The Road to Omaha: A Novel Read online

  They definitely looked better with regulation haircuts and clean-shaven faces, even though both were bobbing their heads up and down to the Latin beat emanating from the radio. “Okay, men, ’tenhut!” cried the Hawk, snapping off the radio while holding the wheel.

  “Wot, loco man?” asked the astonished aide with less than all his teeth, sitting next to the window.

  “That means ‘attention.’ You’re to pay attention to what I say.”

  “Maybe better, man, you pay us some cash, huh?” said the aide sitting next to Mac.

  “All in good time, Corporal—I’ve decided to make you each a corporal because I’m forced to place additional responsibilities on your basic assignments. Naturally, that calls for an upgrade in pay.… Incidentally, for identification purposes, what’re your names?”

  “I’m Desi Arnaz,” replied the aide by the window.

  “So am I,” said his associate.

  “Fair enough. D-One and D-Two, in that order. Now, listen up.”

  “Up where?”

  “Just listen. We’ve encountered complications from the enemy that will require some aggressive initiative on both your parts. You may have to separate so as to draw hostile personnel away from their posts, thus allowing the objective to be taken—”

  “So far,” interrupted D-One, “I got the ‘required’ ’cause it’s used a lot in courtrooms, like ‘remanded.’ The rest, I’m not so sure.”

  So the Hawk shifted to fluent Spanish, which he had learned as a young guerrilla leader in the Philippines fighting the Japanese. “¿Comprende?” he asked when he had finished.

  “¡Absolutamente!” cried D-Two. “We cut up the chicken and spread around the pieces so we catch the big lousy fox!”

  “Very good, Corporal. You learn that from one of your Latino revolutions?”

  “No, señor. My mama used to read the noosurry stories when I was a liddle kid.”

  “Wherever it comes from, grunt, use it.… Now, this is what we’re going to do—Christ on a pogo stick! What the hell are you wearing on your collar?”

  “What, man?” asked D-One, shaken by the Hawk’s sudden vocal explosion.

  “You, too!” cried Hawkins. “Your shirts—the collars on your shirts … I didn’t see them before!”

  “We didn’t have no ties on before, neither,” explained D-Two. “Chu give us dinero and to’ us to buy two black ties before we go into the big building with d’fancy elevator.… Also, loco man, these h’ain’t our own shirts. A couple of bad gringos on motorcycles were very unfriendly to us outside a restaurant on the highway.… We sold the motorcycles but we kept the shirts. Nice, huh?”

  “You idiots! Those insignias are swastikas!”

  “Waz that?”

  “Pretty liddle things,” observed D-Two, fingering the black emblem of the Third Reich. “We got big fancy ones on the back—”

  “Rip ’em off your collars, Corporals, and keep your goddamn tunics on.”

  “Toon hocks?” D-One asked, bewildered.

  “The jackets, your coats, your uniforms—keep them.” The Hawk stopped in midstatement as up ahead the Pinkus limousine slowed down and turned right into a side street; Mac did the same. “If Sam lives in this neighborhood, the boy’s sweeping floors, not filing briefs.” The neighborhood referred to was a short, dark block lined with small shops sandwiched between entrances to time-worn apartments above, bringing to mind those turn-of-the-century sections of large cities teeming with immigrants. All that was missing were pushcarts and peddlers and the sound of foreign tongues in abrasive counterpoint. The limousine glided into the curb fronting a fish market; Mac could not do the same, as there was no available parking space until the end of the block, at least a hundred feet away and barely seen. “I don’t like it,” said the Hawk.

  “You no like what?” asked D-One.

  “It could be an evasion maneuver.”

  “Invasion?” cried D-Two, his eyes wide. “Hey, loco man, we no fight in no war, no revolución! We are peaceful malefactors, dat’s all.”

  “Malefactors …?”

  “They also use that lots a’ times in court,” clarified the uniform by the window. “Like ‘required’ and ‘remanded,’ you know?”

  “No war and no revolution, son, just a cowardly, ungrateful malefactor whose escorts may have spotted us.… You, D-One, I’m going to stop for a moment; you get out and look around that fish store—pretend you’re shopping for dinner—and stay in touch. There may be a back door, but it isn’t likely; they may even change clothes, but our target would swim in his convoy’s duds. Still, we can’t take chances. He’s in the hands of pros now, men, and we’ve got to show our calibers!”

  “Does all dat tontería mean I should watch the tall guy in the picture?”

  “That’s it, Corporal, and it’s not proper to question your superior’s direct orders with improper invective.”

  “Dat’s beautifool!”

  “Move!” yelled the Hawk, braking the car as D-One opened the door and got out, slamming it shut behind him. “You, D-Two,” continued Mac, shooting forward, “as soon as I park, I want you to cross the street and walk halfway back to that big vehicle and keep your eyes on it and the store. If anybody comes out in a hurry and gets into the limo or any car near it, let me know.”

  “Isn’t dat what Desi-One is doin’, man?” asked D-Two, taking the walkie-talkie out of his pocket.

  “He could be ambushed if the Eye-Corps is sharp enough, but I sort of doubt it. I generally stayed two vehicles behind the target-movable, so I don’t think they reconnoitered positive.”

  “You talk funny, you know dat?”

  “Into position!” ordered the Hawk, swerving into the parking space near the corner and instantly switching off the ignition. D-Two leaped out of the car, rounded the hood, and raced across the street with the alacrity of a seasoned point. “Not bad, caballero,” said Mac to himself, reaching into his shirt pocket for a cigar. “You’ve both got definite possibilities. Real noncom stature.”

  And then there was a gentle tapping on the windshield. A policeman stood on the curbside, gesturing with his club. Momentarily confused, the Hawk looked across the street at the opposing empty space. Just before it was a sign: NO PARKING HERE TO CORNER.

  Sam selected the slabs of scrod, thanked the Greek owner with his customary, if mispronounced, “Epharistó,” and was welcomed by a courteous “Parikala, Mr. Deveroo,” as he paid the bill. The two guards, their interest in fish minimal, were bored, and so they looked at the enlarged, faded, framed photographs of various Aegean islands on the wall, but with no interest whatsoever. Several other customers, seated at two white Formica tables and all speaking Greek, seemed more intent on conversing with one another than buying anything. They greeted two newcomers to the store, but not a third, a man in an oddly unidentifiable uniform who proceeded to walk to the rear counter, which was empty except for chopped ice, and kept peering over the top. Under the scrutiny of his observers, he then pulled a hand-held radio out of his pocket, raised it to his lips, and began to speak.

  “Fascistas!” screamed an elderly bearded Zorba from the table nearest the rear counter. “Look! He signals the Germans!”

  As one, the former overage partisans from Salonika stumbled forward to attack and capture the hated enemy of fifty years ago even as Sam’s two guards rushed to his side, their weapons drawn. The object of the aged Greek warriors’ assault slashed his arms and kicked his feet out at his attackers, parting them with a certain professional expertise, and raced to the door, stopping just briefly enough to reach into a fishtank by the entrance.

  “I know that man!” yelled Devereaux, breaking away from the grips of his protectors. “He wore a swastika on his collar! I saw it when we were in the elevator!”

  “What elevator?” asked the Scandinavian cohort.

  “The one we rode down on from the office!”

  “I didn’t see no colored swastikas in the elevator,” proclaimed the Polish conti
ngent.

  “I didn’t say color, I said on his collar!”

  “You talk funny, you know?”

  “You hear funny, have you ever considered that?… He’s closing in, I can feel it!”

  “Feel what?” asked Knute.

  “The Titanic. He’s on his disaster course—for me—I know it! He’s the most devious son of a bitch that hell ever created. Let’s get out of here!”

  “Sure, Mr. D. We’ll pick up the porterhouses at that meat market in Boylston and head right to your place.”

  “Hold it!” cried Devereaux. “No, we won’t.… Give your coats to a couple of those fellows over at the tables and pass out a few hundred dollars to convince them to get into Aaron’s limo and be driven around the harbor.… You go out first, Knute, and tell Paddy to drop them off at some gin mill on the way to the Pinkus house and I’ll meet him there. Stosh, you call for a cab, and we’ll coordinate the whole thing.”

  “This all sounds crazy, Mr. D.!” said Stosh, taken aback at Sam’s sudden tone of authority. “I mean, sir, it doesn’t sound like yourself … sir.”

  “I’m going back in time, Stanley, and I was taught by a master. He is closing in. I really do know it. But he made a mistake.”

  “What was that … sir?” asked Knute.

  “He used a real U.S. Army man to do his dirty work. The uniform was plucked like a chicken, but did you notice the posture, the clipped hair on the back of his neck—that bastard was government issue!”

  “Loco man, where are you?”

  “Around the block, stuck in the goddamned traffic! Which one are you?”

  “Desi-Dos. Desi-Uno is wid me.”

  “Hello, loco man. You are crazier than a bunch of coo-coo parrots.”

  “What’s the on-scene evaluation?”

  “Cut the crap, man, I got almost killed!”

  “A firefight?”

  “Wid fish? Don’t be dumb … wid crazy old men wid beards who don’t speak no h’English.”

  “You’re not making sense, D-One.”

  “There h’ain’t a lot of that goin’ around. Specially wid the tall skinny gringo you got a bad thing for.”

  “Be clearer, Corporal!”

  “He sent some old men away in the big black car wearing silly clothes—he thinks we don’t catch on. He’s one dumb gringo!”

  “Catch on to what?”

  “He’s waidin’ for annuder car. One of his amigos is standing in front, lookin’ around.”

  “Goddamn, I’ll never get back there in time. We’re going to lose him!”

  “Not to worry, loco man—”

  “Not worry? Every hour counts!”

  “Hey, man, how far do these liddle radios go for talkin’?”

  “They’re military-cellular megahertz frequencied. Up to a hundred and fifty miles over land, twice that over water.”

  “We h’ain’t goin’ swimmin’ in no cars, so everything’s h’okay.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We’re gonna follow the gringo and his amigos.”

  “Follow …? For the love of Caesar’s legions, in what?”

  “Desi-Dos already hotwired a nice Cheffy. Not to worry, we’ll stay in touch wid chu.”

  “You’re stealing a car?”

  “Hey, we don’ steal nudding. It’s like you say—good estrategia. Right, loco man?”

  Paddy Lafferty was definitely not amused by the three bearded, elderly Greeks in the back of the Pinkus limousine. One, they smelled like a combination of dead fish and baklava; two, they kept turning on every switch they could find, like mental cases in a Video World; three, they looked ridiculous in the ill-fitting jackets belonging to Sam, Stosh, and Knute—especially with their beards half-covering the lapels; four, there was a distinct possibility that one of them had blown his nose—twice—on the velour window drapes; five—oh, hell, what was the point? He’d have to do a complete detail job on the car before Mrs. Pinkus stepped into it.

  It wasn’t that Paddy objected to what Sam was doing; actually, it was kind of exciting and surely broke up the monotony of his daily driving schedule, but nothing was really clear to Lafferty. In truth, the whole truth was known only to the Devereaux boyo and Mr. Pinkus. Apparently, Sammy had been mixed up in some terrible shenanigans a few years ago and now someone was coming after him to settle a score or two. That, of course, was enough for Paddy; he was very fond of Devereaux, even though the hotshot lawyer could be a little squirrelly at times, and anybody who knew the name of one of the army’s great men, General MacKenzie Hawkins, was someone sort of special in Lafferty’s eyes. Too few people these days, especially the yuppie types, paid the respect due the great old soldiers, so it was nice to know that among Sam’s qualities was a regard for the country’s true heroes.

  All this was on the plus side for Mr. Pinkus and his favored employee, but what wasn’t so plus was the information Paddy felt they all should be given. For instance, who was after Sam, and why, and what did they look like? Surely the answers to these simple questions were vital to Devereaux’s protection. Well, not necessarily the why, because that could be a legal thing, but the who and what the hell they looked like were pretty damned important. Instead, all they were told was that Sam would know, Sam would raise an alarm the instant he recognized the bastard or bastards coming after him. Well, Lafferty had never been an officer, but even a combat sergeant knew a short, proper response to that kind of reasoning. As that great soldier Mac the Hawk might have said: “You don’t make a primary target one of your forward scouts.”

  Suddenly, the limo’s telephone rang, abruptly shattering the chauffeur’s hero-oriented thoughts about a man he surely worshiped from ten glorious days in France when that great soldier led their battalion. “Lafferty here,” he said, the phone out of its recess and next to his ear.

  “Paddy, it’s Sam Devereaux!” yelled the voice over the line.

  “Somehow I can tell that, boyo. What is it, Sammy?”

  “Are you being followed?”

  “I was hopin’ to be, but I’m afraid not, and I’ve kept one eye on the mirrors—”

  “We are!”

  “That don’t make sense, lad. Are you sure?”

  “Definitely! I’m calling from a pay phone on the Waltham road—at a place called Nanny’s Naughty Follies Et Cetera.”

  “Hey, boyo, get out of there. You shouldn’t be seen on those premises. Mr. Pinkus wouldn’t like it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Are you callin’ from the phone about ten feet from the jukebox?”

  “Yes, I guess so, I see a jukebox.”

  “Look over to your left, at that big circular bar below a long, raised platform.”

  “Yes, yes, I will.… There’s just a bunch of dancers—oh, my God, they’re all naked! Women and men!”

  “That’s the et cetera, boyo. Now, if I were you, I’d take fleet feet and beat it.”

  “I can’t! Knute and Stosh went out after the Chevy that was following our cab and stopped when we stopped. I mean, they’re really professionals, Paddy. They spotted the ‘tag’—they called it a ‘tag’—and got rid of the taxi, and now they’re closing in.”

  “I’ll be there in less than ten minutes, Sammy! I’m droppin’ these Greek archbishops off at the next gas station and swingin’ north. I know a shortcut. Ten minutes, boyo!”

  • • •

  “Loco man, are you wid us?”

  “If your trail markers are accurate, no more than five minutes, D-One. I just passed the Chicken Shot Café, the one with the red neon rooster sign.”

  “Maybe you gringos don’t know dee difference. Maybe you eat chicken McRooster, no?… It don’t take you even five minutes from that place.”

  “What’s the status—what’s happening?”

  “We good corporales. We got a liddle surprise for you, loco man.”

  “Ten-four!”

  “Ees not six o’clock—”

  “Rolling!”
<
br />   The stolen Oldsmobile from somewhere in the Midwest careened into Nanny’s parking lot in less than three minutes, MacKenzie Hawkins chewing the stub of his cigar and peering out the windshield for his aides-de-camp. Instantly, he saw D-Two at the far end of the asphalt, waving what looked like a large, torn dark blanket. As he raced toward his mechanically talented adjutant, he saw that the signal flag was not a blanket but, instead, a pair of trousers. The Hawk leaped out of the car and approached D-Two, taking a moment to straighten his too-long, too-red, and, definitely still too-loose wig.

  “What’s your report, Corporal?” asked Mac anxiously. “And what the hell are those?” he added, nodding at the trousers.

  “Dere pants, loco man, what you think?”

  “I can see they’re pants, but what are you doing with them?”

  “Ees better I got ’em than the bad amigo who usually wears dem, no? As long as I have deze and Desi-Uno has the odders, the two dumb amigos stay where dey are.”

  “The two—the escorts, the convoys? Where are they … and where’s the target?”

  “Come wid me.” D-Two led the Hawk down the deserted far side of the building, which was obviously used for deliveries and garbage pickups. Parked next to a large trash dumpster, parked so close that the door could not possibly be opened, was a Chevrolet coupe, its opposite door equally secured by a long, discarded tablecloth knotted to the handle and tied to the rear bumper. Inside, one in front, the other in the narrow rear seat, were Devereaux’s two guards, their apoplectic faces pressed against the glass of the windows. Closer inspection disclosed the fact that both wore only undershorts, and further surveillance revealed two pairs of shoes and socks placed neatly by the exposed rear tire. “Dee odder windows we open a liddle bit so they got h’air, you know?” explained D-Two.