Dust Devil (23 page)

“
Renzo
Cassavettes!” the receptionist exclaimed, wide-eyed. “
The
Renzo
Cassavettes? The Racket Club... Whistle-blower... the—the
Pulitzer Prize?”

“
That’s
the one,” he confirmed lightly, grinning at the young woman’s
awe as he strode past her desk and through the short, swinging door
set in the wooden railing that separated the reception area from the
rest of the newspaper office. He knocked on his father’s door,
then opened it. “Hello, Pop.”

“
Renzo!”
As though he couldn’t believe his eyes, Joe Martinelli got
slowly to his feet. “Renzo.” In a moment, the two men
were exchanging bear hugs, clapping each other on the shoulders.
Although in the more than a decade that had passed since he had left
town, Renzo’s parents had visited him more than once in the
various cities in which he had lived, he still hadn’t seen
either his father or mother for the past two years. “Sit down.
Sit down, Son,” Joe urged, motioning toward a chair. “So.
You’ve finally decided to come home, have you? To take me up on
my offer, after all?”

“
Yeah,
Pop, I have.”

“
Renzo,
are you sure?” Joe’s eyes were searching as he gazed
intently at his son. “I’d hate to think I pressured you
into something you didn’t want to do. Right now, you’ve
got the world by the tail. You can write your own ticket,
journalistically. Go anywhere. Be anything you want to be. Your
mother and I... we’re so proud of you, of all you’ve
managed to accomplish. Who would have thought it? My son, a Pulitzer
Prize winner!” The older man shook his head, as though he still
couldn’t quite believe it. “Coming back here, taking over
the
Tri-State
Tribune,
that’s
a long way from being a crackerjack investigative reporter in
Washington. So are you sure this is what you want to do, Renzo?”
Joe asked again.

“
I’m
sure, Pop. As the saying goes, I’ve been there, done that. So
what’s left? I figure managing my own newspaper’s not a
bad step up the ladder from where I am at the moment. Besides, I’m
tired of big cities, Pop. My life in Washington is...”
Empty,
solitary. I’m the proverbial soul alone in a crowd,
Renzo
wanted to say. “Well, ever since the Racket Club, it’s
like I’m under a microscope, Pop. I made a lot of enemies by
exposing such far-reaching political corruption—and not a few
of those enemies are my own jealous, highly competitive colleagues,
I’m afraid. They’d love nothing better than to watch me
stumble and take a long, hard fall. And I just don’t think I
want to spend the rest of my days running on the fast track, trying
to stay one step ahead of everybody who’s breathing down my
neck. I’d rather quit while I’m ahead. Besides, I don’t
mind telling you I’ve missed the slower pace of life in a small
town, Pop. Being the editor and publisher of the
Tri-State
Tribune
will
give me a chance to take things easier for a while, time to try my
hand at writing a book, time to enjoy life for a change. These past
several years... well, all I’ve done is work, Pop. I couldn’t
have gone so far, so fast if I hadn’t. But now, I’m
tired. Tired? Hell. I’m just flat burned out. So by selling me
the
Trib
so
you and Mom can retire to Florida like you’ve always wanted,
you’re actually doing me a big favor.”

“
All
right, then. I’ll have all the necessary papers drawn up first
thing next week,” Joe declared, satisfied at last that this was
indeed what Renzo really wanted, that he didn’t just feel
pressured and obligated to take over the newspaper. “Meanwhile,
I’ve got a Sunday edition to finish up. How’d you like to
help me, for old-time’s sake?”

“
I’d
love to, Pop. What’s doing? Lots of stuff about J. D.
Holbrooke’s senatorial campaign, I’ll wager.”
Renzo’s voice was carefully casual.

“
Of
course we’re covering it. Having moved in a few political
circles yourself these past several years, you’re undoubtedly
aware J.D.’s been news ever since he ran for governor and won.
Everybody in town expected he’d serve at least two terms,
especially since ZoeAnn obviously relished being the state’s
first lady. But then word got out that J.D. had cancer, a rumor he
himself confirmed when he stepped down at the end of his term. It was
pretty serious, and I think most people believed he wasn’t
going to live much longer. But J.D.’s always been a fighter and
a survivor, and in the end, he licked the disease—just as he’ll
probably beat his opponents in the Senate race.”

“
So
you think his chances of winning a seat are pretty good?”

“
Yes,
I do.” Joe nodded. “He was a popular governor, and ZoeAnn
was perceived as a gracious first lady, if a trifle distant. Well,
are you ready to get to work, Son?”

“
Sure,
Pop.” Renzo stood, cursing himself silently for suddenly being
unable to ask the question that was uppermost in his mind: Was it
because Sarah Kincaid was now Bubba Holbrooke’s wife that she
had been on his arm at J.D.’s fund-raiser?

Renzo
realized then that part of him was afraid to learn the answer, afraid
of what he would feel, of what he might do if the answer was yes. So
he didn’t ask. Instead, he worked alongside his father until
the Sunday edition was put to bed. Then they went home, where Madonna
Martinelli greeted her son happily but nervously and served
his
favorite
supper. And still, Renzo did not ask the question that haunted him.

In
the back of his mind lingered the knowledge that, no
matter
what, he loved his parents. He didn’t want to have an
unmendable breach between them and him, and he wasn’t certain
how he would feel toward them if he discovered they had lied to him
and, in doing so, had cost him Sarah Kincaid. Or perhaps he had
foolishly lost her himself that day at the quarry, when he had
taunted Sonny Holbrooke—and that, too, was something that even
now, after all these long years, Renzo didn’t want to face.

Like
Sarah herself, Sonny had also haunted him. Renzo remembered that
strange, tentative, unexpected offer of friendship on the top of the
high rock, and he felt that his life had been somehow diminished
because that friendship had been so abruptly snatched away from him
before it had ever really begun. There was, as well, the fact that as
Renzo had grown older and the shock, pain and disbelief of that fatal
day had worn off, Papa Nick’s casually spoken words in the
long, sleek black car had returned to him: that his shoulder had
displayed what had appeared to Papa Nick as a flesh wound from a
bullet.

In
later years, those words had come to trouble Renzo distinctly
whenever he thought of them. Now he felt that Papa Nick had been
trying to tell him something—and that he had not understood
what it was. Sometimes he would touch his shoulder, where the wasp—or
had it been a bee?—had stung him, and he would be transported
back to the quarry. He would hear the summer stillness broken by the
blaring music, the backfiring of Junior Barlow’s clunker, and
in Renzo’s mind, the sound would become a
gunshot,
and he would wonder if someone had, in fact, tried to kill him. But
why? Had Papa Nick’s words been a warning? Of what nature? Why
would anyone have wanted to kill him, Renzo Cassavettes,
a
twenty-two-year-old
who
had known blessedly little of the shadowy circles his mobster father
and sluttish mother had moved in? The only crime he had ever
committed had been the taking of Sarah Kincaid’s innocence—a
crime in the eyes of the law, technically, since she had been just
seventeen. But neither he nor she would have called it that. At
least, not then.

Did
she look back on that day now with regret and resentment, he
wondered, seeing him as nothing more than a callous seducer and
herself as his trusting victim? Deep down inside, Renzo feared she
probably did. The thought made him sick inside. He,Mad loved her. If
he were honest with himself, he must admit he loved her still.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t give a damn whom she had married. He
wouldn’t ever have come back here to this town.

Temporarily
installed in his old room at the Martinelli bungalow on Elm Street,
Renzo lay in bed that night and thought of Sarah lying in Bubba
Holbrooke’s arms—and fantasized about torturing his old
enemy to death very slowly or pumping him full of bullet holes.

At
three in the morning, Renzo awakened gasping and in a cold sweat, his
heart pounding horrifically. It was his old, familiar nightmare that
had held him in its terrifying grip, the interminable, dusty road
beneath his bare feet a monstrous, writhing serpent, maw gaping,
venom-dripping fangs poised to strike. It had bitten him on the side
of his shoulder, a sharp, puncturing sting, and then had swallowed
him whole. Inside the road-snake, he had
tumbled
endlessly down into the dark, cold acid of its stomach, where he had
spied a body floating in a tangle of halfdigested bones and other
hideous debris. Only this time, when he had gingerly rolled the
corpse over, the face hadn’t belonged to Sonny Holbrooke.

It
had been Bubba’s.

“
Say,
boys! if you give me just another

whiskey
I’ll be glad,

And
I’ll draw right here a picture of the

face
that drove me mad.”

The
Face upon the Floor

—
Hugh
Antoine D’Arcy

Bubba
Holbrooke took another long swallow from the glass of whiskey he held
in his hand. It was late, and he was tired—not to mention
thoroughly bored by the discussion currently taking place in his
father’s study. Were it not for the fact that if J.D.’s
race for the Senate were successful, he and ZoeAnn would pack up and
move to Washington, D.C., Bubba wouldn’t have volunteered to
pass out so much as a single campaign flyer. But if J.D. won, Bubba
would be left in charge of Field-Yield, Inc. again, as he had been
when his father had been installed in the state’s governor’s
mansion in the capital. Of course, J.D. would undoubtedly leave Evie
behind once more, to manage those things he didn’t trust Bubba
to deal with at the fertilizer plant. But Bubba hadn’t paid any
heed to Evie’s looking over his shoulder before—and he
wouldn’t this time, either. Besides which, the campaign allowed
Bubba to spend a great deal more time with Sarah Kincaid than she
would normally have permitted.

Bleary
eyed, he gazed at her now, wondering what her reaction would be if
she knew he was seeing not all the various campaign materials, but
her naked body spread out on the massive old desk that dominated the
study. In his mind, she was sweating and writhing frantically beneath
him, and he was inside her, making her beg and scream for more. Not
that that was likely to happen anytime soon, Bubba told himself
disgustedly. Ever since she had started working for Field-Yield, Inc.
five years ago and he had first really noticed her, Sarah had held
him at arm’s length. And the harder she had tried to keep him
at bay, the more determined Bubba had grown to possess her. He hadn’t
been able to believe this beautiful, cool, poised woman was the same
little “Coal Lump” Kincaid his sister, Evie, had used to
tease so unmercifully at school.