The Thomas Berryman Number

If Poole had come back while Berryman was sitting there reading, Berryman thought that he probably would have killed him. He’d come to the apartment to learn if the crazy-looking hippie was dangerous; now he felt that he was.

He considered shooting the saccharine maniac with his own .44 magnum.

But Poole didn’t come back, and as Thomas Berryman sat reading and smoking at his leisure, he started to make more considered plans for the young southerner. Far from being an unexpected liability, he began to feel that Poole might be very useful, a godsend.

White Geese, July 2

The famous Chub L. Moss and Sons; Gunsmiths, is a gray gas station and red barn in White Geese, Kentucky. Moss specializes in legal fireworks, and also in tools for the extermination of black males. Berryman took the two-lane blacktop up to White Geese after he left Poole’s apartment.

The fireworks store was full of hangdog hillbillies. Human clown faces. It took Berryman a good half hour to get to see Chub Moss, Jr.

He found the man extraordinary to look at. Moss had been shot through his head as a teenager and his eyes wandered around like pinballs.

“So how you?” He greeted Berryman with the upraised hand of a court clerk. “Bet you lookin for some Foaff of Ju-ly fah-works.” He swung his hand down toward crates of bombs and hanging strips of red poppers. “Feast your eyes, stranger.”

Thomas Berryman was into playacting again. He looked at his shoetips and grinned like a boy come in to buy his first Trojan. “Also lookin for a gun, Mister Moss.”

Moss Jr. exposed several blackened teeth in an unhappy smile. He lowered his voice. “Wah you lookin in the exact right place man fren. Jes keep at little cigar to you’sef. Get you face blow out yo asshole if you don’t.”

Moss turned on his heels and led the way to a smaller room to one side of the main fireworks emporium. Only a few men had ventured into the smaller room. It was filled with rifles and revolvers. Every kind of rifle from a Winchester .22 for rat exterminating to an M-16 smuggled out of Fort Campbell.

Moss held up one of the M-16s. “This here is more of a

weapon,

sportsman. Course? …” He sighted the long rifle at two young women gassing up a VW out front. His eyes flew around behind the barrel like stirred bats.

“Dreamin’ of nook,” Moss said, “shooting the gook.” He clicked the trigger and simulated a blunderbuss recoil.

He google-eyed Berryman’s sunglasses. “Hope you not thinkin a huntin rabbit?”

Berryman hooted. “Not going to eat’m if I do.”

“You sure as hell ain’t. No way.”

Moss Jr. tried to sell Berryman a Colt .38 with an ankle holster. He tried several different M-12s and M-16s. Some twenty-two-caliber dum-dums. A handmade Creek Indian blanket.

Berryman hemmed and hawed, toed the wooden floor like a skittish colt, finally picked up one of the Smith & Wesson pistols. A .44 magnum like Bert Poole’s. Plus a silencer.

He signed for it American Express: care of Mr. Brewster Greene of Louisville.

As he bagged the gun, silencer and ammunition, one of Moss Jr.’s eyes disappeared into his forehead. In his mind he was participating. “Hey, whachu goan do with all this fahpow?”

Berryman held an Indian blanket up to a hanging Coleman lamp. “Targetshoot,” he said. “Kill beer cans and watermelons.”

Moss’s eye returned. “You know that .44 was developed for huntin,” he said.

“I know that.”

“All right then. All right,” Moss grinned. He handed over the gun. “You will be careful a your nigger weenies near my cherry bombs. On your way out, stranger.”

Philadelphia, July 2

It was on that same day, July 2nd, that the final piece was told about the puzzle.

St. Joseph’s Place is a well-kept secret in the extreme northeast section of Philadelphia. It’s made up of two long rows of modest homes, most with owner-trimmed hedges and very old elms in their front yards. Most with swing sets or basketball hoops.

The street deadends north at St. Joseph’s Church and elementary school. As Gothic cathedrals go, the church is small and unpretending. The elementary school is redbrick in color, probably large, but mostly hidden by elms.

Directly across from the school, half-hidden in still more elm trees, sits Joe Cubbah’s candy store.

The name on the yellow and brown Hershey’s sign says “Angie’s Magazines.” The candy store is called “Angie’s” after Joe Cubbah’s wife (who also happens to do all the work there), but in the vernacular it’s “Jockey Joe’s,” no relation to the saint.

On that particular morning, Cubbah was minding the store for his wife.

To be more precise, he was lounging in the back booth near the pay phones.

He was equipped with steaming black coffee, cream doughnuts,

Penthouse

magazine, and the

Philadelphia Inquirer.

He was dressed in a raw silk shirt and Daks, but he smelled of bacon grease.