The Thomas Berryman Number

What the hell, I’d tell you something like that first thing out of the box.”

Shea took out a thick envelope that looked like an unbelievably huge phone bill. “Half now, half later,” he said. “You want it?”

Joe Cubbah shook his head slowly from side to side. “No owsies,” he said.

Shea then took out a second envelope and set it down on the first. “I forgot,” he grinned. “Sorry about that, sweets.”

“OK,” Cubbah said. He put both envelopes under his apron. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

He left Shea and walked out in the main part of the store again.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Shea called after him. “What’s this think about it shit?”

But Joe Cubbah had no more to say to the detective.

Whitehaven, July 2

Magnolias and azalias wave like high and low flags along the long, straight, whitestone drive leading up to the Powelton Country Club in the southwestern corner of Tennessee. The trees and bushes eventually open onto a grand antebellum plantation house with a great flagstone porch and thirty-foot-high Doric pillars. The ponderous building dwarfs people, motorcars, the realities of the twentieth century.

Short-haired blackmen in white coats shuffle around with silver trays holding mint julep, Jack Daniels, even Budweiser and a little Falstaff these days. Boys and girls ride and swim, play golf and tennis; and they fuck in the abandoned slaves’ cabins still standing around the grounds.

For five thousand dollars annual dues, the residents of western Tennessee can enjoy the South of their daddies and mammies at the Powelton Club.

On one end of the long, flagstone porch, Johnboy Terrell sits with silver-headed Dr. Reuven Mewman, a famous veterinarian with enough cotton money to paper both ends of all the Q-tips sold in America.

People watch the two men from respectable distances. Even the black waiters watch. They all try to guess what Johnboy wants with the Silver Fox.

Terrell was puffing on a satisfying, but dangerously dark Corona. “I have recently read a very outstandin’ book on vet’narians,” he was saying.

“Herriot, or something on that order.

All Creatures Beautiful and Pretty.”

Dr. Mewman shrugged. “I received three copies of the damn thing last Christmas. But hell John, I

see

enough horseshit without

reading

about it.”

Terrell, who in addition to having an immediate use for the silver-maned animal doctor, liked him well enough, laughed heartily. Reuven Mewman, he considered, had the good timing and sense of folkiness that either made or broke orators in the South.

“Esther donated the books to a rummage sale at our church.” Mewman was not one to surrender a captive audience. “They had me autograph the damn things, and charged near full price for them.”

“Then,”

Mewman took bourbon and swished it around his gums, “uh woman—whose thor-uh-bred springer spaniel I saved from a overdose of Alpo last spring—presented me with a copy of one of the books I had signed, sealed, and given away to my church … And I

still

haven’t read page one.”

“Well, you ought to.” Johnboy chewed and grinned. “Herriot’s prob’ly the finest livin’ vet’narian writin’ today.”

Both men laughed again and Dr. Mewman called for more drinks.

A black man who looked like Asbestos came and went, taking their reorders for double bourbons. As Mewman ordered, Johnboy watched two saddle-shoed teenagers teeing up their golf balls in front of the porch. He thought the game of golf a terrible waste of their precious youth.

“I understand,” he spoke while looking out over the golf course, “that you’ve expressed interest in spendin a few years in Washington, District of Columbia.”

“I did speak around about my availability,” the veterinarian admitted. “But that was earlier this year.”

“I advise against it.” Terrell made a face by misshaping his lips. “Northern winters rust you … But I do believe,” he went on, “that there’s an opportunity coming up in this Senate race.”

“That’s because? …”

“That’s because the one candidate, John Fair the second, is a horse’s ass. Ridin high on his daddy’s money plus a set of brass testicles … And that’s because Horn … I understand Jimmie Horn has been seein’ a white woman.”

Reuven Mewman’s head shook in a short arc.

“That nigger is far too smart for that, John. Too smart. Too hungry. I’m sure it’ll happen one day, but not just yet … Where did you hear that bullshit from, John?”

Terrell watched as one of the teenagers lofted an iron shot high over two pine trees. The little white pellet dropped fifteen feet off the pin on hole number 2.

He turned in his chair to face Mewman. “I thought you were smart, also,” he said. “A little smart and hungry yourself.”

The veterinarian understood and he blushed a ripe, tomato red.

“You see, I’m just checking on your availability, Reuven. Because as I said, John Fair, Jr., is the original horse’s ass—and Horn is vulnerable at this time.”