Atlanta Extreme

by Randy Wayne White

  Hawker went to the door, waited after the deep bing-bong of the bell. He expected Watkins to be of the new breed of Southerners, the Jimmy Carter type: soft, sophisticated, trendy, affected.

  Hawker’s preconceptions, to his great relief, were dispelled the moment Watkins opened the door.

  “You Jimmy Hawker, the man Thy Estes sent to see me? Hey, come on out to the porch, boy. Set yourself down. That big red-haired lady give me a little more notice, I’d a worked up a good bass-fishin’ trip so’s the two of us coulda had something to do while we chewed the fat. Hell, nothin’ fun about this type of meeting. Man who said you can’t do two things at once was dumber than pig shit if you ask me. What you want to drink, boy? Go on, set yourself down.” Andrew Watkins, ex-Senator Andrew Watkins, was all of five and a half feet tall, weighed probably a hundred and sixty, and he wore baggy, paint-stained khaki pants, a soft brushed cotton shirt of the L.L. Bean variety, Wellington boots, and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He had a broad, humorous face, sun-swollen nose, Clark Gable ears, and wide, shrewd blue eyes. Everything about him was at once relaxed but energized. Hawker realized with some amusement that in just the short introduction Watkins had established himself as Hawker’s friend, leader, and confidant.

  The vigilante took a seat in one of the wicker rocking chairs. “I’d like some iced tea if you’ve got it.”

  The older man made a face. “Tea? What are you, boy, some kind of Englishman? I got me some bourbon in there that’s guaranteed twenty years old, smooth as a baby’s bottom. Let me get you just a touch of that, how ’bout it?”

  “Okay, Senator. Bourbon it is.”

  “That’s the spirit. Never trusted a man that don’t drink. ’Cept an alcoholic, of course. Admire the hell out of an alcoholic that give it up. An alcoholic who does that’s got the balls of a junkyard dog. A regular dang saint, and I ain’t kidding.” The little man turned without warning and yelled, “Sarah! Sarah! Get your dark ass out here! We got company, goddamn it.”

  A moment later a handsome black woman appeared on the porch carrying a tray. Though she was probably in her early fifties, she had the long legs, trim hips, and body of a much younger woman. She was startlingly attractive with skin the color of pale wood, and she looked fondly at the little man as she said, “Yes, Senator, I have everything you need right here.”

  “Well, it’s about damn time. Didn’t you hear the door bell ring?”

  The woman continued smiling. “Yes, Senator. That’s why I got the tray ready.” She crossed in front of Hawker. “Bourbon for you, Mr. Hawker. Andrew said that’s what you would want”—she gave him a sidelong glance—“and, of course, he’s never wrong. And here’s a little carafe of water, straight from the spring. He said you might like that too. Can I get you a little something to eat?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m just fine, thank you.”

  “See there, Senator? A man with manners. You might take a lesson or two.”

  “God, woman, don’t be getting uppity with me in front of company. Just hand me my drink and get back to your duties. The damn garden’s ’bout eat up with weeds, and them bastard sand-spur have taken over the backyard. You got fieldwork to do.”

  The woman handed him a tall, sweating glass topped with a twist of lime. “Now, now, Senator, let’s watch our language. Here’s your iced tea. I had the maid bruise some mint and add it to the water when she brewed it, just the way you like it.”

  Andrew Watkins made a face. “Goddamn it, woman, I ain’t ever liked tea, and I ain’t ever going to like tea. Keeps me jittery and makes me pee. Why in hell do you keep bringing me this crap?” He shook his fist at her, and it was only then that Hawker realized that the two of them were enjoying an old and private game. “I can’t sell you no more, but I can, by God, fire your black ass!”

  The woman leaned over and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. “Yes, dear. Now drink your tea. And after Mr. Hawker leaves the trash needs taking out.”

  Watkins was laughing softly to himself as the woman disappeared inside. “Women,” he said. “God, what strange things they make us do.” Hawker could only nod in agreement as the little man continued. “Twenty-five years ago Lester Maddox and me stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the restaurant holding ax handles to keep them Negro agitators out. I had plenty of good friends that was Negroes, but I believed that a man who owned a restaurant, who worked his ass off to keep it going, ought to have some say about who goes in and who stays out. Well, I still believe that, but things change, Mr. Hawker. With every bad change a little good sneaks right in with it. Them agitators had them a woman lawyer fresh out of Grambling. She was a beautiful thing to look at, and she could twist them Washington Yankee bureaucrats right around her little finger. They was anxious to feel guilty about bein’ white, but they was even more anxious to get into that little girl’s pants. She worked on their guilt without givin’ away that other thing, and that one woman did more for the civil rights movement than all them Afro-haired dumb shits put together. And hate me? That woman hated me with a spittin’ passion. Called me a Nazi on national TV. Brought suit against me in federal court and tried to have me disbarred. Campaigned hard for my opponent in the first election and cried like a baby when I won. Shit, she even snuck Tabasco in my drink at some damn convention and had an AP photographer hiding, ready to snap my picture. The cutline they used when they ran the picture over the wire was, ‘Senator Watkins reacts to passage of busing bill.’ Just about made me look like a fucking idiot.

  “Well, that woman stayed in politics one way or ’nother, and we saw quite a bit of each other at parties and rallies and such, and we’d always compete to see who could be nastiest. The woman had a tongue like a serpent, I’m tellin’ ya. Keep me awake at nights just so’s I’d have something clever to say the next time we meet. She’d say something like, ‘Well, Senator, if you disagree with me, why don’t you stand up and speak louder so everyone can hear?’ And, of course, she could see damn plain that I was already standing up. And I’d say stuff like, ‘Counselor, when they give you that diploma at Grambling, how many professors you have to ask before you found one that could read it to you?’ I mean, Mr. Hawker, we’d say mean shit.

  “It got to be kind of a game. And after a time it got so we both looked forward to seeing each other to see who could nail the other to the wall. Our little jokes got harder and harder, but we were really liking each other better and better. Found out later that the dang woman was bribin’ one of my secretaries so as she could find out what parties I was gonna be at and where. Well, one thing about a Washington party, it’s filled with stuffed shirts, assholes, and journalists—a journalist being a pretty even cross between the two, only they’re more prone to drug use. At those kind of parties you got to watch what you say every minute. Can’t trust nobody, so nobody has any real fun, except the journalists, of course, ’cause they’re drinking free booze and using their drugs over in some corner, and nobody’s gonna squeal on them, ’cause who would write the damn story? Well, got so this woman and I would spend most our time together at these parties ’cause, hell, we’d both said just about every nasty thing in the book to each other and didn’t have no need for soft talk or bullshit. A person you can speak plainly and honestly to, Mr. Hawker, is a rare commodity these days. In Washington, D.C., a person like that is a regular damn auk. We both appreciated the break, you might say.

  “So when I retired from the Senate, I hired this woman into the firm. It was a damn smart move on my part, ’cause it got us a lot of the black business in Atlanta, and if you haven’t noticed, boy, there’s a considerable population of those folk. Well, my wife, God bless her, passed away, and then I got into some personal trouble and, fact is, needed a woman. Only woman I could trust was this damn Negro agitator. She helped me more’n most of my white friends would’ve or could’ve, and that was her what just brought you your bourbon.”

  “Sarah?”

  “Miz Sarah, I call her.”

  “How long since you’ve h
ad a drink, Senator?”

  Watkins chuckled. “You don’t miss a trick, do you, boy? I ain’t had a touch since thirteen months before Miz Sarah and me got married. It was the one stipulation she made: I had to stay off the Tennessee tonic for at least a year or she wouldn’t have me. We got married three years ago.” The little man smiled. “It ain’t easy being an alcoholic, Mr. Hawker. I still buy the bourbon for my friends, and I like to make sure they drink it, ’cause I buy the best and I, by God, love the smell of it. But being an alcoholic has helped me in a lot of ways too. For one thing, quitting the booze has given me one hell of a lot of respect for myself. It wasn’t easy, especially ’cause I was never really convinced that I was an alcoholic until I’d been dry for about three months. Another thing, it’s helped me to understand other people’s problems better.” The senator looked up at Hawker shrewdly. “And that’s why you’re here, ain’t it, Mr. Hawker? ’Cause some folks in these parts got troubles?”

  “That’s right, Senator.”

  “Ol’ Thy Estes is a real frank lady. Usually has no trouble speakin’ her mind, but maybe you already know that, huh? Well, she told me that she trusts you one hundred percent. And she said that you could help us. But the weird thing is, she wouldn’t say how. And you know what, Mr. Hawker? I don’t want to know how. The law has become a strange thing these days. The more they legislate, the bigger the holes in the laws become. All kinds of reasons why bad men can’t be put away. All kinds of legal reasons why hardworking, honest people have to put up with shit that no civilized people should have to put up with. I’m not interested in how you help us, Mr. Hawker, I’m interested in results. And Thy Estes says you produce results.”

  “I try, Senator.”

  “Good, boy, that’s good to hear. Well, I’m a plainspoken man, Mr. Hawker, so before we even get started, tell me how much this help of yours is going to cost.”

  “No cost, Senator. Not a penny. All I need is information.”

  The little man’s eyes bored into him, and in that moment Hawker saw beneath the easy-talking, good-ol’-boy facade of Andrew Watkins. He saw a tough, shrewd man and a cold, calculating intellect. Hawker wondered how many times the humorous facade had trapped his associates on the Senate floor and how many times those same associates had been made to squirm when Watkins turned that cold gaze on them. “You don’t charge nothing? Don’t want no kind of compensation or special favors? You just doing this out of the kindness of your heart, right, boy?”

  “That’s right, Senator.”

  Watkins pushed the baseball cap back on his head. “Son, I’ve had business dealings with white men, black men, Eskimoes, Indians, Chinese, and two or three kinds’a midgets, but I ain’t met anyone who would do something for nothing. Now what’s your angle, boy?”

  “No angle, Senator. You’re thinking I might get rid of one problem, then become a problem myself, correct? Well, you’re wrong. I’m not a shakedown artist, and I’m not a con man. Am I doing this out of the kindness of my heart? Almost never. But this case is an exception. I’ve been with Wellington Curtis in Masagua. I know what he is doing down there. He is slaughtering people. Not communists, not government troops, but villagers who have little more than sticks to fight with.

  “Have you read his book, The Killing Tree? I have. I finished it last night. In it he writes about effective guerrilla warfare. He says that a guerrilla army, properly trained, can take control of an entire country with only an occasional direct firefight with opposing forces. The way to do it is through intimidation, through wholesale slaughter. Sooner or later, he says, the citizenry will have had enough and force their own government to relent.

  “Of course, when he wrote the book, the idea was repugnant to him. But something happened to him in the jungle. He got caught up in it; he went insane. Shawn Pendleton and Greg Warren liked slaughtering people, and they helped him along. Now, when the government forces of Masagua attack his people, he retaliates by wiping out a defenseless village. He hacks down women and children and hangs their heads on a hillside for public display. He has thousands of heads, Senator. I’ve seen them.

  “So what do I want to be paid? Nothing, Senator, not a damn thing. I’m taking this job because I want to. I am going to cripple Wellington Curtis’s operation. And then I am going to eliminate Wellington Curtis.”

  The older man whistled softly. “Mr. Hawker, when you get angry, you get a look in those gray eyes of yours that is purely like a nightmare. You ain’t mad at me about my little cross-examination, are you?”

  Hawker realized that his hands were clenched into fists. He relaxed them, smiling. “No, Senator. But I would like some information on Pendleton and Warren. I’ve heard that you’ve formed a group to try to resist their shakedowns.”

  Watkins sat back in his chair and rocked. “Ain’t much of a group, really. Mostly made up of folks who know the victims. The victims themselves are too damn scared to go to the law and too damn scared to fight. Pendelton and Warren match right up with your story about Curtis. From what I gather they are regular animals. They go to rural cotton and tobacco farmers, small businessmen, and they ask for donations to Curtis’s little army. If the folks refuse, they come back later and kick the shit out of the man. If they still refuse, they go after the woman. Rape her, if she’s pretty enough, cut her up if she’s not. Not many refuse after that, but if they do, or if they threaten to go to the law, Pendleton and Warren threaten to kill the kids. Real slimy characters, those two. They put the folks on a monthly donation plan. If the money keeps coming, the beatings stop.”

  “So what’s your group done so far?”

  “Not much. When we get wind of a new victim, we go and offer whatever help we can give. Try to convince them to go to the law. But when a man’s kids are threatened, he’s going to do everything in his power to keep ’em safe. And that includes keeping his mouth shut. So we keep chewing at the ass of the authorities to lock up those two bastards. No luck so far.”

  Hawker thought for a moment. “Have you heard about any new victims? Anyone who Pendleton and Warren might favor with a return visit?”

  Watkins nodded. “Matter of fact, there is. Over Blackshear way, little town ’bout forty miles from here, there’s a young couple got a cotton/tobacco dealership. Jon and Cathy Sanders is their names. They buy, sell, and rent warehouses. You know the sort of thing. ’Bout two weeks ago I heard that Jon got the living bejesus kicked out of him. Wouldn’t tell the law nothing. He’s got a couple of kids, not even in school yet, so it adds up. I got in touch, and he wouldn’t tell me no thin’, either. I told him I knew who did it, but he said he’d handle it himself. Jon’s a good boy. I knew his daddy. But he is purely scared to death that if he squeals, them two bastards are gonna come back and kill those kids.” The senator looked up. “He ain’t gonna tell you nothing, either, Mr. Hawker.”

  “He doesn’t need to, Senator. But the next time Pendleton and Warren come around, I’ll be there—if you’ll help.”

  Watkins turned unexpectedly and yelled, “Sarah! Damn it, Sarah, where the hell are you? Lazy damn coloreds! Mr. Hawker needs hisself another bourbon, woman!” The senator looked back and grinned, holding up his glass of iced tea as a toast. “You’re goddamn right I’ll help, boy—on the one condition that you come back here someday and we go out bass fishin’ where there ain’t no likelihood of wiretaps or bugs, and you tell me without leaving out a single bloody detail just what you did to them greasy bastards.”

  fourteen

  The dirt parking lot of Sanders & Sanders tobacco warehouses was illuminated by a single mercury vapor lamp. The lamp, from its high aluminum pole, threw a cold light over the outdoor auction booths; the loading ramps; a big new corrugated steel building; a smaller, dilapidated wooden building; the corner of a tobacco field with its broad-leafed plants that trailed away into darkness, shadowy in the pale glow of a quarter moon.

  Except for one car in the parking lot—a Ford station wagon that had just pulled in—the plac
e was deserted.

  The car was owned by Jon Sanders, who waited alone inside the warehouse, unaware that, outside, the vigilante watched over him from the shadows.

  James Hawker sat in the high limbs of an oak so big and old that it had probably been standing in the days when General Sherman marched his army through to Atlanta. Across his back was slung a short-barreled Colt Commando submachine gun. Strapped in the shoulder holster outside his black Navy watch sweater was a Smith & Wesson .45-calibre ACP. Attached to the webbed combat belt were five grenades, a pouch of plastic explosives, a UHF radio, and plenty of ammunition. Belted to Hawker’s calf was his Randall Attack/Survival knife, Model 18.

  The Randall had saved the vigilante’s life more than once.

  He was ready. And now he waited.

  Waited for the vehicle he knew would bring Shawn Pendleton and Greg Warren to their meeting with Sanders, a meeting in which Sanders was to pay them five hundred dollars in protection money, his “donation” for the month.

  The vehicle also brought them, Hawker knew, toward their rendezvous with death.

  With the help of Senator Watkins, Hawker had spent two weeks in the little town of Black-shear. He had spent the days familiarizing himself with the area, learning the roads, but mostly resting and working out and honing his plan to destroy Wellington Curtis and his organization.

  On his first night in town, staying in a cottage owned by one of the senator’s friends, Hawker had gone to the road outside Sanders’s pleasant rural home and found the telephone terminal. It was one of the tubular ones into which ran underground cable and drop lines.

  Staying in the shadows to avoid the occasional passing truck, Hawker used a test set—a rubber-coated, hand-held telephone with alligator clips—to find Sanders’s line. It was not difficult. He kept clipping onto pairs and dialing Sanders’s number until he got a busy signal. When he hung up, the phone rang inside the house. Hawker was close enough to hear it. He watched a pretty woman carrying a baby cross behind the front window, and she answered the phone.