The Last Manly Man

by Sparkle Hayter

  “Yeah, her college followers have a group called the Mrs. Degree,” I said.

  “That’s clever. She says here that women have always secretly run the world, as the power behind the throne.…”

  “Those women who have been secretly running the world, they sure have been doing a lousy job,” I shot back. “What was up with the Inquisition? Or World War Two? Or Watergate? Or the Vietnam War? Or all that postwar wife-beating? What were women thinking?”

  “Touched a nerve, huh? You havin’ a bad day, Robin? You sound aggravated.”

  “Oh. No. It’s just one of those days, Jack. Hectic, you know? Women have influence and always have, sure. But not enough. That secret-power-of-women crapola is a myth they feed women to keep them from clamoring for more real power.”

  “You have more power than you think, in my opinion,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, probably so, and we have just as much of our own crapola,” I said.

  He laughed and hung up without saying good-bye.

  Les the plumbing contractor had left a message to call him back, but he wasn’t in when I returned the call. While I waited for him to get back to his office, I read through the papers. All the tabloids were reporting the Luc Bondir “dead for fifteen years” story. All the papers hinted at a connection between Bondir and illicit nicotine experiments. Blue and Jason had been effective in their ruse to mislead the media so far.

  “I think I’ve found the place for you,” Les said. “A guy I know was the plumbing contractor two years ago on a job on Tweak Island, off Long Island in the Atlantic. He did the job for a company, LMM Corporation.”

  LMM. Last Manly Man.

  “Know who owns this island?”

  “The LMM Corporation, offshore registry, Cayman Islands, I think. I’m gonna fax you the coordinates.”

  “Thanks, Les.”

  For a moment, I toyed with tracking down this LMM Corporation. This would take a long time, and I wasn’t sure what good it would do. It was no doubt a holding company of a holding company of a holding company.

  As soon as I got the Tweak Island coordinates from Les, I beeped Jason.

  “Found island,” I said. “Am at work.”

  Five minutes later, he beeped back, “Blue coming. Half hour.”

  Jason was waiting for us with another man at a table at the Bog, an environment- and cannabis-friendly club in downtown Manhattan. It was an eco-club, where you could pick up the latest literature on boycotts, swig a brew, and watch The Wizard of Oz with the sound turned down and the soundtrack from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon turned up. If you’re around my age and you want to really feel your age, stop by this place on a busy night. You never saw so much baby fat. And what an anachronism. It was the 1960s here, black light, glow-in-the-dark peace signs, and R. Crumb “Keep on Trucking” posters, girls with frizzy hair in Indian muslin skirts and tunic blouses (some of them born post-MTV, all born well after the Beatles broke up).

  The bar was carved out of half a psychedelic school bus, once used to transport deadheads from Grateful Dead concert to Grateful Dead concert. Plastered around the walls were signs exhorting people to help save this animal or those indigenous people, to free Animal Liberation Front activist Rod Coronado, to boycott this company or that company.

  Today, Jason was wearing a coral pink and yellow sundress with pale pink, closed-toe sandals. He looked pretty as a picture.

  “This is number twenty. He’s a liberation specialist,” Jason said, introducing Blue and me to a short, skinny white man in his thirties. “This is Robin, the journalist I told you about, and this is number seven.”

  “You can call me Blue,” Blue said.

  “Good to meet you,” he said, spreading a Long Island map out on the table and checking the coordinates of Tweak Island against it. “Okay, Tweak Island is right … here.”

  Jason spread his copy of the hand-drawn map of Tweak Island next to the larger map. “We think the bonobos are being held there,” he said, pointing.

  Number twenty studied the hand-drawn map, then the Long Island map. “We’re going to need to reconnoiter the island, confirm its location, and make note of all visible security,” number twenty said. “Let’s take a little trip out there.”

  An hour later, Jason, Blue, number twenty, and I boarded a fishing boat moored at the northern end of Manhattan. There was a six-person crew in addition to us, all members of the Organization, two dressed in loose cotton pants and shirts that bore the name Islander Fishing Expeditions. Three others were dressed as tourist fishermen, in Bermuda shorts and short-sleeved shirts. The last member of the crew, named Ethan, was a young, bearded redhead wearing a knit cap and a big unbleached apron over baggy, rough-weave clothes. He looked like he’d just stepped off a Greenpeace recruitment poster, and he smelled like a burlap bag full of potatoes.

  “We are a couple hours away, so just relax for now. When we get close, we’ll want you to stay out of sight, inside the cabin, in case they have lookouts who might recognize any of you,” number twenty said.

  Jason knew Ethan from a previous operation, and they renewed their acquaintance with bear hugs.

  “Wow, you make a good-looking woman,” Ethan said to Jason. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “Most people don’t until I open my mouth,” Jason said. “What are you doing on this operation?”

  “I’m the chief cook and bottle-washer. Come on down to the kitchen. Bring your friends,” Ethan said.

  We followed him down to the galley.

  “I’m making a big batch of couscous,” Ethan said. “You all like couscous, with veggies and broiled tofu?”

  “Robin doesn’t like vegetarian food.” Jason sneered.

  “You’re not a vegetarian?” Ethan asked me.

  “I’m a minerarian.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t eat any living things, animal or vegetable. I eat rocks. Only rocks. I wash them down with water,” I said.

  “She’s a meat-eater. She thinks she’s funny.” Jason scowled.

  “My couscous is excellent. People sign on to our crew just for the cooking. You’ll like it,” Ethan said. He was a sunnily optimistic counterpoint to Jason’s cynical self-righteousness.

  Blue pulled out a deck of cards and we sat at the table and played hearts while Ethan cooked. We all helped ferry food to the rest of the crew, then sat in the sun and ate it. Ethan, Jason, and Blue discussed various endangered and extinct species—the harelip sucker, the long-jaw cisco, the Wabash riffleshell, the spectacled cormorant, the Tasmanian wolf, the dusky sea sparrow, the hairy-eared dwarf lemur, and so forth. They all had such colorful names. Being interesting was no defense against obliteration, evidently.

  It was warm in the sun, and it made me sleepy. I dozed off, visions of long-jaw ciscos dancing in my head. Some time later, Jason awakened me. We were getting close to Tweak Island and had to go into the cabin.

  Inside, we were handed binoculars. The fishing boat pulled up near Tweak Island and stopped. We were about a hundred yards offshore. The island was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire. Behind the fence was a large, one-story brown building. There was a pier and two speedboats were tethered to it, bobbing in the water and bumping against each other.

  For the first half hour, we saw no visible activity on the island. Then a helicopter rose up from behind the building and circled above it. It flew out to us, hovering above us momentarily before flying off.

  After that, there was nothing for another half hour, when two men got into one of the speedboats and came out toward us.

  “Get down, away from the windows,” said Jason.

  Outside, we heard the speedboat motor approach, then cut to idle.

  “Who are you?” asked a man.

  Number twenty explained he was the operator of a fishing tour. Two of our crew, posing as tourists, said something in some foreign language, and then one of the men in the speedboat said, “This is a private bea
ch. Could you please take your fishing elsewhere?”

  The speedboat left, heading out toward another fishing boat, a few hundred yards or so back of our boat. Number twenty came into the cabin and said, “We’re going to head out a little farther so we’re less conspicuous.”

  Number twenty sat down and began marking up a copy of the hand-drawn map with notations, while another member of his crew looked on. He called Jason over.

  “We see from this map that the electricity connects here and here. The alarm system has to be disabled here. The map says the bonobos are held here, unless they’ve been moved. There are guards here and here. The entrance is double-bolted and requires a pass code. That might be these numbers down here. Just in case, we’ll have to bring explosives to blow our way in. In addition to firearms, we’ll need tranquilizer guns and nonlethal doses of knockout drugs.”

  He pulled out an almanac.

  “The full moon is waning, but we still have the problem of too much moonlight. What is the weather forecast?”

  “Clear tonight, partially cloudy by morning, with possible rain showers, progressively cloudy until the weekend.”

  “Cloudy is good. Rain is good,” said number twenty. “We’ll have to work fast to catch this cloudy weather.”

  One of the “tourists” came inside. “Another helicopter patrol above the island,” he said. “The chopper goes out on the hour, the speedboat on the half hour.”

  “All right. Let’s head back to land. The crew and I will make a few quick passes of the island tonight to check out the nighttime security. We’ll rendezvous tomorrow morning, eight A.M., at the Bog to discuss our options. That’ll give Jason and me time to consult with some other specialists. We’re going to need backup on this job.”

  “I definitely want to be at the liberation, with my own camera,” I said to Jason as we sailed back.

  “I told you that you could have the story when the bonobos were liberated. I don’t break my promises,” he said. “I’m meeting with Karen Keyes at the women’s conference later. Do you want to join us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eight P.M., by the Diogenes booth. There’s a rock band performing, so the room will be dim, but try to disguise yourself anyway,” he said.

  “Eight P.M.,” I repeated. That was good. The conference was only a couple of blocks from the Metro Grand Hotel, which meant I could stop by and see Gus, try to smooth things out with him.

  I didn’t have much time for smoothing, as it turned out. It was after 7:00 by the time Blue dropped me off at my place. I just had time to change quickly, put my hair up under a scarf, and run back down to Blue.

  “Where to?” Blue asked.

  “The Metro Grand Hotel,” I said. That’s where Gus was now staying. Gus only stayed at the Plaza when he wanted to play the newlyweds-from-the-Midwest game. “Where are you going?”

  “I have a bunch of deliveries backed up for this evening,” Blue said. “But I’ll be on beeper if you need me.”

  Gus was in the bar of the Metro Grand, unshaven, drinking whiskey.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Gus said when he saw me. “Can we talk?”

  “I don’t have much time. I have to run to the women’s conference,” I said. “I just stopped by to see how you were.…”

  “Why do you have to go? Are you giving a speech or something?” he asked, clearly annoyed.

  “No, I have to meet some people for work.…”

  “I’m going with you then.”

  “No, don’t do that.”

  “Why not? What’s going on? Look, you keep running off, I can’t get a straight answer out of you.… It’s like you can’t wait to get away from me. You owe me some answers, Robin,” he said.

  It stung when he used my real name.

  “It’s not you…” I said, regretting the words as soon as they came out. I sounded like I was getting ready to dump him.

  “It is me! I can’t get a part, I can’t keep a woman around.… What is my problem?”

  “It’s not you. I really like you. I want to see you. I just … have to go,” I said, and walked out of the bar.

  “I’m going with you,” he said, following me out.

  “Go away,” I said. Man, oh man, I hated to do that, to hurt him.

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on,” he said, sticking with me.

  Quickly, I speeded up, walking well ahead of him, but he continued to follow, seething. He followed me right into the women’s conference.

  The convention floor was packed with people there to watch a rock band called the She-Wolves. The lights were dimmed except around the peripheries of the hall, where booths representing different women’s groups and causes were set up. In the low light, I was able to lose Gus.

  I couldn’t see Jason or Keyes. When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw that the audience was only about half women. The rest were men, of all ages, but primarily young men of various races, some in She-Wolves T-shirts.

  On the stage, four women in tight white T-shirts and jeans sang sexually aggressive songs about men, songs originally done by men about women. At the moment, they were singing their slightly rewritten cover of “Little Red Riding Hood,” a Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs song. In this throaty, hard rock version, they are the she-wolves and a young man is Red Riding Hood.

  “Where’s Jason?” someone behind me asked.

  It was Karen Keyes.

  “I thought he was with you.”

  “I haven’t seen him. Oh, by the way, someone else from ANN called me today. Reb Ryan from …”

  “Investigative Reports,” I said. “What did he want to know?”

  “If I knew anything about some missing bonobo chimps. I feigned ignorance, of course.…”

  “Damn. That means they are getting closer to the real story,” I said. “Shit.”

  “I told Jason I didn’t have much time,” Keyes said. “I have a symposium at nine I haven’t finished preparing for. Can you have him contact me after the symposium?”

  “Yeah, if I find him,” I said.

  After she left, I wandered the conference floor, moving through the darkened hall under corporate banners for soft drinks, menstrual analgesics, clothing lines, automakers, and so on, past the birth control booths, the displays exhorting women to join one women’s group or another, the causes—Amnesty International, Globofeminism, Universal Health Care, etc. The Mrs. Degree girls, followers of Suzy Hibben, were handing out brochures next to hosiery company reps handing out free pantyhose. At a booth to promote women’s boxing, you could put on padded gloves and hammer a punching ball.

  Between the Lesbian Parents booth and a cosmetic company display, my beeper went off.

  “Trouble,” said the message. “I am coming to get you. Blue.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Something has gone wrong?” I said, jumping into Blue’s car.

  “Not exactly,” Blue said.

  Before he could explain, the back door opened.

  Gus jumped in.

  “Gus, what are you doing here? Go home! For God’s sake!” I said.

  “So this is who you blew me off for,” Gus said.

  “No, Gus …”

  “I’m not leaving until I get an explanation,” Gus said. “I’m tired of these wild stories. I want the truth.”

  “Okay, the truth,” I said. “This is my lover. I didn’t want to tell you. You’re a nice guy, Gus, and it was fun, but my heart belongs to Blue here.”

  “I thought you were different,” Gus said, and he sounded deeply hurt. “It felt special to me.…”

  “No, I’m like all the rest. I’m a bitch and I was just using you. Now go home, get on with your life,” I said.

  “I’m going,” Gus said.

  As soon as he was out of the car, Blue squealed away.

  “Want to tell me what that was about?” he asked.

  “I can’t very well tell him the truth. I mean, I did tell him the truth, and he didn’t believe it. He’
d rather believe I’m ditching him for another man.”

  “You broke his heart,” Blue said. “He had tears in his eyes.”

  “Did I? Boy, I hated to do that to him. But what choice did I have? I really liked him too. He’s really sweet and …”

  “Maybe you can make it up to him later,” Blue said.

  “I hope I get the chance. I really do like him. He’s a lot of fun and he’s really sweet. Shit. So what’s up?”

  “Our boy Dewey has spoken some more. Apparently, arrangements had been made with yet another cell to create a diversion on one side of Tweak Island to facilitate the liberation on the other side. It is impossible to reach the diversion squad now. The liberation would have to take place Wednesday night. That means we are going to have to work tonight to be ready to go out tomorrow. We’re going to the hospice now. Jason’s there. Number twenty and some of his crew are meeting us over there.”

  “Okay. What will I need …”

  “Damn,” Blue said.

  “What?”

  “I was supposed to call my ex-wife. Do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Look in that box of CDs. There’s a Robert Mitchum calypso CD.”

  “Robert Mitchum doing calypso?”

  “It sounds strange, but he was pretty good.”

  “Found it.”

  “Good,” he said, dialing his cell phone with one hand. “Plug it in, forward to the last track, I think it is number fourteen, “My Baby’s Loving Arms.” Hit the pause button. When I nod my head, hit the play button.”

  “Okay.”

  “Honey?” Blue said into the phone. “I’m sorry I forgot to call you. Business. But I’ll see you this weekend and I’ll be thinking of you.”

  He nodded at me and I hit the play button. Blue held the phone to a speaker. After the song was over, he put the phone back to his ear and said, “Love ya, baby. Good night.”

  “Gotta keep that woman happy,” he said to me after hanging up.

  “How come you date your ex-wife?” I asked.

  “Aw, hell, I’d remarry her, but she wants it this way. Peculiar woman. She thinks it’s the only way to keep me faithful. If I step out on her, she’s free to step out on me. Know what I’m sayin’, Robin?”