Chaingang (9 page)

He nursed an Oly Light, paper propped on the wheel in front of him, back to the offices, and angled the rearview so he could watch the door of Drexel Commodity Futures.

For once his timing was okay, and after about forty minutes he saw Dave in the doorway speaking to someone, and he was out of the car and moving.

“Yo."

“Hey, Royce. I was just about to get back to you, babe. Sorry!” Big lying smile on his face.

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Dave. We got to talk, hoss."

“Oh, um—wow!” He glanced furtively at his wrist. “I've got to see this guy, babe. Let me call you tonight."

“What the fuck you pulling on me, man?” He couldn't help it. He was totally torqued. “We've got a deal."

“Absolutely. Not here,” he begged him with his tone and eyes, pleading Royce to go away. “Not the time or place."

“How many times I gotta phone?"

“You don't understand, Royce."

“That's right.” His throat felt so dry.

“I'm in a helluva bind.” Drexel spoke quietly. “I can't come up with it. I just got hosed."

"You
the one don't understand. You don't do that. You don't fuck this kind of a deal over. You
got
to come up with it!"

“I'm into other people, too. Royce. I'm in a world of trouble. I ... I got in over my head."

“How dare you tell me that shit. You let me stick my dick into something this heavy and you tell me you're over your head? What the fuck is wrong with you?” He was trying to whisper, and it was coming out like a whine. He could see the deal dead in Drexel's yuppie eyes. “Sell your fucking house, and cars. You got to get me out from under this."

“It's gone. I've already mortgaged my house. I'm down the tubes, Royce. I just got in too deep. Listen—I'll call you tonight. I'll explain—"

“You can't explain shit. You can't explain your way out of something like this, bud. Get real."

“Well, it ain't happening,” he said, in mock tough guy. Hawthorne wanted to throw him up against the wall of the building. It ain't happening. Drexel turned, starting off. No good-bye.

“You got some set of balls on you for a fucking wimpy, no-dick
pussy!"
He was out of control. Fuck it.

He shrugged with his body and his face. “I'm—"

“Yeah. I know. You're sorry. You're that, all right. Fuck.” He didn't know what to do next. Go in the bank and try to move the weight in there? First Bank of Waterton was notoriously loose in their SBLs, and after all—wasn't he a small businessman? It wouldn't be like he didn't have the collateral.

He watched David Drexel get into his big car. Money in the bank. It couldn't have gone south like this. Jeezus—how much bad luck does somebody have to have?

He turned the corner of the bank, walking, nodding hello to people he'd known all his life. Would P. J. Thatcher, the State Farm man, come to his funeral when Happy and Luis finished with him? he wondered as he passed the insurance office. He needed somebody who had some serious bucks to get him temporarily off this dangerous tenterhook.

He saw Myrna Hyams at a desk and opened the door to Perkins Realty.

“Hi.” She'd been with Sam for a long time and wore her concern on her face.

“Hi, Myrna. I don't guess you've heard anything new?"

“Not a word."

“Does everybody in town know he's disappeared, do you suppose?"

“They will tomorrow. I gave Jake at the
Weekly Dispatch
the details just a while ago. They put the paper out tomorrow.” The
Weekly Dispatch
was printed in Maysburg, and this would be big news—a pillar of the community missing.

“Did you get those telephone bills ready?” Mary had told Myrna that he was “helping the family” look for Sam.

“Yes, sir,” she said, glumly. “I couldn't think of anything I haven't already said. I just can't imagine what has happened to Mr. Sam."

He couldn't think what to say, so he just shook his head by way of commiseration. Royce wondered who'd look for him if he disappeared.

Mary Perkins was working her way back down North Main with the handbills. She went in Judy's, the town's most popular cafe, and spotted a woman she knew.

“Hi, Francie."

“Howdy, Mary,” a heavyset woman said from behind the cash register, a look of condolence immediately wrinkling her plump, friendly features with concern. “It's awful about Sam. Have you heard any news?"

“No.” Mary showed the woman a stack of pages she'd just run off across the street at the bank. “Would you all mind handing these out for me?” They were reward announcements that showed Sam's photograph, followed by a photocopy of the account of his disappearance that had run in the
Weekly Dispatch
that morning.

“Of course not. I'll make sure they get handed out myself,” Francie assured her, glad to help. “I sure hope Sam's okay.” She had clearly written him off.

Mary thanked her and left, working her way on down North Main. She, too, had a very bad feeling now. She'd already caught herself several times as she spoke of her husband in the past tense. Too much time had gone by.

She worked her way down the block, leaving more of the reward handbills at General Discount, the doctor's office, and O'Connor GMC Motors. She'd parked their car on Maple, and she went back to rest a minute and regroup. The plan was to get more posters and work her way on out South Main. She unlocked the car, got in, and looked at Sam's likeness from a recent photo.

REWARD

A substantial cash reward will be paid to anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Sam Perkins, 33, of 911 South Main in Waterton, who has been missing since the morning of Friday, October 5, when he was believed to have been abducted from the parking lot of Perkins Realty.

Anyone having information as to his disappearance or his present whereabouts should contact Martin W. Kerns, Chief of Police, Waterton Office of Public Safety, 555-9191 or 555-3017.

Mary's own number had been added to the newspaper account. She only just now noticed that the pasteup had not been trimmed of all its extraneous information. There was a filler line that the paper had run across the bottom, and she'd left it on. In tiny print at the bottom of the announcement it read:

“Support the Maysburg Eagles!"

Mary forced herself into action and started the car, pulling around the corner and parking halfway down the block. She gathered up a big armful of handbills and went in the first building down at the corner, Wilma's Hair Salon.

Kristi Devere was cutting someone's hair, and there was another lady under a dryer. Mary couldn't place the woman she was working on, but the woman acted like she knew Mary. She asked Kristi if she could leave some of the posters of Sam, and was turning to leave when the woman said, in a well-meaning tone, “I know exactly what you're going through, dear."

“Oh.” She had no idea who the woman was. A pleasant-looking bottle blonde of mysterious years, but clearly on the high side of middle age.

“I lost my Stanley and I didn't think I was ever going to get over it. Thirty-five years.” Kristi stopped and looked at her customer. “It's terrible to have a husband killed."

“Nobody knows that, Clarisse,” Kristi said gently.

“Of course they don't. But you know, if your husband gets Alzheimer's or something, and he's elderly, or in bad health, or he has a stroke—you know—” She needed to talk about it.

“Sure.” Mary wanted to get moving. Clarisse? Not Clarisse Pendleton? Must be. She vaguely remembered her husband had been killed in a car accident. A drunk driver.

“We had our kids grown and out of the house. Doing well. Our grandchildren were healthy. We had our financial situation—you know—comfortable. I mean, we weren't wealthy...” Huge diamonds flashed on an expressive, wrinkled hand.

“Mm-hm."

“I couldn't go in a room in the house without seeing something of Stanley's. I finally had to just box up everything and have Goodwill get it. All his beautiful suits. I couldn't stand it. I cried every time I came in the house. I couldn't fix a meal. I'd open the refrigerator and just break down. I'd find some little note or something in one of my purses. My heart broke ten times a day. You know—you lose someone to cancer, it's awful. But everyone loses loved ones to heart disease, cancer, things like that. To have something like this—"

“Bye bye, Mary,” Kristi said. “Good luck, hon.” Giving her a chance to thank them both and quickly start out the door.

“Holidays are the worst—” she could hear the woman call out to her back as the door mercifully closed.

NORTH OF WATERTON, MISSOURI

“
M
agic Silo. Crossing plowed ground to barnyard. Repeat. Magic Silo. Crossing plowed ground to barnyard.” The words register deep in the lion's brain salad. A radio spits noise.

“That's a rog, Charlie Charlie November. Magic Silo out.” Trying to fight his way out of the haze of tranqs. Wordscreen wrestles for information. Sorts through call signs: Wicked Trade. Mad Rover. Mud Puppy. Magic Silo does not connect.

Sees the steel. Chains. Feels the cold. Senses loss of equilibrium. Turbulence of some kind. Perhaps he is in Vietnam, on the way to an unknown LZ with the call sign Magic Silo. A bumpy ride, in this UH-1. The slick shudders in a loud eggbeater machine-gun flatulence of turbine whomp. But if this is a bird, where is the cocky pilot? The absentee door gunner? The copilot? No arrogant crew chief speaks. He replays a night insertion: unmarked skinships approaching LZ Quebec-Tulsa, filed as LZ: field expedient.

His body shrugs through layers of fog. Tests the chains reflexively. He is immobilized, but he can hear a radio and a single voice. If the pilot is tantalizingly alone, this is golden data—a neck snaps like rotten wood in his memory and he wants to smile, but the huge face is frozen.

There is the ruck. He realizes he must be hallucinating. His duffel and weapons case! A rush of joy surges through his bloodstream.

The presence of something else washes over him and he is back at Quebec-Tulsa, drag man on a squad-strength spike team. Grabbing ass through the sawgrass. Ten ground-pounders double-timing into the bad bush: trip flares, mines, frags, ammo, det gear, web gear, warm bods sheep-dipped (sanitized), night-fightered in camouflage, every jingly thing taped down.

Daniel Bunkowski is loaded for bear. A backbreaking ruck, X'ed bandoliers of ammo, det cord, wire, and assorted gear for his precious “pies,” streaming blast-furnace sweat and killer karma, death out the bazonga.

“Chaingang” he is called—out of earshot—existing nowhere on paper, core name-taker for USMACVSAUCOG, a ghost unit created in the pages of an NSC “action memorandum” to the Joint Chiefs, a “NONSKID JACKS” in jargonspeak: the verbalization of
N
ational
S
ecurity
C
ouncil
D
irective to the
J
oint
C
hiefs of
S
taff.

It was sanctioned by a few words found amid the verbiage of the National Security Act, which mandated an outfit of its type to perform “such functions and duties affecting the national security as the National Security Council may direct."

The benign-sounding tongue twister of an acronym was said to stand for the
U
nited
S
tates
M
ilitary
A
ssistance
C
ommand
V
ietnam/
S
pecial
A
dvisory
U
nit of the
C
ombined
O
perations
G
roup.

No Army 201. No MOS. No unit clearance. No name, rank, serial number on file. Not even the tradecraft lie of a civilian cover or private sector gig for a legend. Just this huge loose and evil cannon to pull pitch and plow any time the mood strikes.

Dr. Norman's Alpha Group II has frozen his brain. He is back in the Nam, and deep inside his own madness:

Life drips. It drips down through the tertiary foliage of the triple canopy, nourishing, feeding the teeming green. Day slowly comes with time's passage, and yesterday's heat, still trapped down in this leafy, hot world, rises to a boil as the plant life radiates intense warmth out through the stink of rotting vegetation. More warmth builds inside the moist, living greenhouse, catches, builds, cools with the coming night, but never cooling enough, layering heat upon itself, baking again, feeding, dripping, nourishing. Nightfall again, coming soon.

The spike team enters this blast furnace of green heat, moving carefully through the alien world. It reeks with rotting plants, sweltering jungle, an oppressive and stifling humidity index that cannot be described, and a thousand and one organic perils. Heat prostration and deadly dehydration are among the more benign life-threatening dangers.

They eyeball pathways and cart trails and streams, busting jungle, working their way up-country.

“Beaucoup VC,” the point man whispers. The man who walks his slack moves his index finger closer to the oily trigger of his piece, whispering to the man behind him.

“Victor Charles.” This man turns to the RTO and warns him as he points. The radioman looks.

"Charlie."

The word filters back through the spike team, but they do not tell the drag man. He is far behind, busting jungle at his own pace. Stopping now beside a cart trail where the smell of the little people fills him with thrilling anticipation. He starts moving backward, waddling away from the trail, his huge body atingle with excitement as he covers his tracks, backing into seemingly impenetrable jungle.

Invisible now, motionless, he stands and begins the slowing, stilling of his vital signs. Breathing in the killer heat like some enormous jungle plant, thriving on the suffocating humidity, drinking it in as he shifts down into an almost subhuman stillness, a wide and frightening parody of a grin distorting his features as he listens to the noisy bumblers move farther away.

The spike team breaks through the triple-canopied green, following the cart trail through truck gardens and a ruined villa, moving toward a rubber tree wood line.

“Yo, Rodriguez."

“Say?” Rodriguez is the last man.

“What happened to Chaingang?"

“Fucked if I know, Sarge.” He shrugs. “He's back there somewhere. Back in the jungle."