Death Trance by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

could get in to save them because the fire was so fierce.’
    Randolph bent down and picked up a workman's safety helmet. It was blackened and bubbled but he could still make out the name 'Clare' on the front of it. He set it down again and said, 'Goddam it.’ He rarely profaned but there was no other way to describe how he felt now.
    'Have the police been here?’ he asked after a while.
    They took a look. Chief Moyne came up in person.’
    'What did he say?’
    Tim Shelby wiped the sweat from his face. 'He commiserated.’
    Randolph nodded. That sounds like Chief Moyne. Did his forensic people find anything?’
    'If they did, they didn't tell us. They took away one or two pieces of piping and part of the tank casing, but that's all.’
    'Well, I'll talk to Chief Moyne in the morning,’ Randolph said.
    He was just about to leave the ruins when a small group of five or six men appeared and stood outside the shattered factory, inspecting it with obvious interest. Randolph recognized them at once. Nobody could mistake the bulky, three-hundred-pound figure in the flapping white double-breasted suit and the wide-brimmed cotton-plantation hat. It was Orbus Greene, president of Brooks Cottonseed and chairman of the Cottonseed Association. Orbus had been a mayor of Memphis in the days before urban renewal, and plenty of local politicians still privately held the opinion that Memphis would not have needed half so much urban renewal had it not been for him and his friends.
    The men who accompanied him were his minders: men who opened doors for him and reorganized restaurant tables so he could squeeze into his seat. They had the look of dressed-up yokels: gold rings, gold teeth, greasy kids' stuff on their hair.’
    Randolph picked his way out of the ruins. Orbus was standing so that his swollen, sallow face was half hidden by the brim of his hat.
    'It pains me to see this, Randolph,’ he said. His voice was as high and as clear as a young boy's. Somebody had once told Randolph that Orbus could sing soprano solos from Verdi's operas capable of bringing tears to your eyes provided you were not required to look at him while he sang.
    'Still,’ Orbus continued, 'there's always insurance, isn't there? Insurance is better than ointment.’
    'I lost three good men here, Orbus,’ Randolph retorted. 'Neither insurance nor ointment will bring any of them back. Now, if you'll forgive me, I have work to do.’
    Orbus thrust his pig's-trotter hands into his sagging coat pockets and raised his head so he was squinting at Randolph from underneath the brim of his hat, one-eyed.
    'You're not the man your daddy was, you know,’ he remarked provocatively.
    'I know that,’ Randolph replied equably.
    'Your daddy was always an independent kind of man. Free-thinking, free-spirited. But he respected the cottonseed business, and he respected the people who make their living at it.’
    'I hope this isn't yet another invitation to join the Cottonseed Association,’ Randolph told him. 'Believe me, I have enough clubs to go to. Useful, interesting clubs, where I do useful, interesting things, like playing squash. I have no interest at all in spending my evenings in smoke-filled rooms manipulating people and prices.’
    'Well, you sure paint a lurid picture of us,’ smiled Orbus. 'Maybe you should remember the kidney machines the Cottonseed Association bought last year for the Medical Centre and the vacations we gave to those crippled kids.’
    'I'm sure you didn't forget to enter those charitable donations on your tax returns,’ Randolph said. 'Now, please, I just came back from Canada and I'm very pushed for time.’
    'You just wait up one minute,’ said Orbus. 'What you've been doing these past three years, playing the market, selling what you choose to whom you choose at whatever price you choose, well, that was understandable to begin with. Your daddy had been letting Clare Cottonseed stagnate, hadn't he? For quite a long spell. Me and my fellow