The Road to Omaha (12 page)

“Aaron and my
mother
?”

“Be a touch flexible, lad. You’ve met Shirley with the concrete hairdo.… Here, now, drink a little water—I’d give you some whisky, but I don’t believe you could handle it. Your eyes don’t convey much human, more like a cat’s that’s heard a loud noise.”

“
Stop
it! My whole world is coming apart!”

“Don’t unravel, Sam, Mr. Pinkus’ll stitch it back together. A grander man in that department there never was.…
There
, he’s comin’ back now. I hear what’s left of the door.”

The exhausted, frail figure of Aaron Pinkus trudged into the off-limits office as if he had just returned from an assault on the Matterhorn. “We have to talk, Samuel,” he said, sinking breathlessly into a chair in front of the desk. “Would you please leave us, Paddy? Cousin Cora suggested that you might enjoy a char-grilled porterhouse in the kitchen.”

“A
porter
?”

“With Irish ale, Paddy.”

“Well … you understand that first impressions are not always written in stone, am I correct, Mr. Pinkus?”

“That, too, is written in stone, my old friend.”

“What about
me
?” yelled Devereaux. “Will somebody cut me
loose
?”

“You will remain exactly where you are and how you are until our conversation’s over, Samuel.”

“You always call me ‘Samuel’ when you’re mad at me.”

“Mad? Why should I be mad? You’ve only involved me and the firm in the most heinously insidious crime in the history of civilization since the Middle Empire of Egypt four thousand years ago.
Mad
? No, Sammy, I’m merely hysterical.”

“I think I’d better leave, boss.”

“I’ll beep you later, Paddy. And enjoy your porterhouse as if you were having my last meal in this life.”

“Oh, you carry on so, Mr. Pinkus.”

“Then carry me out to the temple if I do not signal you within the hour.” Lafferty made a rapid exit, signified by the screeching sound of the shattered outside door being pulled shut. Hands folded in front of him, Aaron spoke. “I must assume,” he began calmly, “that the person who contacted you on the telephone was none other than General MacKenzie Hawkins, am I correct?”

“You know damn well you’re correct, and that sewer rat can’t
do
this to me!”

“What precisely has he done?”

“He
talked
to me.”

“There’s a law prohibiting communication?”

“Between the two of us, there certainly is. He swore on the Manual of Army Regulations never to speak to me again for the rest of his miserable, misbegotten life!”

“Yet he saw fit to violate this solemn oath, which means he felt he had something of great import to tell you. What was it?”

“Who
listened
?” yelled Devereaux, again straining against the constricting white strips pinning him to the chair. “All I heard him say was that he was flying into Boston to see me and everything went crazy.”

“You went crazy, Sam.… When is he to make this journey?”

“How do
I
know?”

“That’s right. You turned off your ears and turned on your precordial anxiety.… However, based on the assumption that he had something vital to tell you, or he would not have broken his agreement never to contact you, we can assume that his flight to Boston is imminent.”

“So’s my departure for Tasmania,” said Devereaux emphatically.

“That is the one thing you must not do,” interjected Pinkus with equal firmness. “You cannot run away nor can you avoid him—”

“One
reason
!” broke in Sam, shouting. “Give me
one
reason short of murdering the son of a bitch why I
shouldn’t
avoid him? He’s a walking distress signal from the Titanic!”

“Because he will continue to hold over your head—and, by extension, mine, as your only employer since law school—your participation in this crime of the ages.”

“
You
didn’t walk out of the data banks with over two thousand top-secret intelligence files,
I
did.”

“That seemingly ominous act sinks to the level of complete insignificance compared to the evidence you’ve been trying to tear off your walls.… But since you mention it, was there any point to the theft of those files?”

“Forty million points,” answered Devereaux. “How do you think that diabolical general from the River Styx raised his capital?”

“Blackmail …?”

“From the Cosa Nostra to some Brits who weren’t exactly in line for the Victoria Cross; from former Nazis whose respectability was up to their thighs in chickenshit, to Arab sheiks who made money by protecting their Israeli investments. He refined the whole sticky ball of wax and made me go after them.”

“Good God, your mother said those were all your delusions! Killers on a golf course, Germans in chicken farms … Arabs in the desert. They were
real
.”

“Sometimes, not often, I have a martini I shouldn’t have.”

“She also mentioned that.… And Hawkins unearthed these scoundrels from the intelligence files and forced them to capitulate to his demands?”

“How low can you get—”

“How
ingenious
can a man
be
?”

“Where’s your moral armor, Aaron?”

“Certainly not for the benefit of scoundrels, Sam.”

“Then in support of the evidence you’ve seen on my walls?”

“
Definitely
not!”

“So where do you stand?”

“One has nothing to do with the
other
. There’s no linkage.”

“Not if you were me, Counselor.”

Aaron Pinkus took several deep breaths in silence while
placing his ten fingers across his forehead, his head bowed. “For every impossible problem there must be an eventual solution, either in this life or in the hereafter.”

“I prefer the former, if you don’t mind, Aaron.”

“I tend to agree,” said the elderly attorney. “Therefore, we will, as you expressed in your own singular vernacular, get off our asses and charge ahead.”

“To what?”

“To our mutual confrontation with General MacKenzie Hawkins.”

“You’d
do
that?”

“I have a vested interest, Sammy. You might even say a potentially disastrous one. Furthermore, I should like to bring to your attention a truism of our profession, true because of its validity.… A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Your General Hawkins may possess an extraordinary military mind, with all its brilliant eccentricities, but, I modestly submit, he has not matched his skills against those of Aaron Pinkus.”

The befeathered Chief Thunder Head of the Wopotamis spat out his mutilated cigar and returned to the interior of his huge tepee, where, in addition to the expected American Indian artifacts, such as ersatz scalps lining the walls, he had installed a waterbed and various electronic equipment that would make the Pentagon proud—
had
made the Pentagon proud, before it was stolen. Sighing audibly, in both sadness and anger, Thunder Head carefully removed his awesome tribal headdress, dropping it on the dirt floor. He reached into a buckskin satchel and pulled out a fresh cigar of indeterminate make and limited quality; he shoved it into his mouth and proceeded to mangle a good two inches of the end until his teeth were stained. He crossed to the waterbed, lowered himself down on its instantly rolling swells, and immediately lost his balance, falling backward, as the cellular telephone inside his beaded tribal tunic erupted. The ringing persisted as he thrashed about, trying to calm the rough waters beneath him, finally succeeding by pushing himself forward and planting his boots
firmly on the dirt. Angrily he yanked out the phone and spoke harshly. “What is it? I’m in powwow!”

“Come on, Chief, the only powwows around here are when the kids hear their dogs bark.”

“You never know who’s calling, son.”

“I didn’t know anyone else had the number.”

“Always operate on the assumption that the enemy can scan and lock into a frequency.”

“What …?”

“Just stay alert, boy. Now, what is it?”

“You know that English couple who were here yesterday asking for you, the ones we played dumb Injun for?”

“What about ’em?”

“They’re back, but with a couple of associates. One looks like his keeper doesn’t know he’s missing from his cage, the other sniffs a lot—he’s got either a bad cold or a couple of very inflamed nostrils.”

“They must have smelled something.”

“Not with his honker—”

“I don’t mean the support troops, I mean the English types. That legal idiot of yours, Charlie Redwing, must have tipped them off to something.”

“Hey, come on, T.H., except for falling off that lousy horse, he was terrific. They didn’t learn bean one about you, and that fancy lady kept looking at his jockstrap—”

“
Loincloth
, son, loincloth. Maybe it was the horse.”

“Maybe it was the loincloth,” suggested the caller, as Thunder Head, caught in a rolling vinyl wave, was thrown back on the waterbed.

“
Augh
!”

“Hey, our legal eagle may really
have
something, huh? I guess you agree.”

“I agreed to nothing! My BOQ accoutrements here are loused up—”

“You designed them, T.H.”

“And I’d advise you to cut the familiarity,
boy
! You’re a low-life enlisted man and you will address me as
Chief
!”

“Fine, Chiefy-baby, then you can drive into town and get your own rotten cigars—”

“I didn’t redress you that severely, son, I just want to maintain a logical order of command. All I’m saying is
that support troops are not called up for such R and R as ‘loincloths,’ do I make myself clear?”

“Maybe.… So what do you figure? What they smelled, I mean.”

“Not what
they
smelled, young man, but what someone
else
smelled that called for auxiliary support. Those Brits didn’t reassault by themselves, they were ordered back by a combat officer who wanted a reassessment. It’s as clear as Porkchop Hill.”

“Porkchops …?”

“Where are they now, boy?”

“At the souvenir lean-to. They’re buying up a load of stuff and being very friendly, even the ox. Incidentally, the girls—excuse me, the
squaws
—are happy as hell. We just got in a new supply from Taiwan.”

Thunder Head frowned, lit his cigar, and spoke. “Stay on the line, I’ve got to think.” Several quarts of smoke fogged the tepee when, finally, the Hawk resumed speaking. “Pretty soon the Brits will bring up my name.”

“I guess they will.”

“So, have one of our downtrodden brethren tell them my tepee is roughly two hundred running antelope strides above the north pasture, past the buffalo mating ground, by the great oaks, where the eagles lay their precious eggs. It’s an isolated place, so I can commune with the gods of the forest and contemplate. Got it?”

“I can’t understand a word you just said. We’ve got a few cows but no buffalo, and I’ve never seen an eagle except in the Omaha zoo.”

“You’ll admit there’s a forest.”

“Well, woods, maybe, but I don’t remember any great big trees.”

“Damn it, son, just get ’em up into those woods, okay?”

“Which of the paths? They’re all clear, but some are better than others. It’s been a lousy tourist season—”

“Good thinking, boy!” exclaimed Thunder Head. “Fine tactics. Tell ’em they’ll find me quicker if they separate. The one who reaches me can call the others; they’re not that far away from one another.”

“Considering the fact that you’re not anywhere near
those woods, it’s not Tine tactics,’ it’s dumb. They’ll get lost.”

“Hopefully, son, hopefully.”

“What?”

“In light of the nature of this engagement, the enemy’s using unorthodox strategy. Nothing wrong with unorthodoxy—hell, I’ve employed it most of my career—but it doesn’t make any sense if it retards your progress. In this situation, a frontal assault is our adversary’s most productive course—his only course, really—but instead he’s going around our flanks firing mortars filled with horseshit.”

“Lost me again, Chief,” said the caller.

“Anthropologists looking for the remnants of a great tribe?” scoffed Thunder Head. “A tribe from the Shenandoahs, savages brought over to the English court by Walter Raleigh, you
believed
all that crap?”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible. The Wopotamis came from someplace in the East.”

“From the Hudson Valley,
not
the Shenandoahs. For a fact, they were run off by the Mohawks ’cause they couldn’t farm and they couldn’t raise cattle and wouldn’t get out of their tepees if it snowed. They weren’t a great tribe, they were losers from day one until they reached the Missouri River, in the middle eighteen hundreds, where they found their true calling. They first hornswoggled, then corrupted the white settlers!”

“You know all that?”

“There’s very little about your tribe’s history I don’t know.… No, son, someone’s behind this covert operation, and I’m going to find out who it is. Get to work now. Send ’em up to the woods!”

Twenty-three minutes passed, and one by one the members of Hyman Goldfarb’s scouting patrol entered the four paths in the dense forest. They had decided to separate insofar as the precise instructions they had received at the souvenir lean-to were totally imprecise and contradictory, the crowd of yelling squaws in a raucous debate over which path actually led to the great Thunder Head’s tepee, a residence obviously equated with some holy shrine.

Forty-six minutes later, one by one, each member had
been ambushed and bound—arms and legs—to a sizable tree trunk, their mouths gagged with ersatz beaver pelts, all assured that rescue was imminent as long as they did not somehow find a way to remove the gags and scream. Should that happen, the wrath of a downtrodden, exploited people would descend on their heads, specifically their scalps, which would be no longer attached to their heads. And each, of course, was accorded treatment commensurate with his or her station and sex. The English lady was much tougher than her like-talking male associate, who attempted some complicated Oriental defense, only to wrench his left arm out of its elbow socket. The shorter, sniffing American tried to make a deal while slowly removing a short-barreled Charter Arms automatic from his belt and therefore had to be visited with several cracked ribs. The most strenuously difficult, however, Chief Thunder Head—né MacKenzie Lochinvar Hawkins (his middle name having been stricken from all records)—saved for the last. The Hawk always felt it was proper to permit his harshest challenge to have the honor of being the final barrier. You didn’t take out a Rommel with the first wave against the
Afrika Korps
—it just wasn’t, well, proper.