English’s one good eye focused on Brewer as he walked up to the hospital bed. He was panting shallowly. “You Brewer?”
“Yes.”
“I have to talk and I have to talk fast. Okay?”
“Yes,” Brewer said.
“Christ. Look what they did to me.” His right eye filled with tears. “Maybe I would have been better off if I had taken that last shot from the fungo bat. Things aren’t looking so good for me. I haven’t cried since I was a little kid. And now I can’t stop.”
“Take it easy,” Brewer said. “And take your time.”
“They nearly tagged me in Hong Kong,” English said. “They just missed me. So I knew I had to get back here and spill my guts. I want to talk. I want everyone to know what I know. Then I won’t have any secrets, and they’ll leave me alone. Where do you want to start?”
“Who were you working for?”
“I never met him. It was all done by phone.”
“Come on,” Brewer said. “You’d have to be an idiot to touch a deal like that.”
“I had no choice.” English heaved a great sigh. His eye filled again.
Brewer watched and waited.
“I screwed up,” English said. “In Chicago. Last year. I was a purchasing agent in a company making robots. I took a few goodies from some suppliers.”
“Kickbacks?”
“Nothing big. No cash. Presents. A TV set. Weekend in Las Vegas. Then a microchip company I was dealing with went into Chapter Eleven and the records came out. I was on their good little boys’ list. I got a suspended sentence, probation for five years, but I lost my job, my reputation, everything.”
English swallowed several times. “Oh Christ, everything hurts so much … I came out here to the West Coast to get a fresh start. And one day I get a letter, and in it there’s a photocopy of one of the checks I wrote in Chicago. People in Chicago didn’t know about the bad checks or I would never have gotten off with just the suspension. If they ever saw it, they’d throw me right in the sneezer. So when I pull this bad check out of an envelope, I go into a real sweat. There’s a note in the envelope. ‘I will call you Thursday evening.’ So you bet your bippy I’m home on Thursday, waiting for the call. I know I’m in deep shit. Guy says I want you to do a job. And I will pay you very well. When you’re through with the job, you walk away clean with money in your pocket, and you got the original check to tear up.”
“So you did it?”
“Does a monkey eat bananas? It was the carrot and the stick. I was hurting for money. I wasn’t doing so great on the West Coast. My past kept after me. And here was payday.”
“What was the deal?”
“Purchasing. Military supplies. High-tech equipment. That was my specialty as a purchasing agent. This guy on the phone set up a checking account, and I went out and rented an office. Had a bunch of fake letterheads printed. Purchase-order forms, business cards, the lot. Eureka High-Tech Enterprises was one I made up. And Condor Medical Software Company. There were others.”
Brewer wrote the names on a pad.
“I was caught in a trap,” English said. “I was supposed to buy stuff on the forbidden list. If I don’t, the Voice calls Chicago. If I do, I’m a big-time criminal. If I get caught, I’m looking at five to ten plus another two to five on the suspended from Chicago. It was one long nightmare. I mean long. It’s—” English sighed then inhaled sharply. “Oh Christ.” He suppressed a sob.
Brewer put a box of tissues on the bed.
“I’m okay,” English said. “Okay. One day a list arrives in the mail from the Voice. It’s a list of parts, every damned one of them illegal. Buy these, says the note. Don’t be obvious. There’s also another list—of companies—military component manufacturers and defense contractors. Those are the companies I’m to buy from. And every damned one of them was having financial difficulties. Cash-flow problems. Slow pay. Bad credit. Several were in Chapter Eleven, fending off the wolves. These outfits are all desperate. They’ll sell for upfront cash plus some fake papers without asking too many questions. To make it even easier to buy from them and cover their asses, I set up a third party as a V.A.R.
“Value Added Repackager?”
“Yes. These are guys with customized manufacturing capabilities. They buy components from various sources and repackage them for specialty markets. See? So I would order stuff, claiming to be buying it for a V.A.R. who in turn was repackaging for the ultimate buyer—a major corporation with a defense contract. … So I would send in a purchase order with a check and an affidavit that the merchandise was destined for a bona fide defense contractor and would not be exported. Understand?”
“Go on,” Brewer said.
“So I start. Buying small. A piece here, a piece there. When I got the parts I ordered, I would use a series of fake companies that took title, so no one would ever be able to figure out where the stuff went. Finally I would ship the stuff using false labels—dishwashers or plumbing supplies.”
“Where?”
“To an outfit in Kansas City. So far as I know, the operation in Kansas City would ship the stuff out of the country under other fake labels.”
“Customs never checked?” Brewer asked.
“These were small orders. That was the secret. The Voice told me to never buy anything big or noticeable. A few parts here, a few components there, but when you looked at the total list, you could see instantly that he could assemble all the stuff and end up with significant capability.”
“Did the Voice have any kind of an accent?”
“Yes, but it seemed American. You know what I mean?”
“You ever meet the people in Kansas City?”
“No. The Voice never let you near anyone else. But five will get you ten that they were in the same boat I was in. Blackmailed.”
“So what happened?”
“Things got worse—that’s what happened. What I was doing was bad enough. If just one person began to ask questions, I’m in the sneezer. But there was some stuff I couldn’t order over the transom. And I told that to the Voice. So he told me to steal it. Steal it. God Almighty.” English seemed bemused, and stared away without speaking.
“Go on,” Brewer said.
“I balked. I told him I didn’t know how to do that. So I got another letter from the Voice with a copy of another one of my checks. He must have bought them up—the whole lot. That’s when I crashed. This guy owned me. All he had to do was send copies of those checks to Chicago and my chain is yanked. So I couldn’t stop. Yet I knew one day I would get caught.” He stopped talking again. His mind seemed to be wandering.
“Go on,” Brewer said.
“One thing I couldn’t do was burglary. I mean it’s a skill, you understand? So I hired some second-story men to steal for me. You ever go out on the street and try to hire some burglars? I mean, you don’t just run a classified in the local paper. And these weren’t a few juveniles in sneakers. These were hardcase hoods. Fifty percent earnest money up front, balance on delivery. I didn’t crap around with this stuff. When I got it, I slapped fake labels on it for the waybills and shipped it fast to Kansas City.”
“Now you’ve got a big operation going,” Brewer said.
“A mountain of small stuff,” English said. “A nibble here, a nibble there. I got in deeper and deeper. I’m dealing with real criminals now. I didn’t trust a one of them. I knew if those hoods got caught, they’d finger me to cop a plea.”
“Suppose you had to get in touch with the Voice?” Brewer asked.
“There was a phone number with an answering machine where I could leave a message. Some place in Europe. Germany.”
“Go on,” Brewer said.
“One day a miracle happened. Would you believe it? The Voice called me. Shut it down, he said. Burn all the papers. Everything. Pay off everyone. A check is in the mail. He tells me I did a good job. I’m free! Glory be to God. I’m off the hook. Life began to look good again.” English paused and swallowed, and more t
ears welled.
Brewer waited. English tried to dab his eye with tissues but the splints on his fingers and wrists stopped him. He dropped the tissues, defeated.
“So,” he said. “The check comes. It’s another cashier’s check from a New York bank. Nice fat check, more than I expected-But none of my bad checks from Chicago. So he’s still got me. I call the number in Germany and leave a message. But there’s no reply. I decided to take the money and run before he changes his mind and gives me another job.”
“You went to Las Vegas?”
“Yep,” English said. “I went to Vegas. I’m in bad shape, man. I mean I have some money, but I know I’ll never work on a legitimate job again or lead a normal life. I have to spend the rest of my life on the run, hiding from that nightmare voice on the phone.”
“So you’ve been running ever since?”
“Oh no. It wasn’t that simple. Vegas was a big mistake. Big mistake. You know there are people who make a living gambling? That’s their occupation. So I figure if I can’t go legit with a regular nine-to-five somewhere, I’ll make my daily bread at the gaming tables. Like I said others do. You know what my father does?”
“No,” Brewer said.
“He’s a minister, man. A minister. He believes in the goodness of every single person. And now he’s got a criminal son who’s a professional gambler in Las Vegas. My father doesn’t really believe that Las Vegas actually exists.” English stopped again, struggling to stop the tears. “How am I doing?”
“Just great,” Brewer said.
“Twenty-one got me. Blackjack. Got my bankroll. Now I’m desperate. I’m hiding. No dough. And no way to get any. So, I bought stolen credit cards. They’re not expensive, and you can live like a king if you have nerves of steel and an instinct to know when to lay off a card.”
Brewer nodded.
“It gets worse,” English said. “I figure I can’t keep this up forever. I just don’t have the skills to be a criminal. So what do you think I decide? Let me show you how smart I am. I decide to contact the Voice again. Bright? The brass ring? Sure. I figure if I can get those checks back, I can try to go legit again. I flew to Germany and I called the number and I left a message and I waited. Just by pure luck, I’m coming back from dinner when I see these goons enter my hotel room. You know the kind? No neck. A nose like a banana. Knuckles dragging on the ground. And the pants are stuffed full of these colossal legs. You see them in your nightmares. In Vegas they call them the Sunshine Boys. Like those animals in the airport. So, I just turned around and got the next flight out of Germany.”
“Athens?”
“How’d you know?”
“Go on.”
“They followed me to Athens. How? I don’t know. So I skipped again.”
“Hong Kong?”
“Yeah. That’s when I decided to come back and face the music. Even jail’s better than that. Got the picture?”
“I got the picture,” Brewer said.
“They nearly tagged me in Hong Kong. So when I took off, I knew they had me pegged. There would be a welcoming committee in L.A. when I landed. I figured I was a dead man. And damned near was.” English paused to control his voice. “Listen,” he said. “I want to tell you something. I mean—” He wept softly. “I want to say—” He paused and gathered himself again. “Everytime I see a fire extinguisher, I’m going to kiss the blessed thing.” He laughed. A giggle. “So help me Christ.” He laughed again. “Maybe I’ll even carry one strapped to my waist. How’s that for a picture? Me coming down the street lugging a fire extinguisher.” He giggled then sobbed.
He tried again to get tissues from the box by his side with the finger splints. Brewer pulled some out for him. “Here,” he said.
Bobby English attempted to speak again. “I want to say—Listen, I want to say—” He sobbed. “Honest to God, man. I owe you big. When you hit them with that fog, I knew I was delivered like Moses and his people in the wilderness. I owe you big, man. Big.”
English tried to reach Brewer with a hand. “No man should do to another man what they tried to do to me. These guys don’t mess around, man. They’re mean. I mean sick mean. They meant to kill me.
“Right now, you can bet the Voice has dozens of other fake companies operating here—all shipping a steady stream of small packages out of the country. The smuggling goes on and on. It’ll never stop. A bunch of poor bastards like me. You get him. For me. Get him. Monster. A Russian monster.”
“How do you know he was Russian?” Brewer asked.
“Reach into that drawer,” English said. “Right there. The top one.” Brewer found a bank note, a Russian ruble. “They found this in my coat pocket down in the emergency ward. A calling card. It’s Russian, isn’t it?”
Brewer nodded. “Russian,” he said. He looked at it thoughtfully, then at the purple face on the bed.
Brewer got the evening flight back to Washington. As his plane took off, a man with a bandage over his nose made a call from an airport pay phone. “He’s airborne,” he said. “Bound for D.C.”
Chapter 23
On Wednesday evening the stout one and the tall one were in Mehtma’s dining room eating tandoori chicken with curried rice and chapaties. A new group of Orientals had arrived at mid-afternoon. Tiny people, they sat around the round tables, still bundled and shivering from the unwonted cold, drinking quantities of hot tea, scraping the rice from small white bowls into their mouths with chopsticks.
Mehtma’s third son, with his furrowed brow, entered the dining room. He crossed to their table and with his quick, small hand put the telegram down beside the stout one’s plate.
The stout one picked up the telegram and opened it with a table knife. He read the message then nodded at his partner.
The next morning, after breakfast, they cut the labels out of their clothes with a razor and took a taxi to Heathrow for the ten A.M. flight to Washington. They carried no baggage.
Chapter 24
They were asleep when the telephone rang once—a long, sustained ring.
“I never heard a phone ring like that before,” Margie said.
“Neither did I.” Brewer picked it up and got a dial tone. He Was almost back to sleep when the telephone rang again. Three very long rings.
“Sounds more like a burglar alarm,” Margie said.
Brewer picked up the phone; there was a three-second pause before he got a dial tone. He stood up and pulled on his pants then walked down the apartment stairs to the basement. In his bare feet he strode down the rows of the apartment storage units, following the overhead lines along a steel I beam to the telephone junction box. The cement floor was cold.
The door to the phone junction box stood open. There were now three taps on Margie’s telephone line.
He felt a draft of cold air, and turned and walked to the back of the basement to the rear door. It was standing open. He climbed up the dozen outside steps to the alley. The snow froze his feet, and the cold wind on his bare torso made him gasp as he glanced up and down the alley under the clear, cold sky filled with stars. There was no one to be seen.
He locked the basement door, shut the door to the phone junction box, and returned to bed.
“Your feet are like ice,” she said.
He lay beside her, holding her in his arms and shivering.
The blanketing snows and the hard freeze in the wetlands were driving flocks of starving birds to the salt marshes along the coast. Newspapers advised people to fill their bird feeders more often and to put out extra food for the larger birds. All through the winter Margie fed the crows.
On some mornings Brewer would walk with her to the park, carrying the bird feed in a large paper sack. Under the grim and gray cloudy sky, he would stand in the middle of the park and watch her trudge in her red boots over the deep snow, her red plastic scoop strewing pellets of bird feed. Flocks of silent crows on swift, silent wings seemed to materialize out of the gray sky to come flying down through the winter-bare trees like G
reek furies bringing retribution. As they landed on the snow around her, they raised a din of squawks and caws.
“What is this?” he asked her, hefting the bag.
“Dog Kibble,” she said. “Tuna-flavored. They love it.”
He held the bag so she could refill her red scoop.
She studied his face for a moment.
“What?” he asked her.
“When you walk, you don’t look up or down,” she said. “You stare straight ahead as though you were seeing something awful. You’re like a man with tunnel vision.”
“That’s what you need when you’re in a tunnel,” he said. And he felt he was in a tunnel, a man racing through a tunnel from birth to death toward a destination unknown, on rails laid by some other. He felt he was unable to change, unable to alter his course. Programmed like a robot from the day he was born. He looked at the throngs passing through the park. Was everyone created on a set of tracks?
“Life is passing you by,” Margie said. “Lift up your head and see what’s going on around you.”
“Do I want to see what’s going on around me?” He looked again at the straggling lines of office workers shuffling on the salted slush through the park to their jobs. The ant people. Is that the life that was passing him by?
A car pulled up at the curb and a man got out from the passenger side, wearing a long black overcoat and a wide-brimmed black hat. Around his neck was a scarlet scarf. Above the car the street sign read: FIRE LANE No Stopping or Standing.
The tall man stood by a partially open car door, speaking to the driver as he watched Margie sow the pellets over the snow. Pointing at crows, he shook his head at the driver.
Then he slammed the car door, and all the crows leaped into the air with great flaps, cawing with alarm. Watching the birds doubtfully, the man turned and strolled through the shuffling crowd, talking to himself.
Brewer set the bag of bird feed on the ground and stepped in front of Margie, watching the man attentively. Striding into the park, the man stepped off the path, out of the way of the pedestrians, and with his hands at his sides, cocked his head at Brewer. With slow deliberateness he pulled the scarlet scarf open then unbuttoned his long black coat. Hanging from his neck on a leather strap inside his overcoat was a nine-millimeter Uzi.
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