Read Online The Scribe by Matthew Guinn - Free Book Online Page A

the doorway.
    â€œWho? Canby? Enough.”
    â€œYou’re certain?”
    Vernon nodded.
    Grady walked back to his desk and picked up the notepad. He shook his head as he reread the notes there. “You’d better be,” he said.
    T HE CLOUDS that had begun to gather on the western horizon were marshaling in earnest by noon, banding together in a long line the color of a bruise that seemed to billow as it moved toward the Chattahoochee River west of the city’s border. Against their shadow, the gas-lit marquee of Lee Smith’s Big Bonanza Saloon burned with defiant cheer, promising ease and comfort despite the darkening skies above. At night the marquee, with Smith’s name emblazoned on either side, was visible from ten blocks away, making Mamie O’Donnell’s placelook like a backwater joint by comparison. On any day, even on the brightest noon, Canby thought, the marquee would have blazed over Decatur Street like something dropped from some more exotic locale, New York perhaps, into the midst of Atlanta’s gritty railroad and business district.
    He remembered the Constitution stories about the opening of the place back in ’76, even remembering Grady’s breathlessly reporting that the huge French mirror behind the bar had cost $2,500. That was nearly a career’s salary for a policeman. But Canby thought he knew why Vernon had picked the Bonanza for their lunch meeting—he felt sure that, just like when Smith threw open his doors five years ago, cops still ate free.
    He stepped through the vestibule into the cool shadows of the frescoed walls and his footsteps fell silent on the grass rug on the marble floor, into which had been woven BIG BONANZA in tall red letters. From the dining room came the din of perhaps a hundred voices, jumbled speech echoing off the marble. He scanned the faces at each table for Vernon’s, or perhaps for that of some other member of the Ring that Vernon had also summoned. After a few moments, a clergyman in black—Bishop Drew, he realized after a second—stood up at one table and waved him over. Canby watched himself in the huge bar mirror as he walked closer to the table, feeling a strange sensation of closing distance on himself, until he noted that his own face in the mirror wore a scowling expression. With an effort, he composed it, as Vernon would have done.
    â€œMister Canby, please join us,” the bishop was saying. He placed a hand on the shoulder of a portly man who had not risen from his seat. “Have you met Mister A. N. Wellingrath?”
    â€œI have not,” Canby said as the bishop’s cool palm left his. The other man did not offer a hand, so Canby nodded to him, then sat. He did not look up again until he had arranged his napkin carefully in his lap. When he did his eye fixed on A. N. Wellingrath’s cuff links, which protruded from the sleeves of his coat. They were encrusted with tiny white diamonds—enough of them to look heavy.
    Canby cleared his throat. “Are we waiting on Vernon and Colonel Billingsley?”
    Bishop Drew took a sip of claret before he spoke. “I expect Chief Thompson will arrive soon. Colonel Billingsley has been detained by some of his northern investors. He sent me in his place.”
    â€œI didn’t realize the two of you were associates.”
    â€œOh, yes. He is one of my most prominent parishioners.” He cut his eyes to Wellingrath. “We have yet to gather Mister Wellingrath into the fold.”
    Wellingrath snorted but made no comment, as if he hadn’t heard. He motioned the waiter for another whiskey and Canby nodded for one himself.
    â€œLet’s get to it,” Wellingrath said, fixing his smallish eyes on Canby. “Mister Canby, I won’t bullshit you. I’m a cracker, purebred, out of Columbia County. We lived so far out in the country we had to go into town to hunt. I came to Atlanta right after the war, when I was