“Hi, Les, Charlie. How you, Wade? How’re things, Will?”
The responses were guarded. They left him ample elbow room at the bar. Leroy Shannard came in at quarter after twelve, heading toward the dining room. He saw Wing and stopped abruptly and came over to him.
“I’ve been boring hell out of our mutual friend all morning, James,” Shannard said. “I keep saying to him I told you so.”
“What’s a good word for him? Disgruntled?”
“That word has always bothered me. If you’re not disgruntled, you have to be gruntled, don’t you?”
“What’s a better word for Elmo today?”
“I’d say hurt. Just plain hurt. He said if anybody was to see you, tell you he’d like a little chat with you. He should be at his office all afternoon. I guess he wants to talk to you like an uncle.”
“You seem calm and contented, Leroy.”
“I’ve had a busy morning, a right busy morning indeed, soothing some people down and chewing out other ones. I have to keep explaining how you snuck that into the paper without permission, and have been fired. Poor Eloise had hysterics over the phone after Martin left the house. Poor fellow has been adding two and two and coming up with twenty-two, but he can’t back out on the financing now without confirming all the gossip that’s going around. Darse Coombs was stamping around my office demanding we sue somebody. But, yes, I guess I’m calm and contented, James. The worst fuss is over already. It’ll be downhill from here on. Tonight in a thousand happy homes, they’ll use that paper to wrap the garbage. You’d better talk to Elmo. He’s upset about what you said about retaliation. I guess he isn’t entirely sure about what you meant, James. You’ve got no job with the paper and no job with him, and no chance of any kind of a job in Palm County. And of the people left who’ll still speak to you, there isn’t a one of them who’ll ever trust you. So he seems to feel you’ve given yourself all the retaliation one man can use.” He glanced at his watch, nodded at Jimmy and said, “Good luck, boy,” and headed for the dining room.
After lunch he went to see Sheriff Wade Illigan at his courthouse office. Wade had the mild pink face of a fat man, and a stringy, durable body. After he was seated, Wade got up and shut the door and went back to his desk.
“I was expecting to be picked up by the city police,” Jimmy said.
“Well, I heard about that, and the way I understand it, Jim, they decided against it. Borklund was for it, but Ben Killian was against it. They’ll explain just how you worked it in tomorrow’s paper, and publish it along with Elmo’s statement calling it a pack of lies.”
“Wade, we’ve known each other a long time.”
“Don’t expect much trade out of that, Jim. I’m an elected official.”
“Elmo knows how badly I’ve hurt him. Maybe nobody else realizes yet except Elmo, and me. Wade, what happens to people who hurt Elmo?”
“He doesn’t do anything without a purpose in it.”
“How about Pete Nambo? Pete is nice and tame now.”
“Maybe Elmo used to be rougher than he is now.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Not especially. What are you getting at, anyhow?”
“I might not be worth taming.”
“If there’s any laws violated in Palm County, outside the incorporated areas, I intend to do my duty.”
“Wade, damn it, I want to know what could happen!”
Illigan leaned back in his chair, and his face was still a fat man’s face, but no longer mild. “There’s a lot of people, some of them kin to Elmo, some not, thinking he’s the second coming of Jesus. He’s put a lot of meat in their mouth. They could just get the idea you’d done Elmo a hurt and he might like something done. But they wouldn’t let it point back to Elmo. It would have to be one of two things, Jim. You’d have to have some kind of innocent accident. Or else one day you’d just be packed up and gone, which would seem likely.”
“So, in either case, how close would you check it?”
“What are you trying to ask me? I’m an elected county official. I got half the budget I need. You know that. When, like they say, an aroused populace is on my tail, demanding justice, I have a hell of a lot of work to do. But with you, Jim, it’s like this. Who is going to get aroused? Just who? I grease the wheels that squeak loudest. If it looks like you left, who’s going to insist you get found? If you smoke in bed, who’s going to order an autopsy? The county coroner?”
“So... I’m out in the cold.”
“You knew that before you came in here.”
“I guess I did.”
Wade stood up, a sign that the talk was over. “I’m not saying anybody is going to even think of doing anything. I’m just saying you’re awful short on friends. You’ve got nobody here. A sister you’re not real close to. Who else? I were you, I’d leave. I surely would. You’ve wore this place out for yourself.”
“I’ll think about it, Sheriff.”
Illigan said, “Good luck, Jim.” He looked uneasy. “When I walk you out the door, I got to cuss you some and give you a little push. Don’t take it too personal.”
Jimmy Wing sat stiffly on the couch in Elmo’s office. Elmo paced slowly back and forth in front of the couch, his hands locked behind him. He sighed audibly.
“Look at it this way, Elmo,” Jimmy said. “This is the time you took too big a bite.”
Sandra Straplin sat on Elmo’s desk, swinging her beautiful legs, glowering at Jimmy. “The hell he did!” she said. “Everything was fine. Then you turned stinker. You betrayed him!”
Elmo turned toward her and said in a weary voice, “Now, you get on out of here, Sandra.”
She crossed to the door with an exaggerated swing of her sturdy hips and banged the door shut behind her.
Elmo looked toward the door. “She got all worked up. Dellie got all worked up. My oldest four kids got all upset to hell. The other two are too little to understand. I tell you, when a man has so many folks depending on him and looking up to him, he carries a heavy load. Anything happens, he feels like he was letting ever’ last one of them down. Sandra there was about the worst of all. You know you have a steady thing going with an office woman, and after a while she gets to take herself too damn serious.”
“Should I take her to Tampa and put her on an airplane?”
“Don’t you get smart-mouth with me, boy. I’ve got awful damn sick of you awful sudden. Here I am giving you the fairest offer in the world. You got a little upset and confused in your mind on account of your wife dying. You get up in the Municipal Auditorium tonight and confess you made it all up so as to help those bird lovers. You say you’re putting yourself under a doctor’s care. In return, I either get you back onto the paper, or I get you into the county somewheres at good pay.”
“For the last time, Elmo. No!”
Elmo stood and looked down at him and smiled in a sad way. “Boy, you are not only stubborn, you are right stupid.”
“So be it.”
“You could wind up tied to a tree, boy.”
“I could wind up a lot of ways.”
“Are you too dumb to be scared?”
“That must be it, Elmo.”
“The pity of it is you’re causing me no real hardship, you know? Two out of that five are going to use it as an excuse to back out of their promise to sell me the share they agreed. I can smell that already. But when the time comes, they’ll be brought around so fast it’ll put a cramp in their necks.”
“But what are you going to use the money for, Elmo?”