The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (24 page)

Her husband stomped down the steps. He was seething.

"That fuckin' drunk ain't in his room! Or he
ain't answering his phone. And that fleabag he's staying in won't
check on him."

"Which one is it?" I said. "Maybe I
have some pull with the manager."

Ricker laughed, louder and longer than before.

"My lord, Lootenant, you do have a set of balls.
You surely do."

He took the revolver back from Jacquie. "The
hell with the machine. If you even got one. The more times Curl goes
to your place, the more likely he is to get spotted. Besides, even if
he got the machine squared away, he still couldn't very well call
your clients and friends and pretend he was you. No, I guess we'll
just have to risk it."

He took his seat and nodded to Jacquie. "You be
good to my little bride, now, you hear?"

His wife shook off her parka and swayed over to me.
She was trembling, but not, I thought, from the cold. I had stopped
shivering and started sweating. Profusely.

Jacquie began undoing the last three buttons on my
shirt. "I'd like to take a leak first," I said.

"No," said Ricker.

"Shower and shave then?"

"No!"

"At least a little mouthwash."

"No, Goddamn it," said Ricker, his free
hand awkward on his zipper. "Damnation, I never did see a man
try so hard not to get laid."

Jacquie finished with the buttons and pushed my shirt
tails under my back and behind my neck. She was humming and singing
to herself in Vietnamese.

"Jacquie do a lot of this in Vietnam, Ricker?"

He had his own member in his hand, playing with it.

"Yeah," said Ricker. "Lots of guys.
Lepers, mostly."

So much for even trying to get him mad.

Jacquie slid my briefs down to my ankles. She backed
off half a step. She undid her designer jeans and shoe-horned her
hands down between the pants and the rump. She worked her legs and
hips alternately up and down until she'd shimmied her way out of
them. She kicked off her heels and stepped out of the pants. Her legs
were chunkier than the jeans and heels had suggested. There was a
six-inch scar on her right thigh.

She smiled at me and reached down to tug up her
sweater.

"Put your heels back on first, babe," said
Ricker, a crack in his voice.

Jacquie complied. Her legs looked better again,
dancerlike.

She pulled her cowl sweater slowly over her head. Her
bra and panties were black and lacy. The panties were crotchless.

"You like?" she said to Ricker.

"Perfect," he said.

She turned to me, smiling and licking her lips. Her
smile faded, her face darkened.

I had no erection for her. I had been picturing Beth,
in her hospital bed and connected to a dozen tubes alternating life
and death for her.

"Ricker, he not ready," she said.

"Make him ready, babe."

"Ricker . . ."

"Make him," he said sharply.

She slipped off her bra. Then she daintily plucked at
the little bow that held her panties together. Her hand lingered down
there a bit longer than necessary.

"Make him," he said, his voice more
desperate than sharp.

She straddled me and lowered her shoulders. Her mouth
was even with my navel, her breasts assuming the outline of my
crotch. She began to move very slowly. Fingertips, breasts, lips, and
tongue. She was very good. I thought of Beth. And the tubes.

I heard Ricker groan and rise partly from his seat.
Jacquie moaned to him and worked harder.

"He still no good." Now she sounded
desperate.

"Shit," said Ricker, standing up and
reaching to his back pocket. He pulled out a clasp knife and tossed
it to her. "Finish him, then. Any way you want."

Jacquie opened the blade, slashing herself as she did
so. She cursed, and the knife clattered to the floor.

She pummeled me in the balls with her good hand. I
clenched my teeth and built up toward a hell of a yell. Jacquie
hopped off me and onto the floor to retrieve the knife. Ricker said,
"The hell with it," and leveled his revolver on me.

I heard the glass shatter but the tinkle of the
shards was drowned out by the rifle coughing through its own
silencer. Ricker's chest opened in three places, the size of peaches,
as the high-velocity bullets tumbled through him. He dropped the
revolver. One of the rifle rounds struck Jacquie in the shoulder as
she straightened up with the knife. It knocked her off balance as
Ricker dropped to his knees at her feet, his chest a fountain of
blood.

She shrieked something in Vietnamese as her knife
hand went up. She got rattled by the rest of the shooter's magazine.
She fell across my groin area, draped lifeless except for blood and
the release of the continency muscles.

I heard a door give way upstairs and more than one
set of boots hit the floorboards above my head. Two MPs in combat
fatigues preceded J.T. down the stairs.

Kivens looked around at the mess and said, "God-damn
fuck up."

"I'm fine, J .T. Thanks for asking."

He waved a hand at me absently and put the other to
his face. "I know, I know."
 

Nineteen
-•-

THE DRIVER HAD STOKED THE HEAT UP IN THE PARKED CAR.
My shoes had been under the iron bed. Even wearing a pair of old
Curl's fatigue pants and one of his blankets around me, however, I
was still shivering. I also had a splitting headache. They had moved
Ricker's pickup out of the driveway and replaced it with a
nondescript Chevy van. There was a lot of quiet activity around the
back of the van.

Casey came over to our car. J .T. , who was standing
outside, spoke to him briefly. Casey went back to the van, and J .T.
got back in the car next to me. I still didn't have any real
strength, or even feeling, back in my hands and feet. They had
carried me out of the basement, cradled between two MPs like an
oversized infant.

J .T. asked me his twentieth question, which I
answered the way I had the previous nineteen. By silence.

"Jesus, John, you might at least have thanked
Casey. That was a hell of a piece of shooting he did."

I glared at J.T., then rested my head back against
the seat to control my shaking. I hitched up the blanket a little.

"John, please—"

I broke. "You son of a bitch, J .T.! You pulled
all those strings and called all those favors to get me a look at the
files, and all the time you knew."

"John, we didn't know in the way—"

"Oh, c'mon, J .T. You knew like you were writing
the script. You put me in that office like it was a clearing and I
was a goat. You fucking staked me out to shoot a tiger."

J.T. turned gloomy. "We didn't want to shoot
him."

"That's great. Terrific. Makes a big difference
to the goat."

"You don't understand, John. I don't know what
happened to Al. Truly I don't. He was more your friend than mine, but
I want to find out who got him, too. We've known for a long time that
there was something going on with the noncoms all through the corps.
The MPs, I mean. But we weren't sure just what. Some kind of
world-wide network, linked in with the quartermasters and probably
set up during 'Nam, or even before. For all we know, it's damn near
eternal, passed on from one corrupt sergeant to the next, generation
to generation. I was pretty sure Ricker was dirty because of his
lifestyle. Not crazy or flamboyant, just higher than it should have
been with his army pay. I thought he might be part of the network. We
figured to let him take you and then tap his telephone calls."

"You got a warrant for that?"

J.T. screwed up his mouth. "C'mon, John, this is
the army, remember? We clean our own laundry."

"Go ahead."

"Well, he used only pay phones and a different
one each time. So we put a bug on the cellar window there, and we
hoped he'd tip something while you kept him talking."

"But all he did was confirm that he, and Curl,
and somebody else was in 'the club'. ”

"Yeah, I know." The gloomy look again. "And
now we've got two unauthorized bodies."

"What about old Curl?”

J .T. waved his hand. "We haven't touched him.
He'll probably come back here sometime tomorrow.

He'll find a broken window and door and a lot of
blood sort of clumsily cleaned up in his basement. Then he'll try
calling Ricker to piss and moan about it. When he doesn't reach
Ricker, maybe our luck will change and he'll call somebody else in
the network. Or maybe he'll panic and run. Maybe even run to someone
else in the club."

"How do you plan to prosecute these boys with so
much 'fruit of the poisonous tree' lying around in the form of
wiretaps, and homicide, and—"

"We don't prosecute, John. We just get 'em."

I looked back over to the van. A subofficial graves
registration. It all started to sink in."

"Can you take me back to my hotel now?"

J.T. tapped the driver, a slim blond MP in dress
greens. "Go ahead, Squires."

"Yessir." He shifted into drive, and we
pulled away from the house.

J .T. said, "You don't have a hotel anymore, or
even luggage. Remember? Old Curl checked you out. I'll take you to a
safe house we use sometimes. We can outfit and feed you there."

And debrief me and debrief me and debrief me.

"Fine," I said and started thinking again.

Squires drove along the Interstate. I had a rough
idea where we were. I saw a sign saying REST STOP, THREE MILES.

"We're going to have to stop at that rest area
ahead," I said.

"John, we're only—"

"Now, look, J.T., goddamn it!" I snapped.
"I've been knocked out, shot up, and stabbed at, and I goddamn
want to go to the head. A real head. Now."

“
O.K., O.K.," said J.T. "You're entitled,
O.K.? Squires?"

"Yessir?" '

"Pull in at the stop."

"Yessir."

A few minutes later Squires swung the sedan off the
highway and into the rest area lot. There were only two other cars
and a brightly illuminated log cabin with a small RESTROOMS AND
SNACKS sign. The MP parked curbside and turned off the engine. He
pocketed the key. "Sir, if you don't mind, I'd like to go, too."

"Sure, Squires. Go ahead."

Good trooper, I thought. Knew enough to make coming
with me seem his request rather than J .T. 's order. So I wouldn't
feel "in custody." Squires was lifer material.

We got out, me leaving the blanket and walking
quickly but uncertainly to the cabin doorway. A fat man, who wore a
park ranger uniform none too well, sat behind a counter marked
"Tuckville Rest Area." He barely glanced up from a magazine
as we walked by him.

Squires held the door for me. I walked in and sagged
a little against a sink.

“
You all right, sir?” asked Squires.

"A little unsteady, but O.K. Thanks."

"Yessir."

I made my way to the nearest stall and clanged in. I
dropped my pants, let out a groan, and smacked my hand hard, like it
was my head, against the sidewall. I stumbled and shuffled to my left
so that my right shoulder faced the door.

Squires knocked. "Sir?" He gingerly pushed
the door inward.

I truly was groggy, and he was a lot younger and more
recently trained than I was. I was slumped half against the toilet
paper dispenser, using my left hand to clutch the toilet seat.

Squires leaned down. "Sir?"

I swung my right elbow up and out as hard as I could.
It caught him on the right cheekbone and snapped his head back into
the part—open stall door. I rose up and gave him a short, quick
left to the nose, and he caved in. I didn't think I'd broken anything
on either of us.

I buttoned up and stepped over him. I picked his
pocket for his car keys and his holster for his weapon. I unloaded
the weapon and dropped it into the next john. I clutched my stomach
and dry-heaved my way out the door and toward the fat ranger.

"Hey," I said breathlessly, "the
soldier and I are both sick as dogs. I think it's food poisoning. We
got a buddy in the car outside. Get him. Quick, quick!"

The ranger bustled up and out a door next to the
counter, the door locking behind him. As soon as he was outside, I
grabbed a map and climbed over the counter. I unlocked and stepped
out the back door, circling behind the cabin. I got around the corner
just as J.T.'s heels disappeared into the cabin. The ranger was close
behind him, snorting huge clouds of cold air.

I chugged to the car, got in, and turned the key. I
eased away from the curb and slid back onto the Interstate.

The map showed a reasonably wide state road three
miles on. I took it and headed east. Toward the town where a friend
from college lived.