The Road to Omaha (63 page)

“What are you going to Boston for?” asked Devereaux.

“To pick up dat crazy actor, Mr. Major Sooton, and drive him to dee h’airport. The great heneral has talked to him and he expects us quick.”

“What’s
happening
?” asked Jennifer.

“I’m not sure you should ask,” cautioned Sam the lawyer.

“We gotta hurry,” said Desi the First. “Major Sooton says he gotta stop at some big store for
correcto
‘attire,’ which I don’ t’ink is for an automobile.… Where ees Colonel Cyrus?”

“On the beach,” replied a perplexed Redwing.

“You get d’car, D-Two,” ordered D-One. “I’ll tell d’colonel and meet you in the garage.
Pronto
!”

“
Sí, amigo
!”

The adjutants raced away, one out to the beach by way of the sundeck, the other through the foyer to the garage off the circular drive. Sam turned to Jenny. “Did I say something about ‘Devereaux’s prophecy’?”

“Why is he keeping us in the dark?”

“It’s the devious part of his devious strategy.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t tell you what it is until he’s gone so far it’s irreversible. You can’t turn back.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” exclaimed Redwing. “Suppose he’s all wet, all
wrong
?”

“He’s convinced that’s not possible.”

“And you?”

“If you take away his original premise, which is
always
wrong, his track record’s not bad.”

“That’s not good enough!”

“In fact, it’s really terrific, goddamnit.”

“Why don’t I feel more reassured?”

“Because the ‘goddamnit’ means he drives you to the edge of oblivion, and one day he’ll take that extra step and we’ll all go tumbling down.”

“He’s going to have Mr. Sutton impersonate him, isn’t he?”

“Probably; he’s seen him in action.”

“I wonder where.”

“Don’t even think about it. It’s easier that way.”

Johnny Calfnose, resplendent in his brightly beaded buckskins and jacket, stared forlornly at the sheets of rain beyond the admissions window in the Wopotami Welcome
Wagon Wigwam, a large, garishly painted structure in the shape of a covered wagon with the four sides of a colorful Indian tepee surging up from the center of the layers of canvas. When Chief Thunder Head had designed the edifice and brought in carpenters from Omaha to build it, the inhabitants of the reservation had looked on in bewilderment. The Council of Elders’ Eagle Eyes had asked Calf nose.

“What’s that lunatic doing now? What’s it supposed to be?”

“He says it represents the two images most associated with the old West. The pioneers’ covered wagon and the symbolic tepee from which the savage tribes came out to slaughter them.”

“He’s all heart and mashed brains. Tell him we need to rent a couple of Caterpillar backhoes, scything machines, a minimum of ten mustangs, and at least a dozen laborers.”

“What for?”

“He wants us to clear the north field and stage ‘raiding parties.’ ”

“
Mustangs
?”

“Not the cars, horses. If we’re going to gallop around the circled wagons, we’d better teach the younger ones how to ride, and the few nags we’ve got couldn’t make it from one end of the field to the other.”

“Okay, but what’s with the laborers?”

“We may be savages, Calfnose, but collectively we’re the ‘Noble Savage.’ We don’t do that kind of menial work. Or windows, either.”

That was months ago and this was now, an afternoon drenched with rain, and no summer tourists to buy a plethora of souvenirs shipped in from Taiwan. Johnny Calfnose got up from his stool in front of the admissions window, walked through the narrow leather-sheeted entrance to his comfortable living quarters, and went to the television set. He turned it on, switched the cable channels to a ball game, and sat down in his Barcelona sling chair to enjoy the late afternoon watching a doubleheader. However, all was savagely interrupted by the ringing of a telephone—the
red phone
. Thunder Head!

“Here I
am
, Chief,” cried Johnny, grabbing the phone off an Adolfo parquet table.

“Plan A-one.
Execute.
”

“You’re kidding—you gotta be
kidding
!”

“A general officer doesn’t ‘kid’ when the assault’s in progress. It’s code Bright Green! I’ve alerted the plane at the airport and the bus companies in Omaha and Washington. Everything’s at the ready. You leave at dawn, so start spreading the word. All duffels are to be packed and checked by twenty-two hundred hours and the slop shoot’s off-limits to the entire D.C. contingent. That’s
gospel
, soldier. There’ll be no red-eyed redskins in my brigade. We
march
!”

“Are you sure you don’t want to think about this for a couple of weeks, TH?”

“You’ve got your orders, Sergeant Calfnose. Swift execution is paramount!”

“That’s kind of what’s bothering me, Big Fella.”

Sundown had come and gone, the massive, awe-inspiring statue of Lincoln bathed in floodlights as hushed, mesmerized tourists weaved around one another for differing views of the masterpiece. An odd exception was a strange-looking man who seemed furtively occupied with the shadowed grass beneath his feet. He kept walking directly away from the memorial’s steps in a straight line, under his breath verbally abusing the sightseers he collided with, and every now and then thrusting his hands out into the stomachs and cameras of the offending intruders as he adjusted the red wig that kept falling over his ears and his neck.

Vincent Mangecavallo had not been born and brought up in Brooklyn’s
Mondo Italiano
without learning a few things. He knew when it was preferable to arrive at a “meet” long before the appointed hour, because a “meet” could be spelled differently, like in a carcass on a hook in a slaughterhouse. The problem Vinnie the Bam-Bam had was in the plural word “paces”—what the hell was a pace? Was it a foot, a yard, a yard and a half, or something in between? He had heard the stories from the old days in
Sicily where duels were fought with
Lupo
guns, the firing marked off by paces as the enemies walked in short steps or long steps, all counted off by a referee, or sometimes by a drum, and nobody paid much attention because the one who cheated always won. But this was
America
. “Paces” should be more specific, in the interest of fairness and honesty.

Also, how the
hell
could he keep an accurate count while walking through the crowds at night? He would reach, like, number sixty-three, bump into some clowns, causing his wig to sideslip on his head and blind him, resume his “pacing,” and forget the number he had reached. So it was back to the steps and start again!
Shit
! On the sixth attempt, hanging a right for the final yardage, he reached a large tree that had a brass plate on the trunk spelling out the date it was planted by some President in the year one and who could care less, but there was a circular bench around the goddamned tree that made a little more sense. He could sit down, and his face would not necessarily be seen by the nut general he was to meet for the purpose of exchanging information.

Naturally, Vincent decided to walk away from the tree and wait in the shadows of another—who knew how many lousy
paces
away? But he knew what to watch for: a tall old joker hanging around that brass-plaqued tree and probably wearing feathers in his head.

Watching the obese figure circling the rendezvous, the uniformed General Ethelred Brokemichael was astonished! He had never liked MacKenzie Hawkins; in fact, quite the opposite, since Mac was the despised Heseltine’s buddy, but he had always respected the tough old soldier’s abilities. At the moment, however, he had to question all those years of silent admiration. What he had just witnessed was a ridiculous exercise in covert rendezvous procedures—ridiculous, hell, it was grotesque! Hawkins had obviously borrowed or bought a jacket designed for a heavyset man, filled it with stuffing, and to conceal his natural height he walked, or rather half-prowled unnaturally like an ape, through the crowds in front of the Lincoln Memorial—
back and forth,
back
and
forth
—a grunting gorilla foraging for berries in the underbrush. It was a sight to sicken the creator of the Suicidal Six! And there could be no error in Brokey the Deuce’s recognizing him, for the Hawk still wore his stupid red wig, only here in the warm, humid Washington night it kept falling over his eyes. He obviously had never heard of liquid adhesive, which
anyone
familiar with the theater would know about; talk of amateurville, MacKenzie Hawkins was a novice’s neophyte!

Now Brokey’s wig, by sheer coincidence only
slightly
red—auburn, really—was held in place by a Max Factor flesh-toned base tape that was indistinguishable from his hairline, especially in soft light, a low “muted amber” in theatrical parlance. Professionalism would take the day, thought Brokemichael, deciding to surprise the Hawk, who had retreated to a surveillance position beneath a large spreading Japanese maple thirty-odd feet from the rendezvous. The Deuce was exhilarated; Mac had made an ass of him in Benning and now he would return the favor.

He made a wide circle, skirting the edge of the crowds in the diminishing wash of the memorial’s floodlights, every once in a while passing another uniform whose arm instantly responded with a salute to his rank. As he approached the maple tree from the eastern flank, the intermittent salutes caused Brokey to wonder again why the Hawk insisted that he wear his uniform for such a covert rendezvous. When he had repeatedly asked why, the only reply he got was:

“Just do it, and wear every goddamned medal you ever won or issued yourself! Remember, everything we talked about down in Benning is on tape.
My
tape.”

The Deuce reached the maple tree and slowly, his back against the trunk, sidestepped his way around the bark until he stood silently next to the
really
amateur former soldier who had made a fool of him and who was now staring intensely at the rendezvous ground. The really
stupid
thing was that instead of standing up straight for a better view, the idiot continued to buckle his knees and hunch over the stuffing in his coat, maintaining the short stature of his
disguise in the dark shadows of the spreading maple. Amateurville!

“You expecting somebody?” said Brokey quietly.

“Holy
shit
!” exploded the disguised civilian, whipping his head around with such force his red wig spun ninety degrees to the left, the sideburns descending over his forehead. “It’s
you
?… Sure, it’s you, you got on the brass threads!”

“You can stand up now, Mac.”

“Stand up on what?”

“Nobody can see us here, for God’s sake. I can barely see my feet, but I sure as hell can see that dumb wig of yours. I think it’s on backwards.”

“Yeah, well, yours ain’t so totally perfect, G.I. Joe!” said the civilian, adjusting his hairpiece. “A lot of the bald older dons wear that shit with the Max Factor tape that suddenly takes the top wrinkles away from your forehead—you can always tell, but, naturally, we don’t say a word.”

“What do you mean ‘tell’? How can you
tell
in this light?”

“Because, you jerk, the light reflects off clear tape.”

“Okay, okay, Mac. Now stand up so we can talk.”

“So you’re a couple of inches taller, what d’ya want from me? Go downtown and buy a pair of elevator shoes or maybe a couple of stilts? What’s with you?”

“You mean you …?” Brokey the Deuce leaned over, his neck thrust forward. “
You’re
not Hawkins!”

“
Hold
it, pal!” cried Mangecavallo. “
You’re
not Hawkins! I got photographs!”

“Who are
you
?”

“Who the fuck are
you
?”

“I’m here to meet the Hawk—over
there
!” exclaimed Brokemichael.

“So am
I
!”

“You’re wearing a red wig—”

“So the hell are you—”

“He wore one in Benning!”

“I got mine in Miami Beach—”

“I got mine from my unit’s extensive wardrobe.”

“You like
pěche
, too, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What are
you
talking about?”

“
Wait
a minute!” Brokemichael’s eyes had been drawn in exasperation to the brass-plaqued rendezvous tree. “
Look
! Over there! Do you see what I see?”

“You mean the skinny priest in the black suit and collar sniffing around the meet like a Doberman who’s gotta take a piss?”

“That’s exactly who I mean.”

“So what? Maybe he wants to sit down on the bench—there’s, like, a bunch of slats that go around the tree—”

“I
know
that,” said Brokey the Deuce, squinting in the shadows of the maple. “
Now
, look,” he continued as the cleric came into the western wash of the distant floodlights. “What do you see?”

“The collar, the suit, and he’s got red hair, so
what
?”

“Amateurville,” determined the creator of the Suicidal Six. “It’s not hair, it’s a wig; and like yours, very badly done. Too long in the nape and too wide at the temples.… Odd, I seem to recall seeing him before.”

“What nape and whose temple? What’s religion got to do with anything?”

“Not religion, the
wig
. It’s not properly fitted.”

“Oh, I forgot,
pêche
. I gotta find me a soldier
poofereeno
at the biggest conference of my life—not that I personally got a problem, you understand—only that this is
no
time for unholy tolerances!”

“Perhaps the wigs are the symbols …?”

“Of
what
, for Christ’s sake? We gonna join a protest?”

“Don’t you see? He had all of us wear red wigs!”

“He didn’t have me do a goddamned thing. I told you, I got mine in Miami Beach at a weirdo shop near the Fontanbloo.”

“And I found mine in my unit’s wardrobe room—”

“Some unit—”

“But
he
wore a red wig when he came to see
me
.… My God, it was subliminal motivation directed at
improv
!”