The Road to Omaha: A Novel Read online

  “Stop it!” roared Eleanor Devereaux. “I’ll hear no more!”

  “I think we’d better, dear Eleanor, and if you’ll pardon my untenable language, please be quiet. Go on, Sammy. I don’t wish to hear it, either, but, by the god of Abraham, who controls the universe and who may now have some explaining to do, how did it happen? And it’s all so obvious that it did happen! The press was right, the media everywhere were right! There were two people—it’s there on your walls! There were two popes and you kidnapped the original!”

  “Not exactly,” pleaded Devereaux, each inhaled breath more difficult than the last. “You see, Zio figured it was okay—”

  “Okay?” Aaron’s chin came perilously close to the top of the coffee table.

  “Well, yes. He wasn’t well and … well, that’s another part of the story, but Zio was smarter than any of us. I mean he was really with it.”

  “How did it happen, Sam? It was because of this lunatic General MacKenzie Hawkins, wasn’t it? He’s in all these photographs. He was the one who made you become the most unknown notorious kidnapper in the history of the world! Am I even reasonably accurate?”

  “You might say that. Then again you might not.”

  “How, Sam? How?” pleaded the elderly attorney, as he picked up a copy of Penthouse from the coffee table and began waving it in front of the comatose face of Eleanor Devereaux.

  “There are some excellent articles in that magazine.… very academic.”

  “Sammy, I beg you, do not do this to me, or to your lovely mother here, who bore you in pain, and at this moment may be in need of ministrations beyond our capabilities. In the name of the Lord God of Hosts, to whom I shall vigorously protest in temple on tomorrow’s Sabbath, what possessed you to be a part of this monstrous act?”

  “Well, actually, Aaron, ‘possessed’ is a fairly accurate description of the alleged—I restate, the alleged—criminal enterprise to which you refer.”

  “I don’t have to ‘refer,’ Sam, I simply point to these very specific articles of evidence on your walls!”

  “Yes, well, actually, Aaron, they’re not entirely conclusive—”

  “You want I should subpoena the Pope?”

  “Vatican executive privilege wouldn’t permit it.”

  “These photographs alone would obviate the rules of evidentiary procedure! I’ve taught you nothing?”

  “Pick Mother’s head up, please.”

  “It’s better she’s out, Sam. What was this ‘possessed’?”

  “Yes, well, actually, Aaron, without any intent on my part, I walked out of the army intelligence G-Two computer banks with copies of maximum-classified files chained to my wrist twenty-four hours before my discharge.”

  “So?”

  “Well, you see, Aaron, as MacKenzie Hawkins’s attorney-of-record, I had to accompany him to his final Six-thirty-five resolution of all the classified intelligence reports relative to his military career, from World War Two through Southeast Asia.”

  “So?”

  “Well, you see, Aaron, that’s when Mac’s friends in the army intruded on the procedure. I’d made a minor mistake in the Golden Triangle and instituted charges against a certain General Ethelred Brokemichael for dealing in drugs, when it actually was his cousin Heseltine Brokemichael, and Ethelred’s supporters were mad as hell, and since they were all friends of Mac Hawkins, they rallied around the Hawk and played his game.”

  “What game? Heseltine … Ethelred! Drugs, Golden Triangle! So you made a mistake, you withdraw the indictment. So?”

  “It was too late. The military’s worse than Congress. Ethelred didn’t get his three stars, and his buddies blamed it on me and helped Mac.”

  “So?”

  “One of those bastards chained a briefcase on my wrist, slapped a max-security label on it, and I signed out with two thousand six-hundred forty-one copies of top-secret files on my person, the majority of which had nothing to do with Mac Hawkins, who stood innocently at my side.”

  Aaron Pinkus closed his eyes and sank back on the small settee, his shoulder touching the totally dazed Eleanor Devereaux. “So you were his for the immediate future—roughly five months.” Aaron cautiously opened his eyes.

  “Either that or have my discharge postponed indefinitely … or I’d spend twenty years in Leavenworth.”

  “Then the money came from the ransom—”

  “What money?” interrupted Sam.

  “The money you spent so lavishly on this house … hundreds of thousands of dollars! It was your share of the ransom, wasn’t it?”

  “What ransom?”

  “For Pope Francesco, naturally. When you released him.”

  “We didn’t get any ransom. Cardinal Ignatio Quartz refused to pay.”

  “Cardinal who?”

  “It’s another story. Quartz was happy with Guido.”

  “Guido?”

  “You’re shouting, Aaron,” murmured Eleanor.

  “Guido Frescobaldi,” answered Devereaux. “Zio’s look-alike cousin; he was an extra in La Scala’s third opera company and sometimes got to play small parts.”

  “Enough!” The celebrated attorney took several deep breaths, doing his best to find some self-control. Lowering his voice, he spoke as calmly as possible. “Sam, you returned home with a great deal of money that did not come from a deceased wealthy Devereaux. Where did it come from, Sam?”

  “Well, actually, Aaron, as a general partner, it was my pro rata share of the remaining capitalization initially raised for the corporation.”

  “What corporation?” asked Pinkus, his quiet voice floating and barely audible.

  “The Shepherd Company.”

  “The Shepherd …?”

  “Like in the Good Shepherd.”

  “Like in the Good Shepherd,” repeated Aaron, as if in a trance. “Money was raised for this corporation—”

  “Actually, in increments of ten million dollars per investor, said investors restricted to four and forming a limited partnership with the general partners, their individual risks naturally limited to the capital ventured and based on projections anticipating a ten-to-one return on their investments.… Actually, none of the four investors cared to be legally acknowledged and preferred to consider their investments as charitable contributions in exchange for anonymity.”

  “Anonymity …? Forty million dollars’ worth of anonymity?”

  “Actually, that was pretty much guaranteed. I mean, where could I possibly file the papers of incorporation, Aaron?”

  “You? You were counsel for this travesty of a business enterprise?”

  “Not by choice,” protested Devereaux. “Never by choice.”

  “Oh, yes, those two-thousand-plus intelligence files you walked out with. No discharge. Leavenworth.”

  “Or worse, Aaron. Mac said there were ways less public than a firing squad if Pentagon public relations ruled out an execution.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand.… Sam, your dear mother here, who mercifully is in a state of shock, mentioned that you told her your money came from religious artifacts—”

  “Actually, as was clearly stated in the bylaws of the limited partnership, the primary function of the corporation was the ‘brokering of acquired religious artifacts.’ I covered it rather nicely, I thought.”

  “Dear God,” exclaimed Pinkus, swallowing. “And naturally the ‘acquired’ religious artifact in question was the person of Pope Francesco the First, whom you kidnapped.”

  “Well, actually, Aaron, that’s not really legally sound, much less conclusive. The allegation itself might even be considered libelous.”

  “What are you saying? Look at your walls, the photographs!”

  “Actually, I might suggest that you—you, Aaron—look at them again. Legally speaking, kidnapping is defined as abduction by force or coercion and holding a person or personages against their will, their being freed subject to the payment of funds. Although, as I’ve acknowledged, a preliminary strategy had been
meticulously financed and was in place to implement such an objective, the strategy failed and would have been aborted but for the voluntary—I might say enthusiastic—cooperation of the subject. And those photographs hardly depict the subject in question to be under any constraints whatsoever. In fact, he appears to be content and in excellent spirits.”

  “Sam, you belong in a room made of thick sponge rubber! Hasn’t the enormity of what you did made even a dent in your moral armor?”

  “The crosses I bear are heavy, indeed, Aaron.”

  “That’s not the most appropriate allusion you could employ.… I don’t really want to know, but how did you ever get—him—back to Rome?”

  “Mac and Zio worked it out. The Hawk called it a ‘very back-channel’ mission, and Zio began singing opera.”

  “I’m exhausted,” whispered Pinkus. “I could only wish this day never happened, that I had not heard a word uttered in this room and that my sight had deserted me.”

  “How do you think I feel every day of my life? The eternal love of my life is gone, but I’ve learned something, Aaron. Life must go on!”

  “How uniquely phrased.”

  “I mean it, it’s over. It’s all in the past, and in a way, I’m glad today did happen. Somehow, it’s freed me. Now I have to get off my ass and charge ahead, knowing that slugworm son of a bitch can never touch me again!”

  And, of course, the telephone rang.

  “If that’s the office, I’m in temple,” said Pinkus. “I’m not prepared for the outside world.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Sam, rising and heading for the desk as the phone rang again. “Mother’s up here—sort of—and it’s better Cora doesn’t answer. You know, Aaron, now that it’s all out in the open, I really feel better. With your support, I know I can charge ahead and face new challenges, find new horizons—”

  “Answer the damn thing, Sammy. My head is splitting.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, sorry.” Devereaux picked up the phone, greeted whoever was on the line, paused for a reply, and then proceeded to scream hysterically, with such uncontrollable frenzy that his mother bolted up from the settee, shot over the oval coffee table, and ended up splayed out on the floor.

  6

  “Sammy!” shouted Aaron Pinkus, dashing back and forth between the unconscious Eleanor and her son, who was now, in an outburst of panic, ripping down every framed photograph he could reach on the walls and smashing them down on the floor. “Sam, get hold of yourself!”

  “Slugworm!” screamed Devereaux. “Maggot of the universe, the most despicable human being on the face of the earth! He has no right—”

  “Your mother, Sammy. She may be dead!”

  “Forget it, she wouldn’t know how,” replied Devereaux, racing to the wall behind the desk and continuing his assault on the myriad photos and newspaper clippings. “He’s sick, sick, sick!”

  “I didn’t say sick, Sam, I said dead,” continued Aaron, kneeling painfully and holding the mother’s quivering head firmly, hoping his ruse might have an effect on the son. “You really should show some concern.”

  “Concern? Has he ever shown me any concern? He tears my life apart then steps on the pieces, grinding them into the dirt! He rips my heart out and blows it up into a balloon—”

  “I didn’t say he, Sam, I said she! Your mother.”

  “Hello, Mother, I’m busy.”

  Pinkus withdrew the beeper from his pocket and held his finger down on the signal button; then he kept pressing it in bursts. His driver, Paddy Lafferty, would somehow get the message of emergency: He had to.

  He did. In moments, Paddy could be heard crashing through the east wing entrance, ordering Cousin Cora in his most commanding sergeant’s roar to get out of his way or he’d throw her to a bunch of war-weary drunken infantrymen looking for a little feminine amusement.

  “It’s no threat, Mick!”

  Sam Devereaux was tied to the chair behind his desk, his arms and legs bound with sheets torn from his bed and ripped with abandon by the once and former Sergeant Patrick Lafferty of Omaha Beach, World War II. Ripped, that was, after he had cold-cocked Sam and found the bedroom. Devereaux shook his head while blinking and attempted a semblance of his voice. “Five drug addicts attacked me,” he offered.

  “Not exactly, Sam boyo,” said Paddy, holding a glass of water to the lawyer’s lips. “Unless you consider a touch of Bushmills in that category, which I don’t advise you to do in old Southie, or even in O’Toole’s saloon.”

  “You did this to me?”

  “I had no choice, Sam. When a man goes over the edge of combat fatigue, you bring him back however you can. It’s no disgrace, boyo.”

  “You were in the army? In combat …? You were with MacKenzie Hawkins?”

  “You know that name, Sam?”

  “Were you?”

  “I never had the privilege of meetin’ the great general personally, but I seen him! For ten days in France he took over our division, and I tell you this, laddie, Mac the Hawk was the finest commanding officer the army ever had. He made Patton look like a ballet dancer, and frankly I kinda liked old George, but he just wasn’t in the Hawk’s league.”

  “I’m screwed!” screamed Devereaux, straining at the binding sheet strips. “Where’s my mother … where’s Aaron?” he asked suddenly, glancing around the empty room.

  “With your mother, boyo. I carried her to her bedroom. Mr. Pinkus is administering a little brandy to help her sleep.”

  “Aaron and my mother?”

  “Be a touch flexible, lad. You’ve met Shirley with the concrete hairdo.… Here, now, drink a little water—I’d give you some whisky, but I don’t believe you could handle it. Your eyes don’t convey much human, more like a cat’s that’s heard a loud noise.”

  “Stop it! My whole world is coming apart!”

  “Don’t unravel, Sam, Mr. Pinkus’ll stitch it back together. A grander man in that department there never was.… There, he’s comin’ back now. I hear what’s left of the door.”

  The exhausted, frail figure of Aaron Pinkus trudged into the off-limits office as if he had just returned from an assault on the Matterhorn. “We have to talk, Samuel,” he said, sinking breathlessly into a chair in front of the desk. “Would you please leave us, Paddy? Cousin Cora suggested that you might enjoy a char-grilled porterhouse in the kitchen.”

  “A porter?”

  “With Irish ale, Paddy.”

  “Well … you understand that first impressions are not always written in stone, am I correct, Mr. Pinkus?”

  “That, too, is written in stone, my old friend.”

  “What about me?” yelled Devereaux. “Will somebody cut me loose?”

  “You will remain exactly where you are and how you are until our conversation’s over, Samuel.”

  “You always call me ‘Samuel’ when you’re mad at me.”

  “Mad? Why should I be mad? You’ve only involved me and the firm in the most heinously insidious crime in the history of civilization since the Middle Empire of Egypt four thousand years ago. Mad? No, Sammy, I’m merely hysterical.”

  “I think I’d better leave, boss.”

  “I’ll beep you later, Paddy. And enjoy your porterhouse as if you were having my last meal in this life.”

  “Oh, you carry on so, Mr. Pinkus.”

  “Then carry me out to the temple if I do not signal you within the hour.” Lafferty made a rapid exit, signified by the screeching sound of the shattered outside door being pulled shut. Hands folded in front of him, Aaron spoke. “I must assume,” he began calmly, “that the person who contacted you on the telephone was none other than General MacKenzie Hawkins, am I correct?”

  “You know damn well you’re correct, and that sewer rat can’t do this to me!”

  “What precisely has he done?”

  “He talked to me.”

  “There’s a law prohibiting communication?”

  “Between the two of us, there certainly is. He swore on the Man
ual of Army Regulations never to speak to me again for the rest of his miserable, misbegotten life!”

  “Yet he saw fit to violate this solemn oath, which means he felt he had something of great import to tell you. What was it?”

  “Who listened?” yelled Devereaux, again straining against the constricting white strips pinning him to the chair. “All I heard him say was that he was flying into Boston to see me and everything went crazy.”

  “You went crazy, Sam.… When is he to make this journey?”

  “How do I know?”

  “That’s right. You turned off your ears and turned on your precordial anxiety.… However, based on the assumption that he had something vital to tell you, or he would not have broken his agreement never to contact you, we can assume that his flight to Boston is imminent.”

  “So’s my departure for Tasmania,” said Devereaux emphatically.

  “That is the one thing you must not do,” interjected Pinkus with equal firmness. “You cannot run away nor can you avoid him—”

  “One reason!” broke in Sam, shouting. “Give me one reason short of murdering the son of a bitch why I shouldn’t avoid him? He’s a walking distress signal from the Titanic!”

  “Because he will continue to hold over your head—and, by extension, mine, as your only employer since law school—your participation in this crime of the ages.”

  “You didn’t walk out of the data banks with over two thousand top-secret intelligence files, I did.”

  “That seemingly ominous act sinks to the level of complete insignificance compared to the evidence you’ve been trying to tear off your walls.… But since you mention it, was there any point to the theft of those files?”

  “Forty million points,” answered Devereaux. “How do you think that diabolical general from the River Styx raised his capital?”

  “Blackmail …?”

  “From the Cosa Nostra to some Brits who weren’t exactly in line for the Victoria Cross; from former Nazis whose respectability was up to their thighs in chickenshit, to Arab sheiks who made money by protecting their Israeli investments. He refined the whole sticky ball of wax and made me go after them.”