Page 59 of The Chain House
“And then?”
“I talked him into it, okay?”
“Why?”
“He’s doing this documentary thing, and I thought he should do it.”
“Bullshit, Carl.”
He clenched his jaw, punched the steering wheel with the padding of his right hand, but instead of making him look mad or tough, it came across as sad, and Jennifer felt instantly sorry for him. He was hiding something and scared. “Okay, so maybe it’s bullshit,” he said, “but it doesn’t change that he needed to do it. He needed to grow a pair. Put on his big boy pants.”
“Are you trying to make yourself feel better?”
He drove for thirty seconds in silence; she could tell he was building up to something, so she allowed him time to get to it. And finally, he said, “I was in Quills one morning, about three weeks ago. It’s a coffee shop, our go-to. Mostly I work from my couch, but every Monday I go to Quills. Starts my week off right, you know? I’m there and I’m minding my own business, and all of a sudden, this dude, I’ve never seen him before, he sits down across from me, completely uninvited, and I’m like, hello? And he goes, you roommates with Sam Harper? Without thinking, I’m like, yeah, what about him? And he goes, I heard he’s doing a documentary on Sal Batise. I concur, but I’m wondering where this is going.” Carl kept glancing in his rearview mirror as he drove. “And then the dude tells me that Sam needs to put his name in. Like he knew he hadn’t.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“No,” Carl said. “Not with any words, but it was clearly implied … just the way he looked at me. And everybody knows Batise has a web. He’s got people all over, on the outside. He still has followers. Probably one of his old pals from prison.”
Jennifer knew Sal Batise had done two stints in prison before starting The Collective. Two years for his first bit and one year for the second, the first for his role in a gas station robbery that left the clerk blind in one eye and the other for illegal prostitution and money laundering. It was thought by many—especially the ones who wrote the true crime books—that Batise had met Justice Minks during one of his stints in prison, although no Justice Minks had ever been found, which meant, just as everyone already knew, Justice Minks wasn’t his real name.
Jennifer asked Carl, “What did he look like? This dude at the coffee shop.”
“White guy. Dark hair. Pale. Greasy with a neck tat.”
“Shit.”
“What, you know him?”
“No, but like you said, it’s probably one of his followers. Somebody continuing to do his bidding on the outside. But it’s perfectly clear now that Batise wanted Sam from the start. And that scares the shit out of me.”
“Me too,” Carl said. “My stomach’s been messed up for three weeks.”
“Thanks for that.”
“You asked.”
“Did I?” she said. And then, “So how’d you convince Sam to contact the prison?”
“Just kept on him,” he said. “Challenged his manhood. Do that enough to a dude, and he’ll give in.”
“Because men are still Neanderthals?”
“Yeah, I guess so. But just so you know … the perceived threat I felt in that coffee shop, it wasn’t for me. It was for Sam. I was worried the threat was for him.”
Jennifer watched him, thought the moment needed a quick punch of levity. “So that’s the fuck, Carl?”
He smiled. “Yeah, that’s the fuck, Jennifer.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror again and his smile faded. “But I’m pretty sure somebody’s been following us since we left the house.”
CHAPTER27
SAM HAD VOTED for Governor Hawthorne, both terms.
It was the first time Sam had ever voted. Truthfully, he’d gone into it blind that first time, voting for Gavin Hawthorne because he knew his father was, but by the second term it had been a no-brainer. Except for a few extremists on either side, the entire state of Kentucky loved Governor Hawthorne, and he rarely did anything to piss anyone off. And when it came to anything remotely controversial, like capital punishment, or extremely incendiary, like abortion, he had a way of answering questions that somehow appeased both sides. He was the Middle Man. The ex-professional athlete who still looked like he could take to the field. He was handsome and charming and charismatic and genuinely kind.
Sam, like he had with Sal Batise hours before, predicted he would be enamored by Governor Hawthorne’s presence, if not starstruck, and maybe he would have been if the governor hadn’t entered the prison looking like he hadn’t slept in two days. But all Sam felt was sorrow, because the man was in clear pain and anguish, and the sight of it brought tears to Sam’s own eyes when he shook the governor’s hand, the man’s grip strong and angry.
