by Stuart Woods
“That’s what you’d get if they were assumed names, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. What I’d like is some fingerprints.”
“I’m not sure how we’d get those,” Holly said.
“I wouldn’t try right now. Just keep it in mind. Now, why were you calling me?”
“Remember Franklin Morris?”
“The loan officer? Sure.”
“He bailed over the weekend.”
“Quit his job?”
“Quit the town. He and his wife are gone, their house is empty, and he took most of the money out of his bank account on Friday afternoon. A neighbor says he and the wife pulled out in a van, a convertible and a horse trailer in the wee hours of Sunday morning.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Also, we’ve learned that he got his job with a fraudulent recommendation from a nonexistent Miami bank.”
“I’ll get a warrant. This is a federal matter.”
“Okay. I’ve already put out an APB in five states for the cars, but we have no plate numbers.”
“I’ll check the car registrations and get the numbers.”
“Thanks, Harry.”
“So he fooled us both in the interviews, huh?”
“Looks that way. On the other hand, he might not have had anything to do with the robbery; maybe he just thought that the investigation might bring too much attention to bear on him.”
“That’s a possibility, I guess, but I’m inclined to discount it, for the moment.”
“Me, too.”
“Okay, Holly, let’s keep in touch about this.”
“Bye, Harry.”
The phone on her desk rang as soon as she put it down.
“Holly Barker.”
“Chief, my name is Warren Huff.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Huff ?”
“I was just over at a house I own that I rent out, and I found it empty and a search warrant in the kitchen.”
“That would be the Franklin Morris house.”
“Yes, ma’am. It was a real shock finding it empty.”
“I can imagine. Did Morris owe you a lot of rent?”
“No, he didn’t. I got a check in the mail this morning for a month’s rent, mailed on Friday, and I still have a month’s rent as a security deposit. There was a note attached that said I could keep the deposit.”
“I see. Then you have no complaint against Mr. Morris.”
“Well, he had a lease that he ran out on, but I guess I’m not out any money.”
“Mr. Huff, I’d like to send somebody over to have a look at the check and the envelope it came in. Would you put it aside without touching it again?”
“Sure, if you say so.” He gave her the address of his office.
“Thanks, Mr. Huff.” She hung up and called Tommy Ross and asked him to go and dust the check and envelope for prints.
The phone rang again. “Holly Barker.”
“Hey, it’s Ham.”
“Hey, Ham. What’s up?”
“You know that Peck Rawlings guy?”
“Yep.”
“I had a phone call from him just now.”
Twenty-one
LUNCH AT HAM’S WAS ALWAYS FISH, FRESHLY caught. He rolled a couple of plump sea trout in flour and dropped them in hot oil.
Holly didn’t rush him. It was best not to rush Ham, he’d get around to it.
Halfway through lunch, Ham got around to it. “So, ol’ Peck called me this morning.”
“What’d he have to say?”
“I think Peck thinks I’m his kind of folks.”
“Good.”
“Good? I found it kind of insulting.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
“Said he wants to bring me something to read.”
“Bring? He’s coming over here?”
“Around six, he said.”
“You think he wants to recruit you?”
“Maybe.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“How do you want me to feel?”
“I don’t want you to get in over your head, Ham.”
Ham snorted. “Over my head? I’ve spent more time in over my head than anyplace else.”
“I guess you have. What I meant was, if these people are who I think they are, it could get dangerous.”
Ham shot her a withering look. “More dangerous than ’Nam? I don’t think so.”
“All right, I had to say it.”
“Sort of a disclaimer, huh?”
“Sort of. I just want you to go into this with your eyes wide open.”
“What do you want me to get out of this guy?”
“Nothing, at first. Don’t ask too many questions. Let him tell you.”
“You want me to be sneaky, huh?”
Holly laughed. “Real sneaky.”
“That’s one of the things I do best.”
“Okay, I want to know how many of them there are, where they came from, how they support themselves, and anything else you can find out.”
“I guess I can find out most of that just by going out there again.”
“I guess so.”
“But if I start asking him where he’s from, he’ll get suspicious.”
“Right.”
“Something else he’s going to be suspicious about, kiddo.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“He’s got to read the papers and watch TV. Pretty soon, he’s going to figure out who you are and that the man they shot in the bank meant something to you.”
“How are you going to handle that?”
“Well, I’ve got to tell him something. You want him to think you’re a closet Nazi or something?”
“You might let him think that I’m not totally averse to his views.”
“I guess I could do that. You think he’ll buy it?”
“When he finds out I’m the chief of police, he’s going to be cautious.”
“I guess he might be.”
“Maybe you better bring it up, so he won’t find out from somebody else.”
“Okay.” Ham took a bite of fish. “I think it might be best if I let him know, somewhere along the line, that I didn’t approve of Jackson much and that that was a sore spot with you.”
“Good idea. I don’t think he liked me too much when we met.”
Ham chuckled. “Well, when you offered to make him shorter, that probably didn’t go down all that well.”
“He’ll have me pegged as somebody he can never trust.”
“I guess he will.”
“So you’ve got to make out, one way or another, that you and I aren’t as close as we could be.”
“I guess I can do that.”
“I wish there were some other way to do this, but I think Harry Crisp is right: it would take too long to put an FBI agent in there.”
“Probably.”
“Ham?”
“Yep?”
“See if you can find out if this outfit has a name. That could be a big help.”
“You mean, if they call themselves the United White Brothers of the Klan, that could tell you something?”
Holly laughed. “No, I mean if they have a name, we can use it to find out more about them. There are people who track extreme organizations, keep files on them.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
Holly looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get back to work. Call me when he leaves, will you?”
“I will.”
She gave him a big kiss on his forehead. “Don’t piss him off, Ham; I wouldn’t want to lose you.”
Twenty-two
HAM SELECTED A WEAPON, FIELD-STRIPPED IT and spread the parts out on a towel draped over a table on his back porch. Then he waited.
At six o’clock sharp, there was a loud knock on the front door, and a male voice yelled, “Ham?”
“Yo!” Ham yelled back,
then went to the door, wiping his hands on a paper towel.
Peck Rawlings stood on the front porch, a thick envelope tucked under one arm. “Hey, there.”
“Hey, Peck, come on in,” Ham said, opening the door. “Come on out on the back porch. Can I get you a drink?”
“Well, I guess the sun is over the yardarm,” Rawlings replied. “Sure, if you’ve got some Scotch.”
“Go on outside and grab yourself a chair, while I pour.” Ham went to the kitchen, poured himself a bourbon and Rawlings a Scotch, then joined him.
Rawlings was bent over the table, examining the pistol. “What the hell is that?” he asked.
Ham handed him his drink, set his own down, quickly reassembled the pistol, screwed on the silencer, and handed it to Rawlings. “There you go.”
Rawlings examined the evil-looking .22 automatic. “Jesus, Ham, that’s an assassin’s weapon. Where’d you get it?”
“Oh, when I was in ’Nam I ran a few errands for the Company, and they issued me the thing. Somehow, it got lost, and they never got it back. Pretty pissed off, they were.”
“I can imagine.”
“They were manufactured in small numbers—handmade, really—specifically for the Company. They were used in wet work all over the world, I believe.” He took the pistol back from Rawlings, shoved in a clip, and worked the action. He took aim from the porch at a stand of cattails and fired, making only a tiny pfft sound, and cutting the head neatly off a cattail. “That was a .22 Magnum round, believe it or not.” He handed the pistol back to Rawlings. “Try it.”
Rawlings took aim at a cattail, fired a round, and missed. He handed the pistol back. “That’s really something,” he said.
“A little different from your Barrett’s rifle, but it gets the job done. And nowhere on it is there a serial number or any mark that would identify who made it.”
“I don’t suppose you’d like to sell it?”
“You’d have to pry it from my cold dead hand,” Ham said.
“I don’t blame you.”
“Sit down and drink your drink, Peck.”
The two men settled themselves and sipped their whiskey.
Ham said nothing, just looked out at the Indian River. He’d wait for Rawlings to get around to it.
“Pretty place you got here,” Rawlings said, finally.
“Yep, I sure love it.”
“How’d you ever come by it?”
“The easy way. Fellow I was in the army with died and left it to me.”
“You’re a lucky guy.”
“I sure am.”
Rawlings was quiet for another moment, then he shoved the thick envelope across the table to Ham. “I brought you something to read.”
Ham opened the envelope and shook out a book. “Ah, The Turner Diaries,” he said. “I read it twice, years ago.” He shoved it back across the table.
“No, keep it. That’s an autographed copy,” Rawlings said.
“Well, thank you, Peck. I’ll treasure it.”
“What did you think of the book?”
Ham had read it when he’d found a buck sergeant who served under him reading it. He thought it was the most outrageous collection of lies, bigotry and downright trash he’d ever come across. “Prescient,” he said. “The naked truth, well told.”
Rawlings grinned. “It sure is, ain’t it?”
“It is.”
“Ham, I think you’re my kind of guy.”
You do, do you? Ham thought. You go right on thinking that. “What kind of guy are you, Peck?” he asked.
“Me and my friends are what you might call patriots,” Rawlings said. “In our fashion.”
“And what fashion is that?”
“You might say we’re working toward the goals expressed in that book,” Rawlings said.
“And just how do you go about doing that?” Ham asked, looking curious. “Without getting sent to prison, I mean.”
“Slowly, carefully, and above all, quietly.”
“I should think so,” Ham said, nodding. “I’ve often wondered if there was anybody actually doing anything.”
“More than you might imagine,” Rawlings said.
“That’s interesting to hear.”
“Just how interesting, Ham?”
“Very interesting. Tell me more.”
Rawlings shook his head. “Not right now,” he said. “You and I will have to get to know each other better before I can do that. You’ll recall I said that we work carefully.”
“Sure, I understand. You go right on doing that.”
“With that in mind, I’d like to know a little more about your daughter.”
“Holly?”
“Right, Holly. She seemed to me to be a little—”
“Annoying?” Ham ventured.
“If you’ll forgive me saying so, yes, annoying.”
“Well, Holly’s not the smartest girl who ever came along. I mean, she’s my daughter and all, but we’ve never seen eye to eye about a lot of things, so we don’t see all that much of each other.”
“Looks like you go fishing together.”
“That’s about all we have in common,” Ham said. “If we can get through a couple of hours of fishing without getting into an argument, we’re doing well.”
“What do you argue about?”
“Well, politics, and, until recently, her boyfriend.”
“What about him?”
“He always looked like a Jew to me, although he denied it.”
“So she finally dumped him?”
“No, somebody dumped him for her. He got blown away in a bank robbery, just as they were about to get married.”
Rawlings’s eyebrows went up. “A bank robbery?”
“Yep. He apparently shot off his mouth—he had a real smart mouth—to somebody who was holding a shotgun, and the shotgun just happened to go off. Good riddance, if you ask me.”
“You know, I think I saw something about that in the papers. Is your daughter a cop?”
“She’s the fucking chief of police!” Ham spat out. “Can you believe it? She was an MP in the army, and not all that good at it, and an old buddy of mine got her this job. Just between you and me, she’s not all that good at this one, either.”
“Well, ain’t life funny?” Rawlings said. He looked at his watch. “Well, I’ve gotta be somewhere.” He stood up. “Thanks for the drink, Ham. I’ll see you around.”
Ham shook his hand and showed him to the door, then watched him drive away. He went back into the house and called Holly.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Not so hot,” Ham replied. “We got to talking about you, and I broke the news to him about your being a cop. He didn’t take it too well; a minute later, he was out of here.”
Holly sighed.
“Yeah,” Ham said. “You better think of something else.”
Twenty-three
HOLLY CALLED THE MIAMI BUREAU OF THE FBI and asked for Harry Crisp. He came on the line immediately.
“Hey there, Holly.”
“Hey, Harry. I’ve got bad news.”
“What?”
“The Lake Winachobee people didn’t bite on Ham.”
“Not even a nibble?”
“When Ham mentioned I was chief of police, the guy went cold and got out.”
“Out of where?”
“He came to Ham’s house.”
“Why did Ham mention that you were a cop?”
“We figured they’d find out anyway—read the papers or something. Ham told him we don’t get along, and that he didn’t like Jackson, thought he was a Jew.”
“Why the Jewish reference?”
“Rawlings brought along an autographed copy of The Turner Diaries.”
“Oh.”
“I’m really disappointed. I thought Ham could take this guy.”
“You know, when we were involved in that Palmetto Gardens thing, I had a look at Ham’s service record.”
“You can do that?�
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“Let’s just say I did it. After what I saw in there, I would have thought that Ham could handle just about anything, anytime.”
“That’s pretty much the truth. Except for me.”
“How’s that?”
“He could never handle me, but I always let him think he could.”
“Oh.”
“What are we going to do now, Harry? Can you put somebody into that group?”
“It would take months, Holly, maybe longer. Did Ham get a name for the group?”
“No.”
“If we had a name, if we knew who we were targeting, then that might help. I might be able to find an undercover guy who had some up-front credentials with right-wing groups who could go in there fully recommended. I mean, if they’re associated with other groups. But if we don’t know who they are, then we don’t know which buttons to push.”
“Well, so far we know they’re weapons nuts, that they’re anti-Semitic and antisocial, and of course, that they rob banks and kill people.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that last part.”
“You’re right, I’m jumping ahead.”
“We’ve got to do this one step at a time.”
“Have you heard anything on Franklin Morris and his wife?”
“Not a peep. It’s like they drove off the edge of the earth.”
“I’ll bet you anything they’re out at Lake Winachobee right this minute.”
“If we had probable cause to think so, we could go in there with an arrest warrant.”
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be worth it. We might pick up Morris, but the current charges against him are minor, and the group would know we were onto them.”
“I suppose we could take a look at them from the gun-show angle, but once again, we’d tip our hand that we were interested in them.”
“This is depressing.”
“The only thing we can do right now is to just wait for something to happen.”
“What, for them to rob another bank? Kill somebody else? They’re flush with ill-gotten cash right now, and they’ve got no reason to do another bank.”
Hurd Wallace stuck his head through her doorway. “Holly, Joy Williams from Southern Trust is on the line. She says it’s important.”
“Harry, can you hold on for just a minute?” Holly asked.
“Sure.”
She punched the HOLD button, then answered the call. “Hi, Joy.”