  Manny opened the door and stepped into the store. He didn’t notice the van that had pulled into the parking lot and was sitting, its engine idling, as he looked around the store for customers. None, and no surprise. There was a man at the cash register, another dozing against a wall, and as Manny greeted them, the manager stepped out of his tiny cubicle at the rear.

  “Hi, Frank,” Manny said, pulling the envelope out of his pocket and waving it. “Merry Christmas, huh?”

  Frank started to speak, but stopped, and his expression suddenly changed from greeting to something else, something Manny couldn’t figure.

  “What’s the matter?” Manny asked. Then he felt a cold draft on the back of his neck and realized that Frank was looking past him, toward the door. So was the man at the cash register, and the one against the wall was suddenly awake. Manny turned around.

  Two men stood inside the door, and two others quickly joined them. They were wearing camouflage fatigues and black berets, and three of them were holding some sort of small automatic weapons. The fourth, a tall, thin, deeply tanned man with barn-door ears and a hooked nose, held an automatic pistol.

  This was not the first time Manny had faced men with guns, what with the business he was in, and he did not panic. “All right, fellas,” he said, holding his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture, “no problem. No problem at all. We’ll give you what we’ve got—whatever you want—and there won’t be any fuss, all right?” He turned half around. “Frank, get all the cash together, whatever you’ve got, and do it right now.”

  “No.”

  Manny turned back toward the four men. “What?”

  The tall man spoke again. “We don’t want your filthy money.”

  “I’m sorry?” Manny said, bewildered. “You want pictures, tapes? Take whatever you want. Whatever.”

  “You three,” the tall man said to Manny’s employees. “Over here; on the floor.”

  Manny didn’t like this at all. A stickup? Sure, take your loss like a man, don’t get anybody hurt. But what was with these guys? What was it with the uniforms? He held out his car keys. “Listen,” he said, “there’s a brand-new Mercedes 560 SEL out in the parking lot—sixty grand’s worth. Take it and have a Merry Christmas, okay? Let’s not get crazy here.”

  “Lie down on the floor,” the tall man said harshly. One of his companions grabbed Frank, the manager, and threw him onto the floor at Manny’s feet. “Face that way,” the tall man said, “all in a row.”

  Manny was suddenly very frightened. This was very weird. He looked out the window at the deserted street. A patrol car, he thought. We gotta have a patrol car, right now.

  “You’re Pearl,” the tall man said. “We didn’t expect to get this lucky.”

  “What lucky?” Manny said, his voice breaking. These guys wanted him. Was this some mob thing? He’d never had any of that kind of trouble, always made it a point to get along with those guys. His three employees were lined up on the floor at his feet now.

  The tall man nodded to one of his companions and pointed at Frank, the manager. The uniformed man, who was young and fresh-faced, stepped forward, quickly aimed his weapon, and fired a single shot into the back of Frank’s head. The manager emitted a sort of sigh.

  “Jesus God!” Manny said. “Please don’t do this! These people have never done anything to you! Neither have I!”

  “Shut up,” the tall man said. He nodded to another of his companions, who stepped forward and shot the cashier, then to the third companion, who shot the remaining employee.

  Manny stood, staring at the three bodies. He looked helplessly out the window again. Would nobody come to help him?

  “Pearl!” the tall man barked.

  Manny turned and looked at the man, suddenly angry. “You sons of bitches, all of you!” he shouted.

  The tall man raised his pistol and fired point-blank into Manny’s face.

  Manny flew backward, knocking over a bookstand, and ended up facedown on the floor. Amazingly, he was still conscious. He heard the tall man speak again.

  “Good work, men,” the man said.

  “Pearl’s still breathing,” another voice said. “You better put another one in him.”

  “Yeah,” the tall man said.

  Manny clenched his fists. His right hand was full of blood. The shock and the noise came at the same time.

  10

  At midmorning on Christmas Day, Will set the airplane down on fifteen hundred feet of pasture at Flat Rock Farm. He taxied as close to the house as he could, then walked the last hundred yards, bearing his Christmas gift. Jasper met him at the back door, all smiles.

  “I sure am glad to have him home, Mr. Will,” the black man said, “and I sure am glad to see you down here on Christmas. Minnie wants to know—can you stay for Christmas dinner?”

  Will shucked off his coat and handed it to the man. “I’m afraid not, Jasper,” he said. “My folks are expecting me back. I haven’t had a meal with them since I got home from Washington.”

  “Come on upstairs,” Jasper said. “We got him all fixed up in his own room. We put a bed in there that sits up, and wait till you see what the Governor sent down here.”

  Will followed Jasper up the stairs and down the hallway to the big corner room. The Senator was sitting, supported by the new bed, facing the biggest television set Will had ever seen.

  “Twenty-seven-inch screen. Ain’t that something!” Jasper crowed. He leaned closer to Will. “There’s a therapist lady coming every day, starting tomorrow. I sure hope she helps him. I hate seeing him like this.”

  Will went to the bed and pulled up a chair. He took Ben Carr’s hand. “Merry Christmas, Senator,” he said. The hand moved a bit. A muscle spasm? Will set his gift on the bed beside the Senator and removed the wrapping. “It’s a speaker telephone,
” he said to the old man. He unplugged the instrument beside the bed and plugged in the new phone. “When you get a call, Jasper can just push the button, here, and you can listen without having to fool with the handset.”

  The same childlike expression greeted Will, the same bright eyes. Did they understand what they saw? They had to. Will wouldn’t have it any other way. He sat beside the bed for half an hour bringing the Senator up to date on everything he could think of. He told him about the preliminary hearing for Larry Moody, and about Katharine Rule’s promotion. The Senator knew her from CIA budget hearings before his Intelligence Committee.

  Finally, Will said his goodbyes. “The folks are expecting me home for Christmas dinner. I’ll call you often and get down here as much as I can.” He left the old man still pointed at the massive television set and went back to the airplane.

  As the late-afternoon sunshine streamed through the library windows, Will sat with his mother and father and sipped coffee. They were all sated from a fine Christmas feast, and they had about run out of things to talk about, Will thought. He was wrong.

  “Are you going to run?” Billy Lee said out of the blue.

  Will sat up. “Run for what?” he asked, puzzled. “If you’re talking about Jim Barnett’s seat, well, I guess so. Nothing’s changed.”

  “Everything has changed,” Billy said. “Can’t you see that, boy? I’m talking about running for Ben Carr’s seat.”

  Will looked at his father, dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious. With him lying down there on that farm, paralyzed? Besides, he could recover and run himself.”

  “Come on, son,” Billy said, “it’s time to face it. Ben Carr is never going to run for anything again. He’s out of it, and the sooner you get a grip on that, the better.”

  “I’ve talked with his doctor at length about this,” Will insisted. “He’s seen more than one person the Senator’s age snap right back from something like this.”

  “Will, even if his recovery surpassed his doctor’s wildest dreams, he’s through; can’t you see that? The vultures are already circling, boy, just waiting for the earliest decent moment to pounce.”

  “Well, I’m not one of ’em,” Will said emphatically. “That seat is the last thing he’s got to cling to, and I love him too much to try to take it away from him.”

  “It has already been taken away from him,” Billy said, standing and beginning to pace around the room. “And if he has a mind left, he knows it. Ben Carr is as much a realist as any man on earth, and you ought to know that by now. If he can still think, he’s lying down there right now trying to figure out how to get you elected to replace him. I believe that, and you should, too.”

  “Daddy, my heart wouldn’t be in it. I could never go around this state asking people to vote for me while the Senator is still alive and in office.”

  “Mack Dean could,” Billy said bluntly. “Our beloved Governor will not only run for the seat, but if Ben dies, he’ll appoint himself to the remainder of his term. He told you so himself.”

  “He didn’t say he’d run for the seat.”

  “Of course he will,” Bill said adamantly, “and so will half a dozen others, though none of them has the wherewithal and the organization to do it, except Mack Dean.”

  “Well, you can include me in that group, Daddy,” Will said. “I don’t have a political pot to piss in, let alone any real money or any way to raise it. Sure, with the Senator’s help, I might have a chance at Barnett’s seat, but not without his help.”

  Billy Lee looked at his wife for a moment, then went to a bookshelf, removed a handful of books, and worked the combination on the small safe behind them. He took out a bundle of blue-bound documents, closed the safe, replaced the books, and tossed the bundle into Will’s lap. “There’s the wherewithal,” Billy said. “It won’t buy you the election, but it will get you started.”

  “What’s this?” Will asked, wary of the documents.

  “It’s the farm,” Patricia Lee said.

  “What?”

  “We’ve been putting parcels of land in your name for years. It’s all yours, really. We’ve kept the house and eight acres. The rest belongs to you, including the herd.” Will’s mother had been building a herd of Black Angus cattle for more than forty years, and she now had some of the finest breeding stock in the world.

  “Mother, Daddy, you can’t do this,” Will said.

  “It’s done,” Billy replied. “Of course, we hope you’ll hold on to the land. A lot of it has been in the family since the 1820s, but the herd—that’s readily salable.”

  “I couldn’t sell the herd. Mother has worked too hard to build it up.”

  “Why do you think I did it?” Patricia asked. “Oh, I had a good time with it, but it was always for you, so you’d be free to do whatever you wanted to. I’m seventy years old, Will; your father is seventy-eight. We’ve no business raising cattle. I know you don’t want the herd; your interests are elsewhere. I’ve sold off all but the best stock over the last couple of years. Why not sell them now, when they’ll serve your purpose? That’s what I want. That’s what your father wants.”

  Will sat and looked at his parents. He tried to speak and failed.

  “I’ve never seen you at a loss for words”—his mother laughed—“and this is it, I guess. Well, Will, are you going to run?”

  “I can’t even let myself think about it right now,” Will said. “I’m so grateful to both of you for doing this. I’m overwhelmed, I really am. But what you’re suggesting just seems unthinkable.”

  “You keep thinking about it,” Billy said, “and you’ll be surprised how much more thinkable it’ll get.” He flopped into his chair and reached for the television remote control. “We’ll talk about it some more,” he said. “Right now, it’s time for the news.” He switched on the set. The six-o’clock news was a nightly ritual in the family.

  “Good evening,” a young woman said. “In the early hours of Christmas morning, three men were murdered in an Atlanta adult bookstore.” A shot of the interior of the store filled the screen. “The execution-style slayings took the lives of the store’s manager, Frank Smith, and two of the store’s employees. The store’s owner, Manfred Pearl, who also owns three Atlanta nude dancing clubs, miraculously survived and is in critical condition in Piedmont Hospital, with two gunshot wounds to the head.” The camera moved through the store and stopped at the counter next to the cash register. A crudely lettered sign in marking pencil was scrawled across the countertops: DEATH TO QUEERS AND JEWS, it read. The picture went back to the newscaster. “Police say that robbery was not a motive, since the store’s cash register was undisturbed. A message left by the murderers made reference to homosexuals and Jews. Mr. Pearl is Jewish.”

  The picture switched to a group of women and children parading outside the store with signs. “A women’s group from the Gospel of Freedom Church of Atlanta has been picketing the store in recent weeks. The church has a large congregation and a big following on television for its pastor, Dr. Don Beverly Calhoun”—the picture switched to a shot of a sleek, gray-haired man preaching from a pulpit—“who has also founded Freedom University, on the church grounds. Dr. Calhoun is with us in our studios.”

  The woman turned to her right, and the camera pulled back to reveal the minister, gorgeously tailored and groomed, sitting next to her. “Dr. Calhoun, do you think that the recent targeting of this store by your ministry might have, in some way, led to these killings?”

  Dr. Calhoun placed his hands on the desk before him and folded them together. “Sheila, this sort of tragic thing could never have been done by anyone even remotely associated with our ministry. And I hope, in the midst of all this, none of us will lose sight of the tragedy which this so-called bookstore and others like it have brought to our community and our nation. This Mr. Manny Pearl, who, of course, we wish a speedy recovery, is a kingpin of the thriving Atlanta pornography industry, reaching to the very heart of our Christian—”

 
“But Dr. Calhoun,” the woman interrupted, “Mr. Pearl’s activities have all been within the law, have they not? Do you have any evidence to the contrary?”

  “Sheila, Mr. Pearl’s activities have never, at any time, been within God’s law, and that is the law we hold supreme.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Calhoun.”

  Will turned to his father. “He’s a pretty slick article, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes,” Billy replied. “And he and Mack Dean are as thick as thieves, which is not an inappropriate simile, now that I think of it. Mack attends the Gospel of Freedom Church about once a month, and the television camera always finds him in the congregation. Calhoun raised a huge chunk of the money for Mack’s two campaigns.”

  “You think Calhoun’s crooked in some way?”

  “Probably not, unless you consider separating little old ladies from their Social Security checks crooked. I sure do.”

  “He raises a lot of money outside Georgia, too,” Patricia interjected. “He has a national audience on television. He’s pulled in enough money from around the country to invent that so-called university of his, cranking out little automatons for Jesus.” In her scorn, Patricia’s Irish accent came to the forefront. “God help us if they call what he’s feeding them an education.”

  “When Governor Mack Dean announces for Ben Carr’s seat,” Billy said, “you can be sure Dr. Don, as he likes to be called, will be at his side—or leading him by the nose, depending on your point of view.”

  “You really think Mack will run for the Senator’s seat?” Will asked, incredulously.

  “Son, sometimes I think you’re still a babe in the woods. Mack, I promise you, views Ben Carr’s illness as a God-given opportunity to propel himself farther in politics than he ever believed possible. He’s been a lackluster governor, and next November, he’ll become a lackluster senator.” Billy paused. “Unless somebody of substance runs against him.”

  Will found that notion nearly as depressing as he, himself, running for the Senator’s seat. He couldn’t do it, he knew that, and some part of him still doubted that Mack Dean could.