Wag the Dog (61 page)

“Not a doctor . . . but yeah, I guess.”

“That's what they call the entry wound?”

“Yeah, in the back. If we roll him over, the exit wound, it'll be bigger.”

“Did I tell you what he said?” Martin says.

“No.”

“Never trust a nigger calls hisself Hawk and dresses like a pimp.”

The phone rings. I pick it up. It's a woman. She asks for Maggie. When I say Maggie's not here, she asks if I'm Joe Broz. I say yes. She identifies herself as Barbra Streisand's secretary and wants to know if Maggie got her screening copy of the
The Prince of Tides.
“It's under consideration for an Oscar in several categories,” she says. “In a way, a vote for it is a vote for women in the industry. I know that's important to Maggie.” I agree with her that it is, tell her we've received our copy; and hang up.

“Are you gonna help me?” Martin says.

“What?”

“Waste the motherfucker. Are you gonna help me or not? He was your friend, wasn't he? Or doesn't that matter with you people?”

“You really want him?”

“Fuckin' A.”

“Can you do it? When the time comes; will you be able to do it?”

“You try me. I'm gonna waste the motherfucker, motherfucker gon' die.”

The phone rings.

I grab the kid. “Listen to me, Martin. You answer it. I'm not here.”

“What?”

The phone rings.

“Listen and listen good. I'm not here. If it's a man named Taylor, I never came back. You don't know where I am. You can ask him where Hawk is. Tell him you're gonna kill Hawk—”

The phone rings.

“—if you want. Find out where he is. If you can. Get it?”

He nods and picks up the phone. I go in the other room and get the extension. By the time I get it, I hear Taylor saying, “I know he's there. You tell him my people watched him come back.”

“Fuck you. I want Hawk. You tell me where he's at.”

“Put Broz on.”

“I told you, asshole, he's not here.”

“You tell him to get on now or Maggie Lazlo goes to Bo Perkins and Chaz Otis and they have a party from which she'll never recover.”

Of course, I want to get on and tell him I'll kill him if he does that. But there's no point. He knows that. The point is he can't play his cards until I sit down at the table. Since he has a winning hand, the only hand, I don't want to sit. Sure, he's going to offer a trade, the memo for Maggie. And we'll all walk away and go home happy.

It makes Martin pause. He doesn't need to know who Bo and Chaz are to understand. He's got a crush on her and he's tempted to respond to the threat. But he's smart in spite of himself and just says, “I would if I could, but I can't. Man's not here.”

“Who the fuck drove up, then?”

“Some other guys.”

“What other guys?”

“I don't know. One of 'em's named Dennis. Don't know the other two.”

“Where is Broz?”

“Who are you?”

“Tell Broz he's got one hour to call me.”

“Where?”

Taylor gives Martin a number. Martin writes it down. “What if I don't see or hear from him?”

“One hour or she's dead meat. Like that bitch in Hué. Dao Thi Thai. Except we'll play with her first.”

“You best think about that, man,” Martin says. “What if I don't talk to him in an hour. And then you kill her. Then what you got to play with, dude? Then you got Joe Broz coming to kill you as well as me coming to kill Hawk. You some kind of stupid man.”

“Shut up,
boy.
Don't you call me stupid,
boy.
As for you coming after Hawk,
boy,
go ahead and try. You just do what I tell you.”

“I don't do what the fuck people tell me. Where the fuck you living, man, you think people do what the fuck you tell them? You tell Hawk, Martin Joseph Weston comin', comin' for him. And he's gonna die.”

“Goddamn you, kid, put Broz on.”

“You stupid or deaf? He ain't here.”

Taylor slams down the phone.

I check the phone number. I recognize it. He's at John Lincoln Beagle's house.

“I need you to do what I say, Martin. If you do it my way, you'll get him. If you rush, if you go at him too soon, he'll get you.”

“I'm gonna take care of business. I don't need you to—”

“You got a gun? Money? Backup? A plan? What are you gonna do with your father? You call the police, then you have to tell them who was here, where you were, and all of that. Then if you go after Hawk, they know it's you. You need us, we need you. I need you to save Maggie. I need you to go up against Hawk, when the time comes.”

“Alright,” he says.

We have five 9-mm handguns, a rifle, and a shotgun. “Dressier, I want you to go buy another rifle. Something suitable for sniping. Scope to go with it. High-power, night scope if you can get it local. Get another shotgun. Pump action, something we can cut down. If you can get a spray gun, Mac-10, Uzi, anything like that, get it. Get four sets of body armor. Dennis, you've been to Beagle's, you're in charge of that. I want you to scout it. Take Tae Woo and Martin. See if you can figure out how many men Taylor's got, their positions, how they're armed. See if you can figure out where they're keeping Maggie. Martin, don't do anything yet. Except gather information. You treat this like you're in the Marines and Dennis is your NCO. Taylor only wants one thing, for us to go in. It's an ambush.”

The phone rings.

I point to Martin. He goes to the phone. I go to the extension and put it where we can see each other. On my signal we pick up the phone together. He says, “Hello.”

“Put him on, boy,” Taylor says.

“I told you, he isn't here,” Martin says.

“Too bad,” Taylor says. “Since he's not here, he'll miss hearing this.” There is a pause. Then—Maggie screams.

I gesture to Martin to hang up. He looks at me. I gesture again.
Hang up.
He does and I do simultaneously. He looks at
me like I'm something different than he is. He says, “You're an ice cube. There's something dead in you.”

Maybe he's right. Maybe I've just been here before. Steve would understand. I say, “We have to keep your father for twenty-four, forty-eight hours. Can you handle that Martin?”

“He's dead,” Martin says, being strong. “It won't make that much difference to him.”

“No.”

The phone rings again. I just want to let it ring. Or cut it off. But that will tell Taylor that I'm here and that I can't take it. Then he can say that he's cutting off her finger or her breast or taking out her eye and I better come quick. Whatever it takes to make me think that I have to try. Then we both die.

I gesture to Martin again. He shakes his head no.

So I say, “I thought you had balls?”

We pick up the phones simultaneously. Martin says, “Hello.” This time it's a woman's voice. She whispers, “Is Joe there? Joe Broz?”

Martin says, “No.”

She says, “Oh, God,” like she's going to hang up.

“Wait,” I say into the phone. “Bambi Ann?”

“Joe?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't go, Joe. They're going to kill you. And kill her. I don't know what you've done and I don't care.”

“Where are you?”

“At a pay phone away from the office.”

“OK. I don't want you to get in trouble.”

“Don't let them hurt her, Joe.”

“I'm trying, Bambi Ann.”

“You know what she did for me, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“She had John Travolta call me. Me, personally. To advise me about Scientology.”

“How do you know they're going to kill her?”

“I listen. I always have. I control the intercom. It makes me seem very efficient. Like Radar O'Reilly in
M*A*S*H
.”

“Oh.”

“Really. It does. I show up with things before they ask. They think I'm wonderful.”

“And you are.”

“But not how they think.”

“Better.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure. You're beating them at their own game.”

“I hadn't thought of that.”

“Tell me what you know,” I say to bring her back.

“I've never gone against the company.”

“I know. You're a loyal person.”

“I am.”

“And it's good.”

“I'm doing this for her. For Maggie.”

“I understand.”

“Taylor's going to kill . . . kill both of you. I think. He and that Mr. Hartman person, they argued over it. It's the memo. You shouldn't have taken the memo, joe.”

“She wanted me to. Maggie. I did it for Maggie.”

“Oh.”

“Go on.”

“That's all I know.”

“Where did they argue over it?”

“On the phone. With Mr. Sheehan.”

“Conference call?”

“Yes.”

“Scrambled?”

“I operate the scrambler.”

“Where was Hartman?”

“He was in his office, I think.”

“He going to stay there? Or does he want to be in at the kill?”

“In on it. He insists.”

“OK. Will you help me some more?”

“If I can.”

“To save Maggie's life.”

“Yes.”

“If I need you, I'll call you at the office and say this is your uncle . . . you have a real uncle?”

“Arnold.”

“Uncle Arnold. You'll be too busy to talk and you'll call me back. OK?”

“OK.”

“Can I call you at home?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

“There is something else,” Bambi Ann says. “Mr. Bunker called about . . . about it.”

“What did he want?”

“He said to be sure to get a copy of the memo.”

“To who?”

“To Mr. Sheehan to tell Mr. Taylor. Oh, yes, Mr. Hartman, that's why he wants to be there. To be sure he gets the memo.”

“Do they know—-Taylor, Sheehan, Bunker—do they know what's in the memo?”

“It doesn't sound like it.”

“Thank you, Bambi Ann, thank you.”

“Good luck. Save her,” she says.

I
WAIT OUTSIDE
the dojo for Sergeant Kim to leave. It is evident now that I am not as clever as I think I am. Taylor has me under surveillance and picked up on my recruitment of Hawk. And if Hawk is working for Taylor the whole time, Taylor knows all about ROK.

Kim d rives a Lincoln Town Car. I follow him. He lives twenty minutes away in a section that has become almost completely Oriental in the last ten years. He pulls into his driveway, gets out, walks to the curb, and waits for me. He invites me into his home. I've never been there before. I know that his wife is dead. A young woman, perhaps twenty, greets us at the door, in properly obsequious Confucian fashion. She and Kim speak in Korean. He does not introduce me. We go sit in the living room and she brings a bottle of reasonably good Scotch. Again, he says nothing about her, whether she is a daughter, a relative, a maid, a woman that he brought over mail-order from Korea. I tell him what has happened. She brings us cheeseburgers. They're excellent, thick and juicy, topped with sharp cheddar, sliced dill pickle on the side. “I hate kimchee,” Kim says. “You like kimchee? I got some. You can have.”