Bradford cruised down the route until he found a Burger-Triumph stand, where he dropped the envelope into the trash basket.
There it sat, scuffed and filthy, while Bradford phoned an employee who had never met him.
"It's at the second Burger-Triumph after you get outside Marblehead," said Bradford into the roadside telephone. "Doctor Woldemar Keating of MUT. We want to know who really employs him and why does he phone in wrong information. Then there are two new professors. One is white and one is Oriental. We want to know who employs them and then we want them finished."
Wakefield gave his employee their names. He wondered what the corpses would look like after his employees finished with them.
In his newspaper, he never ran those gruesome sorts of photos. The Boston Blade never pandered to prurient interest. The Boston Blade was the conscience of New England. Also, Bradford Wakefield III did not like blood.
Dr. Woldemar Keating couldn't believe what was happening to him. Four black men, one very large, had come into his Cape Cod home and stretched him over a butcher block table in his kitchen.
One of them had held a can opener with an ugly point. He put it point first to Dr. Keating's navel. The man with the can opener did not talk. The very large man they cañed Bubba did not talk.
The shortest one, with the thin mustache, talked. His name was Dice. Dr. Keating was not sure whether he really had such perfectly white teeth or whether the darkness of his face made them look white. He had the complexion of charcoal.
All four had come through his front door after the big one they called Bubba had knocked it down. Bubba
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had lifted Dr. Keating like a marshmallow and put him on the kitchen table.
"We gonna take out you insides like some lukewarm peas outen a can," said Dice. "We gonna split you up like a popped pork sausage. We gonna spread you greasy white intestines outen you belly like so much spaghetti."
"Yeah," said the big one named Bubba.
"Or we can be nasty," said Dice.
"What could possibly be nastier?" whined Dr. Keating.
"Nasty is we don't use the can opener," said Dice.
"Bubba, he use his hand," said the big one named Bubba. He raised a very large and wide thing with fingers on it. Dr. Keating knew it was a hand because one of those fingers was a thumb. And he could see fingerprints. They looked like pottery swirls on kitchen plates. Bubba must have been seven feet tall. The hand could hide a chessboard.
Bubba took a big flat, thick salad knife and put it between forefinger and pinky with the other two fingers underneath. He pressed up with the two middle fingers. The knife snapped.
"What do you want from me?" asked Dr. Keating. He finally understood.
"We thought you never ask. We wants to know who employ you. Who be the man what pay you?" said Dice.
"Yeah," said Bubba. "Dat what we want."
"MUT pays me," said Dr. Keating.
"Who else?" said Dice.
"No one else."
"We know dere be someone else."
"No one else."
Dice nodded. Dr. Keating felt a sharp pain at his bellybutton. He felt his flesh rip. They were bringing the can opener up, digging his stomach open. He screamed in pain.
"Please, please, please. I get money deposited in my bank account."
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"How long?" asked Dice.
"Many years now, five, six. You can't do this."
"Don't be telling this black man what he can do. Dat be 'fringing on my rights dere," said Dice. "You does that and den I gets mean."
"Yeah," said Bubba.
"Please," begged Dr. Keating.
"Now, I don't wants what you been getting paid for for a long time now. I wants de new thing. Who you working for so you be phoning in wrong information?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. Please."
Dice nodded. The can opener moved up a few more inches to just below the chestbones. The white belly gushed blood like a sausage split by the heat of a fire.
"Last chance 'fore we gets mean," said Dice.
"There's nobody new paying me. No one. I tell you. I swear."
"Too late. Now we be's mean."
Dice stepped away to keep anything from getting on his pure white silk suit with the red handkerchief hanging out of the breast pocket, the red handkerchief that matched Dice's new red shirt and red tie and shiny red shoes with the blue neon socks. He had had to hunt all over Roxbury to get the right neon blue. Most of the stores had only the dull neon. Whoever heard of wearing dull neon blue socks with a red shirt?
Bubba reached into Dr. Keating's belly and the two other men who were holding his arms and legs turned their gaze away. Dice stepped back farther. Sometimes Bubba splattered. Bubba was sloppy.
Crack went the ribs, and Keating's eyes widened in shock. Crack went the backbones, and then there was blankness in the white man's face.
"Okay, Bubba," said Dice. "Let's go. He dead."
But there was more cracking. Bubba was taking out the ribs. Then Bubba went to work on the knees. Bubba crushed the knees in his hands like pine cones mashed in a steel vise.
"Bubba, he be dead a while now, Bubba," said Dice.
Bubba took the legs out of the hip joints. 51
"Bubba," said Dice. "He dead. Time to go, sweet fella."
Bubba went for the head. He liked heads. He liked to press them till the eyes popped out.