by Bill Granger
He padded on bare feet down the staircase, tying his robe around his pajamas.
The man in the kitchen was a cabdriver and his red-rimmed eyes told the time. Crowder looked at the kitchen clock: It was just after four in the morning.
“I told him,” the driver began, waving at James’ flat, staring face. “Package came in on Alaska Air and the steward said he had the instruction to hold on to it until now and that I was supposed to get it to you by four in the morning. No later than four-fifteen.”
“Jesus Christ,” Malcolm Crowder said. He had light hazel eyes and rugged good looks of the kind portrayed in beer or cigarette advertising aimed at men who will never look that good. He turned the envelope over. It was a standard 8½- by 11-inch manila envelope sealed with a clasp. Malcolm Crowder looked at the cabdriver.
“Do I know you?”
“Not me but I know you, Senator. I voted for you.”
Crowder let the famous smile define the face for a moment. “How much?”
“How much?”
“How much did you get?”
“Ten bucks.”
“Bullshit,” Malcolm Crowder said.
The cabdriver turned sullen. “The steward took care of me. I don’t need no tip if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about anything. Steward comes off an Alaska Air flight and gives you a package and tells you you’re supposed to drop it off at someone’s house at four in the morning.”
“We get packages all the time to deliver.”
“At four in the morning.”
The cabdriver blinked. He saw the point. “I don’t want any trouble. The guy duked me forty bucks. Forty bucks is forty bucks just to wake somebody up. Maybe it was a joke. I don’t know who’s gonna spend forty bucks on a joke. I didn’t know it was you, Senator, until just right now when I saw you, it dawned on me. I voted for you.”
“You told me,” Crowder said. He put his forefinger in the little opening between the flap and the back of the envelope and tore it open.
He read the sheet of paper.
There were enough details to make it real for him. He didn’t know his face was turning gray or that James was now watching him instead of the driver.
“You know who gave you this?”
“Steward, I dunno his name.”
“Where was he coming from?”
“He said he was given the package at Nome. He was on the circle, Anchorage to Kotzebue, down to Nome and back.”
“Who gave him this in Nome?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Look, forty bucks is forty bucks. I’m sorry I woke you up but you don’t get any action at four in the morning and forty bucks is forty bucks.”
“James, get him twenty more. And get him a piece of paper. I want you to write down your name and phone number.”
“I don’t want any trouble out of this—”
Malcolm Crowder looked up from the sheet and tried the famous smile again but this time it looked ghastly in the gray drawn face. Crowder looked all of his fifty-nine years in that moment. “There’s no trouble, friend. I just need your name in case I have a question later. Maybe ask you to identify that air steward for me.”
“OK, just so there’s no trouble. I mean, for forty bucks, I don’t need a beef.”
“No trouble,” Crowder said again, turning from the driver, already absorbed again in the message.
The telephone rang exactly four minutes later while James was locking the front door behind the cabdriver. The big house on Hill Crest Avenue at the extreme western edge of Anchorage was so quiet that the shrill ring of the telephone seemed louder than it was.
“Yes,” Malcolm Crowder said. He was in the study now, sitting at his desk. The nameplate read: U.S. Senator Malcolm Crowder. It was a memento, as were many things in the oak-paneled room. People like the cabdriver still called him “Senator” but that had been over eleven years ago.
“You received the envelope?” The voice was nearly as flat and noncommittal as Malcolm’s “Yes.”
“This is just an elaborate blackmail—”
“Of course. But there’s a kernel of truth in it all. Rather a large truth about the bomb. A very small device, contained in a suitcase, which will vaporize a large number of caribou, wolves, grizzlies, moose, and a one-mile section of the pipeline.”
“How much time do I have?”
“The clock is running. Do you want the account number?”
“Yes.”
The caller gave him the name of an account in the Hong Kong Bank of Commerce. He repeated the number and then made Malcolm Crowder repeat it. “You see, we make a call and they tell us the money is there and we call you and tell you where the device is.”
“This is the crudest form of blackmail,” Crowder said.
“Yes, it is. The wonderful thing about crudity is that it gets your attention so much better than subtlety. Like a full-blown fart in that crowd your wife screws around with. You must really be in love with her pussy to put up with people like that. You used to be some kind of a man, Mal.”
No one had called him Mal since the years he was a bush pilot, hacking a living at the edges of the wilderness. Did he know that voice?
“This is impossible, you know. This can’t be done the way you want it done.”
“Look, everything is possible, including an atomic device blowing up the pipeline. You know it and so does security and the state patrol and even the fucking government.”
The expletive was delivered in the same, flat voice and made it curiously more sinister.
“I don’t have any connection with the people who might be willing to pay,” Crowder said.
“That’s not true, Mal,” the voice said. “There isn’t a deal that goes down in Alaska that you haven’t put a finger in. You are a professional greaser and go-between, just as you were in your senator days. Politics made you a rich man, Mal, and now we want a little of the money. Not from you, of course; just from the people you can deal with.”
“But what if this is all just—”
“That is the problem, Mal. To convince you it’s real. We thought we could send you notes on all the bombs we’ve set on the line in the last sixteen months but we chose just to give you the dates, coordinates, and times. You know they’re right. If you don’t know, you check with your people.”
“There are a lot of people involved in the pipeline—”
“No history lessons now, Mal. Those explosions did not make the media because that’s the way we keep confidence in the country. But you know and we know that ULU was responsible for those explosions and that in sixteen months, you have not the faintest idea where or what ULU consists of. Now it’s payday. Three million dollars in the Hong Kong Bank of Commerce by six P.M. Alaskan standard time. That will give you exactly two hours to find the suitcase and deactivate the device. The time allotted is more than generous. By all means, stir up the troops. Call out the army at Fort Richardson, recruit every bush pilot at Merrill Field, tell it from the mountains. We assure you that you will not find a suitcase in eleven hundred miles of wilderness, the odds are simply against you.”
Malcolm Crowder, for one of the few times in his life, did not have any more words.
“Mal?”
“Yes.”
“Three million dollars is not a lot of money anymore unless you don’t have it. It will cost ten times that in repairs and damage control from a bombing on the line. You know that and other people should know that.”
“The note said four million.”
“Good, Mal. You have a firm grasp of details. Who do you suppose will receive the other million?”
Malcolm thought about it. The thought began to work on him like the heat in his sauna or Terry rubbing his balls.
“It takes one to dance but two to tango. This is all a matter of timing. Your distinguished successor to the United States Senate is in Anchorage all this week. Fortunately, your successor shares your ideas on ethical conduct. You get a
hold of the senator and convince the senator that a million split two ways is decent pay for a day’s work.”
“I don’t need anyone else.”
“Sure you do. Think of the possibilities, Mal, always think of the possibilities. A sitting U.S. senator and a former distinguished U.S. senator are so convinced that the threat is real that a deal is cut before the stock exchange in New York closes. Three million into one numbered account, one million into a joint account bearing the names of two distinguished political leaders from ‘The Last Frontier’ state.”
“I don’t have an account.”
“Take the number,” said the voice. The second number surprised Malcolm. The caller was organized, he was a planner, he even had an account set up for the grease. A half-million dollars was a half-million dollars. Malcolm Crowder thought about money the way he sometimes thought about Terry, but money was always available to think about. Some people said Malcolm Crowder knew the price of every building in downtown Anchorage and could figure the grease cost needed to have the building erected. He knew the price of nearly every politician in the state legislature in Juneau, including the ones who said they could not be bought.
“You start paying blackmail and you never stop.”
“How many atomic devices you think I got?”
Malcolm’s eyes grew very wide. The voice took on shape in his mind. The word I had been used for the first time. For the first time, Malcolm saw form and substance. He knew the security forces both private and public on the pipeline had thrown nearly two million dollars into the search for ULU, whatever ULU was. Native settlements had been raided, the usual suspects rounded up, and it had all been for nothing.
Crowder said, “You’re ULU.”
“The thing is to get people’s attention. It isn’t that easy. Used to be you could threaten people and they’d pay up. You can’t threaten corporations or governments that easily. You can do it, but not easily. Everyone’s got their own agenda, Mal, just like I do, just like you do. It ain’t your three million, Mal, it’s just that you want to give the people the best advice you can and you want to be sure that you really do find an atomic bomb planted where I say it is once you put the money in that account in Hong Kong. Which reminds me: The transfer of funds is cash. No checks, no vouchers. Now back to your problem, Mal, I don’t have much time. Do you really think I’m kidding, Mal? I put down the days and the times and all that, but maybe underneath it all, you think I’m kidding.”
“No. I think you’re crazy but I don’t think you’re kidding. The problem is, it isn’t enough to let you get away with it.”
The flat voice was laughing now, more form and substance to what had been ethereal. Malcolm closed his eyes to concentrate on the voice.
“I like you, Mal, because you’re not a stupid man. I thought that one over myself. You need a setup and I need a way to block a comeback. I’m not worried about Hong Kong, Mal, that money will be traveling the minute it’s in the account and you know that those wily Chinese are just about smarter at it than even the gnomes in Zurich. So what do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“I can give you two turkeys, all trussed and ready for baking. The first turkey is called Noah but his name is something else. The second turkey is called Kools. The way it works, after the money is sent and the bomb is found, you get the message about Noah, who will probably be sitting on his can in Fairbanks. Told the other one to meet me in Seattle but I don’t know, he might just hang around with the first one in Fairbanks. Whatever it is, you get two turkeys for the price of one, Mal. I call that pretty good.”
“What about you?”
“Me? They’ll implicate me for sure but what the hell, I won’t be anywhere you ever gonna find me. You and the Justice Department fumblebums and the crack Alaska State Police—hell. You haven’t found me in sixteen months, try sixty sometime. People get found when they leave marks. I don’t leave marks. Travel alone, pay cash, eat simple, and have a bowel movement every day and you’ll live a long life.”
“What do I do?”
“Call the senator now. That’s your first selling job but I’ll make it easier on you. I’ll call the senator and mention that you’ll be calling right behind me. Then you two cook your deal, but remember, Mal, the clock is literally running on this. Hate to see an ecological disaster, especially when I planned this so careful. If it has to be, it has to be. I’m not playing, Mal, you figure that out by now?”
Malcolm nodded before he spoke. “I figured that out.”
“Good, Mal. Good for you.”
The connection was broken. Malcolm sat in the light of full morning streaming into the room and listened to the wind.
He called the senator shortly before five in the morning. The conversation lasted no longer than it had to.
“Do you believe him?”
Malcolm looked annoyed. He had changed into his jogging suit and sneakers and was working on a pot of coffee on the silver tray on his desk. James was still awake, lurking in dark corners of the large house, and Terry would sleep until the middle of the morning.
Eleven years before, Malcolm had no intention of resigning from the United States Senate and recommending to the governor that the attorney general take his seat.
Until the day Patricia Heath called him to her office in Juneau. It was a warm spring day in the panhandle and the air had smelled of pine trees and the fresh warm wind from Japan. Senator Malcolm Crowder was then forty-eight years old and had shed his first wife. He had a long-standing liaison with a very discreet blond secretary in his Washington office and was always on the prowl for money and women. Oddly, he was then attracted to powerful women. Patricia Heath had fallen into this category. Normally, a summons from a low-ranking official would have been snubbed; but on that warm spring day in the Alaska panhandle, Malcolm Crowder had pussy on his mind.
It took three minutes for Patricia Heath to ruin his day.
She had all the details in the thick packet of Xerox copies she had handed him. Of course, Patricia assured him, she had the originals.
The details were about money. Money leaves a trail, even when it’s cash. There are bank receipts and statements of fund transfers and even the indiscreet purchase of several large pieces of real estate in Virginia that should not have been affordable to a man of modest means, only eight years in the Senate. Malcolm Crowder was a man of the people, the bush pilot who had saved a Yup’ik village in the North Slope borough from being wiped out during a smallpox epidemic in 1955. He had braved a winter storm in his twin-engine Cessna to deliver the vaccine and other medicines to the forsaken village and made certain the Anchorage and Fairbanks papers heard about it.
Patricia Heath had cored out the myth of Malcolm Crowder in the papers she gave him that warm spring day.
“You’re a crook,” she said. She was then just thirty-three, very bright and pretty. She wore conservative go-to-work clothes in a way that made men stare at her. There was a smell of flowers about her and she wore her hair short. She looked both vulnerable and cold at the same time. It was the eyes, she had Julie Andrews’ eyes and they were used to good advantage. Like Julie Andrews’ screen persona, she made men desire her without loving her.
“These are—”
“Tedious documents that prove what I say. Now sit down and shut up and let me tell you how this is going to play.”
No woman had ever spoken to Malcolm Crowder like that. Few could.
In the next sixty-one minutes, Malcolm Crowder learned all he ever wanted to know about Patricia Heath. She was every bit as ambitious as Malcolm, just as ruthless and, in the final analysis, just as crooked. Six days after the interview, he announced his resignation from the Senate and four days later, the governor nominated the party’s surprising woman to the office. It played well in Nome and Sitka and the places between. The newspapers said Patricia had “spunk.” It was the sort of word Alaskans used when complimenting their women, who in many cases were far tougher than their
men.
“You’ve stolen your share,” Patricia Heath had said, smiling at him, on that wonderful day in Juneau with the birds calling across the pine forests and the immense glacier glistening in the sunlight. “It’s my turn.”
So it was. Patricia was the senator of large interests in the largest state. Money talked and she listened well. There was enough money to go around and Malcolm still got more of his share than he had thought possible. Once in office, Patricia Heath was generous to him. She gave him all the vouchers and money transfers and letters “of understanding” in her thick file on him and never brought up the matter again. Malcolm sometimes wondered if he would have let her off that easily.
He stared at her now in the harsh early morning light. The sun was low in a clear sky but there were heavy clouds on the Chugach Mountains just east of the city. The wind had died a little. She wore a simple skirt and blouse, no jewelry or makeup, but she still carried the smell of flowers about her and filled the room with her extraordinary eyes.
“Do you believe it?” she said again.
“Everything is right, right down to the bank in Hong Kong. The problem is, how does this come back to us if this is a hoax?”
“I don’t mind doing business with you, Malcolm, but I don’t trust you. Any more than you trust me, but I’ve got more cause. I know your kind, Malcolm. You can’t stay bought.”
“A half million buys a lot,” he said. “Everything this guy said was right. I do need you on this, just the way you need me. The eco-creeps are giving everyone a hard time about a second pipeline and the new drilling off Norton Sound, but what if a genuine full-scale Hollywood four-star disaster really hit the line? You think a bunch of ragged-ass natives are going to get the blame? The line will take the blame, just for being there.”
“Where the hell does he get an atom bomb from?”
“I don’t know, maybe they make them in high school now for all I know. I know you can get them, same as you know, I was on oversight committee for four years—”
“So what do we do?”
“There are maybe twelve people we have to be in touch with. We work it in relays. We can work it out of here, I had the phones swept on Friday.”