The Road to Omaha: A Novel Page 9

  “Good God, your mother said those were all your delusions! Killers on a golf course, Germans in chicken farms … Arabs in the desert. They were real.”

  “Sometimes, not often, I have a martini I shouldn’t have.”

  “She also mentioned that.… And Hawkins unearthed these scoundrels from the intelligence files and forced them to capitulate to his demands?”

  “How low can you get—”

  “How ingenious can a man be?”

  “Where’s your moral armor, Aaron?”

  “Certainly not for the benefit of scoundrels, Sam.”

  “Then in support of the evidence you’ve seen on my walls?”

  “Definitely not!”

  “So where do you stand?”

  “One has nothing to do with the other. There’s no linkage.”

  “Not if you were me, Counselor.”

  Aaron Pinkus took several deep breaths in silence while placing his ten fingers across his forehead, his head bowed. “For every impossible problem there must be an eventual solution, either in this life or in the hereafter.”

  “I prefer the former, if you don’t mind, Aaron.”

  “I tend to agree,” said the elderly attorney. “Therefore, we will, as you expressed in your own singular vernacular, get off our asses and charge ahead.”

  “To what?”

  “To our mutual confrontation with General MacKenzie Hawkins.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “I have a vested interest, Sammy. You might even say a potentially disastrous one. Furthermore, I should like to bring to your attention a truism of our profession, true because of its validity.… A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Your General Hawkins may possess an extraordinary military mind, with all its brilliant eccentricities, but, I modestly submit, he has not matched his skills against those of Aaron Pinkus.”

  The befeathered Chief Thunder Head of the Wopotamis spat out his mutilated cigar and returned to the interior of his huge tepee, where, in addition to the expected American Indian artifacts, such as ersatz scalps lining the walls, he had installed a waterbed and various electronic equipment that would make the Pentagon proud—had made the Pentagon proud, before it was stolen. Sighing audibly, in both sadness and anger, Thunder Head carefully removed his awesome tribal headdress, dropping it on the dirt floor. He reached into a buckskin satchel and pulled out a fresh cigar of indeterminate make and limited quality; he shoved it into his mouth and proceeded to mangle a good two inches of the end until his teeth were stained. He crossed to the waterbed, lowered himself down on its instantly rolling swells, and immediately lost his balance, falling backward, as the cellular telephone inside his beaded tribal tunic erupted. The ringing persisted as he thrashed about, trying to calm the rough waters beneath him, finally succeeding by pushing himself forward and planting his boots firmly on the dirt. Angrily he yanked out the phone and spoke harshly. “What is it? I’m in powwow!”

  “Come on, Chief, the only powwows around here are when the kids hear their dogs bark.”

  “You never know who’s calling, son.”

  “I didn’t know anyone else had the number.”

  “Always operate on the assumption that the enemy can scan and lock into a frequency.”

  “What …?”

  “Just stay alert, boy. Now, what is it?”

  “You know that English couple who were here yesterday asking for you, the ones we played dumb Injun for?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “They’re back, but with a couple of associates. One looks like his keeper doesn’t know he’s missing from his cage, the other sniffs a lot—he’s got either a bad cold or a couple of very inflamed nostrils.”

  “They must have smelled something.”

  “Not with his honker—”

  “I don’t mean the support troops, I mean the English types. That legal idiot of yours, Charlie Redwing, must have tipped them off to something.”

  “Hey, come on, T.H., except for falling off that lousy horse, he was terrific. They didn’t learn bean one about you, and that fancy lady kept looking at his jockstrap—”

  “Loincloth, son, loincloth. Maybe it was the horse.”

  “Maybe it was the loincloth,” suggested the caller, as Thunder Head, caught in a rolling vinyl wave, was thrown back on the waterbed.

  “Augh!”

  “Hey, our legal eagle may really have something, huh? I guess you agree.”

  “I agreed to nothing! My BOQ accoutrements here are loused up—”

  “You designed them, T.H.”

  “And I’d advise you to cut the familiarity, boy! You’re a low-life enlisted man and you will address me as Chief!”

  “Fine, Chiefy-baby, then you can drive into town and get your own rotten cigars—”

  “I didn’t redress you that severely, son, I just want to maintain a logical order of command. All I’m saying is that support troops are not called up for such R and R as ‘loincloths,’ do I make myself clear?”

  “Maybe.… So what do you figure? What they smelled, I mean.”

  “Not what they smelled, young man, but what someone else smelled that called for auxiliary support. Those Brits didn’t reassault by themselves, they were ordered back by a combat officer who wanted a reassessment. It’s as clear as Porkchop Hill.”

  “Porkchops …?”

  “Where are they now, boy?”

  “At the souvenir lean-to. They’re buying up a load of stuff and being very friendly, even the ox. Incidentally, the girls—excuse me, the squaws—are happy as hell. We just got in a new supply from Taiwan.”

  Thunder Head frowned, lit his cigar, and spoke. “Stay on the line, I’ve got to think.” Several quarts of smoke fogged the tepee when, finally, the Hawk resumed speaking. “Pretty soon the Brits will bring up my name.”

  “I guess they will.”

  “So, have one of our downtrodden brethren tell them my tepee is roughly two hundred running antelope strides above the north pasture, past the buffalo mating ground, by the great oaks, where the eagles lay their precious eggs. It’s an isolated place, so I can commune with the gods of the forest and contemplate. Got it?”

  “I can’t understand a word you just said. We’ve got a few cows but no buffalo, and I’ve never seen an eagle except in the Omaha zoo.”

  “You’ll admit there’s a forest.”

  “Well, woods, maybe, but I don’t remember any great big trees.”

  “Damn it, son, just get ’em up into those woods, okay?”

  “Which of the paths? They’re all clear, but some are better than others. It’s been a lousy tourist season—”

  “Good thinking, boy!” exclaimed Thunder Head. “Fine tactics. Tell ’em they’ll find me quicker if they separate. The one who reaches me can call the others; they’re not that far away from one another.”

  “Considering the fact that you’re not anywhere near those woods, it’s not Tine tactics,’ it’s dumb. They’ll get lost.”

  “Hopefully, son, hopefully.”

  “What?”

  “In light of the nature of this engagement, the enemy’s using unorthodox strategy. Nothing wrong with unorthodoxy—hell, I’ve employed it most of my career—but it doesn’t make any sense if it retards your progress. In this situation, a frontal assault is our adversary’s most productive course—his only course, really—but instead he’s going around our flanks firing mortars filled with horseshit.”

  “Lost me again, Chief,” said the caller.

  “Anthropologists looking for the remnants of a great tribe?” scoffed Thunder Head. “A tribe from the Shenandoahs, savages brought over to the English court by Walter Raleigh, you believed all that crap?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s possible. The Wopotamis came from someplace in the East.”

  “From the Hudson Valley, not the Shenandoahs. For a fact, they were run off by the Mohawks ’cause they couldn’t farm and they couldn’t raise cattle and wouldn’t get out
of their tepees if it snowed. They weren’t a great tribe, they were losers from day one until they reached the Missouri River, in the middle eighteen hundreds, where they found their true calling. They first hornswoggled, then corrupted the white settlers!”

  “You know all that?”

  “There’s very little about your tribe’s history I don’t know.… No, son, someone’s behind this covert operation, and I’m going to find out who it is. Get to work now. Send ’em up to the woods!”

  Twenty-three minutes passed, and one by one the members of Hyman Goldfarb’s scouting patrol entered the four paths in the dense forest. They had decided to separate insofar as the precise instructions they had received at the souvenir lean-to were totally imprecise and contradictory, the crowd of yelling squaws in a raucous debate over which path actually led to the great Thunder Head’s tepee, a residence obviously equated with some holy shrine.

  Forty-six minutes later, one by one, each member had been ambushed and bound—arms and legs—to a sizable tree trunk, their mouths gagged with ersatz beaver pelts, all assured that rescue was imminent as long as they did not somehow find a way to remove the gags and scream. Should that happen, the wrath of a downtrodden, exploited people would descend on their heads, specifically their scalps, which would be no longer attached to their heads. And each, of course, was accorded treatment commensurate with his or her station and sex. The English lady was much tougher than her like-talking male associate, who attempted some complicated Oriental defense, only to wrench his left arm out of its elbow socket. The shorter, sniffing American tried to make a deal while slowly removing a short-barreled Charter Arms automatic from his belt and therefore had to be visited with several cracked ribs. The most strenuously difficult, however, Chief Thunder Head—né MacKenzie Lochinvar Hawkins (his middle name having been stricken from all records)—saved for the last. The Hawk always felt it was proper to permit his harshest challenge to have the honor of being the final barrier. You didn’t take out a Rommel with the first wave against the Afrika Korps—it just wasn’t, well, proper.

  The challenge in question was outsized in bulk but not too sizable in the brain department. Following a damn good workout with a man no more than half his age, the Hawk prevailed by ducking twice in rapid succession and sending rigid, pointed fingers into the middle of the enemy scout’s stomach; he knew it would work by smelling the hostile’s breath. Up came an excess of Indian food from the scout’s throat; a hammerlock forcing the huge enemy head down toward his embarrassing accident did the rest.

  “Your name, rank, and serial number, soldier!”

  “Wadda ya talkin’?” belched the hostile, referred to as the ox by Thunder Head’s security.

  “I’ll settle for your name and who you work for. Now!”

  “I got no name and I don’t work for nobody.”

  “Down you go.”

  “Holy shit, have a heart!”

  “Why? You tried to rip it out of my chest. Into the mess you go, soldier.”

  “It smells so bad!”

  “Not as bad as what I smell around all four of you clowns. Give me what I want, prisoner!”

  “It’s wet … Okay, okay! They call me the Shovel.”

  “I’ll accept a nom de guerre. Who’s your commander?”

  “Wadda ya talkin’?”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Wadda ya now, nuts?”

  “All right, soldier, lose the rest of your stomach! You like our grub? Have it again, you old redskin lover!”

  “Jeez, you got it yourself! I didn’t have to say nothin’. Redskins!”

  “Come again, grunt?”

  “He played for ’em! The Redskins … Lemme up, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Played for …? I need more, you latrine-cleaner! What kind of hot air are you trying to peddle?”

  “You’re closer, real close! They couldn’t put nuthin’ in the air while he was around. He didn’t need no defense hulks, he just broke right through and nailed the quarters from Namath on down! The Hebrew Hercules, maybe …?”

  “Quarters—? Namath? Redskins?… Christ on a surfboard, football! And Hercules?… There was only one linebacker like that in NFL history. Hymie the Hurricane!”

  “I didn’t say nuthin’! You said it.”

  “You haven’t the vaguest idea what I said, soldier.” The Hawk spoke softly, rapidly, as he released the bull of a man while swiftly manipulating the ropes that secured him to the tree. “The Golden Goldfarb,” he continued hoarsely under his breath. “I recruited the son of a bitch when I was posted at the Pentagon!”

  “You what?”

  “You never heard that, Shovel—believe me, you never heard it!… I’ve got to get out of here, pronto. I’ll send someone back for you idiots, but you, you never told me anything, you understand?”

  “I didn’t! But I’m also happy to oblige, Mr. Big Indian Chief.”

  “That’s a small accomplishment, son, we’re on to bigger things. We just struck the gusher by rattling the biggest exposed nerve in Dizzy City!… The Golden Goldfarb, wadda ya know? Right now, I need a goddamned attorney-of-record fast, and I know exactly where that ungrateful asshole is!”

  Vincent Mangecavallo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, stared at the secure telephone in his outstretched hand as though the instrument were the inanimate embodiment, of a communicable disease. When the hysterical voice on the line paused for breath, the DCI yanked the phone to his ear and mouth and spoke quietly but grimly. “You listen to me, you pinstriped baked apple. I’m doing the best I can with talent your crowd only pays for but wouldn’t know how to talk to, much less let into your la-di-da country clubs. You wanna take over? Be my guest, and I’ll laugh like a goosed fruit when you get drowned in a vat of minestrone.… You wanna know something else, you lockjawed cannoli?” Mangecavallo suddenly, briefly stopped, then resumed speaking in a much softer, friendlier voice. “Who’s kidding who? We all may be drowning in that barrel of soup. So far, all we got is zilch. That Court’s as clean as my mother’s thoughts—and no cracks from the Whiffenpoof group, thank you very much.”

  “Sorry I blew up, old fellow,” said the Secretary of State, on the other end of the line. “But surely you can understand the extraordinary disadvantages we face in the upcoming summit. My God, think of the embarrassment! How can the President negotiate from a position of strength, with the full authority of his office, if the Court even thinks of permitting a totally unknown, tiny tribe of Indians to cripple our first line of defense? The sky’s where it’s at, you know, old boy!”

  “Yeah, I figured, bambino vecchio.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s Guinea-speak for something I never could understand with your types. How can a little kid be old?”

  “Well, the tie, you see. The old schools, old bonds, the symbols, I suppose. Therefore, the ‘old boys.’ Quite simple, really.”

  “Maybe like vecchia maledizione di famiglia, huh?”

  “Well, I got the ‘familiar’ part, and I imagine in a broad sense there’s a correlation. It’s a rather lovely foreign phrase.”

  “We don’t think so. You get killed for it.”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “No matter, I just wanted a couple of moments to think.”

  “I do that all the time. Tangential intrusions.”

  “Yeah, sure, so let’s intrude on this summit problem. Number one, can the Big Man call it off because he’s got the flu—or maybe shingles—hey, they’re rough, how about it?”

  “Terrible image, Vincent. No way.”

  “His wife has a stroke? I can arrange it.”

  “Again, no, old sport. He’d have to rise above personal tragedy and perform heroically—that’s bible.”

  “Then we’re in the minestrone.… Whoa, whoa, I think I got it! If the Court’s debate goes public, suppose the Big Fella says he supports the right of what do you call it—petition?”

  “You’re bonkers!”<
br />
  “Who?”

  “Insane! On what possible basis could he endorse such a position? This isn’t merely pro choice or against it, it’s real. You can’t tab votes on this, you have to take a stand—and the only stand he can take pits him against the constitutional balances of power. He’s embroiled in a battle between the Executive and the Judicial. Everybody loses!”

  “Boy, you got a lot of big words, baked apple. I don’t mean he ‘endorses,’ I mean he ‘supports’ the public debate, in the sense that he looks after the little people—like the Commies used to do but never did—and, anyway, he knows he’s got twenty-two other SAC bases in the country, and eleven or twelve outside. So what’s his problem?”

  “Roughly seventy billion dollars’ worth of equipment in Omaha he can’t move out!”

  “So who knows that?”

  “The General Accounting Office.”

  “Now we’re getting down to the marbles. We can shut those guys up. I can arrange it.”

  “You’re relatively new in this town, Vincent. By the time your enforcers are in place, the leaks will have begun, the seventy billion instantly escalated to well over a hundred, and any attempt to suppress even the rumors, those figures will reach nine hundred billion, making the Savings and Loan fiasco petty cash. By that time, since there’s obviously a healthy grain of validity in that malodorous brief, we’d all be prosecuted under the laws of Congress for covering up something we had absolutely nothing to do with over a hundred years ago for the sake of political advantage. Furthermore, despite the fact that this is the most intelligent course of action we professionals could take, we’d not only be facing fines and imprisonment, but they’d also take away our limousines.”

  “Basta!” yelled Mangecavallo, switching the phone to his other, less-abused ear. “This is nuthouse time!”

  “Welcome to the real world of Washington, Vincent.… Are you absolutely certain there’s nothing, shall we say, ‘convincing,’ on any of those six idiots on the Court? What about the black fellow? He’s always struck me as quite uppity.”

  “He would and you would, but he’s probably the cleanest and the brightest.”

  “You don’t say?”