The Road to Omaha (23 page)

“Your morning reading material, Mac?” asked Devereaux sarcastically, walking into the suite’s sitting room.

“Well, hello there, Sam,” said the Hawk warmly, removing his glasses as though he were a retired elderly academic of gentle disposition. “Have a good sleep? I didn’t hear you get up.”

“Don’t give me that little old winemaker routine, you conniving python. Outside of the telephone, you probably heard every breath I took, and if there were trees in here and it was dark, I’d have a garrote around my throat.”

“Now, son, you really do misjudge me, and let me tell you it pains me sorely.”

“Only a megalomaniac could make such an appeal referring to himself three times in one sentence.”

“We all change, boy.”

“The leopard has spots when he’s born and he has spots when he dies. You are a leopard.”

“I guess it’s better than a python, eh?… There’s juice and coffee over on the table, also a couple of Danish. Have some; it keeps the morning blood sugar up—damned important, you know.”

“Are you into geriatric medicine now?” asked Devereaux, going to the room-service table and pouring himself black coffee. “Selling tonic to natives?”

“I’m not getting any younger, Sam,” answered Hawkins, a note of sadness in his voice.

“I was just thinking about that in a roundabout way, and you know what I decided? I decided that you were going to live forever, an eternal threat to the planet.”

“That’s an impressive evaluation, son. There are good
threats and bad threats, and I thank you for the status you afford me.”

“Christ, you’re impossible!” mumbled Devereaux, carrying his coffee to the chair in front of the desk and sitting down. “Mac, where did you
get
all that stuff?
How
did you get it?
Who
put it together?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention that?”

“If you did, my state of shock precluded my hearing it.… Let’s start with the sealed archive materials.
How
?”

“Well, Sam, you’ve got to understand the psychological manifestations of those of us who toil in the vineyards of our government, both civilian and military. Try to comprehend the paradox in which we generally find ourselves after long years of service—”

“Cut the preamble horseshit, Mac,” Devereaux broke in harshly. “Spell it out.”

“We’re screwed.”

“That spells it out.”

“We make half, if that, of what we could make in the private sector, most of us believing that we’re making something else as important as financial gain. It’s called ‘contribution,’ Sam, real, honest-to-God contributions to a system we believe in—”

“
Stop
it, Mac. I’ve heard all of this before. You also have damn good pensions and retirement perks, like buying at PXs at half price, and generous insurance, and it’s damned hard to fire you if you’re no good at your jobs.”

“That’s a particularly narrow point of view, Sam, and applicable to the few, not the overwhelming many.”

“All right,” said Devereaux, sipping his coffee and looking hard at the Hawk. “I’ll concede that. I just got up from three hours’ sleep, I feel rotten, and you’re an easy target. Now, how did you get the archival stuff?”

“Remember ‘Brokey’ Brokemichael, not Ethelred but Heseltine, the one you hung that bum drug rap on?”

“If I live to be four hundred and ten, I’ll carry those preposterous names to my grave.… If
you
remember, they, or
he
started me on my road to hell with General Lucifer by having me walk out of the data banks with a couple of thousand top-secret files.”

“Yeah, well, there’s sort of a connection in a way. You
see, when the army wouldn’t give Brokey his third star—because of you, young fella, and the confusion over the names—he mounted his high horse and said ‘I quit!’ … Well, even the army has a conscience, as well as connections. You can’t cut loose a goddamned military legend and just let him fade away like that rich fruitcake MacArthur opined to Congress. I mean, Brokey didn’t sell his expertise to a foreign government like Manila and have a bundle in reserve. So the boys over at Defense scouted around for a job for old Brokey, something not too tough in the brain-scan department, but the kind of title that warrants a fair sum, so Brokey could augment his retirement pay, both of which he so richly deserves.”

“Don’t tell me,” interrupted Sam. “The Bureau of Indian Affairs. The
big
office.”

“I always said you were the brightest lieutenant I ever met, boy.”

“I was a
major
!”

“Temporary, and reduced in rank by Heseltine’s friends. Didn’t you read your discharge?”

“Only my name and the date of separation.… So we have déjà vu; you and the insidious Brokemichael are really back in my life.… Obviously,
Brokey
—honor-bound by comrades bonded in battle—saw fit to let some air into a few musty archive depositories and rummage through a number of sealed files.”

“Oh, nothing so random as that, Sam,” protested the Hawk. “A lot of research went into this investigation before that action was deemed necessary. Of course, the fact that Brokey was where he was had a kind of stimulating effect at the beginning, and I can’t deny that having access to all that centralized Indian history wasn’t a help, but months of research were required to uncover some mighty peculiar shenanigans that called for aggressive decisions.”

“Decisions like illegally breaking into the sealed archives without judicial appeals or warrants, which are available to any legitimate party with probable cause?”

“Now, son, certain operations are best carried out away from the floodlights, if you know what I mean.”

“Such as holding up a bank or breaking out of prison.”

“That’s harsh, Sam. Those are criminal activities; this is rectifying a great crime.”

“Who put it all together?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who wrote it? The structure, the verbiage, the arguments and appraisals … the concrete refutations of the status quo?”

“Oh, that wasn’t hard, just time-consuming.”

“
What
?”

“Hell, there are all kinds of forms to follow in the law books, and fancy language that complicates simple meanings to the point where you can go nuts trying to follow the nonsense, but it reads very official-like.”

“
You
did this?”

“Sure. I just worked backward, from the simple to the obscure, with a little heartfelt indignation thrown in.”

“Jesus
Christ
!”

“You’re spilling your coffee, Sam.”

“It’s a casebook brief!”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but thanks, son. I just took it one sentence at a time, cross-checking with all those law-school textbooks. Hell, anybody could do it if they’ve got twenty-one free months to write it in and their brains don’t blow out with all that mumbo-jumbo horse-shit. You know, sometimes it took me a whole week just to get down half a page so it sounded right.… Now you went and spilled the rest of your coffee, boy.”

“I may also throw up,” said Devereaux with a quiver in his voice as he rose from the chair, his trousers stained throughout the pelvic area. “I am vapor, I don’t exist. I am merely an aspect of some undiscovered dimension where eyes and ears float indiscriminately in spirals, seeing and hearing but with no knowledge of form or matter, reality itself an abstraction.”

“Sounds fine, Sam. Now if you’ll throw in ‘whereas’ a couple of times, and a few ‘parties of the first and second parts,’ you could take it into court.… You all right, boy?”

“No, I am not all right,” replied Devereaux in what could only be described as words spoken in a soft ethereal cadence. “However, I must heal myself and find my karma
so as to struggle through another day and find the shadows in the light.”

“The shadows
where
 …? You got funny cigarettes stashed away in that bedroom?”

“Speak not of things beyond your understanding, Sir Neanderthal. I am a wounded eagle soaring up into the sky for my final release from earth.”

“Hey, Sam, that’s
good
. I mean it’s real
Indian
talk!”

“Oh, shit.”

“Now you broke the spell, son. The tribal elders don’t countenance that kind of language.”

“Well, hear
this
, you Anglo-Saxon savage!” yelled Sam suddenly, close to losing control but abruptly pulling back to the vocal strains of his previous search for karma. “I remember Aaron’s words precisely: ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ that’s what he said, and ‘tomorrow’ in itself does not define a specific time. Therefore, as party of the second part whose opinions were solicited, I prefer to construe ‘tomorrow’ as having a wide latitude of hours, since the word fundamentally implies ‘toward morning’ but without prior restrictions regarding the rest of the day until darkness descends.”

“Sam, can I get you an ice bag, an aspirin—maybe a drink of that fine brandy?”

“No, you may not, you diseased plaguer-of-the-planet. You will listen to my determination.”

“
Termination
 …? That’s my lingo, boy!”

“Be quiet,” continued Devereaux, walking to the hotel door and turning, the unfortunate coffee stain on his light-colored trousers having spread maliciously. “I hereby determine that the hour of our conference will take place post meridiem, the specific time to be mutually agreed upon with later communication by telephone.”

“Where are you going, son?”

“To where I can find solitude in isolation and collect my thoughts. I have a great deal to think about, Mr. Monster. I’m going home to my lair, shower in steam for an hour or so, and then sit in my favorite chair and ponder.
Au revoir, mon ennemi du coeur
, for so it must be.”

“
What
?”

“See you later, General Asshole.” Devereaux went out
into the hotel corridor, closed the door, and walked to the nearby bank of elevators on the right. Having used his limited French on the Hawk, his thoughts briefly returned to Anouilh, and the conclusion the playwright reached when he wrote that there were times when there was nothing left but to scream. This was one of those times, but Sam refused to give in to the temptation. He pressed the descending button, his entire being on hold.

The elevator door opened and Devereaux walked inside, nodding briefly, unconsciously, at the only other passenger, a woman. And then he looked at her. Suddenly
lightning
flashed before his eyes and
thunder
crashed into his ears, as life and blood instantly returned to the walking corpse he had been only seconds before. She was
glorious
! A bronzed Aphrodite with glowing dark hair and incandescent eyes of a light, bewildering color, with a face and body sculpted by Bernini! She responded to his stare with a modest glance until her gaze obviously strayed to the large wet circle of cloth that saturated the crotch of his trousers. Oblivious to anything but her beauty, yet conscious of the weakness in his knees, Devereaux spoke.

“Will you marry me?” Sam said.

“You take one step toward me and you won’t see for a
month
!” With the speed of a vice-squad decoy, the striking, bronze-skinned woman ripped open her purse and whipped out a small metal cylinder. Arm outstretched, she held it in front of her, the can of Mace upright and aimed at Devereaux’s face barely three feet away.

“
Hold
it!” cried Sam, his hands above his head in abject surrender. “I’m sorry—
please
—I apologize! I don’t know what made me say that … it was an involuntary slip, a result of stress and exhaustion—a mental accident.”

“It seems you’ve had a physical one as well,” said the woman, her tone ice-cold as her eyes dropped briefly down to Devereaux’s trousers.

“What?” Sam saw exactly what she meant. “Oh, my God, the coffee—it was
coffee
 … 
is
coffee! You see, I’ve been working all night and there’s this crazy client—you probably won’t believe this, but I’m an attorney—and he drives me up the wall, and I was having coffee when I just couldn’t
stand
it any longer,
him
any longer, and I spilled the coffee. I just wanted to get out of there—see, I was in such a hurry I forgot my jacket!” Devereaux suddenly stopped, remembering that he didn’t have his jacket;
some bearded Greek had it. “Actually … never mind, it’s all too grotesque.”

“That thought occurred to me,” said the woman, studying Sam, and, satisfied, putting the cylinder of Mace back in her purse. “If you’re really an attorney, I suggest you get some help before the court insists on it.”

“I’m considered a rather superior attorney,” offered Devereaux defensively, drawing himself up to his full height, the image somewhat vitiated by roaming hands trying to cover his soiled trousers. “I really am.”

“Where? In American Samoa?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Forget it. You remind me of someone.”

“Well,” began Sam, a touch relaxed and genuinely embarrassed. “I’m sure he was never the idiot I look like.”

“I wouldn’t cover that bet with a great deal of money.” The descending elevator slowed to a stop. “I wouldn’t cover it with a dime,” the woman added quietly as the door opened.