The White Mountain (14 page)

“I know Herb.  Getting him to
talk will be easier than you think.”

“If you say so.  And how do
you know he’ll be at home at nine-thirty in the morning?”

Chuck smiled and started the
car.  “Miss Mary, if the CIA can’t keep track of the First Lady’s brother, the
whole country’s got bigger problems.”  He backed out of the parking space and
then turned onto Arlington Boulevard.

“I guess I’m just having
second thoughts.  What makes you think he’ll talk to us?”

“Not us.  You.”

“Me?  But you said—”

“I did say
us
, I know,
but I changed my mind while you were in the store.”

“Why?”

“Without sounding like too
much of a pig, Herb Richmond has a soft spot for the ladies.  Pretty girl like
you, he’ll open up a whole lot faster if you don’t have some old geezer standing
at the door with you.”

“But—”

“No buts, this is the way to
go,
trust me
.”

Mary stared out the car
window.  “And you’re sure this’ll work?”

“Put some socks on those cold
feet.  I said it before and I’ll say it again, when that homeless guy got beaten
to a pulp last week, nobody gave a damn, but once it got out that he was a
veteran, Herb Richmond was all over the news talking to anybody that would
listen.  All you have to do is show up on his front door, flash a smile, tell
him you’d like to ask him about the incident, and you’re inside.  Quick as anything. 
You get him talking, ask if it’d be possible for you to introduce your dad, who
also happens to be a Vietnam vet, and then bring me in.”

“What if he has Secret
Service protection?”

“He doesn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he declined it.”

“He’s allowed to do that?”

“Yep.  I need you to do
something.  I need you to breathe for me, okay? We’re
good
, Miss Mary. 
I promise.”

Mary fanned her face and then
rolled down the window for some fresh air.  Sarcasm, thick as the humidity
outside, dripped out of her mouth.  “Can’t be that hard.  No big deal,” she
said.

Traffic was unusually light,
aside from the multitude of construction zones where they had to stop and inch
along, and it was bearable enough to keep Mary’s nerves only slightly tilted in
the red.  While they waited their turn at a stoplight, Mary said, “There’s one
thing I’ve been meaning to ask.  You said in the bar last night that Ares may
be involved with the family somehow.  What if it’s Herb?”

Chuck looked at her sideways,
eyebrow raised in an arch, one corner of his mouth turned up.  “You and your
imagination.  Herb? 
Herb?
  He’d be the last person I would...”  Chuck
paused, chewed on a knuckle.  “Well,” he said, elongating the word.  “It’s a
possibility.  It’s out there—way past the moon out there—but if you connect a
couple of un-connectable dots, I could see it.  Maybe.  And that’s a maybe that
weighs more than I do.”

“What dots?”

“Honestly, it’s like trying
to make a connection between, say, a cat meowing in China and somehow it woke
up a man in Idaho.  I wouldn’t bother with it.”

“Holy shit, Chuck.  Don’t you
think this is something I need to know before you send me in a house with a
murderer?”

“He’s not Ares, and even if
he were, I wouldn’t say
murderer
.  Not in the strictest sense of the
word, anyway.  Whoever Ares is, and whoever he’s killed, it’s been in
self-defense, at least since his original game.  He’s been defending himself
from the others for the past thirty-odd years.”

“Oh my God, are you kidding
me? 
The strictest sense of the word? 
You’re talking semantics? 
Especially when I might be risking my life?”

The traffic light turned
green and the vehicles ahead nudged forward, picking up speed and stretching
out like a train engine pulling a line of cars.  Chuck lifted a hand from the
steering wheel, patted the air, trying to calm her down.  “Easy, easy.  Don’t
forget, I’ll be right outside.  Anything goes wrong, remember the signal.  I’ll
be in before you know it.”

“The dots, Chuck.  You tell
me the dots or I’m getting out at the next stoplight and walking home.”

Chuck tossed both hands into
the air and shook his head.  “You’re as bad as my second ex-wife.”

“And I can understand why
they’re exes.” 

“I’m sure all three of them
would agree with you.”  Chuck signaled and turned right into a well-kept
neighborhood.  Tree-lined streets with immaculate lawns groomed to a crisp,
tight perfection.  Greens so fresh and deep they appeared painted, unnatural. 
Maples, oaks, and pines resting in each yard and around their bases, flowers
blossomed in multi-colored halos.  “Forget I said anything.”

“Chuck!”

“It’s nothing major, honest. 
The only connections I see are minimal.  He got back from Vietnam in 1975.  The
next contest was in 1976 and this Ares person won that one.  If—and trust me,
it’s a huge
if
—if Ares is actually in the Richmond family, there are
only two people that would remotely have the ability to defend themselves
against the type of men Ares has faced all these years.  Herb Richmond is one
of them, and the other is Billy Barton.  He’s a cousin to the family on the
mother’s side.  Former Ranger that got back to the States around the same time
Herb did.  I suspect it’s him for no other reason than Herb doesn’t fit the
profile.  He’s not the type.  And besides, back when Daddy Richmond had his
mind set on turning Herb into the next suit and tie to run the show, he never
would’ve let him participate.  The whole scenario, it doesn’t play right.  I
mean, why would Herb risk his life for a measly million dollars—or, uh, whatever
it was back then—when he was in a position to inherit hundreds of millions if
his dad kicked the bucket back in the seventies?  I’d imagine it’s billions
now.  Doesn’t compute.  Not at all.”

Mary readjusted herself in
her seat and faced Chuck.  “Why didn’t you mention this last night?  Or this
morning in the coffee shop?”

“Because you wouldn’t have
agreed to this if I had.”

“You said I could trust you.”

“And you can, Miss Mary.  I
didn’t lie...but I may have left out a couple of details.”

“Stop the car.”

“No, listen—”

“Chuck, let me out.  Now.”

Chuck whipped the car over to
the curb, slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop behind a cherry red
Porsche. 

Mary unbuckled herself and pulled
at the door handle as Chuck grabbed her arm.  Not hard, but enough to keep her
in her seat.

“Let go,” she said.

“You get out of this car, you
better start planning Randall’s funeral.  Think about Alice and Jesse.  This
isn’t about you.  Never was.  You think about what it’ll do to them if he’s
gone.  We either find a way to get Randall out, or help him win.  On the other
hand, you can get out of that door and deal with the consequences yourself.” 

Mary stared at him, almost
shaking.

Chuck let go, pointed past
her and said, “There’s the sidewalk.”

Mary looked to her right. 
Outside the car, the empty concrete slabs awaited, promising freedom from
immediate responsibility, but threatening with unavoidable certainties.  What
would Randall’s death do to their family?  Everything he’d been capable of
achieving with poor Alice, rescuing her, saving her from her self-destructive
ways, would be undone by Mary’s own selfish desire to run from something bigger
than she thought she could handle.  If Sledge hadn’t destroyed her
self-confidence so many years ago, the thought of shying away from a challenge
never would’ve presented itself.

A long string of
possibilities flashed through her mind in a snapshot slideshow.  The funeral. 
Alice’s inevitable collapse, followed by a return to the meth addiction she’d worked
so hard to overcome and Mary had worked so hard to hide.  She and Jimmy would
have to take in Jesse.  Adopt him, feed him, take him to school while his
mother’s teeth rotted away in a drug-addled stupor down some back-country road,
curled up on a dingy couch in a tin-can mobile home.  They would find Alice’s
blue body one day, and her sweet little six-year-old nephew would have to bury
both parents within a year of each other.

Mary slumped into the
passenger’s seat, pulled her leg and her cane inside the car, and shut the
door.  “Drive,” she said.

***

They stopped in front of a sky
blue, two-story home with white trim and a matching door.  Tall columns
supported the porch roof, connected by railings that stretched across the
facing side.  Potted plants, white and yellow begonias and lavender verbenas
hung from hooks and swayed in the breeze, while a single rocking chair sat at
an angle, facing east.  Mary imagined herself sitting out there each morning
with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, taking in the warmth of the morning
sun.  It was the type of home she’d dreamed of owning one day, completely
unlike the modest, ranch-style house that she and Jimmy shared in one of
Smythville’s simpler, residential neighborhoods.

On any other occasion, she
would’ve stared at it fondly, glad that someone got to live in and enjoy such a
beautiful place, but jealous of their good fortune. 

But today, once she managed
to get inside, it would be nothing more than a prison.

Chuck said, “Nine-thirty on
the nose,” and patted her shoulder.  “You know what to do, but I’d like to go
over it again.”

“I got it.”

“Just in case, introduce
yourself—who are you?”

“Ellen Wallace, with the
Post
.” 

“Good.  He won’t bother
checking, so don’t worry about it.  You’re doing a community piece and would
love his input since he’s such a well-regarded member of the homeless veteran lobby. 
When you’re inside, sit down, make some small talk.  Flirt with him.  That’s
important, don’t forget.  Then you move on to the interview.  Ask questions
about his time in the service and what he did when he got back—but avoid
anything about the game in ‘76.  We’ll get to that after I get inside and then
we’ll double-team him. 

“Ask him about the plight of
the American soldier and how hard it is to come back.  Massage it a little, get
him warmed up.  Remember what I said this morning, he doesn’t have the best
relationship with Daddy Richmond, so try to tie in something about big
corporations raking in billions while some poor vet goes hungry.  Lead him into
talking about his father.  Make Daddy Richmond out to be the bad guy.  You get
him fired up, he might tip enough to start talking about all the ridiculous
things Jackson does with his money.  And from there, your job—your
only
job—is to build up his trust factor and get him to the point where he’s ready
to tell the press everything about what his daddy’s doing wrong.

“Then you pull it back a
little.  Apologize to him.  Tell him you didn’t mean to get him upset, and you
have somebody for him to meet.  That’s when you bring me in.  I’ll introduce
myself.  I’m a vet that got a lot of poor treatment when I got home from ‘Nam,
too.  Folks spat on me, all that stuff.  You make some offhanded comment about
the way I was treated, like you’re randomly picking up the conversation where
you left off before.  Combine that with my sob story, it should really light
his fuse, and hopefully, we’ll get what we came for.”

“You really think he’ll go
for it?  The more I think about it—it seems like it’s too far off target to
drag him into talking about how his family offers a few million bucks for
people to kill each other.”

“He’ll go for it.”

“But how can you be so sure?”

“Instinct.”

“That’s it?  Instinct?”

“You’ll just have to trust
me.”

“And look where that’s gotten
me so far.  Why can’t I tell him who I am, you know, plead my case?  Just ask
if he can help me get Randall out?”

“On the slimmest chance that
he’s Ares, and trust me, he’s not, I don’t think that would be such a good
idea.”

CHAPTER 14

Randall pushed the 2x4s off
his chest and crawled over the scattered pile of wood.  He dropped, rolled two
times, and stopped with his back against the wall.  One breath, two breaths,
three breaths later, he shoved himself upward and risked a peek outside through
the other window.  Jagged shards lined the outside edge where the blast had
blown it apart.  He expected to find someone—Geisha, Mein Kampf, or Yankee
Doodle—peering back at him, trying to assess the grenade’s damage.  Instead, he
had a clear view of the yard, the gravel driveway, and the barn a hundred yards
distant.

Where had he gone, whoever it
was?  Wouldn’t peeking in through the window be the easiest route to
confirmation?

Yeah,
he thought,
and that’s why he ain’t
there.  He knows if he didn’t get me, I’d be ready to grab him.  Snap his damn
neck.  What would I do?  Wait.  I’d wait on me to come out.  And if I didn’t, I’d
go inside, give it some time, then sneak down the stairs where I had some
cover.