The Road to Omaha: A Novel

  “What?”

  “It just got there this morning.”

  “This morning …?”

  “Well, you see, there was this Indian brave who fed me misinformation, which is different from disinformation, regarding a little matter of a bar exam—”

  “Just answer my question, General! The attorney-of-record, if you please!”

  “Him,” replied the Hawk, pointing at Sam Devereaux.

  9

  Vincent Francis Assisi Mangecavallo, known in certain select circles as Vinnie the Bam-Bam, and also as code Ragu, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, paced his office in Langley, Virginia, a perplexed, frustrated man. He had heard nothing! What could have gone wrong? The plan was so simple, so flawless, so airtight. A equals B equals C, therefore A equals C, but somewhere within that simple equation, Hyman Goldfarb and his people had lost their marbles and Vincent’s own man, the best and most innocuous shadow in the business, had only managed to get lost! Big Foot! The Abominable Snowman! What the hell was wrong with the Hurricane? Who had chewed up his well-advertised brains? And where was that miserable slime Vincent had rescued from a not-so-small debt in Vegas and put on a respectable government payroll, telling the casino boys to lose the slime’s markers in the interests of national security? Gone, that’s where he was! But why?

  Little Joey the Shroud had been overjoyed to hear from his big-shot friend from the old days, when they all used Little Joey to tail the deadbeats from the Brooklyn docks to the fancy clubs in Manhattan—and Joey was good! He could stand alone by himself in the middle of Yankee Stadium and no one would notice him even if every seat in the place was sold out. Nobody ever noticed Little Joey the Shroud; he just faded into the wallpaper as fast as he did in a crowd on the subway. It was a talent he had, like total insignificance—even his face was sort of gray and nondescript.… So where the hell was he? He had to know he was better off with his old friend Vincent than without his big Washington connection—after all, the markers could be reinstated and the casino tuxedos would come after him again. It didn’t make sense—nothing made sense!

  The telephone rang, the telephone hidden in the lower right-hand drawer of the director’s desk. Mangecavallo ran to it; he had installed that line himself, at night, and with professionals far more experienced than the so-called experts in the Agency’s department of clandestine communications. In fact, no one in the government had the number; it was limited to really important people who got things done. “Yes?” barked the DCI.

  “It’s Little Joey, Bam-Bam,” said the piping voice on the telephone.

  “Where the hell have you been? Thirty-six hours, maybe a day and a half, I don’t hear from you!”

  “Because for every minute of that time I been spinning my head and racing my ass from one fuckin’ place to another keeping up with a zuccone!”

  “What are you talkin’?”

  “Also you told me not to call you at home, which number I ain’t got, and definitely not through the big spy joint’s switchboard, right?”

  “Yeah, right. So?”

  “So between airplanes and hustling airline clerks and paying off taxi drivers ready to spit in my face, and bribing a retired cop who once put a collar on me to do a little checking with his old buddies in the black-and-whites to find a certain stretch limo with a funny license plate, I ain’t had a hell of a lot of free time!”

  “Okay, okay. Tell me what happened. Did you get anything I can use?”

  “If you can’t, I can. This jigsaw’s got more crazy pieces than a pasta salad, definitely worth more than those markers in Vegas.”

  “Hey, Joey, those markers were over twelve thousand!”

  “What I got’s worth double, Bam-Bam.”

  “Don’t use that name, huh?” said Mangecavallo defensively. “It don’t fit with this high-class office.”

  “Hoo-hay, Vinnie. Maybe the dons shouldn’t have sent you to school. You lose your humility, you don’t get no respect.”

  “Knock it off, Joey. I’ll take care of you, on my father’s grave.”

  “Your poppa’s alive, Vinnie, I saw him the other week at Caesar’s. He’s rolling high in Vegas, only not with your momma.”

  “Basta.… He’s not in Lauderdale?”

  “You want a room number? If a bimbo answers, don’t hang up.”

  “That’s enough, Joey. Stick to business or those markers will reach fifty big ones with the vigorish and I cut you loose, capisce? Now, what happened?”

  “Awright, awright, just testing the water, okay, Vinnie?… What happened—jeez, what didn’t happen?” Little Joey the Shroud took a deep breath and began. “Like you figured, Goldfarb sent a crew out to that Indian reservation—I knew right away when I recognized the Shovel walking through the big fake stockade gate past the nut Welcome Wigwam and heading straight to the food counter. Boy, can that huge fazool eat! Right behind him is this scrawny gibrone who blows his nose a lot, but the bulge in his hip pocket ain’t Kleenex. Then I mingled and heard two other friends of the Shovel who talked funny English asking about this Thunder Head you’re interested in, and let me tell you they were hot for his warm body.… So I wait from a big distance and the four cannolis—one of which is a broad—run out of the souvenir joint and race like hell up a dirt road where each of them goes into a different path—”

  “A path?” Mangecavallo interrupted. “Like more dirt?”

  “S’help me, Bam-Bam—excuse me, Vincenzo—dirt and bushes and trees, a regular forest, you know what I mean?”

  “What the hell, it’s a reservation, I guess—”

  “So I waited and I waited and I waited,” continued Little Joey rapidly.

  “So am I, Joey!” broke in the director.

  “Okay, okay. Finally, this big-shot Indian comes running out of the woods—I mean, he’s got to be your big shot, Thunder Head, ’cause he’s got a clothesline full of feathers from his head to his ass—and barrels down the dirt road, then hangs a right till he reaches a big, funny-looking tent and goes inside. Then I saw what I tell ya, Vinnie, I couldn’t believe with my own eyes! This big-shot Indian comes out a few minutes later, only he’s not the same guy.”

  “What are you smokin’, Little Joey?”

  “No, I mean it, Vin. He’s the same gumbar, but he don’t look like the same gumbar! Instead, he looks like a four-eyed accountant in a regular suit, wearing glasses and some dumb fuckin’ wig that don’t fit, and carrying a big cloth suitcase.… Well, naturally, the suitcase tells me he’s breaking out of the reservation, and the way he looks tells me he don’t wanna be an Indian no more.”

  “Is this gonna be a long story, Little Joey?” asked Mangecavallo plaintively. “Get to the goddamned point.”

  “You want your markers’ worth and I wanna prove what I got’s worth more, okay?… But I’ll cut to the airport in Omaha where I followed him and where he got a ticket on the next plane to Boston, which I also did the same. However—and this is important, Bam-Bam—while I’m at the counter I show the little girlie one of my phony federal badges and tell her the government’s interested in the big fella with the stupid-lookin’ wig. I think the wig did it, ’cause the broad was so helpful I had to explain to her that everything was on the quiet and she shouldn’t call nobody. Anyway, I got the name from the big gumbar’s credit card—”

  “Give it to me, Joey!” exclaimed the DCI, picking up a pencil.

  “Sure, Vin. It’s M-small a-small c, capital K period, Hawkins, G-e-n with a period, then USA followed by a big R, then e and a t. I wrote it down but I don’t know what it all means.”

  “It means his name is somebody Hawkins and he’s a retired army general.… Holy shit, a general!”

  “There’s more, Vinnie, and you better hear it—”

  “I’ve got to hear it! Go on.”

  “So I resume the tail in Boston and everything goes crazy, I mean pazzo. At the airport he runs into a men’s room where he meets a couple of Spies wearing uniforms I never seen b
efore, and they go out to the parking area and get into an Oldsmobile with an Ohio or Indiana license plate and drive away. Quick, I lay a fast fifty on an off-duty taxi and tell him to stay with the Olds when things go even more crazy!… This now-accountant-type Indian chief takes his two refried beans to a fuckin’ barber shop, then s’help me God, Bam-Bam, they drive to some park by the river where the big lasagna makes his two enchiladas march around the grass like a couple of marionetti while he keeps yellin’ at ’em. I tell ya, it was weird!”

  “Maybe this retired general is a Section Eight; it could happen, you know.”

  “Like he got bounced for mixing up tanks for dirigibles and saluted the trucks?”

  “You read about it all the time. Like some of our dons, sometimes the bigger the guns, the flakier they get. Remember Fat Salerno in Brooklyn?”

  “Hoo-hay, do I remember! He wanted to make Oregano the flower of New York State. He walked right into the Albany legislature yellin’ his head off about discrimination.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking about, Little Joey. Because if this M-small a-small c Hawkins, retired General Fruit-of-the-Loom, is Chief Thunder Head like I agree with you, we got ourselves another Fat Salerno yelling his head off in Washington also about discrimination.”

  “He’s Italian, Vinnie?”

  “No Joey, he’s not even an Indian. So then what happened?”

  “So then the big lasagna and his two enchiladas got back in the Olds—that’s when I had to slip my off-duty creep another fifty—they drove to a busy downtown street and just stayed there. Not the two refrieds; they get out, and after they stop at a men’s store, they go into a big building, but the nut-Indian-chief-now-four-eyed-accountant just keeps sitting in the car. That’s when I had to hand over two fifties to the lousy off-duty thief ’cause he says his wife’s gonna hit him with a hot frying pan if he don’t come home, and he had a point.… It was over an hour before a big stretch limo pulls up in front of the big building and three gumbars get in, followed by the two enchiladas who go right to the Olds, which follows the limo. Then I lost both of them.”

  “You lost …? What are you telling me, Joey?”

  “Not to worry, Bam-Bam—”

  “Please!”

  “Sorry. Vincent Francis Assisi—”

  “Forget that, too!”

  “Awright, awright, I apologize with all my heart—”

  “Your heart’s gonna stop unless you tell me why I shouldn’t worry!”

  “I lost the zuccones in the traffic, but not before I got the license of the big dark-blue stretch, and at the same time, would you believe, I remembered the name of the Boston police-prick who collared me twenty years ago and who, I figured, had to be in his late sixties, and who, Christ willing, might still be alive like I was, since we were both pretty much the same age.”

  “I hate long stories, Little Joey!”

  “Okay, okay. So I went to his house, which wasn’t much after his long years of public service, and we raised a glass or two of good cheer to the old days.”

  “Joey, you’re driving me nuts!”

  “Awright, awright. I implored him to maybe put his downtown connections to work, along with five C-notes for himself, to find out who owned the limo with the funny license plate, and maybe also where it went when it was followed by the Olds and maybe even where it was at the present time.… Would you believe he answered the first question without so much as a break between whiskies?”

  “Joey, I can’t stand you!”

  “Calma, calma, Bam-Bam. Right away he tells me the limo belongs to one of the biggest lawyers in Boston, Massachusetts. He’s a yarmulke named Pinkus, Aaron Pinkus, who is considered a very upright guy and very respected by the lowest and the highest of the fish, both legit and not so legit. He’s immaculate—God forgive me—but it’s true, Vinnie.”

  “He’s a fuckin’ slime, that’s what he is! What else did the shamus tell you?”

  “That as of twenty minutes ago the stretch is parked outside the Four Seasons Hotel on Boylston Street.”

  “What about the Olds and the big phony Indian chief? Where the fuck is he?”

  “We don’t know where the Olds is, Vinnie, but my shamus got the word on the Midwest license plate and you ain’t gonna believe it—I mean it’s unreal!”

  “So try me.”

  “It belongs to the Vice-President!”

  “Magdalene?” yelled the Vice-President of the United States, slamming down the telephone in his study. “Where’s that darn Oldsmobile of ours?”

  “Back home, honeybunch,” replied the lilting voice of the Second Lady from the living room.

  “Are you sure, lovey-dove?”

  “Of course, lamb chop. Just the other day the maid called to say the gardener’s assistant had trouble driving it on the highway. It simply stopped and wouldn’t start again.”

  “My God, did he leave it there?”

  “Heavens, no, dimplekins. The cook called the garage and they towed it in. Why?”

  “That awful man from the CIA, the one with the name I can’t pronounce, just phoned to tell me it was seen in Boston being driven by vicious criminals and when did I lend it to them. We may have image problems—”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me!” screamed the Second Lady, bursting into the room, her hair rolled up in pink curlers.

  “Some son-of-a-bitch bastard must have stolen the fucking thing!” yelled the Vice-President.

  “You sure you didn’t lend it to one of your crumb-bum buddies, you asshole?”

  “Christ no! Only your scumball friends would ask to borrow it, you bitch!”

  “Hysterical recriminations will get us nowhere,” stated an emphatic but shaken Aaron Pinkus, as MacKenzie Hawkins straddled Sam Devereaux, the general’s knees pinning the lawyer’s shoulders to the floor while an occasional cigar ash fell on Sam’s contorted face. “I suggest we all cool it, as the young people say, and try to understand the position each of us finds himself in.”

  “How about a firing squad right after my disbarment proceedings?” choked Devereaux.

  “Come on, Sam,” said the Hawk reassuringly. “They don’t do that anymore. The goddamned television loused it up.”

  “Oh, I forgot! You explained it once before—public relations, I remember now. You made it clear that there were other ways, such as shark-fishing trips for three and only two come back, or duck hunting in a blind where suddenly a dozen water moccasins show up when nobody knew there were any snakes around. Thanks a bunch, you psychotic maggot!”

  “I was only trying to keep you in line for your own benefit, son, because I cared for you. Like Annie still does to this day.”

  “I told you! Never mention that name to me!”

  “You really lack understanding, boy.”

  “If I may, General,” interrupted Pinkus from behind the desk, “what he lacks at the moment is a clarification of the circumstances, and he’s entitled to that.”

  “Do you think he can handle it, Commander?”

  “I believe he’d better try. Will you try, Samuel, or shall I call Shirley and explain that we are not at that art show because you appropriated her limousine, packed it with exuberant elderly Greeks, and forced me, as your employer, to attend to your personal difficulties—which, by extension, are not legally inseparable from my own?”

  “I’d rather face a firing squad, Aaron.”

  “A wise decision. So would I. I understand that Paddy has to send the velour curtains to the cleaners.… Let him up, General, and allow him to take my chair here.”

  “Behave now, Sam,” said Hawkins, cautiously getting to his feet. “There’s nothing to be gained by violence.”

  “That’s a fundamental contradiction to your entire existence, Mr. Exterminator.” Devereaux rose from the floor and proceeded to hobble around the desk as Pinkus gestured at his chair. Sam sat down with a resounding thump, his eyes on his employer. “What am I looking at and for, Aaron?” he asked.


  “I’ll give you an overview,” answered Pinkus, walking across the room to the mirrored bar recessed in the hotel suite’s wall. “I will also bring you a decent thirty-year-old brandy, a luxury your lovely mother and I have in common, for you will need the effects of a mild depressant as, indeed, we did prior to our examination of your ‘château’s lair.’ I may even give you a very generous portion, because it could not possibly alter the sobriety your attorney’s mind will be shocked into by what you read.” Aaron filled a crystal goblet with a richly dark-brown cognac, brought it to the desk, and placed it in front of his employee. “You are about to read the incredible, and after doing so, you’re going to have to make the most important decision of your life. And may the God of Abraham—said Abraham who I sincerely believe has royally screwed up—forgive me, but I, too, shall have to make a momentous decision.”

  “Cut the metaphysical stuff, Aaron. What am I looking for? What’s your overview?”

  “In a matzo ball, my young friend, the United States government stole the lands of the Wopotamis through a series of conspiracies in which promises were spelled out in treaties, said treaties subsequently determined never to have existed, yet actually buried in the sealed archives of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.”

  “Who the hell are the Wopotamis?”

  “An Indian tribe whose territories extended north along the Missouri River, including all lands within the flights of a thousand arrows to what is now Fort Calhoun, then west following the Platte to Cedar Bluffs, south to Weeping Water, and east to Red Oak City in Iowa.”

  “So what’s the big deal? Historical real estate was compensated by the coin-of-the-era as spelled out by the Supreme Court in—I think in 1912 or 1913.”

  “Your photographic memory is, as usual, extraordinary, Sam, but you’re permitting a gap, a lapse, as it were.”

  “I never do that! I’m perfect—legally, that is.”

  “You’re referring to treaties that were part of the record.”

  “What other kind were there?”

  “Those that were buried, Sam.… That’s what’s in front of you now. Read them, my young friend, and render me your astute legal opinion in an hour or so. In the meantime, drink the brandy sparingly—your instinct may be to swill, but don’t, just sip.… There are pads and pencils in the upper-right drawer and the brief starts with the stack on your left, marked alphabetically in succeeding sheaves across the desk. You’ll want to make notes, I’m certain of that.” Aaron turned to the Hawk. “General, I think it would be a good idea if we left Sam alone. Every time he looks at you I sense that his concentration goes astray.”