"I don't know what those two plan to do," Piggott whispered in a barely audible voice. "I don't even know their names, or the name of the guy who brings them around. I was just told to let them practice here. Nobody's supposed to even talk to them."
Garth took the stock away from the man's head, then tossed him a dirty pillow from the sofa bed. Piggott pressed the pillow to his beer belly, wrapped himself around it.
"Do they ever stay in the compound?"
"No."
"Where are they now?"
"I don't know. I never know when they're going to show up to practice, and I don't know where they go when they leave."
Garth apparently believed him, for my brother's response was to look over at me and shrug his shoulders.
I asked, "Where's Guy Fournier?"
Piggott moved his head slightly so as to look at me. His eyes shone with pain, humiliation, and fear. "I don't know any Guy Fournier. It sounds like a frog name, and I don't know any frogs."
"What makes you so accommodating to these people who come here and go as they please? They're obviously not the types you normally associate with."
"I'm just following orders."
"Whose orders?"
"A woman. I don't know her name. She talks to me on that radio over there."
"Jesus Christ," Garth said. "It's like the fucking Wizard of Oz."
"Pay no attention to the woman behind the radio."
"It's the truth!" Piggott wheezed.
I walked over to the radio, turned it on, and tapped the microphone. "Maybe I'll give her a buzz. What frequency does she use?"
"The one it's locked on. It's the only frequency on the radio that works."
That was interesting. It was also interesting that the steel casing of the radio didn't have a serial number in the place where one would normally expect to find it, nor anywhere else that I could see.
It looked like a specialized piece of company equipment. I considered the notion that beneath his tattoos and greasy hair and potbelly Paul Piggott might be a highly skilled, expertly camouflaged, and very gutsy CIA operative, but just couldn't wrap my mind around the idea. He was just one more company pawn, like so many of the other people we were wading through. I asked, "Do you have a code name?"
"No."
"How do you contact this woman when you want to have a chat?"
"I don't. She contacts me when she wants to talk. I carry a beeper when I leave the cabin. When it goes off, I come to the radio and turn it on."
I leaned over the microphone, pressed the switch on the base. "Hello, hello, hello? This is spook radio. Anybody out there? Over."
I released the switch and turned up the volume, but there was nothing but the crackle of static on the speaker. When I turned the dial, even the static disappeared. I looked over at Garth. "What does your bullshit antenna tell you?"
My brother shrugged again. "It indicates he's telling the truth."
"Things just get curiouser and curiouser."
"It makes sense that they'd seal these pinheads off tighter than a bulkhead."
I walked over to Paul Piggott, who had rolled over on his back and pressed a dirty handkerchief to his broken nose in what appeared to be a successful attempt to stop the bleeding. I asked, "Does the name Thomas Dickens ring a bell with you?"
He didn't answer right away, and seemed to be thinking about it. He rolled his eyes first to the right, then to the left, and finally back to me. "I think that's the name of the nigger you were using to-"
He abruptly stopped speaking and sucked in his breath when I rested my foot on his bulging stomach. I pressed down, but not too hard. Piggott was finished, and needed only to be asked the right questions. There conies a point, probably already passed in this cabin, where a little appropriate physical persuasion becomes torture. I did not need nor want to inflict any more pain. I said, "Watch your mouth."
"For Christ's sake, is that what this is all about?!"
"What did you think it was about?"
"What do you want from me?!"
"Who told you to call Taylor Mackintosh and tell him to come to my office and try to bribe me?"
"The woman on the radio," Piggott mumbled, rolling over, getting to his feet, and collapsing once again on the sofa bed. "I'm answering all your questions. Your brother isn't going to hit me again, is he?"
"That depends," Garth said quietly.
"What exactly did this woman say to you?"
Piggott took the handkerchief away from his face, touched his crooked nose, winced. "She said you were using this nig-this African American to blackmail some guy by the name of Cranny, or Crans, or Kranes. I had it right at the time, but I'm not sure of the guy's name right now. She said this African American was going to claim that this Crans guy had stolen some poems. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but the woman said it was important."
I glanced over at Garth, who looked as incredulous as I felt. I asked Piggott, "You don't know who William P. Kranes is?"
He regarded me with a combination of suspicion and fear. "That's the guy's name. I don't know who he is. Should I?"
"Do you have any idea who you're carrying out these little chores for?"
Light glinted in his murky eyes, and the corners of his bloody mouth pulled back in a malevolent grin. "People who are going to make this country a fit place for decent Christian white folks to live in again."
"That's encouraging. Precisely what did this woman want you to do?"
"She said the situation was unclear, and she wanted to explore it-those were her words. She said it looked like you and the African American guy might be cooking up some plan to make this Cranny guy look bad, and she couldn't allow that to happen. I was to send some suit from our organization to talk to you and see if you and the African American guy would take money to make the problem go away. I didn't understand how there could be so much fuss over some poems, but she insisted it had to be taken care of. The suit would be authorized to offer you up to two hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet about whatever it was you knew. A couple of days later she gets back to me and tells me to forget the whole thing, that the problem was going to be handled a different way, but by then I'd already called Mackintosh."
I removed the checkbook I'd taken from Taylor Mackintosh from my pocket, flapped it in front of Piggott. "The money would have been taken from a Guns for God and Jesus checking account?"
"Yeah."
"Where do you get that kind of money?"
"The woman and her people put money into the account when we need something, or when they want us to do something that requires cash."
"Why did you pick Taylor Mackintosh as your bagman? Is he the only suit in your organization?"
"No, but he's the most famous. He's a movie star. I figured you'd be impressed."
I glanced over at Garth, who sighed and looked down at the floor. I knew what he was thinking, shared his sadness and outrage, and sense of total frustration. In the final analysis, Moby Dickens had lost his life because of no other reasons than the company's paranoia, indecision, execrably poor choice of personnel to task, and the sheer stone stupidity of those personnel combined with Guy Fournier's hubris and indifference.
"Hey," Piggott continued. "You want to tell me now what's going on? How come you two have got such a hard-on for me?"
I looked at him, replied, "Thomas Dickens was murdered by people associated with your lady friend on the radio."
He just couldn't help himself; he leered, then barked, "Good! One less nigger we'll have to kill when the war starts."
Uh-oh. I'd obviously been wrong about Piggott being finished, and his psychotic hatred appeared to have given him a second wind. I considered smacking him in his broken mouth, but didn't have the stomach or heart. Besides, considering his remark, it was beginning to occur to me that Paul Piggott had not really found the beating he'd already taken all that unpleasant, and I didn't want to do him any favors. Garth apparently felt the same aversion-although he might
well have some other punishment in mind for Paul Piggott, like a quick death. He walked across the room to where a collection of knives was mounted on the wall and selected a huge Bowie knife. Then he walked back to Piggott and pressed the tip of the blade up under the now thoroughly terrified man's chin. For a moment I was afraid he was going to drive the blade straight up through Piggott's skull, but he didn't. Instead he lazily worked the tip back and forth in the sweaty flesh until a tiny hole had been opened in Piggott's quivering jowl. A drop of blood became a stream that ran down the man's throat and over his chest.
"Garth. .?"
"Not to worry, Mongo," Garth replied in a whisper. "Everything's under control. I'm just lowering his blood pressure."
"Hey, all I ever did was send around somebody to try to lay a lot of money on you!" Piggott burbled. "I didn't kill the African American guy!"
I said, "We know that. Let's get back to your lady friend. What makes a big macho guy like you so eager to act as a gofer for some woman you've never met?"
Piggott's eyes were wide and crossed as he gaped down his nose toward where the tip of the Bowie knife was stuck in his jowl. "Take the knife away," he mumbled. "I can't talk."
Garth took the knife away from the man's jowl. Piggott cowered as he pressed his blood-soaked handkerchief to the fresh wound in his throat. He croaked, "Are you going to kill me?"
"A distinct possibility," I replied. "The only thing you've got going for you is my brother's deep sympathy for the mentally handicapped, and your continued cooperation. Answer my question. Why are you so hot to do everything this woman tells you? Because she and her people give your group money?"
In an instant the light in his eyes had flickered from fear to hatred, and he glared at me. "I don't have any say where that money goes," he said through clenched teeth. "And none of it goes into my pocket. I do what she asks because she and her people get things done."
"Explain. Start by telling us how you got your hands on this particular radio in the first place."
"It was delivered a little more than a year ago, along with some batteries and the beeper."
"Who delivered it?"
"Some guy in a pickup truck. He didn't say anything-just put the radio and stuff down on the ground and gave me an envelope with a grand inside along with a note. The note said the radio and money were from people who wanted to help us fight ZOG. It said that if I was really serious about fighting for the rights of white Christians, I'd take the radio, set it to that frequency, and wait to be contacted. Me, I'm not stupid, so I figured it was just the goddamn government trying to trick me into doing something they could nail me for. But I figured it couldn't hurt to set up the radio and see what happened, so I did. Then the woman started calling me."
"And she asked you to do certain things?"
He shook his head, mumbled, "Not at first. I wouldn't have done anything for her in the beginning because I didn't have any reason to trust her. She said she understood that, so she was going to provide me with what she called her bony fideys. She said her people were going to do certain things to show me I could trust her, and they did."
"What did they do?"
"They killed people," he replied nonchalantly, wiping blood off his chin. "Kikes, niggers, spicks. Mud people. So-called community leaders around the country. First I'd get newspaper clippings about some troublemaker. Then, a few days later, I'd get an obituary notice saying the man or woman had been killed in an accident. I knew they were no accidents, because I'd been told about them in advance."
I shook my head, swallowed hard to try to work up some moisture in my mouth. "This still goes on?"
"Sure, it still goes on. ZOG is still in control, isn't it?"
"Who delivers the clippings?"
"A guy on a motorcycle. He doesn't stop. He just drives in, drops an envelope with the clippings on the ground, then drives off again."
"Does he have a schedule?"
"No."
"When was the last time he was here?"
Piggott thought about it, shrugged. "Last week-a couple of days after that lady kike on the Supreme Court died."
"The woman on the radio told you that Mabel Roscowicz was going to die?"
"I just said so. I knew about the guy who died just before her too. Any outfit that can take out two ZOG kike justices like that is one I'm going to take seriously. That's why I take orders from the woman."
"So what else has this woman asked you to do besides send somebody to try to bribe me and provide a shooting range for the two crew cuts?"
He looked away. "I said I didn't kill the poem guy. I didn't have anything to do with that. I wasn't even told about it."
"That wasn't the question. How many people have you and your friends here killed?"
"We haven't killed anybody. And the woman hasn't asked me to do that many things. Our main orders are to sit here and wait."
"For what?"
"To fight ZOG when the time is right. The woman says there are big changes coming in the country, and we're going to be foot soldiers on the front lines." He paused, glanced back and forth between Garth and me, then continued, "You're both white guys. You'd better start thinking about lining up on the right side before it's too late."
Garth said, "Pretty slim pickings here, Mongo. This is just a reserve unit of thugs and errand boys who probably don't know what day it is."
"Yeah, well, the trip hasn't been a total waste of time. Paulie here will make a colorful witness to the mystery lady's predictions. Also, we now know that they're not planning to use snipers at long range; the shooters plan to do their work up close and personal. The information will help the Secret Service."
"Maybe, maybe not. The president and vice president aren't going to let the Secret Service lock them up in a closet until November. The shooters get to pick the time and place, and they expect to die. It's going to be hard to stop them."
"True. But we've done our bit for the Republic. We have verification that the two justices were murdered. The FBI will want to chat Paulie up, and he shouldn't be too hard to find if and when congressional hearings are ever held."
Piggott's voice was coming back. "Hey, wait a minute!" he said, sitting up straighten "I'm not testifying to anything! You guys are likely to be dead soon! ZOG will be on its knees!"
Garth ignored him. "Yeah, but we've used up two days going on three, and we're no closer to finding Fournier or identifying his associates in the company. Those are the people you and I are after."
I nodded as I sighed in resignation, then walked across the room to the radio with the single, preset frequency. "This is a dandy piece of CIA equipment. No serial numbers, but experts might be able to trace some of the components and identify the manufacturer, who might be able to link it to the company. Too bad it's too heavy for us to lug out of here."
"What do you mean, CIA?" Piggott said with genuine indignation. "The CIA's an arm of ZOG!"
"They're the people you've been taking money and orders from, shithead," Garth replied without looking at the man.
I walked around the radio, peered through a cooling vent on the side. I'd turned the radio off, but there was a small blue bulb still glowing inside. I felt my stomach muscles tighten. "You leave this radio on all the time, Paulie?"
"What, do I look stupid? That would run down the batteries. I turn it on when the woman wants to talk to me."
"When she contacts you on your beeper?"
"Yeah. I already told you that."
"And you carry your beeper with you all the time?"
"Sleep with it under my pillow, carry it with me to the crapper. Those are my orders. What was that shit you were saying about the CIA?"
I reached under the table and disconnected the cables linking the radio to the dry cell batteries. When I peered through the vent again, the blue light was still on. The radio had its own internal power source, and this was not good. I glanced at my watch; forty-five minutes had passed since we'd entered Paul Piggott's cabin.
&nbs
p; "Bad news, Brother," I said tersely. "It's like Kranes's offices. The radio and beeper are bugged. Our company friends have known where we are from the moment we walked in here. They're not going to like what they've heard. I suggest we depart henceforth."
"Or sooner," Garth said, abruptly stepping close to Piggott and clipping him under the chin with the palm of his left, ungloved hand. Piggott slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Together we scurried out into the night, sprinted around to the back of the cabin, and began clawing and scrambling our way back up the mountain.
Fear is a powerful motivator, and we made it back up the mountainside in twenty minutes, not much longer than it had taken us to climb down, but the all-out exertion was wasted, and we would probably have been better off fleeing on foot in a different direction. Now it was too late.
We heard the THWOP- THWOP- THWOP of the helicopter rotors a few seconds before the unmarked Apache rose like some giant, malevolent bird of prey over the crest of the mountain. Mounted searchlights probed the dark mountainside, and one finally caught us in a blinding glare. We scrambled to the copse of trees, where I snatched loose the reins of our horses from a tree limb, handed Garth's to him. The horses were frightened, rearing.
Garth hesitated. "We'll be easy targets on horses, Mongo!" he shouted over the thrashing roar of the helicopter, which was hovering just above the tree line, raising a cutting, abrasive cloud of broken branches, needles, and leaves all around us.
"Not if we keep to the trees!" I shouted back, vaulting into the saddle of my horse, which immediately reared. I wheeled the animal around and brought it under control, then reached out and grabbed the reins of Garth's horse, which was wide-eyed with panic. "It's our only chance! They can contact the compound by radio. There'll be a dozen of those people after us in a few minutes, and more dozens of searchers by dawn. I don't recall the locals as being too friendly."
Garth looked at me, then at his horse with its flaring nostrils. "Mongo, I can't ride like you! I'm not sure I can stay on in these conditions. You go! I'll keep them busy here. The helicopter can't follow both of us!"
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