Buzz Riff

by Sam Hill

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Crime Fiction; Suspense; Humorous gen fiction

Synopsis

'Fast, funny and popping with surprises' Robert Crais

Top Keirnan has got problems. The research firm he's been running out of his 30s-era schoolhouse in Athens, Georgia, is beginning to founder, thanks to his former office manager (and ex-lover), who has stolen half his clients and set up shop on her own. And Top is no longer banking big bucks as an operative for Shaw's Mercantile Marine since they've decided his addiction to the adrenaline buzz is more of a risk than an asset. Things are looking tough for Top, when he gets a call.

American Civil War General 'Stonewall' Jackson was shot by his own men while on night patrol. His aide-de-camp reached into the General's saddlebags to find something to press against the wound and pulled out a new flag, the Stars and Bars. Stonewall died, but the Bloody Red Rag, as the flag became known, went on to become the most valuable relic of the war. Now it's been stolen and Top is asked to find it.

Normally Top wouldn't touch a job like this: the money's too small, and he's not excited about his arrogant, bigoted client, Professor Jay Pope-Scott. Problem is, Top badly needs those twenty thousand dollars. So he's soon taking on fanatical collectors, ultra-right-wing religious paramilitaries, a biker gang, Fourth Federal Bank and his former lover to save the school and recover the flag.

In this sequel to Sam Hill's knockout debut novel, BUZZ MONKEY, the action comes non-stop. The scrapes are daunting, the escapes hair-raising and the outcome stunningly unpredictable.

Release date: August 20, 2020

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 336

Sample

I didn’t much like my new client, and I wasn’t particularly upset when someone shot him. I didn’t like him for the same reason no one else liked him-he’s an embarrassment. But he is also a tenured professor at the university, occupying the Latham Chair of Southern Studies. And he was my client because I needed the twenty thousand dollars.

He’d become my client on Thursday at 8 A.M. at his office in the Institute of Southern Studies, located in a restored antebellum on Lumpkin Street. Significantly, the smallish mansion was situated across the street from the university proper, and marked only by a tiny sign tucked under a small round boxwood shrub. If the university had its way, I am sure they would have exiled him even further away, say to the campus of Georgia Tech.

I drove by twice before I found the sign, and saw the small, discrete, crushed-marble driveway that led beside the white mansion and around to a lot. In back were four parking spaces, two with small white-on-brown university-issue “Visitor” signs. Both of the other spaces were unlabelled. In one sat a new, silver Mini Cooper, and beside it sat an older maroon Jag XKE, the one with the long phallic hood. A small chrome badge for the Bonnie Blues, a Confederate version of the DAR, was bolted to its license plate.

I stepped out of the truck, drained the last of my extra large White Hen coffee-of-day and tossed the empty disposable foam cup in the pickup, where it joined three empty Heineken beer bottles, an old rusty jack handle I’d picked up from the middle of the highway, and a crumpled up Dunkin’ Donuts bag. If every pickup in America cleaned the trash out of the back bed simultaneously, landfills would overflow like a shaken-up Coca Cola soda can.

I wore a black T-shirt, black jeans, and hiking boots-a little more somber than my normal attire, but I’d learned a long time ago that things went smoother if you fit the client’s stereotype. My girlfriend Amanda had told Pope-Scott I was a mercenary, and so he’d be expecting a mercenary. I dressed to expectations.

Girlfriend. There’s a word that seems like it belongs in the sixties. But all the alternatives-lover, significant other, seem too clinical for me. So I’m stuck with girlfriend. The word, that is. I’m not stuck with Amanda. Not that I’m saying I’d mind being stuck with Amanda.

In April in Athens you can sometimes feel the heat before it starts to register on the thermometer. This morning was cool, but the air held an implication of the warmth to come. In the distance, I could hear a faint chant, most likely football players over on the new Astroturf practice field, readying themselves to improve on last year’s number three national ranking. (I had my doubts, since they’d graduated the entire offensive line and lost three underclassmen to the NFL. But in Athens in the spring, anyone with doubts about the Dawgs is best served keeping those to his or herself.)

There was a brick walk that led from the lot to a back door. The back door, though, was heavy gray steel spotted with a line of shiny brushed-steel and brass locks. On the door a square sign in italics read, “Please Use the Front Door, y’all.” Someone had scrawled a Nazi swastika in bright red marker across the face of the sign.

I made my way noisily along the loose driveway. Despite my misgivings about the new client and working this close to home, I was delighted to be working. This day a familiar riff of adrenaline rippled up my spine. I tasted the acrid dryness of excitement in my mouth, and knew I was fighting a grin. I was buzzing, and to quote REM, “I feel fine.”

In the front another small brick pathway wound from the driveway to a set of broad stone steps leading up to a massive wooden porch. The wide porch was painted gray, and was home to six white columns and a dozen or so large green wicker rocking chairs. At the top of each corner of the ceiling a security camera swiveled and blinked. I noticed there was the faintest trace of mildew on the wall where the porch connected to the face of the house. Other than that, the place was immaculate.

I stood quietly on the porch, then closed my eyes and rotated my neck in one direction, then reversed it, hearing the soft pops of my stretched tendons. I hung my arms loosely down by my side, and shook them out. I raised one hand to eye-level. It still trembled noticeably as I rang the bell. There was a soft muffled ding dong somewhere deep in the house.

Answering the door, to my mild surprise, was not an ancient Bill Robinson-style butler, but a pretty blond woman in her midtwenties. She wore a red linen sheath dress, so simple it must be very expensive, a single gold strand necklace, and diamond earrings of noticeable size and clarity.

“Mr. Keirnan?” she lisped softly. “Mr. Keirnan” came out as a lazy, seductive roller coaster of a dozen or so syllables, all lovely. There are two primary Southern accents, mine, a flat nasal cracker drawl, and hers, the soft, refined accent of people from Virginia and the Atlantic coastal cities. Or put more simply, I sound like Tommy Lee Jones and she sounded like Scarlett O’Hara. I nodded.

“Come in, please. Jay is waiting for you,” she pulled open the door with her right hand and beckoned me in with her left. There was a small gold filigreed band on the third finger of her left hand. I stepped inside, and onto a thick Oriental carpet. We stood in a long hallway with doors off to each side and a sweeping staircase to my right. She closed the door behind me, and I felt a gun barrel press into my back. “I’m so sorry, but would you mind raising your hands? Are you carrying a gun, Mr. Keirnan?”

I raised my hands and shook my head as she expertly and thoroughly patted me down. “What are these?” she asked, feeling my knee braces.

“Knee braces. I had a bicycling accident many years ago,” I answered.

“You can put your hands down,” she said sweetly. “Thank you for not making a fuss. Some people really get huffy, but Jay gets death threats daily, and we have to take them seriously.”

“What happens when people get huffy?” I said as I turned. She slipped the gun into the drawer of a small wooden table and pushed it shut. There was a bouquet of carnations in a vase on the table, the blooms doubled in the mirror behind it. I watched her pale blue eyes in the reflection.

“It’s usually just the guys. Having a girl search them offends their pride. Then I have to insist,” she answered, smiling with her perfectly lipsticked mouth. “My name is Caron, C-A-R-0-N.” She pronounced it like “Karen,” with a hard C and soft second syllable.

“You drive the Jag,” I guessed.

She looked at me appraisingly. “All those muscles, and a brain, too. I’ll have to keep an eye on you Mr. Keirnan.”

“Top,” I answered.

“Top,” she answered. “Jay will see you now, Top. Please follow me.” She opened a set of French cut-glass doors to our left.

We crossed through a smallish parlor with a fireplace and deep red walls filled with framed scenes depicting Southern life before the War, and into what was once probably the dining room. It appeared to now be Caron’s office, and was dominated by a large modern-looking desk holding an HP computer. The desk sat in a sideways U in front of a huge floor-to-ceiling window. Her desktop held no pictures or personal items at all.

Facing the desk across the room was a wall of shelves filled with books. I could see the books were shelved two deep, English style. Against the far wall, beside a painted door, sat a row of black metal Steelcase filing cabinets, the shallow kind where the files run perpendicular to the wall. On them were neat stacks of papers. From a quick glance, they appeared to be academic submissions in various stages of preparation and editing.

She caught my look. “Jay still edits a journal on Southern history. They haven’t taken that away yet,” she said tightly. Walking briskly past me to the door, she tapped lightly and without waiting for a reply, opened the door. She stepped through and stood to the side, announcing me, “Professor Pope-Scott, Top Keirnan.”

“One moment, Caron, Mr. Keirnan,” said the man sitting at the desk with his back to us, tapping on a keyboard on the credenza. While we waited for him to finish pecking in his message, I looked around curiously. The corner room we stood in was blindingly bright, partly because of the yellow paint and white trim, but also because of the huge windows that filled the two outside walls. The wall behind me held four framed certificates, diplomas from Emory and Harvard, a 1991 Pulitzer Prize, and an appointment to the Latham Chair. The last certificate was hung upside down. Every frame was perfectly aligned.

Against the inside wall to my right stood a row of flags on poles. In the midst of the flags, about halfway down, squatted a horizontal, glass-topped display case about four feet square. There was also the walnut desk and matching credenza, several tables filled with neat stacks of books, magazines, and papers, and two high-backed upholstered chairs.

Several minutes later Pope-Scott finished his e-mail, sighed and stood. He turned, and I saw a handsome fortyish man, perhaps six three or four, with rounded shoulders and a thick shapeless waist. His hair was thick and wavy, brown streaked with gray, and he wore it long and combed back. He dressed in a dark, woody sport coat, cream-colored button-down shirt, and crisply creased brown slacks. Instead of a tie, he wore a brown and red paisley cravat. In the pocket of his sport coat was a neatly folded solid red silk kerchief. The clothes looked fashionable and new, but the overall effect was that of a Victorian fop.

The professor stepped out from behind the desk and sailed across the room toward me, head back, back stiff, smile beaming, and right hand outstretched. On his other hand were a large pinky ring with the Harvard crest, and a small filigreed wedding band, just like the one Caron wore. The hand I shook was soft and dry.

“Mr. Keirnan, delighted to make your acquaintance,” he said. “Positively delighted.”

“Bullet-proof glass, Professor?” I asked, nodding to the windows, although I knew the answer from the thickness and slightly bluish cast of the glass. The question was just theater, intended to reinforce the mercenary stereotype.

“Why, yes, sir. How did you ever know? And call me Jay, Mr. Keirnan, please. I insist,” he said. Listening to his exaggerated Southern phrasing and syrupy accent, I realized I might not be the only one playing to type. “Do you do a lot of this?”

“How can I help you, Professor?” I answered. I didn’t want to explain that I had done a lot of this, before my ex-employer Shaw’s Mercantile Marine had fired me. Somehow I didn’t think telling Pope-Scott that I now earned my living as a librarian would build client confidence. Behind me I heard the click of Caron’s heels on the small stretch of hardwood floor between the thick carpet in this room and the one in her office. She didn’t close the door.

Pope-Scott looked a bit lost at my question. He gave a quick sideways glance toward the open door that led to Caron, looked back at me and pursed his lips. After a moment he answered, “Well, how refreshingly direct. I fear I am not that used to directness, being an academic and a historian at that. Indeed, I myself have not had great success with directness.” He laughed at his own joke. His laugh was a horsey thing that bared his top teeth and threw his head back.

“Please, sir, sit. Can I offer you coffee?” I nodded and he called in a slightly raised voice, “Caron, would you mind? And if we have any pastries or something, that would be absolutely delightful, my dear.” He led me to the two chairs in front of the desk and turned them so they faced each other. He placed me in the one with its back to the window, facing the row of flags and the glass-topped case. “How’s this?”

“Fine, thank you,” I said.

He sat, crossed his legs at the knee and eyed me carefully. “Are you comfortable, Mr. Keirnan? Pardon me, but you seem to be fidgeting a bit there. Is it the chair? Perhaps that sun on your back is too warm?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Are you sure? Perhaps you’d rather have herbal tea, something without caffeine?” He raised his hand to signal Caron.

“I’m fine, really,” I said. I didn’t explain that with the adrenaline rushing through my blood vessels like a subway train through a dark tunnel, it was almost impossible for me to sit still. I willed my legs to stop bouncing, and laced my fingers tightly in my lap. There was nothing I could do about the tic under my left eye.

He didn’t appear completely convinced, but decided to drop it, and instead said, “Well, let us be direct. Mr. Keirnan, I need you to recover the flag stolen from that case, stolen by my cousin, Styrell Wooten.”

“Why did he steal it?” I asked, leaving aside for a moment the question of how anyone managed to steal something from a building with deadbolted steel doors, inch-thick glass, and an expensive camera system.

“Why to sell it, of course, sir. Its value is incalculable. Any number of collectors would pay millions for it. Millions,” he said with emphasis.

He paused and then melodramatically touched a finger to his lips and rolled his eyes skyward, before extending his hands, palms outward toward me. “Wait, let me take a step back.”

He dropped his hands to his knee and leaned forward. “What do you know about the Confederacy, Mr. Keirnan?” I hesitated, debating whether or not to admit that my family had been in the South for two hundred years and two of my great, great, great-grandfathers had fought for the 25th Georgia under Johnston. Before I decided, his hands flew up, he uncrossed his legs and bounced to his feet, “Perhaps a quick history lesson would help.”

He eagerly strode to the row of flags and straightened. Caron brought in the coffee, a bamboo tray holding a frail china pot and two matching cups and saucers, a tiny pitcher of milk, a small bowl of Equal artificial sweetener packets and two spoons. On the side of each saucer next to the cups were two Fig Newton cookies. Pope-Scott stood waiting impatiently, coffee forgotten. As Caron sk>od, she turned quickly away and I thought I saw a tear leak down one cheek.

“Mr. Keirnan, let me tell you about the Bloody Red Rag, the battle flag used to staunch the blood from General Stonewall Jackson’s mortal wounds, arguably the most important artifact remaining from the War Between the States.”

I pointed at the squat case and raised my eyebrows. He nodded, and held up a finger to keep me from interrupting his flow, “Let us start our discussion on that fateful day in May of 1863.”

When the university had appointed him to the chair eleven years ago, the wunderkind Pope-Scott had just won a wheelbarrow full of prizes, including a Pulitzer for his first book, Johnnycake: The Scotch-Irish in America. His appointment by the university made him the youngest chaired professor at the University of Georgia since World War I and one of the most popular-his lectures were standing-room only.

But then he’d written Dixiecaust, which critics called “a rancid mix of half-lies and pseudohistory” and my personal favorite, “the Mein Kampf of the trailer park set.” Supposedly, the university lost one hundred million dollars in alumni and corporate donations the first year after Dixiecaustwas published. And because Pope-Scott had tenure, there was not one darn thing they could do about it. Except try to pretend he didn’t exist. So Pope-Scott now gave lectures in his office to audiences of one while his wife cried in the office next door.

My mini-course on Civil War history took two hours. He was a pretty good speaker, and if he was rusty now, he must have been something when he was in lecturing shape. I learned a great deal about the strange and brilliant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson but very little that might help get the flag back.

At the end of the lecture, we left it that I would confer with my partner and get back on whether we thought we could help them. I promised to drop by the next day at the same time with a decision, and if the decision was “Yes,” spend some time getting started. As Caron closed the big door, it was clear from the look in her eyes that she never expected to see me again.

I eased up the driveway with both windows rolled down, and a hot humorless breeze cut through the cab. I didn’t bother to turn on the air conditioner because I was only going to the bank, a few blocks away. Suddenly a horn blared, tires squealed, and I saw a red BMW whip across the near lane of traffic and into the driveway, spraying a hatful of the white marble pebbles across the immaculate lawn. I stood on my brakes and slid an inch or two on the loose surface as the BMW skidded to a stop a foot or so from the front bumper of my pickup.

The woman driving threw a fist with one finger extended skyward at whoever had blown the horn. She climbed out of the convertible, slammed the door emphatically, stood and raked her thick curly hair back over her head. Walking around to the driver’s side of the pickup, she dropped her large, round sunglasses down her beautiful nose. Gillie Marcianello Lynfield stands five ten in stocking feet, and her eyes were level with mine. She leaned on the door, bringing her face a quarter inch too close for comfort. She knew it.

“Hi, Top. I thought it was you,” she said. “Long time no see.”

“How do you walk in gravel with three-inch spike heels?”

“We’ve had this discussion before,” she said.

“I don’t remember the answer, if I got one,” I said.

“So how are you? How’s Benny? Maggie?”

“Fine, Gillie. How are George and the kids?”

“They’re good, real good,” she drawled. “Robbie’s enrolled in the Christian Academy out on 441 now. He likes it real well. He’s got a teacher that seems to be taking some interest in him. Finally. And he gets along with all the kids in his class. The baby’s started doing that thing they do before they crawl, you know, where they scoot around on their butt. So she’ll be hell on wheels here before long. And George is George.” Her broad smile cut big dimples into her cheeks. Gillie had been the second person I’d hired when I’d started Polymath. For five years we’d been partners in building up the business.

I started the company as a front, a way to get a W-2 for the IRS, but it’s become a real business with a building full of computers and real employees paying real taxes. Gillie helped me build up Polymath, and now her new company, AWS Research, is our largest competitor. AWS, like Polymath, is in the business of fact-checking manuscripts, speeches, and the like. Most of the revenue comes from correctly rewording and attributing quotes.

Take “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Last year a national newspaper ran a story attributing it to Lincoln. People usually think that quote comes from the Bible because it’s got that Old Testament plague-pestilence-and-mutilation ring to it. Which isn’t that far off. It was actually said in 1523 by Erasmus, the Dutch religious philosopher. Had the paper called Polymath, we would have told them that and sent them a bill for a hundred dollars. The newspaper fact checker had probably gotten lazy and searched the quote on the Internet, the world’s largest source of IRIT, information that really isn’t true.

Most of our researchers work in the big libraries at the University of Georgia as their primary job and for me on the side. What we do ranges from checking a single quote for a speechwriter to completely fact-checking manuscripts. We have over a hundred semiregular clients, and have annual contracts with a dozen or so Fortune 500 companies, publishers, management consultancies, and law firms. At least we had annual contracts with a dozen or so large companies; now we have half that.

“How’s business?” she said on cue. She bit her lower lip and smiled and leaned an inch closer. I tried not to look down her scoop-necked blouse at the swell of her breasts. I felt a disloyal stirring in my Jeans.

“Not too good,” I admitted.

“You shouldn’t have fired me. I wouldn’t have founded AWS and taken all your clients.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to steal money that I was getting paid to deliver to an insane drug boss and I wouldn’t have had to fire you,” I said.

“You should have let us make some real money at Polymath and I wouldn’t have had to steal,” she said.

I shook my head, tired of the exchange. “Speaking of money, I’m going over to the bank. There’s some problem with the account. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

She smiled and shrugged philosophically. I saw a bead of sweat start on the corner of her hairline and leak down. “Aren’t you hot standing out in the sun like that?” I asked.

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t worry about me. Marcianellos are genetically designed for the hot weather. Good Neapolitan olive skin.”

I looked in the mirror and saw Caron standing at the window, staring out at us. “I need to get going, Gillie. Glad to hear your family is doing well.”

“Fuck you, Top,” she said sweetly. She spun around and marched back to her car, climbing in and quickly backing out onto Lumpkin without looking. A tan truck with a landscaping logo on the side slammed on its brakes. The trailer it towed jackknifed and slid sideways four feet. Behind it a young woman in a Hyundai compact screeched to a halt, missing the trailer by a millimeter. She sat, her mouth opening and closing like a guppy, her hands in a death grip on the wheel. Gillie peeled out without looking back.

Jeff Nelson was a large, heavy-set man, a few years younger than my early thirties. He wore a short-sleeved yellow shirt that struggled to stay tucked into his khaki pants, a brown patterned tie, brown loafers, and horn-rimmed glasses. His hair was blond and thinning and fell unbankerlike over his forehead. His round, smooth face bore a strong resemblance to the Gerber Baby.

I’d been sitting a few minutes when he came and fetched me from the small waiting area. “Welcome to Fourth Federal, Mr. Keirnan. Great to finally meet you. I’m Jeff,” he said. I shook his hand.

“Call me Top, Jeff, everyone does. Give me one minute, there’s a quote I want to write down,” I held the People magazine open with one hand and with the other scribbled a few words on the outside of the ochre folder that contained Polymath’s latest bank statements. We keep our own proprietary database of quotes in addition to dozens of books and databases. While I wrote, Jeff shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.

“Mr. Greenfell is waiting for us,” he said. “Let’s go this way, please.” We weaved our way back through a maze of small cubicles demarcated by chest-high dividers. From the ceiling of the big room hung a dozen or so small white signs, with titles like “Corporate,” “Small Business,” and “Trade/Forex.”

Each cubicle we passed had a small nameplate, including one that read, “J. Nelson, Relationship Banker.” I glanced inside and saw a neat desk and a small sideboard with a computer. The screen displayed a news page with a picture of a man covered in blood standing in front of smoking rubble. I’d seen the picture a dozen times. The man in the picture was a doctor at an abortion clinic, and the latest victim of the serial bomber who called himself the Sword of Michael. On the desk sat a gold-framed family portrait. At a quick glance, the Nelsons had an infant and a toddler, and she and the kids were also blond. The only other personal touch I could see was a blue back-support resting on the dark gray chair.

We worked our way over to a small glassed-in office in the corner. Inside sat a thin man wearing a stiff blue pin-striped suit, a blue and red regimental tie, and a white cotton button-down shirt that was carefully pressed, but unstarched, meaning Mr. Greenfell still ironed his own shirts. Probably one promotion away from sending them out, two away from once a week dropping off a bag of shoes off to be shined. We gazed at the top of his head as he used a yellow marker to carefully highlight sentences in a densely worded contract. Jeff tapped on the metal door frame with his knuckles, “Mr. Greenfell?”

The man looked up. His face was thin and he wore a very serious expression, possibly to disguise that he was no older than Nelson. “Please, come in. Sit down,” he said, motioning to two chairs in the small space in front of his desk. Jeff bumped his way into the chair closest to the wall. When we’d set up the account five years ago, there had been a different person in this office, and instead of Jeff, we’d been assigned to a woman named Naomi, and everyone had been smiling and we’d been offered iced tea. Today, even Jeff tried to look somber.

“Tha. . .