CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Saturday, September 14

It is somewhat difficult to believe that I am sitting here in Joe’s Inn, surrounded by family (well, Cindy) and friends. Less than twelve hours ago, I was tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse, wondering if I was smoking my last cigarette. My adventures of late necessitated a special Saturday morning meeting of the Oregon Hill Breakfast Club. There’s a bodyguard with a big-ass gun sitting next to

me.

“Dude,” R.P. McGonnigal says, “you’ve got more lives than a damn cat.”

THE COPS got to the strip club no more than five minutes after I called the chief to tell him that, no thanks to him, I was still among the living. There were so many blue lights and government cars that the crowd inside must have thought it was a drug bust.

Somebody had already found a bandage, and the Good Samaritan and his helpers had more or less dealt with the beer-bottle cut I gave myself sawing my way to freedom. They even helped me get free from the damn duct tape connecting my legs to remnants of the chair. Before the police arrived, I had time to slip into a room and remove my soggy underwear, somewhat easing my discomfort.

During all this excitement, there was no sign of Randall or any of the other Purifiers. The linebacker guarding the entrance had a rather impressive gun in his right hand just in case.

The cops, when they got there, took their sweet time entering the building I’d escaped from.

“It might be booby-trapped or something,” one of the feds explained. He scowled when I observed that I wished they had shown as much concern for my well-being as they displayed for their own.

Finally the cops went inside. By that time, it was after midnight. The strip-club crowd was mostly hanging around alfresco, behind the yellow tape that had been hastily put up. The onlookers seemed disappointed when no gunfire emanated from the warehouse.

“Shit,” I heard one of them say, “now the club’s closed for the night, and they didn’t even shoot nobody.”

“No boobs and no bodies,” somebody added.

When it seemed that there was no sign of my captor, they led me into the building so I could give them a guided tour. I showed them the big room on the second floor and described my evening. They didn’t appear to mind when I lit up a Camel. I noticed that my hands were not as steady as they might have been.

They seemed impressed that I was still alive.

“Man,” L.D. said, “we thought we’d lost you.” His sincerity almost allowed me to forgive him.

I replied that they did lose me, somewhere off Staples Mill Road.

There didn’t seem to be much left in the way of evidence in the room, other than a large collection of hate literature, some flags that needed burning, and a sizable collection of skin mags.

I’m sure there’s DNA galore to help the authorities eventually catch these bastards. The question, though, is whether they can catch them before they do whatever they’re planning to do.

And, I’m happy to say, there was a goodly amount of Randall’s blood soaking into the wooden floor.

“We know who these fuckers are,” one of the feds said. “We didn’t know where they’d gone to. Now we know.”

It would be better, I suggested, if they knew where the fuck they were right now.

“We’re on that,” he assured me. These government guys might screw up royally, but they don’t lack for confidence.

The man who was guarding me, I was told, is one Randall Heil, which would explain the attractive forehead tattoo. He’s an ex-con and a big star in the Nazi and Klan circuit.

“He changed his name,” the fed said. “We don’t know much about him, except that his real name, his birth name, is supposed to be Randall Herrmann.”

I told the cops about being abducted from under their damn noses and tried to describe the other vehicles—the one that followed my captor and me to the warehouse, and the van. I remember the one that blocked me. Big-old muscle car, might have been a GTO. Dark blue, rag top. 1 showed them where the car had been parked next to mine.

“Shouldn’t be that hard to find,” one of the state guys muttered. Yeah, I was thinking but not saying, easy for somebody who can find his ass with both hands.

It became pretty obvious that Randall Heil, or whatever the fuck his name was, had decided that his best bet was to grab his gun and get the hell out of Dodge.

My car was sitting by its lonesome on the side of the building.

I had what I thought was a pretty pertinent question for the chief and his posse.

“What the fuck happened?”

The way they explained it:

The feds were all ready in their little stakeout two blocks away when I was ambushed on Franklin. When my lifeline phone was thrown out the window, they apparently didn’t know anything was wrong at first. When they didn’t hear anything for about a minute and the phone wasn’t moving, they said they took off for the Airbnb house.

By then, my escorts and I were headed in the opposite direction, down Staples Mill and toward the warehouse where I nearly cashed in on that company life insurance policy.

“We didn’t know what kind of car they had or anything,” L.D. said. “We just knew that you weren’t there.”

They knew I was driving a Honda Accord, but who the fuck isn’t? By all accounts, they were looking all over hell and creation for me, everywhere, it seems, except in one warehouse in Scott’s Addition.

I did my best to describe the other skinheads.

When the dust finally settled, it was suggested that I might need some protection. They gave me back my original cell phone, and I called Cindy.

I explained to her that I would have to spend at least one more night at another location. My beloved, who had not yet been to bed as she waited for my call, wanted to know why, and I tried to tell her about my night, leaving out some of the more exciting parts. It is hard, though, to make an abduction sound like anything but an abduction.

“They kidnapped your ass?” she said.

But I got away, I explained. It’s all good.

I told Cindy that it would be smarter all around if I let the feds take me to a nice, safe, well-guarded hotel until they catch these fuckers.

“I don’t want you in some damn hotel,” Cindy whined. “I want you here.”

Soon enough, I told her, with fingers crossed.

LAST NIGHT’S insanity was over a bit late to make the Saturday paper.

However, I did give our online readers a taste. The feds didn’t want me to write anything about their “ongoing investigation,” but I insisted. Considering their track record in keeping me out of harm’s way, they knew they did not hold the moral high ground.

So I spilled such information as I had so far and posted it. I also called Sarah Goodnight, who was still in the office at one A.M., waiting to hear from me.

“Wait. Wait,” she interrupted. “You got kidnapped, and you escaped? What the hell, Willie?”

I explained that I didn’t mean to get kidnapped. It just kind of happened.

She did seem glad to hear from me though. She bemoaned the fact that I’d managed to get away too late to get anything into the paper. I promised to escape more quickly next time.

There is, however, an extensive report on my goings and comings last night out there in the ether. Writing for the website means never having to have your copy cut.

The bottom line, information that has already been picked up by every media outlet in the state, is that there are some bad guys still at large who want to make a lot of noise, but the cops don’t know where or when.

I did try, after my escape, to get somebody on the federal, state, or local level to comment on the “ongoing investigation,” but, being an “ongoing investigation,” nobody had anything to say.

THIS MORNING, the sun was shining in my room at the Omni. I told my bodyguard that I wanted to go to breakfast. He said he’d accompany me downstairs. I told him, no, I want to go to Joe’s.

He was not happy with that plan, but I stood my ground.

“You guys damn near got me killed,” I explained. “Now I want to see my wife and maybe a few friends.”

And so here we sit, R.P. and Brooklyn, Andy Peroni, Custalow, Cindy, and a mildly unhappy fed with a big-boy gun. He insisted on joining the party after I made my calls. We told him to go for the toast instead of the biscuit.

We’ve had to settle for a table in the other room at Joe’s, our normal spot having been taken over by a horde of young folk, a couple of them in what appears to be their pajama pants.

The waitress seems surprised, though not overjoyed, to see us here on a Saturday. We tell her not to worry, that we’ll be back tomorrow too.

“Lucky me,” I hear her mutter.

R.P. and Brooklyn seem to take a proprietary interest in my recent adventures, having given me shelter.

“We might of been killed or something,” Brooklyn says.

Close, I tell him, speaking from experience, doesn’t count.

Abe, who has spent the last couple of nights at the apartment of local rock diva Stella Stellar, wants to know if it’s safe for him to return to the Prestwould.

My bodyguard says it might be a good idea to give it another day or so “at least until we catch these guys.”

I have a second opinion, which I’ll impart to the guy after breakfast.

I’m not quite so cautious, noting that it seems to me that the Purifiers have bigger problems than old Willie right now, like how to avoid what has become at least a statewide manhunt.

“I wish those guys would have tried some shit like that up on the Hill, back in the day,” Andy says.

Cindy, his sister, reminds him that, back in the day, there were plenty of guys in our lily-white neighborhood who would have been Purifier material. She’s right. Custalow and I were about the only blemishes on the alabaster demographic of Oregon Hill back then, and there were some people who thought we were two minorities too many.

“Well,” Andy says, “we weren’t all like that.”

Indeed, the little gang I hung with wasn’t like that. R.P., Andy, Abe, the missing Goat Johnson, the late Sammy Samms, and I weren’t saints, but we were better than that.

Sometime early into our third hour of hogging the table, as the bodyguard keeps looking at his watch and wondering, like our server, when the hell we’re going to leave, I get a call.

Francis Xavier “Goat” Johnson has somehow heard about my recent adventures. He’s calling from Ohio, where he inexplicably has not yet been fired as president of a college that obviously needs a search committee.

“What the fuck, Willie?” the academic component of our posse inquires.

I tell him where I am and who’s with me and put him on speakerphone.

“You’re there on a Saturday? Damn, the folks at Joe’s must be bustin’ their buttons over that.”

“Joy is unrestrained,” I hear our server say to one of her peers.

So I give Goat the quick version of what’s transpired the last twenty-four hours.

“Man, you all have got some crazy human beings down there,” he says. “First Charlottesville, and now this.”

I point out that quite a few of the perpetrators of the neo-Nazi disgrace in C-ville were from elsewhere, including some from Ohio.

“Yeah,” he says, “but they go down there to go batshit.”

Goat catches up for five minutes or so and then hangs up. We show some mercy on our server and my bodyguard and finally pay the bill, leaving tips of as much as 20 percent.

“Don’t be a stranger,” our server says, but not like she means it.

After breakfast, I turn to my bodyguard and give him his walking papers.

“It’s been swell,” I tell him, “but now I want to go home.”

He protests that it’s his job to protect me.

Fine, I reply, but if you do it, you’ll have to do it from the lobby of the Prestwould. Cindy and I need a little quiet time.

The bodyguard gets on the phone to his fed masters and, after a few intense minutes, hands the phone to me, so that I can assure whoever’s on the other end that I’m taking responsibility for my own safety from now on.

I mean, how much worse can I screw that up than the cops have already?

Custalow says he’ll come back later this afternoon.

When we get inside our unit (if, indeed, “our unit” is the right phrase for an apartment we are renting from my ex-wife), Cindy turns to me.

“I don’t know whether to kick your ass or rip your clothes off,” she says.

I express a preference for the latter, and she agrees, “although I might want to kick your ass later too.”

I DO manage to crawl out of bed about one. Obviously there’s a lot of typing to do before the Sunday edition goes to press tonight.

I’ve ignored a few phone calls in the interim, finally turning the damn thing off. Most of them, I see, are from my immediate bosses, Mal Wheelwright and Sarah.

I give Wheelie a quick call and tell him I’ll be in the office in half an hour.

On the way out of the building, I am not surprised to run into Feldman in the lobby, where McGrumpy seems to live.

“Killed anybody today?” he asks. McGrumpy is, among other faults, irritatingly repetitive.

“Not yet,” I reply, “but there are some really bad guys looking for me. If some big skinheads with guns come in here, tell them you haven’t seen me.”

On the off chance that I’m not pulling one of his aged legs, he heads for the elevator.

THERE AREN’T many people in the newsroom when I get in a little after two. Hell, there are never many people in the newsroom these days. Now that they’re selling the building and seem intent on making us a less than daily publication, enthusiasm for going that extra mile and showing up unpaid on a Saturday has waned considerably.

The sports desk guys are watching a college game on TV. Two copy editors are feverishly trying to read everything that’s going into the local section, a task that used to involve five or six of them. Leighton Byrd, still too young to have gone into complete fuck-this-shit mode, is working on a story.

I head over to Wheelie’s office. Sarah sees me come in and meets me there. I am surprised when Leighton joins us.

After they congratulate me on being alive and writing something coherent for our free online readers, Wheelie moves on to the Sunday paper. You can win a Pulitzer Prize on Saturday, and they want to know what you’re going to do for Sunday.

Wheelie surprises me though.

“We thought it might be good,” he says, clearing his throat the way he does when he has something difficult to say, “if, instead of having you write it first-hand again, maybe we ought to have another reporter interview you.”

So now I know why Leighton is standing here with the grownups. She smiles in what I’m sure she hopes is an ingratiating manner.

“You think somebody else could tell it better than the guy who was in the chair?” I inquire, only raising my voice a little.

“Well,” Wheelie says, “we just want it to be objective. You know, maybe you’re too close to it.”

“Too close to it?” I reply, perhaps upping the volume a bit. “Damn right I was too close to it. If I’d been any closer, Leighton would be writing my goddamn obit right now.”

“Nobody’s questioning your ability to write the story, Willie,” Wheelie says. “But this might need a different approach.”

I notice that Sarah isn’t saying anything.

Hell, I have six messages on my phone from other news sources wanting me to tell them my story. As if. Everybody wants this story. But it’s mine.

This doesn’t make sense. And then the penny drops.

“This is B.S., isn’t it?” I ask. They know I’m not talking about bullshit, although it’s that too. I can feel the sweaty palms on Benson Stine, our present publisher, all over this one. And I know for a fact, or as factual as a report from Enos Jackson on the copy desk can be, that little Leighton has been seen in the company of our publisher at Lemaire’s bar in the Hotel Jefferson, laughing at his stupid-ass jokes.

Nobody denies my assumption.

I flatly refuse to let Leighton Byrd or any other ambition addict tell my story. OK, I tell other people’s stories all the time, but, goddammit, I’m the teller, not the tellee.

“It’s what B.S. wants,” Sarah says, rolling her eyes.

“If he wants the fucking story,” I tell them all, “he’s going to have to endure reading it with a Willie Black byline.”

Then I do the adult thing and storm out, refusing to listen to what passes for reason.

Leighton, to her credit, does come to my desk and tell me it wasn’t all her idea.

“It was just something Benson brought up,” she says.

“Leighton,” I tell her, “you have the makings of a really good journalist. Hell, if I last long enough, you’ll probably be my boss one day. But you’re poaching, and poaching’s a felony in my book.”

She turns to walk away.

I have one more bit of advice.

“Benson Stine won’t be around here forever. We run through publishers like toilet paper. Don’t hitch your fucking star to B.S.”

She stomps off. At least she didn’t cry.

Nobody else brings up the possibility of my being interviewed by my own newspaper. I see Wheelie in his office, the door closed, having an intense conversation with someone.

When he walks out half an hour later, he heads toward my desk. He doesn’t stop, just says as he walks past, “Write it. Fuck it. Let him fire us all.”

THERE’S PLENTY to write. In addition to the whole kidnapping thing, it’s time to give the readers a little background. I warn Sally Velez that this is going to be a stem-winder. It’s time to tell the whole sad Stick Davis story, or as much of it as has played out so far.

I tell how the cops’ suspicions turned from me to Jerome Sheets to parties unknown. I relate what I learned from Stick’s neighbor about the mysterious strangers who came to the scene of the crime the day before the body was found and left with paper bags. I tell as much as I know about the luckless Whitney Charles.

I tell about how I accessed Stick’s iPad and learned about the DVD that damn near got me killed. I relate more than L.D. or the feds want me to, I’m sure, about the botched plan to catch the Purifiers, and about my escape.

The lede, though, is what is likely to grab the attention of what few readers we have left.

“A neo-Nazi group that had a hand in the Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ fiasco in 2017 has returned. According to a video recording, the group, Purity, plans to wreak more havoc on Virginia sometime in the near future. The problem is, law authorities don’t know where, and they don’t know when.”

Of course, as any sportswriter who has written the top to his game story with two minutes left only to see the home team blow an eight-point lead and lose at the buzzer can tell you, don’t write your lede too early.

It’s close to six when I get the call. I spoke with L.D. a couple of hours ago, not because I thought he’d tell me anything, but just to make sure that he knew his forces, the state guys, and the feds were going to be wearing a bit of egg on their faces tomorrow morning. He cursed me a bit, but his heart really wasn’t in it. It’s been a bad week for the chief.

“Just go easy,” were his final words. It was about as chagrined as I’ve ever heard L.D. I almost felt sorry for my old gym-rat buddy.

So I figured he was calling this time to make one last pitch for a little mercy from the fourth estate.

But that wasn’t it.

“We thought you ought to know this,” he said. “We think we know when they’re going to do it.”

Of all unlikely things, the brainstorm that solved that riddle sprang from the normally storm-free brain of Chauncey Gillespie.

My donut-eating sometimes source on the police force remembered something.

Randall Heil’s real last name, Herrmann, caused something to click with Gillespie.

He remembered reading about a shootout that happened five years ago in Idaho. A bunch of skinheads refused to vacate a shack on somebody else’s property. Before it was over, federal agents were fired on and, surprise, fired back. Final tally: One less skinhead.

The story wouldn’t have been more than a short in the B section, except that the victim, Roger Herrmann, was from one of those soulless suburbs in Northern Virginia. 1 vaguely remember that we ran it inside the A section.

The cops, of course, knew what Randall Heil’s name was before he changed it. So Gillespie accessed the write-up in the Washington Post and found a quote from the deceased’s brother, who gave his name as Randall Herrmann.

In the interview, Randall went on at length about the “murder” of his brother, which turned into a rant about law enforcement, government, and the United States in general.

“We will not forget this,” Randall “Herrmann” is quoted as saying “Blood for blood.”

Randall made enough noise that he got his picture in the Post.

If it isn’t Randall Heil, it’s his identical twin.

“So this is interesting,” I say, humoring the chief, “but what’s the importance?”

“The importance,” L.D. says, “is the date. Roger Herrmann was shot and killed on September 16, 2014, five years ago.”

I look at my calendar. Today’s the fourteenth.

“Now,” the chief says, “all we have to do is find the sons of bitches and figure out what they plan to blow up.”

So, the smart money’s on the sixteenth, two days away. I thank L.D. and tell him this is information our readers need to know.

“Yeah, I figured so,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d never give you this kind of information. Don’t get used to it.”

“And you say Gillespie came up with this?”

I hear the chief chuckle.

“Blind hog finds acorn. But don’t quote me on that.” There’s plenty of time to rewrite the top of the story, telling our readers why the day after tomorrow might be a good day to watch out for suspicious packages.

We have a pretty likely answer to “when.” The “where,” though, is still a mystery, and apparently the cops have less than two days to answer that one.

Since the Purifiers are in our backyard, and based on what Heil told me when he thought I wouldn’t be around to tell anybody else, this is going to be our story.

Here’s hoping for a happy ending.