The Devil's Good Boys, page 109
Swinging to Doc, she demanded, “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “Young lady, I once superintended over the execution of a Nazi colonel who'd been captured by my men in an ambush. This was late in the war. He was an SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer, a particularly dreadful creature responsible for murdering many innocent Jews and others, including someone very dear to me ...”
He paused, not finishing the thought.
“And?” I said.
Doc seemed to shake himself. “Just like Spiker, at the very end he saw spirits from hell, young McGrath. Devils. This sort of thing is reported less often nowadays. The dying of our day are heavily sedated. If demons really come – or angels driving chariots of fire – a dying man or woman cannot tell us about them.”
I glanced at Spiker's body. Suspended by his wrists, prosthetic leg at an obscene angle, he was pale and bloodless and scrawny as a starved alley cat. Turning away, I said to Tuffy, “You may have done Spiker a kindness.”
She smiled grimly. “How do you figure that?”
“In the scriptures ...”
“Don't tell me about the scriptures! I don't want to hear it! I don’t believe in them.”
“Nevertheless, God repeatedly says vengeance belongs to Him alone, Tuffy. Maybe you diminished what God had in store for Major Harry Spiker.”
Her laugh was scornful. “Nothing could be worse than what I did to him, Muscle Brain! Or what happened afterward. I only wish I'd gotten my hooks into this bastard sooner, because our daddy and his friends would still be alive.”
I unlocked the handcuffs, dropping Spiker to the floor.
“We ought to pound a stake through his chest and cut off his head, the son of a bitch,” Tuffy whispered. She caught my eye and opened her right hand. She’d found a plastic bread bag in a cupboard, and I saw something bloody inside.
“What’s that?”
“I’m keeping his balls.” Her voice was defiant. “I told those Barney Fife asshole cops that I was going to hang Spiker’s balls on Gettysburg’s Christmas tree. I keep my promises!”
“What the hell, Tuffy?”
“Those cops had plenty of time to round up the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys. They didn’t do their jobs and our daddy died. This’ll teach ‘em!”
“Can I talk you out of this?”
“Not a flippin’ chance!”
We shut off the lights and went outside. As we walked through the pounding rain, Doc produced a flashlight.
“I'm going back to my camp, young McGraths,” he said to us. “A walk in this black downpour would clear the palate, so to speak. We make a good team, by the way. I might leave Gettysburg for a while to avoid unwelcome conversation. In that case, I intend to pay you a visit in Oregon. I'd like to have a look at Mary Pinchot Meyer's diary.”
“See you, Doc.”
“Be seein' you.”
Jane was beside me in the front seat as we drove back to Gettysburg. “What happened back there?”
“Cochise, you'd never forgive me if I told you.”
After a time, she whispered, “McGrath, when we were prisoners in there, your mother attacked those men. She went at them like a wild thing, biting and scratching... She kept shrieking, 'You leave my family alone!'”
“Looks like somebody clocked her.”
“Spiker did that. Big as he was, he had a real hard time controlling her. That upset him. Afterward he mumbled something about taking the edge off, and he smoked a joint and slugged down some bourbon. By the time he went outside, he was fried to the gills, McGrath.”
Driven to drink and drugs by Mama, I thought. I couldn’t help smiling. Harry Spiker probably wasn't the first. Might not be the last. His impaired condition and Mama's contrariness took him way off his game. Probably saved our lives.
“She loves her family very much, McGrath. To do something like that ...It was terribly dangerous.”
“Maybe.” My own theory was that Mama viewed the other McGraths as hers. Property – her property. Extensions of herself.
“What you're telling me may say more about her possessive nature and narcissism than about love,” I told Jane.
She thought about that. “No, McGrath. You’re wrong. She loves her family.”
“I'll need to think about that.”
As I rolled into the restaurant parking lot, Mama said, “We need to go to the police.”
“We can't do that, Mama,” I replied. “They'd arrest Tuffy and me and the doc.”
“We have to go to the police.”
“Talk to her,” I told my sister. “Tell her if we go to the cops, you and I will end up in jail. And what's left of Operation Group 40 will swoop down and settle with the rest of this family.”
“Mama,” Tuffy said. “Shut up about the police! If those Barney Fife bastards could help us, they'd already have helped us.”
“You shouldn't talk to your mother that way! I've sacrificed everything for you.”
“Then forget about the police! We aren't reporting this.”
“We should go to the police.”
“We're not going to the police!” Tuffy looked at me and rolled her eyes.
Autumn, her small daughter, and little Dallas began to cry, quickly followed by the other children. While I stowed the guns and other hardware in the basement, Mama and Tuffy and her kids climbed the stairs to the apartment. After showering and cleaning up, Jane and I drove the Caddy up the quiet street and parked between Eisenhower's office and the Lamp Post Tea Room. I went to a pay phone outside the Tea Room and dialed the number Herr Dueker had given us. A man answered on the second ring.
“Speak.”
He didn't sound happy.
“This is McGrath. They're all down.”
“All of them?”
“You bet.”
From his voice, he hadn't expected this. No doubt he assumed I'd be killed, and good riddance to bottom-feeding, low-IQ, rural American rubbish. He said, “We'll have a janitorial crew on site shortly. Do you require medical attention?” Now he sounded hopeful, but maybe that was my imagination.
“Negative.”
I told him about the bodies in fox holes around the perimeter. “One of their cars is parked on the college campus. It's a Caddy and the keys are in the ignition.” I gave him the license number and location.
“We'll take care of it.”
“One other thing. My feminine colleague is worried. She thinks Herr Dueker may look upon me as a patsy, like Lee Harvey Oswald. I advise relating the body count and suggesting it would be dangerous to set me up.”
His voice was amused and condescending. “I will convey those sentiments.”
“Appreciate it.”
Chapter Nineteen
Shanghai McGrath
Present Day
What a bed-wetting little peacock, Shanghai thought. But Peter Tarleton did indeed cut a suave figure. That indigo-dyed Chester Barrie wool suit from Savile Row, for instance, might never have been equaled in Washington’s alpine town of Leavenworth. And those Italian ostrich shoes, and the shirt of ribbed twill and Staffordshire Regiment tie, they were to die for.
In a folding chair at Peter’s left hulked the huge, twelve-fingered Pancho Cacafuego Batista Agtuca. Behind them, a baker’s dozen of thick-necked, cold-eyed bodyguards, took up stations.
Agtuca had gotten himself slicked up, too; his head was freshly shaved, then polished like a cherry wood armoire. Facial and nose hair trimmed and washed. Black slacks, a pale blue shirt, darker blue tie with a Windsor knot, and a herringbone sport jacket. He was damned near presentable, omitting, of course, his marled eye and the hideous cattle brand disfiguring his face. The Flying S brand was scarlet and shiny with medicating salve. It wouldn’t take most folks more than one glance to nervously edge away from Pancho.
Amused, Shanghai looked him in his good eye and raised his middle finger. Pancho reddened, more accustomed to cringing terror than fearless contempt.
“Peter,” Juliette said, shaken. “What are you doing here?”
“Dear Juliette,” Tarleton replied, voice dripping honey. “You missed our wedding, my sweet. So embarrassing.” Peter's voice was doleful and aggrieved and Shanghai thought he'd probably practiced these opening lines before a mirror.
“Then, of course,” Peter continued, “came the unexpected rocket attack, killing so many of us. My wonderful father was a lion of the Congress, never to be equaled or forgotten, and he died. They collected him in fruit-pickers’ pails and identified him by DNA. So sad. Everything was quite terrible.”
“What are you doing here?” Juliette demanded again. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“I have come,” he said, “to reclaim my lovely but inconstant bride, and my beloved unborn son.”
Shanghai was devoting most of his attention to Pancho Agtuca and the Group Forty security detail, but he glanced at Peter and snorted. “She ain’t your bride, Short Pants, she’s mine, and the unborn child belongs to me! We were married six days ago.”
Peter pointed a finger at him. “Rancher-boy, you will remain silent! Understand? Juliette was promised to the Sangrael! Our unborn son is the Sangrael’s. A promise to the Brotherhood carries the weight of law.”
“Oh? Whose law is that, buckaroo?”
“The actual law on this earth. Our law.”
“Wrong! Guess again, asshole.”
“Peter,” Juliette said, “I broke off our engagement. This is crazy and I have no idea how you learned I'm going to have a baby.”
“Little on this earth happens that does not come to our attention,” Peter said. “I am here to take you home, dear Juliette. You and my unborn son – my heir.”
Shanghai again interrupted. “So, who's the Brotherhood's big kahuna these days, Tarleton? You? Or is it that drugged-out, voices-in-his-head, fruitcake flat-earther Kingsley Armaros?”
“None of your affair.”
Peter’s voice was snippy. The subject of the Sangreal’s leadership apparently had touched a nerve.
“Sure, it is,” Shanghai said. “I'm guessin’ you and your Social Register chums are still fightin’ over who gets to be king of the world.” Shanghai's laugh was scornful.
“You will keep silent, rancher-boy, or these large and dangerous men will silence you.”
“Is that so?”
Casually, Shanghai took foam plugs from his jacket pocket and made a show of stuffing them into his ears. The ear plugs mystified Peter.
“What are you doing?”
“Tarleton, my handgun is a 10mm with 180-grain bear loads, but it’s a noisy rascal. I’m real fast with it, and I guarantee these buckaroos of yours won't get me before I put a bullet between your ears.”
Peter blanched and glanced nervously at his security detail, whose eyes also had gone wide. Tough dudes in this modern era preferred having an advantage and were not necessarily braver than other people, Shanghai thought.
Clearing his throat, Peter turned back to Juliette. In a less confident voice, he said, “The Brotherhood has a significant investment in you, my dear. You have been monitored since birth...”
“What?”
“Our attention was caught very early by your unique blood antigens, my love. Governments routinely track and catalog those with Rh-negative blood – the so-called 'blue blood antigen.’ The Brotherhood, too, keeps tabs on such people. Rh-negative is possessed by only seven percent of the world's population ...”
“Peter!” Juliette cried. “This is crazy! Shanghai and I are married! We love each other and this is our honeymoon! Please! You need to go! Right now!”
“Be so good as to allow me to finish, Juliette. No woman on earth possesses these requisite blood antibodies in combination with your particular beauty, grace and intelligence. You are quite the Guinevere to Camelot’s young King Arthur – in this case, me. When the Brotherhood resolved to enrich our bloodline, your suitability as a mate and child bearer instantly came to our attention ...”
“My suitability! Mate and child bearer! Stop! Peter this is insanity! Listen to yourself! Oh, dear!”
Shanghai glanced around at the other Octoberfest celebrants. Everybody was listening in rapt fascination to this screwy exchange. This’ll give ‘em all something to talk about for weeks, he thought.
Pancho Agtuca glowered, his working eye bloodshot, the lunacy of the conversation utterly lost on him. The couple who'd been ejected from their seats were angrily elbowing their way back through the knot of NFL-sized Operation Group Forty bodyguards. Taking up stations behind Peter and Pancho, they stared daggers at their tormentors, intent only on reclaiming their stolen places at the outdoor table.
“Excuse me!” the woman said. “Excuse me! You people are very rude!”
The Tyrolean band played on.
Undaunted, Peter continued this patronizing discourse. “You have a choice, dear Juliette. You may return to Europe with me and deliver our son. In which case I promise to permit rancher-boy to live a little longer...” He had regained some of his courage and glanced around confidently at his security detail.
“Peter,” Shanghai interjected. “You're the buckaroo with a choice. Leave now, or I will drill a railroad tunnel between your eyebrows, and that’s guaranteed. Choose wisely.”
Shanghai's eyes were locked on Peter’s, and his right hand gripped the gun under his jacket. “If your ambition is to die young, have at it, buckaroo. Otherwise, git!”
Juliette persisted, “Shanghai and I are married, Peter!”
The mounting personal risk settled it for Peter Tarleton. He rose carefully and inclined his head to Pancho Agtuca and his security team, signaling them to accompany him.
Pancho made no move to rise.
“The Sangrael and I will have you and its child, or no one will!” Peter whispered to Juliette, fright rendering his voice unsteady. “This is your last chance.”
She shook her head, remaining seated. Peter walked away, bracketed by the phalanx of bodyguards, but Pancho stayed where he was. His boss and the rest of Peter’s protective detail strode toward the tree-shaded parking area paralleling the highway. A second cadre of bodyguards that Shanghai hadn’t noticed joined them. Shanghai realized his initial count had been short; more than twenty security specialists were in this group.
He shrugged. Oh, well. He was confident he could have opened both Peter’s and Pancho’s heads to the fresh alpine air before they got him.
Pancho was still seated, his expression so aggressively evil that it would have curdled milk.
“Still think you’re a cowboy?” he sneered, spitting out the words with his gutter-Spanish accent. “Wrong! You’re my punk! I’m gonna get you two, and I’m gonna fuck both of you up the ass before I kill you! Enjoy the honeymoon!”
“Try it now, Pancho.” Shanghai ‘s hand was on his concealed gun. “Go for it, buckaroo.”
The monster sneered, rose and followed the others.
The standing couple reclaimed their chairs, outraged and confused. A middle-aged man next to Shanghai demanded, “What the hell was that all about? Who was that guy doing most of the talking? He acted like he was some Michael Corleone mob godfather.”
“That was one of the rulers of the world,” Shanghai said, taking out the earplugs.
“There are no rulers of the world!”
“That's what we keep tellin' him. Some buckaroos won’t listen.”
Reclaiming their seats, the outraged couple put down their plates and cups of beer. “That was incredibly rude!” the woman fumed to Juliette. “I hope those men are not your friends, dear, because I intend to complain to Leavenworth's mayor, whom I happen to know very well! Don't be surprised to see a prominent letter to the editor!”
Shanghai was coming down from an adrenaline rush and began to chuckle. He caught the woman’s eye. “A letter to the editor? Yes, ma’am, that'll get 'em!”
Juliette's cheeks were scarlet with embarrassment. “Oh dear. Everybody, we are so very sorry!” To Shanghai, she added. “That was unbelievably crazy, Shanghai. I'm so humiliated.”
“Not your fault.”
They watched Peter Tarleton and his entourage enter a half dozen high-end, black Mercedes and BMW 7-series sedans. Peter, in the passenger seat of an ebony Maybach S600, waited in annoyance for Pancho to get settled behind him. Agtuca moved stiffly, Shanghai noted, an apparent consequence of intercepting a bullet on the Estoque. The 523 horsepower S600 then glided onto the highway and headed west, back toward Seattle. One after another, the others accelerated after their leader.
Juliette drained her beer and looked at Shanghai. “My God! I'm afraid they're going to come back! What do you want to do now?”
“They went left,” Shanghai said. “You and me'll go right.”
Chapter Twenty
The Memoirs of Gifford McGrath
Friday October 31, 1975 Halloween
“First principle: any explanation is better than none. The question 'Why?' is not pursued for its own sake, to find a certain kind of answer – an answer that is pacifying, and soothing.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Jane and I strolled back through the darkness toward the three-story Victorian red-brick building that once housed McGrath's Pennsylvania Dutch Corner Cupboard restaurant.
“Tomorrow morning, early,” I said as she took my arm, “you and I need to go back up there and get my rental. It's in the woods where Doc Prophet has a little camp. We'll take Tuffy's Volvo.”
She nodded. The street and sidewalks were empty, damp and misty. Violence seemed to have ebbed, receded and spent itself across the cosmos, taking the remainder of this terrible night off. Tomorrow, of course, was another day.
“And then what do you want to do, O Mighty McGrath?”
I pulled her closer. “Then, I suggest we get back to Oregon and resume our interrupted lives, Cochise.”
A stereo in a frat house launched into Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love. A window must have been open because Grace Slick's voice was clear and powerful, belting out her original version, not some cheesy muzak iteration. I paused to listen and Jane watched my face, amused.
