The Devil's Good Boys, page 62
To Barnabas, Ross once explained his born-again commitment to enforcing the speed laws. Drivers on U.S. 95 sometimes were so lead-footed that they sometimes exceeded their automobiles’ design limits. He’d once pulled over a woman he'd clocked at ninety-two mph in her small, foreign-made car.
“I sauntered up and asked her for her license and registration and proof of insurance,” he'd told Barnabas. “I turned around and the whole rear end of her car was on fire. It just burst into flames.”
Added to that, parts of this lonesome desert highway were 180 miles from the nearest hospital. Injuries from speed-related accidents considered minor when minutes away from a big city emergency room could be fatal out here. Ross had pulled over fast-moving DeLoreans, Lamborghinis, Aston-Martins and Jaguars. “You name it, I've stopped it. I could easily write a hundred tickets a month on this highway and not write one of them under 80 mph.”
Some drivers, he figured, hated the Oregon high desert and wanted it behind them as quickly as possible.
“If people would slow down, they might see the wild horse herd off to the right, or the badger or the elk and the deer,” he'd opined. “But all they get to see is my red and blue lights when I come up behind ‘em.”
Ross would have preferred to pack a holstered Colt .45 six-shooter, owing to its simplicity and his own frontier heritage. To his disgust, the sheriff insisted he carry a striker-fired 9mm Glock with a polymer frame and electronic red-dot sight.
Shanghai went to the window and waved. Squinting dangerously, Ross strolled inside with his shotgun leveled and safety disengaged.
Agtuca and his pal were on their knees. The cartel representative’s face was resigned to the annoyance of being arrested, Agtuca's was satanic with fury. The restaurant staff gave Ross the details. The armed takeover began when the two outlaws swaggered in for lunch and the huge biker recognized Juliette. Out came the guns. Their belligerence and threats had ramped up when Juliette refused to disclose Shanghai’s identity to Pancho.
Minutes later, an Oregon State Police cruiser rolled up outside. Gun in hand, the trooper was taking no chances when he strolled in. Ross and the state trooper handcuffed the prisoners, read them their rights and escorted them outside. Shanghai watched the trooper get them seated in back of his cruiser. Ross took statements and explained that they intended to wait an hour or two for an escort before the state police transported them to the county lockup in Vale.
“These are dangerous, unpredictable felons,” Ross said. “We have solid information that criminal associates of theirs are in the area. The feds have holds on both these perps. We don’t want to lose ‘em.”
Peter's and Anita's hasty departure annoyed Ross. “I'll talk to Nita later,” he said. “ I'm gonna give her hell, believe me. Not that it'll do one damn bit of good. She's as headstrong as a horse I once had to put down.”
He paused and looked at Shanghai. “Had she been drinkin'?”
“She's on the wagon, going to AA.”
He nodded. “This Peter guy, I’ll need a phone number and last name.”
“I’m sure we can help you out,” Shanghai said, amused. “Juliette, you're up.”
She gave him a look. While she talked to Ross, Shanghai stepped outside and called Barnabas on his cell. Twenty seconds into his account, his father was laughing his head off.
“I was already on my way home from the Cattlemen’s meeting. Be at the house shortly.”
Shanghai said, “You might want to notify Col. Hawser, your Homeland buddy. He’d probably be interested in chatting up Pancho Agtuca and his cartel chum. They’ll be in the county lockup in Vale. The feds have holds on ‘em, according to George Ross.”
When Juliette and Shanghai finally walked out to his pickup, the trooper was still awaiting backup before transporting his prisoners.
“Bless you for rescuing me, Shanghai.” Juliette’s voice was subdued. “This wasn't how I expected lunch with Peter to go. That was so awful.”
“You do realize he ran out on you?”
“And he took your beautiful friend Anita with him! Damn it, Shanghai, I'm furious at both of them! But Peter had a point about not getting involved.”
“Baloney! Peter’s got no backbone. He ran out on you! But that won't help him; George Ross is a bulldog.”
“Oh, dear me.”
“C'mon, let’s get back to the Estoque.”
Juliette's face was wan. “I hope Peter remembers to leave the Acura's key-fob at the ranch.”
More and more, Peter Tarleton was shaping up as a self-absorbed narcissist and a coward, Shanghai thought. Great presidential timber, this dude. “Five bucks says he flies off with it in his pocket.”
“Oh dear, Shanghai.”
“Do we have a bet?”
Chapter Six
The Memoirs of Gifford McGrath
Saturday June 18, 1966
“War is an ill thing, as surely I know,
But t'would be an ill world for
weaponless dreamers if evil men
were not now and then slain.”
– Rudyard Kipling
I got two hours down time during the afternoon break. Combined with an hour-long nap before the breakfast-and-lunch shift, those one hundred eighty minutes kept me on my feet. Helped, of course, by a cold shower, coffee, and residual wake-me-up adrenaline when my mountain-top gun battle came to mind.
Nevertheless, the workday proceeded glacially. God Almighty, I thought, I need a day off! In fact, this whole lunatic family could use a day off. Maybe weeks on end of work in the heat of summer explains why we're all crazy.
Eventually, the doors closed, and we cleaned up for the evening.
Upstairs, I showered and found clean jeans, a polo shirt and tennis shoes in my closet. Not for the first time, I marveled that Mama, when not ramrodding waitresses, savaging the characters of her innocent teenage offspring and advocating for sexual purity, obedience to ancient biblical admonitions and her own dictates stayed ahead of the laundry and kept the upstairs apartment spit-shined.
This family had a super work ethic, once you got past our collective mental health issues.
Back downstairs, the snack bar once again became an after-hours hang-out for a small group of Gettysburg adolescents. Thankfully, nobody, including Tuffy, knew about the previous evening's gun battle.
My sister buttonholed me as I strolled into the kitchen. “Glenna is coming up without Byron, who's now ancient history. She dumped him.”
“Surprise, surprise!”
I was thinking that maybe Cousin Glenna had a prejudice against guys with black and blue and purple balls. I didn't say it, of course; I'd been brought up better. But the fact that Glenna was allowed out of the house so soon after her near-abduction was vaguely surprising. On the other hand, Glenna pretty much did as she pleased.
“Tonight, we're having a cookout under Big Round Top,” Tuffy said. She paused and inspected me critically. “Why are your eyes bloodshot?”
“Street drugs. Alcohol poisoning. Mad dog sex. Non-stop rock 'n roll.” I grinned.
“Oh, jeez, don’t you just wish?” She shoved me, laughing, knowing it was all untrue. “When are you and I gonna stop leading such boring lives?”
“We may pass into eternity having never fully lived.”
“You, maybe, not me, Muscle Brain! One of these days, I’m spreading my gossamer wings and showing the world how to grab life by its jug ears, beat its face bloody and kick it in the balls!”
“Now, now. Gently.”
“Gently, hell!”
Tuffy moved to another subject. “I went to A&P and bought steaks, onions, a pineapple, tomatoes and green peppers. Plus, we have baking powder biscuit mix ....”
“Let me guess. Shish-ka-bobs over an open fire?”
“And a Dutch oven cobbler. You know the drill.”
Inwardly, I groaned. What I desperately needed was sleep. Tuffy's cookout would be fun if I could stay upright. This was the equivalent of a beach party for land-locked teens in the backwater Borough of Gettysburg, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, long miles from the Atlantic Ocean. A thought crossed my mind that doing this might be dangerously stupid, given that our family remained downrange of the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys, aka Operation Group Forty.
Still, the McGraths had shot those killers to tatters on two occasions so far. They had to need another a day or two to plug the holes, regroup, snivel, and bury their dead, damn them. We’d probably be okay.
Jane Shaughnessy burst through the screen door, smiling and locking onto my left arm. “Hey there, McGrath!”
“Careful, Cochise,” I intoned. “We have a professional teacher-student image to represent to a fallen and unrepentant world. Can I get a witness? Amen?”
“Bull crap, McGrath!” She bumped me hard with her hip, laughed, and kissed me solidly.
Tuffy's eyes widened, her reaction consistent with someone who'd collided with a ten-foot-tall Great White Woolly Wugga-Wugga late at night on a Gettysburg sidewalk.
“Jane! Am I to understand that you and Muscle Brain have become… what's the term? … romantic? Really? Him?”
Jane's smile was smug. “Good guess, Tuffy.”
“We are merely a flight instructor and his wayward student,” I said. “Nothing more.”
Jane bumped me again and laughed. “McGrath, get a clue! You are officially my boyfriend! You need to live up to your role!”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
She dug a comb out of her bag and ran it through my hair. Whispering theatrically: “Give it your best shot, McGrath! And don’t let me go too long between kisses, baby!”
Tuffy squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head for a five-beat count, processing an unthinkable paradigm shift. Her subprimate sibling had shouldered his way through the looking glass and returned with a spectacular girlfriend. This shouldn’t happen.
“Jane! Maybe we should talk ...”
“Tuffy, I know exactly what I'm doing!” Jane squeezed my arm.
“You don’t!” Tuffy yelled.
Chipping in my two cents, I said, “Tuffy, you’re up to bat. You need to swap out smarty-pants Truman Vernam for a real guy.”
“I feel a migraine coming on!”
Abruptly shifting gears, Tuffy said: “I talked to Cousin Diller. He's driving up, too.”
Diller was Tuffy's age and lived in Hanover, where one set of grandparents and most of our aunts, uncles and cousins on Mama's side hailed from. High spirited and sporting a classic case of adolescent immaturity, Diller's raison d'etre lately had been outrunning cops in high-speed chases. This was still that golden age when law enforcement broke off hot pursuit at jurisdictional boundaries. For many Pennsylvania teenagers in the ‘60s, dangerous police chases to township boundaries and the Maryland line were rites of passage. As much a sport as baseball.
“We should get going,” Tuffy said.
We convoyed out the Taneytown Road in my Jeep and Linda Church's Studebaker. At the trailhead of a winding, unpaved bridle path that was off-limits to motorized vehicles, Linda parked the Studebaker.
I shuttled everyone through the dark, silent hardwood forest in the Jeep, creeping along in low-range four-wheel-drive. Our destination was Slocom’s Pond, an impossibly deep, pioneer-era gravel pit a dozen yards off the bridle path. It formed the boundary of federal and private land under Big Round Top, the highest point on the Gettysburg Battlefield. A hard-to-find spring-fed pond in a thick forest, Slocom’s Pond was ideally situated to prevent discovery of teenaged gatherings. It was also close to the spot where Joshua Chamberlain's heroic 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment held its wobbly line on the battle's second day against repeated Confederate assaults. Running low on ammunition, Chamberlain led his troopers in an incredible bayonet charge into two Alabama regiments, driving off the Rebs. The 34-year-old Chamberlain was awarded the Medal of Honor.
I got a fire going and Jane helped prepare shish-ka-bobs on steel skewers. We'd brought along a Dutch oven acquired by the old man in Fairbanks, Alaska. I filled it with sliced peaches and Winesap apples, butter, raisins and brown sugar. Covering the mixture with biscuit dough and securing the lid, I buried it in the coals.
A Canadian cold front had blown in, making for a freakishly chilly Pennsylvania summer night. Jane wore corduroy pants and her heavy, hooded sweatshirt. I had on jeans, a long-sleeved cotton pullover and sheepskin cat-skinner's vest that the old man had worn in his Alaskan logging days.
The shish-ka-bobs were sizzling when we heard a muscle car laboriously grinding up the narrow bridle path. Diller and three buddies arrived in a 1964 Plymouth Barracuda. I marveled that he'd gotten the big, low-slung car in here. But Diller wasn't averse to abusing Detroit iron.
“Thought we'd stop by,” Diller yelled, cackling with laughter.
Wiry and rail thin, he was maybe six-four and a hundred sixty pounds, still at that interesting late-adolescence stage where male ego and runaway self-esteem trumped accountability and good sense. Diller's father, Uncle Dill, was one of Mama's two older brothers, and the elder Dill had a boys-will-be-boys attitude toward his eldest son’s coming-of-age adventures. He’d patiently replaced three automobiles the delinquent Diller wrecked over the past year and a half. He'd also bribed a prosecutor and municipal judge after a high-spirited Diller punched a police officer on a Maryland ocean beach.
An outraged Diller had claimed innocence in that episode. He’d been inoffensively sleeping on the sand after a party and came up swinging when the cop nudged him with a steel-toed boot. Clearly, the officer was way out of line.
Ironically, Diller would grow up to be a township police officer, a municipal judge – which didn't require a law degree – and ultimately and unthinkably – ascend into the rarefied Boss Hogg hierarchy of Hanover's ruling good ol' boys. That, of course, would be decades in the future.
For this evening, he'd acquired a bottle of vodka, a box of cigars and a pack of cards.
“We're gonna play poker,” he confided. To Diller’s way of thinking, the debut of a young man into adult life had much to do with cards, tobacco and illegal consumption of hard liquor. These things were de riguer for anyone not contemplating missionary work in Africa or the priesthood.
“Poker?” My cousin Glenna curled her lip.
“It’s what guys do, Glenna!” He let go with one of his boisterous cackling laughs. “ Us boys have outgrown your Mickey Mouse Club re-runs!”
“Like I still watch the Mickey Mouse Club!” Glenna shot back, surprisingly perky in the aftermath of her near-abduction, hospitalization and emotionally wrenching breakup with Byron. Teenagers are nothing if not resilient, the reason governments habitually dragoon adolescent boys into their foreign wars.
“Liar!” Diller laughed. “You still love Mickey and the Mouseketeers!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
Not too many years earlier, the Merry Mouseketeers had been a big deal for all of us. Shortly after the McGraths arrived in the Lower Forty-eight, a ten-year-old Glenna had drawn Tuffy, Diller and me aside to confide in funereal tones a devastating secret: Walt Disney and the entire Mickey Mouse Club had died in an airliner crash.
Diller had cried. Tuffy and I were skeptical.
“Glenna,” nine-year-old Tuffy argued, “if that's true, it would be on the news.”
“No!”
In whispers, Glenna informed us the tragedy was too horrific. Our sentimental nation would be unable to cope with losing Walt and the beloved Mickey Mouse Club. Should the truth leak out, government operations would cease, Cold War military preparedness would be dangerously compromised and the public’s collective will to continue lost forever. A decision was made at the highest levels to withhold the news, perhaps forever, at any cost.
“So, how'd you find out?” I demanded.
“I have sources,” the 10-year-old Glenna replied.
The merry Mouseketeers and Walt Disney, as it turned out, were fine. But the episode underscored an enduring element of each of our characters. Diller was more tender-hearted than he let on. Glenna would grow up as conspiracy-minded as she’d been at age ten. And Tuffy and I would refuse to believe the creature shot dead in the smokehouse was a grizzly until it had been dragged out on the grass and carefully inspected.
“Diller,” cautioned Tuffy, “if you drink that vodka and play poker, you'll lose the pink slip to this Barracuda.”
“Hey! The more I drink, the better I play!”
Right, I thought, and you can grin down grizzlies, wade the Mississippi and catch lightning in a burlap sack. Truth be told, I envied my tall cousin's afraid-of-nothing self-confidence.
Meanwhile, Diller's buddies shyly inspected Jane, Linda Church, Tuffy, Glenna, and an attractive newcomer to our group named Verna Geigley. Being of the adolescent male persuasion, they also hungrily regarded the food being prepared.
While Diller and his immature cohorts swaggered, smoked cigars and evaluated food and feminine charms, Tuffy stealthily removed the vodka from Diller's muscle car. Eventually, the boys drove into the darkness, and she came to me with the unopened bottle in its paper sack.
“Tuffy,” I said. “What have you done? You've torpedoed their evening!”
“I couldn't help myself! Diller is such a delinquent! All that talk about cards and booze.”
Shaking my head, I used a shovel to dig the Dutch Oven out of the fire. Setting it on a centuries-old hardwood stump overlooking the moonlit pond, we dished cobbler onto paper plates. The campfire cast a rosy glow over the wooded site of stalwart Union Army heroism. Trees rustled overhead, and the summit of a steel battlefield observation tower on Big Round Top peeked down at us in a magical lunar glow.
Presently, we heard the thunder of the returning Barracuda. Headlights bobbed and flickered through the foliage.
“Uh-oh,” I warned Jane. “Here comes trouble.”
“Hark, children!” This from Tuffy, laughing. “Methinks Diller returns.”
She walked into the darkness as the stillness was shattered by a big car's undercarriage high-centering on rocks and stumps. Accelerating into the clearing, Diller braked hard and threw himself from behind the wheel
