The Road to Omaha (31 page)

“
Hey, man, where you’re staying, they got everything
!”

“
They got maybe girls? Nice girls, of course, because my associate is very religious.
”

“
I’ll get him what he wants, and I’ll get us what we want. Leave it to me, man.
”

“What did they say, Pedro?” asked the head clerk.

“Raul, sir.”

“Terribly sorry. What did they say?”

“They are very appreciative of the fine manners and exemplary kindness displayed by all of you. They are especially gratified by the fact that you have assigned this modest Raul to be with them throughout their stay.”

“My word!” said an assistant manager. “You speak extremely well for a Sp … for a newly arrived person to our shores.”

“Night school, sir. Boston University Extension Course for Immigrants.”

“Keep your eyes on this young man, gentlemen. He’s different!”

“
He’s the biggest asshole of them all. This is a good place; he won’t last a month.
”

“
Tell us something we don’t know
, Pedro!”

“
Perhaps,” said Aaron Pinkus, interrupting, “you’d like to look around this magnificent lobby. It’s really very unique.… Would you translate, please, Raul.
”

“
With great pleasure, sir.
”

Harry Milligan approached the tank top-
cum
-tattoos and whispered into his ear, only vaguely aware that a number of people in the lobby stared at them. “The great general moves in wondrous and mysterious ways, lad. I explained our mission and he was kinda quietlike, but as the Lord is my witness, I could hear the wheels spinning in that fine brain of his.… Y’know, that grand man could be scalin’ down the outside walls at this minute. I’m told he taught all the Rangers every thin’ they ever learned!”

Suddenly, the intrusion startling, the septuagenarian in the patch-laden field jacket, his bowed legs a set of churning
parentheses, rushed up to Milligan and Tank Top. “I’ve
got
it, boyos! They’re
terrorists
!”

“
Who
, for Christ’s sake?”

“Them fancy dans in the fish ’n’ chips!”

“What’re ya talkin’ about?”

“Those two dark-skinned, black-haired creeps leavin’ the front desk! They’re supposed to be big shots,
right
?”

“Well, I guess they are, boyo. Look at ’em.”

“Since when do big shots in big-shot threads get out of a lousy, small three-year-old Buick instead of a big limousine-type automobile? I ask ya, Harry Milligan, does it make
sense
?”

“No, it don’t, ’cause it ain’t natural, not with highfalutin duds like that in a place like this. A three-year-old Buick just ain’t fittin’ transportation, yer right about that.” Harry squinted at the splendidly dressed visitors who looked for all the world like preening peacocks, foreigners from some sun-drenched country in the Mediterranean by the dark complexion of their faces.…
Arabs
! Arab
terrorists
who surely were not comfortable in the clothes they wore or they wouldn’t be hitching up their shoulders and wiggling their asses in their tight-fitting trousers. No, sir, those boyos were used to desert robes like in the movies and long-curved knives under their belts, not fancy-dan sashes around their waists. “Holy Mary, Mother of
God,
” whispered Gilligan to Tank Top. “This could be it, boyo! Get word to each of our lads—tell ’em to move in slowly, keepin’ their eyes on those two Sahara rats. If
they
get into an elevator,
we
get in, too!”

“Harry, I didn’t go to confession this week—”

“Oh, shut up, there are seven of us, for Christ’s sake!”

“That’s more than three on one, ain’t it?”

“Now you’re an accountant, lad? Hurry along now, and lastly, tell the boyos that if I give the lodge war cry, we rush ’em!”

Like a gracefully choreographed pavane with somewhat less than graceful dancers, the Milligan-Gilligan brigade began threading through the well-dressed guests in the hotel lobby. Bare arms with tattoos and T-shirts from O’Boyle’s Meats mingled with tropical worsteds and Christian Dior prints, while a swinging combat helmet
kept crashing into the stomachs of Brooks Brothers blazers and Adolfo cocktail dresses, all to the growing concern of the entire front desk and the appalled victims in the lobby being assaulted by the offending intruders in their very strange costumes.

Suddenly, a heavyset man with fire in his eyes emerged from an elevator. He looked around and moved quickly to a vantage point near the front entrance where he could obviously survey the lobby. Unseen by him, a tall, gray-haired figure in a buckskin Indian jacket came out of the shadows and sidestepped his way to within several feet of the agitated man.

“
¡Caramba
!”

“
¡Madre de Dios
!”

The screaming duet filled the lobby as the two men in cutaways roared at the top of their voices while pointing accusingly at the heavyset man near the entrance.

“
¡Homicidio
!”

“
¡Asesino
!”

“
¡Criminal
!”

“
¡Demandaré el policía
!”

The stunned, unfriendly-looking gentleman who was the object of the cutaways’ shrieking accusations began to run but was instantly stopped by the tall man in the Indian costume, who hammerlocked the man’s neck and head while jamming his knee up into the base of the accused’s spine.

“That’s
him
, boyos!” came another roar that echoed off the walls and over the pandemonium of the crowds in the lobby. “It’s the great man
himself! Erin go bragh
, boyos!
Charge
in the memory of Saint William Patrick O’Brien!”

And, naturally, the Milligan-Gilligan brigade pummeled through hysterical bodies and fell upon the two Arab terrorists in cutaways.

“Wa chu
doing
, ole man?” yelled Desi the First, fending off an assault by a fat stranger now wearing a combat helmet.

“Hey,
loco
jerk!” cried Desi the Second, his foot sending an O’Boyle Meats advocate into a lovely Queen Anne chair that collapsed under his bulk; he gripped the bare arm of Tank Top. “Das a nice lookin’ snake, ole gringo,
an’ I don’ wanna hurt it, but chu gotta leave me alone! I got no
disputa
wid chu!”

“
Sergeants
!” roared the Hawk, crashing through the collapsing figures around his two extremely adept adjutants. “Commander Pinkus has ordered an evacuation!”

“As quickly as possible,” added Aaron by the door. “The hotel security was filling out stolen property forms in the office, but they’re out of there now and the police have been summoned.
Quickly
!”

“Wad about the
vicioso
, Heneral?”

“When he wakes up he’ll have a bad back for a month or two. I wonder if the Mafia has Medicare.”

“Will you three please
hurry
!”

“H’okay,
Comandante,
” said Desi-One, looking around at the melee in the lobby. “Hey,
Raul
!”

“
¡Si, Señor Embajador
? You freak!”

“We’ll call you later, man! Maybe you wanna join the army wid us, no?”

“Maybe, amigo. It could be safer than this place.
¡Adiós
!”

Aaron Pinkus’s Buick coupe raced down Boylston Street and turned around the first corner that would lead them to Arlington and eventually the Ritz-Carlton hotel. “I simply don’t
understands
” protested the attorney. “Who
were
they?”

“They were lunatics—
old
lunatics,
senile
lunatics!” replied an angry MacKenzie Hawkins, glancing into the backseat. “Did you two suffer any wounds?” he asked.

“You crazy, Heneral? Dose ole men couldn’t steal chickens.”

“What’s
that
?” yelled the Hawk abruptly as he watched Desi the First place four wallets on the seat between himself and Desi-Two.

“Wad’s wad?” asked D-One, innocently looking up at the general.

“Those are billfolds—wallets—four of them!”

“Ees a big crowd back there,” offered D-Two. “My fren’ don’ work so hard today ’cause he can do lots better.”

“Good Lord,” said Pinkus behind the wheel, a sense of
defeat again overwhelming him. “The hotel security … those stolen property reports.”

“You can’t
do
that, Sergeant!”

“
I’m
not so lousy, Heneral. Ees only a sideline, as you gringos say.”

“Oh, dear Abraham,” pleaded Aaron softly. “I really must calm myself, my blood pressure is stratospheric.”

“What’s the matter, Commander Pinkus?”

“Let’s just say this hasn’t been a normal working day for me, General.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

“Oh, no, thank you. Driving actually takes my mind off things.” Aaron reached over to the radio and turned it on.

The strains of Vivaldi’s Concerto in D for flute filled the small car, causing Desis One and Two to look at each other in disapproval and Pinkus to breathe steadily, deeply, for a few moments of peace. However, it
was
only a few moments. Suddenly, the music stopped and the excited voice of an announcer replaced the soothing Vivaldi with a nerve-shattering news flash.

“
We interrupt this program to bring you an exclusive bulletin. The Four Seasons Hotel on Boylston Street was only minutes ago the scene of an extraordinary incident. The circumstances have not been clarified, but apparently there was a riot in the hotels lobby causing numerous guests to be jostled and thrown to the ground—fortunately with only minor injuries so far reported. We switch you now by telephone to our correspondent at the scene, Chris Nichols, who was having a late lunch at the hotel
—” the announcer paused, involuntarily adding, “
Lunch at the Four Seasons? On our salaries …
?”

“
Not lunch, you idiot
!” broke in a second voice, deep and resonant. “
My wife thinks I’m in Marblehead
—”

“
You re ON, Chris
!”

“
Just kidding, folks … but there was no humor in what took place here barely five minutes ago. The police are trying to unravel the facts and it’s not an easy job. All we know at this moment is that the cast of characters might have come out of a Hitchcock film.… A famous Boston lawyer, two Spanish ambassadors, Arab terrorists, a large elderly American Indian with the strength of a buffalo, an
odd assortment of World War Two veterans in strange attire and even stranger hallucinations, and finally, a reputed Mafia executioner. Only the first and the last have been identified. They are the renowned attorney Mr. Aaron Pinkus, and one Caesar Boccegallupo, allegedly a
capo primitivo
in the Borgia family of Brooklyn, New York. The first-named, Mr. Aaron Pinkus, presumably escaped with the two Spanish ambassadors or was taken hostage by the Arab terrorists, depending on whose version one cares to accept. Mr. Boccegallupo is in custody, and according to reports keeps shouting that he insists on speaking to his lawyer, who he claims is the President of the United States. Well, regardless of political parties, we all know the President is not an attorney.
”

“
Thank you, Chris, thank you for this exclusive report, and good luck in Marblehead with that exciting yacht club regatta
—”

“
It’s over, you stupid son of a
—” The Vivaldi returned but did nothing to lower Aaron Pinkus’s blood pressure.

“Abraham has truly deserted me,” whispered the foremost lawyer of Boston, Massachusetts.

“I
heard
that, Commander!” shouted MacKenzie Hawkins. “
He
may have, but as sure as leopards have spots,
I
haven’t! We’ll face the fire together, turn it on ’em, and blow ’em away, old buddy!”

“Is it possible,” asked Aaron Pinkus softly, glancing at the Hawk, “that I have been presented with the human form of my own personal dybbuk?”

Sunrise Jennifer Redwing quietly shut the bedroom door and walked to the writing desk in the sitting room of the Ritz-Carlton suite arranged by Aaron Pinkus. “Your mother’s asleep,” she said as she pulled the chair away and sat down facing Devereaux on the couch. “At last,” she added, firmly crossing her legs and glaring at Sam.

“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you that my mother isn’t always tanked.”

“If I were a mother, Samuel Devereaux, and I had learned about my son what she’s learned about you during the last several days, I wouldn’t draw a sober breath for the next five years!”

“Isn’t that a little severe, Counselor?”

“Only if you chose to immolate yourself on the stage of the San Francisco Cow Palace, all proceeds going for the benefit of mothers driven to cuckooville by their offspring.”

“She told you quite a bit then,” said Sam, unsuccessfully trying to avoid the lovely lady’s positively unfriendly gaze.

“Only bits and pieces at the house, but for the past half hour, I’ve listened to a compendium of horrors—that’s
when you may have heard me locking the door as she instructed me to do.… Underworld killers on a golf course, English traitors, Nazis on chicken farms, Arabs roasting goats’ testicles in the desert—and my
God
, kidnapping the
Pope
! You made allusions to this mad general scouring intelligence files to raise forty million dollars—but nothing like
this
! Jesus
Christ
, the
Pope
! I can’t believe it … she must have got that wrong.”