The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “Nice tats,” he said. She turned around, expecting to see Cat-Eyes Lockhart, but instead she saw a man with a dark red full beard and blue bandana on his head. The second Volunteer was just as tall as McCann but not quite so massive, well muscled, wearing a sleeveless denim jacket that might once have been biker colors over a tank-top T-shirt. His arms and shoulders were covered with a variety of Confederate flags, Klansmen on rearing horses holding fiery crosses, Swastika motifs and Viking warrior maidens in armored bikinis. His arms were crossed and he was holding a stainless steel .357 Magnum in one hairy hand.

  “Yours are pretty gnarly too,” she conceded.

  “You know who we are?” asked McCann in his deceptively low and gentle voice. “Lenny told you?”

  Lainie had instructed her to keep to the truth as much as possible and try to avoid any lies that might trip her up later. “Yeah, I know who you are, and no, Lenny didn’t tell me,” said Kicky. “Lenny never tells me shit. Never told me shit, I should say. I saw you when you came in the Den yesterday and I recognized that guy who was with you, the Cat. Jesus, man, everybody in Portland must know his face by now. That guy’s hot as bubbling cheese. I don’t know who’s got more balls, him or you for being seen with him in public.”

  “We tried putting a bag over his head, but that attracted even more attention,” said the man behind her. His accent was noticeably Southern or possibly cowboy.

  McCann had a disconcerting habit of concentrating on the most essential points first. “So if Lenny didn’t tell you anything about us, how comes it that we see you here at the very time and place we should be seeing Mr. G.?”

  “I was in the can and when I came out I heard him set up the meet with you here,” she said. “I figured you’d want to know he was dead.”

  “You figured right,” agreed McCann. “And how did that come about?”

  “Last night he got a visit from those two nigger cops I mentioned,” said Kicky. “I was there when they came in. One was a uniformed sergeant, Roscoe something. The other was Jarvis from the Hatecrime and Civil Disobedience Squad. They call him the Monkey.”

  “We’re familiar with the Monkey, yes,” said McCann. “Go on.”

  Two blocks away, the Pacific Power van was discreetly parked in an alleyway, and the three detectives were hunched over McCafferty’s metal case getting an earful, clear as a bell. “Yeah, you bet yo’ ass you familiar wid me, cracka muthafukka!” growled Jarvis.

  “I can’t believe it! We’re finally getting these guys on digital!” crowed Detective McCafferty in elation.

  “Quiet!” snapped Lainie, straining to hear.

  In the apartment Kicky launched into the crucial part of her cover story. “They came in and they talked with Lenny for a while in one of the booths,” she said. “Then all of a sudden they took him back in the back. Didn’t look like he was too happy about going with them. I took care of some business about that time, and when I got back the Den had hit the bubble gum machine, flashing blue lights everywhere.” There was an electronic beep. “What the fuck!” She turned and saw the second Volunteer right behind her with a hand-held metal detector in his hand; he had been quietly running it over her while she spoke.

  “What’s in the handbag, Kicky?” asked McCann. Kicky scowled and handed it to him. McCann holstered his pistol and dug around in the bag, then pulled out the sock with the padlock inside it. “You must get some rough customers,” he remarked, hefting it and returning it to the handbag, which he handed back to her.

  “Yeah, where the hell you think I got this?” she said, pointing to the still visible bruise on her face where Jarvis had hit her the night before, heading off one obvious coming question. “Anyway, I heard later that Lenny was found dead in the alley with his head beaten in. It must have been those cops. I remembered seeing you guys earlier that day, Jarvis is with Hatecrimes, and so I put two and two together. I figure they were trying to squeeze him for information on you guys, and so I came here instead to give you the 411.”

  “Why?” demanded McCann.

  “Because I want to help you out,” she said.

  “And why is that?” he asked.

  Kicky gestured toward herself. “You know what I am,” she said. “Any fool with two eyes can see. America’s fucked me over and I figure it’s time I returned the favor.”

  “What, no big long speech about how the world Jewish conspiracy done turned her into a ho’?” chortled Jarvis two blocks away in the van.

  “No, no, she’s playing it just right!” insisted Lainie. “Quiet!”

  “You a junkie?” asked McCann.

  “Not anymore. I been clean six months and I’m staying clean,” said Kicky.

  “You think Lenny gave us up?” asked the second man.

  Kicky gestured around her. “You hear any sirens?” she asked. “Guess not.”

  “And we should believe this story of yours and trust you exactly why, now?” asked McCann politely.

  She repeated the gesture. “I say again, you hear any sirens? Look, I don’t expect you to let me in on all your deep dark secrets or nothing like that. I wouldn’t want to know those anyway. But I’m willing to help you any way I can.” She took a Jupiter’s Den card out of her back pocket, one of a number she carried for customers. “My cell’s on the back. I’ve done what I came here to do. Now I’m going to leave, and you can call me any time and I’ll go anywhere you tell me and do whatever you tell me. Or if you don’t trust me, then go ahead and shoot me.”

  “How do you know we won’t just shoot you?” asked McCann.

  “I don’t,” she said. “Sure, I thought about it, and I just don’t care anymore. If all I have to look forward to in America is 50 more years of this shit, I’d rather die now and get it over with before I end up a washed up sick old drunk like my mom, 55 going on 75. I figured it was worth the risk.”

  McCann looked at the second man. “She’s right,” the second man said. “We ain’t hearing sirens and there’s no RRT kicking in the door, and she’s not wired so far as that handset tells us.”

  McCann smiled coldly. “Well, regardless of what you’ve heard, miss, we don’t just kill people without a reason, so I guess we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m Comrade Smith. Winston Smith.”

  “I don’t remember no Smith in our NVA files,” said Jarvis two blocks away in the surveillance van, furrowing his brow.

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” said Lainie, rolling her eyes. “But this smart-ass should remember that in 1984, Big Brother got Winston Smith in the end.”

  “1984? Naw, he don’t sound old enough to have a record that far back,” said Jarvis decisively.

  “Quiet!” snapped Lainie again.

  Back in the apartment, Jim McCann continued his introductions. “This is Thumper,” he said, indicating the red-bearded man.

  “Obviously your street name,” said Kicky.

  “Actually, it’s my job description,” said Thumper with a boyish and only slightly maniacal grin.

  McCann went on, “Now, since you want to do your patriotic duty to the Northwest Republic by helping us out, I don’t suppose the late Mr. Gillis told you anything about a consignment of goods he had for us?”

  “Uh, like what, guns or explosives?” she asked. “I guess that’s what you guys would be interested in, but I always figured Lenny was too lame to deal in heavy shit like that. But then I never would have figured him for one of you guys anyway,” she concluded.

  “He wasn’t one of us guys,” said McCann. “Lenny Gillis was just what he seemed to be, a petty criminal, and not too good at it. But unfortunately, revolutionaries can’t be too picky about who we deal with sometimes. And no, it wasn’t weapons or ordnance. I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to you to learn that Gillis also did a heavy trade in stolen goods?”

  “I did fourteen months in Coffee Creek off one of his little fencing deals gone bad, so no, it wouldn’t surprise me at all,” replied Kicky in a dry tone.

 
“We learned through various channels that Lenny ended up with some of the loot from a high-end rip-off at a defense plant in Seattle,” said McCann. “We came here tonight to buy some stuff from him, but now we’ve got no Lenny and no merchandise, and an envelope full of cash burning a hole in our pockets. When you were around that strip joint of his, did you see anything like a package or maybe a box, a manila envelope, anything like that? Smaller than a breadbox, able to fit into a briefcase?” Kicky noticed there was a briefcase on the back of one of the musty and decayed armchairs in the apartment.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “But I know sometimes he used to stash his hot stuff in here. This thing you’re looking for, you say it’s something small, like drugs? That size? Try under the TV.” She pointed to the home entertainment center. Under the set was a drawer with slots for DVDs. The second man pulled it out. “Nothing but porno,” he said in disgust.

  “No, it goes further back,” she said. “Pull the drawer all the way out.” Thumper did so. “Now reach way back inside and see if anything’s there.” Thumper made a long arm inside the cabinet and pulled out a large, heavy padded mailing envelope. He tore it open and spilled the contents out onto the coffee table. Kicky saw a number of small, square and rectangular black objects. “That what you’re looking for?” she asked.

  “That’s it,” said McCann, holding up one of the Lego-like components.

  “Uh, you gonna shoot me if I ask what those are?” Kicky couldn’t resist asking, even as her heart quailed at the risk she was running.

  “Computer chips and micro-circuit boards,” said McCann, admiring them. “Very special ones. All plastic. No metal filaments, no metal in their composition at all. I won’t tell you what we want them for, but suffice it to say that these babies can pass through a metal detector without tripping it.”

  “Wow, I didn’t know they could make things like that,” said Kicky with a wide-eyed and impressed expression on her face.

  “Shit!” said McCafferty in the surveillance van. “Dollars to donuts it’s those SMC-Fives and Sixteens from the Boeing heist up in Seattle last month! Silicon microconductors, chips and boards, the matched set, state of the art! And you’re going to let these fascist sociopaths walk with them, Lainie? If the Chief doesn’t crucify you, the FBI will!”

  “It’s a risk we have to take, Andy,” said Martinez in a level tone, knowing he was right and if she couldn’t make her case to higher-ups on the point, she’d be walking a beat as a meter maid. “Don’t you see? Already this little tattooed twist has told us something we didn’t know. She’s a gold mine and we have to keep drilling her in deeper and deeper!”

  In the apartment, McCann opened his briefcase, put the envelope inside, and took out another, smaller envelope. From it he pulled several packets of hundred dollar bills and handed them to her. “I’ll just assume you’re Lenny’s heir apparent,” he said to Kicky. “The deal was twenty grand. Make sure it’s all there.”

  Kicky gave a wry smile and gently shoved the money back at him. “I suppose that was a test,” she said. “Keep it. I mean it, uh, Comrade Smith. I really do want to help you and maybe someday have a country of my own where I can be something besides white trash.”

  “Perfect!” breathed Lainie in the van, headphone to her ear.

  “Look, I’ll go now,” said Kicky. “I got a bus to catch. If I make it out of the building without a bullet in my back, I’ll assume I’m good with you guys. Call me, and have whoever calls me use the name Mr. Smith so I’ll know he’s from you.”

  “I can’t guarantee that,” said McCann. “It’s not up to me. You know we’re going to have to check you out?”

  “Yeah, well, when you do you’ll see I’m no prize,” she said seriously. “I’m not going to try to hide or conceal anything. My past is pretty shitty.”

  “You check out, maybe your future will be better, sister,” said Thumper.

  Kicky slipped up then. She forgot herself and snapped at him, “I’m not your sister!”

  “Yes, ma’am, actually, you are,” said Thumper seriously. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  “Well, I guess I’m a racist,” admitted Kicky. “My God, how could anyone grow up where I did and not be?”

  “And what do you think a racist is, ma’am?” asked McCann.

  “Uh, a white person who hates niggers?” guessed Kicky.

  “No, that’s a common misconception. Hate has got nothing to do with it,” McCann said seriously. “One of our old leaders, Pastor Bob Miles, put it best many years ago. A racist is someone who knows who they are.”

  “I can’t honestly say that I know who I am,” admitted Kicky.

  “Then we’ll show you,” said Thumper. “Now split. Out the front. We’ll go out the back way. Wait for a call. It may be a while, but wait for it.”

  Kicky turned and left the apartment. She left the building and walked to the bus stop, under a streetlight so the two men would be sure to see her there. A minute or so later, a dark Ford sedan slid by the stop; she did not see if the two men were in it or not, but they were. She continued standing there for almost five minutes, letting one bus pass, before the Pacific Power van pulled up beside her and the side door slid open. Then she got in and collapsed into a fit of hysterics, vomiting in sheer terror at her close encounter with death. Lainie Martinez actually tried to comfort Kicky and wiped her mouth with a paper towel. She was now a valued asset.

  In the dark Ford, Volunteer Jimmy Wingo, alias Thumper, was driving, and McCann was dialing his wireless phone. A voice answered. “Mac’s Auto and Body Shop,” said the man, who was one of the Volunteers several blocks back in the two men’s escort car.

  “Hey, Joey, those Toyota brake pads came in, finally,” said McCann. Volunteer Van Gelder, whose first name was not Joey, understood that they had the microchips in their possession.

  “Finally!” he said. “Can you get them over here first thing in the morning?”

  “Mmmm, not sure, slight problem in the schedule tomorrow,” said McCann. “I’ll do what I can. You keep a sharp eye out tomorrow morning and they’ll be there when they get there, is all I can tell you.”

  “Okay,” said Van Gelder. “Have a good evening.”

  “You too.” McCann had just told Van Gelder that something wasn’t quite right and he needed to keep an extra sharp eye out, while the two NVA teams met at an alternate safe house to the one originally planned. It took them two hours of circuitous driving to reach the place, another apartment complex on a semi-rural road in Clackamas County.

  Awaiting them was Lieutenant Wayne Hill of the Third Section, the NVA’s intelligence arm. He had chosen the code name “Oscar” in a sardonic reference to the Zionist book and movie Schindler’s List. Hill too had a list. He was a slender and handsome man of about thirty with ash blond hair, blue eyes and a classic aquiline Nordic countenance. He was the scion of one of the wealthiest old money families in Virginia, the possessor of a Phi Beta Kappa key from Georgetown University, an absolutely dedicated and ascetic National Socialist and already enjoying a budding reputation as one of the Army’s most skilled assassins. He floated between brigades, training brigade intelligence officers and troubleshooting difficult cases, or sometimes trouble-stabbing and trouble-strangling them. Anything to do with the super-microchips came within his high-priority purview.

  McCann walked into the living room of the apartment and held the envelope. “I checked them out on a laptop with a special USB adaptor while we were on our way here,” he told Hill. “They’re the real McCoy, alright. No defectives. We got what we paid for, and we didn’t even have to pay for them.” He threw the envelope of cash down on the table. “But there was something of a problem at the delivery point.” Jimmy Wingo walked into the room with two mugs of coffee and handed one to McCann.

  “One problem I can see right off the bat is the fact that Lenny Gillis has been dead for the past twenty-four hours,” said Hill. “I got the word tonight. The case has been sealed alr
eady and somebody did a full cleanup in the PB’s computers. None of our people can get near the files, they’re behind too many cyberwalls. So how did you get the goods?”

  “One of Lenny’s prossies, white girl named Kicky McGee, with a lot of tattoos and a lot of miles on her, shows up and gives us a line about how she wants to join the Army, then she leads us right to the merchandise. We could have found it ourselves, but it would have taken us a while.” McCann then went through a detailed account of the entire meeting with Kicky.

  “It sounds pat, but sometimes real life works out pat,” said Hill. “Does she read right?”

  “It could have happened exactly as she said, yes,” said McCann. “I didn’t detect a single thing about her, anything she said or did, that indicated she was lying. She sounded like a pissed-off white girl who is tired of being fucked by Amurrica, in every sense of the word. The metal detector said she was clean, although as we know from these chips we just got, that doesn’t mean much anymore. I’ll say this much: I know ZOG does not want us to have these chips. They know that with these we can get anything electronic we make past 90 percent of all the security scanning devices in the country. I can’t see them letting us walk out the door with these if they had any way of knowing we had them in our hands.”

  “Did you see any sign at all that you were tailed here from the meeting site tonight? Anything even remotely suspicious?”

  “Zip,” said McCann. “We kept an eye out for copters, and we stopped in Gresham and I ran the detector over both vehicles looking for any bugs or GPIs they might have slipped on us somehow. Nothing.”

  “Jimmy?” asked Hill.

  “Hey, don’t ask me for an opinion on a woman,” snorted Wingo. “Last time I trusted a woman I ended up in Angola Farm. But I’m like Jim. I didn’t pick up on anything that sounded like she was lying. And if it was two cops that killed Gillis, that could explain the PB burying it so deep.”

  “Lenny did tell me at our last meeting that he was expecting a visit from the heat last night,” said McCann. “Jarvis used to be Vice and my guess would be it wasn’t about us, it was over some shakedown he was running on his old turf. That would play. If I had to decide, I’d say the girl is straight up and she needs to be contacted by a recruiter.”