“You know the Seacoast Bank‟s main branch down near the river?”
“I can find it.”
“I‟d like to know who the president‟s doing business with. Who he talks to during the day, that kind
of thing. His name‟s Charles Seaborn.”
“How about the phone?” Lange asked. “You want it bugged, too? I got a two-for-one special on.”
“No, they wouldn‟t be that dumb.”
Lange spread another smile over his boxcarred face.
“Done.”
25
LIGHTNING PEOPLE
All the way back to the hotel I was thinking she had probably called and left a message canceling out.
It kept building up in my mind until I broke out in a sweat, the way you do when you want something
so bad you‟re sure you won‟t get it. I started getting pissed and by the time I got to the hotel I had this
dialogue between us worked out in my head. I would get it all off my chest, once and for all.
Then I got to the room and there were no phone calls or messages. It was almost a letdown.
I was still in a sweat so I peeled off my shirt and pants and sat down in front of the air conditioner in
my shorts. I sat there until got chilled. That took about fifteen minutes, which meant I had four more
hours to go.
I kept waiting for the phone to ring, expecting her to call the whole thing off. The suspense was awful.
I took the phone off the hook but it started screeching like bad brakes do and I hung it up. I sat on the
bed and took it off the hook and waited until it screeched; then I‟d depress the little bar and wait a
minute and let it up again. I killed another fifteen minutes that way until my finger got tired.
About six o‟clock I ordered a steak, potatoes, salad, and coffee. I had forgotten how bad room-service
food is until I took the first bite. I wasn‟t hungry anyway. The coffee was in one of those ugly purple
Thermos pitchers that always look dirty and it was lukewarm but I drank it because it was something
to do.
I was killing time. Hell, who am I kidding, I was watching it crawl by on its hands and knees,
checking the clock every five minutes. In desperation I started to read Cisco‟s report on Dunetown. It
might just as well have been written by the chamber of commerce for all it told me. I dropped it in the
wastebasket and stared at the television set for another thirty minutes.
At about seven I decided to take a bath, soak my tired muscles, and kill another half hour. I turned on
the spigots and the radio. The water was so hot it took ten minutes f juggling and dipping before I
settled in. A bath is great therapy,, particularly when it‟s just about too hot to bear. It opens up the
head, clears away the cobwebs, helps you sort the real stuff from the bullshit. Kind of like medication.
About ten minutes after I got into the tub the muses began to whisper to me. They were saying things
I didn‟t want to hear. The muses don‟t always cooperate.
Wake up, Kilmer, the voices said, you made Dutch a promise. No scandal, you told him, and he took
you at your word, no questions asked.
Wake up, Kilmer, you can‟t erase twenty years with a kiss and a smile and a roll in the hay. 1963 is
history. You had prospects then. What have you got now? Stick spelled it out, the Holiday Fucking
Inn, that‟s what you‟ve got. Now that would really give Doe a laugh—for about the first five minutes.
Wake up, Kilmer. You don‟t even know what‟s real and what‟s fantasy anymore.
I was getting pretty fed up with the muses, and the radio didn‟t help. It was set on one of those easylistening stations and Eydie Gormé was singing “Who‟s Sorry Now?” Just what I needed, background
music with a sob in every note.
I lifted my foot and turned on the hot water with my toes and waited until I had to grit my teeth to
stand it. The water was reaching the boiling point when I turned it off. That killed another fifteen
minutes.
I needed to get a little perspective on things, separate what was real and what I wanted to be real. I
needed to be objective.
But that‟s not what! did. What! did was think about that place at the base of her throat, the soft spot,
the one where you can see the pulse beating. I used to stare at it and count the beats. I could tell when
she started getting excited.
I thought about the way she closed her eyes and parted her lips about a quarter of an inch when I was
about to kiss her. She had the softest lips. You could get buried in those lips. I never felt her teeth. I
don‟t know how she did it. Her lips were as soft as a down quilt.
Three years, that‟s how long I had waited, watching her grow from a fifteen-year-old tease to an
eighteen—year-old woman, playing the brother-sister act when they came up to Athens for football
weekends. That was to appease Chief. When she was about sixteen, her good-bye kisses started
getting softer. And longer.
Talk about strung out.
Get off it, Kilmer. Think about something else. Details, concentrate on details. And events. Reality is
what we‟re after here.
I concentrated on her eighteenth-birthday party. It came to me in flashes, like a movie when the film
breaks and they lose a few frames.
She wouldn‟t let me see her all that day. The way she acted, you‟d have thought it was her wedding
day. About midmorning Chief, Teddy, and I went to the Findley office on Factors‟ Walk. It was part
of the ritual when we came down for the weekend, going to the office on Saturday morning. We had
to wear ties and sports jackets, setting an example so the workers wouldn‟t get the feeling that they
could take it easy because it was the weekend. Chief was big on setting examples. The office was only
open half a day, so the employees thought they were getting a break. “Gives us four hours‟ jump on
the competition come Monday morning,” Chief said with a wink. He winked a bit for emphasis, a
habit Teddy had picked up.
He‟d always pull off some kind of deal, usually on the phone, just to show us how it was done. When
he was wheeler-dealing, his left eye would close about halfway. Teddy called it the Evil Eye. When
the Eye started to narrow, watch out, he was on to something, closing in for the kill. It‟s one of the
things the rich inherited, that predatory sense. I guess that‟s why they‟re rich— they have a built-in
instinct for the jugular.
I never got a true handle on the business. They were into everything. Cotton, shipping, real estate,
industry, farming, you name it. All it did was bedazzle the hell out of me. I don‟t think Teddy got into
it either, He was more interested in hell-raising. And poon. That‟s what he called it, poon. “Let‟s go
down to the beach, Junior, check out the poon.”
I got another flash. On that particular morning the office was closed in honour of Doe‟s eighteenth
birthday. When we got there, the janitor let us in and we went up to t}e third floor. I always loved that
building. It was all brass and oak and everything was oiled and polished so it sparkled.
Chief stood in his office, which seems now like it was maybe half the top floor. He stood there and
swept his hand around.
“I‟m going to divide this room up into three rooms, boys,” he said. “I‟ll take this corner. One of you
can have the river view; the other one, the park.” Then he flipped a coin.
“Call it, Jake,” he cried. I don‟t remember what I called. He covered the coin with his hand and
peeked under it, looked up very slowly, and smiled at me. “You win, Jake. Take your choice, river or
park?” I figured Teddy wanted the river and he had a right to it because it was obviously the choice