Southern Cross Page 18

  “What’s going on, Bedford?” I asked when I’d learned all I could by being quiet. “Why the rough stuff?”

  “One of my lieutenants has doubts about your bona fides,” Bedford answered affably.

  “Who?”

  “Names don’t matter. It’s enough for you to know that he’s a trusted soldier in the brigade.” In contrast to his hectoring back at the park, Bedford’s voice had become confident and modulated. Something or someone had changed the script, and quite likely blown my cover.

  I started to sweat; there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room for my lungs to work with. “What’s the deal?” I asked. “You guys don’t need money all of a sudden?”

  “My lieutenant will discuss it with you. Just to show I’m not prejudiced one way or another, I’m going to leave you two alone. When he’s completed the interrogation, you’ll either be assassinated or your contribution will be accepted as a generous gift to ASP.”

  A whispered colloquy somewhere in front of me was followed by the scrape of boots across concrete and footfalls descending a staircase—Bedford had taken his leave.

  As with many perils in which I’ve found myself, my only option was to wait and hope. The main thing I was hoping was that the car I’d heard stop somewhere near the van belonged to Seth Hartman and that he was poised to be my savior should the need for one arise. But in the next instant the hope was dashed. A car door slammed, an engine fired, and a vehicle roared off—Bedford and an aide were making tracks.

  I raised a hand to scratch my nose.

  “Don’t move,” a wobbly voice commanded, its forced audacity familiar from the tapes.

  “I’ve got an itch.”

  “I don’t care what you’ve got. Keep still or I’ll dust you.”

  “What’s your problem, pal?”

  “My problem is you. For one thing, who are you?”

  “The name is Tanner.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can’t prove it without moving.”

  He thought it over. “Okay. But nothing funny.”

  I fished out my wallet and held it out for him, not the folder with my P.I. license in it, just the wallet. It occurred to me belatedly that the purpose of the entire exercise might simply be to rob me.

  I kept my hand in midair after the lieutenant plucked the wallet from it, and a moment later he returned it. It seemed as heavy as when it left, but money doesn’t weigh much.

  “You’re supposed to be from Denver,” the voice complained in a liquid whine.

  “I am.”

  “That says San Francisco.”

  “I’ve found it’s not prudent to carry accurate I.D.”

  “What do you do?”

  “For a living?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m an investor.”

  “In what?”

  “In white America.”

  He hesitated. “Bedford thinks you’re a cop.”

  “What’s his problem? I don’t have the right accent or something?”

  My foe was getting agitated. “We don’t have a problem. You’ve got a problem.”

  “Other than that I can’t see anything and I’m talking to a nitwit, I wouldn’t know what it is.”

  “I’ll show you who’s a nitwit.” He jabbed me in the stomach with what felt like a fist.

  I bent over, fighting for breath and warring with bile. When I managed to straighten up, it was to confront a heartfelt accusation.

  “I already know you’re a spy,” the voice announced with fresh assurance. “You work for the race traitor Seth Hartman.”

  Since I couldn’t see a way out of my predicament in the direction we were going, I exchanged some subterfuge for truth. “I admit it—Seth is my friend. But he’s your friend, too.”

  His voice rose on a thermal of panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about you and your daddy. This is ridiculous, Colin. We both know you’re not a killer. I’m going to take this blindfold off so we can discuss it like gentlemen.”

  His answer was the rattle of a weapon. “I’ll waste you if you do.”

  “No, you won’t; you can’t afford to kill me yet.”

  “Why not?”

  It was like giving instructions in grave-digging. “You might kiss ten thousand bucks good-bye, and the Field Marshal wouldn’t like that.”

  Before he could fashion a rebuttal, I reached for my blindfold and slipped it off and blinked at the skittish eyes of Colin Hartman. That this tonsured soldier in baggy fatigues and clown-sized boots was the offspring of the debonair Seth Hartman was a jarring disconnect to contemplate. It must have been even more jarring for Colin to have to live with it.

  In removing the blindfold, I’d taken the initiative, and Colin didn’t know what to do about it. I took advantage of his uncertainty to try to figure out where we were.

  It seemed to be some kind of abandoned storage structure—the walls were smeared with graffiti; the floor and low ceiling were slabs of rough cement that were fouled with trash and cobwebs. There was a narrow door at one end of the room, but no windows in the walls except for a slit at my back. For some reason, I had a feeling I’d been there before, though that was clearly impossible.

  Suddenly I knew what it was. I was inside a bunker, built of reinforced concrete, embedded in earthenworks on its sides, its orientation toward the sea, its function to repel invasion, like others I had seen in places that felt vulnerable to offshore enemies, such as the Presidio in San Francisco and Fort Worden near Seattle, which possessed installations that could be carbon copies. I paid brief homage to the Field Marshal—it was a good place for conversation and even better for assassination.

  While I was piecing that together, Colin Hartman shuffled nervously in the shadows cast by the modicum of light from a distant street lamp that managed to find us through the narrow door. His hands fiddled inexpertly with the semiautomatic pistol I’d seen leaning against the wall of his apartment; it occurred to me that my most likely fate was that Colin would shoot me by accident.

  As I moved to where I could see his face, he trained his weapon on my chest. In the dregs of light in the bunker, Colin looked even younger than he was, a bald boy-man with festering flesh, a petulant pout, and the hangdog slump of the outcast. If the father was a man who had never been ill at ease, the son was a child who had never felt comfortable with his life and had surrendered his fate to others.

  I gestured at his armband. “What’s N.G.O.K?”

  “New Generation of Klan. Why are you lying to us?” he continued quickly. “Why were you at Seth’s office? Did he send you to kidnap me or something?”

  “It seems to me that you and Bedford are the ones doing the kidnapping, Colin.”

  “We’re just defending ourselves,” he objected thinly. “From traitors like my dad.”

  “Your father isn’t a traitor; he’s worried you’re going to get into trouble.”

  Colin’s lips lifted in a pout. “It’s a free country; I can say what I want.”

  “Sure you can. But I’m confused about some things. Maybe you can straighten me out.”

  I leaned against the wall at my back and watched a spider make room for me. “One thing I was wondering was why an organization like ASP would put a man at the top of its list of enemies, then put his son in a position of power. And then I was wondering why a group that thinks Jews are destroying the world would let a Jewish kid carry their colors.”

  Colin’s eyes grew wide as poker chips as his face gorged with protest. “Are you trying to say I’m a Jew? Because I’m not. It goes through the mother. My dad’s a Jew because his mother was, but my mother wasn’t, which means I’m not. It’s the way they do it. You can look it up.”

  I diminished his rebuttal by ignoring it. “I was also wondering if ASP might not be using the young man for something other than a foot soldier.”

  “Like what?”

  “A fall guy.”

  “What
’s that supposed to mean?”

  “ASP says your dad is an enemy of the South.”

  “Right. ’Cause he is.”

  “They’ve named Seth the enemy, and they’ve threatened to execute him if he doesn’t leave town.”

  Colin’s chest swelled in a defiant strut. “We’ll do it, too.”

  “Let’s say your dad is found dead. Because of what’s gone down in the past—the tapes and the notice of judgment—the cops will go straight to ASP. Could be trouble for the patriots, unless of course the cops have a reason to suspect someone else, someone like Seth’s son. They’d buy it, since the son and the father don’t get along and everyone knows it, plus I’m sure ASP has collected some physical evidence to plant to point the police in the right direction, including proof that you killed me this evening. When ASP gives you up on a murder charge, it gets itself off the hook.”

  Colin’s shell of confidence was eroding beneath an acid bath of fear. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  “How do you know?”

  He licked his lips. “Besides, nothing will happen to Dad if he does what they want.”

  “Which is?”

  “Quit helping the race traitors. He’s been helping them all his life, and he’s got to stop.” Colin’s voice rose to an oily screech. “Guys like me don’t have a chance anymore—we’re nothing, we’re a joke. Niggers get paid for taking drugs and having kids, while guys like me can’t even get a decent job. White people built this country, and it’s been stolen by the mud people. The banks, the media, the federal bureaucracy, they’re all run by slopes and Jews; they’re totally against white people.”

  “You’re being used, Colin. ASP isn’t a bunch of Christian patriots; ASP is a hit squad put together to target your father. The question is, why are they after him?”

  Colin was sullen and subdued. “Because he’s a race traitor, like I told you.”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with race. I think you and Bedford are both pawns in this thing.”

  Colin thrust out his chin and his weapon. “The fuck we are. We’re white Christian Americans who aren’t going to take Zionist shit anymore.”

  “You’re two unhappy young men who are being used to destroy a fine man’s life. What I can’t figure out is why. Who’s behind it, Colin? Give me a name. Let me find out whether ASP is on the up-and-up or whether you’re being set up for a frame.”

  Briefly evangelical, Colin’s expression lapsed to a stricken grimace.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, Colin. What is it?”

  “I’m supposed to do something with you. I’m supposed to decide you’re all right and make you give me money. Either that or kill you.”

  “How are you supposed to decide?”

  “You’re supposed to do something to prove you’re a patriot.”

  “Like what?”

  He hesitated, then spit it out like a bite of bad food. “You’re supposed to paint a swastika on the door to my father’s office.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. There’s paint and stuff in the truck. If you refuse, I’m supposed to kill you. I’m supposed to skin you alive. They took me out in the woods and taught me how. They made me practice on a dog.” The phrase was a tremolo of anguish.

  I shook my head. “Walk away from it, Colin.”

  In response to my plea, Colin brandished his MAC-10. It rattled in the concrete cave like the crack of breaking bones. “I can’t,” he said miserably. “ASP is the only thing I have. ASP is all I am.”

  In the echo of Colin’s anguished essay, I made a final pitch. “What about Broom? What would she say if she found out you killed me?”

  “She’d be pissed I didn’t let her watch.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Colin toyed with his weapon absently, gazing into the depths of the bunker as though salvation could be found by deciphering the obscene graffiti, which featured pornographic paeans to people named Stephanie and Bryan and a more reverent nod to Mötley Crüe. It couldn’t have been more tense had U-boats just been spotted off the coast.

  “I’ll do it,” I said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I’ll paint the swastika on Seth’s office. To prove to Bedford I’m who I say I am. That’s the only way we can find out whether ASP is for real or a tool of some conspiracy to destroy your father.”

  Colin shook his head. “You’re stalling. You’ll jump me the minute I put down my gun.” He squinted at me. “Anyway, I already know what ASP is, just like I already know who you are.”

  “Who?”

  “The one in the yearbooks. My sister and I used to look at them all the time. Every picture of Dad—what he was doing, what he was wearing, who he was with. There were two pictures of him in the freshman book and seventeen his senior year. That’s a lot, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Your dad was pretty popular.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m not, either. It’s not that important unless you’re a politician.”

  Colin didn’t find the quip amusing. “I’m not a politician; I’m not anything.”

  It was time for pop psychology, so I made like Mister Rogers. “Sure you are. Plus you’re young. You can be whatever you want to be.”

  “I don’t want to be anything.”

  “Then you’re better off than most—you’ve already realized your ambitions.”

  I smiled to show I was kidding—Colin didn’t look like someone who’d been kidded very much. Teased, yes—relentlessly. But not kidded.

  “I’m going to do it,” he said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Kill you.”

  “Why?”

  “Bedford said to.”

  “You’ll go to jail, Colin. For a long time. Too many people know you’re here.”

  “Who?”

  “Bedford, for one. His boss, for another.”

  “He doesn’t have a boss.”

  “Sure he does. He’s also got friends. One of them is Jane Jean Hendersen. I saw her at the rally—what’s Bedford’s relationship to her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I fired a random shot. “She’s not his mother, is she?”

  Colin thought about it. “I don’t think so, but I know she gives him money, so maybe she is.”

  I hoped Colin was wrong about Jane Jean, and I hoped he wasn’t going to kill me, but I couldn’t count on either. “You can’t do it, Colin,” I said after a moment.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know what the parts of the Bible that Bedford was quoting really mean, but I know what one part really means.”

  “What part is that?”

  “The part of Deuteronomy that says ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

  Colin shifted uneasily. “There are millions of exceptions to that.”

  “Cold-blooded murder isn’t one of them.”

  Colin rubbed his bare skull with his free hand, rapidly and vigorously, as if things were alive in there that he needed to squash. “You know something funny about that weapon you’re carrying?” I said casually.

  “What?”

  “It’s a MAC-ten. There’s a little lever up by the clip. See it? It’s a double safety device. They do that when they convert to automatic firing, so unless it’s turned left, the cartridges can’t eject and the weapon won’t fire. It might even explode.”

  Colin slid his trigger finger along the magazine, feeling for the nonexistent lever.

  “A little farther over.”

  When he lowered his head to look, I grabbed the weapon and shoved the muzzle skyward as I tried to put my thumb between the trigger guard and trigger so it wouldn’t move if Colin pulled it. But instead of rendering the pistol inoperable, I managed to discharge it.

  The belch of gunfire was deafening in the concrete sound chamber—Colin was so startled he dropped his weapon and cupped his ears. A ricochet nipped at my shirtsleeve as it whizzed by
me on the way back from the far wall; another clanged off the metal doorway.

  When the caroms had ceased, I picked up the pistol and ejected the clip. The duct tape around the grip was as warm and sticky as pastry. “These things are awful,” I said as I placed it on the floor behind me. “I can’t believe the NRA opposes banning them, can you?”

  Colin didn’t look at me and didn’t say anything; he just ran out of the room and straight for the edge of the bunker and jumped off without looking back, hurling himself onto the concrete pad some dozen feet below. I thought he was trying to escape until I realized he was trying to kill himself.

  I got to him as fast as I could. Colin lay on his stomach in an unconscious heap, limbs disjointed and akimbo, blood seeping from his ears and nose and from a gash above his eye. My impulse was to carry him to the van and rush him to the hospital, but given the angle of his neck and the nature of his injuries, I decided I’d better not.

  The only source of help seemed to be a house whose windows were bright in the night some fifty yards down the street. I glanced at Colin again. He remained a bag of rubber bones, motionless and bleeding. I headed for the nearest phone.

  I was into my jog when a figure stepped from behind a bush. “What happened?” it asked me.

  When my heart was back in my chest and my lungs had shrunk enough to let me speak, I identified the ghost as Seth Hartman. “Colin’s been hurt,” I told him.

  “How?”

  “He fell. Concussion. Maybe worse.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I pointed. “Telephone. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I started to run off, but Seth put out a hand to stop me. “I’ve got a phone in the car. What do we need?”

  “An ambulance would be good.”

  “A helicopter would be better. What kind of injury?”

  “Head and neck, probably. Broken wrist. Possible internal injuries.”

  Seth ran toward a white Lincoln parked several yards from where we were. In the glow of the dome light, I watched him make the call. “The medical college has a medevac chopper—it’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” he said when he returned. “The right people will be waiting when he gets there.”