“Gimme a break!” Stone pleaded, laughing.
The ball field had a white taped cross just outside the infield. A crowd was around the field, looking upward, straining to see what appeared to be small multicolored dots that grew larger as the contestants, already out of the aircraft, fell to earth in jumpsuits of a variety of colors. The chutes flared after a free-fall, and an official pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and set it off near the cross marking the target on the field. The thick orange smoke indicated the direction of the wind for the jumpers, a factor critical to their ability to maneuver for accuracy.
One by one, the nine contestants descended, the interval determined by when they opened their chutes. They landed, softly, after nearly flying their highly maneuverable square chutes, by stepping lightly onto the ground. The skill of the parachutists was displayed by their ability to judge the wind and guide themselves accordingly as they “flew” in slow, large circles above the field, trying to position themselves so that they could step down with one foot as close as possible to the mark. All but one were within the X formed by the cross, and he was still within the circle defined by the spectators.
The last contestant alighted like a blue heron, his long legs extended until the last moment. Then he pulled one up slightly so that the other would step directly on the center of the cross.
“Way to go, Arno!” Wings Harper cheered, his words drowned out by the appreciative roar of the crowd. The three men waited until the contestants had gathered up their parachutes and been congratulated by their friends; then Pappy and Wings walked up to the winner. Wings said, “Hey, Arno, how much you make on that one?”
The jumper peeled his helmet off to reveal light red hair, and smiled slyly at Wings. “Who, me?” he asked in mock innocence. “Gamble?” Then, spotting Pappy Saye, he said, “Pappy, you know me like a brother. You know I’d no more gamble than ol’ Wings here would jump in the water without his inner tube.”
“Sure,” said Pappy, “and I’m Snow White.” He jerked his thumb at Stone. “Meet a friend of ours, Mike Stone.”
The raw-boned redhead put out his hand and smiled. “Arno Bitt,” he said. “Heard about you in the teams. Always wanted to shoot with you. Say you’re real surgical.”
Stone smiled at the compliment. “Surgical” shooting had a precise meaning in the SEALs. It meant the ability to fire in a close-quarter battle situation, such as hostage rescue, with the ability to unerringly score two lethal hits to the head of the hostage takers without endangering either the hostages or other rescuers, all that in a crowded room in the heat of a life-and-death battle with desperate men.
“Well,” said Stone, “maybe you’ll get the chance. What’re you doing these days?”
“I’m in between divorces. Had a parachute school going, nice little business. She got it in the settlement. Started another. I think it’s gonna go the same way. It’s like they say, ‘lucky in cards…’”
“Gotcha,” said Stone. “Think you could work with these two beach-hoppers again?”
“Work with the devil if the price is right.”
“It’s not. It sucks. But, who knows? You might get to shoot with me.”
“C’mon, Arno,” said Pappy. “All you got to lose is your ass, and most of that’s gone already.”
“You might get laid,” Wings Harper added helpfully.
“Lemme think about it,” Arno said.
“Sure,” said Stone. “Let’s get something to eat.”
As the three men crossed the field back to where the propane tank had blown, they were greeted by the sounds of gasoline-powered chain saws. At the cooking pits, people were lined up with plastic plates as the “chefs,” all volunteer former SEALs, carved the roasted carcasses with chain saws, then used pitchforks to heave the chunks of meat onto wooden tables for slicing and distribution to the waiting diners. Beer flowed copiously from innumerable kegs. The sea stories got wilder and wilder and the eyes of the children wider and wider until their mothers herded them out of earshot at “Aw, Mom, just when they got to the good part!”
It was late in the day when Stone, cold sober, helped Pappy Saye and Wings Harper, slightly inebriated, carry a thoroughly drunk Arno Bitt off the field and back to Stone’s motel. “He’ll be okay,” Pappy slurred, “ish just Germans can’t hannel beer. Not used to it.” They placed Arno on the second bed in the room, then left with the promise to come by in the morning. Stone took off Arno’s shoes, loosened his belt, and covered him with the bedspread, then turned in himself.
In the middle of the night, Stone awakened the moment Arno Bitt rose from his bed and lurched into the bathroom. He listened as the man got thoroughly sick. Then, when Arno failed after a period of quiet to emerge from the bathroom, Stone realized he had passed out. Many a man, he knew, had choked to death on his own vomit. He got up and went in to check on Arno and found him unconscious, head, shoulders, and one arm down in the bathtub. The tub was sprayed with a thick layer of vomit, the combination of partially digested meat, potatoes, and corn, and what seemed to be half a keg of beer. Stone sighed, then went to work.
Arno Bitt wakened shortly after 8:00 A.M. His head ached the way it had the day that he was next up in a baseball game, the batter took a vicious swing for a third strike, and the bat slipped out of his hands and hit Arno in the forehead.
Arno lay still on the bed. He wasn’t dizzy. That was a plus. He didn’t feel sick. Another plus. He might live. Then he remembered the middle of the night and knew why he didn’t feel nauseated anymore. He looked over at Stone, who appeared to be asleep.
Painfully, but with a sense of obligation and embarrassment, Arno Bitt got up and went into the bathroom to do his best to clean up the mess he’d made before Stone, whom he hardly knew, got up to find it. To Bitt’s astonishment, the bathroom was immaculate—albeit, there was a sour odor that the wide-open window had still not fully dispersed.
Stone was stirring when Arno came out of the bathroom. “Listen, Mike,” he began, sheepishly.
“Forget it.” Stone cut him off, his voice kindly.
“Yeah, but—”
“Arno, in BUD/S, when both my knees gave out the third day of Hell Week, the guys in my boat team virtually carried me all the rest of the week when we weren’t in the water. It’s what it’s all about, Arno. You know that. You wore the Budweiser.”
Bitt thought about that for a minute, then said, “Mike, yesterday when I said I wanted to think about your thing—you know, goin’ in with you? It was because … well, I knew Wings and Pappy real good. I operated with them. But I didn’t know you, know what I mean? But what you said … about the Budweiser. I mean, you’re right. You wore it, too. And if that ain’t good enough, nothin’ in the world is. I mean—”
“I know what you mean, Arno. Thanks. Welcome aboard.”
Arno smiled ruefully and held his head. “Besides,” he said, “maybe I can steal something.”
Stone grinned and frowned at the same time. “Jesus,” he said, “I didn’t hear that.”
13
“Doctor, I don’t mean to sound like I’m questioning your judgment, but the fact of the matter is my aunt said nothing about going home until I mentioned that I’d put up three old navy buddies at the house. That makes a total of five men, including me, that she considers to be just out of adolescence, with nothing better to do than rip up her house while screwing our brains out with every teenage girl we can lure in there from the local junior high. She’ll go nuts home.”
Dr. Heller looked Michael Stone in the eye and spoke with the effort at control of someone who’s just been insulted by an idiot: “The facts of the matter are, there has been no blood in your aunt’s urine for days now; the rotator-cuff fracture was hairline and responded well to healing by electrical stimulation—a relatively new technique. Ditto the broken rib. We don’t tape them up anymore, and it’s healing just fine. The problem is the knee. She’s got an orthopedic brace. I’ve been urging her discharge for days, because unless
she uses her legs, the muscles will atrophy. I don’t care that she’ll be a problem to you at home. You’re not my patient, she is. Bring her back in two weeks for a checkup. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to finish my rounds.”
So it was that Stone found himself, the day after returning from the SEAL reunion, cautiously driving Aunt May back from the hospital. He hoped fervently that his new allies would remember his urgent warnings against profanity and off-color sea stories. Seeking any advantage in a bad situation, he had told his aunt that his friends were there to help him find out who had injured her, all hope of effective action by the police having been abandoned.
Stone turned into the driveway at 182 Garden, stopped under the porte cochere and “accidentally” hit the horn. It was an arranged signal to let everyone know he had arrived. By the time he had helped his aunt up the steps and opened the door, Pappy Saye, Wings Harper, and Arno Bitt, freshly shaven, scrubbed, and dressed, were lined up on the other side of it as if ready for inspection. Only Saul Rosen, out in the van monitoring the computers at Riegar, was missing.
Heaving a sigh of relief, Stone made the introductions. His friends “ma’amed” Aunt May to death, as if she were the Queen of England and they local yeomen. Aunt May bought their act so thoroughly, Stone was astonished to hear her say, “Well, now, Michael, it’s nearly noon and we can’t have strong young men like these standing around starving. You take my things up to my room and I’ll just get lunch started. You do have food in the house, don’t you?”
The four men protested at once, citing her injuries, but Aunt May would have none of it. “The doctor said if I didn’t use this leg, I’d lose it,” and off she limped to the kitchen.
“Oughtta make her an honorary SEAL,” growled Pappy Saye.
Lunch consisted of sandwiches and caused Aunt May to hand Stone a long grocery list before she allowed herself to “rest a bit upstairs.” He pocketed the list, then the four of them crowded into the Mustang for a familiarization trip around Rhinekill, with emphasis on the Riegar plant and the athletic center, where, Stone emphasized, he expected to be joined for PT in the morning. His mandate drew no objections, but there were a couple of bets back and forth between Arno Bitt and Pappy Saye as to the number of laps Wings Harper would cover before he drowned.
At Goldberg’s card shop on Main Street, Stone left the engine running to run inside to purchase three Rhinekill street maps. After paying for them, he opened each on the counter and made two X marks, one showing 182 Garden, the other the location of the card shop. Back in the car, he passed them out and said, “Okay, guys. As you can see, this is a small town. Use the maps, recon further on foot while I go get the groceries. Meet you back at the house.”
As Pappy, Wings, and Arno went off in different directions, Stone parked and walked the short distance to Ira Levin’s cigar store.
“You got some nerve!” Ira Levin said as Stone walked through the open door to his shop. “You were supposed to come back and tell me how your aunt was an’ I haven’t seen you since. Good thing people in this town tell me things so I can keep up. I just wish you was one of them. So tell me, counselor, how’s…” The plump shopkeeper’s hand came up and clutched at his chest. His face looked striken and his legs started to give way. Stone thought the old fellow was having a heart attack and rushed toward him, intending to ease him to the floor.
Before Stone could reach Ira Levin, the ever-present cigar fell from the fingers of Ira’s right hand as he put it out against the counter to support himself. The hand at his chest reached out as if to point to Stone, and it was then that Stone noticed the blood. It was seeping from a tiny hole in Ira’s left side—above the heart but not above the lung, Stone recognized. He knew a sucking chest wound when he saw one.
“The … man…” Levin said, and fell to one knee. Stone glanced behind himself at the open door. There was no one in sight. He knelt, put his arm around Ira and, supporting him, lowered him to the floor. Levin’s chest was wheezing through the hole and the bloodstain was growing.
“Rosen…” Ira rasped. “Saul. Not what you think … but … okay … Riegar … Sar…”
“Don’t talk, Ira,” Stone commanded. “I’ll get help.”
With one hand, Ira Levin grasped Stone’s shirt, as if to detain him. With the other, he fumbled in the pocket of his cardigan sweater. “The … man…” Ira Levin coughed up blood from his lung. His mouth moved a bit more, but he said nothing. The hand clutching Stone’s shirt relaxed. His pupils dilated. Ira Levin was dead.
Michael Stone looked at the dead man’s right hand. As he died, it had fallen out of his sweater pocket. Still in his fingers was a scrap of paper with something, appearing to be in shorthand, written on it in pencil. Stone knew he should leave everything as he found it and call the police. Instead, he took the piece of paper, rose, went to the door, and looked. No one. He walked toward his car. If he was seen, Stone would say he was going for the police. He wasn’t seen.
Stone rationalized that he had witnessed Levin’s death but had not seen the shooter. There was nothing, really, he could tell the police, and he couldn’t afford to become involved in what he knew would be a fruitless investigation that would tie him up in knots at a time he most needed to be free to act. He drove two blocks toward a nearby supermarket, then changed course abruptly for a more distant neighborhood mom-and-pop grocery where the proprietors would know him.
“How’s it going, Tony?” Stone asked the man behind the counter, who had been a classmate in high school. His parents had opened the store and turned it over to Tony Lorenzo when they retired.
“Good, Mike. How’s your aunt? She home yet?”
“Brought her back today. Gonna be okay.”
“Thank God. What can I do for ya?”
“Mazie gave me a grocery list as long as your arm. I don’t get the right brands and stuff, she’ll have my ass.”
“Let’s see ’er.”
Stone handed over Aunt May’s list and browsed at the magazine rack while Tony filled his order. Finally, Tony called out, “There you go,” and Stone returned to the counter. “What do I owe you?”
“Eighty-three, sixty-seven. Watcha gonna do, open a restaurant?”
“Nah, got a bunch of old navy buddies visiting. Eat me out of house and home.” Stone faked looking for his wristwatch, then said, “Forgot my watch. You got the time Tony?” He handed him five twenty-dollar bills.
“Sure. Two-forty. And, your change: sixteen thirty-three. You need some help with them bags?”
“Nah. I got it. Thanks, Tony. See ya.” A harried young woman with three young children in tow approached the counter and Stone left, his arms full of groceries. He could hear sirens in the distance.
When Michael Stone arrived back home, none of his retired SEAL friends had returned from their familiarization tour of Rhinekill. He put away the groceries, then tiptoed upstairs so as not to awaken his aunt. To Stone’s astonishment, she was up and dusting his bedroom.
“For heaven’s sake, Mazie, that sort of thing can wait until you’re up to it!”
“I am up to it, as any fool can plainly see. Besides, I can’t have your friends, who came all the way up here to help me, think I run a pigsty of a household.”
Stone threw up his hands and said, “All right, but don’t carry on when I have to bring you back to the hospital.” Searching for some excuse to get his aunt to sit down, Stone thought of the slip of paper he had taken from the dead hand of Ira Levin. He fished it out of his pocket and said, “Mazie, what shorthand system do you use when you take my dictation?”
Aunt May stopped her dusting, turned to him, and said, “Pittman. That’s what they taught at business college in my day. Nobody uses it anymore; they use Gregg—that is, those who don’t use that clumsy machine. Why?”
“Oh, I found this old piece of paper when I was cleaning up the mess the burglar made of the safe.” Stone put on an innocent face. “Did you write this?” He showed the paper to his aunt.
<
br /> Aunt May took the piece of paper from her nephew and looked at it, frowning. “I certainly did not. I don’t know what system this is. It certainly isn’t Pittman, and I know enough Gregg to tell it’s not that, either. You say you found this in the safe?”
“Yeah. Well, it’s not important. Thanks, anyway. Here, I’ll finish up in here; you go rest.”
“I’ve had enough rest for a week, thank you. Did you get the groceries?”
“Yup. Tony had them all. And I put them away.”
“Humph. There’s hope for you after all.” She started to limp out of the room, hand against her skirt to hold her thigh. “This devil’s device,” she said, “is too tight.”
“Mazie, those people know what they’re doing. They measured it carefully.”
“They made a mistake,” Aunt May said, and was gone.
Stone puzzled for a moment over the paper he had taken from Ira Levin, then shrugged and put it into his wallet. The doorbell rang, and Aunt May went to open it, admitting Pappy Saye. He’d have to get his friends their own key, Stone thought, as he went downstairs to greet Pappy.
“’M I the first back to the hooch?” Pappy asked.
“Looks that way,” Stone said. Stone might not be Clarence Darrow, but he knew enough law not to make admissions against interest to anyone about witnessing Ira Levin’s death. He would share information on a need-to-know basis, but not sources. His intelligence training taught him that.
Stone was impatient for the return of Saul Rosen. It was time for a confrontation. Ira Levin had died with Saul’s and Sara’s names on his lips, and Saul had some explaining to do.
“I’m gonna hit the head,” said Pappy as he headed upstairs. “It’s been a long walk.”
Arno Bitt and Wings Harper, having arranged to meet before returning to base, arrived together. Stone let them in the door. “Well,” he said, “whatta you think?”
“Calling this place a city is stretching it,” said Wings. “Not that much to cover, really. Think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the layout.”
The Monkey Handlers Page 24