The Road to Omaha (77 page)

“Jebediah, we can’t get
through
!”

“Right.”

“Where are the
police
?”

“Right.”

“Olaf, these crazy people won’t let us by!”

“Right.”

“There should be
laws
!”

“Right.”

“Stavros, this never happened at the temple of Athena!”

“Right.”

“Stop staring!”

“Wrong—oh, sorry, Olympia.”

Around the corner on Capitol Street, concealed in a recessed doorway, were two tall men. One was resplendent in the full dress uniform of an army general, the other in the ragged clothes of a tramp. The tramp rushed out of their sanctuary, peered around the edge of the building, and then ran back to the general.

“Things are progressing, Henry,” said MacKenzie Hawkins. “They’re really getting hot!”

“Have the media arrived?” asked Sutton, the actor. “I made it perfectly clear to you, I don’t make my appearance until the cameras are there.”

“A couple of radio stations have come. You can tell by the people with microphones.”

“Not good enough, dear boy. I specifically said
cameras
.”

“All right, all
right
!” The Hawk raced out again, looked again and raced back. “A TV crew just got here!”

“What station? Is it a network?”

“How the hell do
I
know?”

“Find out,
mon général
. I have my standards.”

“Christ on a
seesaw
!”

“Blasphemy isn’t called for, MacKenzie. Look again.”

“You’re
impossible
, Henry!”

“I hope so. It’s the only way you get anywhere in this business. Hurry up, now. I feel the urge to perform; it’s the stimulus of a growing audience as you hear them flocking into a theater.”

“Don’t you ever get stage fright?”

“My good fellow, I’ve never been afraid of the stage,
it
is afraid of me. I tread across it like thunder.”

“
Shit
!” The Hawk rushed out again, but instead of racing back to the actor, held his place and saw what he hoped to see. Four taxis pulled up on the other side of First Street, only moments apart. Out of the one in front stepped three men of the cloth: a priest, a minister, and an elderly rabbi helped by the two Christians. From the second emerged the Marilyn Monroe of hookers, hips swaying—somewhat awkwardly—but who was examining? The third cab deposited the maximum rube of the Ozark’s backcountry, with the image of chickenshit dripping from his porkpie hat and over his ballooned checkered suit. The fourth taxi made up for the banality of the three fares ahead. An immense, elegantly dressed black man stepped out on the curb, his huge sculpted head and giant body nearly dwarfing the vehicle.

As programmed, Jennifer, Sam, and Cyrus walked in different directions, no acknowledgment among them, but none crossed the street to the Court. The three religious zealots stayed on the pavement, bickering among themselves, the rabbi’s head pecking forward as the two opposing Christians alternately nodded and shook their heads disapprovingly. The Hawk reached into his ragged pocket and withdrew his walkie-talkie. “Calfnose, come in. Come in, Calfnose!” (There was no need for a code name.)

“Don’t shout, T.H., this thing’s in my ear!”

“Our contingent’s arrived—”

“So have half the horny population of Washington! And
I
do
mean just half—the other half would like to scalp our girls!”

“Tell ’em to keep it up.”

“How high? Are we up to garter belts?”

“That’s
not
what I mean! Just keep up the chants and make the drums louder. I need the next ten minutes.”

“You got it, T.H.!”

The Hawk ran back to the recessed doorway. “Another ten minutes, Henry, and you make your entrance!”

“That
long
?”

“I have a few things to do, and when I return, we’ll go out together.”

“What do you have to do?”

“Eliminate some of the enemy.”

“
What
?”

“Nothing to be concerned about. They’re young and inexperienced.” MacKenzie raced out in his disheveled tramp’s clothing.

And one by one the four of the Ranger commandos in their camouflage green and black fatigues were tapped on the shoulder and subsequently rendered unconscious by an old hobo. Each was dragged to a curb, his face doused with several ounces of Southern Comfort, and laid to rest until revived.

However, and adding to Sir Henry’s anxiety, the “ten minutes” became twelve, then twenty, and finally, nearly a half hour. The Hawk had spotted five buttoned-down, stern-faced federal agents and six gentlemen whose squinting frowns and large foreheads were barely above and perhaps even below the gorillas-in-the-mist. He dispatched them in like fashion. “
Amateurs
!” whispered the Hawk to himself. “What kind of commanders do they
have
?” … Whoever they were, they sure had the PR covered! Some son of a bitch in a T-shirt kept his video camera rolling, focused on the counterprotestors, obviously for the benefit of those who had given them their orders.
Ha
! A
joke
! But every time Mac tried to grab the bastard with the camera, he pivoted like a goddamn ballet dancer and disappeared in the crowds.

And crowds there were en masse, as Mac ran back to the doorway. Sir Henry Irving Sutton was not
there
!
Where the hell
was
he?… The actor was ten feet away at the edge of the building, stunned, studying the melee at the steps of the Supreme Court. Fights had broken out in front of the forty-odd stamping, chanting, drumming, sign-jerking Wopotami protesters, but the violent altercations seemed to have nothing to do with the Indians.

“Oh, my God!” said Hawkins, his hand on Sutton’s shoulder. “I’m not as young as I used to be!”

“Neither am I. So what?”

“A few years ago, none of those bastards would have gotten up. Or there were a hell of a lot more of them than I saw.”

“
Who
?”

“Those clowns who are beating the shit out of one another in the crowd of tourists.”

And, indeed, they were. The buttoned-down collars were screaming at the camouflaged commandos, who proceeded to throw them over their shoulders, as the goons of the world, figuring that any fight meant they had to be the victors or it was back to the union shop, jumped in with brass knuckles and leaded blackjacks. A full-fledged riot was not merely in the making, it was made. Angry tourists, pummeled and tripped by the combatants, screamed; those in mortal combat, bewildered by the lack of uniforms or any identification of their enemies, kept hammering away at anything that moved near them, and the idiot with the video camera kept yelling “
Glorioso
!” as he pranced around.

“
Go
, Buttercup!” shouted Hawkins into his radio.

“
Right
, Daffodil, but we’ve got a problem,” came the voice of Colonel Cyrus.

“
What
problem?”

“We’re okay with the religious trio, but we’ve lost the hooker and the rube!”

“What
happened
?”

“Pocahontas got mad when some female tourist threw a bunch of firecrackers at the feet of the dancers and screamed something in Greek. Our girl went after the bitch and Sam went after
her
!”

“Get them back, for God’s sake!”

“Do you really want Judge Oldsmobile to go into that mess and bash heads?”

“Damn it, we don’t have much
time
! It’s almost quarter to three and we’ve got to get inside, change our clothes, and present ourselves to the praetors of the chambers by three o’clock!”

“We may have a few minutes of flexibility there,” interrupted Cyrus. “Even the judges have to know about the chaos out here.”

“A
Wopotami
chaos, Buttercup! Let’s say that’s not to our benefit, even though it’s necessary.”

“
Hold
it! Our chickenshit rube is bringing back Pocahontas—in a hammerlock, I might add.”

“Every once in a while that boy comes through!… Detail the situation and let’s
move
!”

“Will do. When does our general walk out?”

“As soon as I see the rube and the princess cross the street, separately, and make sure
she
goes first.… Where are the three holy joes? I can’t see ’em.”

“You couldn’t. They’re on this side, making their way through the riot. You’d think people would have more respect for religious types. Desis One and Two have already clobbered a dozen yahoos, and I swear I saw D-One rip off five watches!”

“That’s all we need, a preacher-mugger!”

“That’s what we got, Daffodil.…
Out
, here come our two attorneys, Punch and Judy.”

“Whip ’em into shape, Colonel. That’s an order!”

“Listen, massa, you’re lucky I’m smarter than you or I’d take offense.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind, your instincts are right.
Out
.”

The Hawk put his walkie-talkie back in his distressed overcoat pocket and turned to Sutton. “Only a couple of minutes now, Henry. Are you ready?”

“
Ready
?” said the actor, controlled fury in his voice. “You idiot! How can I possibly command the stage with that fracas going on?”

“Come on, Hank, you told me only a couple of hours ago that this thing was practically ‘offstage.’ ”

“That was an objective analysis, not a subjective interpretation. There are no small parts, only small players.”

“Huh?”

“You’re extremely insensitive where the arts are concerned, MacKenzie.”

“Yeah?”

“The lovely Jennifer is crossing the street—
God
, the wardrobe mistress should be fired
forthwith
! She’s a
harlot
!”

“That’s the idea.… There goes Sam—”

“
Where
?”

“The guy in the checkered suit—”

“Wearing that ridiculous hat?”

“Looks different, doesn’t he?”

“He looks positively stupid!”

“That’s what we want. No smart lawyer there.”

“Good
Lord
!” exclaimed the actor. “Did you see
that
?”

“See what?”

“The minister in the gray suit—over there—the one climbing the steps with a priest and what appears to be an old rabbi between them.”

“Oh, oh.… What happened?”

“I swear to you the vicar just punched a man and stole his watch. Ripped it right off his wrist!”

“
Damnation
! I told the colonel that’s all we needed, a preacher who’s stealing his flock blind.”

“You know …? Oh, my word, of course you do. The elderly man in the rabbinical clothes is
Aaron
! And the two others are those fellows from Argentina or Mexico!”

“Puerto Rico, but that’s not important. They’ve reached the top, they’ll get
in
 … You’re
on
, General!”

Static erupted from the Hawk’s radio; he yanked it out of his pocket as the voice of Cyrus burst forth. “I’m crossing the street. Wish me luck!”

“All systems are
go
, Colonel.… Calfnose, come in!”

“I’m here, don’t shout. What is it?”

“Cut the Indian stuff and go into the national anthem.”

“Ours is better, you can sing it.”

“
Now
, Johnny! Our general’s going out!”

“You got it, paleface.”

“This is it, Henry! Make it
good
!”

“I’ve never made it bad, you jackass,” said the actor as he took several deep breaths, pulled himself up to his full imposing height, and strode out toward the rioting crowd and the sudden Wopotami rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ The chorus was, in a word, spectacular. Voices rose to the heavens and the sight of forty painted, weeping faces of America’s original inhabitants had a striking effect on the crowd. Even the fiercely aggressive commandos, in deadly combat with the union-busting thugs, held their adversaries off with straightarms and hands around throats. The goons dropped their brass knuckles and their blackjacks, and all stared at the tragic figures singing their hearts out in devotion to a land that had been stolen from them. Many tears were starting to cloud the eyes of the onlookers.

“
Now
is the winter of our
discontent
!” roared Sir Henry Irving Sutton in his most stentorian voice as he climbed to the fourth step and turned to the crowd. “Dogs may
bark
at us, but our vision is clear. A dreadful wrong has been done, and we are here to
right
it! To
be
or not to be, that is the question …”

“That son of a bitch can go on for an hour,” whispered MacKenzie Hawkins into his radio. “Where is everybody? Answer by your numbers!”

“We are in dee big stone hall, but chu don’ unnerstand, Heneral—”

“I’ve got the princess and the rube with me,” said Cyrus, “and you
really
don’t understand!”

“What the hell are you two talking about?”

“A little number you hadn’t figured on,” explained the mercenary. “They’ve got metal detectors in here and if Jenny or Sam or Mr. Pinkus passes through, they’ll set off every alarm in the building and probably most of Washington.”

“Oh, m’God! What’s this country coming to?”

“I suppose I should say something like ‘look to the root causes,’ but right now we’re screwed.”

“Not yet, Buttercup,” yelled the Hawk. “Calfnose, are you on the line?”

“Sure am, T.H., and we’ve also got a problem. Our people
have had it with your friend Vinnie. I mean he’s one big pain in the ass.”

“What’s he done? You’ve only had him since this morning—what
could
he do?”

“
Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch
, that’s all he does! Then
his
friend shows up, the little guy who talks like a chicken, and before you can say Geronimo, we’ve got a dozen crap games going on all over the motel with Joey something-or-other running from room to room to catch the action. Catch it, I might add, with very funny dice. He cleaned up, and a lot of our braves were cleaned out.”

“We don’t have
time
for this!”

“Make it, T.H., while your general, who I’ve got to admit looks like you, is still yelling his head off. Our boys and girls are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. They want those two scumballs out and their money back!”