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Festival of Deaths(105)

By:Jane Haddam


“I understand that,” Gregor said, “but even so—”

“They thought Ronald Reagan was a shill,” Ira explained. “They thought he was a plant. As part of a plot by Planned Parenthood, Ted Kennedy, and the National Education Association. To take over the country.”

“That wasn’t Ronald Reagan,” Gregor said deadpan. “That was Dan Quayle.”

“Let’s not get into Dan Quayle.” Ira Ballard laughed. “Okay. So they sent out this press release and for a while nothing much happened. They seem to have died out in Minnesota. They resurfaced again in Markdale, Arizona, in 1985. This was apparently the result of a move. The founder of the White Knights was a man named Robert Waltrek. He moved to Arizona.”

“And restarted the organization,” Gregor said.

“If it needed to be restarted. He might just have decided to go public again. There were never too many people in the White Knights in Minnesota—four or five—and none of them has resurfaced on the lists of any other racialist organization. In Arizona, Robert did better. He got a group of about thirty people from Arizona and New Mexico.”

“Where did he find that many?”

“Survivalist conventions. Meetings of other organizations. That kind of thing. In 1987, he decided to do something smart—at least, smart for an organization like this looking to add new members. He took out classified advertisements in six different survivalist magazines. They were classics. Our educational system is a mess, Gregor, trust me. Our educational system is doomed.”

“I know,” Gregor said. “What did these advertisements say?”

“They said, ‘WHITE MEN, DEFEND YOUR SKIN.’ In capital letters. And then they went on from there.”

“Wonderful. Then what?”

“Then,” Ira said, “came the convention. The first one, I mean. I told you about the one last April—”

“In Kisco, Oklahoma.”

“Right. Well, they’ve only been holding them in Kisco since Waltrek moved to Kisco. They held the first one in Markdale, Arizona, because that’s where Waltrek was living then. They got a hundred and fifteen people.”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad, and not as good as it was going to get. But close. The thing is, it was right after the convention in Markdale that the trouble started.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The usual kind. On day three of the convention, a bunch of them got drunk and went throwing rocks at the house of the only known black person in Markdale, who turned out not to be black after all but Native American. He also turned out to be a Harvard lawyer. They got caught.”

“Did they get prosecuted?”

“Oh, yes. Prosecuted and sued,” Ira said. “The next year they held their convention fifty miles south, in Hornby, just to stay away from the sheriff. The year after that, they moved to Kisco.”

“How many people did they get in Kisco?”

“A hundred fifty-three,” Ira said. “And that was it, by the way. The first convention in Kisco was in 1990. Every convention since has drawn fewer people. Last April they were back down to double digits.”

“There’s hope for the human race yet.”

“Most of the human race at least knows a loser when they see one,” Ira said. “And these boys are losers, Gregor, it’s pitiful. Anyway, to get to the part you want to hear about. At the Kisco convention in 1991, it was decided to form local chapters in various parts of the country so that White Knights could meet on a regular basis and try to do something about the mess the country is in. One of these chapters was formed by two young men from Philadelphia, Ricky Calverness and Ted Gressom.”

“Wait a minute,” Gregor said. “Let me get a pen.”

What he got was a pencil and a scrap of paper with “Hogrogian Bakery” written on one side of it. John Jackman was still sitting in the living room, eying his coffee suspiciously and looking bored. Gregor waved to him and then sat down at the kitchen table, so that it would be easier to write.

“Give me those names again,” he told Ira Ballard.

“Ricky Calverness,” Ira said, “and Ted Gressom. Calverness is twenty-four. He was jailed last year for three months for punching some guy out in a bar and doing it so well the guy ended up in the hospital for six weeks. That was in West Virginia. Gressom has a somewhat more interesting history. He’s twenty-six. He did two years at the Colby Work Farm for beating the girl he was living with into a coma. And I do mean girl. She was fourteen.”

“They sound like pleasant people,” Gregor said. Colby was the most notorious work farm in all of Georgia—maybe, in law enforcement circles, in all of the United States. Gregor couldn’t remember another person who had been sent there on a domestic violence case. This must have been one hell of a case. Either that, or at least one judge in this system was finally waking up.