Under the Beetle's Cellar

by Mary Willis Walker

  “The old Tong woman followed them, all the way back to Austin. She’d never been to Texas before, but she loved it, and she was used to the heat because it was even hotter in Tongaland and much more humid. She moved in with Jacksonville and Lopez, and she did the cooking. She made these wonderful spicy noodle dishes for them. Of course, they didn’t like noodles much, but all the neighbors did.”

  “Noodles and what?” Sandra asked.

  “Oh, various things. Shrimp, vegetables. Sometimes, as a treat for Lopez, she’d do spicy noodles with beetles, or spiders, if she could catch them.”

  “How about the President?” Hector asked.

  “He was real happy to get Dr. Mortimer and the Galaxy Peace Ray back. The mission was accomplished, and he had them all to lunch at the White House. He gave them medals and plaques and certificates saying they were heroes.”

  “What did they eat at the White House?” Sandra asked.

  “Well, in honor of Jacksonville, the President had one of the White House butlers go out and find some good ripe roadkill—it had been a possum, I think—and scrape it up into a pizza box and—”

  “Arggh,” Sue Ellen said.

  “And for Lopez some delicious gourmet beetles on a silver plate. They don’t allow slumber bugs at the White House, but Lopez had given them up anyway. And for Dr. Mortimer, a steak, to build up his strength, because he had lost so much weight while he was in prison.”

  “A rare steak,” Conrad said. “With A-1 sauce and french fries.”

  “Yeah,” Walter said. “That’s right.”

  “So they lived happily ever after?” Philip asked in a skeptical tone.

  Walter looked to the back of the bus where the boy lay on his seat with his head sticking out in the aisle. “Well, they certainly weren’t happy all the time, Philip, and they didn’t live forever. Jacksonville still worried about being ugly and Lopez had to fight off the craving for slumberbugs all his life. But they did have some very happy times together. Jacksonville read many good books and Lopez had the best garden in the county. So you decide for yourselves. If that’s living happily ever after, then they did. Now you guys need to go to sleep. Before you do, I want you to close your eyes and practice in your mind your part in our emergency plan. When I give the signal, you need to be able to go right to it. Okay? I think we’re going to have to do it for real tomorrow.”

  Kim came up and sat on the seat Walter was leaning against. She lifted his ponytail and took the rubber band off it. Then she started combing his hair. He protested softly, “Kim, honey, it’s so dirty.”

  “Yeah, so’s mine. It doesn’t matter. You can’t help it. I like to comb hair. I’ll make it look nice.”

  Heather, curled up on the next seat, said in a sleepy voice, “Me, too. Maybe when I grow up I’ll be a hairstylist like my Aunt Cheryl. She’s real pretty. You’d like her, Mr. Demming.” She lifted her head up suddenly, as if something had just occurred to her. “Do you have a girlfriend or anything?”

  “I did,” he said, “Carolyn. But she married someone else and moved to Dallas.”

  “Oh, she shouldn’t have,” Heather said.

  “I know.” He was getting tired. Having his head touched always did that to him. It was so relaxing, so soothing. Kim had even managed to get a bad snarl out without pulling. He closed his eyes.

  Finally she got the hair combed out to her satisfaction. “It’s gotten long,” she said. “Are you going to cut it when you get home?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think I should?”

  “No. I like it long. Heather, let me have one of those scrunchies you’ve been saving.”

  Heather sat up and reached in her pocket. She pulled out a red fabric-covered band and handed it to Kim. Gently Kim combed his hair back tight and gathered it into a bunch. She slipped the band on and secured it. Then he felt something soft against his forehead. It tightened. She was tying something around his head. “What’s that?”

  “It’s that old blue handkerchief of Josh’s I always kept for him. I washed it out yesterday,” she said, “so there’s no boogers on it or anything.”

  He reached up and felt it. She’d twisted it into a narrow band and tied it in the back. He was stunned. It was what he’d always done in Vietnam. To keep the sweat out of his eyes. “Why did you do that, Kim?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought it would look good. Don’t you like it?”

  “Yes, I do like it,” he said. “I think it will bring us good luck.” And God knows, he thought, we are due some. Please, God, if You could grace us with just a little luck down here, we will make the rest of it ourselves.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  “There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

  WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD FROM

  THE SIRENS OF TITAN,

  BY KURT VONNEGUT

  When Molly, Patrick Lattimore, and Grady Traynor returned to the communications room, Rain Conroy was fully dressed. She sat on a desk chair with her face tilted up toward Jules Borthwick, who was daubing pink lipstick on her mouth. He’d used face powder to whiten her complexion and applied a streak of rouge along each cheekbone. He had done something amazing to her hair, which had been short and sleek, to make it frizzed and dry-looking, for all the world as if she’d had years of bad perms.

  Molly stared in wonder at the transformation.

  “Stand up,” Lattimore said.

  Rain waited for Jules to finish blotting her lipstick, then she stood.

  It was astounding. She was now a bulky, tired, fifty-two-year-old elementary school teacher with a round-shouldered hunch and a look of amiable confusion. She wore a green cotton-polyester suit and large round, fabric-covered earrings that matched. The skirt was A-line; it hit her mid-calf in the most unflattering way, and managed to make her legs look heavy. The jacket hung open to reveal a white rayon blouse with lace trim. Her legs had the orange cast that comes from support hose, and her long feet looked comfortable in sturdy black pumps with low heels.

  The body was what was really amazing. The thickness around the middle looked like the natural postmenopausal thickening, and the low-slung breasts, just discernible underneath the white blouse, looked soft and real.

  “Wow!” Molly said. She studied the blouse, which seemed to fasten down the front with a hidden placket and a lace edging. “But how do you get to your weapon?”

  Rain stepped toward her and smiled sweetly. Before Molly could smile back, Rain turned into a blur of motion. She ended in a crouched shooting stance with a pistol gripped in both hands. It was aimed into the fireplace.

  Jules stepped back. “Hot damn! We got Velcro for our pistol-packing mama. What would we do without Velcro?”

  Rain laughed. “We’d have to do décolleté.”

  “Miss Cates is going in with you, Rain,” Lattimore said. “Just as far as the door, to hand over her materials and testify to your identity.”

  “I thought so. That’s why I wanted her to see that move.” Rain looked at Molly. “If things go wrong and you see me start to do what I just did, get the hell out of the way. Hit the floor and crawl under something. Hostages and pain-in-the-butt innocent bystanders get shot because they don’t stay down.” She slid the gun back inside her blouse, sucking her breath in to reposition it in the space inside her fake torso. Then she ran a hand over the placket to close it and smooth the fabric over the bodice. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes,” Lattimore said, “we surely do. Holihan, put that house plan up here on the board, please.”

  Holihan tacked a large sheet of paper next to the diagram of the compound. “This is the first floor of the main building,” he told them. “We got this from a local builder the Jezreelites consulted about some structural problems in the building three years ago. He made this from the sketches he did at the time. You’ve been i
nside, Miss Cates. Does this track with your recollection of it?”

  Molly looked at it. There was the big central room you entered into directly through the front door. To the right was the kitchen and behind that was the huge mess hall with long tables. To the left was the office where she had spent two harrowing hours with Samuel Mordecai.

  “This is the way I remember it.”

  Lattimore said, “Well, this time you shouldn’t see more than the area around the front door. Look. Here’s how it goes.” He stepped over to the compound diagram and planted his middle and index fingers just outside the gate. “We drop the two of you off here. Lieutenant Traynor will take you in his unmarked unit. We’re going to do it so fast the press won’t know what’s happening. You’ll be inside before they can react.

  “You’re going to take the lead, Molly. You get out of the car. Cynthia—we’re going to call her Cynthia from now on—will follow along. You’ll open the gate. It’s a simple lift latch like on a tennis court. No lock. You’ll push it open and close it behind Cynthia. You’ll be solicitous of her because this is painful for her. You’re carrying the folder under your arm.” He snapped his fingers. “Curtis, get the folder, please.”

  Curtis handed him the brown accordion file with Molly’s handwriting on the tab identifying it as ‘Samuel Mordecai.’

  “Everything’s in here,” Lattimore continued, “including your little tape player in case he wants to play the tape and doesn’t have one that size. We’ll go over it all in a minute.” He handed the file to Molly and put his fingers back at the gate. “So you walk in. You’ll lead the way, Molly, with Cynthia just a step behind you. We want you to look all business. No hesitation. Move briskly and deliberately. You’re the confident one, Cynthia’s timid and a little stunned by all this.”

  He walked his fingers through the gate to the front door. “The lights are bright. You know we have these searchlights set up. You’ll be blinded by them. Keep your eyes down on the ground. Don’t look behind you. There will be guns pointing at you from the towers and from some of the windows in the main building. Ignore them. You walk to the front door. They’ll have been watching you, so they may open it for you as you approach. If not, knock. They’ll open and let you in.”

  He moved over to the house diagram. “Molly, you go in first. This is real critical right here. You say, ‘I’m Molly Cates and this is Cynthia Jenkins,’ and you wait. If Samuel Mordecai is there, you address this to him. If not, wait for him. When you see him, Molly, don’t greet him or make any small talk. Don’t smile. Keep it cool and impersonal. Don’t argue with him. That’s what our psychologists advise. Don’t get involved in any discussion about what’s been happening. Just stick to what you came for, which is to give him the folder and summarize it.

  “Now, the place you want to stand to do this dog and pony show is right here to the left of the door.” He walked his fingers there.

  “If they say they want to search you, you let them, but don’t make it easy. Make them work for it. Frown and look embarrassed, offended.

  “If he tells you to come into the office or somewhere else, say this: ‘The agreement was that I’d show it to you here. I can leave it with you, but I’ll show it to you here.’ Take the lead and show him the police report with the names. Tell him it led to Hank Hanley, who was one of the witnesses on Waller Creek. That led you to the Pi Alpha Omegas, which is how you eventually tracked Cynthia Jenkins down. You flew to Houston last night to talk to her. She acknowledged right away she was his mother and was able to fill in all the details. You brought your tape of that discussion. You always tape interviews.

  “So hit the highlights, like that, and hand him the file. Ask if he has any questions. All we want you to do is vouch for her and validate it. Then you get out of there. Ask Cynthia if she’s all right, pat her on the arm, and say that you’ll see her later. And you walk out.” He switched back to the compound diagram and walked his fingers from the front door back to the gate. “Walk at the same rate you walked in. Brisk. You’ll feel like running. Don’t do it. And don’t look around. Just keep your eyes on the ground. Lieutenant Traynor will be waiting with the car. You hop in and he’ll bring you back here.”

  He gave Molly a pinched smile. “And that’s it.”

  “That’s it if everything goes perfectly,” Grady said.

  “Okay,” Lattimore said, “let’s talk about contingencies. Number one is the body-search issue. If they just frisk you, it’s all right, even if they really feel you both up. If they want to do a strip search, Cynthia is going to have a fainting spell. Molly, we’ve practiced it already. She will feel poorly and all you need to do is be solicitous. She’ll carry it.”

  Rain said, “The whole idea is for me to get Mordecai in a room alone. Everything I do or say will be aimed at that.”

  “The second problem,” Lattimore said, “is if he wants you to come with him and Cynthia, to have you show him the stuff privately. You want to resist that. Let me repeat: The goal here is for Cynthia to get him alone. If it’s necessary, and you have to go along with it, then be sure you stay out of the way. Rain will take him out at the first opportunity. You’ll hit the floor and stay there. We’ll hear the shot for sure because we have our electronic ears on, and the first shot’s our cue to move. If she can, she’ll blow out the window of the room she’s in with a frame charge. You can count on our coming through that blown window within sixty seconds, even if it’s on the second floor. The lights will go off, inside and out, as soon as we hear the shot. They have a generator, but we don’t know if it works and anyway it’ll take a while for it to kick in, so you may be in the dark. And there’s no moon tonight. Cynthia has a tiny laser light.”

  Grady uncrossed his arms for the first time. “Tell her what happens if they get made, Lattimore.”

  “If thirty minutes pass with no shot and no blast, we’re going to assume you got made and we’ll come in. Molly, if there’s some delay other than that, ask Mordecai if you can call me. Say you don’t want me to worry. All you have to do is pick up the phone and I’ll be on the other end,” Lattimore said. “At worst, this will be a diversion—to mask our assault.”

  “Have you ever seen an explosive entry, Molly?” Rain asked.

  “No.”

  “And she’s not going to,” Lattimore said.

  “But if you get unlucky,” Rain said, “and get to see one tonight, you should know what to expect. We go in fast—screaming like Banshees, black hoods, gas masks, Ninja gear, flash-bangs blinding you and deafening you, assault rifles blazing.”

  “Sounds like a Rolling Stones concert I saw recently,” Molly said.

  No one laughed.

  Rain said, “I don’t know what effect Mick Jagger has on people these days, but our entries make most people piss in their pants the first time. I did. You’ve got one thing to remember: Stay down. That’s how you survive.”

  “Okay,” Lattimore said, “if no one has anything else to add, let’s give the ladies some time to powder their noses and get their seams straight.” He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Then come back here and I’ll make the call to Mordecai. Curtis, get me Blumberg.”

  Molly found the bathroom, but her bladder was much too nervous to give anything up.

  Walking past the little room off the kitchen, looking for Grady, she saw Rain Conroy sitting alone inside. Her head was lowered, her eyes closed. Her lips moved silently. Her fingers were busy with something in her lap and at first Molly wasn’t sure what she was doing. Molly took a few steps into the room and saw that it was a rosary. Rain was moving her fingers slowly from bead to bead.

  Molly stood quietly and watched her pray. She knew she ought to leave, but she couldn’t.

  When Rain finally opened her eyes, Molly was still watching her.

  “Old habits die hard,” Rain said. “And this business makes you superstitious. You tend to do exactly what you did all the other times you survived.”

  �
�Are you still a Catholic?”

  Rain smiled. “Are you still a woman? Are you still a member of your father’s family?”

  “But you quit being a nun.”

  “And I bet you quit being a virgin.”

  Molly smiled back at her.

  Rain said, “I don’t mean to be flippant. I don’t go to mass, haven’t for twenty years. I did once commit my life to the Church, but it proved unworthy of me. Sexist. Corrupt. Rigid.” She shrugged. “But so is every other organization I’ve seen since then.”

  “Well,” Molly said, “I’m interrupting you. Sorry. But one more question—just now … what do you pray for?”

  “For courage. And luck. For my reflexes to keep their edge just a little longer. For the soul of Samuel Mordecai. For the hostages.” She ticked them off on her fingers—“Hector Ramirez, Lucy Quigley, Sue Ellen McGregor, Brandon Betts, Bucky DeCarlo, Heather Yost, Kimberly Bassett, Conrad Pease, Sandra Echols, Philip Trotman, and especially Walter Demming.”

  “I’m impressed that you learned their names. I haven’t wanted to get that close.”

  Rain nodded. “I usually pick one name to concentrate on. I think it will be Philip Trotman this time. To center myself when things get messy. It calms me.” She studied Molly. “You might need one tonight. Why don’t you take Heather Yost? That sounds like a lucky one to me.” Rain closed her eyes. “But do it in the other room, please. I need a little time alone.”

  But Molly hesitated. “Rain,” she asked, “do you have any other advice for me?”

  Without opening her eyes, Rain said, “Make sure you pee before we go, and, for God’s sake, stay down.”

  Molly found Grady in the kitchen studying the cast of Rain Conroy’s torso. When he saw Molly, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close. “Molly, go in and get out quick. No heroics.”

  “No danger of that,” Molly said.

  He nodded at the statue. “She’s paid to do it. And trained for it—a professional. You’re not.”

  “I know.”