Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"Turkey vulture. But we do have eagles and hawks. We can sit down and lean against the back wall. It's just the right time of day for the light show."

They sat. They watched. The beams from behind them lit up the hills in odd colors, converting the view into something like a Maxfield Parrish landscape. They lay down on the grass. They chewed on each other's faces, wound tongue around tongue. His arm was up to its elbow in her baggy shorts, his hand exploring the country he had glimpsed for a second on the train, before everything…

"Whoops," she said, and rolled away, spinning on her long axis several times. She stopped a yard or so from him, looking up at the sky, catching her breath.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I'm about to sink into uncontrollable carnality, and as I think I mentioned on the love boat, I can't do that." Silence. She turned her head. "Oh, now you are pouting."

"Well, it's not fair to me. I mean it's not natural."

"You could procure a trollop," she offered. "To afford you carnal release."

"I don't want a trollop. I want you. Besides, wouldn't you care if I did? Procured one."

"It would pain me, but I'd try to live with it. I would offer it up, as we say. And I am yours, except in that way. As you very well know." She reversed her rotation and ended propped upon an elbow, looking down into his face. "Look, I have a feeling this is big-time, and I don't want to mess it up, and I don't want it to be some boring fifties-type thing, us grabbing at each other and me pulling back and you getting all cranky."

"We could do other stuff."

"Oh, right, blow jobs, the prep school solution. You're missing the point. The point is not to release it, because I know and you know that, once we start, we'll be on each other like minks and that'll be that. The thing is to raise the energy from here…"

And to his amazement she bestowed a gentle squeeze upon the bulging crotch of his jeans.

"… to here." She placed her hand under his shirt, on his beating heart. "Do the same to me."

"Under your…?"

"Of course." He did so. She was extremely warm to the touch. The beat was firm and rapid.

"Now look into my eyes. Let the energy flow up from your sex organs to your heart."

"How come you talk like a book? How come you know this stuff?"

"Do I talk like a book? Maybe. It could be the languages, a taste for precision. I like words. I can't bear the inarticulate yawp that passes for conversation. Complaint. Boasting. Sarcasm. Tag lines from sitcoms. How about those Sox? But language is sacred. It has glory, even in ordinary speech. The way most people use it, it's like a winged horse pulling a junk wagon. As for this"-she pressed on his chest-"this is how I whiled away the long, lonely years waiting for you. My mystical readings. It's working, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It's weird. Did you ever do this before?"

"Of course not. This is my maiden flight. Don't talk now. In a little while time will stop. Don't be frightened."

"What did the judge say?" asked Karp.

"Judge is not inclined to issue our warrant," said Hawes. "Judge says we haven't demonstrated the involvement of the union to the degree necessary to open the union books and the personal accounts of all the union's officers to the extent we asked for."

"Christ! Why in hell does he think the Heeneys were killed? We have Floyd involved. What else does he want?"

"Something besides the Cades," said Hawes, and added gloomily, "You have to admit he's got a point."

They were walking down a pale green corridor smelling of disinfectant that could have been any hospital in the world, but was in fact the Robbens County Medical Center. They were going to visit Wayne Cade.

"I don't admit any such thing," said Karp. "I should have been there. I assume the Sewer was present?"

"Yeah, he was in good form, too," said Hawes, letting pass the small dig. He had grown a thicker skin in the weeks of working with Karp. "Very eloquent about the importance of the Fourth Amendment to our vital freedoms."

"And Bledsoe bought it."

"Well, yeah. He made the point, which was hard to argue with, that he'd been on the state court of appeals and the state supreme court for twenty years, and if an appeal had come up based on the exclusion of evidence produced by the present subpoena, he'd have been inclined to reverse. Seward pointed out that the only connection we have with the union is through Floyd, and the only inculpation of Floyd is the testimony of a pair of half-wit felons. Hell, they could've said the mayor was there, too."

"He probably was, in this town," said Karp darkly. "Well, fuck it anyway, we knew it was a stretch. We'll just have to find the money some other way."

They had arrived at a door guarded by a Robbens County deputy. Officer Petrie looked up from his ragged Guns amp; Ammo, glared briefly, and with a motion of his head informed them that the occupant was available for interview.

They found Wayne Cade propped up in his hospital bed watching a NASCAR race on a television hung from the ceiling. He was still huge, but not as ruddy as he had been. Tubes entered his mound of bedclothes at several points.

"You want to shut that thing off, Wayne?" said Hawes. "We need to talk to you."

"I got nothin' to say," said Cade, nor did he still the roar of the track.

Karp reached high and flipped the power switch off. He said, "Your cousins say you shot Lizzie Heeney in the head while she was sleeping. You want to comment on that?"

"Yeah. My comment is fuck them, and fuck you, too." Cade stared at Karp. His eyes, like those of all the Cades, were small, close-set, tincolored. "That's your girl, ain't it? The one with that dog tore me up?"

Karp said nothing.

"Yeah, you're that one. You're that Jew lawyer from New York. Okay, here's a comment, lawyer man. When I get out of here, I'm gonna find that dog and gut-shoot it, and throw it on a slow fire, and skin it while it's still wigglin'. And then I'm gonna do the same thing to her, after every man I can drag in has fucked her up the corn hole."

"Not a helpful attitude, Mr. Cade," said Karp. "It speaks to a lack of remorse. When had you planned on accomplishing these deeds? You know you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison, don't you?"

"That's what you think, shitheel."

"Well, Mr. Cade, given your current legal position, ordinarily I'd have to say you have a lot of balls, but in your case… exactly how many do you have now?"

Cade roared, clenched his fists, made a move to leave the bed, grimaced in pain, and fell back on his pillows, yelling, "Petrie! Goddamnit, Omar, get these goddamn people out of my face!"

"We'll try him first," said Karp after they left the room. "A conviction will give us a nice base for going after George Floyd and Lester."

"You're pretty confident," said Hawes.

"Yeah, aren't you? We have good forensics, prints at the scene, his prints on the cans and bottles along with those of the other two we know for sure were at the murders. We even have an I.W.Harper pint with all three of their prints on it, overlapping. Also, since all the DNA stuff from the shoes came back positive, there's a lock on Bo and Earl, and the bottle prints mean Wayne was at the party. We have the two cousin confessions. He killed the child with a gun. We have the gun, too."

"But no prints on it, and no knowledge of how it came to be buried at Floyd's. We do know it was in the Guyandotte. They compared the mud on the gun and got a match."

"Yeah, my darling wife was right on the money there, if a little late. And for sure I'd dearly love to have whoever saw them toss the piece and fished it out. And planted it on George. But you can't have everything."

"I don't like it, though. It's just the kind of thing that screws up a case."