A Thousand Bridges

by Michael McKinney

  After a long silence, Katherine said, "Oh, Mac." Her voice changed with each word. "Do you really mean it? Do you think there's still a chance?"

  "Hell, yes," I said. "There's still a chance."

  I didn't know what I was talking about, but I was tired of seeing them win all the time and I was sick of seeing Katherine's hopes crushed every time she turned around. Even if it was a lie, it was something to believe in, a reason to hope. And sometimes that's all that makes the difference between living and dying. "I'm tired of these jerks pushing me around," I could hear people talking around her. "I have to go now, Katherine, but I'll be in touch."

  "Hey?" she said quickly, and I waited. "Please don't get hurt, Mac. I want to see you again."

  "Well, okay," I said. "But it's not fair. You get to get hurt."

  "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

  "Speaking of cracked up, how's the jaw?"

  "I'm okay," she said. "I'll be fine as long as I know you're safe. I'm worried about Candy, though. She's under a lot of stress, and Dr. Kuyatt is getting pushy about telling the world about Omni. Or, at least, getting Candy to do so."

  Just the thought of that gave me the willies. "Tell him to wait until I call back. I don't care what he wants to do, but he can't let this out until I get some things done here. Tell him to give me two weeks. It's not that long."

  "Okay."

  "I'll be in touch," I said. "Take care."

  I drove home and checked the mail. In the small stack of bills and junk was a letter that, even without a return address, I knew was from Mel. I turned it over and checked the seal, then looked into the corners for slits, but it seemed okay. Before I went inside I walked across my yard and checked out my home. I had spent a lot of time over the last few years working around the house, and it seemed to be holding up through my recent neglect, though the grass needed mowing. Mockingbirds sang to me from the electric wires as I climbed the ladder and checked my roof.

  Satisfied, I went inside and opened the letter from Mel. It was brief and urgent.

  "I need some evidence that the Contras were training at Omni," the letter said. "And I need it soon. Without it, I can't get the right people to listen. This thing is bigger than we believed, friend." It was signed, Mel.

  I reread the letter before I burned it in the sink. I ran water over the ashes, then opened the other mail, sat at my desk and paid my bills. I thought of calling Mark to work up a will leaving everything to Katherine, but it not only seemed melodramatic, I could think of no reason why she would want it, or the hassle of disposing of it. She had her own job, her own stuff.

  I pulled out all the clippings I had collected on Omni, Inc., and after dinner I sat down and studied them. There were brochures on the luxury homes that circled Omni's twin lakes and met at a huge clubhouse that sat between them, offering me the rare opportunity to not only own one of these homes but, by doing so, to become a part of the 'Dynamic New Future of Northwest Florida.'

  I had copies of topo maps and aerial photographs from both the courthouse and a realtor who, for some reason, thought I represented a group of Germans interested in buying a large tract of land alongside Omni.

  I had spent a couple of mornings at Limestone Creek during my 'egg days," walking and taking pictures. I even proved to myself that I could still climb a tree, and as I sat at my table with a magnifying glass looking over the blowups, I saw an imposing structure I knew to be the Men's Club. I could see enough details to guess where it was in relation to the surrounding buildings, and with the help of those aerial photos, I planned my entry and exit.

  I noticed on the brochures that moonlight rides on horseback and several nature trails were underlined as positive parts of the Omni Lifestyle, and I hoped that meant a minimum of electronic security, but I had no way of knowing for sure. I couldn't think of a way to find out more and, besides, I was tired of waiting. Maybe a bit of the 'blaze of glory' mentality still hung on, but I wanted this thing settled.

  Bob Birk had a big lead for his party's nomination over the incumbent governor, and his two opposition candidates were losing ground. The primaries were just around the corner, and I was afraid that once he cleared that hurdle he'd be unstoppable.

  I studied the maps of Limestone Creek that I'd picked up at the canoe livery and tried to memorize them. When I called Thursday morning to book a buyer's tour of the Omni grounds I was told the resort was closed until the next Tuesday. I got indignant and said my business had me in another part of the world by then and I would think they could make an exception.

  They surprised me by saying "sorry." Better luck next time. Whatever the reason, it was important enough for sales people to give up their enormous commissions. I studied the newspapers for a clue and finally found a tiny article that mentioned a formal get-together at Omni on Friday night. It wasn't a come-on to draw a crowd but only stated its existence. One of those either-you're-invited-or-you're-not things, and I immediately wanted to stick my nose in and see what was going on. There were a couple of problems.

  I wasn't invited. They didn't like me.

  I called the Men's Club, told them I was a caterer, and asked for the assistant manager's name. Then, I called all the catering services in Palmetto Bay and told them I was Anthony Riccio, the assistant manager of the Men's Club. I said I wanted to know if they were going to have any trouble delivering all they'd agreed on. Two of them said they didn't know what I was talking about, one guy tried to give me a better deal, and the fourth person said everything was ready and they'd be there at six o'clock to begin setting up before the band showed up.

  I told her I could send a man over to help, but she said, "No, thank you." It was worth a try.

  There were only three bands in the area that could play the kind of music they'd want to hear out there at 'The Club,' and I found the right one on the second call. Larry Lemon and The Lancers were ready, Larry told me, and they'd be there at eight o'clock, as agreed. They would play from nine until one, with a fifteen minute break every hour.

  "Do you know 'The Hokey-Pokey?' I said. There was a hesitation.

  "Yes, sir."

  "It's Mr. Birk's favorite song," I said. "He can't get enough of it."

  I hung up.

  I drove to town and cruised the pawn shops until I found a trumpet and case. I went to Sears and bought beige pants and a bright red blazer, and hoped the Lancers hadn't changed their image. There wasn't much chance of that. I'd seen them over the years at various to-dos and neither the outfits nor the music ever varied. I found a large black jumpsuit and decided to buy it, too.

  My plan looked good every other hour as Friday approached. On alternate hours I knew I was an idiot and that I would be dead before I ever heard The Hokey-Pokey. Still, there was a chance my plan would work. Nobody paid attention to musicians, or expected anything out of them.

  I left the house in jeans and a dark green t-shirt and drove away unnoticed. Clouds obscured the half-moon as I eased my car to a stop on a dirt road north of the county bridge that crossed Limestone Creek just east of Omni's main gate. It was the place I'd reconnoitered, the spot where Candy Furay had watched her friends die as she said silently in the dark.

  I opened the trunk and pulled out a small inflatable boat and pumped it up. I stripped off my clothes and put on the Sears outfit, then pulled the jumpsuit over it. The trumpet case fit into the bow and left enough room for me to huddle over the frail plastic oars. There were so many things wrong with this plan, so many things that could go wrong, that I wasted no more time thinking about them.

  The current was swift and branches hung down everywhere, spinning the little boat around like a top. I held on and forgot about the oars until I was under the bridge, then used them to brake myself and slip out of the flow into a still pool.

  I stepped out gingerly, grimacing as my bare feet touched the icy water. The horn case made an adequate seat, and I put on my shoes before slipping the boat up onto the bank. I looked through the ragged sheets of
corrugated tin, the last remnant of the old fence that skirted the creek, and saw a wide field of low grass and small pines, black as ink and crowned, far away, by the floodlighted splendor of the Limestone Creek Men's Club.

  I pulled a piece of the tin aside and slid through carefully, then reached back and brought the trumpet case to me. I swallowed. Sometimes, you reach a point where you can only act. There are no more words, no more plans - you have no room left for doubt. Headlights of cars sparkled in the night as the limousines circled in front of the club and spewed wealthy white people into their invitation-only corral. It was too far away to see if there were many armed guards outside, and I moved silently, listening for any sounds of men or dogs. I turned back and looked at the fence, got my bearings, then turned again and worked my way across the dark field.

  ELEVEN

  When I got within rock-throwing distance of the parking lot I circled around to the back of the building and stood behind the catering van. I stripped off the jumpsuit and took the trumpet from the case. I checked my watch and leaned against the truck to wait. The band took their first break right on time and I stepped into the parking lot, trumpet dangling from one hand as I wiped my brow with a handkerchief I held in the other.

  I took on a casual gait and glanced around, but could see no one moving. I wandered along the back and checked doors until I found one unlocked. It opened without an alarm going off, and I stepped inside a long, white hallway. There were three solid doors set into the left wall and one in the center of the right. I could hear the muffled sounds of a party from somewhere above.

  I wandered to the door on my right and leaned forward, listening. The knob turned in my hand but, before I could open it, I heard the unmistakable sound of an M-16's bolt being set. Lock and load. I stretched a goofy grin across my face and turned around. A uniformed soldier wearing camo with no insignia stood in the middle doorway with the muzzle of his rifle pointed at my chest.

  "Jesus Christ!" I said, voice up a couple of octaves. "You scared the shit out of me!"

  I wiped my face with the handkerchief. "In fact, I don't think I need to find a bathroom now, thanks to you."

  "There are no bathrooms in here, sir," the young soldier said.

  "Well," I said, "there has to be at least one somewhere in this fucking Taj Mahal." I twisted my trumpet hand over to glance at my watch, noting that the M-16 never moved. "God damn! Five minutes left to take a leak and I still have to find my way back to the bandstand."

  I laughed and shook my head. "The last door I tried I wound up in the parking lot."

  The soldier watched me, relaxing maybe just a little. "Can you at least tell me where the hell I am?" I asked. "And please stop pointing that gun at me!"

  The soldier kept the rifle right where it was and nodded his head toward the exit door. I took a quick peek at the door I almost opened.

  "You'll have to leave now, sir," he said. "Good luck."

  "Luck?" I said. "Have you been listening to the crap we're playing? I don't need luck, I need a lobotomy."

  The soldier laughed. I opened the door and walked out singing, "Feelings....nothing more than feelings." The outer, unconditioned air was sticky and warm. "I hope you don't kill me.....then I'll have no feelings."

  I heard him chuckle again as the door closed behind me with a sigh. I was stunned. There, inside a private men's club on private land, was a uniformed soldier armed with a loaded M-16 and fully prepared to kill. I had to go back in.

  The music started up again, and I could hear bass notes and laughter through the walls. I turned the knob slowly and pulled the door open. There would be no excuses if he discovered me this time. I hugged the left wall and worked my way down until I was directly across from the single door. I listened, but could hear nothing, so I took a deep breath, quickly crossed the hall and stepped through the door, closing it behind me.

  The caterers didn't even look up when I came in, but kept piling food on a long table covered with a forest green tablecloth that hung almost to the gray-tiled floor. "Put those down first!" a woman shouted angrily.

  "No! Those!" I ducked behind a handcart stacked high with folding chairs just as the door opened and the same soldier stuck his head in, looked around slowly, and disappeared back into the hall.

  The caterers waddled away and I crawled from behind the handcart to look around. It was a large room, smooth and business-like, with several rows of plush folding chairs already set up facing a modern, lighted podium. A giant screen TV hung from a low ceiling behind the podium, and a ball of speakers protruded from the wall under it. A video camera sat on its tripod and stared at the empty stage.

  I heard people talking and ducked down again. "Wait!" a man shouted. "We'll need those chairs!"

  I felt like all three stooges as I crawled under the long table, trying not to drag the trumpet, getting the heel of my shoe caught in the green tablecloth. I heard the click of shoes just inches from my fingers and then the sound of the handcart squeaking away across the floor. People began filling the room, and I smelled cigar smoke.

  For twenty minutes I lay perfectly still on the hard tile floor, propped up on my elbow, watching shiny leather tips of shoes slip back and forth under the tablecloth like busy mice as the men above munched on the catered treats. The top of my head scraped against the rough underside of the table.

  'I'm a grown man,' I thought to myself. 'Reasonably intelligent, semi-educated, and I'm hiding under a table in a room filled with men, some of them probably my age.'

  A public address system was switched on and a little electronic hum began, followed by pops and squeals that bounced across the room. A man's voice, amplified, but off-mike, said, "Check the video camera, Stanley, then set these levels."

  The men at the table stopped talking.

  "Gentlemen." The speaker's voice was strong and self-confident. "Please be seated. I have much to discuss with you while our friends and families enjoy the party upstairs, so please hold all questions until I've finished."

  Footsteps shuffled away from me and I could hear the squeak of folding chairs being dragged across the floor. The room lights dimmed, so I lay down and peeked out from under the tablecloth. A soft spotlight washed the man at the podium in a bluish-white glow. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties. He had close-cropped white hair and a trim white mustache.

  "First," he said, "let me tell each and every one of you that your actions have not gone unnoticed. You men have invested in the future of this country in the last few years, and it is my opinion that, soon, yours will be the patriotism that all others will be judged by.

  "It is a new world, and there will be a new order. This new world is exciting, but dangerous," he paused, sipped water. "This new world will be one in which there is no room for amateurs in government."

  He scanned each face. "America has survived all these years because of something more than a population willing to fight for it. It's sad to say, gentlemen, but we owe our survival to dumb luck as much as anything else."

  The room was so quiet I wondered if any of these men dared to breathe. A tall, slender man I guessed was Stanley stood bent over the video camera, watching the man through a tiny blue window.

  As the speaker continued his powerful speech, I felt a chill that didn't come from lying on the cold tile floor. He talked about the Middle East, and the changing face of Europe. The rise of Asian nations. He said we could no longer afford the luxury of a haphazard government that couldn't make decisions. "Look at Congress," he said. "What do you think of Congress?"

  There was a chorus of boos and catcalls.

  "Exactly!" he shouted above them. "They have outlived their usefulness in the job of keeping America secure. They are simply bottomless pits of ego and, if left to them, our standing in the world will be gone. And we can't have that."

  The room stayed silent, with an undercurrent of murmured conversations. "The time has come when it isn't enough to have opinions. Everyone has opinions, as the old saying goes.
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  "But we need men who have convictions! Men who'll take a stand for their beliefs! And I don't mean over dinner with the wife. I mean in public. At their places of business, and in government."

  The speaker said people no longer knew what they wanted, and were prone to follow any scheme, any diversion. He told these men it was their job to decide a direction and to make sure it followed a well-defined plan. "We have set our goal on the year Two Thousand."

  He pulled the microphone from its stand and drifted away from the podium, his forehead wrinkled in thought. "Not far away now, friends. The year Two thousand will bring forth a new America, a single-minded America that will lead the rest of the world into a new order. We will be the leader, not simply one of the followers."

  And then he gave them the plan.

  Even Mel Shiver, in his deepest paranoid fantasies, would have come unglued. I thought of his letter to me, and wondered if he'd found traces of this plan. The nation's Drug Czar had been on a speaking tour that contained a teaser about creating a nationwide series of orphanages, called AmeriGrowth for Children, that would separate children from drug-infested communities and addicted, toxic families and give them a chance to live drug-free.

  Inner cities would be reshaped to offer "economic opportunities." Then the speaker dropped the bombshell. "As you well know, military bases are, and always have been, the backbone of your economy. Our economy. Well, gentlemen," he said, "by the year Two Thousand, giant military bases will be a thing of the past. Kiss 'em goodbye."

  The collective intake of breath in that room drained the oxygen supply and left everyone dizzy. He let them think it over for a minute. Giant military bases were the bedrock of Southern economy, and they knew it.

  "This is not the end," he said. "It is the beginning. The beginning of a new America, an unconfused America, and men like Bob Birk will be at the helm."

  A thundering applause shook the room. "My friends, we have set in motion a restructuring of government in Florida that will make it the model for the rest of the nation, for the rest of the world. And you men will play leadership roles in it.