Page 17 of The Devil's Advocate

I shook my head, said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Makes a refreshing change from hotels in Alabama refusing to give me a room because I’m black,’ he said.

‘Either way, I don’t want to stay there. Doesn’t matter if it’s racism or homophobia, it’s all bad. Let’s try the one across the street.I’llgo in this time. I’m Irish Catholic.’

We both made our way across the street. We hadn’t seen a single car on the road since we came into town. Even the streetlights looked depressed. The short walk stuck the shirt to my back like hot glue. I wasn’t cut out for this climate. Harry waited outside while I ventured into the New Hotel. I suppose it was new once. Probably in the forties. A small red neon signed burned the word vacancy into a passing mosquito’s ass. I opened the front door, and a bell rung. Like The Chanterelle, there was already someone behind the reception desk. This receptionist was a young man with black hair that looked as though it had been painted onto his head. He stood up, nodded. Opened the register book.

‘May I have your name, sir?’

‘Eddie Flynn,’ I said, reaching for the pen cradled in the fold of the guest register.

A light bulb went off behind his small, blue eyes. He sucked air through his teeth, closed the book in front of me and said, ‘I’m sorry, we’re fully booked.’

I stood there in silence, staring at the kid. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. He bit his lip and began to tap a rapid beat on the reception desk with his pen.

‘Is there a convention in town?’ I asked.

‘It’s summer. Our busy season,’ he said, with his head firmly pointed at the floor.

There was no sense in arguing, I left and rejoined Harry on the sidewalk.

‘It seems they’re fully booked, too. Funny, isn’t it? I think someone knew we were coming.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Look, I don’t want to stay in either of these dumps anyway. Let’s go back to Mobile, get a real hotel,’ said Harry.

‘Good idea,’ I said.

We made our way back across the deserted street toward the Prius. Harry opened the driver’s door, put one leg inside and froze.

‘What is it?’ I said.

I came around to his side of the car, followed his gaze to the flat front tire. I looked at the back tire. It was good. I walked around the car and saw the rear passenger tire was flat too. I knelt down in the light from the porch of The Chanterelle, and ran my finger along the rubber. There was a hole, about an inch wide and two inches above the rim. A knife mark.

‘It’s my name,’ I said. ‘Someone knew we were coming and wanted to make sure we got the right kind of welcome.’

Harry blew out his cheeks, said, ‘I hate this goddamn town.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PASTOR

The Pastor gazed through the dormer window at the ivory, butterball moon that crested the rooftops of Buckstown.

He heard footsteps on the stairs.

He turned and looked around the room. It was a wide-open space. The floor above Buckstown Insurance Services didn’t get much use. A row of filing cabinets filled one side of the room. Seven seats had been arranged in a circle in the middle of the wooden floor. A table sat below the window with cups and a coffee dispenser, which the Pastor had filled in the small kitchen in back. The only decoration on the walls were two flags. The first was the Confederate flag, pinned to the eaves. The second was an antique flag that had been framed and hung on the wall opposite the file storage. The flag’s colors had faded. A once-vibrant red background now looked rusted. In the middle of that brownish red sat a white flower. An old emblem on age-worn cloth. The flower was a camellia. It had turned from white to yellow. The seven petals fanning out from the center appeared tarnished. Either from age, or urine. It was a flag likely to be pissed on, and probably had been. It was one of only three flags of its type that survived today. The Pastor paid fifty thousand dollars for it in a black-market auction.

No reputable antique dealer would sell the flag in public. It had history. The thin, fraying cloth carried the weight of the sins committed under that banner.

The door opened and a squat, bald man in a tweed jacket entered the room. Professor Gruber was sweating right through that jacket. Even at night, the heat was oppressive and the walk up the flight of stairs had turned Gruber’s blue shirt black with perspiration. Behind him was a tall, lean man with red hair and a beard, softened by flecks of gray. He wore a checkered shirt and blue jeans. They looked incongruous – the two of them.

The Pastor had come to learn that ideas and thoughts brought all kinds of people together.

‘Is this the father?’ asked the Pastor.

Gruber nodded.

The Pastor headed straight for the man in the working clothes, held out his hand, said, ‘Welcome.’