Big Mango (9786167611037) (7 page)

“You and your squad were the last people we
know of who had that money,” he said.

Eddie was still drawing a complete blank when
Reidy suddenly reared all the way back in his chair, spread his
arms, and smiled broadly.

“We just want you to tell us what you did
with it, Eddie.”

WINNEBAGO
sucked hard on the
butt of his Camel then without breaking stride flicked it across
the sidewalk into a dark green garbage bin. “So what did you tell
them?” he asked Eddie as they crossed Union Street against the
light.

“The truth. I told them they had bad
information. We were on the embassy walls kicking people down until
we lifted out, not guarding crates full of money.”

“Did they believe you?”

“Of course not.”

Eddie and Winnebago were walking down
Columbus into North Beach, the fiercely Italian quarter of the city
that surrounded Washington Square.

“But it’s true, Eddie. We weren’t guarding
any damned money.”

“You sure of that?”

“Of course I’m sure. I know what money looks
like.”

“Somebody sure as hell thinks we know
something about it.”

“Yeah, so?”

Eddie shoved his hands deeper into the
pockets of his leather jacket as they crossed the square toward the
wedding-cake towers of St. Peter and Paul Cathedral.

“Maybe they’re right, Winnebago.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m just saying that maybe we do know
something about it. Sometimes you know things you don’t know you
know.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. That doesn’t make
sense even to me.”

Eddie watched a few tentacles of fog licking
at the foot of Columbus where it ended at Fisherman’s Wharf. Out in
the middle of the bay, Alcatraz was already lost in a cotton-candy
swirl. In another hour or two, Eddie suspected, a lumpy flood would
submerge the city’s hills, leaving only the tops of buildings
poking out here and there, buoys posting the hazards in a
diaphanous sea of white.

Eddie had always thought that its famous fogs
suited San Francisco perfectly. The city was a wispy, fragile
place, a watercolor world where everything was always slightly out
of focus. When Eddie looked at it that way, he figured San
Francisco was exactly the right place for those damned photographs
to turn up.

“We were only grunts, Winnebago. Half the
time we didn’t know where we were and the other half we didn’t know
what we were doing there.”

When Eddie continued, he lowered his voice.
He felt silly doing it, but he just couldn’t help it.

“Maybe we were around that money without
knowing it.”

Winnebago started to say something, but Eddie
waved him off.

“Think about it. First somebody sends me
those two pictures. Then, a couple of days later, the Secret
Service shows up in my office and asks me what we did with the
$400,000,000 we were guarding when Saigon collapsed. That can’t
just be a coincidence. It’s all got to be connected somehow, and if
it is…” Eddie reached across with his forefinger and tapped
Winnebago on the shoulder, “then somebody other than the Secret
Service thinks we know something about that money, too.”

They reached the other side of the square and
Eddie led the way to an empty bench facing the cathedral. They sat
in silence for a while, but then Winnebago scratched the back of
his neck and cleared his throat.

“Maybe that wasn’t really the Secret Service.
Maybe those guys were the same people who sent the pictures,” he
said.

“Yeah, I wondered about that at first, too.
But what sense would it make?” Eddie looked at his watch. “Anyway,
Wuntz can probably find out. He said he’d be here by nine.”

“Are you sure you want to tell him about
this, Eddie?”

Eddie glanced over at Winnebago. “When did
you develop such a suspicious streak?”

“The minute I saw that red circle around my
head.”

Eddie thought back to what he had seen in
Wuntz’s face when he talked about his son. He never thought much
before about how far he would be willing to trust Wuntz if he ever
had to, but now he knew. He just couldn’t work out how to explain
it to Winnebago.

“Don’t worry about Wuntz,” Eddie said. “He’s
okay.”

Eddie fell silent again, not sure he had said
enough yet not knowing what else to say, but Winnebago didn’t seem
to mind.

“You think that maybe it’s all just
bullshit?” Winnebago asked after a while. “How could that much
money just disappear anyway? It would have to weigh a ton.”

“More like ten.”

“Ten tons?
Of money?”

Eddie nodded and Winnebago gave a low whistle
under his breath.

“It’s a real shame about the captain,”
Winnebago went on after a respectful pause. “He could have
straightened all this out, I’ll bet.”

Eddie had been trying not to think too much
about Austin, but the picture of his caved-in skull and broken body
dumped in a Bangkok mud-hole kept coming back to him with unhappy
clarity.

“Say, Eddie, you don’t think the captain
might’ve been killed because…”

Eddie turned his head very slowly and gave
Winnebago a dead-eyed stare.

“Oh, man, like I really want to hear that
kind of shit,” Winnebago mumbled, looking away.

A dirty, brown Ford pulled into a handicapped
parking slot a little off to their left and Wuntz blinked his
lights at them. He got out, ambled slowly over to the bench, and
sat down.

“You’re not handicapped,” Eddie observed.

“Sure I am,” Wuntz replied, smiling
pleasantly. “I’m psychotic.”

Eddie looked thoughtful and Wuntz jabbed a
thumb toward Winnebago. “Who’s he?”

“He’s the guy who was circled in the second
picture.”

Winnebago leaned around Eddie and offered
Wuntz his hand. “I’m Winnebago Jones.”

“You a half Chinaman or something?” Wuntz
asked as they shook.

“I’m a Native American,” Winnebago replied,
and Eddie gave him a long look.

“So let’s have whatever this hot news is,”
Wuntz said as he leaned back and laced his fingers together behind
his head. “The night’s passing and I’ve got hookers to harass.”

While they all pondered the twin towers of
St. Peter and Paul’s, glistening so whitely in their bath of
powerful floodlights that they seemed achromatic, Eddie told Wuntz
the story his visitors had told him.

“No fucking shit,” Wuntz said when Eddie
finished.

“Do you think you could find out if these
guys were kosher, Wuntz?”

“Didn’t their ID look real?”

“Sure they did, but so does that Russian
passport I bought in Hong Kong last year.”

“You sure you don’t know anything about the
money they were asking about?”

“I’ve never lied to you before, Wuntz.”

“No, but we’ve never talked about
$400,000,000 before either.”

“We’re not talking about $400,000,000 now.
We’re talking about some people who claim they’re the Secret
Service and who think I know where $400,000,000 might be. Which I
don’t.”

Wuntz looked hard at Eddie, but he didn’t say
anything. After a moment he pulled a telephone from the inside
pocket of his jacket, pushed himself to his feet, and walked across
the square out of earshot while he dialed.

Winnebago lit a Camel and smoked silently.
Eddie slouched down on the bench, stretched out his legs, and
crossed his ankles. Neither spoke while they waited for Wuntz.
Winnebago finished his first cigarette and was most of the way
through another before Wuntz came back.

“It’s illegal to smoke almost everywhere in
San Francisco these days,” he said as he settled back onto the
bench and returned his phone to his pocket.

“Then naturally I’ll put this out right
away,” Winnebago replied as he offered Wuntz a cigarette.

Wuntz took it and bent forward so Winnebago
could give him a light with his old Zippo. Inhaling deeply and
savoring the taste, Wuntz gave out with a deep sigh that seemed to
chase the smoke away.

“Your visitors were legit. This guy Reidy is
in charge of some kind of task force at the Treasury Department
that no one seems to know much about. They gave it a really weird
name though. Why would they name a federal task force after an old
Dean Martin song?”

Eddie looked puzzled. “What are you talking
about, Wuntz?”

“Volare, it’s called. Task Force Volare. You
know…”

Wuntz tilted his head back, and to Eddie’s
complete astonishment began to sing in a remarkably rich and
vibrant baritone.

Volare …oh oh
E contare…oh oh oh oh
No wonder my happy heart sings
Your love has…

An elderly Chinese woman shuffling past
swivelled her head to stare at Wuntz and he slid into a chastened
silence.

“It’s Voltaire, Wuntz,” Eddie said
quietly.

“No, man. I’ve heard the song a thousand
times. It’s Volare.”

“Not the song. The name of the task force.
It’s called Voltaire.”

Wuntz looked baffled. “What’s a
Voltaire?”

“Jesus,” Winnebago grunted, “don’t cops read
anything but comic books? Voltaire was a French writer noted for
his satire who was the soul of the eighteenth-century French
enlightenment.”

Wuntz looked hurt. “Myself, I don’t think the
French are all that enlightened
now
. Christ knows what they
must have been like in the eighteenth century.”

Winnebago tried to catch Eddie’s eye, but
Eddie was chewing his lip and looking off into the night.

“Anyway,” Wuntz went on, clearing his
throat,”what’s Voltaire or Volare or whatever the fuck it is
supposed to mean?” He addressed the question to Eddie,
conspicuously ignoring Winnebago.

“Reidy said the plan to get the money out of
Vietnam before the North Vietnamese took over was called Operation
Voltaire.”

“It was, huh?” Wuntz thought about that for a
moment. “And who was doing this planning?”

“A marine captain.”

“Not—”

“Yeah, him.”

Wuntz was silent for a moment and then he
asked a question Eddie had already asked himself a couple of times.
“Voltaire doesn’t sound like the name of a military operation to
me. What’s it mean?”

“No idea,” Eddie said.

Winnebago leaned across Eddie, getting as
close to Wuntz as he could. “Voltaire wrote
Candide
in 1759,
one of the masterpieces of—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Wuntz snarled.

“Can you ask your DEA guy if he knows
anything about Reidy’s task force?” Eddie asked Wuntz.

“I think I’ve squeezed all the juice I’m
going to get out of that little fruit. So to speak.”

“I was almost hoping the feds would turn out
to be phonies. If they’re real, the pictures must have come from
somebody else.”

“Yeah, that’s the way I figure it, too,”
Wuntz said, bobbing his head around a little. “I’d say it’s pretty
much a sure thing that you’ve got someone else on your ass about
the same deal.”

“Like who?” Winnebago demanded, stubbing out
his cigarette.

“You want to get something to eat?” Wuntz
asked Eddie, still ignoring Winnebago. He scratched himself and
sniffed the air. “Fuck, that pizza smell down here in North Beach
always drives me crazy.”

“Why would anybody who thought I might know
where the money is send me those pictures?” Eddie asked as if Wuntz
hadn’t spoken. “I don’t see the point.”

“It’s not all that hard to figure out.” Wuntz
sniffed half-heartedly at the air one more time and then sighed in
resignation. “What would you do if you wanted to find out where
something was and the guy who knew wasn’t about to tell you?”

“I guess I’d get someone to slap the guy
around a little. Beat it out of him.”

Winnebago’s eyes went glassy and he reached
for his cigarettes again.

“Nah, that never works,” Wuntz shook his head
firmly. “At least not if the guy has enough incentive to keep his
mouth shut and just take the beating. And I think we can agree here
that the whereabouts of $400,000,000 is a hell of an
incentive.”

“Then how would you get somebody to give up
something like that?”

“You’d have to get into some serious torture
to have any chance at all. Metal pins under the fingernails,
lighted cigarettes on the nuts, that kind of thing.”

Winnebago broke out in a fit of coughing as
he exhaled.

“Then why send those photographs to put me on
guard? Why not just drag me away somewhere and get on with it?”

“Because they’re not going to torture
you.”

“I’m glad you’re sure of that.”

“I am.”

“Then what are they going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Wuntz nodded solemnly. “Nothing.”

“For Christ’s sakes, Wuntz, stop with the
goddamned riddles. Just spell it out for me.”

“They’re trying to spook you.”

“Then they’re doing a hell of a good job so
far.”

“I’m not joking, Eddie.”

Eddie raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You
mean they think the pictures will scare me so badly that when they
come around and ask where the money is I’ll just tell them?”

“I thought you didn’t know where it is.”

“I don’t.”

Wuntz smiled one of those cop smiles that
said he knew a liar when he heard one.

“But they won’t just go away quietly when I
tell them I don’t know anything, will they, Wuntz?”

“Probably not, but I wouldn’t worry about it.
I don’t think anyone’s planning to show up and ask you
anything.”

Eddie just waited for the rest of it this
time and let Wuntz preen a little before he went on, spinning out
his theory.

“They’re trying to make you run.”

Eddie obviously still didn’t get it, so Wuntz
spelled it out, slowly. “Look, if you thought that after all these
years somebody had finally put you together with the missing money
and they were coming to put enough hurt on to make you give it up,
what would you do?”