The Devil's Good Boys, page 25
He threw back his head and laughed again. “What I'm worried about right now is the crazy American justice system. Cops and criminal prosecutors in Malheur and Owyhee counties probably would give this a pass. This is still the boondocks out here, red state as hell. On the other hand, it sounds like Shanghai nailed a couple of them ol' boys in the back, which means he risks a murder charge.”
“Murder?” Juliette's voice was horrified. “Murder! Those men were trying to kill us! There were ten of those bastards. We were running and fighting for our lives! Shanghai didn't murder anybody!”
“Gunshots in the back would argue otherwise to some people ....” Barnabas raised a big, calloused hand as she tried to protest. “I agree he did exactly right – both of you did. In the heat of battle, I've shot more than a few tangos between their shoulder blades as they changed positions for better cover. Only a fool gives a chance to a dangerous man. In a hooraw, a smart fighter kills every enemy he sees, and never mind which way he's facin'. Unfortunately, the law takes a contrary view to such goin’s-on.”
“We were attacked!” Juliette interjected. “I'm still amazed we survived.”
Barnabas smiled. “I ain't amazed at all, if you want the truth. Shanghai is a dang bull-ridin’, gun-fightin' machine. Pop and Saph and me didn't just teach him and Suzie to handle weapons –lots of people are decent shooters. We taught ‘em to think on their feet under pressure, act fast, and stay cool as a frosty mornin'. Big difference.”
In a voice almost too low to hear, Juliette said, “Shanghai showed me how to shoot one of his guns over at OSU. I shot that man just like he taught me.” She looked up at Barnabas. “So, your training saved both of us.”
Shanghai let them talk. After a while, Barnabas took a long breath. “This situation we’re facin’ could take years to resolve and might cost us a million bucks in legal fees. Them bikers' families, for sure, are gonna sue us civilly. When this is over, Shanghai could be in prison and the Estoque might not be owned by the McGraths anymore.”
Shanghai watched him carefully, suspecting his dad had something up his sleeve. Barnabas wasn’t one to let himself get cornered.
Shanghai said, “Sounds like you figure there's another way.”
“Oh, there is, for sure! But Option No. 2 depends entirely on Juliette.”
“What are you talking about?” She brushed away a tear. Still upset over the day’s events, she sounded ready to lose it.
“I need to know if you're willin' to traipse over to the dark side and enter into a criminal conspiracy with us ...”
“I don't understand.”
“I'm suggestin' we all get a few hours’ sleep. Then Shanghai and me and Saph will ride back out there at dawn. We'll take a pack string and gather up them bodies ...”
“What?”
“Us three could hide them danged biker carcasses where nobody will ever find 'em. Ever! It will be like today fell off the calendar.”
Barnabas couldn't help smiling. This was deadly serious, but the son of Grandpop Gifford loved mischief, risk-taking, and pumping cortisol and other un-P.C. male stress hormones through a circulatory system addicted to the wicked brew. “We will disappear them dead sons of bitches!”
“That could get us in a lot of trouble,” Juliette interposed.
“Young lady, the odds are pretty good Shanghai is headed for a penitentiary cell in Oregon or Idaho if we don't do this. Even if my boy sidesteps a murder rap, this ranch can’t survive the attorney fees and civil lawsuits we’d be up against. One way or another, we're screwed.”
He poured himself more coffee, took a long pull, and fixed flinty gray eyes on her. Studying him, Shanghai saw Grandpop Gifford and Granny Jane etched in the lines of his face and the resolute and humorous set of his chin.
“So, Juliette, I need to know,” Barnabas said. “In or out? You killed a bad man today, but how tough are you, really? The clock is tickin', young lady. The future of my boy and this big ol’ family ranch is swingin' out in the cold, cold breeze. If you give us the go-ahead, us men need to roll out before daylight.”
Coffee untouched, she turned and studied Shanghai, gray-blue eyes giving away nothing. She swung back to Barnabas.
“You have to know that those bastards chased us for hours. Hours! They shot at us. They killed poor Bonnie, that beautiful palomino. One bullet almost hit me, and I’m sure they would have gang-raped me and murdered both of us. Your son saved my life – again.”
“I get all that,” Barnabas said patiently. “What I need is the bottom-line.”
“I'm in! Of course, I'm in! Those monsters need to damn-well vanish!”
“Good!” He clapped his hands together and grinned. “Thought you might say that. Now, you better get some sleep, young lady ...”
“My name is Juliette O'Boland, Mr. McGrath,” she reminded him.
“You can call me Barnabas, since we're now co-conspirators in a renegade outlaw cover-up over way on the dark side of the law, Juliette.” His eyes twinkled.
She rose slightly and managed a semblance of a curtsy. “Pleased to make your criminal acquaintance, Barnabas. Even if it comes at the end of an awful, terrible day.”
“Well,” Barnabas said, “when we finish up tomorrow, it'll be like those bad boys never got whelped.”
“Oh, sure.”
He reached around for the whiskey bottle and poured some into her coffee. Mischief was in his voice. “Trust me. Drink up.”
Juliette turned to look at Shanghai. “'Trust me'? Is he for real?”
Shanghai had to chuckle. “Sometimes I ain't so sure myself, Juliette. But he can be entertainin'.”
To his dad, Shanghai said, “One of those dudes – the biker we branded on Little Red Horse Creek – might still be alive out there. I know my bullet hit him, so he's wounded. But he was back on his hind legs, runnin’ hard when he disappeared. He's armed, so we'll need to watch out. If he makes it off the desert, he might even trot back to the sheriff yellin' that his buddies got massacred.”
“We'll worry about him after we do the deed,” Barnabas said. “First things first. Now I need to have a confab with this wily old Basque gun runner. Why don't you show Juliette to her room and then get some shut-eye? You and me an' Saph need to get a big jump on daylight.”
Juliette sat up straighter and took a deep breath. “I'm coming with you.”
“Bad idea.”
“If I'm in, I'm in all the way! Besides, I'm not staying here at the ranch headquarters all alone! That Pancho Agtuca monster could show up here! And anyway, I can help bury those bastards.”
Shanghai smiled. Barnabas finally nodded. “Okay. Up to you.”
Juliette and Shanghai walked down the hallway. At her room, she whispered, “Come in here for just a minute, Shanghai.”
He followed, closing the door behind them. She turned, wrapped her arms around his neck and put her head on his shoulder. Holding her close, he was thinking this was more woman, in a lot of ways, than he’d ever encountered before.
“Thanks for taking such good care of me.” She leaned back to look in his eyes, her face inches from his.
“You did some shootin’, remember?” he said. “And without you agreein’ to this dastardly scheme, I'd probably end up in prison.”
Still might, he was thinking. They weren't out of this briar patch yet, by a long shot. Their eyes locked, and suddenly they were kissing, although he wasn't sure who started that. Pulling away suddenly, her voice was desperate:
“I'd never let anything bad happen to you, Shanghai McGrath! Not if I could stop it.”
A second kiss followed. It went on for quite a while and he unhooked her brassiere and had a hand on her left breast while she moved against him. With a sudden intake of breath, she pushed him away and refastened her bra.
“Oh, dear. This is so wrong! You drive me so crazy, Shanghai! You've got to get out of here! I'm losing my mind! I'm engaged to be married and we can't do this!”
“Juliette, I think it’s time to reconsider who it is you're gonna marry.”
Her cheeks were crimson and her eyes filled.
“Shanghai, someday my fiancé will be president of the United States! Important people are grooming him! I will be in a position to influence the most powerful political and military leader on earth – persuade him to do things that are important and … good! Things he might not think to do otherwise, that could bring peace and justice to a crazy world ...”
He looked at her, saying nothing.
“Shanghai, how could I step away from that?”
“Real damn easy. Step away.”
“I can't! How could I do that, Shanghai? My God!” Her voice was desperate.
“Just do it. I'm in love with you, Juliette. Nobody can guarantee who's gonna be president. Or that he'd even let you influence …”
She shook her head, as if clearing it.
“You've got to get out of here! I'll see you in the morning.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The Memoirs of Gifford McGrath
Monday June 13, 1966
“I'm a child of America. If ever I'm sent to Death Row for my 'revolutionary crimes,' I'll order as my last meal a hamburger, French fries and a Coke.”
– Jerry Rubin
“Where did you see him, Steve?” I asked.
Field Mouse shrugged. “I was driving my dad's car up in the mountains toward Caledonia.”
He described a north-south gravel road near the state park in Pennsylvania’s South Mountains. “It's pretty wild up there.”
“Wild is relative.” I was remembering our former home out beyond Wolf Stew Road near Big Delta, back in my long-ago Alaskan childhood. Back when I was still okay, before I’d tumbled into last place behind practically every young guy on planet earth.
In the woods near our home, Gifford McGrath and his best childhood pal and neighbor, Sharon Chamberlain at one time or another had pegged rocks at a moose, three snarling gray wolves and a foul-tempered sow grizzly with cubs. The wolves and bears ran off. That damned moose charged us and we probably were fortunate to survive.
Now that had been a wild place.
“Anyway, there he was, at a gated lane going back to a big clearing in the woods,” said Field Mouse. “A lot of old trucks and stacked lumber and other stuff all around. He’s a great big, skinny guy, Gifford. Scary. Maybe thirty or thirty-five years old. Blond hair, meanest washed-out blue eyes I ever saw. My dad said those eyes are manholes into hell, a machine gunner’s eyes!”
My pulse quickened. “I know that place.”
“Can't miss it,” continued Steve. “He was with a dozen other guys beside the road. They were slouching against a bunch of Detroit-iron muscle cars, waiting while one of ‘em unlocked the gate. Tough looking outlaws, Gifford. Big, mean, afraid of nothing. Everybody slugging Budweisers, smoking cigars and laughing their frigging heads off! The major had his trademark mason jar of hillbilly pop.”
“Did they recognize you?”
“I don't think so. No.”
“Have you told anybody?”
“What, are you kidding?” The idea shocked him. “Pucky grunt, Gifford! I'm not crazy! If I make them mad, they'll murder me next time they rob us.”
“Next time, huh?”
“For sure, Gifford! Pucky grunt!”
“You know, I'm amazed that everybody puts up with this.” I was thinking out loud. “People just hand over their money and these goons pistol-whip ‘em, anyway, or do anything else that occurs to them.”
“Well, what choice do we have?” Field Mouse was mystified. “They're wild, dangerous mountain moonshiners with guns, Gifford! Now they plan to come back here and shove your parents' faces into your deep fryers.”
He added: “Boy, that'll hurt.”
“Hurt? I guess it would if we let’m do it.”
Unconsciously, I nudged the shoulder bag on the floor beside my sandaled right foot where my Argentine .45 reposed. My resolve was firming up, even though the prospect of another restaurant invasion scared me half to death. Maybe it was lack of imagination, but I could think of nothing more terrifying than a second gun battle with the mountain boys. Unless it was a facial in the French fryers.
Abruptly, my nose interrupted these high-level musings to inform me the pizza was done. I slipped the paratrooper bag over my shoulder and ran into the kitchen. Sliding the pizza from the oven to an aluminum pan, I sliced it up and brought it into the snack bar.
“You burned it!” Tuffy accused.
“Nope. It's a perfect golden brown.”
Tuffy's face was solemn. “Not perfect, Muscle Brain! A long day's journey into night from perfect, brother dear! My friends and I understand that criticizing this pizza would...” She pretended to struggle for appropriate words, “... shatter a deservedly fragile self-image. But perfect it is not.”
Amused, the beautiful Jane Shaughnessy caught my eyes and smiled.
Tuffy forged on, “But you can atone, dear brother. You must make another pizza! Posthaste, right this minute! With anchovies.”
“No way! If the old man smells more anchovies, he'll charge down here like a bull moose in rut and send everybody packing. He hates anchovies worse than communists! Worse than child molesters! Only Democrats and sexually confused dinner theater twits eat those 'stinking, salty little canned fish,' according to the great and mighty Blackjack McGrath.”
“My body craves anchovies,” Tuffy persisted.
I pretended alarm. “Oh, no! Are you pregnant?”
“It would have to be an immaculate conception, a virgin birth, Muscle Brain! I haven't even been out on one single date.”
“Sounds like you're about to give birth, Tuffy.” I was summing things up. “Probably to an evil demon child – a venomous, blood-sucking Infant Anti-Christ who consumes anchovies and the bodies and souls of good men and true!”
Tuffy's nod was serene. “Sounds about right, Muscle Brain.”
Jane Shaughnessy, the product of a rigid Catholic parochial school education, nervously giggled and picked up a slice of pizza. “You two are crazy,” she murmured in that magnolia blossom, Louisiana low-country dialect.
“Not at all,” I objected, keeping my voice solemn. “Tuffy's a pregnant virgin and I'm her affirming and supportive older brother. We’re sane as anybody could hope to find in this batshit Civil War tourist town.”
Her eyes held mine and she appeared thoughtful. “You and Tuffy’re really a pair, aren't you?”
“Not us!” Tuffy exploded. “For one thing, I’m way smarter! Muscle Brain and I have absolutely nothing in common except lunatic parents!”
As it turned out, nobody wanted more pizza. Steve left when it was gone, explaining that he needed to get home. He roasted a quarter inch off his tires doing a Le Mans Grand Prix peel-out, then rolled sedately up Carlisle Street like an eighty-year-old headed for a shuffleboard game at the fire hall.
“What a strange kid,” said Tuffy. “It's like half the synapses in Field Mouse's brain have failed to fire and he needs a new circuit board. Buying tires must cost his dad a fortune.”
Truman, still smarting from our earlier exchange about hippies and the counter-culture, addressed me with his customary nasty tone. “Gifford, pay attention! It occurs to me that the same year your father headed West by covered wagon, my grandfather was one of Pennsylvania's top five attorneys. Have you considered that?”
“Nope, I have not. What's your point, Truman?”
“Listen and become wise, Gifford! My sainted father, the incomparable Peyton Vernam, graduated from Harvard Law and was four years shy of being elected to his first term in the Pennsylvania Legislature when Blackjack McGrath got a job as a 'riggin' slinger' – I believe that's the quaint term Tuffy used for a logging company's heavy equipment operator.”
“So? Your point still escapes me.”
“Gifford, your family is a century behind the Vernams! A century, Gifford! Think about that. I am speaking economically, intellectually, culturally, socially and professionally. A gap of that magnitude, one hundred years, can never be closed in our lifetimes.”
I pondered this. Truman was correct, loathe as I was to admit such a thing. His smile was triumphant.
“Okay, Truman,” I said. “But just for fun, try to imagine that James A. Michener and Lawrence Sanders have teamed up to write a blockbuster best seller. They're here in Gettysburg, two big-time scribblers scouting up a real family to be the model for a collaborative epic of the '60s. A best selling page-turner certain to win a Pulitzer and become an Oscar-winning movie. Who would they pick?”
“The Vernams! Need anyone even ask?”
“Wrong, Truman. They'd pick the McGraths.”
“In your redneck, blue-collar dreams, Gifford!”
“Truman, against the McGraths' sheer lunatic vitality, what have any of you Vernams got? Harvard degrees? Dusty law books? Meaningless, long-forgotten courtroom and legislative victories? I mean, try to get real, little buddy.”
Truman's face flushed with fury. “Gifford, my point is clear: the Vernams' individual and collective IQs eclipse the McGraths', and we're talking an Einstein-to-chimpanzee ratio.”
“Irrelevant, Truman, and I'll tell you why. The Vernams are stuffy, book-smart elites –in a word: Boring! Your family will never stray from paved streets or bandwagon thinking. The McGraths, by contrast, are wild-eyed, end-of-the-dirt-road, biscuit-throwing grizzly killers! You saw what happened to that bandit crew in here on Sunday. Wasn't pretty, was it, Truman? Michener and Lawrence Sanders would freaking love us.”
Truman paled with rage. He hated being one-upped.
“There's no genius and precious little anything else worthwhile among male McGraths, Gifford!” Lifting his nose and turning from me, he glanced apologetically at my sister. “Sorry, Tuffy, but I'm afraid it's very true.”
His snooty disdain had me laughing. I loved sparring with Truman because he got so royally pissed.
On the stereo, Astrud Gilberto was singing The Girl from Ipanema, and I glanced around the table. The desirable Jane Shaughnessy had ceased being alarmed and was chuckling along with me at this latest nutty exchange. Her eyes dropped to her wristwatch. In that delectable Cajun drawl, she murmured, “I hate to leave in the middle of this, kids, but I've got to get home. My folks enforce a curfew.”
