'Forgive me, forgive me,' the cab driver begged the Lincoln's occupants sarcastically 
as the limousine swept by. 'I done seen the wrongness of my ways. Or at least I done seen 
the ass end of that truck before we got totalled.' He turned around to Randolph again and 
said comfortably, That's a fair amount of potential forgiveness in one vehicle, wouldn't 
you say? But what do you think of the way I missed that truck? That's sixth sense, that 
is. Kind of a built-in alarm system. Not everybody has that, sixth sense.'
  'I'd honestly prefer it if you'd use your first sense and look where the hell you're 
going,' Randolph told him testily.
  'All right, my friend, no need to get sore,' the driver replied. He turned around 
again, his sweaty shirt skidding on the textured vinyl seat, and switched on the radio. 
It was Anne Murray, singing 'You Needed Me.' He turned the volume up, surmising correctly 
that Randolph would find it irritating.
  Randolph was a heavily built man, tall and big-boned, and in accord with his 
appearance, he was usually placid. He made an ideal president of Clare Cottonseed 
Products, Incorporated, a business in which Southern tempers invariably ran hot to high. 
If he hadn't inherited the presidency from his father, the board would probably have 
chosen him anyway. He never raised his voice above an educated mumble. He played golf, 
and fished, and loved his family. He had grey hair and reminded his junior secretaries of 
Fred MacMurray.
  He enjoyed being nice. He enjoyed settling arguments and making even the least of his 
two thousand employees feel wanted. His nickname at every one of Clare Cottonseed's seven 
processing plants was 'Handy Randy.' He usually smelled slightly of Benson & Hedges pipe 
tobacco. He had a degree in law, two daughters, one son, and a wife called Marmie, whom 
he adored.
  But today he was more than irritated. He was upset, more than upset. His phone had rung 
at 4:30 that morning and he had been called back from his vacation cabin on Lac aux 
Ecorces in the Laurentide forests of Quebec, where only two days earlier he and his 
family had started their three-week summer vacation. It was their first family vacation 
in three years and Randolph's only time off in a year and a half. But late yesterday 
evening fire had broken out at his No.2 cottonseed-processing plant out at Raleigh, in 
the northeast suburbs of Memphis. One process worker had been incinerated. Two other men, 
including the plant's deputy manager, had been asphyxiated by fumes. And the damage to 
the factory itself had so far been estimated at over two million dollars.
  It would have been unthinkable for the company president to remain on vacation in 
Canada, fishing and swimming and buzzing his seaplane around the lakes, no matter how 
much he deserved it.
  To complete Randolph's irritation, his company limousine had failed to show up at the 
Memphis airport. He had tried calling the office from an airport pay phone smelling of 
disinfectant, but it was 7:45 p.m., and there was no response. Eventually - hot, tired 
and dishevelled - he had hailed himself a cab and asked to be driven to Front Street.
  Now they drove west along Adams Avenue. The radio was playing the '59th Street Bridge 
Song.' Randolph hated it. He sat back in his seat, drumming his fingertips against his 
Samsonite briefcase. 'Slow down, you move too fast . . . got to make the morning last . . 
.'The business district was illuminated by that hazy acacia-honey glow special to Memphis 
on summer evenings. The Wolf and the Mississippi rivers, which join at Memphis, were 
turning to liquid ore. The twin arches of the Hernando de Soto Bridge glittered brightly, 
as if offering a pathway to a promised land instead of to nowhere but West Memphis.
  The day's humidity began to ease and surreptitious draughts wavered around the corners 
of office buildings. The breeze that came in through the open taxi window smelled of 
flowers and sweat, and that unmistakable coolness of river.
  They drove along Front Street, known to the citizens of Memphis as Cotton Row. Randolph 
said, 'Here. This is the one.'
  'Clare Cottonseed?' the driver frowned. He wiped the sweat from his furrowed forehead 
with the back of his hand.
  'That's me,' said Randolph.
  'You mean . . . you're Clare Cottonseed?'
  'Handy Randy Clare in person,' Randolph smiled.
  The cab driver reached behind with one meaty arm and opened the door for him. 'Maybe I 
ought to apologize,' he said.
  'Why?'
  'Well, for sounding off, for driving like an idiot.'
  Randolph gave him twenty-five dollars in new bills and waved away the change. 'It's 
hot,' he said. 'We're all acting like idiots.'
  The cab driver counted the money and said, Thanks.' Then, 'Didn't one of your factories 
burn last night? Out at Raleigh?'
  'That's right.'
  'Is that why you're here?'
  "That's right,' Randolph said again. 'I'm supposed to be fishing in Canada.'
  The driver paused for a moment, wiped his forehead again and sniffed. 'You think it was 
deliberate?'
  'Do I think what was deliberate?'
  "The fire. Do you think somebody torched that factory?'
  Randolph stayed where he was, half in and half out of the taxi. 'What did you say that 
for?'
  'I don't know. It's just that some of the people I pick up, they work for other 
cottonseed companies, like Gray-son's, or Towery's, and none of them seem to think that 
Clare's going to be staying in business too long.'
  'Clare is the number-two cottonseed processor after Brooks. Saying that Clare is going 
out of business is like saying that the Ford Motor Company is going out of business.'
  'Sure, but you know how things are.'
  'I'm not so sure I do,' Randolph replied cautiously, although he had a pretty fair idea 
of what the man was trying to suggest. It was no secret in Memphis that Clare Cottonseed 
was a political and economic maverick. All the other big cottonseed processors in the 
area were members of a price-fixing cartel that called itself the Cottonseed Association 
but which Randolph unflatteringly referred to as the Margarine Mafia. Randolph's father, 
Ned Clare, had rarely upset the Association, even though he had always insisted on 
remaining independent. Ned Clare had kept his salad-oil and cattle-cake prices well up in 
line with the Association's, but when Randolph had taken over the company, he had wanted 
to expand and economize and he had introduced a policy of keeping his prices as low as 
possible. The members of the Association - especially Brooks - had made their displeasure 
quite clear. So far, however, their hostility had been expressed politically rather than 
violently, but Randolph had recently begun to wonder when political push might escalate 
into violent shove.
  'Listen,' the cab driver told him, 'I believe in what you're doin', right? I believe in 
free enterprise, free trade. Every man for himself. That's the American Way as far as I'm 
concerned. I mean . . . I'm not sayin' it's a fact that somebody set light to your 
factory. Maybe I'm talkin' out of my ass. But, well, given the circumstances, it ain't 
totally beyond the bounds of possibility, is it?'
  'I don't think I ought to comment on that,' Randolph replied.
  The driver said, 'How would you like it if I kept my ears open? I'm always drivin' them