The Road to Omaha: A Novel

  “Don’t talk to my friend, Eleanor, that way—”

  “She’s my mother! Suppose I refused to have her Jaguar fixed?”

  “I’m sure I make a hell of a lot more money than you do, Counselor. I’ll take care of it!”

  “Wad chu want, Heneral?”

  “See that car over there? The one in front of those gates.”

  “Sure, I see. A gringo’s sitting in the front.”

  “I want him immobilized, the car incapacitated, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Ees not so hard. He goes to sleep and I rip out the plugs—ees done every night in Brooklyn. Unless you want him dead, which, frankly, Heneral, I do not do.”

  “Hell, no! I want to send back a message. They want our asses blown up, boy, and I want ’em to know they can’t do it!”

  “Ees done, Heneral. Den what?”

  “Come back to the hotel, to Mr. Pinkus’s floor, but cover your flanks. Four men in dumb black raincoats went up to waste all of us.… By the time you get there, I’ll probably have removed at least three of the bastards, but you make sure of the fourth.”

  “Hey! Why chu have all the fun? I’ll take t’ree, chu take one!”

  “I like your spirit, son.”

  “Wad about Desi-Two?”

  “I’m about to explain,” said Hawkins, turning to Aaron Pinkus. “Tell me, Commander, have you got some place nobody knows about, like a hideaway where you take, say, underprivileged women who might enjoy your company?”

  “Are you crazy! You don’t know Shirley!”

  “All right, I understand.… But there must be someplace off the beaten track where we can stay for a day or two.”

  “Well, the firm bought a ski lodge across the New Hampshire border because a very reliable client ran into terribly difficult times—the snow has been very irregular—”

  “That’s fine! We’ll join you there.”

  “But how will you know where it is?”

  “Das simple, Comandante,” intruded Desi the First. “D-Two wired only automobiles dat had teléfonos inside. We wrote down the números for both.” D-One pulled out a torn sheet of paper with two sets of numbers written across it. “See? My amigo, he has the same as dis.”

  “You two are really remarkable. I would very much like it if you’d call me—”

  “No time for medals, Commander!” interrupted the Hawk firmly. “Our mission’s not finished. Take Sam, his mother, and the Indian girl up to your place in New Hampshire. Now, get out of here! My sergeant and I have work to do!”

  The first two black raincoats never knew what happened. Each, to secure escape routes, stood by the exit doors and each in turn was taken from the staircase by the Hawk, rendered unconscious and stripped of all clothing, including his shorts. The third would-be assassin inched his way toward the Pinkus suite, only to be interrupted by a wavering, swiveling drunk, who, once past the killer’s body, swung around and delivered an immobilizing chi sai chop to the back of his neck. The fourth and last assassin Hawkins left to his adjutant, Desi the First. It was, after all, the responsibility of command to instill confidence in his immediate support troops. Actually, it turned out to be a lesson in patience, the mark of a truly superior deep-cover intelligence field man, thought Mac. He waited in the shadows of the exit door, behind which lay the unconscious, naked first killer from SFI. D-One silently emerged from the elevator in his white tie and tails and walked, again silently, halfway down the hallway, then pressed his back against the wall across from the Pinkus suite. For what seemed like the better part of an hour, but in reality was barely eight minutes, Desi the First remained immobile, barely breathing, and then a door opened two doors to his left and a man in a black raincoat came out, an automatic in his hand.

  “¡Iguana, José!” roared D-One, taking the would-be killer by such surprise that he never knew how the weapon was kicked out of his hand; nor would he ever know how he was rendered unconscious by a swift, hard fist in the middle of his forehead.

  “Outstanding!” said the general, walking out of the shadows. “I knew it was in you, son.”

  “Why didn’t chu do it, for Christ’s sake?”

  “On-scene evaluation, boy! It’s how we all get ahead.”

  “I coulda been killed!”

  “I had every confidence in you, Sergeant. You’re prime meat for Advance G-Two.”

  “Ees dat good?”

  “We’ll talk about it later. Right now we’ve got to strip this clown to his skin and get out of here. We’re all between a rock and a hard place, adjutant. We’ve got to concentrate on our next moves, and for you and me it’s joining the others somewhere up north.”

  “No problem, Heneral. Before I come back up here, I talked to my amigo on the car teléfono. Wherever dey go, Desi-Two will stay in the automobile so he can tell me where dey are.”

  “Fine tactics, son—” The Hawk stopped at the sound of a door opening and then voices. A couple, obviously middle-aged guests of the hotel, walked out of their room. “Quickly!” whispered Mac, reaching down for the unconscious body on the floor. “Stand him up as if he just puked.”

  “He came out dat door over there, Heneral. Ees still open!”

  “Let’s go!” Together, Hawkins and his adjutant dragged the limp figure to the open door under the astonished stares of the hotel guests.

  “Ees a crazy wedding downstairs, amigos!” shouted Desi the First, glancing behind him. “You wanna join de party?”

  “No … no, thank you,” said the middle-aged man, hurrying his wife toward the elevators.

  The ski lodge in the hills of Hooksett, New Hampshire, was rustic and sturdy, deserted and dank, and in the best of times would never be awarded more than two stars in the least impressive travel guide. Still, it was sanctuary, and operational in terms of electricity, heat, and telephone service. Also, as it was barely over an hour from Boston, Aaron Pinkus Associates found it to be a convenient out-of-the-city refuge for attorneys and teams of attorneys deliberating difficult cases. In fact, it had become so popular that Aaron had decided not to sell the property, opting instead for gradual and utilitarian remodeling.

  “We really must return those two cars,” said Pinkus anxiously to the Hawk, as they sat beside each other in deep leather chairs in the lodge’s former lobby. “There’ll be police bulletins out everywhere.”

  “Nothing to fear, Commander. My adjutants have ’em camouflaged in the back forty.”

  “That’s not the point, General. It’s grand theft and Sam and I—officers of the court, I remind you—were willing accomplices. I really must insist.”

  “Oh, hell, details! All right, I’ll have the sergeants drive ’em back and park ’em down the street from the hotel. It’s dark out now and even if they’re picked up, those cops won’t know how they landed up in the backseats of their patrol cars without their trousers. Hah!”

  “Thank you very much, General.”

  “Then they can wire up a couple of other vehicles—”

  “Please, that won’t be necessary! The firm has a standing arrangement with a car rental agency and my chauffeur, Paddy, can drive one automobile out here and a friend of his can bring another.”

  “They’ll have to pick up my adjutants. I’m not ready to dismiss them yet.”

  “Of course. Under the circumstances you’ve described, I’d feel much better if those two young men were around. Here, I’ll write out the address of the rental agency; they can all meet there.” Pinkus reached into his pocket and withdrew a memo pad.

  “Aaron, everything’s taken care of!” said Devereaux, somewhat louder than necessary as he walked into the ersatz Alpine lobby, Jennifer Redwing at his side. “The market in Hooksett is sending out a whole bunch of stuff and Red here said she can cook.”

  “How do you want the split case of gin and bourbon?” asked Jennifer. “Fried?”

  “Industrial lubricant, young lady.”

  “Also, quite possibly on your own expense sheet,” adde
d Pinkus. “How did you explain our presence?”

  “I said our whole first team was up here busting our asses over a mess of probate problems.”

  “Why probate?”

  “They think it sounds sexy. Credibility, Aaron.”

  “Mr. Pinkus?” interrupted Redwing, for the sixtieth time in twelve hours, glaring at Sam. “I’d like to use your phone to call San Francisco. I’ll reverse the charges, of course.”

  “My dear, you may turn down a lucrative career with my firm, but you may not embarrass me with such a ploy as reversing charges. You’ll have quiet in what was the manager’s office behind the counter over there—he wasn’t much of a manager and it isn’t much of an office, but you’ll be alone and your privacy assured.”

  “Thank you very much.” Jennifer turned and walked toward it as Hawkins got out of his chair.

  “Have you seen my sergeants, Sam?” he asked.

  “Would you believe they’re out back at the base of the hill about a hundred yards to the right trying to get that old rusted ski lift to work?”

  “Very enterprising,” said Aaron.

  “Very dumb,” said Devereaux. “That damn cable never worked properly from the beginning. I once got stuck thirty feet in the air for almost an hour, my lady of the day twenty feet in front of me screaming her head off. We drove back to Boston the moment we were down and I never got to see the bedroom.”

  “I suspect you’ve seen more than one since we assumed the mortgage.”

  “Hey, come on, Aaron. You yourself once told me to get out of the office and come up here to cool off.”

  “You were furious over losing a case you should have won,” said Pinkus, writing on his notepad, tearing off the page and handing it to the general. “Because the judge was an ignorant political hack who couldn’t follow your reasoning.… Also, if that was your method of cooling off, there was an inversion of temperatures.”

  “This legal stuff is way beyond me,” announced the Hawk. “I’ll go find my adjutants myself. I’ve decided to go into Boston with them. Little Joseph said he wanted a meeting, so I believe I should surprise him prior to our formal conference.… This is the car rental place?” Aaron nodded, and the Hawk walked to the door. “I’ll get back on my own. I want you to have two vehicles here.”

  “Fine, General. And when Miss Redwing is finished, I’ll reach Paddy Lafferty and set everything in motion.”

  “Good thinking, Commander.”

  “I’d get up and salute, General Hawkins, but I don’t think I can manage it.”

  Redwing closed the door of the minuscule office behind the counter, sat down at the desk, and picked up the telephone. She dialed her apartment number in San Francisco, startled by the fact that before the first ring was over the excited voice of her brother was on the line.

  “Yes?”

  “Charlie, it’s me—”

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”

  “It’s all too absurd, too incredible, and too insane to go into—”

  “Try every one of those adjectives to what I’ve learned!” interrupted the younger brother. “That nut son of a bitch outmaneuvered me—all of us—we’re screwed!”

  “Charlie, calm down,” said Jennifer, contrarily feeling her blood pressure rise to uncontrollable limits. “Calm down and speak slowly.”

  “Both are impossible, Sis!”

  “Try, Charlie.”

  “All right, all right.” In San Francisco, the brother took several audible deep breaths and did his best to be lucid. “Without my knowing it, without anyone telling me, a number of weeks ago our Chief Thunder Head convened the Council of Elders with some scumhead sleaze of a lawyer from Chicago calling the legal shots, and had himself legally proclaimed temporary sole and absolute arbiter of the Wopotami tribe for a period of six months.”

  “He can’t do that!”

  “He did, Sis. Notarized, authorized, and recognized by the court.”

  “He had to give something in return!”

  “He did that, too. A million dollars to be divided by the five members of the Council, millions more to be given to the whole tribe within the six-month period.”

  “Corruption!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “We’ll fight it in the courts!”

  “And, besides losing, make fools and heavy debtors out of our brothers and sisters?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For starters, how about Uncle Eagle Eyes, who bought a communal estate for the tribe’s oldest in some desert in Arizona that won’t have plumbing for a hundred years, if ever? And Aunt Doe Nose, who invested in the name of our women in an oil rig on Forty-first Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City, or Cousin Antelope Feet, who took over controlling interest in a distillery in Saudi Arabia, where they not only don’t make booze, they don’t drink it!”

  “They’re all over eighty years of age!”

  “Certified as mentally competent, so covered by the scum-head attorney from Chicago and approved by the Omaha court.”

  “I can’t believe this, Charlie. I’ve been with Hawkins most of the afternoon, and after a bumpy start he came around. Only a couple of hours ago he was so contrite, so genuine. He told me that our corporate trust was the right thing to do, that he’d go along with whatever the Council of Elders approved.”

  “Why not? He is the Council of Elders.”

  16

  Jennifer did not walk out of the small office into the Alpine lobby, she burst into it, exploding the space in front of her. “Where is he?” she said, in her voice the anger of nearby thunder, her eyes shooting out bolts of lightning. “Where is that son of a bitch?”

  “Obviously, you mean Sam,” answered Aaron Pinkus, leaning forward in the leather chair and pointing at the door leading to the kitchen. “He said he remembered where he had concealed a bottle of gin, a place where his shorter colleagues couldn’t reach it.”

  “No, I’m not talking about that son of a bitch, I mean the other one! The velvet-tongued idiot buffalo who’s about to face the combined wrath of the Sioux and the Comanche, delivered by a furious daughter of the Wopotamis.”

  “Our General?”

  “You can bet your tuchis on it!”

  “You speak Yiddish?”

  “I’m a lawyer; it goes with the territory. Where is that bastard?”

  “Well, I’m both apologetic, yet somewhat relieved, to tell you that he left for Boston with his two adjutants. He said something about meeting with a man named ‘Little Joseph,’ who apparently is the person who called him at the Ritz-Carlton. Our two stolen cars just raced down the drive only moments ago, thanks be to Abraham. With the blessings of God they will be returned without incident.”

  “Mister Pinkus! Do you know what that horrible, horrible man has done?”

  “Too many horrors to put into a medium-sized encyclopedia, I suspect. However, not the latest, which I gather you’re about to tell me.”

  “He bought our tribe!”

  “How extraordinary! How could he possibly do that?” Redwing told the Boston attorney everything she had learned from her brother Charlie. “May I ask you a question or two, perhaps three?”

  “Of course,” said Jennifer, throwing herself into the leather armchair next to Pinkus. “We’re screwed,” she added quietly, discouragingly. “We’re really screwed!”

  “Not necessarily, my dear. First, this Council of Elders. They may be wise and grand people, but have they been legally appointed as guardian ad litem for the Wopotami tribe?”

  “Yes,” mumbled Red.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It was my idea,” said Jennifer, only slightly louder, her embarrassment showing. “It gave them pride, which they sorely needed, and I never—never—thought that they’d ever convene in any major decision without consulting me or, in the event of my demise, the others of our group.”

  “I see. Were there any codicils to
the ad litem guardianships, say in the nature of the death or deaths of any or all of the appointees? Replacements, perhaps?”

  “Voted upon by the remaining members of the Council.”

  “Have there been any such replacements … who might have been, shall we say, ‘reached’ by General Hawkins?”

  “None. They’re all still alive. It’s the history of rare buffalo meat in their diets, I think.”

  “I see. And is there anywhere in the ad litem designation that makes mention of the selected children of the tribe who actually execute the fiduciary decisions of your people?”

  “No, that would have been demeaning. As with the Orientals, ‘face’ is terribly important to the Indians. We just knew—we assumed we knew—that should any problem arise, one of us would be called.… Frankly, myself.”

  “You’re speaking realistically, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But legally there’s no proviso in the papers of incorporation that illuminates and clarifies the function of your group?”

  “No.… Again pride, genuine pride. To include such a condition would mean there’s a council above the elders, and tribal tradition could not accept that. Now do you see what I mean? That horrible man controls my people. He can say and do whatever he wants in their name.”

  “I suppose you could always challenge him in the courts under the articles of conspiracy and possible fraud. However, in doing so, you’d have to tell your whole story, and that could be extremely disadvantageous for obvious reasons. Also, your brother does have a point—you could lose.”

  “Mr. Pinkus, of the Council’s five elders, three men and a woman are in their eighties, and the fifth is seventy-eight. None are equipped to deal with these legal complexities any more now than they were thirty years ago, which was zilch!”

  “They don’t have to be ‘equipped,’ Miss Redwing, they merely have to be sufficiently competent to understand the transaction and its benefits and liabilities. I submit they did, perhaps enthusiastically, even to the exclusion of yourself.”