The Road to Omaha (51 page)

“Mac, for Christ’s sake—”

“Especially you, Sam. You’re the one who figured it out; of course, I was ahead of you, but I was proud of your off-scene analysis.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Little Joseph, boy! He’s still there—”

“Who?… 
Where
?”

“That hotel, the Four Seasons. I talked to him a half hour ago and he’s on top of things.”

“On top of
what
? You can’t trust that little bastard, Mac, you said so yourself!”

“I can now,” said the Hawk emphatically. “He flagrantly abuses his per diem privileges, a sure sign of an independent subordinate, and he tries repeatedly to provoke me—that’s a man you can have some faith in.”

“The logic escapes me,” said Pinkus.

“He’s crazy,” said Jennifer softly, her wide, disbelieving eyes on the general.

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Cyrus. “A hostile underling tells you where you stand. You’re not likely to get fragged by him because he’s done just that.”

“You’re crazy, too,” observed Devereaux.

“Not really.” The mercenary shook his head. “There’s a maxim that goes back to the Cossack wars. ‘You kiss the boot before you hack it off with your saber.’ ”

“I like it, I
like
it,” cried the actor. “A perfect second-act curtain!”

“Maybe I’m crazy, too,” added the daughter of the Wopotamis, “but I think I understand you.”

“I would hope so,” said Sam sardonically. “To clarify, Counselor, one does not throw suspicion on oneself before committing a crime.”

“Smart ass,” muttered Redwing. “I see your point, Cyrus, so what do we do?”

“The question is, what has the general
done.
”

“It’s quite acceptable,” said the Hawk. “And considering your background, I think you’ll approve.… I’ve instructed Little Joseph, who, although advanced in years, is a born infantry scout, to survey the situation from all points of the battleground. He’ll check out their bivouacs, the whereabouts of support troops and their firepower, if there are any, your escape routes, if necessary, and the best camouflage you can employ reaching zero target.”

“Zero
what
?” exclaimed Sir Henry.

“No,
no
, Henry, I’m sure the general’s exaggerating!” interrupted Pinkus, staring at MacKenzie, then shifting his intense gaze to Cyrus. “You guaranteed there’d be no violence, no lack of safety procedures!”

“There won’t be, on either count, Mr. Pinkus. The general’s merely using military terms to describe this so-called committee’s hotel rooms and the proper attire—”

“You misunderstood
me
, Aaron, dear boy!” The actor rose to his feet, his profile (that’s “profeel”) to the right, his jaw firm, his eyes glowing. “I welcome the assignment, a glorious pursuit—whatever it is. Remember, General, when we joined the Brits and slogged our way toward El Alamein!”

“Sure do,
Major
Sutton!… I just field-commissioned you up a couple of grades—command prerogative, of course.”

“I accept the rank, sir.” Sir Henry turned and saluted as the Hawk got out of his chair and did the same. “Bring on the bastards! Once more unto the breach and close the walls up with our Equity dead—Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA, too, of course. We fear
no one
—gets the blood boiling, doesn’t it, General?”

“You boys really
were
the best in the big Sahara. You had all the guts in the world, soldier.”

“Guts, be damned, it was the proper synthesis of classical technique and the best of Stanislavski, not that Method nonsense prescribed by fifth-rate gurus who teach that picking your nose is more acceptable than blowing it.”

“Whatever it was, Major, you survived. Do you recall outside Benghazi when the brigade—”

“They’re
nuts
!” whispered Sam to Jennifer. “They’re in a typhoon paddling a canoe that’s leaking.”

“Get hold of yourself, Sam! They’re both … well, larger than life, and it’s rather refreshing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, in a world of pin-striped legalizing wimps, it’s nice to know there are men who can still hunt the killer tigers.”

“That’s sophomoric, antediluvian bullshit!”

“Yes, I know,” said Redwing, smiling. “Isn’t it nice to see it’s still around?”

“And you call yourself a liberated woman—”

“Although I am, I don’t think I ever said it—
that’s
antediluvian. These old men aren’t, they’re simply reliving a world as they knew it. I acknowledge that world and what they did to make it better. Who wouldn’t?”

“You’re just brimming with Sunnybrook kindness, Rebecca!”

“Why not? The Court itself aside, I’ve won every point I raised. In fact, I won too damned much, which means
I’m
acknowledged.”

“With a little ‘mirrors and smoke,’ as our general called it. ‘Best efforts’ is still euphemism for ‘Okay, I’ll try, but if I don’t get anywhere, I’ll retreat. Fast.’ ”

“You mention that and you’ll find out how liberated I am, Counselor,” said Jennifer quietly, again smiling. “You won’t have anything left to soil your trousers with.… Let’s break up the war stories, shall we?”

“
Mac
!” shouted Devereaux, causing both veterans of the North African campaign to look at him as though he were an ugly black worm emerging from a plate of red spaghetti. “How do you really know this Little Joseph will do as you say? You’ve described a slime—maybe one who won’t frag you—but still a
slime
. Suppose he tells you anything he figures you want to hear?”

“He couldn’t do that, Sam. You see, I talked with his superior officer, who I can tell you is
very
superior, on a par with Commander Pinkus and myself—with maybe a mite more influence where it counts.”

“So what?”

“So this very important person has strong personal reasons for wanting us to complete our mission, which we can’t do if we don’t get to the Supreme Court in one piece eight-seven hours from now and counting.”

“Eighty-seven what and what?” asked a confused Aaron.

“We’re in the countdown, Commander. Ground zero in roughly eighty-seven hours minus.”

“Is that anything like ‘zero target’?” the elderly lawyer persisted.

“Can you imagine, Major Sutton, this fella was on Omaha Beach?”

“Probably an enlisted man, General—”

“Yes, I was, and I carried a rifle, not a code book.”

“Zero target, dear Aaron, is the immediate objective,” explained the actor. “Ground zero, the zero not preceding, is the final objective. For instance, in the march to El Alamein we first had to take Tobruk, thus
it
was the zero target, Alamein ground zero. Actually, in the chronicles of Froissait—upon which Shakespeare based his Histories, along with Holinshed—mention is made of the terms—”

“Okay,
okay
!” cried an exasperated Devereaux. “What the hell has all this crap got to do with some slime called Little Joseph at the Four Seasons? To repeat, Mac, what makes you think he’ll do what you tell him to do? He’s lied to you before.”

“Obviously different circumstances,” said Jennifer before the Hawk could reply. “I gather he’s beholden to his very important superior officer.”

“Bull’s-eye, Miss Red. Like in whether Joseph goes on breathing or not.”

“Well, if that’s the case—”

“It’s the case, Sam,” confirmed Hawkins. “As you well know, I don’t make mistakes in that area. Outside of Belgrave Square in London, do I have to remind you of that country club on Long Island, or the chicken farm in Berlin, or that crazy sheik in Tizi Ouzou who wanted to buy my third wife for two camels and a small palace?”

“That will
do
, General!” said Pinkus firmly. “I remind
you
that there’ll be no reminiscing on such past events.
Now, you and Henry sit down and let’s continue with the business at hand.”

“Certainly, Commander.” The two veterans of El Alamein sat down and the Hawk continued. “But we can’t do a hell of a lot until Little Joseph makes his report.”

“How’s he going to do that?” asked Devereaux. “Sending a coded message by a carrier pigeon that flies from his hotel window directly to the sheikdom of Tizi Ouzou?”

“No, son, by telephone.” And, as Sir Henry might say, on cue the telephone rang. “I’ll get it,” said the Hawk, rising and walking rapidly to the white antique desk against the wall. “Base Camp Steaming Tepee,” he went on, the phone to his ear.

“Hey,
fazool
,” came the excited voice of Little Joey the Shroud over the line. “You ain’t gonna
believe
the fuckin’ pig shit you walked into! I swear on the grave of my Aunt Angelina, no shoe repair clown, including my uncle Guido, could scrape it off!”

“Calm down, Joseph, and speak clearly. Just give me the reconn ob-tech, on-scene factors.”

“What crazy language is that?”

“I’m surprised you don’t remember it from the Italian campaign—”

“I was lower than sediment. What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“The technical statistics as you observed them at the hotel—”

“No wonder you
fazools
are bleeding the taxpayers out of their corpuscals! No son of a bitch can understand you—you just scare the shit out of us!”

“What did you find
out
, Joseph?”

“For starters, if those jokers are Swedish, I never had a Norway meatball, which on occasion I have, ’cause this blond bomberinna I used to go with a couple of centuries ago made ’em so to prove the Guinea variety wasn’t so hotsytotsy—”

“
Joseph
, is this going to be a long story? What did you
learn
?”

“Awright, awright.… They got three suites, each with two bedrooms, and by spreading a little bread around with the maids and the waiters I found out they speak regular
American, y’know, English. Also, they’re nuts, y’know real
fruitcakes
. They walk around lookin’ in mirrors and talkin’ funny to themselves, like they didn’t know who they were lookin’ at.”

“What about support troops, firepower?”

“They ain’t got
nuthin’
! I checked out every staircase, even the nearby rooms with some enchilada named Raul who cost me two hundred little ones to check out the register—nobody nowhere around ’em could even be related by coincidence. The only possibility was some fruitcakereno asshole named Brickford Aldershotty, who it turned out was on a one-night stand.”

“Escape routes?”

“The exit signs to the staircases, what can I tell you?”

“So you’re saying the beach is clear—”

“What beach?”

“Zero target, the
hotel
, Joseph!”

“Whoever you got can walk in like it was a church in Palermo on Easter Sunday.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, here are the room numbers.” The Shroud gave them, then added. “Also, whoever you got should have muscle, y’know what I mean?”

“Explain that, Joseph.”

“Well, like a sharp-eyed maid named Beulah told me, these jokers break bottles with icicle points of glass stickin’ up and do pushups over ’em, sometimes like two hundred. I mean they are
fruitcakes
!”

“Meat” D’Ambrosia walked through the swinging glass doors of the Axel-Burlap building on Wall Street, Manhattan, took the elevator up to the ninety-eighth floor, trudged his way through another pair of glass doors, and presented his card to a statuesque British receptionist.

Salvatore D’Ambrosia, Consultint
. The card was printed by his cousin on a press at Rikers Island.

“I should like to have a meet with a certain Ivan Salamander,” said Salvatore.

“Is he expecting you, sir?”

“It don’t make no never mind, call it in, pussycat.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. D’Ambrosia, but one doesn’t call the president of Axel-Burlap without prior notification, and certainly not in person without a previously scheduled appointment.”

“Try me, sweetheart, or maybe I have to break your desk.”

“
What
?”

“Just call,
capisce
?”

Mr. D’Ambrosia was instantly admitted into the walnut-paneled sanctum sanctorum of one Ivan Salamander, president of Wall Street’s third largest brokerage house.

“What … 
whaat
?” shrieked the gaunt, bespectacled Salamander, wiping the perpetual sweat that oozed from his hairline. “You gotta scare the shit out of some lousy receptionist who’s got a ton of class for which I paid airfare, a Blackglama mink, and a salary my wife can no way find
out
?”

“We gotta talk, Mr. Salamander, and more important, you gotta listen. Also, your private secaterry wasn’t too perturbed.”

“Certainly,
certainly
, I told her to stay ice cold!” yelled Ivan the Terrible, as he was known on the Street. “You think I’m
dumb
?… Dumb I’m not, Mr. Musclebound, and I would much prefer that whatever you have to say to me should be said in some rotten spaghetti dump in Brooklyn!”

“My associates and me ain’t too partial to your smelly salami and your give-into-fish, either. Your delicatessens stink up the neighborhoods.”

“So our culinary differences are settled, what’ve you got that I should waste my valuable time on a street soldier? Hahn,
hahn
?”