Stephen Hunter - Black Light

“Wow,” said Russ, surprised. Then he added, “Jimmy was smart. He wasn’t just improvising, he’d worked it out. It figures. His son was very smart. Lamar was very, very clever when he set up his jobs, and he always knew exactly what to do. That’s something he got from his old man.”

“Yeah, he was a regular genius,” said Bob. “But how could he have scouted it out if he was in jail for three months?”

“Uhhh—” Russ let some air out of his lungs but no words formed in his brain.

“Now, let’s consider something else. The guns. All the newspapers say Bub brought the guns. They was planning a job, Bub got the guns together, had plenty of ammo, they went right into action.”

“Right.”

“But Jimmy’s was a Colt .38 Super, not a common gun, a kind of special gun, very few of ’em made. I’d love to find out where that gun come from. The .38 Super never really caught on; it was invented by Colt and Winchester in 1929 to be a law enforcement round, to get through car doors and bulletproof vests. But the .357 Mag come along a few years later and did everything it did better. So the Super just sort of languished. It wasn’t your street gun, the kind a punk kid like Bub would come up with. It’s not a hunting gun. It was never accurate enough to be a target round. It’s not a nineteenth-century cartridge, a .38-40 or a .32-20, say, that could have been lying around a farm for sixty years. No, it didn’t have its day until the eighties, when the IPSC boys begun loading it hot to make major. But in 1955, let me tell you, it wasn’t something you’d just find. You’d have to ask for it: a professional’s gun, real good velocity, nine shots in the mag, smooth shooting. If you were a cop or an armed robber, it’s just the ticket. How’d Jimmy know that? He a gun buff? He into guns? He a hunter, an NRA member, a subscriber to Guns magazine? How’d he end up with just the right gun for that kind of work?”

“Ah—” Russ flubbed.

“And how’d Bub get it?”

“Stole it, I guess,” said Russ.

“Guess is right. But no one ever reported it stolen, not so’s I’d know. What’s that tell us?”

“Ah,” said Russ, not quite knowing what it told him.

“It tells us maybe someone’s putting this thing together who knows a little bit about what he’s doing.”

Russ said, “Like I say, Jimmy was smart, like his boy, Lamar.”

“Not that smart” was all that Bob said.

Where is this going? What’s this guy up to? Russ wondered.

The next morning, they took the new Harry Etheridge Parkway down toward Bob’s hometown. It was a strange experience: the road was not yet built when he left Blue Eye, seemingly forever, three years ago. Now it seemed so permanent, he could not imagine that it hadn’t been there forever, four wide lanes of white cement gleaming in the sun. The road, however, was practically deserted. Who went from Blue Eye to Fort Smith and back again? As a recreation area, Blue Eye had yet to be developed.

It was strange, almost dislocating. He’d walked these hills and mountains daily for the seven years he’d lived alone on a mountain in a trailer with the dog Mike, just forgetting the world existed. He knew them a dozen different ways, all their trails and switchbacks, their enfilades and shortcuts, the subtle secrets of terrain that no map could yield. Yet penetrated from this angle, they gave up visions before unseeable as the highway almost seemed to rearrange the mountains themselves in new and unusual ways. It troubled him, announcing the mistake of going back thinking that things have stayed the same, for they always change and must be relearned again.

A part of him hated the damn road. What the hell was the point, anyhow? They say Boss Harry Etheridge never forgot he came from Polk County and he wanted to pay back his home folks, give them some shot into the twentieth century. They say that his son, Hollis, when he was in the Senate before he began his presidential quest, wanted a monument to his father. They say that all the politicians and businessmen wanted a free feed at the expense of the U.S. government, which is why so many people called it the porkway and not the parkway. But it was meant as a monument to a father’s love of his home and a son’s love for his father.

“This Etheridge,” Russ asked, “is this the same guy that’s running for President? The guy that’s finishing third in all the primaries?”

“Same family,” Bob said. “The father was the big congressman. The son was a two-term senator. Handsomest man that ever lived. He thinks he can be the President.”

“He’ll need more than pretty looks,” said Russ.

“Umm,” grunted Bob, who had no opinions on politics, or particularly on Hollis Etheridge, who was only an Arkansas fellow by political convenience. He’d been raised in Washington, been to Harvard and Harvard Law School and only came back during symbolic trips with his father when he was a youngster. In Arkansas, he was a tribute to name recognition. His two terms in the Senate were marked by obedience to the rules, blandness, party-line votes, rumors of a flamboyant adultery habit (and if you saw his wife, you’d know why) and a great willingness to siphon funds back to the statewide political machine that had put him in office.

Whatever, the road he built got Bob and Russ to their destination in less than an hour where by the old twisty Route 71 it was a close-to-three-hour trip.

“That’s a hell of a road,” said Russ. “We don’t have anything in Oklahoma like that. Too bad it doesn’t go anywhere.”

The end of the highway yielded a futuristic ramp that swirled in streamlined hurry to earth—but it was the earth of beat-up old Blue Eye, depositing them quickly enough in the regulation strip of fast-food joints: McDonald’s and Burger King but also some more obscure regional varieties. Bob noted there was a new place called Sonic, a classic fifties drive-in that boasted pennants snapping in the breeze, clearly a hot dog joint, but it didn’t look like it was doing too well otherwise. The Wal-Mart had moved across the street and become a Wal-Mart Super Saver, whatever the hell that was, and it looked like some kind of flat spaceship landed in the middle of a parking lot. A few blocks on they came to the same scabby, one-story town hall and across the square, the razed remains of the old courthouse, which had burned in 1994 and had simply been flattened and cemented over, until someone figured out what to do with the property. Some Confederate hero stood covered in pigeon shit and graffiti in the center of the square, saluting the empty space where the courthouse had been; Bob couldn’t remember the Reb’s name, if he ever knew. Off the main drag, the same grubby collection of stores, general merchandising, men’s and women’s clothing stores, the life sucked out of them by Mr. Sam’s Wal-Mart. A beauty parlor, a sporting goods store, a languishing tax accountant’s office. And, to the left, the professional office building where two doctors, two dentists and a chiropractor had an office, as did one old lawyer.

“We’ll start here,” Bob said. “Good to see this old dog again. Hope he can still hunt.”

“Is this the great Sam?” Russ asked.

“Yes, it is. They say he’s the smartest man in the county. For close to thirty years Sam Vincent was the county prosecutor. In those days, they called him Electrifying Sam, because he sent twenty-three men to the chair. He knew my daddy. I think he was assistant state’s attorney for Polk in 1955. We’ll see what he has to say. You let me do the talking.”

“He must be in his eighties!”

“He’s eighty-six now, I think.”

“Are you sure he’s even here? He could be in a rest home or something.”