Tally ho in the hunt for commie lovers!
I love you,
CAT
March, 1972
Dear John,
Ha! I never knew LBJ had it in him.
And his cock! Oh Lord, John. The photo of that lunatic Texan taken through the two-way mirror at that hotel in Austin—the one with him fully aroused with that dowdy hillbilly woman.
Let’s put it this way, I haven’t seen one that long since we shared footlong hotdogs at the Maryland State Fair in 1936!
It makes JFK’s look like your little pinky finger!
I love you,
CAT
September, 1965
Dear John,
I am informed that the Warren Commission is going to be released in the fall. Therefore, I encourage you to demand an advance copy for complete vetting by the bureau’s legal counsel.
And, naturally, you (we) must make certain there is no hint of suggestion as to the existence or purpose of Op. Over Easy. If those words are ever leaked to the press—oh Lord, John—there will simply be no end to it. The fact that you had that maniac mobster Ruby hush-up the marginal personality patsy that you’ve so cleverly manipulated all this time is bad (and risky) enough.
Much love,
CAT
June, 1964
Dear John,
I totally agree. That natty Eleanor Roosevelt is most likely a communist, even if she is widow to a president.
And I agree that she is perfectly queer (tee-hee). About as big a lesbian as ever came out of a Texas convent. But more importantly, even if she isn’t, it’s perfectly fine to paint her as such because she is such a natty old softee on communism who loves the coloreds. I swear, she just loves them. If she ever gets her way, we’ll be overrun with coloreds trying to worm their way into everything: business, schools, housing—or, mercy-me, even the FBI!
Go get her my love!
CAT
July, 1944
Dear John,
I am so glad you are finally phasing out Op. Over Easy. And your plan to evolve that program into a secret rapid response team called “deep field command” is ingenious. The bureau has needed a secret license-to-kill team (like the Brits) for decades. But we must be careful who we recruit. Their personality marginality must be minimal, or thoroughly masked so they pose no risk to our own corporate security. That—my love—is the true risk.
On another note, I love the blueprints for the latest revision of the new office building where management of that secret team shall be stationed on the 10th floor.
We are going to enjoy watching your beautiful building as it slowly rises directly across our avenue.
Dinner at the Mayflower tonight, my darling? I hope so. I only had a lousy salad for lunch in the company cafeteria. Oh, John, can’t we do something about that place? The food is perfectly horrid. The FBI deserves a much better cafeteria than that.
I love you,
CAT
January, 1972
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Key West, FL
Her other nickname was Chispa, Spanish for Sparky.
“Never mind my real name. I am Chispa, the Key West Queen of Haul. I own a houseboat, a taxicab and a dump truck. That’s all you need to know. People don’t need real names in this town. They come here to get away from real names.”
He didn’t like her much. She had a snotty attitude about pretty much everything. It made him want to give her a hard pop in the mouth. At the same time, he enjoyed her company. He’d always been strange about women in that way. His wife was no exception. She nailed it during their final argument before divorcing: “You love only what you despise,” she told him. “And that’s as twisted as it gets.”
“Okay,” he said to Chispa, “nicknames work for me.”
“You stay here long enough, we’ll find you a Key West nickname.”
“Already have one.”
“I’m listening.”
“Ice Skater.”
She considered it, then shrugged and said, “Okay, Ice Skater it is. But you won’t be doing much of that in the Keys.”
They drank boilermakers: beer mugs with shots of whiskey. She downed her whiskey in one straight gulp before swallowing half her draft pint as a chaser. He praised her for her method, but preferred to pour his shot of whiskey into the beer and consume it more slowly, or, as he said, “respectfully,” wondering if the word meant anything to her.
They got better acquainted during a pub crawl that lasted well into the evening. After brief stops at Sloppy Joe’s and the Bull and Whistle, she recommended smaller, less touristy places frequented by veteran Conchs. She let him pay all tabs.
“You’re the one who totes around your gold,” she snapped. “So pay the bartender, Mr. Ice Skater Man, and let’s move on.”
At the Green Parrot bar, he decided to needle her on what he guessed would be a sensitive subject.
“And Bayonne?” he asked.
“What about Bayonne?”
“You said at Sloppy Joe’s that people come here to get away from real names. In your case, you came here to get away from real names—and from Bayonne.”
“That’s right, so don’t ask me anything about Bayonne. And don’t bother asking me what I left behind in Bayonne either.”
“No worries,” he said. “Besides, I got a couple of secrets myself.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What do you know?”
“I know you’ve got secrets, Ice Skater Man.”
“Oh?”
“Fucking-A,” she said. “For one, you carry your gold around with you. For two, you know about airlines, but you’re not in the airline business. For three, you want to stay in the quiet part of town, but here you are in the party part of town. Number four, you got a crazy nickname that sounds like some CIA bullshit. And finally, there’s that bulge in your lower back.”
“What about it?”
“Nothing about it,” she said. “It’s your business. That’s all. Just like this is my business.”
Without regard for who might be watching, she dug into her shoulder bag and withdrew a nickel-plated .22 semi-automatic that looked cheap as dirt, like it would break apart in your hand if you fired a single shot. It banged her empty shot glass when she plopped it to the bar counter.
“And before you ask, the answer is yeah, it’s legal. In fact, it may be the only thing in my life that is totally legit.”
“That’s a cute little piece of business,” he said.
“You need it in my line of work,” she said.
“Hauling garbage?”
“My other business, smart-ass. Chauffeur. Make that—female—chauffeur. You were in my cab. Sometimes the stranger in the backseat gets ideas about the woman behind the wheel. Know what I mean?”
He doubted she’d ever had that kind of trouble with kids on spring break. Everyone under twenty-five at this island getaway for snowbirds already had more sex in their lives than they could handle. As for older men—who comes all the way to Key West to bother with a leather skinned cab driver with a crusty New Jersey personality?
Nobody. Except maybe him.
“I do know what you mean,” he said. “I’ve had some trouble with the guy in the backseat a time or two myself. But not the kind of trouble you mean.” She slipped the silver gun back into her shoulder bag before it drew unwanted attention. “And I hope whatever trouble you encounter is only with midgets or little old ladies,” he said, “because that .22 has about as much stopping power as bad words.”
She held her beer with one hand as though offering a toast and patted the weapon in her purse with the other. “It holds ten pills. Each one is the size of my daily vitamin tablet. If the bad guy is still standing after swallowing all ten of ’em, well then, I guess he deserves a gladiator’s thumbs-up from the emperor.”
“I’ll drink to that,” he said.
They spent the night on her boat
, docked on a polluted inlet near the airport. Her brown rusted dump truck sat nearby, more ancient looking than her taxi. It had a large pair of articulated metal forearms protruding at the front, used for locking onto a plow blade or some sort of bulldozer bucket. But the bucket was missing, which made the truck look like a fossilized museum display of reassembled behemoth bones with powerful tusks.
After sex, or what resembled sex, and before falling asleep, he contemplated his own imminent death. Of the three of them—his father, his son, and now himself—he wondered which sacrifice provided the greatest contribution to his country.
Probably his own, he decided.
Chapter Eighty
Gustav Crossroads, Lawson Parish, LA
Democratic House Speaker Henry Wayne Alderman flew home for the weekend.
After a late dinner with his wife, they retired to the back porch, sipped red wine and admired their two acres of perfectly manicured lawn. The summer heat cooled on the bayou during the evening, creating a low-hanging fog that seemed to make the dogwood and Mayhaw trees glow in the darkness, though they had long since lost their magnificent spring bloom. The yardman had mowed that day and placed fresh topsoil treated with hog manure at the base of each tree. Along with the cry of a hundred cicadas, the rich smells of freshly tended earth and cut grass filled the night air.
“Maybe it’s best to just let it go,” his wife said. “Hank, I love you and I’m sorry, but it’s so dark. Oh Lord, it’s so dark it’s painful to contemplate.” She almost laughed with disbelief at her own statement. “God, Hank, it’s the sort thing that will make people feel violated.”
“I know, sweetheart. That’s basically what the Lord’s Apostle from Kentucky said to me this morning in his office.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but maybe he’s right. Some will become so confused they’ll just buy more guns for self-defense.”
“Against whom will they be defending themselves?” he asked.
“That’s the problem, Hank—there’s no one. It’s just the mean truth. It’s so alarming that some will have a nervous breakdown. They’ll go postal blaming the wrong people. This isn’t the wolf knocking at the door. They’ll feel like it is. But it’s not. It’s only the nasty truth doing the knocking. And Lord have mercy, how do you tell people that a horrible badness from the past is actually good news just because it’s the truth? People will feel so assaulted they’ll want the National Guard posted on every street corner.”
He sighed.
“I know, I know. Lord have mercy on our souls either way this thing goes,” he said, looking into the night at the dogwoods glowing in the fog. “It’s like having to choose between colon cancer and getting disemboweled.”
His wife seriously disapproved of the expression, though she privately agreed with the mean irony of it. They sipped a second glass of wine while listening to the rhythm of the cicadas. When his cellphone rang, she volunteered to retrieve it from the kitchen. Seeing that it was from her husband’s press spokesman, Willy Baaktau, she answered and exchanged polite talk with him while walking the phone back to the porch.
“It’s Willy,” she said, handing the phone to her husband.
Congressman Alderman knew it was important. Willy Baaktau knew the rules. Weekend calls were off limits, except during campaigns, and this was not campaign season.
“Watchu got for me this Friday evening, Mr. Baaktau?” Alderman crooned.
“Brace yourself again, Mr. Speaker. Congressman Todd Gaynor is dead. Apparent heart attack.”
Alderman was dumbfounded. “Jayzuss,” he said with an audible gasp.
“That’s not all,” Baaktau said. “When I heard the details, it just about made me jump right out o’my drawers. Sir, it happened in the Capitol about an hour ago. He collapsed right there in the House chamber.”
“What in hell was he doing there at this hour?”
Hearing Baaktau take a breath on the other end, Alderman braced for more dramatic news.
“Mr. Speaker, I tell you the truth, this thing is nearly like somebody put a voodoo spell on that man. Word is, he spent all day in his office in a wildly irritable mood. This afternoon he apparently fell into an incoherent state. His staffers aren’t talking, but I’m guessing it was more like a mental breakdown than a physical attack.”
“Did his staff call a doctor?”
“They tried, but he wouldn’t let ’em. He got mad and sent ’em home. Then tonight, he left his office and took the underground trolley to the Capitol where he was seen wandering the corridors, talking to himself, weeping, praying. The security guards say he was actually cussing. Can you imagine? Of all men—him, cussing inside the U.S. Capitol?”
“I will be goddamned.”
“He went to the House chamber where he stood at the main podium and began ranting about the evils of homosexuality and godless computers. The night security guys said he seemed to think President Kennedy was sitting in the chamber, listening to him. Kept saying things like, ‘Please forgive me, Jack,’ ‘I loved you, President Kennedy,’ ‘Please forgive me, Lord,’ ‘Jesus, won’t you put more oil in my lamp.’ Really crazy shit. When the EMTs arrived, they prepared a tranquilizer hypo. But he collapsed and died before they could get the needle into his butt.”
Alderman knew his visit to Gaynor’s office that morning had sparked these strange events. He absorbed the facts in silence.
“Mr. Speaker,” Baaktau continued. “I know this is not what you had planned for your weekend at home with your family. But, sir, I think you need to scoot-on-out of Cajun country and come back here to D.C. on the first morning flight. Given what we’re dealing with in the White House, they’re all going to be looking to you for guidance on this one.”
“Okay,” Alderman sighed in agreement. “I’ll get my gargling done early, then call to let you know when to meet me at Ronald Reagan.” After he hung up, he turned to his wife.
“Time to call the National Guard?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so,” he said.
Chapter Eighty-One
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Key West, FL
At dawn, the DC-3 glided over the calm, emerald waters of its home base.
On the ground at Key West, Pangolin maneuvered his plane close to the airport terminal so that Eva could depart and scope out the waiting area ahead of her father. He’d become such a well-known fugitive that following his suspected whereabouts had become a national preoccupation. So they needed to be smart.
The latest news reports theorized he was still on foot somewhere in the D.C. area. One ex-FBI agent who’d been a constant staple of speculation on one of the stomp-and-shout so-called all-news networks guessed he was holed-up in a motel no more than fifty miles from the Watergate building. On another network, a female prosecutor who’d been relentlessly outraged over the murder of Billy Carney, wondered if Teagarden wasn’t prowling the nearest McDonald’s, selecting his next little boy to sodomize and murder. Another channel had an expert in something called “geospatial profiling,” which analyzed locational patterns of victims to determine the whereabouts of a suspected killer. That expert was the closest. He predicted that Teagarden was on a southern trajectory and forecast him to be somewhere on an axis that included Richmond, Raleigh, and Atlanta.
Eva slowly walked to the public restroom in the old terminal. The waiting area appeared normal. It was Saturday morning, and the full flow of air traffic had not yet begun. When it did pick up, it would be mostly inbound. Only a few early bird outbound passengers were waiting, mostly bored-looking middle-aged women. She knew from appearance that they were locals heading for a day of 3M: Miami, malls, and men. Not that the Keys didn’t have shopping and plenty of men, but from West Palm down to South Beach, there was much more variety, especially when it came to reasonably attractive, middle-aged persons of the masculine gender and heterosexual persuasion.
When she saw him standing near the main entrance, she pretended not
to notice and ducked into the ladies’ room. He was relatively young, a little on the short side, buff, with short cropped hair and no suntan. Perhaps most telling, his face and eyes looked exhausted, but his engorged pupils were keenly alert. When she emerged from the restroom a minute later, he was gone.
Back on the DC-3, she described the mystery man to her father and Pangolin.
“It’s doesn’t sound like Sheriff Klumm and it’s definitely not McCanliss, but that doesn’t mean much,” Teagarden said. “Well, there are more than two people looking for me.”
“More than two!?” Pangolin said, incredulous. “My friend, you’ve got a whole nation looking for you. Right now, you’re bigger than Tom Cruise.” Teagarden and his daughter exchanged nervous glances. “Look, why don’t I just fly the two of you to Nassau or Freeport?”
“Can’t,” Eva objected. “My toddler is in my Conch House with the nanny, and my robot bird is parked in the civilian hangar right over there by the swamp.” She leaned into a window of the DC-3. Two men armed with M4 carbines stood guard at the distant hangar. She could tell from their posture that they were bored. “My crew is out there now working on the leaky fuel line.”
“Is there another way out of the airport?” Teagarden asked.
“Sure,” Pangolin said, “but not without risking unwanted attention. Key West does have a police force of its own, you know.”
“Well here’s my suggestion,” Teagarden began, “Eva, you and Pangolin exit the plane as though you’re the only two on it. It’ll look better if you’re seen together. Walk to the parking lot as a couple and pull your car to the front curb. I’ll join you there five minutes later.”
The words “together” and “couple” made Pangolin and Eva glance knowingly at each other. Teagarden had no idea they actually had been a couple not so very long ago.
“Sounds like a plan, Dad.”
“Works for me,” Pangolin said. “And if you would, please, Mr. Teagarden, pull the door of the aircraft shut when you deplane.”
Flight of the Fox Page 24