“Now, wait a minute,” broke in Devereaux. “My revered boss can barely walk in that medieval flak suit!”
“He’ll be flanked and assisted by our two men of the cloth every step of the way.”
“Our Desis?” said Jennifer.
“Exactly. It’s Hawkins’s idea and it’s a beaut.… The ‘Reverend Pristin’ and ‘Monsignor Alizongo’ have joined with ‘Chief Rabbi Rabinowitz’ in a religious protest to the Supreme Court over recent decisions they consider to be both anti-Christian and anti-Semitic. You can’t beat that rap unless you throw in antiblack, which would naturally diminish the television coverage.”
“It’s certainly unique,” admitted Sam. “By the way, where’s Roman Z?”
“I hate to think,” replied Cyrus.
“He hasn’t deserted, has he?” said Jenny.
“Not for a minute. There’s an old Gypsy proverb stolen from the Chinese that says a man who saves the life of another can live off that person or persons for the rest of his life.”
“I’m not sure he’s got that right,” said Aaron. “I believe it’s the other way around.”
“Of course it is,” agreed Cyrus, “but the Gypsies changed it, and that’s all he has to know.”
“So where is he?” asked Redwing.
“I gave him money to rent a video camera. At this moment I suspect he’s stealing one from an unsuspecting clerk by telling him he just wants to check the lens refraction in the sunlight. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. He hates to pay for anything—I think he really believes it’s unethical.”
“He should run for Congress,” said Sam.
“But why a camera?” asked Redwing.
“It’s my idea. I think we should have an audiovisual record of the Wopotami protest, as extensive as possible, including any attempts by specific individuals to interfere, harass, or prevent citizens from the exercise of free assembly and their rights of petition.”
“I knew it,” exclaimed Pinkus weakly in the chair. “He may be a professional soldier and a chemist, but he’s also a lawyer.”
“Not so, sir,” contradicted Cyrus. “Due to the confusion of an early turbulent youth, I—we—had to understand certain basic constitutional rights.”
“Wait a minute,” said Devereaux, a note of skepticism in his quiet voice. “Let’s dispense with ‘We Shall Overcome’ for a moment, and carry this where I think you’re taking it. An unedited videotape, the date and time counted off by seconds in every frame, is generally conceded to be irrefutable evidence, right?”
“I’d think a number of congressmen and senators and a mayor or two would agree with you, Sam,” agreed the mercenary, the hint of a smile on his face. “Especially those who’ve temporarily given up eggs Benedict for the powdered variety on less than elegant china.”
“Yes, and if we have such a tape featuring ‘specific individuals’ engaged in unlawful behavior of a violent nature during the Wopotami protest—”
“And,” interrupted Redwing, glancing at Devereaux, who nodded, as if to say be-my-guest, “if those nasty individuals were identified as being under the orders of one government agency or another, we’d have considerable legal leverage.”
“Not just government-oriented,” said Cyrus. “There are a bunch of goons in that crowd who’ve been paid to stop you. Their employers are so much in debt that even the thought of you has them chewing rugs while soiling their trousers.”
“Violent obstruction of the legal process,” added Sam. “Facing ten years in jail, there’s not one of those thugs who wouldn’t break.”
“Colonel, I salute you!” said Aaron, struggling forward in the chair, the sound of metal against metal heard in the room. “Even if everything goes wrong, we’ve got secondary positions of defense.”
“I call it frying the asses of those who would fry yours first, Mr. Pinkus.”
“Indeed! You know, law degree or no, I wish you’d consider a position in my firm, say as a strategist in the criminal law department.”
“I’m flattered, sir, but I think you’d better talk with your friend, Cookson Frazier. Apparently he has a home in the Caribbean, two in France, a flat in London, and several he can’t remember in the ski country of Utah or Colorado. They’ve all been broken into, and he wants me to take over his far-flung security.”
“My word, how wonderful for you! You’d be terribly well paid. You’ll accept, of course.”
“Perhaps for a few weeks, but if there’s any way I can work it out, I’d like to get back to the laboratory. I’m a chemical engineer; that’s where the real excitement is.”
“Now I’ve heard everything,” said Devereaux, shaking his head, his porkpie hat above his checkered suit swiveling.
There was furious knocking at the door. “Stay where you are,” said Cyrus calmly as the others reacted in shock. “It’s Roman. He thinks his entrance into any room is a command performance—especially when the police are chasing him.” The mercenary opened the door; the figure standing in the corridor was, indeed, Roman Z, but instead of a single video camera, he held two in each hand, as well as a large nylon case suspended from his broad shoulder by a thick strap. Also, gone were the silk orange shirt, the blue silk sash, the tight black trousers, and the dangling gold earring. Instead, he was the image of a working media stiff, the kind one sees climbing out of television news vans at the scene of an accident or a fire. He wore neat but abused Levis below a white T-shirt on which was printed in large letters:
WFOG-TV PRESS
“Zee mission is accomplished, my dearest best fren … Colonel,” announced Roman, walking into the room, his words trailing off as his eyes absorbed the sight of Sam, Jenny, and Aaron. “Iss zerr a dancing bear somewhere?”
“If there is, it’s you,” said Cyrus. “Bears forage.… Why four camcorders?”
“Maybe one get hurt,” replied the Gypsy, grinning. “Also plenty of tape,” he added, gesturing at his case.
“Where’s the receipt?”
“Zee what?”
“The paper that shows the amount of the rental and the deposit you gave the store.”
“Oh, zey don’t want it. They hoppy to cooperate.”
“What are you talking about, Roman?” asked Redwing.
“I charge it, Miss Janey—if you are Miss Janey under zat beautiful dress.”
“To whom?” said Devereaux.
“Zeez people!” The Gypsy pointed with pride to his T-shirt. “I wass in a great hurry, and they understand.”
“There are no such people!” cried Cyrus.
“I write them a letter sometime. I tell them how sorry I am.”
“Please, Colonel,” said Pinkus, struggling out of the chair with Jenny’s help. “We haven’t time for an audit. What do we do now?”
“It’s simple,” answered Cyrus.
It wasn’t.
2:16 P.M. Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom—boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom!… Hai-ya, hai-ya,—hai-ya—hai-ya, hai-ya, hai-ya! The drums went bang while the stompers sang, and the signs were raised and the crowds were hazed, and the steps of the Supreme Court were Wopotami madness. The tourists were famous, wives more than husbands, as the dancing-girl protesters were to a dancer inordinately attractive and their skirts flew high.
“Jebediah, we can’t get through!”
“Right.”
“Where are the police?”
“Right.”
“Olaf, these crazy people won’t let us by!”
“Right.”
“There should be laws!”
“Right.”
“Stavros, this never happened at the temple of Athena!”
“Right.”
“Stop staring!”
“Wrong—oh, sorry, Olympia.”
Around the corner on Capitol Street, concealed in a recessed doorway, were two tall men. One was resplendent in the full dress uniform of an army general, the other in the ragged clothes of a tramp. The tramp rushed out of their sanctuary, peered around the edge o
f the building, and then ran back to the general.
“Things are progressing, Henry,” said MacKenzie Hawkins. “They’re really getting hot!”
“Have the media arrived?” asked Sutton, the actor. “I made it perfectly clear to you, I don’t make my appearance until the cameras are there.”
“A couple of radio stations have come. You can tell by the people with microphones.”
“Not good enough, dear boy. I specifically said cameras.”
“All right, all right!” The Hawk raced out again, looked again and raced back. “A TV crew just got here!”
“What station? Is it a network?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“Find out, mon général. I have my standards.”
“Christ on a seesaw!”
“Blasphemy isn’t called for, MacKenzie. Look again.”
“You’re impossible, Henry!”
“I hope so. It’s the only way you get anywhere in this business. Hurry up, now. I feel the urge to perform; it’s the stimulus of a growing audience as you hear them flocking into a theater.”
“Don’t you ever get stage fright?”
“My good fellow, I’ve never been afraid of the stage, it is afraid of me. I tread across it like thunder.”
“Shit!” The Hawk rushed out again, but instead of racing back to the actor, held his place and saw what he hoped to see. Four taxis pulled up on the other side of First Street, only moments apart. Out of the one in front stepped three men of the cloth: a priest, a minister, and an elderly rabbi helped by the two Christians. From the second emerged the Marilyn Monroe of hookers, hips swaying—somewhat awkwardly—but who was examining? The third cab deposited the maximum rube of the Ozark’s backcountry, with the image of chickenshit dripping from his porkpie hat and over his ballooned checkered suit. The fourth taxi made up for the banality of the three fares ahead. An immense, elegantly dressed black man stepped out on the curb, his huge sculpted head and giant body nearly dwarfing the vehicle.
As programmed, Jennifer, Sam, and Cyrus walked in different directions, no acknowledgment among them, but none crossed the street to the Court. The three religious zealots stayed on the pavement, bickering among themselves, the rabbi’s head pecking forward as the two opposing Christians alternately nodded and shook their heads disapprovingly. The Hawk reached into his ragged pocket and withdrew his walkie-talkie. “Calfnose, come in. Come in, Calfnose!” (There was no need for a code name.)
“Don’t shout, T.H., this thing’s in my ear!”
“Our contingent’s arrived—”
“So have half the horny population of Washington! And I do mean just half—the other half would like to scalp our girls!”
“Tell ’em to keep it up.”
“How high? Are we up to garter belts?”
“That’s not what I mean! Just keep up the chants and make the drums louder. I need the next ten minutes.”
“You got it, T.H.!”
The Hawk ran back to the recessed doorway. “Another ten minutes, Henry, and you make your entrance!”
“That long?”
“I have a few things to do, and when I return, we’ll go out together.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Eliminate some of the enemy.”
“What?”
“Nothing to be concerned about. They’re young and inexperienced.” MacKenzie raced out in his disheveled tramp’s clothing.
And one by one the four of the Ranger commandos in their camouflage green and black fatigues were tapped on the shoulder and subsequently rendered unconscious by an old hobo. Each was dragged to a curb, his face doused with several ounces of Southern Comfort, and laid to rest until revived.
However, and adding to Sir Henry’s anxiety, the “ten minutes” became twelve, then twenty, and finally, nearly a half hour. The Hawk had spotted five buttoned-down, stern-faced federal agents and six gentlemen whose squinting frowns and large foreheads were barely above and perhaps even below the gorillas-in-the-mist. He dispatched them in like fashion. “Amateurs!” whispered the Hawk to himself. “What kind of commanders do they have?” … Whoever they were, they sure had the PR covered! Some son of a bitch in a T-shirt kept his video camera rolling, focused on the counterprotestors, obviously for the benefit of those who had given them their orders. Ha! A joke! But every time Mac tried to grab the bastard with the camera, he pivoted like a goddamn ballet dancer and disappeared in the crowds.
And crowds there were en masse, as Mac ran back to the doorway. Sir Henry Irving Sutton was not there! Where the hell was he?… The actor was ten feet away at the edge of the building, stunned, studying the melee at the steps of the Supreme Court. Fights had broken out in front of the forty-odd stamping, chanting, drumming, sign-jerking Wopotami protesters, but the violent altercations seemed to have nothing to do with the Indians.
“Oh, my God!” said Hawkins, his hand on Sutton’s shoulder. “I’m not as young as I used to be!”
“Neither am I. So what?”
“A few years ago, none of those bastards would have gotten up. Or there were a hell of a lot more of them than I saw.”
“Who?”
“Those clowns who are beating the shit out of one another in the crowd of tourists.”
And, indeed, they were. The buttoned-down collars were screaming at the camouflaged commandos, who proceeded to throw them over their shoulders, as the goons of the world, figuring that any fight meant they had to be the victors or it was back to the union shop, jumped in with brass knuckles and leaded blackjacks. A full-fledged riot was not merely in the making, it was made. Angry tourists, pummeled and tripped by the combatants, screamed; those in mortal combat, bewildered by the lack of uniforms or any identification of their enemies, kept hammering away at anything that moved near them, and the idiot with the video camera kept yelling “Glorioso!” as he pranced around.
“Go, Buttercup!” shouted Hawkins into his radio.
“Right, Daffodil, but we’ve got a problem,” came the voice of Colonel Cyrus.
“What problem?”
“We’re okay with the religious trio, but we’ve lost the hooker and the rube!”
“What happened?”
“Pocahontas got mad when some female tourist threw a bunch of firecrackers at the feet of the dancers and screamed something in Greek. Our girl went after the bitch and Sam went after her!”
“Get them back, for God’s sake!”
“Do you really want Judge Oldsmobile to go into that mess and bash heads?”
“Damn it, we don’t have much time! It’s almost quarter to three and we’ve got to get inside, change our clothes, and present ourselves to the praetors of the chambers by three o’clock!”
“We may have a few minutes of flexibility there,” interrupted Cyrus. “Even the judges have to know about the chaos out here.”
“A Wopotami chaos, Buttercup! Let’s say that’s not to our benefit, even though it’s necessary.”
“Hold it! Our chickenshit rube is bringing back Pocahontas—in a hammerlock, I might add.”
“Every once in a while that boy comes through!… Detail the situation and let’s move!”
“Will do. When does our general walk out?”
“As soon as I see the rube and the princess cross the street, separately, and make sure she goes first.… Where are the three holy joes? I can’t see ’em.”
“You couldn’t. They’re on this side, making their way through the riot. You’d think people would have more respect for religious types. Desis One and Two have already clobbered a dozen yahoos, and I swear I saw D-One rip off five watches!”
“That’s all we need, a preacher-mugger!”
“That’s what we got, Daffodil.… Out, here come our two attorneys, Punch and Judy.”
“Whip ’em into shape, Colonel. That’s an order!”
“Listen, massa, you’re lucky I’m smarter than you or I’d take offense.”
“Huh?”
; “Never mind, your instincts are right. Out.”
The Hawk put his walkie-talkie back in his distressed overcoat pocket and turned to Sutton. “Only a couple of minutes now, Henry. Are you ready?”
“Ready?” said the actor, controlled fury in his voice. “You idiot! How can I possibly command the stage with that fracas going on?”
“Come on, Hank, you told me only a couple of hours ago that this thing was practically ‘offstage.’ ”
“That was an objective analysis, not a subjective interpretation. There are no small parts, only small players.”
“Huh?”
“You’re extremely insensitive where the arts are concerned, MacKenzie.”
“Yeah?”
“The lovely Jennifer is crossing the street—God, the wardrobe mistress should be fired forthwith! She’s a harlot!”
“That’s the idea.… There goes Sam—”
“Where?”
“The guy in the checkered suit—”
“Wearing that ridiculous hat?”
“Looks different, doesn’t he?”
“He looks positively stupid!”
“That’s what we want. No smart lawyer there.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed the actor. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“The minister in the gray suit—over there—the one climbing the steps with a priest and what appears to be an old rabbi between them.”
“Oh, oh.… What happened?”
“I swear to you the vicar just punched a man and stole his watch. Ripped it right off his wrist!”
“Damnation! I told the colonel that’s all we needed, a preacher who’s stealing his flock blind.”
“You know …? Oh, my word, of course you do. The elderly man in the rabbinical clothes is Aaron! And the two others are those fellows from Argentina or Mexico!”
“Puerto Rico, but that’s not important. They’ve reached the top, they’ll get in … You’re on, General!”
Static erupted from the Hawk’s radio; he yanked it out of his pocket as the voice of Cyrus burst forth. “I’m crossing the street. Wish me luck!”
“All systems are go, Colonel.… Calfnose, come in!”
“I’m here, don’t shout. What is it?”
“Cut the Indian stuff and go into the national anthem.”
The Road to Omaha: A Novel Page 57