“He could still carry some weight,” somebody said.
“He’s over, he’s finished,” came a counterverdict. “Color him the Jeopardy! answer without a question.”
“God bless America, and God bless the state of Arkansas,” Etheridge said, then turned and walked stiffly away.
“We won’t have Holly Etheridge to kick around anymore,” some wag said.
“Hell, there wasn’t enough of him to kick around in the first place,” someone else added.
31
It had been a good day for the general. At eleven, he had finally closed a contract with Colonel Sanchez of the Honduran Army. Colonel Sanchez was el comandante of Battalion 316, the counterterror and insurgency specialists, American-trained. Though the Hondurans had plenty of money to spend, the general could see no justification for pushing the No. 1 System, as it was called. The SR-25 with the Magnavox thermal sniperscope and the JFP MAW-7 suppressor was the most sophisticated system in the world but it was labor-intensive maintenance-wise and he doubted a third-world nation without a sophisticated technical culture would be able to maintain the units through heavy usage. And heavy usage was expected: the current guerrilla war showed no signs of abating and indeed was moving into the cities, where Battalion 316 and Military Intelligence rightly understood that a long-range precision night-vision sniping capability would prove invaluable.
After much hassling and wrangling, the general had finally convinced Colonel Sanchez that a system built around rebuilt army AN/PVS-2 Starlights mounted on state-of-the-art McMillan M-86s with the JFP Technology M14SS-1 suppressors was exactly what the doctor ordered. Twenty of the units would be in .308 Winchester, ten in .300 Winchester Magnum and ten in .223 Remington, giving Battalion 316 a great deal of tactical flexibility.
Of course JFP sniper cadre would field-train designated marksmen in the usage of the weapons system and serve, for an interim time, as consultants and advisers vis-à-vis their deployment in the combat environment. The general had a talent pool of several ex-SWAT and Green Beret snipers who performed such tasks, and were damn well paid too, both in money and in the odd extra kill they could pick up.
The general and the colonel then went to lunch, demolishing mighty amounts of rare roast beef at one of Oklahoma City’s finest establishments, and the general dropped the colonel off at his hotel, to prepare for the flight home. The general himself went to his club, where he played three quick games of squash with his lawyer and one of his board members. He took an hour in the steam room, showered and got back to the office at four. He expected to spend another two hours on paperwork and to begin work on a presentation set in a month’s time for the German GSG-9 antiterrorist group; if he could snatch them from the jaws of Heckler & Koch and its blasted, overrated PSG1, it would be a wonderful feather in his cap!
He sat at his desk, and Judy, his secretary, came in with his messages.
“Anything important?”
“No sir. Your wife. She’s waiting for her payment.”
“Dammit, I sent that check,” he said.
“Two calls from Jeff Harris at the FBI.”
“Yes, yes. They may go night-vision. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“A Mr. Greenaway, the procurement officer for the Cleveland Municipal Police.”
“Oh, I’ll get right on that one.”
“Long-distance, Mr. Arrabenz from Salvador.”
“That old pirate. Okay, I’ll get back to him. In fact, you may as well start trying to put the call through now. It’ll take hours.”
“Yes sir. And Mr. Short.”
The general thought he misunderstood.
“I’m sorry?”
“Mr. Short. He said it was about Arkansas. He said he’d call back. Frenchy Short, the name was.”
The general nodded, smiled, thanked her.
She left the room.
The general sat there, finding his breath hard to locate in his chest.
It was coming back. Swagger, now this.
Goddammit.
He waited and waited. His technicians left at five, as usual, and Judy went home at six, but the general stayed in his office. Twice after Judy left, the phone rang; one was a wrong number and another a hang-up.
You bastard, he thought, nursing a glass of Scotch neat. You bastard.
Finally, at 8:27 the phone rang.
He snatched it up.
“Hello.”
“Jack! Jack Preece, you old son of a gun, how the hell are you? It’s your old pal Frenchy Short.”
The voice was southern and arrived in a laughing tone of fake heartiness.
“Who are you?” Preece demanded. “You’re not Frenchy Short. Frenchy Short is dead. He died in Vienna in 1974. I saw the Agency report.”
“Details, details,” came the voice. “How are you doing these days, Jack? That divorce still takes a pretty penny, I’ll bet. Your daughter likes Penn, does she? Business is booming, isn’t it? Battalion 316? Excellent, Jack. That’s quite a healthy little shop you’re running.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Frenchy Short.”
“Goddammit, who are you?”
The man on the other end let him sweat for a few moments.
“Jack, you’re right. Frenchy’s dead. You might say I’m his heir apparent.”
“What the hell is this all about?”
“Jack, Frenchy Short was the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ve lived a charmed life ever since you met him. You got the commands you wanted. You moved up through the ranks. You had clout, power, prestige. You ran that sniper school, the premier sniper command in the Western world. You’ve seen your night doctrines accepted by the army. You’ve got a chestful of ribbons and medals. You’ve become a wealthy man. Jack, you owe Frenchy Short a great deal.”
“Stop bullshitting me. Get to the goddamned point.”
“Here’s the point, Jack. In 1955 you did Frenchy a big favor. You hit a shot for us that no one else in the world could have hit. It bought us all kinds of things. And it bought you all kinds of things. Now, forty-odd years later, that case has been opened again. Somebody’s come hunting us. You have to take another shot. You have to put him in the ground. Night shot. Long-range. Your specialty.”
“No,” said Jack. “That is the one thing I regret doing. That man was a law enforcement officer who did no one any harm. He was a hero. That is the only shame I feel. I don’t care what the consequences are.”
“Jack, I forgot how brave you are. You won the Bronze Star, didn’t you? All right, Jack, go noble on your old pal Frenchy Short. You say you’ll face the consequences? You’ll give it all up, your good name, your firm, your family? You’ll endure the scandal? That’s not what it’ll cost you. No, no, if he comes for me, I’ll make certain no matter how it works out, he gets your name, Jack, then he’ll come for you. He’s the best. There ain’t no better.”
“Swagger?”
“And how, ten feet tall and really pissed off. Still the best. Still is. Dusted ten pros the other day, maybe you read about if?”
Preece had, dammit.
“Jack, I’ll give you to Swagger and he’ll take you apart. Or I’ll set him up for you. One shot, one kill.”
The general was quiet. He looked around at his marksmanship trophies, his paneled office, his medals on the wall. If Swagger came for him it was over.
“Then I’m out?”
“For keeps. You go back to your life, I go back to mine.”
“How?”
“Tomorrow you move out with your gear. You go to a farm way out on a dirt road on County 70, off of 71, just north of Blue Eye, Arkansas. It’s way, way out, near a little place called Posey Hollow. Your contact will be a boy named Duane Peck. He’ll get you settled in. Meanwhile, I’m working to set Swagger up in the woods. He’s got to be drawn in slowly, carefully. It can’t be rushed, but I’m thinking a few days, maybe a week. When it happens you’ll have to move fast and quiet. I’ll get you your shot. You better
not miss, General Jack, or he will bury you good and deep.”
“I never miss,” said the general.
32
Beyond the bridge the land changed. It grew flat and plain and gave way, after a time, to perspectives over water, choked with reeds, huge vistas of almost colorless marshlands, broken here and there by clumps of trees. The water sparkled in the sun.
“There isn’t this much water in the whole state of Oklahoma,” said Russ.
They were on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, heading toward St. Michaels, which, a map suggested, was a small town situated on a promontory that jabbed out into the Chesapeake. It seemed like land only marginally reclaimed from the sea: the water winked at them from behind the trees or off beyond farm fields; or it lurked, black and still, in deep pools that lapped around the edges of dark trees that seemed to stretch off for infinity; or, finally, it was in the rivers and streams that lashed this way and that, like saber cuts.
“Wet,” was all Bob could think to say.
“Maybe she won’t see us,” said Russ.
“Oh, I think she will.”
“Do we tell her about Sam? It might upset her.”
“Tell her the truth on all things. She was a damned smart lady, as I remember. Back in the days when nobody thought a woman was smart, they all said, Miss Connie is smart. That says a hell of a lot about her. I do believe all the men were half in love with her, my own father and Sam Vincent included.”
“She’s ninety-five,” said Russ.
“I’ll bet she’s still as sharp as a bee’s ass. You’ll see.”
They passed through St. Michaels, a town so quaint it looked as if it belonged in an antique store window, and then, off Route 33 still farther toward the Chesapeake, they saw a discreet sign, expensive and muted, that said DOWNY MARSH and pointed the way, without explanation.
Russ turned down the drive, came to a gate under overhanging elms. A guard stopped them.
“Visitors,” Russ said, “to see Miss Longacre. Mrs. Longacre.”
The guard, uniformed and black, nodded and let them pass.
It had to have once been the estate of a robber baron or steel or railroad tycoon. An asphalt road curled across land which grew tenuous as they progressed through the high, fluttering reeds, and then at last yielded to a crescent of garden and lawn scalloped out of the marsh, dominated by a brick mansion. The building was gigantic, monstrous, capped with a mansard roof, green copper in the sun, and festooned with balconies themselves intricate with wrought ironwork on many levels and multipaned windows: unbearable ugliness that spoke of the violence and inevitability of capital. Russ thought it was a relic from a nineteenth century full of black smoke and grinding engines, an arrogant eyesore that faced five miles of serene marshlands and beyond the shifty sheet-glass calm of the bay. It had the look of a place where rich people came to die.
Russ pulled into a parking space marked VISITORS, noting that his was the only visiting car. Out on the grounds he could see ancient people hunched in wheelchairs, being guided about by black nurses or aides, whatever.
It was two in the afternoon. The sun was bright, the sky Windex blue. A vee of geese flew far overhead; an egret stood on one leg off to the side of the house, by a little pool.
“Let me do the talking,” said Bob. “I think she’ll remember me.”
They walked in, both in suits, and felt their shoes crack on the linoleum in the hushed silence. There was no sense of the medicinal in here, but more the devotional; it felt to Russ like a religious space.
They came to a counter, where two well-dressed women suspiciously watched them approach.
“Hello,” said Bob. “I’m wondering if it’s possible to see one of your patients—”
“Residents,” he was frostily corrected.
“—residents—named Mrs. Connie Longacre. I’m the son of an old friend.”
“What is your name, sir?”
“Swagger. Bob Lee Swagger. Tell her I’m the son of Earl Swagger. She’ll remember.”
They sat and waited for the longest time, and finally a woman came.
“She is frail. But she’s alert, coherent and tough. I can give you no more than half an hour. Try not to excite her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob.
She led them through double doors, back through vast rooms that were largely empty, and out on a veranda that faced the bay but from such elevation that one could see the lacework of islands and marsh and miles of blue water. The far shore was not visible, though in the distance green islands poked out of the waves.
The old lady sat facing the view in a wheelchair. She was swaddled in blankets. She wore dark sunglasses and most of the flesh had fallen from her face, revealing taut, powdery skin well fissured with wrinkles. But two bright dabs of rouge brightened her gaunt cheekbones and her hair, snow white, sat on her head like a pillbox hat.
“Miss Connie?” said Bob.
“Lord, I’d know that voice anywhere,” she said brightly, turning. “I haven’t heard it in forty long years but I hear it every night before I go to bed. He was a wonderful man, your father. Do you know that, Bob Lee? Most men are not wonderful, it has been my experience to learn, but your father truly was.”
“Yes, ma’am. I wish I remembered him better.”
“Did you ever marry, Bob Lee? And have children?”
“Yes, ma’am, finally. I met a fine woman, a nurse on an Indian reservation in Arizona. I look after horses now. We have a daughter named Nicole, Nicki. She’s four. We love her a great deal.”
“I’m happy. Earl deserved a grandchild. I wish he could have known.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “Ma’am, I’m here with an associate, a young writer. His name is Russ Pewtie.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Longacre,” said Russ.
“Here, take my hand, young man. I want to steal some warmth from you.”
Russ put his hand out and she seized it fiercely, her fingers cold but still tight with strength.
“There. Now, Russ, you describe for me what is before me, please. I insist. I want to borrow your eyes. I’m told it is beautiful, but I have no way of knowing.”
Russ bumbled through a description of the scene, feeling less than articulate.
But she was kind.
“You speak well,” she said.
“He’s a writer,” Bob said.
“What is he writing? Is he writing your life story, Bob Lee? That would be an exciting book.”
“No, ma’am. He is writing a book about my father and how he died.”
“A terrible tragedy,” said Miss Connie. “A terrible day. Worse than any day in the war. Worse in some ways than the day my son and his wife died. My son was a drunk. If you drink and drive in fast little cars, you must face certain consequences. So be it. But your father was doing a job important to the community and setting a moral example. He deserved so much better than a guttersnipe like Jimmy Pye.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “We came to talk about that. About what happened that day. What was said, the timing of it, what you remember. Is that all right, Miss Connie?”
“May I ask why?”
“I just want to know how my father died,” Bob said.
“Any son’s right. Go ahead. Ask away.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes, I did. He arrived at the cottage at about two. He made an awful deputy who was hanging around go away. Most men did what Earl told them; he had that way. But Earl was upset. He didn’t show it, because your father was a man in control. He didn’t say much, he did a lot. He was a still man, a watcher. When he spoke he had such a deep and raspy voice, just like yours. But he was bothered by Jimmy. He could not understand it. He believed in Jimmy.”
“Why was that, do you suppose?” Russ asked.
“I look at the two of them, Jimmy Pye and Earl Swagger, and I see the two Americas. Earl was the old America, the America that won the war. When I say ‘the war,’ young man, of course I
mean World War II.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“With young people today, you can never be sure what they know. Anyway, Earl was sturdy, patient, hardworking, stubborn, very courageous. Jimmy was the new America. He knew nothing. But he was handsome, slick, clever, cute, and evil. He only cared for himself. His theory of the world put him at the center of it, that was all. He never cared even for Edie White except to have her and say to the world, no one else can have this beautiful thing. She was a lovely, lovely girl. Earl would not allow himself to face the truth about Jimmy. That was his flaw, his hubris. That’s why it’s tragedy, not melodrama.”
“Did my father—what was he working on those last few days? Was there an investigation, a project? I have to know what he was thinking.”
“I was only with him for a half an hour that last day, maybe less. Then I left and he and Edie were alone. I never saw him again; by the time I got back, she was sleeping. But … I do remember this. He had found a body that day, earlier.”
“The young black girl,” said Russ. “Yes, we’ve heard of that.”
“Shirelle Parker, her name was. She was murdered. Your father was very troubled by the event. I could see him turning it over. I remember exactly what it was. He said he thought there were signs of ‘monkey business.’ What those were, he never elaborated.”
“But from what I understand, there was no monkey business,” Bob said. “A black youth was arrested the next day or two. Sam prosecuted. It was open-and-shut. The boy was executed two years later. That was all there was to it.”
“Yes,” said Miss Connie. “All there was to it.”
“So my father was wrong,” said Bob.
She turned and set her face outward, as if she were looking across the bay.
Then she turned back to face them.
“Your father was right. Reggie Gerard Fuller didn’t kill her. I found that out many years later.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know. But I do know what happened and why it happened. The night that girl disappeared there was a meeting at the church.”
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