The Road to Omaha: A Novel

  “Don’t you read the trades?”

  “The what?”

  “The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, those bibles of soaked-orange land.”

  “I’m not so hot on the real Bible, either. What about them?”

  “Madge is one of the hottest writers in town! She’s so hot she can get out of town and write in New York or Connecticut. Her last screenplay, Mutant Homicidal Lesbian Worms, cleaned up!”

  “I’ll be damned. I always knew Midgey had a literary bent, but—”

  “Don’t use that word iiterary’!” Lady Cavendish broke in. “Out here it’s death.… Here, I’ll give you her telephone number, but you give me a couple of minutes to reach her first and tell her to expect your call. She’ll be so excited!”

  “Ginny, I’m in New York now.”

  “Isn’t she the lucky one! She’s in two-o-three.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The area code, a place called Greenwich, but not in England. Call her in five minutes, sweetie. And when this is all over, whatever it is, you must come out and meet Chauncey. He’d really like that because he’s a great admirer of yours—he was with the Fifth Grenadiers; the Fifth or Fifteenth or Fiftieth, I’ve never gotten it straight.”

  “The Grenadiers were among the finest, Ginny! You’ve really bettered yourself, and you can bet your nylons I’ll be out to see both of you!”

  The sun was briefly shining on MacKenzie Hawkins as he hung up the pay phone in the Waldorf lobby, having scratched his third wife’s telephone number on the marbelite counter with the point of his penknife. He was so pleased with the turn of events that he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a cigar, masticated it until the proper juices flowed, then lighted it with a field match, also scratched on the counter. A matronly lady in a loud print summer dress at the wall pay phone to his left began coughing violently. She glared at the Hawk between seizures and managed to spew out.

  “Such a proper-looking man with such a despicable habit!”

  “No worse than yours, madam. The management insists that you stop taking those young weight lifters up to the rooms.”

  “Good God, who told…?” The proper lady blanched and raced away in panic as Mac’s phone rang.

  “Commander Y?” said Hawkins quietly.

  “General, it’s time we met.”

  “Optimum, sir! But if you’re still dead, how can we?”

  “I’ve got such a hell of a disguise my own mother wouldn’t know me, may she rest in peace.”

  “Sorry for your loss, fella. Always tough to lose your mother.”

  “Yeah, she’s in Lauderdale.… Listen, I got a lot on my mind so we gotta talk fast, mainly how you get to that hearing two days from now. Have you got a plan? ”

  “One’s forming up, Commander, that’s why I wanted us to confer. I’m very impressed by the guard detail you sent us—”

  “Detail? What details?”

  “The meres.”

  “Who?”

  “The two men you hired for our additional protection.”

  “Oh, yeah, I gotta lot on my mind. Sorry about the Nazi, I figured he’d shave with pigshit if you ordered him to.”

  “Nazi? What Nazi?”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot, he got lost. So what’s this plan?”

  “First, I’d like your permission to include the detail.”

  “Include whatever you like—like what details are you referring to?”

  “The guards, Commander.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry about the Kraut. Look, I gotta talk fast, and since your plan isn’t solid, I’d feel one hell of a lot better if you and that nut lawyer of yours were in my immediate presence, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sam? You’ve heard about Sam Devereaux?”

  “Not pronounced that way, but I understand that when word was leaked to the Five-Sider brass at Defense that this Deveroxx was your lousy lawyer, they wanted blood, like with a grenade implanted in his hemorrhoids. It seems when he was with the IG he fingered the wrong army banana in Cambodia.”

  “That’s all been settled, Commander, the error’s been rectified.”

  “It may be from your mouth to God’s ear, but it ain’t reached the Joint Chiefs. A couple of those West Pointys want to hang the son of a bitch. He’s up there with you on the most-wanted list.”

  “I hadn’t counted on that complication,” said the Hawk curtly. “There’s no cause for all this hostility, there really isn’t.”

  “Hoo-hay, as Little Joey would say,” yelled Vinnie the Bam-Bam. “Maybe you forgot the end of the road with this scam of yours! SAC—in this case, it’s got nothin’ to do with a bag of potatoes.”

  “Yes, I understand that, Commander, but a nonviolent resolution is still possible—not likely, but possible. It’s worth a try.”

  “Let me tell you what I got in mind,” interrupted Mangecavallo. “I want you and the legal lasagna down in D.C. by tonight. I’ll fly up, you fly down, and I’ll put you in storage until we take you in an armored car to the Court. What could be better?”

  “You obviously have little experience in gray to black operations, Commander Y. Breaching the enemy’s lines is simple; it’s how you infiltrate beyond that counts. Each point to target-zero has to be calculated.”

  “Speak fuckin’ English, huh, pal!”

  “Every barrier to the Chief Justice’s chambers has to be surmounted. There’s a way to do it—maybe.”

  “Maybe? We got no time for maybes!”

  “Maybe we do. And I agree with you we meet tonight in Washington, only I’ll tell you where.… At the Lincoln Memorial, two hundred paces from the front and two hundred paces to the right. Eight o’clock sharp. Got it, Commander?”

  “Got what? I got bullshit!”

  “I have no time for hot-headed civilians,” said MacKenzie. “I, too, have many things on my mind. Be there!”

  “Brokey, this is Mac,” said Hawkins, retrieving his telephone credit card as the strains of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” were cut off by Brokemichael’s voice.

  “Jesus, you don’t know what you’ve done to me, Mac! The goddamned Secretary of State, for Christ’s sake. He wants my ass!”

  “Trust me, Brokey, you may have his. Now listen to me and do exactly what I tell you to do. Catch a plane to Washington and …”

  “Frank, this is Hawk. Did you do it? Did you reach that wall-eyed son of a bitch, the Secretary of State, or are you history on Embassy Row?”

  I did it, you bastard, and all he wants are my stripes and my perks, you deep sixer! I’m dead in the basket!”

  “Au contraire, Admiral, you may have upgraded your consultancy. He knows the time, the place?”

  “He told me to shove it and never call him again!”

  “Good. He’ll be there.”

  • • •

  MacKenzie Hawkins stepped back from the pay phone, relit his cigar, and looked over at the open-air bar across the crowded lobby. He had a pressing urge to go over to that shadowed sanctuary of long-ago memories when he was a young officer in love, always temporarily but genuinely in love with someone, but he knew there was no time for such indulgence—although he wished there were.… Madge, his third wife, as lovely and as meaningful to him as the others; he had loved them all, not only for what they were, but for what they could become. Once, when he and an overeducated lieutenant hid out in a North Vietnamese cave off the Ho Chi Minh trail and there was nothing to fill the hours but whispered conversation, they had exchanged life stories. There was nothing else to do but be discovered and die.

  “You know what you’ve got, Colonel?”

  “What’s that, boy?”

  “A Galatea complex. You want to turn every beautiful stone image into a thing of reality and knowledge.”

  “Where’d you get that shit?”

  “Psychology One, University of Michigan, sir.”

  Was there anything wrong with that, whether the image was stone or flesh? But Madge, like
the others, had a far-off dream—to be a writer. Mac had winced privately at her attempts, but there was no denying her ability to snap open one’s eyes at her far-out characters and her wild stories.… So Midgey’s time had come. It was not exactly Tolstoy, but Mutant Homicidal Lesbian Worms had a place somewhere, and as barren as that place was, he was sure his third wife would keep it in amusing perspective. MacKenzie turned back to the pay phone, processed his credit card, and pushed the numbers. The ringing stopped; the phone was lifted off the hook and all that could be heard were screams of horror, of terror.

  “Help, help!” shrieked the female voice over the line. “The worms are slithering up from the floors and out of the walls! Thousands of them! They’re after me! It’s in their weaving heads! They’re going to assault me!”

  Abruptly there was silence, the silence of dread.

  “Hold on, Midgey, I’m on my way! What’s the goddamned address?”

  “Oh, come on, Hawk,” said the calm voice suddenly over the line. “That’s only a promo tape.”

  “What …?”

  “The thing they play on the radio and television commercials. The kids love it, and their parents want me deported.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Ginny called a few minutes ago and nobody has this number but us girls and my agent, who never calls me unless there’s a problem, and wouldn’t you love it, but there never is! You did this for me, Mac, and I’ll never know how to thank you enough.”

  “Then Ginny didn’t tell you?”

  “Oh, the screen treatment thing, the ten-page proposal; sure she did. I’ve got the courier service on standby, waiting for your address. Just give the driver the tapes and you’ll have something by morning. Good Lord, it’s the least I can do!”

  “You’re a swell girl, Midgey, and I really appreciate this.”

  “ ‘Swell girl’—that’s so like you, Hawk. But if the truth be told, you’re the swellest guy any of us girls ever knew—except sometimes I think you went too far with Annie.”

  “I didn’t do it—”

  “We know; she stays in touch and we’ve all promised not to say anything. My God, who’d believe it?”

  “She’s happy, Madge.”

  “I know, Mac. That’s your genius.”

  “I’m no genius—except maybe in certain military situations.”

  “Don’t try to sell that to four girls who had nowhere to go until you came along.”

  “I’m at the Waldorf,” said Hawkins abruptly as he wiped the start of a tear from his eye, revolted by its appearance. “Tell your courier service to go directly to Suite Twelve A; it’s in the name of Devereaux, in case he’s stopped or questioned.”

  “Devereaux? Sam Devereaux? That lovely, delicious boy!”

  “You stay in two-o-three, Midgey. He’s aged considerably and has a wife and four kids now.”

  “Son of a bitch, that’s a tragedy!” cried the third ex-wife of MacKenzie Hawkins.

  26

  The day at Swampscott passed in ennui, the lack of activity causing the three attorneys to make constant calls to their offices in the hope that someone wanted their individual judgments, expertise, decisions … anything. Unfortunately for each, as the games of summer were at full revel, no one seemed to require anything except bits of information relative to inconsequential problems. The idleness, compounded by the frustration of not knowing what the Hawk was doing, led to a degree of testiness, especially between Sam and Jennifer, the latter again ruminating on the whole insane situation.

  “Why did you and your mental permutation of a general ever come into my life, our lives?”

  “Hey, just wait a minute, I didn’t come into your life, you took a taxi to my house!”

  “I didn’t have a choice—”

  “No, of course not, the cabdriver pulled out a gun and said that’s where you’re going—”

  “I had to find Hawkins.”

  “If I recall correctly, and I do, Charlie Sunset found him first; and instead of saying ‘No, you can’t play in the tribe’s sandbox,’ he said ‘Sure you can, old man, let’s make a castle.’ ”

  “Unfair, unfair! He was tricked.”

  “Then as a lawyer he’d better have the fastest feet in ambulance row, because it’s the only way he’ll get clients.”

  “I won’t listen to you … you’re a bigot.”

  “Where feeble-minded apologists are concerned, I certainly am.”

  “I’m going for a swim—”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Why not? Aren’t there enough frenzied sharks out there for you?”

  “If there are, say adiós to Aaron and my mother, as well as Cyrus and Roman Z.”

  “They’re all swimming?”

  “Mother and Aaron wanted to, and our mercs said they couldn’t go alone.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “I don’t think they get paid if people drown.”

  “Why shouldn’t I join them?”

  “Because the giant Aaron Pinkus of Boston law said you ought to read and reread Mac’s brief until you can quote from it. As an amicus curiae you may be challenged by the Court.”

  “I’ve read and reread it and there’s no section I can’t quote from.”

  “What did you think?”

  “It’s brilliant … goddamned brilliant, and I hate it!”

  “Precisely my first reaction. He had no right being able to do it.… Is it true?”

  “You know, it could well be. The legends we all heard growing up, passed from generation to generation and undoubtedly exaggerated and twisted in the process, have a lot of melodramatic correlations. Even symbolically.”

  “What do you mean ‘symbolically’?”

  “Fables of animals anthropomorphized. The cruel albino wolf tricking the dark-furred goats into grazing in a mountain pass from which there was no escape except through the flames of a forest fire, a fire that spread down from the pass and through the fields, taking away their food, their homes, really.”

  “The bank in Omaha that was torched?” asked Devereaux.

  “Maybe. Who knows?”

  “Let’s both take a swim,” said Sam.

  “Sorry I blew up—”

  “An eruption now and then cools off the volcano. It’s an old Indian proverb—Navajo, I think.”

  “Forked-tongue lawman has horse tails for brains,” said Jennifer Redwing, laughing softly. “The flatlands of the Navajo don’t have mountains, much less volcanoes.”

  “You never saw a Navajo brave pissed off because his wife gave a turquoise armband to the flasher in the next tepee?”

  “You are incorrigible. Come on, let’s get suits.”

  “Let me take you to the cabana—it’s not the Casbah, but it might do.”

  “Let me give you a real Indian proverb. Wanchogagog manchogagog—oh, hell, in English, since there are two cabanas, it sort of means one for the girls and one for the boys. ‘You fish on your side, I’ll fish on my side, and nobody fishes in the middle.’ ”

  “How arcane, if not Victorian. No fun at all.”

  The kitchen door swung open as Desis One and Two appeared, both obviously in a hurry. “Where’s d’big black Cyrus?” asked Desi the First. “We gotta go!”

  “Go where? Why?”

  “Into Boston, Mr. Sam,” replied D-Two. “We got h’orders from the heneral!”

  “You talked to the general?” said Redwing. “I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

  “No teléfono ring here,” said D-One. “We call the hotel every hour to check with José Pocito. He tells us what to do.”

  “What are you going to Boston for?” asked Devereaux.

  “To pick up dat crazy actor, Mr. Major Sooton, and drive him to dee h’airport. The great heneral has talked to him and he expects us quick.”

  “What’s happening?” asked Jennifer.

  “I’m not sure you should ask,” cautioned Sam the lawyer.

  “We gotta hurry,” sai
d Desi the First. “Major Sooton says he gotta stop at some big store for correcto ‘attire,’ which I don’ t’ink is for an automobile.… Where ees Colonel Cyrus?”

  “On the beach,” replied a perplexed Redwing.

  “You get d’car, D-Two,” ordered D-One. “I’ll tell d’colonel and meet you in the garage. Pronto!”

  “Sí, amigo!”

  The adjutants raced away, one out to the beach by way of the sundeck, the other through the foyer to the garage off the circular drive. Sam turned to Jenny. “Did I say something about ‘Devereaux’s prophecy’?”

  “Why is he keeping us in the dark?”

  “It’s the devious part of his devious strategy.”

  “What?”

  “He doesn’t tell you what it is until he’s gone so far it’s irreversible. You can’t turn back.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” exclaimed Redwing. “Suppose he’s all wet, all wrong?”

  “He’s convinced that’s not possible.”

  “And you?”

  “If you take away his original premise, which is always wrong, his track record’s not bad.”

  “That’s not good enough!”

  “In fact, it’s really terrific, goddamnit.”

  “Why don’t I feel more reassured?”

  “Because the ‘goddamnit’ means he drives you to the edge of oblivion, and one day he’ll take that extra step and we’ll all go tumbling down.”

  “He’s going to have Mr. Sutton impersonate him, isn’t he?”

  “Probably; he’s seen him in action.”

  “I wonder where.”

  “Don’t even think about it. It’s easier that way.”

  Johnny Calfnose, resplendent in his brightly beaded buckskins and jacket, stared forlornly at the sheets of rain beyond the admissions window in the Wopotami Welcome Wagon Wigwam, a large, garishly painted structure in the shape of a covered wagon with the four sides of a colorful Indian tepee surging up from the center of the layers of canvas. When Chief Thunder Head had designed the edifice and brought in carpenters from Omaha to build it, the inhabitants of the reservation had looked on in bewilderment. The Council of Elders’ Eagle Eyes had asked Calf nose.

  “What’s that lunatic doing now? What’s it supposed to be?”

  “He says it represents the two images most associated with the old West. The pioneers’ covered wagon and the symbolic tepee from which the savage tribes came out to slaughter them.”