The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [42]
Unc set the hat on the table, touched the papers. “Just like I figured. Like every overeducated clod I ever run into, he’s kept records of everything. Like someday somebody’d make a book out of it.”
He looked at me. He said, “Here’s your chance. Read these to me.” He pushed the papers toward me until they touched the plate. He picked up his hat, started with it again.
Tabitha finally looked at me. She leaned back again, crossed her arms again.
I glanced at Miss Dinah, saw her arms crossed, too, waiting, like everybody else, for me.
I pushed the plate away, picked up the papers. They were printouts, at the top and bottom all kinds of garbage codes and whatnot. Stuff Tabitha’d done to get in wherever she’d gotten in.
She had a modem, of course, not to mention a computer, a laser printer.
I had an alarm clock at home whose hands glowed in the dark: about the extent of the technology I had going for me. But I’d worked with computers at school, had read enough magazines, and a couple books, to know it wasn’t easy to steal mail. Or lawful.
“Read,” Unc said.
“This is somebody’s e-mail?” I said. “You stole this?”
Tabitha let out a hard sigh: Get on with it!
I took a breath, said, “There’s the stuff at the top. All this first page says is, ‘Meet with Pigboy Wednesday. Got the goods, good to go.” ’ I stopped, the rest of this page blank.
“Next,” Unc said.
I turned the page, more codes at the top. This one was a little longer. “ ‘Turn left at CR221, follow to Pigboy roost, thirteen miles, for pickup. Maersk Line at Chucktown Terminal, container 1118, will wait for you. Crate up goods, lots of popcorn. Next parcel to the boss man. We be seeing you.’ ”
Tabitha was watching me. Both she and her momma had their arms crossed, heads tilted the exact same way.
“This making any sense to anybody here?” I said, and both of them quick cut their eyes to Unc.
“Next,” Unc said.
I looked at the next page, read, “ ‘CMS fucking pain—’ ” and stopped, looked up.
Miss Dinah slowly shook her head, eyes narrowed down to nothing. “They be evil people,” she whispered. “ ‘The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.’ James three: sixteen, King James Bible.” She paused. “You read they words. You go ahead, and let evil reveal itself.”
I looked at Tabitha. She hadn’t moved.
“ ‘Pain in the ass,’ ” I went on. “ ‘Gone maverick on us. All measures must be taken. Pigboy and Fatback notified, sent packing. Must be voided by 11/24. And? LD put away, of course, if he gets in the way.’ ”
“LD,” Unc said. “One guess who that is.”
Miss Dinah said, “Leland Dillard.”
He whispered, “None other.”
“CMS?” I said, though I thought I already knew.
“You saw the man day before yesterday,” Unc said. “There between stand seventeen and eighteen.” He paused. “Dr. Charles Middleton Simons.”
We sat there, no sound at all, for a long time, that hat twirling slow as ever.
Finally, I said, “Whose files are these? Whose mail?”
Unc stood, took his stick from the bookshelves behind him. He said, “Your friend and mine, Dr. Cleve Ravenel.”
Cleve Ravenel, I thought. Cleve Ravenel. The cherry-red Ram 2500 with the black bed liner. The red-faced and white-haired club member with a beer gut that made his belt buckle disappear.
The one who’d turned too quick, scared when Unc called out his name, asked him to meet with whoever was responding to our call about a body with not much of a head left.
And look who’d responded: Yandle, Thigpen.
Pigboy and Fatback?
Unc started for the door. We were on. Going.
I said, “And who sent this stuff? Who did these come from?”
“That’s a fine question,” he said, and pulled the door open. “You just fold these up and keep them in your back pocket.” He stopped, turned from the door to us. “If I know anything at all about the way these things work, it’s easier to find out what the message is than who’s the messenger.” He looked past me, smiled. “Ain’t that right, Missy Dorcas?”
I heard her