CHAPTER 14

GRADY WASN’T YET IN the mood to start hitting the bars so early in the afternoon. Doing the legwork he planned to do to find out...what? He didn’t have any kind of special plan. Not much of one, anyway. Try to locate Reader Kincaid, that was the only thing he could think of to do, now that he was in New Orleans. Once he found him, then what? Several scenarios presented themselves, most of which involved beating the motherfucker half to death until he confessed to being the one who had stabbed Jack. Maybe go ahead and cancel his ticket.

That was bullshit and he knew it.

He dug out the bottle of Jim Beam he’d packed and poured himself a shot in one of the plastic cups he found in the bathroom. It was quiet in the room, the only exception the noise of airplanes coming in to land. It sounded as if they were ten feet over the roof. That was about right. The Day’s Inn was directly across the street from the airport runways, maybe less than a hundred yards from where they touched down. It was no wonder he’d gotten such a good deal on the room.

He had to admit he didn’t have much of an idea about what he would do, provided that is, that he could find the man. And beating or torturing even someone like Kincaid who had almost killed his brother wasn’t an option for someone like himself.

No, he was that breed of cop...of man...that you applied the word honest to. To a fault. His father’s fault. All his life, all he’d ever heard, ever been taught, was integrity.

“You got to face that mirror each morning, boys,” his father preached over and over. “Play by the rules, and you can sleep at night.”

Well, he’d played by the damn rules, all his life, and what had it gotten him? Broke and half-blind. Some reward. His own father had hardly prospered playing by the rules. Ended up dying of a heart attack and leaving barely enough to bury him. Same with his mother. Even the guy who’d shot Grady in the face--the act that forced him into an early medical retirement--that asshole got out of prison in less than three years. He’d see him every once in a while, staggering out of a bar usually, and once they met face to face. The guy openly snickered at him. He cocked his thumb and finger like a pistol and pointed it at Grady. “Pow,” he said, dropping his thumb, and it was all Grady could do to control himself, to keep from punching his lights out, or worse.

No, it wasn’t fair. Not fair at all. All his life, his father preached to his sons, “Play by the rules, boys. Keep your integrity. Give up your integrity and you give up who you are. An honest man might not have much in the way of material goods, but he can sure face that mirror every morning with a clear conscience.”

Sure. He’d kept his integrity and here he was, your basically unemployable cripple. Great reward. Jack, too, kept his integrity and there he was lying in a hospital bed, probably paralyzed for life.

It wasn’t the first time he’d questioned his father’s credo. But through everything, through all the graft and corruption and the rewards to the practitioners--rewards he saw firsthand every day--he’d held onto that integrity. Why, he asked himself? So I can face myself in the mirror each morning when I shave? Was it worth it? He thought of all the money he’d passed up on the job. There’d been plenty of chances. He knew cops who were set up for life. Had swimming pools in the back yard, and not the above-ground kind. Vacations in the Bahamas. All you had to do was look the other way. An envelope full of money every week, as long as you played ball. Not him. Not Mister Honesty. He could sure use some graft money now. He wondered whether it was still available if he would take it.

It was hard, sometimes. It was damned hard.

Like now, in particular. With a pile of debts that was growing into Mount Everest every day Jack lay in that hospital bed.

When he left his motel room, he slammed the door shut as hard as he could. An elderly couple, coming out of their room a few doors up, looked at him and the man stepped in front of the woman as if to shield her.

“Sorry,” Grady mumbled at them, getting into his car. He left rubber as he whipped the car out onto Veterans Highway...and went off the side of the road as the shadow of a 707 passed directly over him, so close he swore he could see the passengers’ faces.

“Motherfuck!” he yelled out the wiw, steering back onto the pavement. Who was the idiot who decided to build a runway this close to a highway, he wondered. Planes didn’t look to be any more than fifty feet off the ground when they passed over the traffic. If you didn’t have to worry about somebody shooting you or sticking you in this town, you had to worry about being wiped out by a pilot’s miscalculation when you were out for a Sunday drive. He’d be glad to be back in Dayton when this was over, he decided, feeling the thin film of perspiration on his forehead cooling in the air-conditioning.