«Certainly, Miss Redwing. I’ll get the one from the next booth.»
«You won’t see me again for years,» her brother began. «Once I get to Honolulu or Fiji, I’ll find work on the ships and—»
«Oh, shut up, Charlie,» Jennifer said as Mario plugged in the telephone and handed it to her. She dialed, and seconds later spoke. «Peggy, it’s me, and you can have two hours for lunch if you’ll take care of a couple of things for me. First, find out the name and address of the person who has this phone; it’s in Weston, Massachusetts.» She recited the number as Charlie wrote it out on a napkin. «Then book me on a late afternoon flight to Boston—yes, I said Boston, and no, I won’t be in tomorrow, and to anticipate your next question, I will not send my brother in to take my place, because you’d corrupt him… Oh, and Peg, get me a hotel reservation. Try the Four Seasons, I think it’s on Boylston Street—we had our Law Review party there.»
«Jenny, what are you doing?» cried Charlie Redwing as his sister hung up the phone.
«I think it’s pretty obvious. I’m flying to Boston and you’re not going anywhere but to my apartment, where you will behave and stay by the telephone. Your only other option is for me to have you arrested for fraud and nonpayment of outstanding debts—or possibly I could call up a close friend and client to watch over you. Frankly, I think jail’s preferable; my friend plays offensive guard for the Forty-niners.»
«I refuse to dignify terrorist threats, and I repeat: What the hell do you think you’re doing?»
«I’m going to find this lunatic Hawkins and stop him. Oh, not just for you, Charlie, and parenthetically for me, but for our people.»
«I know. We’d be the laughingstock of the reservations. I told Mac that.»
«Far worse, little Brother, far worse. Everything you’ve told me boils down to one irreducible catastrophe. Offutt Air Force Base, the global headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, which is smack-dab in the center of this lunatic general’s grand design. No matter how insane it sounds and unquestionably is, do you think those goliaths in Washington will sit still for a minute at even the hint of any interference with SAC?»
«What can they do except laugh it out of court or pay no attention at all and fry me on the side for false representation? I mean, what can they do?»
«Make new laws, Charlie, laws effectively destroying the tribe. They could start by condemning the land we do have and dispersing the inhabitants thereon. Hell, it’s been done for highways—even country roads and backwater bridges by politicians owing a few debts. What are they compared with SAC’s limitless payrolls?»
«Disperse …?» Charlie asked softly.
«Sending our people hither and yon to ratty houses and dinky apartments as far away from one another as possible,» replied Jennifer, nodding. «What we—or they—have now is no Garden of Eden, but it’s theirs. Many of them have lived there all their lives and most of those lives span seventy and eighty years. They’re the human stories behind the cold government statistics that supposedly justify national interests.»
«Could Washington do that?»
«At the blink of an eye on a campaign contribution; it’s legend. Country roads and backwater bridges are only a spit in the taxpayers’ ocean, but the government’s largesse where SAC’s concerned is Lake Superior.»
«Again, Sis, what can you really do in Boston?»
«Break a retired general’s ass, little Brother, and everyone else’s around him.»
«How?»
«I’ll know better when I find them, but I suspect it’ll be something as outrageous as the lunacy in their own ballpark… Say a conspiracy mounted by the enemies of democracy to bring the honorable giant to its knees and destroy our beloved America’s first-strike capabilities worldwide. Then tie in legal terrorism with racist undercurrents by trumped-up depositions tracing the cabal to fanatical Arabs and resentful Israelis in concert with the hard-liners in Beijing along with the Reverends Moon, Farrakhan, and Falwell, joined by the Hare Krishnas, Fidel Castro, the peaceniks on Sesame Street—and God knows what else. This planet abounds with rotten fish and perceived rotten fish that provoke instantaneous and passionate reactions. We’ll guarantee in pretrial examinations to throw the whole spectrum at them.»
«Pretrial …?»
«You heard me.»
«This is all positively nuts, Jenny!»
«I know that, Charlie, but so are they. Anyone can sue anybody in a free society, that’s both the insanity and the glory. It’s not the litigation that’s important, it’s the threat of public exposure… Good Lord, I can’t wait to get to Boston!»
10
Desi the First knocked sharply on the hotel door for the third time, shrugging as he did so at his comrade-in-arms, Desi the Second, who shrugged back in reply. «Maybe our loco man, the great heneral, has taken a poof-powder, no?»
«Wa’ for?»
«He owes us dinero, yes?»
«I don’ think he’d do dat—I don’ wanna think he’d do it.»
«Neither do I, man, but he tol’ us to come back in an hour, no?»
«Maybe he dead. Maybe that even more loco gringo who yells all the time put him and the liddle old man away.»
«Then maybe we break the door down.»
«And make so much noise the gringo police come after us and we eat the lousy gringo food again for a long time? You make good plans, amigo, but chu got no mechanical abilities, y’know wad I mean to say?»
«What mecánico?»
«Hey, man, we promise each odder, we speak h’English, no?» replied Desi-Two, removing a small, many-bladed contraption from his pocket, a penknife-type instrument that defied description. «So better we can ‘h’assimilate,’ waddever that means.» The jump-starter of Chevrolet automobiles approached the door, briefly glancing up and down the deserted corridor. «We don’t gotta break down no door. Dese liddle plástico locks no problem—dey got a liddle white plástico release.»
«How chu know so much about hotel doors, man?»
«I work lotsa times as a waiter in Miami, man. The gringos call for room service and by d’ time you got the tray there, they too drunk to find d’ door an’ if you bring the tray back, you get yelled at in the kitchen. Ees better to know how to open doors, no?»
«Ees good school you go to.»
«Before that I worked in d’ parking lots. Madre María, they are universidades!» Desi the Second, ebullient, twisted a white plastic blade in the vertical lock space and slowly opened the door. «Señor!» he exclaimed at the figure inside. «You h’okay, man?»
Sam Devereaux sat trancelike behind the desk, his glazed eyes fixed on the pages in front of him. «Nice to see you again,» he said quietly, the words in no way connected to his concentration.
«We almos’ knock the door down, man!» cried Desi the First. «What’s wrong wid chu?»
«Please don’t knock me down again,» came the all but monotonic reply. «I possess the weight of the legal world on my person—I don’t need you.»
«Hey, come on, gringo,» continued D-One, approaching the desk. «What we done was nudding like personal, man. We jus’ follow orders from the grande heneral, y’know?»