“The thing is,” she said, “I don’t think that’d be, what’s the word I’m looking for-appropriate?”
“Seemed pretty appropriate the other night at the Hilton,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed about that, are you?”
“A little,” she said. “I have to confess to using you, in a manner of speaking.”
“Well, damn, woman,” I said, trying to keep it light while hiding my confusion. “If that was using me, you can use me and even abuse me any time you want. C’mon, Mary Ellen, what’s going on?”
“The thing is, I’m getting married in a month.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“And, lemme see: You were getting married in a month and a week when you came out to see your old buddy from upstate.”
A slight hesitation. “Yes.”
“So what was all that-your bachelorette party?”
“In a way. Well, no, that’s not fair. I just, well, I just wanted to know what it would be like. Edward is a nice guy, but he’s nothing like you. I had to know.”
I couldn’t decide if I should be mad or disappointed. “Know exactly what, Mary Ellen?”
“Cam, that night was incredibly exciting and eminently satisfying. What I had to know was whether or not I was in love with you, and you with me, or just turned on by the fact that you are so very different from all the men I work with and see every day.”
That sounded a bit lame to me. “As in, get it on with the pool boy one last time?”
“No, no, no. Please, don’t be angry, even though you have every right to be. But let me ask you something: Are you in love with me?”
“I hold you in great affection, Mary Ellen,” I said, suddenly the weasel. “You know that.”
“Yes, I do, but do you want to marry me? You want a family? A house in the academic suburbs and some kind of normal, nine-to-five life, one that doesn’t involve gunfights in the dark?”
I sighed. We both knew the answer to that question.
“Right,” she said, and I felt my heart sink, even though I knew she was absolutely right. I’d been married, and I was way past my sell-by date to go there again, even with this lovely woman.
“We smoked some mirrors that night, Mary Ellen,” I said. “You gotta admit, when we were good, we were very good.”
“Stop reminding me, Cam. But the truth is, I want all of those things, and it’s kind of now or never as I see it.”
“I guess I wasn’t really calling about having a drink, was I,” I admitted.
She giggled. “And I appreciate the sentiment,” she said. “Shit. This is hard. I thought all I’d have to do is send you a Dear John and go on with my life. Tell me one more thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked. I thought I knew what she’d want to know, and she did not disappoint.
“Are the shepherds with you?”
Bingo, I thought. “They are. And, yes, I am. You didn’t buy the admin story, did you?”
“Wanted to,” she said. “ Really wanted to. But…”
“This mean I can’t call from time to time? Just to see how you’re doing?”
“You might get Edward.”
“Aaarrgh,” I said.
“Cam: It’s been more than great. But now…”
“Got it, babe. All the very best in the next chapter, and I mean that most sincerely. I do have to say, just for the record, mind you, that I’m sorely disappointed in missing out on some more use and abuse.”
I could almost see the smile I could hear in her voice. “Good-bye, Cam.”
Okay, I thought. A clean shoot-down if there ever was one. Let’s go see what kind of a date Carl Trask is.
Harry’s Bar was located in the second-to-last block before the Southport municipal beach and fishing pier. It was a traditional layout-a long, dimly lit, and smoky rectangular room, mirrored bar and stools on one side, a single row of tables on the other. At the back was a jukebox, a worn-looking dance floor, and a stairway with a sign that said POOL, with an arrow pointing up the stairs. I didn’t think they meant swimming. There was a neon Budweiser sign in the window, along with a dusty and somewhat tattered liquor license taped to the glass near the door. A dozen-plus metal stools decorated the bar, all occupied by what looked like workers from the plant, based on all the badges and TLDs. Not a particularly rough-looking crowd, but it was definitely hard hat country. Some of the tables near the dance floor were occupied by small groups of women who were making a giggling reconnaissance of the bar until I showed up with a large German shepherd in tow.
The tables up front were empty, so I chose one in the front corner near the door and sat down with my back to the wall. I had Frick on a harness with me, and I put her under the table with her back to the wall. Some of the guys at the bar noted the shepherd, but most were busy drinking and talking, in that order, and paid us no mind. The women started giggling again. The bartender tried to protest about the dog, but Frick showed her teeth and he elected to retire with his dignity and his ankles intact.
I ordered Scotch and was enjoying my drink as much as I could having just been dumped by the prettiest woman I knew. A polite, even complimentary dumping, but still. Then Ari’s assistant, the lovely Samantha Young, came through the door. This time the giggling really stopped, and was replaced by some frustrated stares from the Southport debutante conga line huddled over their exotic drinks along the back wall. Samantha was wearing what I think are called designer jeans, a light jacket over a heartbreaker sweater, and slightly more war paint than I’d noticed at the office. She carried a small, businesslike leather purse under her left arm.
She closed the door, shucked the jacket, and inhaled. I think most of the guys at the bar inhaled, too. Some of them even whimpered. She gave them a casual once-over, ignored all the daggers coming down the line from the back tables, and then chose the table next to mine. I tipped my glass at her when she sat down, and she gave me a friendly nod, scoring many points for me at the bar. The tables were close enough that we could talk without moving into each other’s space. I asked her how things were going in the head shed at Helios.
“Lots of new faces and interesting questions,” she said. “Which one is that under your table?”
I told her, and then had to explain the genesis of their names. A couple of the more lubricated members of the stool staff were starting to cast lustful if bleary eyes at Samantha while making the usual delicate anatomical observations. She ignored the boozy chatter and accepted a glass of white wine from the bartender. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I nodded.
“Ari said one of your shepherds pulled him out of the river?”
“Yeah, that was Frack-he’s out in the Suburban. Frick here doesn’t much like water. They get everything cleaned up over there in the port?”
She shrugged, indicating she didn’t know. Then she looked over my shoulder at the front door. “ Achtung,” she said quietly.
Colonel Trask stood in the doorway, examining the crowd at the bar like a cop about to make a general roust. There was a tightening of shoulders and turning of faces among the regulars. Then he saw me sitting next to Samantha and walked over. He, too, had changed out of work clothes and was wearing khakis, running shoes, a red and black lumberjack shirt, and an ancient Marine utility cap, complete with a faded eagle embossed above the brim. I was a bit surprised to see what looked like a holstered. 357 Mag strapped onto his right hip. He saw me looking.
“Never leave home without it,” he said, ignoring Samantha. Then he noticed Frick. “May I sit down?” he asked the dog politely.
Frick looked at him as if he were crazy, and I said it was okay, that she’d been fed. He grinned and sat down, but he kept his feet well under his chair. Frick, too, had noticed the hand cannon, and the sight of guns in the open made her alert.
“You’re ahead of me,” he observed and motioned for the bartender to bring him a Bud by pointing at the neon sign. The bartender nodded.
“Y
ou’re a single-malt man?” Trask asked. He sat with his back to Samantha, and was probably the only man in the bar who hadn’t looked at her twice.
“It’s Scotch weather,” I said. “The NRC found any smoking neutrons yet?’
“Early days, Lieutenant,” he said. “Most of them are scientists, and they take a while to organize a proper cluster-fuck.”
So now I was a lieutenant again. Coming up in the world? But then I realized he was calling me lieutenant because he expected me to call him colonel. Well, hell, I could do that.
“They’ll be looking at your operation, too?” I asked.
“Oh, shit, yes. But I have a standard answer for that line of questioning-I offer to give any or all of them a can of chicken soup, and then challenge them to get it through my perimeter.”
“Chicken soup.”
“Yup.”
“Radioactive chicken soup?”
“Nope. But it does come in a metal can, as would any radionuclides that decided to go walkabout with human assistance.”
“Are there other ways for radionuclides to get loose?”
“Surely you jest,” he replied.
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Then go online sometime and Google for a site called RADNET plus the word ‘an-thro-po-genic.’ Familiarize yourself with the term Accident in Progress. See what our government’s been co-facilitating in the field of nuclear safety. Have your lunch first, though.”
“You biting the hand that feeds you?”
“You bet. But back to the chicken soup: I’m talking about someone trying to smuggle radioactive water out of Helios. They wouldn’t put it in a Ziploc bag, no matter what the TV ads say.”
“Unless, of course, you’re dealing with a prospective Muslim martyr,” I said. I thought Samantha might be listening to everything we were saying, but the jukebox started up, and then she had to fend off some prospective dance partners. She looked a tad annoyed; maybe she was put off by all the drooling.
Trask nodded. “But then we should have had a second incandescent DOA,” he said, “and that didn’t happen.”
“Or they haven’t found him in the Dumpster behind the mosque,” I said. “Those guys are fucking serious.”
“You’re right as rain about that,” he said. “Problem is, we Americans aren’t. Islam has declared a religious war and we’ve declared democracy back at them. Imagine, democracy in the twelfth century!”
“Probably seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said, but he wasn’t listening. I sensed a rant coming, and sat back to let him vent.
“I don’t know why I give a shit anymore,” he said. “This country is finished. Washed up. Weak in the knees and damp in the panties. Genetically diluted by millions of illegal aliens, all squalling for their ‘rights,’ for God’s sake. Distracted by video games, talk shows, and prancing heiresses’ crotch shots. Half of the population looks like it just graduated from a Chicago feedlot. America deserves what’s coming.”
“There are men and women fighting overseas right now who’d argue with you,” I said.
“Those are the legions on the frontiers of the empire,” he said, warming to what had to be his favorite subject. “Most of them choose to stay out there among the barbarians because they’re disgusted by what’s going on back at the ripening core. A do-nothing, tax-and-spend government, sweaty, sticky-fingered politicians, usurping judges, thoroughly corrupt political parties, elected pedophiles prowling the United States Capitol-shee-it! The new pope got it right: Islam is a religion of blood and iron, but most Americans are happily focused on money, food, sex, and the latest Xbox video game.”
Yee-haw, I thought. Ari had warned me, too. I wanted to argue with him, but I recognized a zealot when I saw one. Besides, I thought he had a point: For a country at war, life in America sure looked like business as usual. I let him babble on, nodding and going along, because I still didn’t know why we were meeting. Finally he began to run down.
“You really a herpetologist?” I asked, trying to steer us out of all the political foaming at the mouth.
“Not in the practicing sense,” he replied. “I studied snakes because I admire them. Elemental creatures with an unusually perfect predation design.”
“Keep them as pets?”
He laughed. “No. Snakes can’t really be pets. They’re reptiles. Primitive animals. A pet implies an emotional quotient, like your shepherd there. Snakes hunt, eat, digest, doze off, sometimes for weeks, and then they hunt again. Kind of like the falcons in days of yore-they were never hunting for their so-called falconer. They were hunting because they were starving. That’s how you train a falcon to hunt, by the way. You capture it, and then you starve it. When it’s just about ready to fall off its perch, you take it hunting.”
“I’ve been reading about people turning pythons loose in the Everglades,” I said. “That’s kind of a scary thought.”
“That will be interesting, over time,” he said. “Depending on the species, they never stop growing.”
“A threat to a human?”
“Not in the sense that a python can eat a fully grown human. But a big one can surely kill you if you happen to encounter him in or near the water. They prey on monkeys a lot. Catch one drinking from a pond or a stream, grab its face and pull its nose underwater. Then they wait.”
“How big is big?”
“A Burmese can be six to seven meters,” he said. “A hundred fifty kilos, maybe more. They have prehensile tails-always attached to something. Their teeth are an inch long and they slant backwards, so if they achieve a solid bite, you’re not going anywhere. With both ends secured, they throw coils around you. That much weight, you can’t stand up. Once down, they just lie there. When you inhale, they do nothing. Every time you exhale, though, they squeeze. Pretty soon you can’t inhale. Like one of those goddamned seat belts in the backseat-the ones made for baby seats? Every time you lean back, it tightens and locks? Just like that.”
“Lovely thought.”
“Yeah, well, a primitive being can be scary. You know, it’s an artifact from the Pleistocene. And then it moves. You’re wondering why I called you.”
“Yup,” I said, glad to get off the subject of snakes. I don’t much care for snakes.
“Ms. Luscious behind me turned in the badges and TLDs for your two sidekicks, which tells me two things: They’re smarter than you are, and they’ve probably gone back to West Bumfuck, North Carolina.”
“That’s Triboro to the inhabitants,” I said.
“But you’re still here.”
“So I am.”
“Which means Quartermain’s got you doing some shit.”
I didn’t respond. He seemed to have all the answers so far. He leaned back in his chair. Samantha was looking bored, but I noticed she’d changed chairs, which put her one foot closer to us, either for some protection against all the barroom cowboys or to hear better over the jukebox. Trask was obviously waiting for me to say something.
“He does,” I said. “But I have to do it solo, without any help from anyone at Helios. If it’s any comfort, I do not intend to come creeping around the perimeter at night with fence cutters and a bag of grenades.”
“So you said,” he replied. “Too bad-we do grenades.” Then he was serious again. “Okay, here it is,” he said. “You’re on my radar. I’m pretty sure you’re not a bad guy, so I’m not here to tell you how bad things could go for you or any of my usual horseshit. But know this: There may be other players in whatever game Quartermain has going. I’m guessing he wants to use you as a Red Team. Private PI as agent provocateur. If that’s the case, you would do well to have me as an ally.”
“Unless you’re the subject,” I replied, just to throw some shit of my own into the discussion.
He was startled. “The subject?” he asked.
“As in, subject of interest. The target of an investigation. The objective of some kind of play. The individual under surveillance. It’s a law enforcement term.”<
br />
He blinked at that. He’d supposedly done tours with the military police. He had to know the usage of that word, so his question had been a stall for time. I decided to press him a little.
“As to other players in the game,” I continued, “I have to assume the feds have at least one agent under, if only because Quartermain would want to cover all his bets and his ass. You know, the Roman emperor’s wistful question: Who guards the guards?”
I waited, but he just sat there, staring at me.
“Actually, though,” I continued, “that’s not my real problem.”
“What is your real problem, then?”
“I think some evil fuck killed one of my people,” I said.
“That was probably a coincidence.”
“There are no coincidences,” I said. “First rule of homicide.”
He looked away, ostensibly taking in the dance floor scene, but thinking now. He still hadn’t even so much as said hello to Samantha, a woman he knew and probably the most attractive female in the town that night. Suddenly I thought I understood-Samantha’s being there was no coincidence, either. I heard noises out there in the woods.
“There’s one more thing,” he said finally. “Billy.”
“Oh, dear. Billy.”
“Yeah, well, he was a holdover from the previous security director. Cousin of somebody’s mama, I think. Local Southport boy. Once I started bringing my people in, he sort of stood out, and not in a good way. I told you he wouldn’t be a problem, but I may have been wrong about that.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
He smiled. “I guess I expected you to say, Bring it on. I can handle that young punk, et cetera, et cetera.”
“I can handle Billy if I see him coming,” I said. “I can’t handle Billy if he’s a long-gun kinda guy.”
He nodded. “That is very good thinking,” he said. “The good news is that he’s not a shoot-from-the-weeds kinda guy, in my opinion. The bad news is that he’s been running his mouth, and he said if he couldn’t get to you, he’d get to your furry friends. So be careful out there, okay?”
My new best friend, I thought. “Thanks again for the warning.”
The Moonpool cr-3 Page 11
