“E=MC2!” Carrie expostulated. “Don’t you swear in front of me!”
“Swear! He had me put my ‘traveling companions,’ as he calls them, in a gully in a raging storm. He killed one and beat up the other two as surely as if he took a bat to them, and he never lifted a finger. My father!”
“Scared?” Carrie asked.
Jack took a deep breath. “I knew what I was thinking when I headed this way.”
“Well,” Carrie said, “I surely don’t, but I’ve had enough of you and your feelings for now. We’ve got things to do.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Clothes.”
“There’s a pair of huge overalls somewhere there in the back closet, left here by a hired hand the whole county couldn’t afford to feed. Sent him to Kansas. Maybe if we split them down the sides we can make them fit that nasty-lookin’ thing asleep on the grass outside feedin’ the ticks and fleas.”
Jack looked through the window. “He’s not feedin’ anything.”
“Oh, yes he is.”
“He said something about a suit for Kriegel. Shirt. Necktie.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Carrie said. “I’ll go wake Kriegel up. I look forward to givin’ him his breakfast. How’d you like that country ham you had for breakfast?”
“Salty.”
“You want some more?”
“Not just now, thanks.”
“Okay,” Carrie said. “You can tell me how you feel about that ham later.”
9
By golly, Ms. Carrie,” Fletch said, bounding into the dining room where Professor The Reverend Doctor Kris Kriegel breakfasted in state. “We’ve never had house-guests so plumb worn out in the mornings before, I do declare!”
In a white shirt, purple necktie, dark trousers, Kriegel sat at the head of the long, highly polished dining table. On his place mat was a full china breakfast setting, silver cutlery. At almost full attention, Jack stood beside, a little behind him.
“More ham?” Carrie asked the rotund little man.
“Please.” His pale blue eyes gazed over the saddle-shaped birthmark over the bridge of his nose. “It is most delicious.”
Carrie heaped more of the ham on his plate.
“All three hundred and fifty pounds of white and naked flab you all call Leary is dead to the world out on the back lawn,” Fletch said. “I swear, if we drag him down to the roadside, the slaughter truck will pick him up for the glue factory without even stopping to ask which nature of beast he is.”
“Speaking of dead,” Kriegel began.
“By the way,” Fletch said to Carrie, ignoring him, “I forgot to tell you Aetna says Angie Kelly has that recipe for firecracker cake you want.”
Carrie’s lips twitched. She knew Fletch had made his arrangements with the sheriffs department.
Jack glanced from one to the other. Clearly he knew some message had just passed subtly between them.
He did not ask.
Kriegel cleared his throat. “Speaking of dead,” he began again.
“Yes?” Fletch asked.
Frowning as if at an underling, Kriegel said to Fletch, “You may have deprived me—you have deprived us—of a very important source of revenue.”
“Us?” Fletch asked. “You mean me, too?”
“The late Juan Moreno, or so he was known in this country—”
“Yes,” Fletch said. “John Brown. Go on.”
“—is lamented principally for the cash he was going to provide us.”
“Is a-moldering in the ditch,” said Fletch.
“He was indebted to us, you see, for our allowing him to escape with us the confines of the federal penitentiary. He was to pay us from his considerable funds deposited in various Florida banks. Now that he is dead, these funds may be harder for us, even impossible, to tap.”
“The snakes got him,” Fletch said simply.
Kriegel placed his cloth napkin on the table. “That,” he announced, “was the worst night of my entire life. Whose idea was it to conceal me in that raging river filled with barbed wire, old washtubs, and enormous snakes floating down on us in squadrons so thick they were actually entangled with each other?” His voice broke.
“Mine,” Fletch said.
Kriegel was trying to glare with his watery blue eyes. “I barely survived the experience. Only my call saved me.”
“Your cowl?”
“My calling!”
“Exactly,” Fletch said. “The cops didn’t cotch you. In fact, they did look everywhere else.”
“But only, I understand, Mister Fletcher, because you provided them with the use of your four-wheel-drive Jeep to search for us!”
“Certainly,” said Fletch. “I always cooperate with the coppers. They’re my friends. They do their best to keep murdering loonies like you locked up.”
“Mister Fletcher.” Despite his agitation, Fletch could see Kriegel was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. “I happen to be apolitical figure of international significance, and require that I be treated as such, with all due respect.”
Carrie cut her eyes at Fletch. Personages of genuine international political significance had sat at that table many times. None had required particular respect, even during one or two memorable bread fights.
“I am of such significance that your American authorities, in their wisdom, decided it their best course of action to imprison me on perfectly irrelevant criminal charges.”
“I know,” Fletch said in a sympathetic tone. “Both that whore who strangled herself on your bed and that chambermaid who walked in on you and saw what had happened were government agents. They’re everywhere, they are. You don’t need to tell me.”
“I said, ‘irrelevant.’”
“I understand,” Fletch said. “The strangled whore was irrelevant to your call.”
“Exactly.”
Carrie said, “The whore had a calling, too.”
“What difference did the life of a whore make considering the scope of my mission?”
“What’s your mission?” Fletch asked.
“At the moment, my mission is to get to my people who await me.” Tiredly, Kriegel stood up.
“More ham?” Carrie asked.
“Thank you, no.”
“We’ve got that all worked out.” Fletch pulled a torn road map from his back pocket. He spread it on the dining table. “We have to split you up. There are roadblocks everywhere looking for you three. Four. Pretending to drive my son, Jack, to the University of North Alabama, you, Jack, and I, in the station wagon, will take this road into Alabama, you see? and then turn east to Tolliver.”
Carrie was watching Fletch’s fingers on the map.
Bleary from exhaustion, Kriegel was not focusing successfully. “What of my bodyguard?” Kriegel asked. “What of Mister Leary?
“Ah,” Fletch said. “That’s the beauty of the plan. Mister Leary will be going in the pickup truck with Ms. Carrie. She is going to pretend to be delivering a little cow. Dressed as a farm worker, he will ride on the back of the truck with the little cow. She will take these back roads in an arc, you see? and meet us in Tolliver. That way we won’t all be traveling together.”
Kriegel looked at Carrie’s 123 pounds on a five-foot-five frame. “I see. But I do not wish to be separated from my bodyguard.”
“Come, come,” Fletch said. “Jack and I will be with you. What have you to fear? You know Jack is a karate expert. And I? Don’t even ask. Never have I met man or beast to make me tremble in nose or lip.”
“Will you be armed?” Kriegel asked in a high voice.