He pulled in after the final car, almost at the bottom of the hill, and shut off the engine.
“Keys,” I said.
I held out my palm.
When he frowned, the eyes crowding the flat bridge of his nose seemed even closer together. “What for?”
“For now. Our partnership is in the early stages, Delmont, and I’m senior partner. So it’s all about pleasing me.”
He gave me a pouty look but also the keys, which I stuck in my windbreaker pocket.
I said, “I got a bad feeling I already know what kind of meeting this is.”
The pout turned into a grin. “Bet you do. You’re a smart one. But you can just wait here. I’ll go get my money. Could take a while.”
“I’ll tag along for now.”
“But you won’t be able to...” He sighed, smirked, said, “Suit yourself. Anyway, you got the keys and I gotta get somethin’ out of the trunk.”
He got out and so did I. At the rear of the vehicle, I unlocked the trunk and Delmont raised the lid. At first glance what was within looked like folded white sheets, but Delmont rustled around with them, before taking them out, and revealed them as a white uniform with a red insignia bearing a white cross. Tucked beneath was a pointed hood with eye holes in a full-face mask.
“Now do you see why,” Delmont said grinning goofily, “the client can make the payoff directly and still not see who I am? Or me him, neither?”
“I do,” I said. “Hand me those.”
“Why?”
“Never seen one of these costumes up close.”
“Not costume, uniform.”
“Uniform, then. Gimme.”
Reluctantly, he gathered up the white garment and its snappy hood and I took them and laid them on the hood of the car parked behind us for appraisal — a nice clean Buick that wouldn’t spoil the freshly laundered cotton. Spread out there, it was like a KKK member had got deflated.
Delmont, reaching for the outfit, said, “I might need a little help gettin’ into ’em.”
“I don’t think so.” I pointed the silenced nine mil at him, and nodded to the open Charger trunk. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Come on, Delmont. You heard me. I’m gonna go collect your money for you.”
“What for? We’re partners! And anyway, ain’t no way I’m gonna fit in that trunk.”
“Sure you can. You’re big but nimble. As for you going after your money, how do I know you wouldn’t bring a bunch of crazy darkie haters back here and eliminate me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because everything you’ve done in our partnership so far has been under duress.”
“Under what the fuckin’ fuck?”
“Under the point of a gun. Our partnership is in its early stages, remember, and this is your trial period. Get in.”
He sighed. He made a face. Whined some more. But he crawled in, folding himself up like a fetus in a womb by Dodge. I shut the lid hard and he kind of yelped, but I figured he was just making a point.
“Be quiet,” I told the trunk. “I’ll be back with your money.”
With the Ku Klux Klan dress and hat over my arm, I walked up the hill, but stayed down in the ditch. I didn’t need any other latecomers spotting me walking up the gravel road. At the crest, I climbed up to where a cluster of trees provided a nice spot for a panoramic scenic view. The blazing white Hunter’s Moon would help.
But the moon wasn’t the only thing blazing — so were three wooden crosses, the ones on either side maybe five feet high, the center one around eight. Thirteen men in white robes and hoods were gathered around the crosses in a well-spaced circle, as if about to play a demented game of ring-around-the-rosie.
The obvious leader, in a green silk version of the outfit, stood inside the circle, near enough to the central burning cross to feel its heat on his back. In front of the smaller fiery crosses were standard white-robed and — hooded members with the Stars and Stripes on one pole and the Confederate flag on the other.
This bizarre assemblage was down there in the center of a large, woods-surrounded clearing that somewhat overwhelmed them, robbing them of the significance they sought. The night had turned chilly with some wind picking up and it made the fire dance and the flags flap and the uniforms flutter. They didn’t look sinister or foolish or anything like you might expect. In the light of the Hunter’s Moon, the flames burned a bright orange with blue highlights and the white uniforms seemed to glow, while the waving flags took on a near majesty. If some racist Rembrandt had his easel set up, he could get a really nice calendar out of it.
I sighed, leaning against an oak tree. I’d never been much of a joiner, but this would have to be an exception. I got out of my windbreaker and stowed it under the tree, then got into the robe. It was a little big for me — they’d probably been given the lumberjack’s sizing — but that helped keep the nine millimeter in my hand hidden. The suppressor meant I had to hold my hand sideways, bent at the wrist, but nothing in life is ideal.
Finally I put on the hood. Despite oversize eyeholes, the thing really limited your field of vision.
Slowly, carefully, but confidently, I moved out of the wooded hilltop and down the slope. They had no sound system setup — this was a roughing-it outdoor event, after all, like a Boy Scout Jamboree — but I could hear the guy in green silk speaking.
“...we will show those red Commie son-of-a-bitches what real freedom is! We will arm ourselves, we will learn hand-to-hand combat for this coming battle!”
Of course, the well-projected radio-announcer’s baritone belonged to Commander Zachary Taylor Starkweather. Just because the Lone Ranger is wearing a mask, that doesn’t mean you don’t know Clayton Moore is under there.
“Oh, I know we will be outnumbered, though I don’t know about you, but I don’t fear these long-haired college punks much, not very much, no.”
He paused for them to laugh, and they did. I bet that was what it was like at Al Capone’s boardroom table.
“We will teach these college brats the hard way what it really means to be an American, a white, God-fearing, Christian American. They will learn that it is a sin under God to racially mix. They will learn that the Bible condemns the homosexual.”
I slipped into place in the circle, my hooded neighbors making room, putting myself as close to Starkweather as possible; his pointy head turned my way, so I figured he’d noted the new arrival.
“They say we are nigger haters, first and foremost. But I respect the niggers that keep to their own. Still, it is true that you can take the nigger out of the jungle... but you can’t take the jungle out of the nigger!”
That got laughter and applause. But I had a feeling it was something they’d heard before, plenty of times. A catchphrase they were laughing reflexively at, like Gleason saying, “Away we go!” or Maxwell Smart asking, “Would you believe...?”
“No, it is the Jews we will hang first. No more will our taxes go to fund Israel. No more will we tolerate the sins of the Jews against humanity and God. As your Grand Dragon, this I promise, to each and every knight in this Klavern.”
Grand Dragon, huh? Explained the green silk housedress, anyway.
“God bless the Klan!” he shouted. “God bless the Klan!”