Cauldwell pressed the tab on to Trickster’s tongue until the pink liquid was absorbed. He then peeled off another tab and did the same again. And then another. Trickster’s eyes were dilated with terror. Cauldwell could see that he was counting. He peeled off a fourth tab and pressed it on to Trickster’s tongue. ‘This is like shoving de-worm tablets down a cat’s throat, but I don’t suppose you can sick these up.’ Cauldwell peeled off a fifth tab and looked closely at Trickster. ‘You said that you think five of these might kill the patient. Shall we see if you were right?’
Despite Cauldwell’s iron grip, Trickster managed to shake his head.
‘Okay, doctor, we’ll respect your clinical judgement and stop at four. You wouldn’t be much use to me dead.’ Cauldwell looked at the wall clock and relaxed his grip a fraction. ‘Let’s see how long they will take.’ He kept a grip on Trickster while he lay beside him like a wrestler too tired to pin his opponent. Cauldwell watched the hypnotic jerk of the second hand as it did its rounds. After ten minutes, he began to feel the stiffness ebb out of Trickster’s body. It was as if his former soul had migrated. After another five minutes, Trickster had gone completely limp. Cauldwell wondered if even four tabs had been enough to prove fatal. He relaxed his grip.
Trickster touched his throat and sat up. His glasses were half falling off because one of the arms had been broken when Cauldwell attacked him. Trickster tried to balance his glasses on his nose, but his specs wouldn’t stay in place. He finally laughed and threw his glasses away. He stared at Cauldwell with bare dilated eyes and said, ‘Who killed the lamb chops?’
‘I don’t know.’
Trickster sat silent for a few seconds staring into space before he began to cry. ‘We all killed the lamb chops – and we’re washed in the blood of the lamb.’ He wiped his tears and pointed at the wall mirror. ‘What’s he doing there?’
‘Who?’
‘Gaspar Lorca. What’s he doing down there with the peaches and the housewives?’
Cauldwell began to see a pattern. ‘Who else is there?’
‘There are whores in the avocados and priests in the tomatoes.’
‘Is Shaman there?’
‘I don’t know, but he must be there somewhere.’
‘He wrote the poem.’
‘They’ve all gone. The supermarket must have closed.’
‘Do you know Shaman?’
Trickster nodded his head. He was crying again and tears were dripping off his chin. ‘Yes. I love him.’ Trickster suddenly looked up at Cauldwell with supplication. ‘But I love you too.’
‘Does Shaman know what you do?’
‘Yes, but he is so full of love he doesn’t condemn me.’ The tears were pouring now. ‘I need to love you more and love myself more and repent:
I can’t stand the terror in my mind.
When will America…
Go fuck yourself, America, with your bomb.’
‘Who really is Shaman?’
‘Shaman is a poet priest. He has the power to forgive me, to forgive America.’ Trickster tilted his head and looked at Cauldwell with a crazed smile and eyes that were dilated to gaping black pools. The LSD seemed to have kicked his hallucinations to an even higher level. ‘I know you. You’re the one.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one “who preached Communism on Utopia Parkway with your penis in your hand while the air-raid sirens of the Apocalypse wailed you down…”’
‘Yes,’ smiled Cauldwell, ‘that is me and I’ve been sent to help you.’
Trickster’s face was now ecstatic. ‘Then it was you “who made carnal gaps in infinite Space through ranks of fellating seraphim and trapped the archangel of longing…”’
‘Yes, that is me and you are the archangel of longing.’
‘Can we fly?’
‘Yes, but we need help. We need the help of the guardian angel.’
Trickster looked puzzled. ‘Who?’
‘The one outside the door.’
‘Anderson. He is one who has not discovered love. He is a nightmare of alcohol and guns.’
‘Invite him to join us, but keep it simple. Just say: come in please, we’re finished. We’ll tell him about love and liberation later.’
There was an internal telephone on the wall next to the door. Cauldwell readied himself on the opposite side of the door as Trickster picked up the phone. ‘Hello, Mr Anderson, flap your wings. We are ready to fly.’ Cauldwell winced. It wasn’t the message that he had suggested, but Anderson probably knew that Trickster was a weirdo at the best of times.
Cauldwell listened as Anderson punched the key code into the lock on the other side of the door. There was a heavy click as the handle turned and the lock mechanism released. Anderson was a big brute in a grey flannel suit. Cauldwell tried to kick his legs out from under him, but Anderson didn’t go down. He then tried a karate chop to the neck, but it was like hitting an oak trunk. Meanwhile, Anderson was reaching for his gun. Cauldwell launched his shoulder into the side of Anderson’s knee and he wobbled. He grabbed his opposite ankle with both hands and Anderson sprawled sideways, but he now had his gun in his hand. Cauldwell swung behind him. Anderson was back up on his knees. Caudwell whipped a leg around Anderson’s ample midriff and trapped him in a figure-four leg scissors. He then pushed forward so Anderson landed on all fours. Cauldwell squeezed his gut hard with his leg scissors then used his fists to knock out Anderson’s arms from beneath him. Anderson landed on his face with all of Cauldwell’s weight on top of him. He still had his gun in his hand, but was incapable of aiming it at his assailant. Cauldwell put his forearm across Anderson’s throat and began to squeeze. ‘I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to kill you. If you let go of the gun, the decision might be in your favour.’
Anderson let the gun go. It was a Smith & Wesson .38, classic Americana. Cauldwell picked up the revolver with his left hand. ‘I was lying. Maybe I’m going to kill you after all, but I’m not going to shoot you. That would be too messy.’ Cauldwell tightened his stranglehold and Anderson whimpered. ‘Perhaps it would be better to liberate you than to kill you.’
Trickster was smiling benignly at the proceedings. ‘But death, Mr Anderson, is a form of liberation too. Except it isn’t death; it’s entering an endless cycle of reincarnation.’
Cauldwell glanced up at Trickster. ‘Can you get the tabs, please?’
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Cauldwell had given Anderson five tabs instead of four owing to his larger body size. The result was truly bizarre. Anderson had never read the poetry of Shaman – or any other poet. His cultural references were sparse, but he knew almost every American patriotic anthem by heart. His favourite was the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’. He sang it in a deep bass except for the chorus, which he rendered in a squeaky falsetto:
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
By now, both Anderson and the Trickster had taken off all their clothes. Love was in the air. But Anderson was also in the marching mood. Cauldwell found it so delightfully bizarre that he almost didn’t want to leave the testing suite. When Anderson wasn’t singing, he was shouting parade ground commands: Present ARMS; Order ARMS; Right step MARCH. It took some doing to get Trickster to shoulder an imaginary rifle, but he seemed to get some satisfaction from shouting out lines of Shaman poetry as a counterpoint to Anderson’s Battle Hymn as they marched around the room in step: ‘Them Communists and them Russians and them Chinese are marching too…’
Which only got Anderson to sing louder: ‘I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His
righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps…’
And then Trickster: ‘Them Russians want to pee in our swimming pools. Them Chinamens wants to eat our wives…’
Cauldwell wondered if Trickster was leaving Ginsberg and had become fixated on Anderson. Despite the militaristic words of the hymn, Anderson was now a man of peace for whom marching and patriotic singing had become an expression of love. Each time he marched past Cauldwell he covered him in sloppy kisses.
Cauldwell had kept the door wedged open with a chair. The last thing he wanted was to be locked in with those two when the effects of the drug had worn off and help was on the way. He had Anderson’s gun in his pocket; he would need it later. But more importantly, he had found car keys and identity documents in Anderson’s discarded clothing. In fact, thought Cauldwell, he would need Anderson’s clothes as well.
Anderson shouted, ‘Mark time, MARCH’ from the other side of the room and saluted Cauldwell with: ‘I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: “As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal…”’
Trickster counterpointed: ‘The hordes of Asia are rising against us. They want to boil our chickens.’
And at that moment, Cauldwell picked up the bundle of clothes and left the testing suite, locking the door behind him.
»»»»
Cauldwell had changed into Anderson’s suit, but any guard who looked closely at Anderson’s ID photo would quickly realise it didn’t belong to Cauldwell. That’s where the gun might come in handy. Cauldwell strapped on Anderson’s watch. He had lifted that too – convincing the tripping guard that he needed ‘to free himself from time to be truly liberated’.
Even though it was past midnight the outside air was still hot and sticky. Tidewater Maryland has a relentless climate. The night was loud with crickets and Cauldwell could smell the dank rotting perfume of swamp and festering river. It reminded him of his own home in the deeper South. But other than the smells and the sounds, the place was completely unnatural. The squat windowless building he had just left was bathed in high-voltage lights. There wasn’t a blade of grass, only hard-baked tarmac. It was a high-security facility ringed by a chain-link fence topped with two rolls of concertina barbed wire. The only way out was through a heavy steel gate with spikes on the top that was locked. There wasn’t a guard hut, only an MP slumped on a folding chair with a transistor radio pressed to his ear.
Cauldwell got in Anderson’s car, a four-door Chevrolet Bel Air sedan painted the olive drab of a US Army staff car. He immediately realised he was going to have to find a different car. This one, in its military livery, was too easy to spot. As soon as he started the engine, the MP got up and began to unlock the gate. Cauldwell took Anderson’s revolver out of his pocket and laid it on the seat beside him. He then opened the glove compartment to see if there were any maps. It was full of maps. He found one of Maryland and put it on top of the pistol. He then placed Anderson’s ID on the dashboard in front of the wheel, face down because the resemblance was so poor. He drove towards the gate at walking pace. The gate was now wide open and the MP was yawning into a white-gloved hand. The armpits of his khaki uniform were dark with sweat.
As Cauldwell approached the gate, the MP flourished a clipboard with a ballpoint pen tied to it on a string. Shit, thought Cauldwell; you have to sign in and out. On the other hand, you might only need the ID to get into the compound. He decided to pretend he was used to the procedure. Cauldwell stopped the car. He could see immediately that the MP was looking at him with suspicion. He had to act first.
The MP bent down to look in the open window on the driver’s side. His right hand was resting on his .45 Colt automatic.
Cauldwell looked him straight in the eye and added a layer of redneck bubba to his usual Southern accent. ‘I ain’t signed in. Mr Anderson said I didn’t have to, but he was in a hurry and I think he was wrong. I don’t think you were on duty then.’
The MP’s eyes had lost a bit of their flintiness and he was shaking his head. ‘Was it this afternoon?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That was Hicks on duty. He’s gonna get his ass in a sling for that.’
‘I don’t think it was Hicks’s fault. Anderson was late and didn’t want to get his own ass in a sling.’ Cauldwell picked up the ID, ‘Look, he left his ID in the car.’ He then moved the map and picked up Anderson’s revolver. ‘And he left his fuckin’ gun in the car too.’
‘Sheeeit. Poor Hicks.’
‘Can I have a look at the log?’
The MP handed over the clipboard. The transistor radio was still on and tuned in to WCAO. The music was a twangy guitar piece called ‘Rebel Rouser’.
‘Turn it up,’ Cauldwell requested. ‘I like Duane Eddy.’
While the MP fiddled with the transistor, Cauldwell flipped through the pages of the log. ‘Look, Anderson was the last one signed in yesterday. There’s a space after his name. I can sign myself in now and no one will get in trouble.’
The MP squinted and scratched his head for a few seconds, then said. ‘Yeah, why don’t you?’
Cauldwell smiled in anticipation at the shit storm he was about to unleash. He was sure that the MP wouldn’t recognise the name, but the CIA and FBI certainly would. He wrote the actual forename as well as the nickname and made sure both signatures – signing in and signing out – were easily legible: Harold ‘Kim’ Philby. He handed the clipboard back.
The MP saluted smartly as Cauldwell drove off. ‘Have a good evening, Mr Philby.’
»»»»
Cauldwell estimated it would only be a couple of hours at most before they discovered his escape. What he needed was another vehicle. When he left the base, he turned left on Route 40, a four-lane highway heading south. There was an overgrown grass strip separating the lanes and diners and gas stations on both sides of the road. A few of the diners were still open. Even more than another vehicle, he decided he needed something to eat and some strong coffee too. The road was straight and he saw the neon beacon warm and welcoming in the distance.
THE NEW IDEAL DINER. The red lights were two feet tall. There was a smaller sign in ordinary white lights underneath: ‘Buses and Trucks Welcome!’ Despite the glaring lights, the New Ideal looked deserted. The parking lot was empty except for a big Mack Series B truck in the dark shadows of the pine forest that ran up to the back of the diner.
Cauldwell parked the staff car between the truck and the trees so that it wouldn’t be seen from the road. He then tucked the Smith & Wesson into his waistband. He was ready for a late supper, but strolled around the Mack Series B before he went into the diner. Mack trucks were one of the few things he liked about his native America. The massive machines had an iconic beauty of raw power set in the stern frown of pure American Gothic body design. The engine wasn’t tucked in tight to the cab, but thrust forward with snarling chrome teeth. Cauldwell walked back to have a look at the trailer. It was a massive eighteen-wheeler with canvas lashed over the top. He climbed up on one of the rear wheels and reached under the taut canvas. His hand came out with a fist full of coarse gravel. It was almost certainly aggregate for the new interstate highway. Cauldwell smiled and flung the gravel at the stolen car. An idea was forming.
The only customer in the diner was the truck driver who was polishing off a meal of ribs and grits. He looked pretty happy with himself. He had a shiny round face framed by curls of greasy black hair. Cauldwell knew that type – the class clown who almost always ended up operating heavy equipment in later life. Not just Mack trucks, but bulldozers, pile drivers, rock pulverisers, stump crushers and hydraulic hoe rams. They were the laughing imps who ripped up the wilderness for the industrial warlocks.
When the waitress came to clear the truck driver’s table, she stood well away. The driver sat with eyes closed in seeming postprandial somnolence, a toothpick hanging from his moist lips. Meanwhile a surreptitious hand snaked out from beneath the table towards the waitress’s thigh. She was mor
e than ready and gave the hand a sharp slap that echoed like a gunshot. ‘You behave yourself, Scooter.’
‘I was just stretching.’
‘No, you were not.’
‘Ah, come on, Trixie. You like a bit of affection.’
‘You shush. And not when strangers are watching.’
‘I wasn’t watching,’ said Cauldwell.
Trixie gave him a sharp look over her pink butterfly spectacles. ‘Don’t you encourage him.’
Cauldwell winked at Scooter. ‘Got far to go tonight?’
‘I ain’t going nowhere tonight. I’m sleeping in the cab.’ He looked at the waitress. ‘Unless’n I get a better offer.’
‘Not with your manners,’ said Trixie.
‘I just been shot down,’ said Scooter reaching for his hip flask, ‘in flames.’
Trixie was now standing over Cauldwell with an order pad. ‘What can I get you, hon?’
‘I’ll have chicken and sweet potato fries – and plenty of strong coffee.’
Meanwhile, Scooter took another slug from his hip flask and looked over at Cauldwell. ‘Would you like some snakebite medicine?’
‘That’s really nice of you, but I got a lot of driving and want to stay awake.’
‘How far you going?’
‘Raleigh.’
‘You won’t get there this morning.’
‘I know.’
Scooter got up to pay his bill and whispered something to Trixie that got him another slap. When he was gone, Trixie poured Cauldwell his first coffee. Her eyes had dark rings under them. She was dead tired.
‘How long have you been working?’ asked Cauldwell.
‘Fourteen hours. I’m moonlighting; this is my second job.’
‘Why do you do it?’
‘So we don’t lose our house.’ Trixie turned to bring Cauldwell his food.
When he finished eating Cauldwell paid with money he had found in Anderson’s wallet. He gave Trixie a five-dollar bill and told her to keep the change, an enormous tip of two dollars. She said, ‘Thanks, hon.’ And watched him closely as he left. She knew something was up, but she wasn’t going to say anything to the cops. Trixie was loyal to kindness; it was too rare.
The Whitehall Mandarin Page 11
