Stuart Woods: Heat

“All right,” Jesse replied, “and here’s what I want: I want a written agreement that guarantees me, first: an unconditional recommendation by the attorney general for a presidential pardon for any crime committed up to the actual date of the pardon; second: I want a hundred thousand dollars in cash; third: I want a completely new identity, tailored to my specifications and entry into the Justice Department’s witness protection program; and finally: I want a package delivered to the adoptive parents of my daughter, immediately , which will contain a letter from me to my daughter, and you will secure their written agreement to give it to her no later than her twenty-first birthday. The agreement is to be personally endorsed, in writing , by the attorney general herself, and my obligations will be satisfied when Coldwater, Casey and Ruger are either dead or indicted for a serious felony.”

“Why dead?” Barker asked.

“So that, if you try to take these guys and you kill one or all of them, you won’t be able to weasel out.”

Barker looked at Fuller. “Can we do this thing about the letter to his daughter?”

“I’ve spoken with the head of the adoption agency,” Fuller said. “I think she would be amenable to passing the package to the parents, but I don’t think there’s anything in the world we could do to force them to give the girl the letter. They might, but they might not.”

“All right,” Jesse said, “I’ll settle for a letter from the head of the adoption agency swearing that she has passed the package to the adoptive parents.”

“I think I can get that,” Fuller said.

“And I can swing the rest,” Barker replied. “It’s going to take me a couple of days, though, and you’ll have to go back into the joint while I work things out.”

“No deal,” Jesse said vehemently. “There’s a hotel in this city called the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead; Fuller and I will wait there in a suite, and I want my own bedroom.”

Fuller chimed in. “Dan, it’ll give me a chance to brief Jesse on the new background we’ve got worked out for him, and that’ll save us time.”

Barker turned back to Jesse. “I used to think of you as an honorable man. Will you give me your word that you will remain in Fuller’s custody until I get back from Washington?”

“I give you my word on that,” Jesse said. “But no more chains.” There would be time enough later to kill Barker if he came back from Washington empty-handed.

“All right, you’ve got a deal,” Barker said. “But I’m damned if I’ll shake your hand on it.”

That was just fine with Jesse.

Jesse sat at the dining table of a twelfth-floor suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead and polished off a large cut of prime rib. Elsewhere on the table were the remains of a loaded baked potato, a Caesar salad and a bottle of Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon (the reserve). He took another swig of the wine, then turned his attention to a large dish of macadamia brittle ice cream.

“Prison hasn’t improved your table manners,” Kip Fuller said from across the table.

“You’ll have to forgive me, Kip, but it’s been a while since anybody cared.” The ice cream was sensational. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“Because it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and I had lunch,” Fuller replied. “Are you sober enough after all that wine to start absorbing some detail?”

“Shoot.”

“Ordinarily, I’d just build you a legend for this job, but last week I got lucky.” He handed a large newspaper clipping across the table.

Jesse picked it up; it was from the Toccoa, Georgia, newspaper: LOCAL BUILDER’S FAMILY WIPED OUT IN DUI CRASH.

He read a few paragraphs, then looked up at Fuller. “Okay, so the guy’s name is Jesse; what else?”

“His wife and three daughters were killed in a head-on car crash.”

“I read that much.”

“What’s not in the article is that the husband, one Jesse Barron, lived through the crash and was hospitalized with head injuries. When he recovered enough, he checked himself out of the hospital and disappeared. I talked to the local sheriff, who knew the man well, and he reckons he’s a suicide; they just haven’t found the body yet.”

“What else do you know about him?”

Fuller took a file folder from his briefcase and opened it. “Born in a place called Young Harris.”

“I know the town; not far from where I was born.”

“He’s two years older than you are; went to North Georgia College, in Dahlonega, flunked out the first year. Single for a time, then married in his early thirties to one Sally Terrell, had three kids close together — daughters, Margie, Becky and Sherry, ages seven, five and four. The guy worked in construction in Atlanta for half a dozen companies, then moved to Toccoa a little over a year ago and started his own business. He was having a tough time of it, apparently — on the verge of bankruptcy, so the loss of his family wasn’t his only reason for suicide.”

“He could have just taken a hike,” Jesse said.

“The sheriff doesn’t think so. Barron had been drinking heavily, was depressed and had talked about suicide before the accident.”

“Sounds good. Anything unusual about the guy?”

“Very little. A high school football knee injury kept him out of the military, and he was too young for Vietnam, anyway. There is one delicious little detail, though; something we’d have been hard put to invent.”

“What’s that?”

“He was arrested nine years ago in a fight; he was one of a group of hecklers who were badgering a black couple who had bought a house in a white neighborhood.”

“I like it,” Jesse said. “A nice little credential. Was he a member of the Klan or anything?”

“I checked with the FBI — they’ve got a man in just about every Klan organization. He was actually on a list of people approached about joining, but he never did. It shows that the guy must have had a reputation for bad talk around town.”

“Good. What did he look like?”

Fuller handed over a small color photograph. “This was his driver’s license picture. A little smaller than you, and fatter, but you could be him after a car crash.”

Jesse nodded. “Does he have any family?”

“A grandfather in a county nursing home — in his nineties and ga-ga. That’s it.”

“How’d you come across this guy? You don’t read the Toccoa, Georgia, newspaper.”

“No, but researchers at Justice do; they keep an eye out for identities that could be used in the witness protection program. I’ve also got a name from Alabama, but he’s not nearly as good — too many relatives. The nice thing about Jesse Barron is that he’s from your part of the state, so your accents are probably similar.”

“If he’s from Young Harris, they certainly are. What happens if Barron’s body turns up?”

“The sheriff has agreed to keep it quiet,” Fuller said. “There’s nobody to notify, no heirs, nothing to leave them if there were any. The guy was living in a rented trailer.” He pushed the file across the table to Jesse.

Jesse looked through it; it was complete down to Barron’s failing grades his first and only year in college. “Sold,” he said. “Now let’s talk about this town in Idaho. What was it called?”

“St. Clair. It’s a one-industry town — a chipboard manufacturing company called St. Clair Wood Products. Family-owned, employs around four hundred people. We’ve been subscribing to the local weekly newspaper, the Standard , for a while and, apart from jobs in the local stores, county government, the sheriff’s office, that sort of thing, Wood Products is about it.”