Courier (8 page)

"Well, I guess it still seems like it was a good idea, or at least better than living in a household with a drunk. I watched my mother try to escape into a bottle to get away from her problems, and all the problems just got worse, and eventually her liver blew, and she died. By that time, she'd driven away everyone who'd ever cared about her. They got in the way of her dedication to drinking. I didn't wait to be driven away – I ran. When she was dying a couple of years ago, I visited, but there wasn't any emotional scene. Didn't like her when she was alive and don't miss her now she is dead."

Dina said, "Isn't that a bit cold?"

Rick looked her straight in the eyes. "It's the only advantage to being the child of an alcoholic. From what I've seen, healthy people feel terrible when a parent dies."

Dina just shook her head, but Eve nodded. "Alcohol is a huge problem back home. Most Native Americans tend to have trouble with alcohol – apparently, it's genetic. Plus, the stress of poverty and… hopelessness eats our people up inside, and drinking is a cure or at least it dulls the pain for a little while. A lot of the guys coming back from the war seem to be drinking to forget."

"Yeah, well, there are some things that happened in Vietnam that I would drink Drano to forget, but short of that, alcohol just doesn't work. I end up hung over and still remember everything. The worst of both worlds."

She looked at him seriously. "So, what do you do to forget?"

"When I manage to forget a single second of my time over there, I'll be sure to let you know."

"But you can't go on like that," she said. "At home they'd say you were sick, poisoned. The elders know how to fight an illness like that, but you have to be willing to fight along with them."

"Smoke and feathers?"

"My dad's the only licensed psychiatrist on the Montana reservation." There was a flash of anger in her eyes. "Sometimes he uses smoke and feathers, and sometimes he uses psychotherapy. Occasionally, he just knocks the patient upside the head once or twice."

Rick grinned. "Sounds like my kind of guy."

They might have continued to talk about each other, but Dina was fighting for a position on the Senate Special Committee that was about to start hearings on the Watergate scandal and she was bursting with the latest chapter of the story that had been delighting – or infuriating – political Washington since the "third-rate burglary" had happened six months ago.

More cash had been discovered. Dina said that the wife of one of the arrested burglars had been in a plane crash and turned out to be carrying thousands of dollars in cash.

Rick said, "Everything about this Watergate thing seems to have something to do with cash."

"This is the tip of the iceberg," Dina responded. "Everyone knew that Nixon was calling in all his chips for this election. The money was just flooding in. Corporations, industry associations, old friends. You name it."

Eve looked curious. "But don't they know the names of everyone who gives money to a campaign? I thought they just passed a law on that."

"They did, but it didn't go into effect until last April and under the old law – and I love this name, The Corrupt Practices Act
–
you didn't have to identify any contributions to a candidate before he was nominated."

Rick had watched the convention coverage like a soap opera, since there wasn't much else going on when all the politicians were out of town. "And Nixon didn't officially get nominated until August."

Dina smiled. "Bingo. My Republican friends say his money people started beating the bushes the day after the election in 1968. There must be millions of dollars sloshing around. Hell, he certainly didn't have to spend much to beat McGovern."

Eve smiled. "I could have beaten George McGovern."

The women went on with their conversation. Rick said enough to not to be called on the carpet for inattention by Dina, but he was actually just enjoying watching the dark-haired woman talk. He felt that sitting next to her was like sitting under a warm sun and dropping off to sleep. When he was a kid, his favorite time at the beach had been late afternoon, when most of the people had left and the surf and sun merged into a golden haze, and he would doze off and wake up to find that he was alone in the twilight.

"Rick, Rick, Earth to Rick. Come in."

He brought his attention back to Dina. "Hmm?"

"We were talking about the war, the peace talks breaking down, and now the carpet-bombing of Hanoi."

"And you almost let me miss that?" Rick snorted. "Thanks a lot. They've been having peace talks since they started this war, and I don't know which particular idiots are planning those air raids, but a lot of those B-52s are going down. More downed planes means more POWs – just what we need."

Eve looked at him. "But I thought this war was over. Kissinger said ‘peace is at hand' months ago."

"Yeah, but South Vietnamese ‘President for Life' Nguyen Van Thieu and his boys seem to have had other ideas, and they blew up the talks." Rick shook his head. "I'm just glad that most of the ground troops are out. That means fewer American grunts on the front lines, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. I'm not saying that the war was right or wrong, but I do think we've had enough good men die over there. Let the Vietnamese work it out."

Eve turned back to her salad. "Dina said I'd be surprised how different you were from my idea of a Vietnam vet."

"Most of the vets I know are different from all the other vets I know. Except in one thing – given a choice, we'd rather talk about something else." He smiled. "So, what are you doing for the ‘noble red man'?"

She looked at him sharply and then realized he was being ironic – not insulting. "Well, as a ‘noble red woman' and soon to be a ‘noble red lawyer', I'm working on getting charges dropped, people released, and things settled so that I can get back to winning back some of what was stolen from us."

"Like Alcatraz?"

"Hey, it's not like anyone else was using it. And there's some good fishing off there."

Rick laughed.

Dina gave him a funny look, looked as if she was about to say something, but didn't.

The conversation wandered from topic to topic and, when lunch was done, Eve went looking for the ladies' room, and Dina immediately turned to Rick with all the subtlety of a Manhattan prosecutor.

"Wait one damn second. In all the time we've known each other, I can count the number of times I've seen you laugh. Today, you've laughed, talked, and generally acted like a normal human. What's up?"

"Nothing's up." He held his hands up, palms out. "See, I've got nothing to hide."

"No, you like that young girl, and she likes you." She shook her head in mock disbelief. "I thought I'd never see it. All these years that I've watched women throw themselves at you without even scratching that smooth surface, and she just walks in and… wham!"

"There is no wham. There has been no wham, and there will be no wham."

"Only if you're a lot dumber than I think you are." Dina gathered up her things. "Well, like any good lawyer, I can see when it's time to lose gracefully, so I'm going to get out of here. Why don't you walk her home? She's staying right around the corner from your place."

He did try, but Rick couldn't think of a good reason not to follow Dina's advice.

As they walked through the quiet of a Capitol Hill afternoon, Eve asked why he was a courier.

"Why not?"

"Isn't it dangerous?"

"Nah, the statistics for accidents on a motorcycle are about the same as a car after the first six months, and… well, I just like it."

"What is it you like? It's cold. It's wet. Why not sit in a nice warm car?"

"Well," Rick paused. "It's all about turns. Everyone thinks that motorcycling is just going real fast in a straight line, but it's not. The bike is just a big gyroscope, so it bends against a turn. The harder you turn, the more it leans over."

"Like a sailboat?"

"Who knows? I've never sailed. Are there a lot of sailboats in Montana?"

Eve made a face. "Let me think… On an average day, I'd say there were approximately… none."

They both laughed. "Well, a bike going through turns is like… It sounds dumb, but it's like dancing. You swoop, drop your weight down so far you think you're going to scrape the road, and then come up and drop over to the other side and do it again. If you go slowly, it's a terrific way to see the country."

"And if you go fast?"

"Well, if you go fast, it's a very different thing."

She turned her head. "How so?"

"Hard to describe. It's something you need to feel."

"Well, that's not going to happen."

They had arrived at the enormous subway dig that had replaced D Street. It was only a block from Rick's group house.

"I'm staying just over there in that pink house," Eve said. "You don't have to come all the way to the door. There isn't room for two people to walk on these damn rickety catwalks."

Rick looked over the wooden beams that served as a fence around the enormous pit. "I can never believe how deep this goes. It's got to be ten to fifteen stories down."

The entire street was simply gone – ripped out and trucked away. Trees, sidewalks, and even front gardens had been lost – and what remained was a deep, dark space filled with girders, stairs, and work lights. Big mobile cranes were working at both ends of the dig and at the bottom, acetylene torches flared.

"From what I read, this is where they dropped the mole in to dig the tunnels."

"Mole?" Eve asked.

"Yeah, they're using a monster drill that cuts out the whole subway tunnel at once with room for both train tracks. That's the mole. Every day they just goose it forward a bit more and lay concrete in behind it. At least most of it's underground up here. Downtown it's all cut-and-cover, and the streets are just boards."

She smiled. "Tough on a motorcycle, I'll bet."

"Damn right. If it's raining, it's like trying to drive on an ice rink. Last week, a taxi missed the turn at Connecticut Avenue and just slid right over the edge. He was lucky that he caught on the exhaust pipes after the front wheels went over. They had to pull him out with a crane." He looked over the edge again. "And it's not nearly as deep as this."

"The girl I'm staying with says that they're afraid all the houses are just going to fall in someday." She pointed at one of the pastel-colored brick-fronts that sat only a few feet from the edge of the pit. "See, they've had to hammer in I-beams like that to brace up a number of the houses. The walls were beginning to crack."

"Well, if your place starts to topple, I'm just over there." Rick pointed. "You're welcome to drop by anytime. Just don't let my roommates frighten you off."

"Are they bikers, too?"

"Worse, computer hackers and a Senate staffer."

She gave a fake shudder. "Yeah, that's worse. If anything happens, I think I'll just go ahead and fall in."

Then she smiled, gave him a quick wave, and walked quickly down the flimsy walkway over the incredible drop.

CHAPTER 10

 

Rick didn't have to start his shift until 1 o'clock. Mornings were slow, and the couriers didn't have to go into all-out crazy speed mode until after noon, when the push to the 6 o'clock deadline began to pick up speed. He drove slowly up 14th Street – bemused by how the blinking lights and inviting signs of the gaudy nightclubs and the leering come-ons of the sex shops were only blocks from the White House.

A man in a wrinkled raincoat, whose hat just happened to be covering his face, came out of the Olympic Baths and scurried away. Across the street, two tired hookers, one in ripped fishnet stockings and the other in a tiny denim skirt, were sitting on the stoop of a house between two strip clubs: This is It and The Butterfly. One of them waved at him without any real hope. He just waved back.

Ahead, he spotted the rundown town house and garage on H Street where Motor Mouse Couriers was located. At least there was a sign outside that claimed that Motor Mouse was a courier company, but to his knowledge, no one had ever hired them.

Certainly, no one who had ever actually visited their office.

The chopped Harleys outside the garage doors proclaimed its real occupants, the Dawn Riders Motorcycle Club, a group far less violent than the gunrunning Pagans in Prince George's County or the black bikers of the Galloping Gooses, but still dangerous people to run into late on a Saturday night.

He parked the BMW at the end of the row of bikes and took off his helmet. Two men with filthy denim vests and peaked leather caps were slouched in a couple of plastic chairs on the sidewalk. Rick thought the caps were dumb-looking, but at least they weren't wearing leather fringes. He did wonder if there was a dress code among outlaw bikers that required all of them to wear T-shirts advertising Harley dealers.

The biker on the right – a goateed and pimpled man with a beer gut straining the inevitable black Harley dealership T-shirt under his vest – got up and walked slowly over. He walked around the BMW, examining it with a sour expression.

"What the hell is that on your front wheel?"

Rick looked at his front wheel, sat back, and pretended to think about it for a moment. "Earles front suspension."

"Weird fucking thing."

"Yeah, I suppose it is, but it means that BMW can put the same shocks on both the front and rear wheels. As a matter of fact, the front and rear wheels are the same, too." Rick smiled. "They designed these bikes to ride across Africa. This way you only have to carry one set of spares."