There was something unfair here. He was just a kid who’d been minding his own business, and now suddenly his picture was on the front page and fingers were pointed at him. How can a newspaper dig up old yearbook photos and run them whenever it chooses? Wasn’t he entitled to a little privacy?
He threw the paper to the floor and walked to the window. It was dawn, drizzling outside, and downtown Memphis was slowly coming to life. Standing in the window of the empty room, looking at the blocks of tall buildings, he felt completely alone. Within an hour, a half million people would be awake, reading about Mark and Ricky Sway while sipping their coffee and eating their toast. The dark buildings would soon be filled with busy people gathering around desks and coffeepots, and they would gossip and speculate wildly about him and what happened with the dead lawyer. Surely the kid was in the car. There are fingerprints everywhere! How did the kid get in the car? How did he get out? They would read Slick Moeller’s story as if every word were true, as if Slick had the inside dope.
It was not fair for a kid to read about himself on the front page and not have parents to hide behind. Any kid in this mess needed the protection of a father and the sole affection of a mother. He needed a shield against cops and FBI agents and reporters, and, God forbid, the mob. Here he was, eleven years old, alone, lying, then telling the truth, then lying some more, never certain what to do next. The truth can get you killed — he’d seen that in a movie one time, and always remembered it when he felt the urge to lie to someone in authority. How could he get out of this mess?
He retrieved the paper from the floor and entered the hall. Greenway had stuck a note on Ricky’s door forbidding anyone from entering, including nurses. Dianne was having back pains from sitting in his bed and rocking, and Greenway had ordered another round of pills for her discomfort.
Mark stopped at the nurses’ station, and handed the paper to Karen. “Nice story, huh,” she said with a smile. The romance was gone. She was still beautiful but now playing hard to get, and he just didn’t have the energy.
“I’m going to get a doughnut,” he said. “You want one?”
“No thanks.”
He walked to the elevators and pushed the call button. The middle door opened and he stepped in.
At that precise second, Jack Nance turned in the darkness of the waiting room and whispered into his radio.
The elevator was empty. It was just a few minutes past six, a good half an hour before the rush hit. The elevator stopped at floor number eight. The door opened, and one man stepped in. He wore a white lab jacket, jeans, sneakers, and a baseball cap. Mark did not look at his face. He was tired of meeting new people.
The door closed, and suddenly the man grabbed Mark and pinned him in a corner. He clenched his fingers around Mark’s throat. The man fell to one knee and pulled something from a pocket. His face was inches from Mark’s, and it was a horrible face. He was breathing heavy. “Listen to me, Mark Sway,” he growled. Something clicked in his right hand, and suddenly a shiny switchblade entered the picture. A very long switchblade. “I don’t know what Jerome Clifford told you,” he said urgently. The elevator was moving. “But if you repeat a single word of it to anyone, including your lawyer, I’ll kill you. And I’ll kill your mother and your little brother. Okay? He’s in Room 943. I’ve seen the trailer where you live. Okay? I’ve seen your school at Willow Road.” His breath was warm and had the smell of creamed coffee, and he aimed it directly at Mark’s eyes. “Do you understand me?” he sneered with a nasty smile.
The elevator stopped, and the man was on his feet by the door with the switchblade hidden by his leg. Although Mark was paralyzed, he was able to hope and pray that someone would get on the damned elevator with him. It was obvious he was not getting off at this point. They waited ten seconds at the sixth floor, and nobody entered. The doors closed, and they were moving again.
The man lunged at him again, this time with the switchblade an inch or two from Mark’s nose. He pinned him in the corner with a heavy forearm, and suddenly jabbed the shiny blade at Mark’s waist. Quickly and efficiently, he cut a belt loop. Then a second one. He’d already delivered his message, without interruption, and now it was time for a little reinforcement.
“I’ll slice your guts out, do you understand me?” he demanded, and then released Mark.
Mark nodded. A lump the size of a golf ball clogged his dry throat, and suddenly his eyes were wet. He nodded yes, yes, yes.
“I’ll kill you. Do you believe me?”
Mark stared at the knife, and nodded some more. “And if you tell anyone about me, I’ll get you. Understand?” Mark kept nodding, only faster now.
The man slid the knife into a pocket and pulled a folded eight by ten color photograph from under the lab jacket. He stuck it in Mark’s face. “You seen this before?” he asked, smiling now.
It was a department store portrait taken when Mark was in the second grade, and for years now it had hung in the den above the television. Mark stared at it.
“Recognize it?” the man barked at him.
Mark nodded. There was only one such photograph in the world.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and the man moved quickly, again by the door. At the last second, two nurses stepped in, and Mark finally breathed. He stayed in the corner, holding the railings, praying for a miracle. The switchblade had come closer with each assault, and he simply could not take another one. On the third floor, three more people entered and stood between Mark and the man with the knife. In an instant, Mark’s assailant was gone; through the door as it was closing.
“Are you okay?” A nurse was staring at him, frowning and very concerned. The elevator kicked and started down. She touched his forehead and felt a layer of sweat between her fingers. His eyes were wet. “You look pale,” she said.
“I’m okay,” he mumbled weakly, holding the railings for support.
Another nurse looked down at him in the corner. They studied his face with much concern. “Are you sure?”
He nodded, and the elevator door suddenly opened on the second floor. He darted through bodies and was in a narrow corridor dodging gurneys and wheelchairs. His well-worn Nike hightops squeaked on the clean linoleum as he ran to a door with an EXIT sign over it. He pushed through the door, and was in the stairwell. He grabbed the rails and started up, two steps at a time, churning and churning. The pain hit his thighs at the sixth floor, but he ran harder. He passed a doctor on the eighth floor, but never slowed. He ran, climbing the mountain at a record pace until the stairwell stopped on the fifteenth floor. He collapsed on a landing under a fire hose, and sat in the semidarkness until the sun filtered through a tiny painted window above him.
Pursuant to his agreement with Reggie, Clint opened the office at exactly eight, and after turning on the lights, made the coffee. It was Wednesday, southern pecan day. He looked through the countless one-pound bags of coffee beans in the refrigerator until he found southern pecan, and measured four perfect scoops into the grinder. She would know in an instant if he’d missed the measurement by half a teaspoon. She would take the first sip like a wine connoisseur, smack her lips like a rabbit, then pass judgment on the coffee. He added the precise quantity of water, flipped the switch, and waited for the first black drops to hit the canister. The aroma was delicious.
Clint enjoyed the coffee almost as much as his boss did, and the meticulous routine of making it was only half-serious. They began each morning with a quiet cup as they planned the day and talked about the mail. They had met in a detox center eleven years earlier when she was forty-one and he was seventeen. They had started law school at the same time, but he flunked out after a nasty round with coke. He’d been perfectly clean for five years, she for six. They had leaned on each other many times.