The Language Of Cannibals Part 9

"I'm on my way to Dayton, Ohio. That's where Jay Acton was supposedly born; for openers, I'm going to gather evidence to prove otherwise. But the danger is that I may unknowingly set off some built-in warning signals when I start to snoop around, and these would serve to warn Acton that somebody else is on to him. I don't want to do Hendricks any favors; Acton has to be frozen in place. What I want you to do is jail the b.a.s.t.a.r.d right now and find a way to keep him in jail while I go to work on him."

Mosely slowly swiveled around to face me, then raised his eyebrows. "You'd like me to put a man in jail, and keep him in jail, so that you won't end up in jail. Is that right?"

"If you like. I don't want him to get away."

"What do you suggest I charge him with?"

"Start off with suspicion of murder. Then trot out your best prosecutor to argue against bail on the grounds that very serious espionage charges may be pending against Mr. Acton. Make sure the local press hears about that. Believe me, once he's canned and the press starts to sniff around him, you'll have lots of help. Once it looks to Hendricks like the commie is out of the bag, it will look and feel as if you're holding an FBI convention in Cairn. They'll want to grab the credit. But the first move has to be made, and then the rest will follow."

"You say."

"I say."

"Somehow, I can imagine a number of different scenarios as to how things could turn out, and I don't like any of them."

"Give me two days. That's all I'll need to get the ball rolling a" and the FBI will be taking him off your hands long before that, if you'll do the other things I suggested."

"I'm not sure you're aware of what you're asking me to do, Frederickson, or what this could cost me. I'm not sure you're fully aware of what it could cost you. Not only is what you want to do of questionable legality, but you propose to duke it out with some very, very heavy people."

"Look, Mosely, I appreciate your feeling that I'm putting you in a box, but that's Jay Acton's fault, not mine. You're the chief of police in Cairn, and a man was murdered here."

"That hasn't been determined yet."

"You're not listening to me, Chief. The fact that the murderer is most probably a KGB agent is really beside the point, but it complicates matters in this case. I'm just trying to simplify things. The way I see it, you have a chance to be a hero; you're going to be the small-town cop who bagged a KGB operative. This is going to be a very big story, and you're going to be a part of it one way or another. It's Hendricks and the FBI you'll have to fight for credit, not me. You'll have to take my word for it when I tell you I've had enough publicity bulls.h.i.t to last me a lifetime. My only interest is in nailing the man who murdered my friend."

"d.a.m.ned if I don't believe you, Frederickson," Mosely said drily as he rocked slightly in his chair. "The problem is that in all the scenarios I can imagine, I get flushed right down the toilet along with you. In effect, you're asking me to aid and abet you in violating a man's legal rights, and possibly jeopardizing national security interests, while you pursue a personal vendetta."

"You've got it a.s.s-backward, Chief, which is exactly how Hendricks a" and Culhane, if he knew about it a" would like you to have it. I'm trying to bag a murderer, and in doing so, I'll be removing a possible threat to national security."

"You're insane."

"That may well be, but bear in mind that if you don't do something to freeze Acton in place, and he skips, you could end up getting some decidedly negative publicity. If I do Hendricks's work for him and scare Acton away, the FBI is going to need a scapegoat. They may not stop with me. So help me, Chief. Be a hero. No gain without pain. Go for it."

Mosely's response was to grunt, abruptly rise from his chair, and head for the door. "Wait here for me, Frederickson."

"Where are you going, Chief?" I asked, half rising from my chair. "If you're going to pick up Acton now, you'd better take some men with you. He's probably armed."

"I'll only be a few minutes," he said over his shoulder as he walked out of the office, closing the door behind him.

It was thirty-two minutes, to be exact, and Mosely got back just as I was preparing to get up and leave. He opened the door and entered the office looking tense, decidedly sheepish, and more than a little embarra.s.sed. The reason for his discomfort stormed into the office right on his heels, fairly flew across the room toward me, and stopped barely inches away, hovering over me and trembling with fury. He was dressed in a pair of floral-pattern Bermuda shorts with matching short-sleeve shirt. He'd apparently dressed in a pretty big hurry, because the cordovan shoes he was wearing were untied. The tremor in his right hand was now especially p.r.o.nounced. His close-set black eyes gleamed with rage a" but also, I thought, with fear. His graying black hair was uncombed and stuck out from the sides of his head. Sweat ran down both sides of his crooked nose. Elysius Culhane no longer looked like a well-dressed thug, but merely a sweaty, extremely upset thug.

"What are you doing, Frederickson?!" Culhane screamed as he pounded the desk beside me. "Just what the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?!"

"It looks like you got the bad news, Mr. Culhane," I said as I glanced across the room at Mosely, who was standing stiffly with his back to us as he pretended to study a painting of a sailboat. The scarred flesh of his neck around his collar was very red.

"You can't do this to me, Frederickson!" Culhane shouted, pounding his fist on the desk again for emphasis.

I was getting a lot of Culhane's saliva in my face. I rose from my chair, stepped behind it. "Do this to you, Mr. Culhane? n.o.body's doing anything to you."

"You're irresponsible!"

"Irresponsible? I'm not the one who hired himself a KGB agent just because his rhetoric put him to the right of Genghis Khan. How many of this nation's secrets have been leaked to you, Culhane, secrets that the Russians are now privy to?"

Culhane's jaw muscles worked, and for a moment I thought he was going to spit in my face. He didn't. Instead, he clenched his trembling hands to his sides, took a step backward, and drew himself up very straight. "You've made some very serious accusations, Frederickson," he said thickly, his rage making him slur his words together.

"I'd call them shocking. But you're not accused of anything but poor judgment and gullibility. My only interest is in nailing the KGB agent on your staff."

"This is none of your business, Frederickson! I want you to know I've already spoken to a very high-ranking FBI official, and he informs me that you're endangering national security! He's considering issuing a warrant for your arrest!"

"It'll be a cold day in h.e.l.l before Edward J. Hendricks issues a warrant for my arrest, Culhane. It was never a possibility. Would you like to see me on trial? You'd be my first witness. I'm sure there are no fewer than five thousand reporters in this country who'd love to hear the story of the spokesman for the far right who, for years, has been using a KGB officer as an advisor."

"Think about the country, Frederickson! Do you really think it's in the best interests of the United States to have a story like that made public? It will make the whole nation look foolish!"

"Spare me, Culhane. It's not hard to figure out who's going to look foolish."

"I'm warning you, Frederickson!"

"Don't waste your time, Culhane; I've been threatened by really scary people. Let's talk about the real issue here. I note that you haven't tried to defend Acton; you haven't even suggested that I could be wrong. After your talk with your buddy Hendricks, I think you know better. With nothing more than your aide's Social Security number, which I have, I can prove he isn't who he says he is and that he wasn't born where and when he says he was. I have evidence he was born in Russia. I told all this to Hendricks, and it looks like he told you. All you're concerned about right now is your own a.s.s. If you want to minimize any damage to your reputation as a fire-breathing, clear-thinking, hard-nosed movement conservative who would never let the Russians pull the wool over his eyes, I suggest you get with my program. Tell your employee over there to slap the cuffs on Acton and haul him into one of the cells he's got here. And then tell your friend Hendricks that you will not stand for any cover-up, and you insist that justice be done. I want to see a little patriotic fervor on your part regarding this matter. Acton may have made a fool of you, but you'll have the last laugh by helping to get him locked up and brought to justice. How about it, Culhane? Want to help me catch a commie spy?"

Elysius Culhane's response was to change colors like a traffic light a" red to yellow to green a" and retch. He got his hands over his mouth just in time to stop the initial flow of vomit, which oozed out through his fingers. Then he spun around and dashed from the office. I heard the door to the men's room out in the corridor open, and slam shut.

"I can't believe you did what you did, Mosely," I said in a low, tense voice as I came out from behind the protective barrier of the chair and started across the room toward Cairn's chief of police. Contempt tasted sour in my mouth, and I wanted to make sure there was no doubt in the other man's mind just what I thought of him. "Did you think this would be like fixing a traffic ticket? Where the f.u.c.k are your brains?"

Mosely spun around on his heels. His face was even redder, and continued embarra.s.sment swam in his eyes along with an uneasy mix of anger and shame. But there was nothing apologetic about his tone. "Where the f.u.c.k are yours, Frederickson?!" he snapped. "You're in way, way over your head on this, and you refuse to see it! What want just isn't as important as you seem to think it is! Maybe you're not as important as you think you are! You're just one big, f.u.c.king headache. It's not the business of this police department to help you carry out a personal vendetta. There are other issues involved here, big issues involving the reputations of important people as well as the good of the country. I'm no right-winger, Frederickson, but I'm not an ideological neuter, a man without a country, like you, either. I care about this country, and I've heard enough from you to know that you don't really give a rat's a.s.s about the United States. Maybe you don't really give a rat's a.s.s about anything except what you want, which in this case is revenge. If Jay Acton is a spy, then it's going to be taken care of. What f.u.c.king right do you have to say that you're right, and Elysius Culhane and the whole FBI are wrong? What right do you have to ask me to put my career on the line just so you can go off sharpshooting on your own? You have no right, Frederickson! So f.u.c.k off!"

I took a deep breath and backed away a few steps, retreating from my own anger as well as from Chief of Police Dan Mosely. I knew now that I had wasted my time in returning to Cairn and certainly wasted my energy by getting angry at Mosely.

"Do you think Culhane is going to respect you for this?" I asked quietly. "Do you think he's going to reward you or that your job is safer now? Forget it. If he and his right-wing buddies can engineer a scoot by Acton before he's caught, you're just going to be a continuing embarra.s.sment to Culhane. You're making a big mistake, and by the time you realize it, it will be too late. I suspect you're not going to be feeling too good about it."

Mosely shook his head. "The leaders of this country aren't as corrupt or incompetent as you think they are, Frederickson. I'm keeping you from making a big mistake. There'll come a time when you'll thank me for this."

"Did you call Culhane or go and pick him up?"

Mosely stared at me for a time, and I didn't think he was going to answer. But he finally said, "I called him."

"Was Acton there when you spoke to him?"

"He's out sailing."

"I guess we have to learn to be thankful for small favors."

"Get out of here, Frederickson. If you want to end up with your a.s.s in a federal prison, do it on your own time. I don't want to see or hear from you again."

I was trying to select an appropriate response from my reservoir of witty repartee when Elysius Culhane, now looking merely very pale, came back into the office. His hair was wet, matted down and combed straight back. He'd done a fairly good job of cleaning himself up, but there was still a strand of moist vomit that he apparently wasn't aware of staining die front of his shirt. He walked to the middle of the room, stopped a few paces away from me.

"You listen to me, Frederickson," he said, calmer now, but still slurring his words together slightly. "I'm not going to waste any more time arguing with you. I will not allow you to trash my reputation and career, and I will not allow you to use this unfortunate matter to subject the good, G.o.d-fearing, and patriotic people of this great nation to ridicule a" which is certainly what you would like to do. As you know, I have very powerful friends in Washington. So do you. But I suspect that I have more than you do, and if it starts making the rounds that you're a traitor, that left-wing, candy-a.s.s Shannon is going to run from you like a stuck pig. A traitor's what you'd be, because damaging my reputation would be a victory for the communists, something they sorely need right now. The Russians would have the whole world laughing at us. You're perfectly willing to be used as a propaganda tool by this nation's enemies."

"Jesus Christ, Culhane, would you believe that you actually have the capacity to make me feel sorry for you? You really do believe all that s.h.i.t you say you believe, don't you? You can actually make yourself believe anything you want, and reason has nothing to do with it. Elysius Culhane in Wonderland. And here I thought you were just a hypocritical con man who'd learned to make a good living spouting garbage and waving the flag."

"That's the communist in you talking, Frederickson; that's Russian propaganda. People like you are what's wrong with this country. And don't count on your friend, Mr. Lippitt, who everyone knows dotes on the Frederickson brothers like sons. The Defense Intelligence Agency is small potatoes compared with the FBI and CIA. If Jay Acton is a KGB spy like you say he is, then the proper authorities will take care of the matter. But if you try to interfere any longer in any way, if you dare to even whisper a word to anyone about a KGB agent on my staff, I will sue you for slander and libel for everything you and your big creep of a brother have. And those powerful friends of mine will make sure I win. Cross me on this, Frederickson, and I will see that you lose your licenses, as well as all your possessions. You and your brother will be ruined. You are definitely to take this as a threat. If you try to use the information you have to harm this country that I love, I will crush you. Do I make myself perfectly a" ?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Culhane," I said mildly. "You've got throw-up on the front of your shirt. It's really disgusting."

"Huh a" ?"

That seemed as good an exit line as any, and as Elysius Culhane looked down at the front of his shirt, I walked around him and out of the office. I gave the door at the entrance to the town hall a good kick on my way out, but only managed to hurt my toe. Still seething, I walked quickly to where Beloved Too was parked on the street, got in, started the motor, and popped the clutch. Beloved Too's tires spun, and I left twin swaths of rubber behind as I shot away from the curb.

I started calming down and feeling considerably better by the time I reached the Cairn town limits. It was close to 5:00, but my flight out of LaGuardia wasn't until 9:15. Figuring I had plenty of time to pack and brief Garth on what I was up to before leaving for the airport, I stopped in Nyack a" in my opinion the finest, and certainly the funkiest, of the riverfront towns a" to get a liquor-laced ice-cream cone at a small ice-cream shop called Temptations. Then I sat on one of the two wood-and-iron benches outside to eat my cone and watch the weekend day-trippers from the city wandering by while I considered my position. All in all, I decided, things were not going all that badly.

I had been outraged by what I considered a lack of professionalism, cowardice, and a betrayal of my trust on the part of Dan Mosely. But on reflection, I decided that the policeman had probably done me a favor, albeit unwittingly; he'd certainly done Elysius Culhane no favor by informing him that his top aide was probably a KGB agent. In effect, Mosely's phone call had made Culhane a conscious, responsible player, and then Culhane, by confronting and threatening me, had dealt himself even deeper into the game. He now shared responsibility for what happened to Jay Acton. Despite all his bl.u.s.ter and self-delusion, I was fairly certain he knew that I was going to proceed apace. I was also fairly certain that Culhane, by the time he paused long enough to change his shirt, would realize that, under the circ.u.mstances, he really had no choice but to help catch the spy he had hired, and then try to capture as much of the credit as he could in order to defend himself against the ridicule and other hits he was certain to take. If anyone could pull strings to keep Acton safely behind bars for two or three days, it was Elysius Culhane; in the end Culhane, for his own reasons, could end up my strongest ally.

I finished my cone, climbed back into Beloved Too, and went south on Broadway to 9W, then headed for Exit 4 of the Palisades Parkway. To my left, the Tappan Zee Bridge bisected the Hudson River, which appeared unusually blue and sparkling in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. Farther on, the grand earthen dam that had given Piermont its name jutted halfway across the river, a relic of World War II. It had been a busy weekend, and I was starting to feel tired, lazy. That feeling didn't last long. I perked up considerably when I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a bulky pickup truck with a heavy steel plate welded to its front end come zipping up behind me to settle in only inches from my rear b.u.mper. The man behind the wheel was wearing a ski mask a" a bright red one, with Ho Ho Ho embroidered in green across the forehead.

Tailgating truck drivers wearing ski masks in August tend to make me jittery. I snapped on my seat belt and shoulder harness, tightened the straps as far as they would go, then took my Beretta from the glove department and laid it on the seat beside my thigh before tromping on the accelerator. My abrupt acceleration saved me from the full force of impact as the steel plate welded to the truck's front end struck me in the rear, but it was still enough to send me into a slight power skid. I straightened out, floored the accelerator again. The man behind me obviously had a few horses under his hood, because he immediately started gaining on me again.

Route 9W along this section was two-laned, winding and very narrow, with virtually no shoulders; trees lined the highway to my right, and to my left was all steep, tree-covered embankment with small houses nestled in alcoves all the way down to the river. There just wasn't that much room to maneuver. The next town was perhaps five or six miles ahead; there I could power slide off the highway into the parking lot of a restaurant or service station. But I was going to have to get there first, before I was shoved off the road into a tree.

Hoping to give my oversized partner in b.u.mper tag something else to think about besides the fun of ramming me, I picked up my Beretta, switched it to my left hand, reached around, and winged a shot over my right shoulder. The rear window shattered, but when I looked into my rearview mirror I could see that I had missed the truck's windshield entirely. The driver was once again coming up on me fast.

There was a car coming the other way. I furiously honked my horn and flashed my headlights; the driver of the other car, apparently thinking that I was warning him of a speed trap ahead of him, honked and flashed back, waved cheerily as he sped past. I fired again, this time half turning in my seat and taking my eyes off the road for an instant in an effort to get off a better shot.

I turned back just in time to see the armored front end of a huge semi-trailer cab easing out into my lane from a side road. The driver of the second truck wore no ski mask, either because it would have hurt his heavily bandaged face or because he saw no need to hide his features from the man he intended to see dead. The grimly leering, bruised and bandaged, but clearly recognizable face of Gregory Trex was visible in the truck cab's side window. Crashing into the cab meant certain death for me and probably wouldn't do more than slightly addle the granite-headed Trex. My options were the ultimate in slim pickings.

I whipped the steering wheel to the left, then released my grip on the wheel and locked my hands behind my neck, bracing as the car hit the slight shoulder on the left and went airborne. This, I thought as I waited for the impending crash and darkness, was the last car I was going to name Beloved.

I didn't have long to wait.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

I regained consciousness a" in what I a.s.sumed was a hospital bed a" with a skull that felt like someone had tried to split it down the center with a chisel, a mouth that felt and tasted like it was filled with steel wool soaked in dirty turpentine, and the terrible fear that I'd been partially blinded. I lay in a dim pool of pale yellow light cast by a bulb set somewhere in the wall above my head. Virtually everything beyond a three-foot radius was impenetrable darkness; what I could see out of my left eye was blurred and milky, and I could see nothing at all out of my right eye. I grabbed for the blind eye. Pain shot through my head and right shoulder, but I was rewarded, if that was the proper term, with the feel of a heavy bandage covering the right side of my face. Maybe I hadn't been blinded after all. I groaned, closed my good eye against the pain. When I opened it, a blurred but instantly recognizable shape, complete with full beard and shoulder-length hair, was leaning over me.

"Why do I have the distinct feeling that I should have stuck around Sat.u.r.day to listen to your bad news?" Garth said in a voice that was wry, yet heavily laden with emotion.

"A comedian is just what I need, Garth. Ha ha."

"Sorry about that. Just my way of showing how happy I am to find you alive. I pa.s.sed your wreck on the way here, and it gave me a few anxious moments."

"What's the news on me? Did I lose an eye?"

Garth laid one of his large, powerful hands on my left shoulder, squeezed it very gently. "No. You're going to be all right, brother. For a time they thought you'd fractured your skull, but X rays show otherwise. Mild concussion, lots of cuts, sc.r.a.pes, and bruises to keep the other bruises you had company, but you'll live. You've got a twelve-st.i.tch gash over your right eye, but the eye itself is undamaged; they just found it easier to bandage it the way they did. You've lost a little scalp and hair on the right side of your head, but you were thinking of getting a haircut this week anyway, right?"

"There you go again with another real knee-slapper."

"How do you feel, Mongo?"

"Garth, my physical and mental states of being lend the term 'feeling like s.h.i.t' new depths of meaning."

He began to gently knead my shoulder in a way that relaxed my muscles, and somehow began to ease the twin suns of white-hot pain that were blazing behind my eyes. "That was some job of flying you did in the Volkswagen, brother," he said softly, his tone soothing, almost hypnotic. "You must have sailed better than a hundred feet through the air going down that hillside; you flew right between the eaves of two houses, rolled over, and landed on top of a tree beside some guy's deck. You made him spill his drink. When the paramedics finally managed to climb the tree, they found you hanging upside down in your harness. You're a h.e.l.l of an advertis.e.m.e.nt for seat belts and harnesses." He stopped the kneading, eased himself carefully down on the side of the bed. When he spoke again, all traces of warmth and humor were gone from his voice. "What the h.e.l.l happened, Mongo? What's going on here?"

I worked my tongue over my gummy lips, tried to clear my throat. "Get me some water, will you?"

"Watch your eye," Garth said as he rose from the bed.

He turned on the light, came back, and poured me a gla.s.s of water from a plastic carafe on a table beside the bed. Then he sat down again, gently raised me up, and handed me the gla.s.s. As I sipped the water, he gently rubbed my back between the shoulder blades, then kneaded the back of my neck. Incredibly, my nausea and pain began to ease, and the vision in my uncovered left eye began to clear somewhat. If I was ever to bet on the healing power of the laying on of hands, it would be Garth's hands I'd bet on. They were hands that, more than a few times in the past, since his poisoning with nitrophenyldienal, had been ready to kill a" never inappropriately, but often prematurely, at least in my opinion. But they were also, most definitely, a healer's hands.

"So," I said as I drained off the water and handed him back the gla.s.s, "where am I?"

"Cairn Hospital. I'm told it's a very good one."

"What time is it?"

"Three o'clock in the morning, Monday. I got home around six yesterday, found your note. When you weren't home by nine, I picked up the phone and called the police and the hospital. Bingo. That's how I found out you'd been in an accident."

"It was no accident; it was an on-purpose. Two guys ran me off the road."

Garth grunted, as if he wasn't surprised. The knotted muscles in his jaw and neck were the only sign of his anger and concern. He refilled the water gla.s.s, then pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down in it. When he spoke, his voice was low, but humming with tension. "What was the bad news you wanted to give me on Sat.u.r.day, Mongo?"

"Oh, that," I said, rolling over on my side and propping myself up on a very sore elbow. "You mean the bad news you said I should take care of?"

"Come on, Mongo."

"The bad news on Sat.u.r.day was that I'd become convinced Michael was murdered. Today's bad news is that the KGB agent who probably murdered Michael works for Elysius Culhane. Naturally, Culhane isn't too eager for this fact to become public knowledge, and the FBI seems perfectly willing to help him cover it up. Cairn has a chickens.h.i.t police chief who doesn't seem inclined to do anything about it, and then there's the minor matter of the possible existence of a death squad in Cairn, which may be responsible for me being here."

"Whoa, Mongo. I feel I've done sufficient groveling, so stop trying to be clever and just start from the beginning."

I did, relating what I'd learned and everything that had happened from the time I arrived in Cairn on Friday afternoon to the moment on Sunday afternoon when I yanked on Beloved Too's steering wheel and went soaring off into s.p.a.ce. Garth listened in silence, the steady, bright gleam in his limpid eyes his only display of emotion. When I finished I was exhausted, once again in pain, and with increasingly blurred vision in my good eye. Garth seemed to sense this; he leaned forward in his chair and once again began to knead the muscles in my back and neck with his powerful but incredibly gentle hands.

"Okay," Garth said softly. "First, let's try to sort out this attempt to kill you. Trex and one of his buddies ran you off the road. The problem is that n.o.body seems to have seen it happen."

"Who reported the accident?"

"The guy who spilled his drink when you landed in the tree next to his deck. He just saw the car come sailing out of nowhere and land on top of the tree; he didn't see what happened up on the road, and no other witnesses have come forward. Do you think the ambush was Trex's idea?"

"He sure as h.e.l.l had a powerful itch to kill me."

"And he was waiting for you in ambush. He knew you'd probably be using 9W to get to the Palisades Parkway. How did he know you were in Cairn? Could he have been following you?"

I shook my head. "He couldn't have been out of the hospital himself for more than a short time before he came at me. Besides, Gregory Trex wasn't interested in following me, only killing me a" and, if he'd been following me, he'd have had a lot better places to kill me than on 9W. Even if they weren't in trucks, that s.h.i.thead and his friends wouldn't be good enough to tail me without my knowing it. He must have seen my car parked outside Town Hall, or seen me go in. He figured I'd be going home eventually, so he rounded up a buddy and set up the ambush."

"Maybe Culhane put Trex and his buddy on to you."

I thought about it, nodded. "Could be; it would be enough simply to drop a hint to Trex that I was in town, and Trex would take it from there. After Mosely called him, Culhane had time to call Hendricks at the FBI before he came to confront me. Maybe he also took the time to call Trex."