The Buzzard Table

CHAPTER

19


Generally, turkey vultures do not kill.

—The Turkey Vulture Society




Thursday night

The knock on the door of the motel room came shortly after seven.

“Yeah?”

“Barbecue Pit,” said a muffled male voice.

With his hand on the automatic in his pocket, the man inside said, “Hold it up to the peephole.”

Not that he was going to look. He hated these damn things. Apocryphal or not, the story had gone around a few years back about someone being shot through the eye he’d used to see who had knocked, and he never used one if he could avoid it.

Instead, he pushed aside an edge of the window curtain and peered out.

Reassured by the familiar face of a kid who had delivered to him on his last trip and the logo on the white paper bag the kid was holding up to the peephole, he let the curtain fall, unlocked the door, and handed over a couple of bills.

“Keep the change,” he said expansively.

Although the tip was barely eight percent of the bill, he planned to add his usual twenty percent to this receipt before he turned it in with the rest of his expense chits. They had deep pockets and they never questioned him about small things, but two dollars here, three dollars there—it could add up to a tidy yearly sum. He wasn’t getting any younger and a man had to shore up against retirement, didn’t he?

He popped the top on a can of beer that had chilled in his ice bucket, then removed the lid on the foam take-out plate and felt his mouth water as the aroma of vinegar and roasted pork reached his nose. He had been born in Texas, and grilled beef ribs drenched in a fiery tomato sauce with jalapeño cornbread on the side would always be his favorite, but the chopped pork barbecue of eastern North Carolina and its deep-fried hushpuppies sure ran Texas a close second.

He unwrapped the plastic utensils and napkins and dribbled a packet of Texas Pete over the fragrant meat before turning his attention back to the weather channel on his TV screen. They had planned for him to refuel here and fly on to Maine tonight, but a vicious little ice storm up there had closed the Bangor airport so he’d been ordered to wait it out till morning.

A secure bunkhouse occupied a corner of the hangar here, but it didn’t have television and it didn’t have beer and he sure as hell didn’t feel like listening to the moans and curses of the prisoner he was ferrying up from Gitmo. The medic refused to give him another knockout shot till they were ready to put him back on the plane tomorrow morning. Been up to me, thought the man, I’d have given him a knockout shot to the head with a monkey wrench.

He devoured a crispy hushpuppy in one bite, then picked up the remote and clicked over to a basketball game. According to the announcer, Duke had a good chance to win the NCAA championship this year.



Shortly before ten, Martin Crawford crossed the motel parking lot and moved silently along the side to the room number the clerk had given him. He had already checked that there was no security camera on this side, only on the reception area. Nevertheless, before putting his ear to the door, he kept his hat pulled down and his scarf pulled up until he had unscrewed the overhead lightbulb with a gloved hand. From within came an announcer’s excited voice and the televised roar of a sports event.

A tiny crack in the curtain let him see the whole room: a rumpled bed, a handgun on the nightstand beside it, and a glimpse of movement in the bathroom beyond.

He’s getting fat and sloppy, Crawford thought to himself as he picked the lock. He was prepared to kick the door in if necessary, but to his surprise, the man had also neglected to put the safety latch on. In three steps, Crawford had crossed to the gun and dumped its clip onto the floor.

A moment later, the man walked out of the bathroom, bare-assed, still damp from his shower, toweling his hair dry.

“Guess what, Al?” Crawford said. “Your pals didn’t quite kill me after all.”