The Thomas Berryman Number

“I see,” Etta Horn nodded. “I see.”

She sipped her cool drink, watching her son over the rim.

“I’ve been talking to a few people about it. Politics,” she clarified. “I’ve been sitting down at the store musing about it. Listening to quite a few people talk too.”

Jimmie Horn looked over her head at Julian Bond’s photo. He wondered what Bond’s folks were like. “So what’s on your mind?” he asked his mother.

“Oh, nothing. Nothing.” The old woman revealed where her son might have picked up his great innocent postures. “We did visit your Aunt Fay down at Clarksville last week though.”

“Uh-huh,” Horn shook his head.

“Farming niggers down there don’t know Jimmie Horn from Harry the Hootowl,” she grinned. “White folks down there know you, but they don’t approve of you.”

“You’re beating around the bush, darlin’. You’ve got me flushed out. Talk straight.”

“Well” Etta Horn sighed, “it just seems to me … you’ve got to meet with these people. You’ve got to reach out, and shake their hands, and tell’m who you are. Got to have people saying—‘Hey now, guess who I saw down the feed store today. That young Jimmie Horn runnin’ for United States Senator. He looked me right in my eye, said he’d be the finest, hardest-working senator Tennessee has ever had.’

“Why I heard of a man somewhere,” Etta Horn went on, “Michigan, Ohio? … he won senator just by walking across the state meetin’ people face to face.”

“Black fella?” Jimmie Horn smiled.

“Don’t get smart. Don’t get wise … People like a hard-worker, black, white, or otherwise. Especially these days. All these bums around.”

“All right.” Jimmie Horn rubbed his hands together for action. “All right. You walking with me?”

The old woman jutted out her chin. “I’ll walk,” she said. “Far as my legs carry me.”

“Will your husband walk?”

“He hates it like the plague of Egypt—politics—but he’ll be there too.”

Horn sat back in his chair. He bit off another mouthful of cake. “Love these things,” he smiled.

Etta Horn just sat quietly rocking in her green chair. She rocked and nodded and winked one time. She looked like a woman capable of plotting a President up from his cradle.

“You’re sneaky as you ever were,” she finally said with the familiar straight face.

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

Before Jimmie Horn left that evening, his father wandered in from the grocery.

He was Marblehead Horn, squarely built, forever in farmer’s overalls and a gray felt hat. He looked like a black Nikita Khrushchev.

“Daddy, we’ve got you out campaigning with Jimmie,” Etta Horn told him as a greeting.

“The hell you do.” Marblehead plopped down in his easy chair. “Shit on that.”

“We’re going to walk clear across Tennessee. Just like that man in Ohio.”

Horn’s father punched the TV remote control. An ancient Zenith flared in the corner of the living room. “The hell I am,” he called back to her.

But he would. He always had, and he would. The old man was a sure thing. Just as sure as the fact that his Little Hill Grocery opened at six, closed at nine-thirty, took credit for “anything people eat, and nothing else.”

Jimmie Horn went home that night with warm feelings coursing through his body. This time a black Galaxie joined the green Polara that always followed him.

At 11 P.M., a pale blue Lincoln Continental shut off in the porte cochere of one of the dark, fat plantation estates in Nashville’s Belle Meade section.

Terrell climbed heavily out of the car, paused like a thoughtful animal in the porch light, then disappeared into his house.

Bright lights flashed on in several rooms on the ground floor level. They mapped his route through the big house.

The final light was the desk lamp in Terrell’s study.

Terrell sat down in a worn easy chair. He slid off his black patent leather loafers, loosened his belt, thought about this Thomas Berryman character for a moment. He thought about the lawyer Harley John Wynn too. About his murder somewhere up in New York.

Then he made a phone call to New Orleans.

The man Terrell spoke to in Louisiana had a fast, nearly unintelligible drawl. “This Berryman the one who does the drownings and heart attacks?” he wanted to know. “This

Thomas

Berryman you yappin’ about, Mister Terrell?”

“Thomas Berryman,” Johnboy said. “But I believe he’ll be using a gun this time. That’s the impression I got. I had a nice little talk with the man. Southern boy, you know.”

During the next few minutes the details of a contract on Thomas Berryman were arranged. A mob killer would probably be used. He was to be paid in full regardless of what happened to Jimmie Horn.

“Your nigger is Thomas Berryman’s responsibility,” the New Orleans man made very clear. “He’s the hot-shit. My man’s fee will be ten. He’s light. He’s mob.”

“By the way, Mr. Terrell,” the New Orleans man quipped before he hung up, “this is turning into a real public service number for you, isn’t it.”

After Terrell hung up, the New Orleans man called first New York, then Philadelphia. The name Joseph Cubbah was brought up during the Philadelphia call.

Nashville, July 1