Alex Cross's Trial

spent a good portion of my childhood was now in such a lofty position that he could send out invitations engraved on thick vellum. And that on his way to manhood, L.J. had invented a machine that shot twine around cotton bales in one-eighth the time it took four men to do the job.

    The Stringer Automatic Baler. Without it, Cotton would no longer be King.

    I eased into a rear table at the Slide Inn Café. I ordered coffee and a big breakfast of grits and eggs, patty sausage and biscuits. I thought about L. J. Stringer for a moment or two, but my heart was heavy at the absence of a single letter from home.

    Why hadn’t Meg written? I didn’t really need to ask myself that. I knew the answer. But even if she was too angry—why hadn’t she allowed the girls to write?

    I decided to detour by the post office just to make sure no letters had been accidentally sent to Judge Everett Corbett’s home.

    Meantime I took a slurp of the Slide Inn’s good chicory coffee and tore open the last of my three letters, the one without a return address.

    At first I thought the envelope was empty. I had to feel around inside it before I found the card.

    It was a postcard, like any other postcard. In place of a picture of the Grand Canyon or Weeki Wachee Springs, the card bore a photograph of a young black man dangling from a rope. His face had been horribly disfigured. The whip marks on his bare chest were so vivid I felt like I could touch them.

    On the other side of the card was a handwritten message:
    THIS IS THE WAY WE COOK COONS DOWN HERE.
    THIS IS THE WAY WE WILL COOK YOU.
    WE KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE.
    GO HOME, NIGGER-LOVER.

    Chapter 40

    I DIDN’T GO HOME, of course; I couldn’t—my mission was only just getting started. So I actually talked to some candidates for federal judgeships. And I continued my secretive investigation for Roosevelt. I even squeezed in a few hours at L. J. Stringer’s party and remembered what a good friend he was.

    A few weeks later, I felt I needed a haircut, and I knew where to go: Ezra Newcomb’s.

    During my visit, I congratulated Ezra, Eudora’s only barber, on the sharpness of his blade. This resulted in my receiving a nine-point instructional course on the most important techniques involved in properly sharpening a straight razor. (The truth was, I had brought my own dull razor along, hoping to have Ezra sharpen it.)

    “You got to start her off real slow, then you swipe down the strop real fast,” he was saying.

    This was exactly the lesson I had gotten from Ezra the last time he cut my hair, when I was a boy of eighteen.

    “Just don’t understand it,” Ezra said. “A boy goes all the way up to Harvard and they don’t teach him how to sharpen a razor.”

    “I must have been out sick the day they gave that class.”

    Ezra laughed and swept the bib off me with a dramatic flourish. He returned my sharpened razor to me. I handed him a quarter and told him to keep the change. He whistled at my generous big-city tipping habits.

    Then I stood outside the barbershop in the bright September sun, admiring the dangerous gleam on the edge of the blade.

    “Why, Ben, you’re looking at that razor the way most men look at a pretty girl!”

    I turned around to see Elizabeth Begley standing right there beside me. We were practically elbow to elbow.

    “I was admiring Ezra’s handiwork. In all my years of trying, I have never been able to put half as good an edge on a razor.”

    “Oh, Ben, I don’t believe there’s anything you can’t do,” she said, “if you decide to go after it.”

    Now what was this craziness? Was my old girlfriend flirting with me? Was I flirting right back?

    I flicked the razor shut and slipped it into my pocket.

    “Come walk me to Jenkins’s store,” she said. “I bought new boots for Emma and she’s already been through the laces. That’s not right.”

    We walked the sidewalk of Commerce Street, which was fairly deserted at this hour.

    “A little bird told me you were the guest of honor at the Stringers’ dress party the other night,” she said.

    “I wouldn’t say guest of honor,” I said. “But I guess some people are a little curious what I’m doing back here.”

    “You must tell them all you’ve come to visit me, ” Elizabeth said with a smile. “That will get their tongues wagging.”

    She laughed, and so did I.

    “Speaking of people who love to talk behind other people’s backs…” She nodded in the direction of Lenora Godwin, who was walking toward us on the sidewalk