The Thomas Berryman Number Read Free Page B

with curly, auburn hair, however, and he was basically rugged-looking.
    According to Asher, Toy had tried to starve himself when he’d first come in the hospital. Asher said he’d been burly back then.
    When Toy spoke his voice was soft. He seemed to be trying to sound hip. N.Y.-L.A. dope world sounds.
    “You look like a Christian monk, man,” he drawled pleasantly.
    “No shit,” I laughed, and he laughed too. He seemed pretty normal. Either that, or the black-bearded aide was a snake charmer.
    After a little bit of measuring each other up, Toy and I went right into Jimmie Horn.
    Actually, I started on the subject, but Toy did most of the talking.
    He knew what Horn looked like; where Horn had lived; precisely where his campaign headquarters had been. He knew the names of Jimmie Horn’s two children; his parents’ names; all sorts of impossible trivia nobody outside of Tennessee would have any interest in.
    At that point, I found myself talking rapidly and listening very closely. The Sony was burning up tape.
    “You think you know who shot Horn up?” Toy said to me.
    “I think I do, yes. A man named Bert Poole shot him. A chronic bumbler who lived in Nashville all his life. A fuck-up.”
    “This
bumbler,”
Toy asked. “How did you figure out he did it?”
    His question was very serious; forensic, in a country pool hall way. He was slowly turning the black Stetson around on his fist.
    “For one thing,” I said, “I saw it on television. For another thing, I’ve talked to a shitload of people who were there.”
    Toy frowned at me. “Guess you talked to the wrong shitload of people,” he said. He was acting very sure of himself.
    It was just after that when Toy spoke of the contact, or bagman, involved with Jimmie Horn.
    It was then also that I heard the name Thomas Berryman for the first time.
    Provincetown, June 6
    The time Toy spoke of was early June of that year; the place was Provincetown, Massachusetts.
    Young Harley John Wynn parked in the shadows behind the Provincetown City Hall and started off toward Commercial Street with visions of power and money dancing in his head. Wynn was handsome, fair and baby-faced like the early F. Scott Fitzgerald photographs. His car was a Lincoln Mark IV. In some ways he was like Thomas Berryman. Both men were thoroughly modern, coldly sober, distressingly sure of themselves.
    For over three weeks, Harley Wynn had been making enquiries about Berryman. He’d finally been contacted the Tuesday before that weekend.
    The meeting had been set up for Provincetown. Wynn was asked to be reading a
Boston Globe
on one of the benches in front of the City Hall at 9:45 p.m.
    It was almost 9:30, and cool, even for Cape Cod in June.
    The grass was freshly mown, and it had a good smell for Wynn: it reminded him of college quadrangles in the deep South. Cape Cod itself reminded him of poliomyelitis.
    Careful of his shoeshine, he stayed in tree shadows just off the edge of the lawn. He sidestepped a snake, which turned out to be a tangle of electrician’s tape.
    He was startled by some green willow fingers, and realized he was still in a driving fog.
    It wasn’t night on Commercial Street, and as Wynn came into the amber lights he began to smell light cologne instead of sod.
    He sat on one of the freshly painted benches—bone white, like the City Hall—and he saw that he was among male and female homosexuals.
    There were several tall blonds in scarlet and powder blue halter suits. Small, bushy-haired men in white bucks and thongs, and bright sailor-style pants. There were tank-shirts and flapping sandals and New York
Times
magazine models posing under street-lamps.
    Wynn lighted a Marlboro, noticed uneasiness in his big hands, and took a long, deep breath.
    He looked up and down the street for Ben Toy.
    Up on the porch of the City Hall, his eyes stopped to watch flour-white gargoyles and witchy teenagers parading to and from the public toilets.
    Harley Wynn’s hand kept slipping