Shock Wave

up an internal stair to the roof, where four chairs, an umbrella, and a two-foot-tall office refrigerator were sitting on a deck.
    Kline took a chair, lit up, blew a lungful of smoke, and said, “First up would be Ernie Stanton. Ernie’s a redneck, a hard worker. Doesn’t show it, but he’s smart. He started out with nothing, and now he owns two fast oil-change places. Ernie’s Oil. He got hurt when Walmart came in. They’ve got that Lube Express thing. But Ernie’s faster and just as cheap, so he got hurt, but he hung on. I don’t think he’ll get past PyeMart. He’s a guy with a temper, he’s a hunter, he’s got guns and all that, and he’s spent thirty years scratching his way up. Done a lot of roughneck work—might know about dynamite. He’s gonna lose his livelihood. He’s gonna lose it all.”
    Virgil made a note of the name. Kline had two others, both businesspeople. Don Banning, who ran a clothing store selling work clothes; he’d also been hurt by Walmart, but he’d moved to somewhat higher-end stuff, brand names that Walmart didn’t carry. “As I understand it, PyeMart carries the same brands he does. He won’t be able to match the prices,” Kline said.
    The least likely one, in Kline’s opinion, was a woman named Beth Robertson, who ran the Book Nook. “She says she’s gone. She’s gonna try to make it through Christmas—PyeMart won’t open until spring—but then she’s getting out. But she’s crazy mad about it. The bookstore is her life. She swings back and forth between this cold acceptance, planning to sell out, and this red-hot screaming anger. It’s like watching somebody who just found out they got terminal cancer. The thing is, she’s mad enough, but I don’t think she could work a hammer, much less make a bomb. She’s the kind who doesn’t understand how a nut and bolt go together.”
    “Any more?” Virgil asked.
    “Well, there’s me,” Kline said. “I’m done. I’m gonna retire, sell out the store while I can still get some money for it. Got a good location, maybe somebody’ll think of something they can do here.”
    “Sorry to hear that,” Virgil said.
    “Nothing lasts forever,” Kline said. “I can’t match the big boys when it comes to peddling pills, and I’m not even sure that’s a bad thing. People already pay too much for medicine. And, my kids are gone, they’re not interested in the store, and I’ve got some money. I think my wife and I might move up to the Cities. Buy a condo, go to some plays, that kind of thing. Be useless old farts for a while. Then die.”
    Virgil said, “As a city councilman . . . you might have noticed that there were some unusual vote changes on the PyeMart zoning.”
    Kline snorted, and smoke came out of his nose. “No kidding? Where’d you hear that?”
    “You know . . . around.”
    “Those boys got bought, is what happened,” Kline said. “Three of them, anyway. The fourth one, he thinks PyeMart’s a good idea: jobs for kids and low prices. They didn’t have to buy him. Those other three, Pat Shepard, Arnold Martin, Burt Block . . . well, they’re not exactly friends of mine, but I’ve known them for a long time. And I’ve got to say, they’d take the money. That’s my bottom line on them. They’d take the money. I doubt that you could prove it.”
    “I’m gonna have to talk to them,” Virgil said. “They could be targets.”
    “You haven’t asked about the mayor. Geraldine.”
    “What about her?”
    “Geraldine was probably the bag man on the whole deal. Bag woman. She’s the one who talked the others into it. She is the personification of greed,” Kline said. “As mayor, she had a veto, and then it would have taken five votes to override her. But that’s not what happened.”
    “She buy a new house?” Virgil asked.
    “No, nothing like that. She’s not dumb. I can tell you what I suspect—my theory. Her husband has a seasonal business, renting out golf carts, and selling some.”
    “That’s not an everyday business,” Virgil said.
    “Well, it’s not uncommon, either,” Kline said. “Probably a couple of them in every big city, the cart rental businesses. You get these golf courses, they have weekend tournaments, and they don’t have enough carts of their own—so, they rent from Dave Gore. He pretty much services a tournament every weekend, is the way I hear it. It’s a legitimate business.”
    “So what’s your theory?” Virgil asked.
    “This could just be bs.