Despite the sense of urgency Werner felt about the Star Team's mission, or perhaps because of it, Werner felt extraordinarily alive as he took his first orders and mixed his first drinks of the night. His euphoria, he thought, arose not only from being entrusted with a special mission, but also from having suffered uncommon hardship, surviving against impossible odds and rejoining society in the city of his arrest seven years earlier. Now, unbelievably, he found himself living not just adequately, or comfortably, but rather well. Even more than that, it now seemed possible, indeed probable, that his daughter was alive and well in England and he might be in contact with her soon. If this came to pass, Werner dreamed, his life would be complete.
But why, then, did he still wrestle so with his urge to return to Utah? Was he becoming too comfortable in Boston, too set in his ways to leave a place he had never even liked? Was he clinging too tightly, perhaps, to the position he had created for himself at the Somerset Club? Or to his customers or his friends or to Carol? Or was it merely an old man's fear of change?
If Werner had learned nothing else from his years in the camps, it was that life requires change and one must learn to not resist. When the time came for him to leave this life behind, all he could be certain of taking with him were his memories, his lessons and his spirit.
****
Less than a half hour after Werner took over the bar, one of the dining room busboys arrived with the message that Jake Hagopian wanted to see him in his second floor office. Werner asked the busboy to summon the waiter who had covered for him earlier in the evening and set off the moment he spotted the waiter cross the lobby toward the bar.
When Werner entered the office, Hagopian was rooting distractedly among stacks of paper covering his massive oak desk. He raised his eyes at Werner's approach and appeared to forget what he had been doing.
"Come on in, Frank," the older man greeted him. "How's business tonight?"
"Busy for a Wednesday," Werner replied as he took a seat opposite Jake's desk. "It looks like April will be terrific month for the bar, Jake. How about the rest of the operation?"
Despite Hagopian's apparent preoccupation with misplaced documents, he appeared to be in an expansive mood.
"Which operation do you mean?" Hagopian replied. "If you mean building materials, business couldn't be better. Everybody seems to have renovation plans, the architects are busy and I'm up to my ears in requests for quotes. But if you mean the restaurant business, I tell you it's been a headache from Day Number One. I'm stinking tired of it and I wish I could get out of it once and for all. 'Who will rid me of this turbulent feast?' Wasn't it Shakespeare who said that?"
"I don't think Shakespeare wrote any plays about Henry II, Jake. But it's certainly the kind of line he could have written," Werner replied genially.
"Of course it is, and you know what I'm arriving at. Look here, Frank, I know we talked about this just last week, but I'm serious about wanting you to take over the Club. I'm tired of the headaches and the red ink and I want to take out my money and put it back into building materials where it will do me some good. What do you say we make a deal, eh?"
"I'm truly flattered, Jake, but I couldn't buy the Club even if I could afford it. It's not legally possible."
"Anything is legally possible with the corrupt bastards who run this city," Hagopian rejoined. "And yes, you can afford it if I say you can afford it. Open your mind, Frank. I think you've got some kind of channel vision about this and it's standing between you and success.
"Look, I'll sell you the Club on terms. I'll even accept your note. All I ask is that I don't have to invest any more than I've put into the business already and that over time you'll start paying me back out of the profits. You have a real knack for the club business, Frank. You'll be turning a profit from the get-up-and-go."
Werner chuckled.
"It's not that I don't believe in the Club, Jake. I love the place and I'd be proud to own it. But I can't own anything in Boston that requires legal registration because I don't have a residence permit. The only place I'm legal is Utah."
"Okay, so while we work on getting you a residence permit, we keep everything titled in my name except the cash and the trade accounts. How would that work for you?" Hagopian persisted. "We can handle it any way that will make you comfortable. Listen, Frankie, you know I won't cheat you. So let's nip that idea right in the bud."
"I know you're trying to help, Jake. You've been great to me and I trust you completely. But a residence permit is not like a liquor license or a building permit. You can't just pay off somebody at City Hall. It requires clearance from the DSS in Washington, and the last thing I want is for the DSS to know I'm here. So, please don't go and try to fix anything for me without my permission, okay?"
"Oh, I would never go around your back, Frankie," the owner assured him. "But if you really want something, you just can't just give it up every time some roadblock gets in your face. So, don't say no yet. Say you'll think about it and get back to me."
"Okay, I'll think about it and get back to you," Werner repeated with a gentle laugh.
"How long do you need to think about it?" Hagopian pressed.
Werner gave it a moment's thought.
"A month," he replied. "I should know by then."
"Fair enough, Frankie Boy," Jake Hagopian answered, rubbing his palms together. "Here's the deal. In a month, either I'm selling the Club to you, or you're selling the bar to me so I can sell the Club in one piece to somebody else. Am I fair or foul?"
"You're always fair, Jake," Werner answered.
"Okay, then, let's shake it up," Hagopian declared, holding out his hand to Werner. And with that, the two men closed their deal.
****
When Werner returned to the bar, every stool was taken and customers were lined up three deep at the rail. Steve, the waiter he had left temporarily in charge, appeared rattled by the surge in orders and stepped aside for Werner to respond to the customers who remained unserved.
"You're going to need more help if this keeps up," the waiter commented. "I'd be happy to move over to the bar full time if you'd like. The dining room has plenty of guys who need the work and Jake says the move is okay with him if you approve."
"I may take you up on that, Steve. Let's see how it goes this weekend, okay?"
The waiter nodded hopefully.
"And by the way, Hank Oshiro's here," Steve added, pointing to the far end of the bar. "I haven't served him yet. I thought you might want to talk to him first."
Werner's expression grew hard.
"Can you cover for me again?" he asked Steve, spotting Oshiro deep in conversation with a thirty-something in a banker's suit and a considerably younger blonde wearing a short black cocktail dress.
"Sure, leave it to me," the waiter replied.
Werner moved to where Hank Oshiro sat at the end of the bar, serving drinks along the way to a half dozen thirsty customers before addressing Oshiro.
"What will you have tonight, Hank?" he asked with an avuncular smile.
"Double bourbon on the rocks," Oshiro replied. "Give me whatever brand you're pushing."
"Oleg tells me you've got a new car," Werner remarked. "Congratulations, Hank. Business must be good these days."
"The car's not exactly new but they cleaned it up pretty nice for me. And, man, is it fun to drive again! It's just like the old days–cruisin' down the highway in my own set of wheels, listening to the old tunes. I feel like a kid again!"
"That's because you are a kid, Hank."
Werner filled an old-fashioned glass with ice cubes and poured in four fingers of house bourbon.
"How did you swing it?" he continued, sharing Oshiro's enthusiasm. "Since when did they start allowing illegal businesses to take tax write-offs for cars?"
"The times they are a-changin', Frank. There's a guy I know who's really good with electronics. He's getting components that haven't been seen on the market in years. I think they smuggle them in from India o
r someplace. Anyway, he and his partner take old cars whose electronics are totally fried and fix them up with new EMP-hardened electronics packages.
"People are going back and restoring cars that were sizzled in the EMP wars and they're selling them at really affordable prices. Affordable for me, anyway. I hear some people are even picking up hulks from the side of the road and shipping them overseas to get reconditioned or chopped up for parts. What was just a hunk of scrap iron a few months ago is now worth something. And the government has been looking the other way because of the foreign currency from the exports. Tell me, Frank, is this a great country or what?"
"And you're able to get gas for it?" Werner replied on a skeptical note. "How were you able to score a ration card?"
"Ration cards? We don't need no stinkin' ration cards!" Oshiro glowered suddenly, imitating the Mexican bandito in the old Bogart film, Treasure of the Sierra Madre. "Actually, Frank, there's plenty of gas out there if you're willing to pay a premium for it. And these days I can afford it. Business is booming! Cannabis is b-a-a-a-c-k!"
"Hey, not so loud in here," Werner chided his young friend with a look of mock surprise and a sidelong glance toward the thirty-something in the banker's suit and his blonde girlfriend.
Oshiro raised his hands as if in surrender and took another sip of bourbon.
"Say, Hank, would you mind coming with me for a minute?" Werner asked abruptly, motioning toward the dining room. "I need to talk to you about something. Wait till I leave the bar, then follow me into the kitchen, okay?"
"Busted already?" Oshiro protested. "Not fit to associate with the regular clientele? You're a hard man, Frank. Can I at least bring my drink?"
"Sure, bring it," Werner replied without looking back as he started toward the dining room.
When Oshiro arrived at the kitchen door, Werner took him into the manager's office and switched on a radio before closing the door behind them.
"Sorry to drag you away from all the fun, but before you get too excited about your brilliant commercial future, there's something I'd like to show you," Werner began as he raised a leg to sit on a corner of the heavy oak desk. "Here, hold out your hand."
"Why?" Oshiro challenged, no longer smiling.
"Just do it. You'll see."
Hank Oshiro leaned forward slowly from the soft leather armchair opposite the desk and extended his right hand toward the older man, who took it and pressed something into the palm. Upon seeing the paper disc with the five-pointed star carefully drawn in black ink, Oshiro grew pale.
"Man, don't ever play a joke like that on me again. Not ever, I mean it."
"It's no prank," Werner answered. "It's from the Kamas Star Committee. They reconvened one last time. They've asked me to form a team."
"A Star Team? Here?" Oshiro blurted out in anger as much as surprise. "You've got to be nuts!"
Werner turned up the volume on the radio.
"We're not in Kamas anymore, Frank," Oshiro continued, lowering his voice and completely missing his inadvertent pun. "The revolt's over and the good guys lost. Hell, the camp doesn't even exist. Don't bring it back."
"And the camps that didn't revolt? Have they been closed?" Werner asked without emotion. "And has the CLA stopped dragging in new prisoners to replace the ones they worked to death?"
"You know they haven't, Frank, but you and I aren't going to change it. So, whatever craziness you're planning, I'll thank you to leave me out of it."
"Oh, so you're for the Unionists now," Werner mocked. "All that rage in you against the Party nomenklatura and the New Class: all is forgiven, eh? Now that business is good and you've got your wheels, life is sweet again. Live and let live. Kamas was just an unfortunate misunderstanding."
"Don't go there, Frank," Oshiro warned through clenched teeth. "I hate the Party as much as you do and I haven't forgotten Kamas for a minute. But you seem to forget that one of your Star Teams came after me once. Yeah, they held their kangaroo court late one night and roasted me real good. It must have made them feel so righteous to send out a team to whack a poor slob like me who made the stupid mistake of accepting a favor from the Wart. Only I never betrayed anyone, and thank God, the team was called off before I was hit. But what did any of those teams really accomplish? And why didn't they send one after Whiting or Chambers or the Warden? Why not whack the people who turned all those dumb slobs into stool pigeons? That kind of Starcom might have made sense to me. If they ever get around to it, let me know."
"Good, then. So you're in," Werner declared with the trace of a smile.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"The team is going to do exactly what you've proposed. We're going to hit the Warden. Here. In Boston."
For the second time the blood seemed to drain from Hank Oshiro's face.
"Rocco? In Boston?" he asked in disbelief. "Are you shitting me?"
"I've seen him up close and personal," Werner replied. "They even announced his new job in the newspaper. You can look it up."
"Holy Shit," Oshiro exclaimed as the reality began to sink in. "If he's here, we can't let him get away. How big is your team?"
"Five, including the two of us."
"And how do you see your chances? I mean, do you stand a chance of getting away with it or is this some kind of suicide mission?"
"I don't do suicide missions," Werner declared. "We're all going to walk away and go on to live happy, productive lives."
"Fine, then. At the risk of seeming fickle, I take back everything bad I said about Star Teams," Oshiro announced with a wry smile. "If we're going after Rocco, you can count me in."
"Tremendous!" Werner replied. "We'll meet tomorrow morning to read you in on the plan. Is ten okay?"
"Yeah, I can do it," Oshiro replied after a quick look at his watch.
"What's more, you'll have to stop coming to the Club. From now on, we can't be seen together. If you want to meet, call me or leave a message saying that you want to come over to my place. Whatever time you give on the phone, we'll meet one hour before in the coffee shop near your flat on Commonwealth. Got it?"
Oshiro nodded.
"How about the rest of the team?" he asked. "Do I know any of them?"
"Sorry, Hank, but I can't tell you that. We're going to keep everything compartmentalized until the last possible moment. For now, I'll be your only contact."
Oshiro laughed and looked around the room.
"Bummer. I'm going to miss this place."
****
An hour after Hank Oshiro left the Somerset Club by the alley door, Werner noticed a short, slightly built man in a tweed jacket and bow tie walk into the lobby. From behind his owlish, horn-rimmed glasses, Harvey Konig's eyes swept the room as if he were searching for someone.
He turned toward the dining room and for a few moments dropped out of sight. When he returned, Konig entered the bar and seated himself at a stool near the door. Werner noticed at once that Konig, while projecting energy and vitality on his previous visit, now seemed to convey a listlessness that reminded Werner of an exhausted addict coming down from a high. He recalled Hank Oshiro's remark the week before about having sold his entire stock of Ambien and Valium that night and wondered if Konig could be such a prodigious abuser of these drugs that he had run through them in less than a week.
"Welcome back, Harvey," Werner greeted him. "What would you like to drink?"
"An Old Fashioned would be just the thing," Konig answered with a bonhomie that seemed less than genuine.
"Jimmy style?"
"Yes, that's the ticket," Konig agreed.
While Werner muddled some freshly cut lemon peel into a mixture of sugar and aromatic bitters, he watched Konig look over his shoulder repeatedly. When he delivered the completed drink to his customer, Werner noticed that two strangers had entered the room.
Both were stocky linebacker types with thick necks and shoulders encased in cheap gray suits. Werner sized them up right away as federals, possibly DSS or FBI, though perhaps a
ffiliated with one of the minor-league federal security teams like Treasury or Energy. They slithered across the room to a vacant table and set to work burning a hole in the back of Konig's tweed jacket with their stares.
Konig saw them, too, and reached out compulsively every few seconds for the bowl of peanuts before him as if eating enough of them might make the two gumshoes disappear. The former professor then launched into a wandering monologue about his social life in London, his flat in Mayfair, his offices in the City and the important personages he knew on both sides of the Atlantic.
Then, without any logical transition, he dredged up memories of the old Somerset Club, before the Events, when he was a rising star at MIT and took every opportunity to dine out with clients and colleagues.
Werner humored Konig by appearing to listen while he took drink orders and filled them for patrons who bellied up to the bar on either side of Konig. The visiting moneyman ordered a second Old Fashioned and nursed it slowly while he rambled on about the hallowed financial institutions of Old Boston. Apparently oblivious of crossing the frontier into dangerous political territory, he leaned over to Werner and offered in a conspiratorial voice that the recent growth in the Unionist economy was unsustainable.
"Their economists couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag," Konig asserted. "The only thing they know how to do is steal. First it was from the taxpayers, then the corporations, and finally the foreign debt holders. They taxed, regulated, inflated, and nationalized the middle class all the way to serfdom, and now they say they want to nurture a private sector again. Believe me, Frank, as surely as the sun rises in the east, the moment the business sector gets on its feet again, the Party will strip it bare. If you have any money at all, keep it buried under the mattress."
Konig went through the second Old Fashioned more quickly than the first and ordered a third. Werner wondered how Konig's constitution would handle the combination of alcohol and prescription drugs, if indeed he were consuming everything he had bought from Hank Oshiro. By now, Konig appeared to have forgotten about the two men in the cheap gray suits who kept their eyes fixated on him.
Star Chamber Brotherhood Page 13