The Thomas Berryman Number Read online

  Occasionally we’d get official word that nothing was happening. Some Nashville policeman had the job of coming in to tell us that nothing was happening.

  His one big news break was the information that ex-Governor Terrell had taken some pills from a little black snap case just before he went in to meet with the grand jury.

  A long-haired northern reporter stood up and said with a straight face, “Sergeant, could you give us anything on the color of the pills?”

  That was the big laugh of the morning. In fact, that was the morning.

  Just after lunch, though, we finally got a little surprise.

  A Tom Wolfe-ish young man (the new Tom Wolfe) walked into the press room to make an important announcement for Mr. Terrell.

  He was a little dandy, in a white suit and polka-dot bow tie. Yale, without any doubt. Word went out that he was Terrell’s own son.

  “Contrary to the suspicions of many of you here,” he read from a small brown pad, “my father is not planning to sneak out a back door to a second Cadillac after these proceedings.” The petulant young man looked up at us as though he’d really stung it to us. “Following the grand jury session,” he continued without aid of his pad, “Mr. Terrell will entertain questions from the press outside.” With that, Terrell’s son stalked out of the room.

  Well, you’ve heard the speech Terrell gave several times over these past few sad years in America.

  It’s the one that never fails to bug your eyes and put a ringing in your ears. It’s the same speech that proved that Nixon, and Mitchell, and Connally, and all the others, despised us to the point of ridiculing us to our faces.

  Standing up on the white courthouse steps, Terrell seemed overly casual to me. Confident. Thoroughly despicable.

  And in the sincerest voice I could remember hearing out of him, in a voice choking with moral outrage, he said that he “welcomed the chance to prove his innocence once and for all, before a judicial system that he for one still believed in.”

  Some people booed loudly; more people cheered.

  He went on to say how he was confident that “the courts will vindicate me.” And he said, “I swear to you before my Lord and Savior, that I have done nothing wrong, and nothing to be ashamed of.”

  It was as strange and scary then as it was the first time I heard a grown adult serve up that kind of tripe to a group of other adults.

  An even more frightening thing was in store for me that afternoon.

  I’d gone down near the Fleetwood to observe the crowd up close. I was standing with a long-haired Citizen-Reporter photographer putting it all down on film.

  To a man the people down by the Cadillac had that sick, hurt look I’ve never seen so much as at the Bible Belt showings of a movie called Marjoe. Marjoe is a documentary about a young, very well loved evangelist who openly admits how he’s been lying to and defrauding the people of the South. I want to tell you that the people around here cried after seeing that film. They are basically trusting, and they can’t comprehend deceit at that high a level.

  At any rate, I was busy watching this fussed-up crowd, and I never saw Terrell until he was practically on top of me. In fact, I only saw him because the photographer started snapping away like a madman.

  Johnboy never stepped one foot out of his chosen path, but he raised a stubby index finger and pointed at me from about ten feet or so away.

  He looked at me with all the pride and Son-of-God feelings power can give a weak man. He looked and pointed, and all he said was “You.”

  I’ve got the photograph to prove that, too. It’s hanging safe and sound, blown up into proportion over my fireplace up here in Poland County.

  Standing in front of the Tennessee state courthouse that day, October 12, I took the wild guess that Terrell would never be tried and convicted. That turned out to be right.

  Nashville, June 30

  A wasted American dreamer, Jefferson Terrell is 99% fat now. He has greasy, cardboard-colored hair slickly parted down the middle, but ducktailing in back. He constantly smells of tobacco and mash whiskey, and since he’s developed high blood pressure his plump face is tomato red. Johnboy also has a big, lazy accent. He pronounces words like pleasure, “play-sure.”

  But there is a smoldering brain in the wreck of Terrell’s body, and he is the man who finally got Thomas Berryman.

  They met to exchange money in a top-floor suite in the old Walter Scott Hotel near the Old Opry Building and Tootsie’s Orchard Lounge. Berryman showed up late. He wore a yellow rubber terrorist’s mask for the meeting.

  Still, an open Amana freezer couldn’t have dominated the tacky hotel sitting room any more than Johnboy. The man had presence; he’d always had it.

  He’d ordered Beam’s Pin, and he was lounging over a squash-yellow davenport, drinking the overrated whiskey without ice. He told Berryman that he looked like a State Farm Insurance agent. His clothes did. Terrell said nothing about the mask, though it clearly had surprised him.

  Trapped inside the stuffy room, Berryman wanted to be back outdoors. Where it was breezy and sunny and quiet. More than that, he wanted to be done with this job, and with the Souf.

  “You may consider it foolhardy that I’ve chosen to meet with you myself,” Johnboy said. “Well, I agree. It is foolish. But it’s the way I’ve always done things. I am a southerner, an empiricist. I wanted to talk to you. To evaluate you. To see you, I had hoped.”

  Thomas Berryman nodded. He was catching sun-streaks in the brass minor behind Terrell’s head. He was remembering Oona Quinn coming out of the Atlantic Ocean like the girl in the famous airline commercial.

  “Now you stop me if I’m not making sense …”

  “You’re doing fine,” Berryman spoke through the rubber mask.

  Terrell slowly sipped his bourbon. He examined Berryman like a rich man undecided about a new stud horse. “I was curious about the kind of man you are. I was damn curious after that row with poor Wynn.”

  Berryman found himself smiling at the fat man’s manner. “And what do you think now?”

  “Why, I find you a complete surprise,” Terrell laughed. “You’re so smart, you see.” He laughed again. “I even begin to wonder why you bother with this sad business.”

  “Sometimes I wonder, too,” Berryman said. “But I guess I’m wondering more about the rest of my money right now. In fact, I’m beginning to worry. I thought you understood that I was to be paid before I do any work. I may be smart, but I’m also very expensive.”

  Terrell was a little surprised. “You haven’t begun?”

  “I’ve done a few little things. Horn is a difficult target given your requirements. I’m ready to begin.”

  “Money then.” The fat man patted his suitjacket. “Right here. Right over the ole ticker. Thomas Berryman,” he kept repeating the name. “I think I expected much more of a lightweight. A lightweight personality, that is. I believe I oversimplified.”

  Berryman replied in a soft, southern gentleman’s voice that he borrowed from his father.

  “I am a lightweight,” he leveled Johnboy. “I have bad emotional reflexes. I’m basically very lazy. Very materialistic. I want to get away from it all. Fast. Live the good life, you know.”

  Johnboy’s head bobbed and his chest heaved a little. He was slightly amused. “Sounds familiar enough.” He reached inside his suitjacket.

  He took out a brown packet bound in ordinary elastic bands. The package was about three inches thick. “All in all, one hundred thousand to the good life,” he said rather solemnly.

  He sat and studied Berryman as he opened the money and flipped through the crisp bills. He appreciated Berryman’s attention to detail. Berryman looked the part of a southern businessman. Right down to the matching tie clasp, cufflinks, belt buckle; to the gray rayon socks with red clocks on the sides.

  “I do admire your inventiveness, Berryman. You are no hunter. If you live long enough, I’m sure you’ll get everything that you want.”

  Ber
ryman finished his counting, then tucked the money in his suitjacket. He stood up over the davenport, moved in front of a confused oil painting of the Scopes trial, and Terrell got up with him.

  “I may be using a gun this time,” Berryman said. “I want lots of confusion. Confusion is the key. It will look very good for the papers. It will probably happen on the Fourth of July. Probably.”

  Berryman was wearing light yellow driving gloves and he extended one hand to Terrell. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he continued to speak softly, “but I really shouldn’t spend any more time here. It’s stupid of me to be here at all.”

  Johnboy touched the glove lightly, more exploring than shaking hands. He stared into the mask’s eyeholes for a full ten seconds. “So damn smart,” he said once again.

  Berryman nodded and smiled slightly. “If I’m followed out of here,” he said, “the deal is off. You mustn’t interfere.”

  Around that same time in the early evening, Jimmie Horn’s hazel-brown eyes drifted down from melodramatic paintings of Jesus posed in front of various wooden doors and gates … to autographed photographs of Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Langston Hughes … to a collection of every black person Norman Rockwell had ever drawn.

  Then the one person he was consistently unable to fool or inveigle, a large-breasted seventy-one-year-old schoolteacher, walked into the parlor where he was sitting. She carried bubbling tonic water with lime, and warm sugar and lemon cakes. She was Etta Raide Horn, his mother.

  “Should of taught summer school again.” She sat in a creaky rocker currently painted green. “Already missin those little stinkers, Jiminy.”

  Horn shook his head. “You should get out of that school altogether is what you should. He should get out of the grocery, too.”

  “And you should go back into law practice,” Mrs. Horn said.

  Her son laughed. “So there.”

  “So there to yourself.” She maintained a straight face that only hinted at laughter. “By way, Mr. Mayor, how’s your campaign going?”

  “It’s going very well, I think.” Horn took a sugar cake, closed his eyes, slowly let his teeth cut through it.

  “I see,” Etta Horn nodded. “I see.”

  She sipped her cool drink, watching her son over the rim.

  “I’ve been talking to a few people about it. Politics,” she clarified. “I’ve been sitting down at the store musing about it. Listening to quite a few people talk too.”

  Jimmie Horn looked over her head at Julian Bond’s photo. He wondered what Bond’s folks were like. “So what’s on your mind?” he asked his mother.

  “Oh, nothing. Nothing.” The old woman revealed where her son might have picked up his great innocent postures. “We did visit your Aunt Fay down at Clarksville last week though.”

  “Uh-huh,” Horn shook his head.

  “Farming niggers down there don’t know Jimmie Horn from Harry the Hootowl,” she grinned. “White folks down there know you, but they don’t approve of you.”

  “You’re beating around the bush, darlin’. You’ve got me flushed out. Talk straight.”

  “Well” Etta Horn sighed, “it just seems to me … you’ve got to meet with these people. You’ve got to reach out, and shake their hands, and tell’m who you are. Got to have people saying–‘Hey now, guess who I saw down the feed store today. That young Jimmie Horn runnin’ for United States Senator. He looked me right in my eye, said he’d be the finest, hardest-working senator Tennessee has ever had.’

  “Why I heard of a man somewhere,” Etta Horn went on, “Michigan, Ohio? … he won senator just by walking across the state meetin’ people face to face.”

  “Black fella?” Jimmie Horn smiled.

  “Don’t get smart. Don’t get wise … People like a hard-worker, black, white, or otherwise. Especially these days. All these bums around.”

  “All right.” Jimmie Horn rubbed his hands together for action. “All right. You walking with me?”

  The old woman jutted out her chin. “I’ll walk,” she said. “Far as my legs carry me.”

  “Will your husband walk?”

  “He hates it like the plague of Egypt–politics–but he’ll be there too.”

  Horn sat back in his chair. He bit off another mouthful of cake. “Love these things,” he smiled.

  Etta Horn just sat quietly rocking in her green chair. She rocked and nodded and winked one time. She looked like a woman capable of plotting a President up from his cradle.

  “You’re sneaky as you ever were,” she finally said with the familiar straight face.

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  Before Jimmie Horn left that evening, his father wandered in from the grocery.

  He was Marblehead Horn, squarely built, forever in farmer’s overalls and a gray felt hat. He looked like a black Nikita Khrushchev.

  “Daddy, we’ve got you out campaigning with Jimmie,” Etta Horn told him as a greeting.

  “The hell you do.” Marblehead plopped down in his easy chair. “Shit on that.”

  “We’re going to walk clear across Tennessee. Just like that man in Ohio.”

  Horn’s father punched the TV remote control. An ancient Zenith flared in the corner of the living room. “The hell I am,” he called back to her.

  But he would. He always had, and he would. The old man was a sure thing. Just as sure as the fact that his Little Hill Grocery opened at six, closed at nine-thirty, took credit for “anything people eat, and nothing else.”

  Jimmie Horn went home that night with warm feelings coursing through his body. This time a black Galaxie joined the green Polara that always followed him.

  At 11 P.M., a pale blue Lincoln Continental shut off in the porte cochere of one of the dark, fat plantation estates in Nashville’s Belle Meade section.

  Terrell climbed heavily out of the car, paused like a thoughtful animal in the porch light, then disappeared into his house.

  Bright lights flashed on in several rooms on the ground floor level. They mapped his route through the big house.

  The final light was the desk lamp in Terrell’s study.

  Terrell sat down in a worn easy chair. He slid off his black patent leather loafers, loosened his belt, thought about this Thomas Berryman character for a moment. He thought about the lawyer Harley John Wynn too. About his murder somewhere up in New York.

  Then he made a phone call to New Orleans.

  The man Terrell spoke to in Louisiana had a fast, nearly unintelligible drawl. “This Berryman the one who does the drownings and heart attacks?” he wanted to know. “This Thomas Berryman you yappin’ about, Mister Terrell?”

  “Thomas Berryman,” Johnboy said. “But I believe he’ll be using a gun this time. That’s the impression I got. I had a nice little talk with the man. Southern boy, you know.”

  During the next few minutes the details of a contract on Thomas Berryman were arranged. A mob killer would probably be used. He was to be paid in full regardless of what happened to Jimmie Horn.

  “Your nigger is Thomas Berryman’s responsibility,” the New Orleans man made very clear. “He’s the hot-shit. My man’s fee will be ten. He’s light. He’s mob.”

  “By the way, Mr. Terrell,” the New Orleans man quipped before he hung up, “this is turning into a real public service number for you, isn’t it.”

  After Terrell hung up, the New Orleans man called first New York, then Philadelphia. The name Joseph Cubbah was brought up during the Philadelphia call.

  Nashville, July 1

  An attempt on Horn would have been made on Sunday night. An attempt was made.

  At about seven-thirty, Santo Massimino was studying ten Jimmie Horns on videotape monitors, and he was liking all of them.

  The young media flash was stalking Tennessee in a WWII flight jacket and ice-cream-store pants. He was a N.Y. hippie, but a serious, wooden-faced one. He was also one of America’s finest salesmen. Right up there with Arthur Godfrey. Massimino’s secret was to talk fast, make a
s little real sense as possible, and give people absolutely no chance to consider what he was saying.

  Jimmie Horn has a news commentator’s face, Massimino was thinking to himself. It was a good TV face. It filled up the gray screen in a nice way and made you feel pretty good about politics. About life in general. That was the way Horn would be merchandised.

  Massimino walked away from the monitor Horns, and called out in the direction of the real McCoy. “No way, Thirsty,” he called. “Take the mike off his tie. We’ll go with the offstage mike.”

  Jimmie Horn was being prepared for a half-hour TV broadcast at eight.

  Thurston Frey, a long-haired station hand, finished nailing down an apple-red carpet around Horn’s armchair. Then he gingerly picked the microphone off the mayor’s silk tie.

  Meanwhile, Horn’s appointments secretary was reading him a riot-act fact sheet by way of prepping him for the TV show.

  Off to one side, Horn’s best friend, Jap Quarry, sipped Navy coffee on a couch used on the “Noon” local TV show. Ten-year-old Keesha Horn was with him. Little boys were already taking after-school jobs to raise money to take pretty Keesha to movies like Superfly and Claudine. (Except that lately she’d had to go to movies, and even to school, with a policeman.)

  Quarry suddenly roared out cruel laughter. The welfare worker stomped over to Jimmie Horn on big orange work boots. He presented the mayor with the styrofoam coffee cup he’d just drained. He shook his head sadly. ELECT HORN SENATOR was printed on the cup’s inside bottom.

  “Such bullshit, man,” Jap Quarry said. “Pure, pure, 100% pure, bullshit, Jim.”

  “Television and radio commercials,” the appointments secretary read on from the fact sheet, “are just extensions of the whistle stop.”

  “One hundred percent pure, Jim. How much do you want it?”

  A makeup man put a touch of light pancake on the mayor’s chin. Then he wiped it off.

  Santo Massimino stood jabbing a rich ward chairman named Heck Worth in the cowboy shirt. “I want you to personally take full responsibility for the busing of the Nashville Technical and the Nashville Pearl High School marching bands,” he said to this man who had made a million dollars out of mere apple cider.