A Catskill Eagle (14 page)

CHAPTER 30

“MAN GOT HIMSELF A PRIVATE ARMY,” HAWK said. “like a chinese warlord.”

I nodded. We were driving toward Hartford, east, directly into the morning sun. The road was curvy and not wide.

“We could kick the shit out of Lionel and Teddy,” Hawk said. “Maybe persuade folks we could do their job better.”

“That’s always an option,” I said. “Let’s try this way, first.”

Hawk shrugged. “Hate getting tied in to those government assholes,” Hawk said. “They could fuck up a square knot.”

We found a diner in West Hartford with an outside pay phone. Hawk went to order breakfast and I called Ives on the number he’d said was always manned. He’d misstated slightly. This morning it was womaned. She said a noncommittal hello. I said I wanted to talk with Ives and she said could he call me back. I gave her the pay phone number and hung up and waited.

Ives called back in five minutes. “Good to see you early-birding it,” he said. “Caught any worms yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Here’s what we need. We need two guys that work at the Transpan weapons facility in Pequod, Connecticut, to disappear.”

“Permanently?” Ives said.

“A month ought to be plenty,” I said.

“What are their names?”

“Lionel Elson and Teddy Bright.”

“Teddy Bright?”

“Would I make it up,” I said.

“What else can you tell me?”

“They are instructors in hand-to-hand combat and physical training at the Transpan test range.”

“Why does a manufacturer have a hand-to-hand combat instructor?”

“We’ll find that out,” I said. “After you scoop Lionel and Teddy.”

“Do you care how we do it?”

“No. We’re angling to get hired in their place and so it shouldn’t look rigged and it shouldn’t connect us.”

“Hurry?”

Behind me a big ten-wheeler ground past, down-shifting as it slowed for a stoplight in the next block.

“Ives,” I said. “You need to remember why I’m in this?”

“Ah yes, the maiden in the tower.”

“After this is over, Ives, you and I may have to discuss your tone. But right now I want her out of that tower,” I said. “And every day she’s not out of it is a long and wearing day.”

“We’ll move with judicious speed, young Lochinvar. Sit tight.”

“Do it in the evening when Hawk and I are sitting around the bar in the Pequod House.”

“We know our business,” Ives said. “We don’t need too much advice.”

“Didn’t you guys engineer the Bay of Pigs.”

“Before my time, laddie buck. I’ll call you at the Pequod House when it’s done and tell you your order has been delayed.”

I hung up and went into the diner. Hawk was on a stool eating steak and eggs. There was a teen-age girl behind the counter wearing cutoff jeans and rubber shower clogs. She looked at me when I sat down.

“Coffee,” I said. “Cream and sugar.”

She brought it black in a thick diner mug and pushed the cream pitcher and the sugar shaker at me.

“Ives gonna do it?” Hawk said.

“Yeah.”

“He gonna fuck it up?”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Folk at Transpan might think it funny that these guys disappear right when we come on the scene.”

“Maybe, but if they do what have we lost. We’re outside looking in now.”

“They get suspicious,” Hawk said, “maybe they decide to clip us.”

“They’ll decide to try that sooner or later,” I said. “I still don’t see us being any worse off for trying.”

Hawk wiped up some egg yolk with his toast. He put the piece of toast in his mouth and wiped his fingers on a napkin.

“And it might work,” he said.

“We never lost money yet,” I said, “underestimating the intelligence of the Costigans.”

Hawk put the last piece of steak in his mouth and chewed carefully. He wiped his mouth with the napkin. “Good point,” he said.

CHAPTER 31

HAWK AND I HUNG AROUND PEQUOD, CONNECTICUT, for the next twelve days. During that time I ran about seventy-five miles, did more than a thousand push-ups, the same number of sit-ups, ate badly, drank thirty-four long-neck bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, read The March of Folly and One Writer’s Beginnings, reread The Road Less Traveled, studied 203 box scores in The Hartford Courant, and discussed with Hawk whether there was a difference between good sex and bad.

On the thirteenth day, Hawk said, “I think I in love with Doreen.”

“Don’t blame you,” I said.

“How you feel about interracial marriage,” Hawk said.

“Against the law of God,” I said.

“You sure?” Hawk said.

“Says right in the Bible,” I said. “Thou shalt not marry a spook.”

“Shit,” Hawk said, “you right. I remember that part. How ‘bout I just fuck her?”

“Far as I know that’s okay,” I said.

We were at the bar. Red came in wearing fatigue clothes and a John Deere hat. The shirt hung out over his belt and he looked like an ambulatory mess tent coming toward us.

“Might have a job for you guys,” Red said. “Cadre chief wants to see you.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

We went in a Transpan jeep driven by one of the security people in blue coveralls. At the gate the driver said something to the gate man and we went on through and into the compound. To the right was a square-frame one-story building. We stopped in front of it and got out. The jeep pulled away. A black lettered sign over the door said ADMINISTRATION.

“You guys wait here,” Red said and went into the building. The frame building was central to the layout of the place. The metal Quonsets ranged along the far line of fence, and the manufacturing plant itself loomed directly behind the administration building. Past the factory and to the right of it was a white colonial house, partially concealed by trees. A white picket fence separated it from the rest of the compound.

Red came out of the administration building. With him was Chico, with his hat on backward, and a tall angular man wearing starched fatigues and gleaming engineer’s boots.

“This here’s Mr. Plante,” Red said. “He’s the cadre chief.”

Plante nodded. “Red tells me you gentlemen are hand-to-hand combat experts.”

I said, “Un huh.”

“We have an opening for two men, to instruct in that area. Are you interested.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Very well,” Plante said. He nodded at Chico and Chico produced a hunting knife with a six-inch blade from behind his back. He held it with the flat of the blade parallel to the ground and the cutting edge turned in. “Take the knife away from Chico.”

Chico grinned a little and crouched slightly and I kicked him in the groin. Chico gasped, doubled up, fell forward on the ground, the knife dropped from his limp hand, and I leaned over and picked it up by the blade. I handed it to Plante.

“We get the job?” I said. Chico was moaning on the ground. Plante looked a little startled.

“He wasn’t ready,” said Plante.

“It’s mostly being ready,” Hawk said.

“You want to give him another chance,” I said. “You want another go, Cheeks?”

“No mas, ” Chico gasped.

I said to Plante, “You want to trot out another one, or do we get the job?”

“What about him,” Plante said, nodding at Hawk.

“You got the knife,” I said. “Give him a try.”

Hawk grinned a friendly neutral grin. Plante leaned back slightly, caught himself, frowned and dropped the knife beside Chico on the ground.

“No need,” he said. “If he can’t cut it we’ll know soon enough.”

“I told you they’d be good, Mr. Plante,” Red said.

“Maybe you were right,” Plante said. “Get Chico squared away.” He looked at us. “You men come this way, we’ll sign you on.” We followed him into the administration building.

We gave Plante phony names, and when he asked for ID we smiled enigmatically and he nodded. We signed contracts including the pledge never to discuss the operations of Transpan. Plante walked over to one of the near barracks with us and showed us our quarters. Then a driver took us back to town where we picked up our stuff and checked out of the Pequod House. By ten that night we were in the employ of Jerry Costigan, and, if we were right, I was about two hundred yards from Susan.

CHAPTER 32

THE WORK WAS EASY. WE DID FOUR TRAINING sessions a day, two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon. We wore our Transpan fatigues. We ate lunch in the cadre dining room in the administration building where the help was Filipino men in white mess jackets.

Most of the training force were mercenaries like Red who already knew all they wanted to learn about hand-to-hand combat, and walked through the practice routines in good-natured boredom. Some of the kids were a pain in the ass. There was a straw-blond kid from Georgia who went at the training with the single-minded intensity of a Hindu penitent. His goal in life was to beat one of the instructors. Each time he failed only increased his determination in the next exercise. He volunteered for every demonstration.

“Tate,” I said to him on our third day in camp, “there’s a time to quit.”

“Quitters never win,” he said. “And winners never quit.”

I shook my head. “Life’s going to be hard for you,” I said.

There was also a squat moon-faced kid from Brooklyn named Russo who was so intent on proving how bad he was that Hawk finally broke his arm on the fourth day of training.

It had a calming effect on Tate.

Each evening after supper we strolled the grounds, circling past the big white colonial with its screen of forsythia and lilacs. On the second night we heard sounds of splashing from the pool. Security people in blue jump suits patrolled the picket fence, and nearer the house occasionally we could see men in civilian clothes strolling about wearing side arms.

The workers’ compound was next to the factory. There were six Quonset huts, three on each side of a dirt strip that in the army would have been called the company street. At the head of the street was a seventh Quonset with a sign over the door that said COMMISSARY. Past that a common latrine made of unpainted pine boards. There were tarpaulins stretched between the Quonsets, and shelter tops made of plywood. Small cook fires flickered at all hours of day or night. Most of the workers were Vietnamese, and when they weren’t on shift they squatted flatfooted beside the cook fires and played cards for cigarettes and whiskey. A small contingent of Latin workers kept an area near the last Quonset and intermingled not at all with the Asians. In the Hispanic section someone had fashioned a weight bench out of two-by-fours, and several men worked out regularly with an old set of barbells and cast-iron plates.

There were no fences around the workers’ compound but it was separated from the rest of the facility as if by measureless oceans of space.

Each shift went to work under the leadership of a blue security type, and a couple of security people were always visible at the perimeter of the compound.

“Stay out of there,” Red told me. “Motherfuckers will cut your throat for a pack of Luckies.”

“Have much trouble with them?” I said.

“Naw. Security keeps them under control. Plus there’s all of us. Long as you don’t go in there alone at night, they can’t do you much harm.”

“Doesn’t look like a step on the executive ladder,” I said.

Red laughed. “Shit no,” he said. “It’s goddamned slave labor, what it amounts to. They buy stuff at the commissary on credit. It gets deducted from their wages and each month they’re farther behind.”

“I owe my soul to the company store,” I said.

“Sure. And they bitch, they get turned in as illegal aliens.”

“On the other hand,” I said, “if they do get turned in and they start discussing this situation with somebody from the justice Department…”

“Course,” Red said. “But these assholes don’t know that. They figure all of us round-eyes are on one side and they’re on the other. They don’t even speak English, you know.”

It was evening. Hawk walked into the compound and squatted on his haunches beside one of the cook fires and began talking to one of the Vietnamese.

“Get him out of there,” Red said. “I’m telling you it’s dangerous in there. Even for him.”

“He’ll be all right,” I said.

“It’s against the rules, too,” Red said.

“No fraternization?”

“Hell no,” Red said. “Bastards start talking to people they may find out they’re being fucked.”

Hawk strolled back.

“What’d they say?” Red said.

“Said they’re bored,” Hawk said.

“You speak the language?”

“Some, and some French, some pidgin,” Hawk said. “I spent time there.”

“With the Frenchies,” Red said.

“Uh huh.”

“I hear the women were something,” Red said.

“Even better than Doreen,” Hawk said.

At lunch at the end of our first week, I said to Plante, “Where do these guys go from here?”

“The forces? They go on permanent station at Transpan installations around the globe.”

“Security?”

“Security, training, and demonstration,” Plante said.

“How ‘bout that mansion over in the corner by the river,” Hawk said.

“Executive house,” Plante said. “Mr. Costigan and his son stay there when they are in the area.”

“Costigan owns all this?” I said.

“This and much more,” Plante said.

“He there now?”

“His son,” Plante said. “Why?”

“Saw all the security over there,” I said. “Kind of like to get a look at Costigan. Man’s a legend.”

Plante nodded. “In an age of collectivism,” he said, “Jerry Costigan is the most powerful sole proprietor in the world.”

“That anything like Soul Brother,” Hawk said. Plante shook his head without smiling. “It’s no joke,” he said. “Mr. Costigan has never yielded an inch. He is an individual swimming strong in a sea of conformity.”

Hawk nodded and drank some lemonade. I said solemnly, “Man’s a legend.”

“When the government came in here and told us we had to let them unionize the work force Mr. Costigan said no, and meant it,” Plante said. “We locked the bastards out and imported workers from the foreign labor pool. Workers, by the way, grateful for the chance. They need discipline. They’re not used to American hustle and stick-to-it. But with guidance they do the job without a lot of pus-gut shop stewards grieving everything you try to do.”

One of the men attendants cleared away dishes and poured coffee.

“Mr. Costigan’s way is clean. There’s no bloat in his operation. He doesn’t subcontract. He doesn’t depend on anyone. He’s stood by the things that got us where we are. Everywhere collectivism, committeeism, collaborationism is oozing over us. Trying to creep in at every fissure. Foreign goods, foreign ideas, decision by committee, by regulatory agency, by boards and unions and…” Plante guzzled some coffee. “… damned community action groups and class action groups and affirmative action groups. Want us to be run by a bunch of fat-ass pansies from Harvard.”

Hawk leaned forward, his face open and interested, his hands folded quietly on the edge of the table. Now and then he nodded. If he wanted to, Hawk could look interested in the Playboy philosophy.

“But Mr. Costigan.” Plante gulped more coffee. A mess steward filled his cup. Plante shook his head rapturously. “Mr. Costigan, he won’t budge. He does it his way. With his own workers, his own forces. He owns it all and he runs it all.”

“And the forces help him,” I said.

“Absolutely.” There was a faint gloss of sweat on Plante’s upper lip. “Absolutely. Transpan is selfcontained. Self-contained. When the collapse comes, we’ll be ready.”

He paused, looked at his watch, and raised his eyebrows. “God, I’m running late,” he said. He stood, rapidly drank a cup of coffee, and hurried out.

The mess steward cleared away his dishes impassively.