by Sam Stewart
Mack said, “They saw us.”
Mitchell said, “Hold it.—Are we on the same team?”
Mack just stared at him. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing here, man, but you want Jackie’s testicles we’re on the same team.”
Mitchell said nothing. He could put that together when he had a little time. Right now he had potentially terminal problems. He crawled forward about a yard and tried to look for what they were.
They were landing lights for one thing. About a dozen of them in a wide circle illuminating the field into hot white glare. He could look straight across, about four hundred meters, whatever it was, to the opposite cover of the trees. And then over at the house. There was nothing moving. Not yet.
He turned, and felt a bone-biting spasm in his leg, like a built-in bear trap.
Mack said, “Anything?”
Mitchell shook his head. “How many has he got?”
“I think six,” Mack said. “Needless to mention, I thought you were the seventh.”
“A defensive attack.”
Mack looked at him. “You save your defenses for defending, man, you’re already dead.—They’ve got dogs.”
“Oh swell.”
“Pitbulls. Relax.”
“Why do I think pitbulls and relax don’t belong in the same sentence?”
“Cuz you’re chicken,” Mack said. He was reaching for a knife. He got ahold of a low snapped branch and started whacking off the fir. He did the work with his right hand and Mitchell saw for the first time that the left hand was a claw, half-cupped, half-useless, an object in a glove.
There was humming in the air.
Mitchell reached for the Terrier that was still in his belt. It was better than a sharp stick. It had five lucky shots. Dog eat dog.
“If I’m holding you up …” Mack said.
“Not me. I can’t move.” He was trying to bend his leg and it wouldn’t go.
“Fuckin cripple,” Mack said; he kept whittling his stick. Mitchell kept his eyes locked firmly on the field. Lying on his side, he started working on his leg, moving it with his hands, easing it, lifting it.
“Fuckin Jane Fonda of the tundra,” Mack said, and Mitchell almost laughed and then both of them froze again, going alert, hearing WOP-WOP-WOP, the unmistakable vibe-shake of a chopper. They ducked as it came, scattering a payload of overhead light and then, plop. It kicked a wide wake in the snow and then settled on its skis, the dragonfly rotors still punishing the air.
Ramp doors open … ramp coming down … nothing coming out.
Mitchell let his gaze zip quickly to the house: Suddenly, a guy moving out from Tahiti. A guy with an Uzi submachine gun slung around his left shoulder … and a Vuitton duffle bag slung around his right. A dark-haired guy with a Magnum mustache. And a white sheepskin jacket and white pants tucked neatly into high white boots. Jackie: ready either for the cover of Uomo or Soldier of Fortune, he couldn’t make up his mind.
Mitchell looked at Mack who confirmed it with a slow, fatalistic waggling of his head.
Okay; that was Jackie.
Jackie on the ramp now.
Mitchell looked at Mack again and hand-signaled out. His leg had unkinked and he could trust it for a while.
Mack didn’t move. He looked sullen and tired, his face illuminated briefly in reflections from the field. He looked at the ship again, raised an imaginary M-16 and shot Jackie in the back as he was going through the hatch. Then he grabbed his stick and they got the hell out.
***
They moved noisily at first against the cover of the rotors, using the extra light, gaining yardage in seconds that might have taken minutes. When the chopper was gone, they moved silently again. Mitchell found the binoculars he’d dropped, scooped them up, and looked around him at the woods: dark, unreadable shapes came to life but it was vegetable life; there was nothing in pursuit.
They moved around the house, giving it a wide berth and then angling in, coming up beside the road.
Mitchell turned around and got one final image of the muscles on the porch. Still yawning; still bored.
25
“I tell you what I wanted to do,” Mack said. “When we got to the car before? I thought I’d say, Bye. You know what I mean? Just, Bye. Fuck it. Walk off.”
They were driving through the woods. Mitchell had his brights on, trying to see around the trees. He said, “That’d be—what? Poetic?”
“Oriental, man. Just … let it go. Buy into the fact that everything’s inexplicable and don’t waste your breath.”
Mitchell thought it over. “Charlie Chan, for example.”
“Yeah. Okay. Or shut up and drive, for example.”
There was silence for a time.
Mitchell made the turn onto the main road and started heading down the curve. He said, “Not that it matters …”
“Then forget it, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Mack said indifferently, “You thought I was dead.”
“I said it didn’t matter.”
“But it gets you through the night.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Good,” Mack said. No angle in his voice. “I’m for anything that works. Meanwhile, let me tell you what matters around here is I lost my cigarettes.”
“Try the glove box.”
Mack lit a cigarette and dragged. “I’m a pragmatist,” he said. “I trust nothing I can’t eat.”
Mitchell laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“I know it,” Mitchell said.
“Good. Because in that case you know it,” Mack said. “If I want to get to somebody, I get to somebody. I don’t get to nine other people, hope he reads about it in the papers.” He turned, flicked a smile; his teeth flashed white against the black shoe polish on his face. He shrugged, spread his hands. “Just a jackknife has MacHeath, dear.”
“Yeah. Okay. It’s where I started,” Mitchell said.
“And what happened to it?”
“Things.”
“Oh,” Mack said. “Them.” He laughed.
Mitchell glanced at him easily and rode another curve. They were riding on the cliff again, the lights of St. Moritz in the valley down below.
“You had a reason,” Mack said. “I mean considering my dazzling performance at Disneyland.… Shit. Okay, you had every right to think it. I thought you might think it. Only why do you think I called you? Why do you think I left you Maid Marian’s number? In Spanish. Area code—dos. Uno. Dos.” He stubbed out his cigarette and leaned against the seat. “Come on,” he said. “Think. I’d’ve done it, man, you think I’d be dumb enough—”
“No. That occurred to me.”
“Good.—Then what? Psychotic?”
Mitchell let it ride.
“Diddy mao,” Mack said.
He could ride with that too. It was a long time since he’d heard fuck off in Vietnamese. “You want to tell me why you called?”
“No.”
There was dead-on silence for a time.
“So I called you,” Mack said, “to give you Jackie and his separated organs on a plate. Little cocksucker tried to pull me into this shit. He came to me about a month ago. ‘Man, here’s the plan.’ He looked me in the eye and said the poison wasn’t fatal. Said all I had to do was put a couple of packages in a couple of restaurants, I could make a little bread, I could get my rocks off at the same time.”
“Wait a second—”
“Why? I’m in a hurry,” Mack said.
“You mean Jackie came to you?”
“You mean me-of-all-people? Listen—he knew I had it in for you, buddy. I was celled with the fucker. A couple of years ago, your name was in the papers. First time I actually knew what you were doing and I got a little riled. We got to talking.”
“Okay. Keep going,” Mitchell said. “Last month …”
“He came on. I told him he was sick, he seemed to back right away. He says, ‘Hey man, forget it. I thought it was a funny
idea but if you don’t like it, we won’t do it.’ That was that,” Mack said. “So imagine my surprise.”
“And annoyance.”
“So to speak. Little cocksucker tried to set me up for the worst disaster of my life. Which is no small task. Anyway—”
“So anyway, you called,” Mitchell said.
“For emotional satisfaction but instead I got the maid.”
It was clicking now. “And then you got the Post,” Mitchell said, “and saw the half-mil reward.”
Mack smiled again. He tapped out another cigarette and then rolled it on his lip.
“Still … you could’ve tipped it on the phone,” Mitchell said.
“Sure. Okay. And you’d’ve tipped it to the cops.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“And some dildo’d start reading me the Carmen Miranda. ‘You have a right to wear hats with bananas, okay? You have a right to be a klutz.’—No thanks,” Mack said. “I’d rather wing it on my own.” He looked up at Mitchell. “What else’s on your mind?”
“I guess Eva,” Mitchell said.
“Who knows … what Eva … lurks …” Mack grinned. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, unlit, and leaned back against the seat. “Eva,” Mack said, “got tempted by the snake, and by a cut of the reward. Eva was made to see that in the general scheme of things, fifty thousand bucks could be sexier than Jackie.”
“Ah,” Mitchell said.
“You remember that story? ‘The woman said, The serpent beguiled me and I ate’?”
“How was it?” Mitchell said.
“Pretty lousy, for a fact. She’s about as spontaneous as acute appendicitis.”
“Ze body is a temple.”
“And ze mouth,” Mack said, “is a drill sergeant. Christ. I never got so many fucking directions in my life. If they tried me at Nuremberg, I’d cop. I’d tell ’em, Hey man, I’m cool. I was just following orders.”
Mitchell laughed. “However …”
“However,” Mack said, “vork, vork, vork, I got ze keys to his apartment.” He looked up at Mitchell. “How did you get ’em?”
“How’d you know I did?” Mitchell said.
“Fuckin Terrier, man. I guess I beat you to the Mag.”
“And what else?” Mitchell said.
“Well … let’s see. Eva’s twat … Jackie’s Mag …”
“St. Moritz,” Mitchell said. “How’d you figure it?”
“Me? I never figure,” Mack said. “As a pragmatist, I happen to deal with what’s around. Like an answering machine. I heard a message from Frangie kind of spelled it all out. Then I scrounged around, I found Jackie’s address book and I boosted it.”
“Ah.”
Mack looked at him. “Ah.—You do that very well, you know. ‘Ah.’ You do that at board meetings a lot? Ah?”
“I don’t know.—You want to come to a board meeting and find out?”
“Not even dead do I want to come to a board meeting. No.”
There was silence for a time.
Mitchell made the turn at Suvretta Haus and headed into town. “On the other hand, whatever you do want …” he said.
“A pepperoni pizza.”
“Seriously, Mack. I owe you anything you want.”
“A pepperoni pizza and a half-million bucks.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Okay?” Mack threw back his head now and laughed. “That’s beautiful. What happens? You want to pull over now and write me out a check?”
“It’s more difficult than that, but I can do it.”
“You can do it in your hat,” Mack said. “Hey listen. Get it straight. You don’t owe me a fuckin thing, man. You didn’t do anything to me, man. What happened to me was chance. It was physics, okay? Laws of falling bodies.” He lit the cigarette. “We were dice coming out of a shaker that day, and that’s everything that happened.”
“I don’t think so,” Mitchell said.
“What else?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s … murkier than that.”
“Yeah? Well you can turn it into anything you want. What’re you lookin for, kiddo? A crutch …? a whip …? a cop-out …? a cross …? A half a million bucks?” Mack waited. “Okay—you want to talk a little murk?”
Mitchell didn’t answer.
“See, for a long time, I went to bed with that story. I mean, bedded it, kitty. Unnatural Relations—you follow what I’m saying? I groped it all over and it fucked me up the ass. Then I could turn around and bitch I’d been raped.—Okay?” Mack grinned. “Got the picture on the wall? I was victimized virtue. I was the victim and you were the victor and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. No. I take it back. I could do smack … booze … robbery …” He laughed. “And I could pass it off to you. ‘Look what you did to me.’ ‘Look what you made me do.’”
“Yeah,” Mitchell said.
“Yeah? Are you nuts?”
“No.”
“That is crap. That is Mickey Mouse crap. That is not even bullshit, that is mouse turds, buddy. That is small-time shit. You can trust me,” Mack said, “because I’ve shoveled it for years. I have shoveled it to Mecca. I have slouched towards Anaheim, the poet might’ve put it. I have worshipped, as it were, at the great shrine of the great mouse, and I’ve been hit with revelation. I was out in California—seeing visions of sugarplums dancing in my head—and then suddenly it hit me. I said, Let it go. He’s got nothing to do with you. I said, Let it go, and these little black pellets came tumbling out of my ears, that’s how full of it I was. So no—to get back to where we started this discussion—you don’t owe me a fucking thing. I want to earn it, okay?” Mack cocked his head. “I want the half-mil reward.”
Mitchell looked up at him. “You know where he went?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, that’s a start,” Mitchell said.
***
Carol said to Burt, “Would you please get up and call him?”
Standing with her arms tight-folded on her chest.
“Christ. Call him what?” Burt said. “I gotta tell you something. Remind you of something. It was you that called your brother to begin with—remember? So it’s your responsibility.” He was trying to watch a Lakers game.
Carol turned it off. Not only that but she was holding the remote, and the set was so modern it didn’t have a knob. Burt stood up and said, “Give it to me.” Carol turned and threw it out the window.
“If you call him,” Carol said, “I’ll go down there and get it. If you don’t, Burt, I’ll throw it in the swimming pool. Now …” she said, smiling as she handed him the phone.
***
The Diamond was alive. A Golden Age rockfest blasted from the jukebox and bounced off the walls and whanged around the tables and a bar six-deep in international adolescence. Rusty came over now and grimaced his surprise, at the blacked-over faces and the cat-burglar caps, and said, “Christ, is this a stickup?”
“Basically it’s more like a wash-up,” Mitchell said. “You got a powder room?”
“Over by the kitchen. Hurry up. Before you spook the whole atmosphere.”
“Spook it?” Mitchell said. “We got so many rape-fantasies going, you could warm yourself for years. Be grateful.”
“And try not to ruin all the towels.”
“Hey listen. I got another problem,” Mitchell said.
“I don’t think I want to know about your problems anymore. They look dangerous.”
“No. Very easy,” Mitchell said. “Your friend Paolo-the-pilot.”
“What about him?”
“I wondered if you knew where he was going.”
“No.” Rusty looked at him slowly. “Is he gone?”
“On a chopper,” Mitchell said. “An Executaire.”
“Yeah. That was Paolo,” Rusty said. “Only where he was going, even Paolo wouldn’t know. He gets instructions on board.”
“You got a phone?” Mitchell said.
“In the men’s room. And I only got one
roll of towels.”
***
Mitchell hung up and then closed Jackie’s phonebook and leaned against the wall. Mack looked at him: “So?”
“He says he doesn’t know.”
“Yeah. Either that or he says he doesn’t know.”
Mitchell thought it over. “What difference does it make?”
“If he knows,” Mack said, “we go right back over there and kick him in the balls. We say, Now … where’s Jackie? We kick him in the balls again and Frangie says—”
“Ouch.”
“Beautiful. The trouble with you is, you’re chicken. But we know that. Don’t we.”
Mitchell filled a sink and then handed back the phone book: Jackie’s initials on a Cartier Must. “You want to go back again to pitbulls and goons?”
“Hey listen,” Mack told him. “For half a million bucks?”
“Buys a hell of a funeral.”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
Mack filled a sink.
Mitchell said, “You think it’s gonna do us any good?”
“The phone book? It’s got about four hundred names. We got … how many hours?”
“Thirty-nine.” Mitchell punched the dispenser on the wall. It promised him soap but it handed him a quantity of perfumed sand. Not enough of it either. Mack said, “Asshole,” and ripped it off the wall, poured some powder in the sink and then whipped it into foam. He shrugged. “So you want to try the whorehouse in Paris?”
Mitchell grabbed the soap. “Or how about Vienna?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Only why would he want to leave Tahiti-in-the-snow to go back to his apartment.”
“With an Uzi,” Mitchell said. “What I’m starting to think … he got the Uzi from Frangie.”
“I don’t know,” Mack said. “Maybe Frangie gave a Bring Your Own Uzi party, huh? I’m not up on what’s in.”
Mitchell rubbed his face. The only thing that seemed to be happening was that his hands were getting black. Mack walked over to the towel dispenser now, sabotaged the lock with a nifty-looking pick, and then jimmied out the roll. He brought it to the sink and then squinted. “Or somebody else is, huh?”