Tinker and Blue (36 page)

61

“Open up,” Blue instructed a blindfolded Wise. “Come on now, you have to keep your strength up, as the other fellow says,” he continued, working the spoon against the FBI agent's mouth. Wise spewed the contents in a series of dry spits. “I know, I know, sunflower seeds take some getting used to.”

“Why don't you just kill me and get it over with,” Wise snarled.

“I didn't think they tasted
that
bad,” Blue said, dipping the spoon back into the bowl. “If I was a Nazi, I would of left the husks on, and then you'd know what tasting bad really means. But we got a bigger problem than sunflower seeds. We called the FBI, eh, and said we were holding you hostage and that we wanted a million bucks for your release. Know what they said? ‘Keep him.' Well, I'm a bit of a horse trader myself, so I know when to come down a little in the price of an old minker, but I had to come all the way down to ten dollars and you know what they said? ‘Keep him!' Looks like they may be looking for a million dollars from us to get them to take you back, so we don't know what to do with you, see. Now take some more. They're good for you. Besides, when you're finished, we're going for a little drive together, but only one of us is coming back.”

—

Special Agent Bud Wise was in his third day of captivity in the Human Rainbow Commune, a relationship as unappealing to the hostage-takers as to the hostage himself.

The first morning, Blue had made his way to Fucdepor Towers where he parked across the street and settled into the back of the van to test the eavesdropping equipment. Following Capricorn's instructions, he soon heard voices, recognizing one of them as belonging to Reginald Regent III because of the petroleum president's angry interviews after he had been mistakenly arrested as Tinker. Staying at his listening post until the office closed and Reginald Regent III himself had left the building, the subject of Tinker never came up. Instead, Blue had recorded numerous conversations between the president and his underlings, as well as several phone calls. Three of the phone calls were to or from presidents of other oil companies, and judging from their conversations, price-fixing sounded like the thrust of their talks. From his economics class in high school Blue understood that price-fixing was shady business, a way for companies that could not form a monopoly because of anti-trust laws to form a monopoly on prices by fixing the price artificially high and keeping new competitors out of the business. It was the kind of stuff that could be turned into a scandal, he figured, but it had nothing to do with Tinker's problems.

On his way back from Fucdepor Towers, it became clear to Blue that the Fucdepor employees who had been left handcuffed together when Tinker and Capricorn made their escape had pooled their powers of observation, creating a composite sketch of Tinker that was portrait perfect. The sketch of Tinker's face, along with a mug shot of Capricorn, was on the front page of every publication. And an FBI agent was missing – a hostage – so now the FBI, which wasn't involved before, was seriously involved now.

Back at the house, listening to the tapes again, there was clearly nothing that remotely incriminated Reginald Regent III in the orders to capture Tinker, seize his plans for the oxygen engine, then have him disappear.

“I couldn't believe they weren't talking about it,” Blue told Capricorn. “The fact that these people weren't talking about it is the same as an admission of guilt as far as I'm concerned. Unheard melodies are sweeter, to quote the other fellow, and what I unheard today was a guilty bastard who wants to kill my best friend saying nothing at all about it.”

“We can't take somebody's silence to the police, Blue,” Capricorn pointed out. “We need evidence. Maybe tomorrow.”

—

Tomorrow brought more of the same. Blue sat out in the van, parking across the street from Fucdepor Towers before 8 a.m., a box of new tapes beside him. The whole day passed without a single conversation in Reginald Regent III's office that hinted that the oil company boss had ordered Tinker to be destroyed like one of the old minkers Farmer and he used to truck around.

The day wasn't a total waste Blue decided as he drove home at the end of the office day humming the lyrics to the ninety-ninth verse of “The Red Lobster.” He had had the foresight to bring his guitar along for company on the second day, along with a six-pack of beer and some alfalfa sandwiches that Karma had thoughtfully made for him, and which he fortified with slices of ham from a deli along the way. His guitar, the beer and food made the monotony bearable, providing Blue with the understanding that he would never allow himself to work in an office. After two days of feeling like a fly on the wall of Fucdepor's head office, he felt he knew about as much as he would ever need to know about nine-to-five jobs in a suit and tie, and what he knew was that it was just too frigging boring. He had been right, he decided, to waste his time in school learning about horses instead of history. Good marks would have led him to college, and college would have led to an office just like Fucdepor's where he would be trapped for the rest of his life waiting for a gold watch and pension instead of unleashing his creativity. That understanding was inspirational.

There's more than one lobster

under the sea

So why not torment him

instead of me

You're the cruelest thing

in these waters

Except for that shark

Before the fisherman caught her

Red lobster, red lobster....

—

Blue raced up to the bedroom to write down the lyrics and discovered Karma at work on the eighth painting in her series. It was already far enough advanced for him to identify.

“You were in the First World War?” he asked. “I'll bet that's why you're against the war in Vietnam. Probably had something really bad happen to you so now you hate war period.”

“You sound as if you believe my painting,” Karma said.

“What I mean isn't what I believe. I'm just trying to look at it through your eyes instead of mine, but if I ever start believing what I see through your eyes, I'll just have to pluck them out, as the other fellow says.”

“So what do you see through my eyes?”

Blue examined the painting, dull muddy trenches and soggy soldiers rain-lashed under tombstone clouds. A Red Cross emblem painted on a tent offering the only splash of colour, of hope, in an atmosphere that suggested hell itself had risen to the surface of the Earth and was devouring the bodies that lay half submerged in bloody mud.

“The Red Cross! Of course that's where you'd be, cleaning up the mess, fixing the world. But I guess the reason I sound like I believe your painting is because I wouldn't of minded being there myself. I mean I wasn't even born for the Second World War, and I was born in the wrong country for the Vietnam War, so if I was in the First World War, I would of seen some kind of action, wouldn't I?

“Hey, maybe I got shot capturing an enemy trench or something and they took me back to that tent there where you nursed me back to health and stood there holding my hand while some general pinned the Victoria Cross to my chest, and that's why we got karma, Karma.”

“Or maybe we were nurses together, Blue, and because we tried to help people who were hurt in the war our karma spared us from having to get involved in another war like the one in Vietnam.”

“That's sick, girl. I'd of never been a nurse. If I was, though, it would be Tinker's problem I'd be trying to fix, not the whole world's. I'd leave that up to you.”

“You didn't record anything today that would help Tinker?”

“Nothing. Just a bunch of idiots in suits talking about how to make even more money. I got nothing against money, Karma, but I don't think these people can ever get enough to just stop and enjoy it, and they think Tinker's engine will make them millions more. Why? So that when they die they can say they made ten million dollars or something.

“Hell, when I die I'd sooner say I
spent
ten million dollars. I'd be really pissed off to spend my life earning money then die before I got a chance to squander it all on wine, women and song – to quote the other fellow. That's all I learned after listening to Reginald Regent the Turd all afternoon. He never once mentioned Tinker's name. I'm beginning to wonder if he knows the place is bugged and that's why he won't say anything.”

“Who is he going say it to, Blue? I'm sure that somebody like Reginald Regent III doesn't just go around blabbering about ordering plans to be stolen or people to be killed. The only person he is going to talk to about it someone he trusts, like Special Agent Wise.”

“Did you come straight from Heaven or have you been around here for awhile?” Blue asked, jumping to his feet and bear-hugging Karma before releasing her to run through the door and down the stairs hollering for Tinker, leaving her wondering what she had said.

In the kitchen Blue opened three beers, passed one to Tinker while he briefed him, put a straw in the second bottle, then beckoning his friend to follow him, led the way to the basement where Wise was tied to the chair. He signalled Tinker to stand in the corner and stay silent then took a chair opposite the FBI agent, waving the bottle under his nose. Wise recoiled at first, then recognizing the odor returned his nose to the bottle, sniffing it curious as a dog.

“Brought a Bud for my bud, Bud,” Blue said, placing the bottle on a table beside Wise, putting the straw in Wise's mouth. “Go ahead, drink. It's not poison, although my mother would debate me on that one, especially when the old man goes on a tear. We're just a couple of guys having a beer together. No need of pretending you're not interested, not with a nose like that. Looks like a road map to every liquor store you ever walked into. So tell me, Special Agent Bud Wise, why didn't you just shoot Capricorn when you had the chance? It would of been easy to stage a break-out then shoot him in the back while he was trying to escape, wouldn't it? He who hesitates loses his prisoner, as the other fellow says. Of course, you wanted Tinker even more than Capricorn, didn't you? Why?

“Maybe you would of been happy just to have Capricorn but maybe somebody else with more power than you wanted Tinker even more. So there you were holding prisoner the very man you've been chasing all these years, and all you can do is try to get information out of him. Must of pissed you off real bad. Then it all goes wrong and where do you wind up? A prisoner of your prisoner. You must be really pissed off now.”

Wise said nothing but his cheeks concaved so Blue knew he was sipping at the beer.

“Nothing to say? Not even your name, rank and serial number? How about the rumour that you take your orders from the President? The president of Fucdepor Petroleum, that is. I'm sure there's no truth to it, but you know the way newspapers are. Anyway, that's what today's paper said, that you were given orders by Reginald Regent the Turd to kill Tinker after you stole the plans for his oxygen engine. I'd let you read it yourself, but then I have to take off your blindfold and you'd get a look at my face and, well, you know what the other fellow says about kidnappers, don't you, that when the kidnap victim sees the kidnapper's face, it's the last face he'll ever see. So I'm just trying to keep you alive here in the basement of this factory where we'll just keep on manufacturing oxygen engines until the FBI agrees to fly us and our engines to Cuba.

“You winched there, Bud, old buddy. You winched when I said Cuba. So you think Castro will be interested in the oxygen engine? Or is it the oxygen bomb that you think he'd like? The way I see it, it's our only chance to get out of this country alive, because, as your friends in the CIA will tell you, Cuba is the only safe place on the planet because the Americans can't beat that Castro character at all. Every time you try, he comes out smelling like a rose and the United States comes out smelling like a three-day-old butt of one of Castro's cigars. If he starts making oxygen bombs, well, that will take care of the United States army, and if he starts making oxygen engines, that'll take care of Fucdepor Petroleum, so I figure Tinker's invention and Capricorn's revolution are going to come together to turn the world into paradise, paradise being of course anywhere where the oxygen is clean and free. Some place like Cuba. Know what I like about Cuba? It's an island. People who live on islands understand each other, just like me and Castro.”

Special Agent Wise pulled his lips from the straw and began struggling against his own handcuffs which held him captive, holding his head back, trying to peek out under the blindfold.

“You can't give that Communist pig the oxygen bomb! He'll blow up the whole free world! Castro's the Russian puppet who pretty near started an atomic war, if you remember the missile crisis. If he gets his hands on the oxygen bomb it could be all over for—”

“That's where you and I differ, Mr. Wise. You'd be surprised how much the two of us – you and me, that is – have in common. We both hate the Ruskies and all that communism stuff, but when it comes to Castro, well Cana— I better not say that. Too much information, as the other fellow says. What I mean is that in the country where I come from we hate the Communists just as much as you do, but not Castro. I got this friend back home, eh, Farm— can't tell you that either, but this friend I got got a dog and know what he called him? Fidel! After Castro, if you can believe that, and this friend of mine fought the Nazis so that should tell you how much he hates the Communists, but not Castro, boy, not Castro.