The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga)

by Stan Hayes

  “Well, you know, Burke, my Sanskrit correspondence course doesn’t leave me as much free time as I used to have.”

  “Oh, is that what I’ve been hearing next door? Didn’t know Sanskrit had quite so many screams and shouts in its grammar.”

  “Guess you forgot that our boy Roy’s getting in shape to try out for UDT. Aside from the nightly 28-mile canter to the hangar and back, he cools off with calisthenics in the living room. Matter of fact, he told me he thought he caught you checking him out from the backyard a couple of times. You oughta ask him to let you go on that run with him some night; just you, him and the land crabs.” With a nauseating smirk, Swearingen side-stepped away.

  “Jesus, Jackie, that was kind of rough. That fading flower has enough trouble scaring up some action around here. God knows what it must be like for him on the base.”

  “It’s his call. If he wants to stir up gossip, that little pissant’s gonna get it sprayed right back at him. And he won’t like it.”

  Grinning at him, she said, “Sister Burke’d like to get me together with one of these poolboy buddies of his. He’s always reminding me that it won’t be long before you’re gone. He almost choked on his canapés when I told them that Maggie and I were leaving too.”

  The afternoon wore on, Lulu’s easy joie de vivre and carelessly sexy presence countering worn-out bons mots as they tripped through endless variations, sun and booze taking their inevitable toll on wasted bodies and flaccid minds. Jack’s dingbat tolerance wore thin, collapsing when Maggie Torres attempted a burlesque recall of the day that he brought Rick to have a look at the accumulated detritus that made up a Condado Beach weekend.

  “I’ve never had someone look directly through me with such passion,” she’d said, mimicking Rick’s no-nonsense military bearing, which she actually did quite well.

  “It might help if you were a little less transparent,” Jack responded as he got to his feet. He and Lulu were in the car within minutes, BOQ-bound.

  “It’s a shame that Ray had to leave so soon,” Lulu said, her grin made slyer than usual by the Daiquiris that had tailgated a slew of their siblings into her system on the deck that afternoon. “Maggie’d taken his measure five minutes after you guys showed up. If he were still here, they’d be banging each other’s brains out pretty much as we speak.” Jack had told her the previous Friday evening about Ray’s (Rick’s) no longer being part of the new FlxAir scenario.

  “Yeah, too bad that didn’t work out. Would’ve probably done them both good. Who is fucking Maggie these days, anybody? I’d be surprised if it were any of the Condado Commandos; can’t be much left after they lie out in the sun all day.”

  “She won’t admit it, even to me, but I believe that the only action that she’s had for awhile’s been with her boss. She was very curious about you in our early stage, i.e. whether I might be willing to share you, or at least pass you along after our thing ran its course.”

  “Well, hell; she’s not all that awful, if in fact you and I hadn’t clicked. What’d you do, fatten up my resume?”

  “Didn’t have to; she gave me the perfect opening.”

  “And that was?”

  “She asked me how big you were.”

  “Hm. You mean BIG?” Jack said, angling a finger down at his crotch.

  “Bingo. And I just had to tell the truth.”

  “And that was?”

  “I just told her what my uncle used to say all the time, when he’d talk about what he did in the machine shop at the mill.”

  “Go on.”

  “I said, ‘Honey, that thing’s absolutely a press-fit.’ Then I had to go on and explain, at least to the best of my understanding, what a press-fit actually was. Her eyes got big, the way they do, and then guess what she said.”

  “Just tell me.”

  Laughing, Lulu told him. “She said, ‘Do you think he’d mind if I watched some time?”

  “Now you tell me.” Sliding his hand up her thigh to moist hair, Jack smiled as he reached her stiffening clitoris. Has she ever seen this young sausage of yours? Shall we give her a break before I leave?”

  Still smiling, she shifted in her chair to ease his access and shook her head. “You just don’t understand girls at all, do you? We’ve been an ‘item’ for over a year, and it’d be a little much for her to get her poor Catholic mind around. When she said ‘watch,’ she was talking about peeping out from behind the closet door. Still, on a given day, with enough Daiquiris- but she’d never be satisfied with just watching, once she got a look at you doing me.”

  “My, my,” Jack said. “What would you think of our giving her a light workout together?”

  “Be a nice going-away present for you, wouldn’t it? Let’s save that for when we’re all back in New York.”

  Draining his glass, Jack said, “So the plan’s going forward. Got any kind of a timetable for getting back to civilization?”

  “Nothing definite; be kind of nice to be there for New Year’s with you, though.”

  “Yes it would. Should be close to done with Lear Jet training by then. Either way, that’s a done deal. I’ll take you on a jet ride.”

  Lulu shuddered as he rolled her clit lightly between thumb and forefinger. “That’s my Jackie. Most of your pals can’t wait to get out and go to work for an airline. Not you; you want your own goddam airline.”

  “Well, part of one anyway. Feel like another round?”

  The irony in her smile would have done credit to a woman 10 years her senior. “And we were going to make it an early night. Now that you’ve got me going, I feel like getting one to go, with a nice press-fit as a chaser. Why don’t you go see the Steward and get us a room?”

  “First I want to tell you something.” As he spoke, Gil appeared at the far end of the bar, giving him a frantic wave-off. Staring at him, Jack couldn’t miss the pantomimed words:

  “Tell her later.”

  Visitors to Serena’s new home on East 10th Street first encounter a mammoth Florentine brass knocker. When lifted, it triggers a four-tone chime strong enough to penetrate to the visitor’s side of the loft’s vault-grade door as though it weren’t there. As it did, a wry grin crept onto Jack’s face. “I can’t believe it,” he said to himself as he stood waiting in the bleak space between the door and the building’s only elevator, which was still configured to carry freight, given its horizontally-split door.

  Serena, luminous in a black silk caftan with crimson embroidery circling a neckline that would invite speculation by any sentient male, opened the door.

  Grinning as they embraced, Jack said, “Is it just me, or is that the old Griffin shoe-polish commercial?”

  Serena cocked her head a couple of degrees for a sidelong look at him. “I forgot. You listened to a lot of radio as a kid, didn’t you?”

  “Sure, who didn’t? Remember? ‘DING-dong, DING-dong; it’s tiime to shiine. Everybodygetset, it’s time to shine- yeah.’” Accompanying the jingle with an uninspired-but-energetic soft-shoe, Jack hit the finish at the end of the last line.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said.

  “Hi yourself, Bojangles,” she said. Get your ass in here before I kick it.” Jack stuck his tongue out at her. She laughed, wrapping her arms around him. “Dancing was never your strong suit. How ’bout playing to your strength and throwing a few Martinis together? Looks like I’ve got some catchin’ up to do.” She led him into the apartment; except for a short stretch of wall on the left, on the other side of which was the kitchen, the entire space was open. Several Persian rugs covered a good part of the wood parquet floor. Large, multi-paned windows took up most of the left and far walls, providing the vital north light for the third of the floor space occupied by Serena’s studio. A wrought-iron spiral staircase in the far right corner led to an upper floor, the view over its chest-high wall adding a thin slice of the East River to its overlook of the first floor.

  “I ’spect I can handle that. How about a rum Martini?”

  “Rum? You kidd
ing?”

  “Serious as a heart attack.”

  “You obviously picked that up in Puerto Rico. Sounds more like a Manhattan.”

  “No; with light rum. Got any Bacardi?”

  “Yeah, I think so; look in that cabinet the shaker and stuff’s sitting on.”

  After their frigid crystal glasses had touched rims, Serena said, “Welcome, bub; hope you’re going to stay awhile.”

  “Oh, yeah, we’ll be in town for long enough to wear out our welcome. Harry and I need to cut loose for a few days before we get started with the Lear Jet. He’s coming in tomorrow.”

  “Great. By the way, I bumped into a friend of yours not too long ago.”

  “Really? Who was that?”

  “Diana Bishop.”

  “Hm. Where in the world did you run into her?”

  “Of all places, the Village Vanguard. Hap dragged me down there to see one of his favorites, Mose Allison. As we were leaving, I heard someone holler ‘Miz Mason’ behind me, and damned if there weren’t the twins, sitting at a table with Mose Allison.”

  Jack grinned, wagging his head from side to side. “Those girls never met a stranger.”

  “I guess you’d know; she mentioned the fact that you and Rick have been carrying on with the two of them for the longest time.”

  His grin easing, Jack said, “Yeah, it’s nice when you can stay up with the home folks. I reckon Hap took that news in stride.”

  “Oh, she didn’t say anything in front of him; she gave me her business card and asked me to call her. Said she had something important to discuss with me. So I called her.”

  “And what was so important?”

  “Well, she said that she and Dolores ‘saw’ you, soon after you left their apartment when you came up for Thanksgiving last year. But you were nowhere near Long Island; you were, according to their ‘vision’ at least, in what appeared to be Bisque’s airport. Does that ring a bell?”

  Jack’s head dropped, his chin nearing his chest. “Anything else?”

  “Jack, She said that they saw you getting on a large airplane. A man with a mustache opened the door, and steps dropped down so you could get aboard. As you did, the man cautioned you to step around some dead or unconscious people that he said were ‘the President’s assassins.’ Please tell me that they’re off their rocker, honey.”

  Raising his head, Jack looked his mother in the eye. He said, “I wish I could, Mom.”

  Serena took a few seconds to respond, her mouth momentarily making a letter-O. “Oh, Jack. What in the hell have you gotten into?”

  Jack moved to sit beside her. “Remember I mentioned to you that Pete and Linda were shuttling stuff around the Caribbean?? Well, most of it was for the CIA. They had an assignment to pick up some ‘fishermen’ just outside Dallas on the afternoon of November 22nd. They were listening to the radio reports of the Kennedy assassination when the ‘fishermen’ showed up on the dock at this little lake where they were to pick them up. All three of them were carrying golf bags. When they reached the Gulf’s deep water, the aircraft began yawing, pulling, to the left. Their passengers had opened the top half of the cargo door and were about to drop the guns that had been in the golf bags overboard.

  Linda went back to see what was causing it; one of them shot her with a poison dart, apparently by accident, when she stepped through the cabin door. Another one came into the cockpit, shouting at Pete about their instruction that the crew, under no circumstances, were to enter the passenger cabin. ‘But she did, and now she’s dead,’ the guy said, or words to that effect. When he went back to the cabin, Pete pulled the nose of the aircraft way up, throwing the three guys and Linda into a heap in the tail. Then he leveled out, engaged the autopilot, pulled a small automatic weapon from the bag behind his seat, went aft and killed all three of them.”

  Serena dropped the hand that had flown inadvertently to her mouth. “Oh, Jack! Was she really dead?”

  “That’s the good part; Pete was finally able to bring her around. Apparently something in a pocket of her Mae West- her life preserver- slowed this dart or whatever it was down so that she got only a trace of the poison that it’d been dipped in. But they were still in a hell of a bind, because they knew that the guys Pete killed were some of, if not all of, the Kennedy assassins. They sure as hell couldn’t go back to Miami, deliver three dead ‘fishermen’ and appeal to the CIA’s better nature. So Pete made the decision. He had enough fuel to make it to Bisque and pick me up. Then we could put our heads together to see what sort of hiding place we could figure out for them until the whole assassination mess blew over. News reports said that the Dallas police thought ‘that they had their man’, but Pete could very easily be facing triple murder charges unless everybody’s satisfied that the plane crashed in the Gulf. I don’t think it’s safe for me to tell you any more than that, at least right now.”

  “I guess I can understand that, Jack, but I do have a question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How did you decide to go to Bisque in time to meet Pete and Linda? Did you drive Hap’s car? You must’ve left a couple of days before the assassination.”

  Jack nodded slowly, repetitively. “Somehow I knew that I needed to be in Bisque, but I had no idea why. Maybe I picked up some kind of a signal from some of the stuff that was banging around inside Diana and Dolores’s heads.”

  “Who was at the airport?”

  “Just Gene Debs.”

  “Oh, God. Did he see the bodies?”

  “No. The aircraft just pulled up to the edge of the ramp, they dropped the ladder and I got in.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Just that they were ferrying a new plane that we’d just bought down to Miami, and that I’d be back in a couple of days for the car.”

  Her expression turning businesslike, Serena said, “so they’re in hiding now, and as long as Gene Debs denies that you were there, your story’s that you were with the Bishop girls until after Thanksgiving?.”

  “Yep. I don’t think they’ll mind, if it comes to my being charged or even investigated, if it came to that.”

  “You’d best make sure. How secure do you think Linda and Pete are?”

  “Very. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “Then maybe we’d better move along to the second thing Diana told me. It’s about Rick.”

  Still second-guessing himself at having confirmed the twins’ vision of the assassins, Jack took a few seconds to refocus. “OK; what’re they giving him credit for?”

  “Well, for openers, murder.”

  His jaw tightly set, Jack locked his green eyes onto those of his mother. “Please don’t tell me that they, of all people, have gone anti-war on us. Killing is what soldiers do, and he’s gone back to do more of it, if necessary. Where do they get off calling it murder?”

  Serena’s features softened as she held Jack’s gaze. “What they saw wasn’t something that was done overseas, honey. They said Rick, dressed in civilian clothes, knocked on the door of an upstairs apartment; their feeling’s that it was somewhere in the Washington area. When the person inside opened the door, Rick hit him twice and he fell to the floor unconscious. Then he dragged the man into a bedroom, put him face down on the bed and shot him behind his left ear. Then he unscrewed part of the gun barrel, put it in his pocket, and wrapped the dead man’s fingers around the weapon. Then he proceeded to search the apartment before he left. If it’s actually true, there may be an explanation for it, but based on what you’ve told me so far, their visions seem to be pretty accurate.”

  “Sonofabitch!” Jack spat out. “It must’ve been that- Underhill! The guy, some kind of spook, whose killing Rick told me that he turned down! And shit, I was sorry for him! He was just stringing me along that whole time about coming into FlxAir. Coming down to Puerto Rico with a sob story about being recruited to kill this guy. What he was really there to do was to see what I’d tell him about what I knew about the FlxAir plane being lost at sea. What
a goddamn mess!” Raising both fists in the air, he brought them down hard on his knees. “But why? What in the hell are they doing bringing you into all this? The last thing I want is for you to be in any danger because of something I did. All Diana had to do was to call me.”

  Serena looked at her son with deep concern. “Diana said that Rick had come to see them just after Christmas, honey, and asked them about your being with them at the time of the assassination. They told him that you’d stayed there with them on Wednesday night, and left very early the next morning without saying goodbye. She said they didn’t think much about it at the time, but then a few days later they had the vision of you getting on the airplane at Bisque. They kept quiet about that, but Rick called them right after Mother’s Day this year, asking them all of the same questions he’d asked them the year before. Soon after that, they had the vision of him killing this man in his apartment.”

  “Did she say they told him about that?”

  “Seeing you get into the plane?”

  “Yes, goddamit, yes! Did she?” Jack said in a low-pitched hiss.

  For the first time in her life, Serena felt an icicle of fear of her son creep quickly up the length of her spine. She waited, willing her pulse to slow, and resisted the reflex to slap him. When she spoke, it was in a tone that she hadn’t used since he’d left high school. “She didn’t say one way or the other, Jack.”

  Before she’d finished speaking, Jack was on his feet. “Do you have their phone number?”

  After the briefest of conversations, he slapped the telephone into its cradle on the kitchen wall. “I’ve got to run uptown and see them, Mom. Please excuse me; believe me, I wouldn’t leave like this if I didn’t have to. Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow about this time with Harry.”