Graham went back to his hotel and slept for two and a half hours. He woke at noon, showered, and ordered a pot of coffee and a sandwich. It was time to make a close study of the Jacobi file from Birmingham. He scrubbed his reading glasses with hotel soap and settled in by the window with the file. For the first few minutes he looked up at every sound, footsteps in the hall, the distant thud of the elevator door. Then he knew nothing but the file.
The waiter with the tray knocked and waited, knocked and waited. Finally he left the lunch on the floor outside the door and signed the bill himself.
4
Hoyt Lewis, meter reader for Georgia Power Company, parked his truck under a big tree in the alley and settled back with his lunch box. It was no fun opening his lunch now that he packed it himself. No little notes in there anymore, no surprise Twinkie.
He was halfway through his sandwich when a loud voice at his ear made him jump.
“I guess I used a thousand dollars’ worth of electricity this month, is that right?”
Lewis turned and saw at the truck window the red face of H. G. Parsons. Parsons wore Bermuda shorts and carried a yard broom.
“I didn’t understand what you said.”
“I guess you’ll say I used a thousand dollars’ worth of electricity this month. Did you hear me that time?”
“I don’t know what you’ve used because I haven’t read your meter yet, Mr. Parsons. When I do read it, I’ll put it down on this piece of paper right here.”
Parsons was bitter about the size of the bill. He had complained to the power company that he was being prorated.
“I’m keeping up with what I use,” Parsons said. “I’m going to the Public Service Commission with it too.”
“You want to read your meter with me? Let’s go over there right now and—”
“I know how to read a meter. I guess you could read one too if it wasn’t so much trouble.”
“Just be quiet a minute, Parsons.” Lewis got out of his truck. “Just be quiet a minute now, dammit. Last year you put a magnet on your meter. Your wife said you was in the hospital, so I just took it off and didn’t say anything. When you poured molasses in it last winter, I reported it. I notice you paid up when we charged you for it.
“Your bill went up after you did all that wiring yourself. I’ve told you until I’m blue in the face: Something in that house is draining off current. Do you hire an electrician to find it? No, you call down to the office and bitch about me. I’ve about got a bait of you.” Lewis was pale with anger.
“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” Parsons said, retreating down the alley toward his yard. “They’re checking up on you, Mr. Lewis. I saw somebody reading your route ahead of you,” he said across the fence. “Pretty soon you’ll have to go to work like everybody else.”
Lewis cranked his truck and drove on down the alley. Now he would have to find another place to finish his lunch. He was sorry. The big shade tree had been a good lunch place for years.
It was directly behind Charles Leeds’s house.
At five-thirty P.M. Hoyt Lewis drove in his own automobile to the Cloud Nine Lounge, where he had several boilermakers to ease his mind.
When he called his estranged wife, all he could think of to say was “I wish you was still fixing my lunch.”
“You ought to have thought about that, Mr. Smarty,” she said, and hung up.
He played a gloomy game of shuffleboard with some linemen and a dispatcher from Georgia Power and looked over the crowd. Goddamned airline clerks had started coming in the Cloud Nine. All had the same little mustache and pinkie ring. Pretty soon they’d be fixing the Cloud Nine English with a damned dart board. You can’t depend on nothing.
“Hey, Hoyt. I’ll match you for a bottle of beer.” It was his supervisor, Billy Meeks.
“Say, Billy, I need to talk to you.”
“What’s up?”
“You know that old son of a bitch Parsons that’s all the time calling up?”
“Called me last week, as a matter of fact,” Meeks said. “What about him?”
“He said somebody was reading my route ahead of me, like maybe somebody thought I wasn’t making the rounds. You don’t think I’m reading meters at home, do you?”
“Nope.”