Night of Thunder

“Maybe next time. This whole damn thing turns on me. You need the best driver you can get for a certain job and if you don’t have him, it all goes away. You don’t want that. So why don’t you stop cobbing on me, Alton, and pick two sons or nephews, if you can tell them apart, which I doubt-the two with the most teeth and whose eyes are far enough apart so that in certain lights they appear normal-you send them into that hospital. And since they’re such smooth operators and nobody suspects nothing yet, they can just inject an air bubble into her vein and when it reaches her heart, she’s gone. Then all our problems are solved, and we can do our job, git our money and our revenge, and move on.”

“I hope God don’t hear the disrespect in your voice,” the Reverend said. “But if I’m so dumb, how come I already sent the two boys?”

SIX

Vern Pye had the gift of gab and Ernie Grumley the talent of conviction. One was a nephew, one a son, though neither was aware of which category they fit into as names were sometimes misleading among the Reverend’s brood. After all, the man had had seven wives and six boys per wife as per certain biblical instructions, and, if rumor was believed, he had spread his seed amply among the various sisters of the various wives, whether those sisters were married to others or not. He had a way about him and a hunger, and women, for some reason, were eager to give to him that which they thought he wanted.

They all-wives, formal and informal, legal and only by custom, sisters and husbands, the progeny-lived together far from prying eyes on a chunk of hilltop outside of Hot Springs, Arkansas. From there they did various jobs for various contacts around the South that the Reverend had inherited from generations of Grumleys before him. The Grumleys, foot soldiers to the Lord and also various interested parties. That is why they’d temporarily migrated to the Piney Ridge Baptist Prayer Camp on Route 61 in Johnson County, Tennessee, at the insistence of Alton, the patriarch.

Vern and Ernie were somewhat slicker than the usual Grumley progeny. Each was smooth in his way and not too tattooed, and the Reverend, noting talent where it happened to spring up (although, Lord, why do you test me so? That quality was rare enough), always urged them to develop their talent. Thus Vern was the superstar of his generation of Grumleys. He was an aristocrat, a Pye out of Grumley, and so his blood was bluer than any other’s, uniting two lines of violent miscreants from the hinterlands of Arkansas outside Hot Springs. He had killed and would kill again, without much emotional investment, but he didn’t consider himself a killer. He had vanities, and pride. He was the compleat criminal. He could forge, extort, swindle, steal cold, steal hot, do banks or grocery stores, do hits, administer beatings, all with the same aplomb. He liked getting over on the johns, didn’t matter who or what the game was.

It helped that he was unusually handsome, with a dark head of hair and large, white spades for teeth. His eyes radiated warmth and charm; he was as smooth with a line of bullshit as he was with a Glock, and he was pretty smooth with that. He’d done a few years’ hard time, where he’d basically networked, and he had three other identities going, two wives, seven children, girlfriends among the stripper and escort population in every southern state, and a thing for young girls, which he indulged at shopping malls, clubs, and fast food joints whenever he had a spare moment. He could con a twelve-year-old into a blowjob in the men’s room faster than most people could count to one hundred.

Ernie was less accomplished. He was essentially a Murphy man, a fraudulent pimp who conned college boys out of their dollars and delivered zero in the sex department, in some of the Razorback State’s seamier venues. Basically, in today’s operation, Ernie’s job was to support Vern and learn from him, which is how they found themselves, in medical scrubs under MD nametags, walking down the hallway of the Bristol General Hospital, headed toward their destination, the critical-care ward.

It was late; the place was nearly empty. It was big enough, however, so that the concept of “stranger” could apply. No nurse, for instance, could know all the medical personnel by name or face and could therefore be counted upon to yield before slickness, sureness of authority, and the steady guidance and charisma of an experienced confidence man.

It’ll be easy.

No one suspects a thing.

The girl is an accident victim, not a murder survivor.

No security, no suspicion, no fear.

Thus the two men ambled happily, making eye contact, issuing warm “Hellos” and “Say, there, how’s the boy?”s as they coursed through the fourth floor’s spotless hallways. They even stopped now and then for a cup of coffee, to assure a patient on a walker, and to examine bedside charts. They took pulses, looked into eyes, felt throats, just like on the television doctor shows.