Covenant Of The Flame

  So all right, as foreman of the maintenance crew, he'd checked those tracks, and they'd looked okay to him. Granted, maybe he hadn't checked them as thoroughly as he could have, but it had been late afternoon, and he'd been eager to get back to town and snort some coke. It wasn't his fault that the jerk who owned the railway had mismanaged the business because he was too busy dipping his wick in his secretary. The dummy's wife had caught him, kicked him out of the house, divorced him, and taken him for millions. Hell, no, Billy Joe thought, it wasn't my fault that the railroad was forced to cut back on its maintenance fund so the jerk could pay his divorce settlement. If there'd been more guys checking the tracks, the accident wouldn't have happened.

  But that's not my problem. No way. Not now. Never mind fixing those tracks. I'm the one who needs fixing, so I don't fall apart eight hours from now when those government investigators try to crucify me.

  Again Billy Joe scowled at his rearview mirror. He'd been driving at random, watching if headlights behind him took the same routes. He'd made sharp turns, run red lights, veered down alleys, done everything he could think of, remembering all those detective and spy movies he liked to watch and the way the heroes got rid of tails. Satisfied that he hadn't been followed, he drove hurriedly from the bar district, heading toward the river. He didn't have much time. Each night at one-fifteen, his supplier set up shop for five minutes and only five minutes - at a secluded parking lot next to a warehouse close to the Mississippi.

  Wiping sweat from his eyes, Billy Joe glanced at his watch. Christ, it was almost ten after. He pressed his trembling foot on the accelerator. The dark parking lot looked deserted when he steered past the warehouse and stopped. No! Don't tell me I'm late! It's one-fifteen on the button! I can't be late!

  Or maybe he's late. Yeah, Billy Joe decided, heart pounding. That's what it is. He just hasn't got here yet.

  At once, the headlights of another car turned into the lot. Billy Joe relaxed, then shook with sudden worry that this wasn't his supplier but government investigators who'd been tailing him. Fighting not to panic, he told himself, there's no crime in taking a drive to the river. Hey, all I have to do is tell them I couldn't sleep, I needed to relax, I felt like watching the lights of the barges on the water. Sure, no problem.

  He didn't recognize the blue Ford that stopped beside him. Not a good sign but maybe not a bad one. His supplier often took the precaution of switching vehicles. But when a tall thin man wearing a T-shirt got out of the Ford, Billy Joe didn't recognize him either, and that for certain was not a good sign.

  The man knocked on Billy Joe's window.

  Billy Joe lowered it. 'Yeah?' He tried to sound gruff, but his shaky voice didn't manage the job.

  'You're here to do business?' the man asked.

  'I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.'

  'Cocaine. Do you want to score, or don't you?'

  Entrapment, Billy Joe thought. If this guy was an investigator, he'd blown his case right there. 'What makes you think I-?'

  'Look, don't waste my time. The regular delivery man had to' leave town for his health, couldn't stand the competition, if you get my meaning. I've got this route now, and plenty of other stops to make. Four minutes more, and I'm leaving. Make up your mind.'

  Billy Joe suddenly realized that the Ford had approached the parking lot from the opposite direction that he himself had used. This guy - whoever he was - couldn't possibly have been tailing him.

  Billy Joe realized something else, that he was sweating more profusely and shaking so bad his teeth were clicking together.

  'Okay, I've made up my mind.' Barely controlling his trembling hands, he awkwardly opened his door and stepped out, legs wobbly. 'Let's do business. Same price as the other guy charged?'

  The stranger unlocked the trunk of the Ford. 'No. The Feds have been making too much trouble, intercepting too many shipments. I've got extra expenses.'

  Billy Joe felt too desperate to object.

  'But this one time only, I'm being generous, adding more to each package. Sort of a good-will gesture, a way of introducing myself to my customers.'

  'Hey, fair enough!'

  Rubbing his hands together, Billy Joe followed the man to the trunk of the car and peered eagerly inside. What he saw was a bulging plastic garbage bag that the stranger opened, revealing white powder. 'What the-? What kind of way is that to-?'

  A sharp pungent odor reached his nostrils. The trunk smelled like a.? Laundry. That was it. A laundry"! Why would-?

  'All for you, Billy Joe.'

  'Hey, how come you know my name?'

  The stranger ignored the question. 'Yes, we brought all of this for you.'

  'We?'

  Car doors banged open. Three men who'd been crouching out of sight in the Ford rushed toward the trunk, grabbed Billy Joe - one on each side and one behind him - bent him over, and shoved his head toward the powder in the plastic bag.

  Billy Joe strained to shove back, squirming, twisting, frantic, but even years of hefting a sledgehammer didn't give him the strength to resist the determined men.

  'All for you, Billy Joe.'

  He struggled with greater desperation, but the powerful hands kept pressing him downward. As his head came closer to the white powder, the strong pungent smell became overwhelming, making him gag. He recognized what it was now. Ammonia. Powdered bleach.

  'No! Jesus! Stop! I-!'

  His words were smothered as his face was thrust against the powder. It smeared his cheeks. It caked his lips.

  Then his face was rammed beneath the powder. It filled his ears. It plugged his nose. He fought to hold his breath, but as the three men held him down while the fourth man twisted the mouth of the plastic bag around his neck, Billy Joe finally inhaled reflexively and felt the stinging powder surge up his nostrils, spew down his throat, and cram his lungs. It burned! My God, how it burned!

  The last thing he heard in a panic before he lost consciousness was, 'We know it's not the powder you're used to, but how do you like it, Billy Joe? You let three hundred people die from ammonia. It's time you got a whiff of it yourself.'

  SIXTEEN

  The eastern bank of the Mississippi. Ten miles north of Memphis.

  In the bedroom of his country mansion, Harrison Page huffed and puffed but finally admitted that his frustrating efforts were pointless. The irony of the word wasn't lost on him. Pointless. It exactly described his penis. Out of breath, giving up, he rolled off the woman - his affair with whom had caused his wife to divorce him - and lay on his back, staring bleakly at the dark ceiling.

  'Sweetie, that's okay,' the woman, Jennifer, said. 'You don't need to feel your manhood's threatened. You're tired is all. You're under stress.'

  'Yeah, under stress,' Page said.

  'We'll try again later, sweetie.'

  Page had only recently admitted to himself how much her shrill voice annoyed him. 'I don't think so. I've got a headache.'

  'Take one of my sleeping pills.'

  'No.' Page stood, put on his pajamas, and walked toward a window, parting its drapes, brooding, oblivious to the moonlight glinting off the river.

  'Then maybe a drink would help, sweetie.'

  If she doesn't stop calling me that, Page thought. 'No,' he said irritated. 'I've got a meeting with my lawyers before I testify at the hearing this morning. I have to be alert.'

  'Just doing my best to be helpful, sweetie.'

  He spun, trying to control his temper. The moonlight through the parted drapes revealed her naked body, her dark mound between her legs, her lush hips, slender waist, and ripe breasts. Overripe, Page bitterly thought. They're like melons so swollen they're about to go rotten. And her skin, when he stroked it, had lately begun to make him cringe, because beneath its smooth once-arousing softness was a further softness, like jelly, like. fat, Page decided. The way she lies around all day, watching soap operas, eating chocolates, she'll soon be as fat as.

  Although he stifled the angry thought, an
other thought insisted. How could I have been such a fool? I'm fifty-five. She's twenty-three. If I'd kept my dick in my pants where it belonged. The first time, after we screwed, when she started calling me sweetie, I should have realized what a mistake I was making. We don't have anything in common. She's incapable of an intelligent conversation. Why didn't I stop right then, give her a bonus, transfer her to another office, and thank God I didn't ruin my life?

  But the fact was, Page dismally admitted, he'd let his dick control his brain. He had ruined his life, and now he didn't know how to salvage it. 'I'm going downstairs. I've got some testimony to prepare before I walk into that hearing.'

  'Whatever, sweetie. Go with the flow, I always say. Just remember, I'll be waiting.'

  Yes, Page thought, subduing a cringe. Isn't that the hell of it? You'll be waiting.

  He put on slippers and left the bedroom, shuffling along a corridor, gripping the curved bannister of a marble staircase, unsteadily descending, relieved to be out of her presence. Her excessive perfume - like the smell of flowers at a funeral - had been making him sick.

  Except for Jennifer and himself, the mansion was deserted. He'd sent the butler, cook, and maid away, lest they overhear conversations that might incriminate him if the servants couldn't keep their mouths shut when the investigators questioned them. Footsteps echoing, he felt the emptiness around and within him as he crossed a murky vestibule, entered his study, and turned on the lights. There he hesitated, chest heaving, staring at a stack of documents on his desk, the possible questions that his lawyers had anticipated he'd be asked at the hearing and the numerous calculated responses he would have to know by heart.

  Weary, he rounded the desk, slumped in his chair, and began reviewing the depressing documents. If only his ex-wife, Patricia, were here, he'd be able to talk with her, to sort out the problem and try to solve it. She'd always helped him that way, listening sympathetically, rubbing his taut shoulders, offering prudent advice. But then he wouldn't have this problem if Patricia were here, because they wouldn't be divorced and she wouldn't have nearly bankrupted him in the settlement and he wouldn't have been distracted from managing the railroad, let alone have been forced to cut maintenance costs so he could squeeze out more profits to make up for the millions he'd been forced to pay his ex-wife. Three hundred people dead. Tens of thousands of acres of forest and pasture turned into a wasteland. An entire county's water supply poisoned. All because I thought with my dick instead of my head.

  A noise made him jerk him eyes toward the left. With a flinch, fear burning his stomach, he saw one of the French doors that led to the patio swing open. Three men and a woman stepped in. All were in their thirties, trim, good-looking, dressed in dark jogging clothes.

  Page lurched to his feet. His years of being an executive had trained him never to show weakness but to react aggressively when feeling threatened. 'What the hell do you think you're doing? Get out of here!'

  They shut the door.

  'I said, get out!'

  They smiled. The woman and one of the men had their hands behind their back.

  Page fought to control and conceal his fright. They looked too cleancut to be burglars, not that he knew what burglars would look like, but. Maybe they were.

  'Damn it, if you're reporters, you've picked the wrong way to get an interview, and besides, I've stopped giving interviews!'

  'We're not reporters,' the woman said.

  'We don't have any questions,' one of the men said.

  'I'm calling the police!'

  'It won't do you any good,' another man said.

  They approached him. The woman and one of the men continued to hold their hands behind their back.

  Page grabbed the phone and tapped 911, suddenly realizing that the line was dead.

  'See,' the third man said. 'It doesn't do any good.'

  'I locked those doors! I turned on the security system! How did-?'

  'We're handy with tools,' the first man said.

  'Like these tools,' the woman said.

  They brought their hands from behind their back.

  Page opened his mouth, but terror choked his scream.

  While two of the men grabbed Page's arms and forced him flat across the desk, the remaining man held up a railroad spike, and the woman swung a sledgehammer, driving the spike through Page's heart.

  SEVENTEEN

  '. impaled on a stack of blood-soaked documents that confidential sources indicate were statements that Harrison Page had been prepared to make at the hearing this morning.' The bespectacled television reporter paused somberly.

  Appalled, Tess sat on a stool at the kitchen counter in her loft, watching the twelve-inch TV next to the microwave. The red numbers on the Radarange's digital clock said 8:03. She'd been trying to make herself eat breakfast - fruit salad, whole-wheat toast, and tea - but after yesterday's ordeal at the morgue and her discovery that Joseph was dead, she didn't have much appetite.

  The reporter continued, 'In a further grotesque aftermath of the Tennessee toxic-gas disaster, the body of Billy Joe Bennett, foreman in charge of inspecting the section of the track where the derailment occurred, was found early this morning in a Memphis parking lot near the Mississippi River. Bennett had been under investigation for possible negligence due to alleged cocaine addiction.'

  The TV image shifted from the reporter to a harshly lit videotape of stern policemen standing near a warehouse, staring down at something, a closeup of a garbage bag on the parking lot's asphalt, the bag filled with white powder, then a panning shot of a sheet-covered corpse being lifted on a gurney into an ambulance. Off-camera, the reporter explained the grisly means by which Bennett had been murdered.

  With renewed pangs of grief, Tess was reminded of the brutal way in which Joseph had been murdered.

  The reporter came back on the screen. 'Police speculate that Bennett and Page were killed for revenge by relatives of victims of the toxic-gas disaster.'

  A commercial for disposable diapers interrupted the news. Tess rubbed her forehead, peered down at her breakfast, and felt even less hungry.

  The phone rang, startling her while she rinsed out her teacup.

  Who'd be calling this early? Troubled, she left the kitchen, walked to the section of the loft where the furniture was arranged to form a living room, and picked up the phone halfway through its third ring.

  'Hello?'

  The gravelly voice was so distinctive that the speaker didn't need to identify himself. This is Lieutenant Craig.'

  Her fingers cramped around the phone.

  'I apologize for calling at this hour,' Craig said, 'but I won't be in the office, and I wasn't sure I'd have a chance to phone you at work this morning - that's if you feel up to going to work.'

  'Yes. I'm going.' Tess sat, dejected. 'I almost decided not to. But it doesn't do any good to brood. Maybe work will distract me.'

  'Sometimes it helps to be with other people.'

  'I'm not sure anything will help.' She slumped, weary. 'What can I do for you, Lieutenant?'

  'I wanted to know when you take your lunch break.'

  'Lunch? Why would-? I doubt I'll be eating lunch today. That's why you called? To invite me to lunch?'

  'Not exactly. There's something I might want you to look at,' Craig said, 'and I figured if you were going to be free at a certain hour, we could make an appointment.'

  Tess felt cold. 'Is this about Joseph's death?'

  'Possibly.'

  'You're holding back again.'

  'This might be nothing, Tess. Really. I'd prefer not to talk about it until I'm sure. I don't want to upset you without a reason.'

  'And you don't think I'm upset already? Okay, one o'clock. Can you pick me up outside my office building at one o'clock?'

  'I'll make a point of it. Who knows? Maybe the meeting won't be necessary. That's what I mean. Don't think about it.'

  'Sure. Don't think. What a great idea.'

  EIGHTEEN

  But Tess had
many things to think about. She kept remembering Joseph's burned corpse and the dark contour of his body seared into the bricks at Carl Schurz Park. In the elevator at work, she shuddered, identifying it with Joseph, numbed that she'd never see him again.

  At Earth Mother Magazine, she went immediately down the hall to Walter Trask's office and told him everything that had happened.

  Trask frowned, more haggard than usual. He stood, came around his desk, and clasped her shoulders. I'm sorry, Tess. Honestly. More than I can say.'