The Thomas Berryman Number

“Too much,” Cubbah said without hesitation. “Shit, I only want to

scare

somebody with this thing. You can have it back if you want.”

“Look, I’m not going to fuck around with you. One thirty-five,” Lemans said.

This time Cubbah took out his billfold.

Tiny waved the money away. “Put it on the Pi-rets for me. Pi-rets 7 to 8 over Yogi Berra. An’ that fuck pitches Seaver you got a job

from me.

You waste Yogi Berra.”

Joe Cubbah put the .38 into a brown lunch bag. He took another lick of icing and grinned.

“OK, I gotta split, Tiny. I really got to get out of state tonight,” he said.

“Stick around a while,” the fat man frowned. “You just got here. Have a fucking tongue sandwich. I just made some out-of-this-fucking-world tongue.”

“I really have to split,” Joe Cubbah said. “I really got to catch this plane tonight.”

“Yeah, you gotta

scare

somebody,” Tiny Lemans said.

“That’s right.” Cubbah held up the brown paper bag. “Right between the eyes.”

Nashville, July 3

Oona Quinn was traveling south to meet Berryman.

It was a serious time for her; almost a religious time, and she didn’t want it mucked up by the soldier riding beside her.

He was a baby-faced P.F.C. From Fort Campbell, Kentucky, he’d already told her. With Beetle Oil in his hair he’d told her. She’d just watched him chug a Jim Crow and Coca-Cola, and the mash whiskey and caffeine had glazed over his baby-blue mama’s-boy eyes.

The two of them were seated together on an Eastern 707 flight into Nashville.

Oona had a copy of the Jimmie Horn autobiography in her lap, but she hadn’t read a word since the flight started. She’d read the book halfway through the night before on Long Island. A day earlier she’d seen Ben Toy at the William Pound Institute.

Two days earlier, on the first, Berryman had called and told her to meet him in Nashville on the fourth. He’d refused to tell her why, except that he needed her there. He’d given her a place and a time, and he’d told her to dress as if she was the wife of Tennessee Ernie Ford. Then he’d hung up before she said she would or she wouldn’t.

Oona was imagining Horn and Berryman meeting somewhere in the story,

Jiminy.

It would be a good chapter.

It seemed to her that Horn should win out. There had already been two attempts made on his life. A diner chef had shot at him from point-blank range and missed. Another time he’d been beaten lifeless, but had lived.

If Tom Berryman succeeded, it seemed to her, it would have to be totally unfair. Some mysterious bush-whacking. Jimmie Horn would have to end up as a martyr. She found that neither possibility bothered her. Berryman had already convinced her that the Horn shooting was inevitable. In

Jiminy,

Horn seemed to feel the same way.

She thought that she still didn’t know Berryman the way she wanted to. Their relationship was too heady. All his relationships were. Maybe that was what was drawing her to him, though?

The soldier put his empty cup on her tray. “Were you all vis’tin’ in New York, honey? Or are you vis’tin’ in Music City? Or goin’ on to Dallas maybe?”

Oona opened up her book. She pretended to read.

What I’m doing,

she thought.

I’d like to find out … What?

The boy swung his face down and up into her view. “I’d say. I’d

have

to say. You’re vis’tin’ Music City.”

Oona blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Just makin’ small talk,” the soldier grinned. “You’re goin to Nashville, I said. First time? First time, I’d bet.”

“First time,” she said.

“You’re sure gonna like it.”

The soldier grinned like the child of a brother and sister. “Country music capital of the world. Athens of the South. Home of the late President Andrew Jackson, I believe.”

“Oh, did he die?” Oona said.

The soldier smiled. Bright-faced already, he lit up one of the Tijuana Smalls he’d been smoking around Times Square in New York.

“Smoke?” he asked. It was a joke. To show that, he hurriedly blew out his match. The smoke from the cigar was faintly chocolaty.

The soldier then began to tell Oona his life story. He talked whether she looked at him, or out the window. He smoked more of the little cigars, and pestered the little stewardesses for more bourbon.

“Mah, mah, mah!” they would giggle. Just “mah, mah, mah.”

The jet finally began to circle over Nashville. A pencil pocket of glittering skyscrapers passed under the wing. There seemed to be a great wilderness around the main city. And Berryman was down there somewhere.

Up in the very front row of the plane, a first class stewardess was waking Joe Cubbah. She asked him to put on his safety belt. He asked her not to be ridiculous.

A green Dodge Polara was parked across the street from the American Legion Hall in Belle Meade. The car’s presence meant that Jimmie Horn couldn’t be far away.

At 11:15, a black detective in a white hat and blue business suit, Horace Mossman, joined two white detectives, Jerry Ruocco and J.B. Montgomery, inside the Polara.