Tuck jumped up and leaned over the desk. Special Agent Myers rolled back in his chair.
“I want you to stop them. I want covert action and deadly technology. I want Navy SEALS and snipers and spies and laser-guided smart stealth gizmos out the ying-yang. I want surgical strikes and satellite views and a steaming shitload of every sort of Tom Clancy geegaw you got. I want fucking Jack Ryan, James Bond, and a half-dozen Van Damme motherfuck-ers who can jump through their own asses and rip your heart out while it’s still beating. I want action, Special Agent Myers. This is evil shit.”
“Sit down, Mr. Case.”
Tuck sat down. His energy was gone. “Look, I’m giving myself up. Arrest me, throw me in jail, beat me with a rubber hose, do whatever you want to do, but stop what’s going on out there.”
Special Agent Myers smiled. “I don’t believe a word you’ve told me, but even if I did, even if you had evidence of what you’re claiming, I still couldn’t do anything. The FBI can only act on domestic matters.”
“Then tell someone who handles international matters.”
“The CIA only handles matters that affect national security, and frankly, I wouldn’t embarrass myself by calling them.”
“Fuck it, then. Take me away.” Tuck held out his arms to receive handcuffs.
“Go back to your hotel and get some rest, Mr. Case. There are no outstanding warrants for your arrest.”
“There aren’t?” Tuck felt as if he’d been gut-punched.
“I checked the computer before I brought you in here.” Myers stood. “I’ll show you out.”
After another cab ride and another truncated telling of his story, Tuck was also shown out of the Japanese embassy. He found a pay phone and soon he had been hung up on by both the American Medical Association and the Council of Methodist Missionaries. He found Sepie curled up on the king-size bed, the television still blaring in the bathroom, three minibottles of vodka empty on the floor. Tuck considered raiding the minibar himself, but when he opened it, he
opted for a grapefruit juice instead of gin. Getting hammered wasn’t going to take the edge off this time, and at this rate, the money he’d left on deposit at the desk in lieu of a credit card—the money that Sarapul had found in Tuck’s pack—would run out in two days.
He sat down on the bed and stroked Sepie’s hair. She had put on mascara while he was out and had made a mess of it. Funny, she’d walked into the hotel wearing one of Tuck’s shirts—the first time she’d worn a top in her life—looking very much the little girl and now she had on makeup and was passed out drunk. Tuck had a feeling that coming to America was not going to be easy on either of them. He kissed her on the forehead and she moaned and rolled over. “Perfume tomorrow,” she said. “You get me some, okay?”
“Okay,” Tuck said. “A woman who smells good is a woman who feels good.” The phrase rattled off the walls of his brain. He snatched up the phone and punched up information. When the operator came on, he said, “Houston, area code 713…”
60
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
Mary Jean sat behind a desk fashioned entirely of rose quartz veined with fool’s gold and stared out the window at the Houston skyline. A brown haze had risen to the level of her fiftieth-floor office as the exhaust of a million cars huddled against the stratosphere and curled around the city like a huge rusty cat looking for a place to nap. It just made her made as a cowpoke wearing bob-wire pants, but not mad enough, of course, to sell her shares of GM and Exxon. Blue chips was blue chips, after all, and the great state of Texas ran on oil.
The intercom beeped and Mary Jean keyed her speakerphone, not because she needed her hands free to work, but because the phone receiver either got caught in her hairdo or her clip-ons rattled against it making all sorts of distracting racket. There’d been a time, before Prozac, when she’d thought for six months that the FBI was tapping her phone line, only to find out it was a pair of twenty-carat ruby cluster earrings banging against the earpiece.
“Yes, Melanie.”
“Tucker Case on the phone, Mary Jean. He’s been calling all day. I’ve tried to put him off, but he says that people are going to die if you don’t talk to him.”
“Does he sound drunk?”
“No, Ma’am. He sounds serious.”
Mary Jean took a deep breath and looked up at the Monet hanging on the far wall. Twenty million dollars, depreciated as office furnishings, ap-preciated to twice its value and donated to a museum as a donation write-off at full value, with no capital gains, and there
it would hang until the day of her death when it would go to the museum.
And it also matched the couch.
“Put him through,” she said.
“Mary Jean, it’s Tucker.”
“I was just thinking of you. How are you, sweetie?”
“Mary Jean, I’m stone sober and I need you to listen.”
“Go on, Tucker. I got more ears than a cornfield in June.”
“First, I know that there were never any criminal charges filed, and I don’t blame you for trying to get me out of the way. But I could really use some help.”
Mary Jean blanched. “Can you hold one second, darlin? Thanks.” She pushed the hold button and then the intercom. “Melanie, dear, would you mind bringing me a couple of number five Valiums and a little glass of juice? Thank you.” She clicked back to Tuck. “Go on, honey.”
And Tuck did, for fifteen minutes, and when he finished, Mary Jean said, “Well, that’s just not right. That’s just terrible.”
“Yes, it is, Mary Jean.”
“We just can’t have that,” she said. “You give Melanie your number there. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Mary Jean, I really appreciate this. If I could go to anyone else, I would.”
“And hurt my feelings? No, you wouldn’t. Tucker Case, I’ve been selling the power to change yourself for forty years. Now, if I don’t believe in the power of redemption, then I’m guilty of false advertising, aren’t I? You sit tight, now. Bye.”
She clicked the intercom. “Melanie, get me Jake Skye on the line, please. Thank you, dear.”
61
Roundhouse Aloha
Tuck stood at the arrival gate amid a group of Hawaiian college students wearing grass skirts and sarongs and festooned with leis they were draping on tourists as they came out of the tunnel from the 747. Tuck spotted Jake Skye well before he came out of the tunnel. He was a head taller than most of the tourists and one of the few who had a tan. Tuck waved to him and Jake tossed his head to show he’d seen him. He came out grinning with his hand extended.
Tuck smiled and hit Jake with a roundhouse to the jaw that knocked him back into a group of pseudo hula girls. Jake apologized to the girls and rubbed his jaw as he turned to Tuck.
“We done?”
“I guess so,” Tucker said. He knew that Jake would never apologize for selling him out.
Jake fell in beside Tuck and they walked through the terminal. “I didn’t see that coming. You’ve changed, buddy.”
“I guess so,” said Tuck. “Thanks for coming.”
“I’m just here to take you home.” Jake pulled two airline ticket folders out of his shirt pocket. “Mary Jean says you can bring your new girlfriend.”
“I’m not going home, Jake.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I need your help, but I’m not going back to Houston.”
“There’s a stop in San Francisco. You can get off there.”
“No. I’ve got some things I need to do.”
“Buy me a drink.” Jake turned and walked into an open cocktail lounge where a twenty-foot waterfall fell over black lava rock among