The Judas Goat (17 page)

“She believe you?”

“No. You buy anything besides booze, like for supper.”

“Naw, man, you was telling me about a place called Bacco’s. Figured you’d like to take me and Kath out and show her you ain’t no degenerate. Treat her to a fine meal. Me too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Let me take a shower.”

“See that, Kath,” Hawk said. “He very clean.” Bacco’s was on the second floor in the old section of Montreal not far from Victoria Square. The cuisine was French Canadian and they had one of the better country pates that I’d eaten. It also had good French bread and Labatt 50 ale. Hawk and I had a very nice time. I was thinking that Kathie probably did not have nice times. Ever. But she was passive and polite while we ate. She’d bought a kind of dungaree suit with a vest and long coat that she was wearing, and her hair was neat and she looked good. Old Montreal was jumping during the Olympics. There was outdoor entertainment in a square nearby, and throngs of young people drinking beer and wine and smoking and listening to the rock music. We got in our rented car and drove back to our rented house. Hawk and Kathie went upstairs to what had become their room. I sat for a while and finished the O’Keefe’s and watched the evening events, wrestling and some of the weightlifting, alone in the rented living room, on the funny old TV set with the illuminated border. At nine o’clock I went to bed. Alone. I hadn’t had much sleep the night before and I was tired. I felt middle-aged. I was lonely. It kept me awake till nine-fifteen. 

We took the subway to the Olympic Stadium. Subway is probably the wrong term. If what I ride occasionally in Boston is a subway, then what we rode in Montreal was not. The stations were immaculate, the trains silent, the service on time. Hawk and I forced a small space for Kathie between us, in the jam of bodies. We changed at Berri Montigny and got off at Viau. Being a supercool sophisticated worldly-wise full-grown hipster, I was unimpressed with the enormous complex around the Olympic Stadium. Just as I was unimpressed with going to the actual, real, live Olympic games. The excited circus feeling in my stomach was merely the manhunter’s natural sensation as he closes in on his quarry. Straight ahead were food pavilions and concessions of one kind or another. Beyond was the Maisonneuve Sports Center, to my right the.Maurice Richard Arena, to my left the Velodrome and, beyond it, looming like the Colosseum, the gray, not quite finished, monumental stadium. Cheering surged up from it. We started up the long winding ramp toward the stadium. As we went I sucked in my stomach. Hawk said, “Kathie say this Zachary a bone-breaker.”

“How big is he?” Hawk said, “Kath?”

“Very big,” she said. “Bigger than me,” I said, “or Hawk?”

“Oh yes. I mean really big.”

“I weigh about two hundred pounds,” I said. “How much would you say he weighs?”

“He weighs three hundred five pounds. I know. I heard him tell Paul one day.” I looked at Hawk. “Three hundred five?”

“But he only six feet seven,” Hawk said. “Is he fat, Kathie?” I was hopeful. “No, not really. He used to be a weightlifter.”

“Well, so, Hawk and I do a lot on the irons.”

“No, I mean like those Russians. You know, a real weightlifter, he was the champion of somewhere.”

“And he looks like a Russian weightlifter?”

“Yes, like that. Paul and he used to watch them on television. He has that fat look that you know is strong.”

“Well, anyway, he won’t be hard to spot.”

“Harder here than most places,” Hawk said. “Yeah. Let’s be careful and not try to put the arm on Alexeev or somebody.” Hawk said, “This dude trying to save Africa too?”

“Yes. He… he hates blacks worse than anyone I’ve seen.”

“That helps,” I said. “You can reason with him, Hawk.”

“I got something under my coat for reasoning.”

“If we run into him we’re going to have trouble shooting. There’s too many people.”

“You think we should wrestle him, maybe?” Hawk said. “You and me good, babe, but we ain’t used to no giants. And we got that other mean little sucker we got to think of.” We were at the gate. We handed in our tickets and then we were inside. There were several tiers. Our tickets were for tier one. I could hear the crowd roaring inside now. I was dying to see. I said, “Hawk, you and Kathie start circling that way, and I’ll go this way. We’ll start at the first level and work up. Be careful. Don’t let Paul spot you first.”

“Or old Zach,” Hawk said. “I be especially careful about Zach.”

“Yeah. We’ll keep working up to the top tier, then start back down again. If you spot them, stay with them. We’ll eventually intersect again as long as we stay in the stadium.” Hawk and Kathie started off. “If you see Zachary,” Hawk said over his shoulder, “and you want to do him in, it okay. You don’t have to wait for me. You free to take him right there.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think you ought to have a shot at the racist bastard.” Hawk went off with Kathie. He seemed to glide. I wasn’t so sure he couldn’t handle Zachary. I went off the other way, trying to glide. I seemed to be doing pretty well. Maybe I could manage Zachary too. I was as ready as I was going to be. Pale blue Levis, white polo shirt, blue suede Adidas with three white stripes, a blue blazer and a plaid cap for disguise. The blazer didn’t go but it provided cover for the gun on my hip. I was tempted to limp a little so people would think I was a competitor, temporarily out of action. Decathlon maybe. No one seemed to be paying me any attention so I didn’t bother. I went up the ramp to the first-level seating. It was better than I had imagined. The stadium seats were colorful, yellow and blue and such, and when I came out of the passageway there was a bright blaze of color. Below the stadium floor was bright green grass, ringed with red running track. Directly below me and near the side of the stadium, girls were doing the long jump. They had on white tops mostly, with large numbers affixed, and very high-cut tight shorts. The electronic scorekeeper was to my left near the pit where the jump finished. Judges in yellow blazers were at the start point, the take-off line, and the pit. A girl from West Germany started down the track in that peculiar longgaited stride that long jumpers have, nearly straight-legged. She fouled at the take-off line. In the middle of the stadium, men were throwing the discus. They all looked like Zachary. An African discus thrower had just launched one. It didn’t look very good, and it looked even worse a minute later when a Pole threw one far beyond it. Around the stadium there were athletes in colorful sweat clothes, jogging and stretching, loosening up and staying warm and doing what jocks always do waiting for an event. They moved and massaged muscles and bounced and shrugged. At either end of the stadium, at the top, were scoreboards, one at each end, with instant replay mechanism. I watched the Pole’s huge discus toss again. “The goddamned Olympics,” I said to myself. “Jesus Christ.‘’

I hadn’t thought much about going to the games until I got off the subway. I’d been busy with the business at hand. But now that I was here looking down on the actual event, a sense of such strangeness and excitement came over me that I forgot about Zachary and Paul and the deaths at Munich and stared down at the Olympics, thinking of Melbourne and Rome and Tokyo and Mexico City and Munich, of Wilina Rudolph, and Jesse Owens, Bob Mathias, Rafer Johnson, Mark Spitz, Bill Toomey, the names flooded back at me. Cassius Clay, Emil Zatopek, the clenched fists at Mexico City, Alexeev. Cathy Rigby, Tenley Albright. Wow.

An usher said, “You seated, sir?”

“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s over there, I just wanted to stop here a minute before I went on.”

“Of course, sir,” he said.

I started looking for Paul. I was wearing sunglasses, and I tipped the hat down over my forehead. Paul wouldn’t expect to see me, if he were here, and Zachary didn’t know me. I looked section by section, starting at the first mw and moving up and down the rows slowly, one row at a time, up to the end of the section. Then I moved on. It was hard to concentrate and not begin to skim over the faces. But I concentrated and tried to, pay no attention to the games right there below me. It was an outdoor sports crowd, well-dressed and able to afford the Olympic tickets. Lots of kids and cameras and binoculars. Across the stadium a group of male sprinters gathered for a 100-meter heat. I picked out the American colors. I discovered that I wanted the American to win. Son of a bitch. A patriot. A nationalist. The PA system made a little chiming sound and then an announcer said, first in French, then in English, that the qualifying heat was about to begin.

I kept drifting through the stands looking up and down the rows. A lot of Americans. The starting gun cracked across the stadium and the runners broke out of the blocks. I stopped and watched. The American won. He jogged on around the track, a tall black kid with that runner’s bounce, with USA on his shirt. I looked some more. It was like at a ball game, but the crowd was more affluent, more dignified, and the events below were of a different order. A vendor moved by me selling Coke.

On the field below, a platoon of Olympic officials in Olympic blazers marched out onto the near side track and picked up the long jump paraphernalia. And took it away. An American threw the discus. Farther than the African.

Not as far as the Pole. I circled the whole stadium, getting tired of looking, stopping now and then to watch the games. I saw Hawk and Kathie two sections over, she was holding his arm, he was doing what I was doing. I started around again and I stopped at the second level for beer and a hot dog.

I put mustard and relish on the hot dog, took a sip of beer, a bite of hot dog (it was so-so, not Olympian) and looked out through the runway to the stands. Paul came down the runway. I turned back toward the counter and ate some more of my hot dog. A tribute to careful search and survey techniques and a masterpiece of concentration, looking over the stands aisle by aisle, and he almost walks into me while I’m eating a hot dog. Super sleuth.

Paul moved on past me without looking and headed up the ramp toward level three. I finished the hot dog and drank the beer and drifted along behind him. I didn’t see anyone who looked like Zachary. I didn’t mind.

At the third deck Paul went to a spot in the runway and looked down at the stadium floor. I went in the next ramp and watched him across the seats. The athletes looked smaller up here. But just as poised and just as agile. The squad of officials was breaking out low hurdles as we looked down at them. The discus throwers were leaving and the officials for that event formed into a small phalanx and marched, out. Paul looked around, glanced up at the top of the stadium and back into the runway behind him. I stayed half inside my runway, a section away, and watched him sideways behind my sunglasses underneath my plaid cap.

Paul came back up the runway and turned down along the ramp that ran beneath the stands. I followed. There was a large kiosk where the washroom was located, and between it and the wall beneath the stands there was a narrow space. Paul stood looking at the space. I leaned on the wall and read a program, across the width of the ramp by a support pillar. Paul walked through the space beyond the washroom and into another ramp, then he came back up the ramp and stood in the space beyond the washroom staring down toward the ramp.

There wasn’t much activity under the stands, and I stayed back of the post with just a slot between it and the edge of the washroom kiosk to see. I was okay as long as Hawk didn’t show up with Kathie and run into Paul. If he did we’d take him right there, but I wanted to see what he’d do. He glanced over his shoulder back toward the washroom. No one came out. He leaned against the wall at the corner and took out what looked like a spyglass. He aimed the spyglass down the ramp, leaning it against the corner of the kiosk. He adjusted the focus, raised and lowered a little, then took a large Magic Marker and drew a small black stripe under the spyglass, holding the spyglass like a straight edge against the building. He put the Magic Marker away, sighted the spyglass again by holding it against the line on the wall, and then collapsed it and slipped it away in his pocket. Without looking around he went in the men’s room.

Maybe three minutes later he came out. It was noon. The morning games were ending and the crowd began to pour out. From almost empty, the corridors under the stands became jammed. I forced after Paul and stayed with him to the subway. But as the train for Berri Montigny pulled out of Viau I was standing three rows back on the boarding platform calling the man in front of me an asshole.

By the time I got back to the stadium, it had cleared. Ticket holders for the afternoon games would not be admitted for an hour. I hung around the entrance marked for our ticket section and Hawk showed up in five minutes. Kathie wasn’t holding his arm. She was walking a little behind him. When he saw me he shook his head.

I said, “I saw him.”

“He alone?”

“Yeah. I lost him, though, in the subway.”

“Shit.”

“He’ll be back. He was marking out a position up on the second deck. This afternoon we’ll go take a look at it.”

Kathie said to Hawk, “Can we eat?”

“Want to try the Brasserie down there?” Hawk said to me.

“Yeah.”

We moved down toward the open area before the station stairs near the Sports Center. There were small hot-dog and hamburg stands, souvenir stands, a place to buy coins and stamps, a washroom, and a big festive-looking tent complex with the sides open and banners flying from the tent-pole peaks. Inside were big wooden tables and benches. Waiters and waitresses circulated, taking orders and bringing food and drink.

We ate, beer and sausage, and watched the excited people eating at the other tables. A lot of Americans. More than anything else, maybe more than Canadians. Kathie went to stand in the line at the ladies’ room. Hawk and I had a second beer.

“What you figure?” Hawk said.

“I don’t know. I’d guess he’s got a shooting stand marked. He was looking through a telescope and marked a spot on the wall at shoulder level. I’d like to get a look at what you can see from that spot.”