The Thomas Berryman Number

Trapped inside the stuffy room, Berryman wanted to be back outdoors. Where it was breezy and sunny and quiet. More than that, he wanted to be done with this job, and with the

Souf.

“You may consider it foolhardy that I’ve chosen to meet with you myself,” Johnboy said. “Well, I agree. It is foolish. But it’s the way I’ve always done things. I am a southerner, an empiricist. I wanted to talk to you. To evaluate you. To see you, I had hoped.”

Thomas Berryman nodded. He was catching sun-streaks in the brass minor behind Terrell’s head. He was remembering Oona Quinn coming out of the Atlantic Ocean like the girl in the famous airline commercial.

“Now you stop me if I’m not making sense …”

“You’re doing fine,” Berryman spoke through the rubber mask.

Terrell slowly sipped his bourbon. He examined Berryman like a rich man undecided about a new stud horse. “I was curious about the kind of man you are. I was damn curious after that row with poor Wynn.”

Berryman found himself smiling at the fat man’s manner. “And what do you think now?”

“Why, I find you a complete surprise,” Terrell laughed. “You’re so smart, you see.” He laughed again. “I even begin to wonder why you bother with this sad business.”

“Sometimes I wonder, too,” Berryman said. “But I guess I’m wondering more about the rest of my money right now. In fact, I’m beginning to worry. I thought you understood that I was to be paid before I do any work. I may be smart, but I’m also very expensive.”

Terrell was a little surprised. “You haven’t begun?”

“I’ve done a few little things. Horn is a difficult target given your requirements. I’m ready to begin.”

“Money then.” The fat man patted his suitjacket. “Right here. Right over the ole ticker. Thomas Berryman,” he kept repeating the name. “I think I expected much more of a lightweight. A lightweight personality, that is. I believe I oversimplified.”

Berryman replied in a soft, southern gentleman’s voice that he borrowed from his father.

“I am a lightweight,” he leveled Johnboy. “I have bad emotional reflexes. I’m basically very lazy. Very materialistic. I want to get away from it all. Fast. Live the good life, you know.”

Johnboy’s head bobbed and his chest heaved a little. He was slightly amused. “Sounds familiar enough.” He reached inside his suitjacket.

He took out a brown packet bound in ordinary elastic bands. The package was about three inches thick. “All in all, one hundred thousand to the good life,” he said rather solemnly.

He sat and studied Berryman as he opened the money and flipped through the crisp bills. He appreciated Berryman’s attention to detail. Berryman looked the part of a southern businessman. Right down to the matching tie clasp, cufflinks, belt buckle; to the gray rayon socks with red clocks on the sides.

“I do admire your inventiveness, Berryman. You are no hunter. If you live long enough, I’m sure you’ll get everything that you want.”

Berryman finished his counting, then tucked the money in his suitjacket. He stood up over the davenport, moved in front of a confused oil painting of the Scopes trial, and Terrell got up with him.

“I may be using a gun this time,” Berryman said. “I want lots of confusion. Confusion is the key. It will look very good for the papers. It will probably happen on the Fourth of July. Probably.”

Berryman was wearing light yellow driving gloves and he extended one hand to Terrell. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he continued to speak softly, “but I really shouldn’t spend any more time here. It’s stupid of me to be here at all.”

Johnboy touched the glove lightly, more exploring than shaking hands. He stared into the mask’s eyeholes for a full ten seconds. “So damn smart,” he said once again.

Berryman nodded and smiled slightly. “If I’m followed out of here,” he said, “the deal is off. You mustn’t interfere.”

Around that same time in the early evening, Jimmie Horn’s hazel-brown eyes drifted down from melodramatic paintings of Jesus posed in front of various wooden doors and gates … to autographed photographs of Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Langston Hughes … to a collection of every black person Norman Rockwell had ever drawn.

Then the one person he was consistently unable to fool or inveigle, a large-breasted seventy-one-year-old schoolteacher, walked into the parlor where he was sitting. She carried bubbling tonic water with lime, and warm sugar and lemon cakes. She was Etta Raide Horn, his mother.

“Should of taught summer school again.” She sat in a creaky rocker currently painted green. “Already missin those little stinkers, Jiminy.”

Horn shook his head. “You should get out of that school altogether is what you

should.

He should get out of the grocery, too.”

“And you should go back into law practice,” Mrs. Horn said.

Her son laughed. “So there.”

“So there to yourself.” She maintained a straight face that only hinted at laughter. “By way, Mr. Mayor, how’s your campaign going?”

“It’s going very well, I think.” Horn took a sugar cake, closed his eyes, slowly let his teeth cut through it.