The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (22 page)

"That'll make twenty?"

“
No, sir, thirty." He turned and smiled.
"Thirty years with the Big Green Machine. Then a nice spread in
Looziana, northeast comer."

He really looked familiar when he smiled. "You
ever stationed in Saigon, Sergeant?"

The smile died, then rekindled. "Yessir. I had
two tours in-country. First one in Saigon."

"When were you there'?"

"Let's see," he said, rubbing his chin,
"December '66 to October '67."

"Just before my time," I said.

"You were there with the Colonel, sir?"

I nodded. "For a time."

"Colonel's a good commander and a fair man."

"Then he hasn't changed."

Ricker smiled again. So familiar.

"Sergeant, are you sure we didn't serve
somewhere together?"

"Wel1, sir, no I'm . . . uh-uh, what's this?"

I looked ahead and saw nothing. Ricker decelerated
and began edging onto the shoulder.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Felt a shimmy from that left front wheel
again."

"I didn't notice anything."

"Ach," said Ricker as we pulled to a stop,
"truck ain't got four thousand miles on 'er and this is the
second time she's done this." He looked at me. "Mind
reachin' into the glove box there and gettin' me the flashlight?"

"Sure," I said, leaning forward and pushing
the box button.

"Sorry about this, sir, but I don't want to
press my luck."

"I don't see any—" I glanced up and over
at Ricker, who squirted a cloud of something from a tiny spray can
into my face.

I remember the sound of my
forehead bouncing off the dashboard.

* * *

We were slogging through a rice paddy. The men were
bunched up, though, in formation like on a parade field. I yelled for
them to maintain their interval, maintain interval. They couldn't
hear me because they were singing a Jody call. You know, "Jody,
Jody, don't be blue, ten more minutes and we'll be through" and
so on. They were marching through this paddy and singing to keep in
step. Stupid thing to do, mines, mortars . . .

There was a dash of light and a tremendous explosion.
The platoon was thrown up into the air and just burst. Rides and arms
and legs and heads dying outward and landing with a sploosh all
around me. The little goat-girl, too.

I was kneeling behind an overturned jeep. It was on
fire. A sergeant in full dress greens rushed up with a hose. But he
had only the nozzle of the hose, there was nothing connected to it.
He turned to me with it. It was Ricker, now in the uniform of a
National Policeman.

"Sorry about this, sir," he said, "but
I don't want to press my luck."

The water hit me in the face. I woke up shivering,
but my face was dry. I was staring at a Sheetrock ceiling with some
peeling pipes and crudely rigged rafter space. There were wide water
skis, ancient fishing rods, and chipped wooden oars. It was dark, but
not pitch black.

My eyes smarted and my head hurt worse than my
mugging aches. I was tied spread-eagle on an old iron twin bed. My
suit, tie, and shoes were gone, my shirt, briefs, and socks still on.
My mouth was taped. I could move my head one hundred eighty degrees,
my line of sight like the arc of an old protractor. I could just
touch my chin to my chest, but the additional view wasn't worth the
discomfort.

There were broken lawn chairs and a dust-covered old
bicycle in one comer. Paint cans and a bucket with a rake and broom
in another. Some army olive—drab canvas hung from a rafter. A
magnified rectangle of indirect moonshine spotlighted a patch of
concrete floor from a high, closed window. By arching my back and
riding up on my neck like a wrestler, I could see, upside down, the
top couple steps of a wooden staircase.

It was early March, and I was freezing to death in
somebody's cellar.

I lay quietly for about fifteen minutes. I couldn't
hear anyone walking around upstairs. In fact, no noise at all. No TV,
radio, car, or even wind noise. Just a nagging, numbing cold.

The backs of my wrists were lashed palms outward to
the top of the iron bed's headboard to keep me from grasping the
railing with my fingers. My ankles were secured similarly at the
other end. I tried throwing my hips ceiling-ward to see if I could
rock the bed. It bucked a little, producing almost no noise or
progress.

Then I heard footsteps above me.

The cellar door opened, and a light flicked on. High
heels clattered lightly on the slat steps. I decided to play possum.

The shoes sounded more muffled on the concrete floor.
A whiff of perfume preceded the accented, female voice.

"Open your eyes."

I stayed asleep.

"My husband put pressure thing on the bed. Wire
upstairs. I know you awake. Open your eyes or I hit you in the nuts."

I opened my eyes.

She smiled down at me. She was Vietnamese, maybe
thirty-five. Probably five feet tall without the heels. She wore
designer jeans, a cowlneck sweater, and a baby blue parka. She held a
short hunting knife in one hand and a short leather sap in the other.

"Better. When my husband come back, you talk.
You talk plenty. But now you be quiet. O.K.?"

I nodded my head.

She looked me over, head to foot. "You
good-looking man."

I didn't nod.

She set her knife down on the bed. She unfastened the
top two buttons of my shirt and slid her hand in. It was warm against
my cold skin. She ran the tips of her nails lightly over my right
nipple. She spider-walked her fingers over to my left nipple and did
the same.

"You like?" she said, licking her lips.

I nodded, very slowly.

She slipped her hand out of my shirt and drew it
slowly down my front. She stroked and probed very gently around where
my zipper would have been.

"Ah," she said huskily. "You like a
lot."

There was a flash of brighter light through the
window and the crunching of tires on gravel. She dropped the sap and
used both hands to quickly rebutton my shirt.

"Too bad," she
whispered as she snatched up her weapons and click—trotted away and
up the stairs. It looked to be a long evening.

* * *

"We're in Mexatawney. 'Bout fifty miles from the
D. of C. Kind of a fishin' community come springtime. Probably nobody
in a mile to hear you if you was to holler or anything."

I still had the tape on my mouth, is all I could do
was listen.

Ricker shifted his butt on the creaky dinette chair.
He'd brought it down the stairs with him. He sat on it backwards, the
back of the chair toward me and him astride the seat, like a saddle.

"Yessir, you're in the house of a friend of mine
from the 'Nam. Curly Mayhew. 'Nother Looziana boy. He's part of, oh,
kind of a 'club' I belong to. Senior noncoms. Old Curl's a good man,
helps another member out, just like in the 'Nam. Don't know how he
stands this commutin' though. Fifty miles. Each way, each day. Whew!"

I blinked a few times. Ricker brought his wrist up to
his eye level, exaggeratedly, like an actor in a kid's play. "Yessir,
old Curl ought to be awingin' his way to Boston right now, havin'
checked out of your hotel for you and havin' paid cash and all for
room, cab, and airfare." Ricker tilted his head so his face and
mine were on parallel planes. "Yeah, he don't really favor you a
lot, Lootenant, but him and you are about the same size and he was
wearin' your suit and all. Even got your overcoat back." Ricker
righted his head. "For room clerks and cabbies and stewardi, I
reckon he'll pass."

I heard the cellar door open and the clacking
approach of my earlier visitor.

"Ah," said Ricker looking up. "Here
comes the wife."

She came into my view, carrying a TV tray with a
towel draped over it. I couldn't see what was on the tray, but I
didn't smell any food. Despite the cold, I could feel the sweat
forming in my armpits.

“
This is Jacquie, my wife." He winked at me.
"But then I understand you met a bit earlier."

Jacquie gave her husband a light cuff on the
shoulder, then let her hand rest on the back of his neck. She aligned
her body in an S curve like the Madonna statues in medieval churches,
but without the spiritual aspirations.

"Hello," she said to me, smiling.

I nodded a greeting.

"Jacquie's a real helpmate, Mr. Cuddy. Yessir,
we met when I was in the 'Nam, of course. I promised her daddy I'd
take her back to The World and be real good to her." He looked
up at her lovingly. "And once you promised her daddy something,
you made good on it. He was a major in the National Police."

Ricker let his gaze slide slowly, melodramatically
over to me. "Interrogation specialist. He taught Jacquie
everything she knows."

I tried to keep a poker face, but I expect that my
eyes might have flickered toward the TV tray. My mind certainly went
back to a different basement, halfway around the world, and the
condition of Al's body.

"Haw!" Ricker slapped his thigh. Jacquie
giggled. "Oh, Lootenant, you're a good one, you are. But you can
relax." He signaled toward the tray. Jacquie stepped to it. She
picked up a syringe and did a careful squirt test.

"Yessir," said Ricker, rising and stepping
behind me. "We can't have another incident like Lootenant Sachs.
No sir, that would be real suspicious. My orders, from another member
of that club I mentioned, are truth serum for you. Yessir, I'd run
clear out of old sodium P. Wouldn't you know it? Would've had to
chase after some today, but fortunately old Curl had a bit of some
new stuff in stock here. He got it through the club. Don't kill your
memory or leave traces in the bloodstream. Now, how about that for
progress?"

Jacquie crossed over to me as Ricker clamped down
hard on my left arm, immobilizing it. "Good old Curl. He was
Quartermaster Corps in-country. Like a squirrel, Curl is. Even now,
he never lets go a nothin' that might come in handy."

Jacquie kneeled down on the floor alongside me. She
pushed and bunched my sleeve past Ricker's grasp and above my elbow.
She was wearing terrific perfume. She smiled a little more vividly as
she jabbed the needle in. I felt the unwelcome, insistent surge of
the drug into my arm. She pulled the needle out, and daubed my arm
with a cold, wet cotton ball. Ricker let me go, and they rearranged
themselves over by the chair. The perfect peacetime couple, a dream
matching of cultures.

I began to float, and I grew warm. Even comfy. I sank
deeper into my cot. It felt like a feather bed. Or more accurately, a
bed of feathers, completely cushioned and completely conforming to my
body. No matter which way I turned or settled I was equally,
infinitely comfortable. I felt my eyelids closing, drooping really,
to slits against the now brightseeming light.

"You are feeling good, now?" asked Jacquie.
I nodded agreeably.

I smelled her perfume again. Her nails gently started
a corner of the tape away from my mouth and snicked it, carefully and
painlessly, all the way off. I didn't look up, but I bet she was
smiling.

"Do you have any questions for us first?"
she said sweetly into my ear.

They were going to let me ask questions. That was
very considerate.

"Yes," I said honestly. "What kind of
perfume are you wearing?"

They both laughed. Her laugh was closer and rose
above his, like the clinking of fine crystal glasses over dinner
conversation. I hadn't heard female Vietnamese laughter in a long
time.

I felt marvelous. I was pleasing them.

"You are wonderful man," she said, stroking
my eyelids and brow with the tips of her nails. It gave me
goosebumps. "Now, what did Lieutenant Sachs tell you when you
talk with him?"

I reported my conversation with Al as carefully as I
could. I wasn't getting it quite right, and I apologized to her.

"That's O.K.," she said, soothingly,
"that's 0.K. Keep telling me."

I finished with Al. I told them all about the visit
to the morgue, and I started to cry. She dried my tears with a
handkerchief and gave me a little kiss on the cheek. Right away, I
felt much better.

She asked me what I told the police. I filled them in
on my talks with Murphy and my return visit to Al's hotel. I tried to
tell them the names of the clerks, but I couldn't remember and she
said that was O.K., they didn't need them. I started to tell them
about the Coopers and started to cry again, but she used her hankie
and brushed her lips over mine and said to forget about the Coopers,
so I did.

We never reached Nancy Meagher or Marco or any of
that. She asked about Al's family, and I told them all about my visit
to Pittsburgh, Martha and Al Junior, and Kenny and Dale and Larry and
Carol. Then she asked me what I told them about Al's death. I related
the concerns in my talk with Carol and my promise to Martha to get
the insurance payment. Jacquie praised me for my efforts on my
friend's behalf. She emphasized how much loyalty like mine meant to
her. She slid her hand inside my shirt again. It gave me bigger
goosebumps.