Frag Box (17 page)

“What’s under this park?” I said.

“Under it? Second Street, I guess, or most of it. The whole place is built sort of like a double-deck bridge, with a sloping street below and a park up on top.”

“And under the sloping street?”

“Some hollow spots where street people hang out, I think.”

“And I bet they sing, ‘Oh, I live under the wye-duct; down by the winny-gar woiks.’”

“What on earth does that mean?”

“It means we just hit pay dirt. Lets get out of here.”

Chapter 23

The Road to the Wye-Duct

The road back to St. Paul seemed shorter than it had on the way out, but maybe that was just because it was familiar now. We skipped our new old favorite restaurant in Eveleth and instead had a late brunch in Hinckley, at a place with a tin tree on a telephone pole for a sign. It had a cloud of bluish smoke coming out of the kitchen exhaust, and it smelled like hot cooking oil and burning beef. In other words, it smelled wonderful. Inside, it also smelled like coffee and fresh bread, and I knew we’d come to the right place. I had the house special stew and Anne had some kind of large salad, with greens that were freshly flown in from Mars, I think.

“How’s the stew?” she said.

“It’s famous. The menu says so.”

“Well, then, what else is there to say?”

“Actually, it’s very good.”

“I’m glad. How was the sex?”

If I’d been swallowing, I would have choked. Instead, I laughed and said, “You just don’t beat around the bush about anything, do you?”

“First rule of reporting,” she said, shaking her head and grinning wickedly. “You don’t find out anything if you don’t ask.”

“All right, then, Lois Lane, the sex was wonderful. Does this mean we’re going to do it again?”

“If we’re lucky. Now comes the time when it gets really, really good for a while, before it all starts to go south.”

I shot her a surprised look and found that she was holding her coffee cup with both hands and staring off into space with a sort of dazed look.

“Why should it all go south?” I said.

“Because it always does.”

“That’s really—”

“You worry too much, Herman. First we get the good time, and if it’s really good, it makes it all worth it.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened on all those political fundraisers besides dancing the polka. Whatever it was, it must have been terribly sad. And I was sure I shouldn’t ask about it.

“What about my story?” she said, blinking her eyes back into focus. “Do we know any more than we did yesterday, apart from the fact that the homeless guy had a father who was also murdered and some goons who look like they
might be
military have been chasing us?”

“We can speculate, is all.”

“I’m a reporter from the old school. I don’t let myself do that. You do it for me.”

“First of all, now that I’ve seen them up close, I would definitely agree with our witch, Glenda—”

“It was actually Glinda, in the Oz stories.”

“Are you going to let me speculate or are you going to correct a bag lady’s personal mythology?”

“Speculate, Herman.”

“Okay. So I agree that our thugs are military types. And Charlie was murdered by some kind of gang, so that would also make these guys our best suspects. But they’re way too young to have been in Vietnam when he was. So why do they care what he did when he was there?”

“I give up, why?”

“I don’t know yet. But my gut feeling is that everything that’s happened so far is somehow tied to his time in the jungle.”

“But we have no proof of that.”

“Not a shred. Put that aside for a moment and consider something else. Two somethings. One is that if these guys had really wanted you and me dead, I, at least, would be.”

“You don’t think they were afraid of your big, bad shotgun?”

“Not for a minute. If I had been a real target, they’d have paid the price and taken me out.”

“So what did they really want with us?”

“Could be they thought we had a line on Charlie’s stash of money, but I think it’s more likely they were just trying to scare us off.”

“That plays okay,” she said, “but we still need a reason.”

“They haven’t found the money yet. And until they do, they don’t want to fold up the tent and go off to wherever they came from. So while they’re hanging around, they would rather you and I quit poking into their affairs.”

“Absolutely maybe,” she said. “What’s the other something?”

“Timing. They killed Charlie’s father before him, and they killed him quick. I mean, they beat on him some first, but when they were satisfied they had what he knew, they shot him in the head. ‘We’re done with you now, old man. Bam!’ No screwing around.”

“But when they killed Charlie…”

“When they killed Charlie, they took their time. I’m thinking they maybe even told him they had killed his father first, so he could think about it while he died.”

“That sounds like a crime of passion, not a treasure hunt.”

“It does, doesn’t it? It sounds like a blood feud. They meant to kill Charlie and his father all along, and the money was just a little sideshow, an unexpected bonus.”

“‘Blood Feud’ is a good headline,” she said, making a little frame with her hands. “‘Blood Feud Has Roots in Vietnam War’ is even better. But whose blood, besides the Victors’?”

“That’s the question, all right. Charlie said he killed, or collected money for killing, several officers. Could one of them have had a buddy, a classmate from West Point, whatever? I don’t know. I think we need some personnel records from Charlie’s old outfit. Last known addresses, so we can talk to whomever is left of them, see what they know.”

“I don’t know if the Army would give those out to a reporter. Maybe if I pretend I’m writing a book… Hmm. No. I just don’t know.” Her face said that she did know, and she wasn’t happy about her prospects.

“I know a sort of renegade hacker who could possibly steal the information,” I said.

“You know some strange people, Iowa.”

“This is undoubtedly true.”

“One other thing bothers me: how did the goons find us at the motel?”

“I thought about that, too,” I said, thoughtfully stirring my coffee. “They were following me the day before yesterday, but we didn’t have anybody behind us when we headed north, and I checked the BMW for a homing device before I left town. So that leaves your cell phone.”

“When I called the sheriff from Mountain Iron? So they homed in on the signal? That seems a little far fetched.”

“If they had the right equipment, they wouldn’t have to. Modern cell phones broadcast their position every time they’re in use. All they had to know was your number, and they could have gotten that from my phone records.”

“That would only get them to Mountain Iron. How did they get to the motel in Eveleth?”

“They cruised around looking for a 328i. There aren’t a lot of them on the Range, you know.”

“Like one?”

“Just like that.”

The last of my stew had turned cold, and I let the waitress take it away and bring me fresh coffee and a piece of apple pie that turned out to be about two inches high and sprinkled with enough cinnamon and sugar to open a small bakery. Anne looked at it longingly.

“I’m sure they have more,” I said.

“You’re a vile seducer.”

“I certainly hope so.”

She signaled the waitress, pointed at my plate, and held up two fingers. The waitress smiled knowingly and went off to get another piece.

The pie was something to die for, but our dessert was interrupted by Anne’s cell phone.

“Now you know why I don’t carry one of those damned things,” I said. She waved a hand to shush me, turned away and spoke quietly into the infernal device. It was a short call.

“My editor,” she said.

“How thoughtless of him.”

“You don’t know the half of it. How fast can you get me back to my office?”

“Well, I think the 328i will do something like Mach oh-point-twenty-five. If there are no cops out and you aren’t afraid of flying, I can have you back in an hour.”

“In one piece, would be nice.”

“For some people, everything has to be perfect.”

I didn’t bother to tell her that I had another reason for wanting to fly down the highway at a speed that was probably insane. Far back, almost out of sight, I had again spotted a black rectangle that could definitely be a Hummer. Our military gang was not done with us yet.

Chapter 24

Echoes

I dropped Anne at the
Pioneer Press
building, put the BMW back in the ramp, and walked to my own office. I turned the corner onto my block just in time to see my friendly shakedown artist, Eddie Bardot, picking himself up off the sidewalk. He glared at me as I walked by but said nothing. Pretty soon his hat came flying out my office door, and he scrambled to grab it before it got run over by a passing garbage truck.

I couldn’t resist nodding to him and giving him a sardonic smile as I opened the door and went inside.

Agnes was at her usual place behind her desk, looking as if she just ate a canary, feathers and all, and Wide Track Wilkie was standing in the center of the storefront window, fists on his hips, watching Bardot go.

“Hey, Wide.”

“Herm.” He nodded absently.

“I see you’ve met our friendly wannabe bonding tycoon.”

“Asshole had the nerve to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business. You believe that?”

“Shocking,” I said. “Also very disrespectful.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, too. Didn’t I say that, Miss Agnes?”

“Well,” said Agnes, “not exactly. I seem to recall your words were a bit shorter than that.”

“Yeah, whatever. Anyways, I had to slam him into the wall a couple times, just to see how good he bounced.”

“And did he?”

“Not worth a shit.”

“So you told him to have a nice day and invited him to leave?”

“Just like that.”

Agnes snorted. Now they were both grinning.

“How about your research?” I said. “Do we know anything more about him?”

He lost the grin, wrinkled his brow and shook his head. “Not much. The word on the street is he’s some kind of outcast from the Chicago mob, but he’s got no record under the name he’s using right now. Maybe this will help.” He reached in the pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a well-worn leather wallet.

“This is his?” I said.

“Not anymore.”

Agnes chuckled and shook her head in mock disapproval.

“Does he know you’ve got it?”

“Not yet.”

“Better and better. Let’s just see what we can see here. Then we’ll copy what we need and throw the wallet out on the sidewalk for him to come back and find later.”

“I’m not leaving any money in it.”

I pulled out maybe two or three hundred in small bills and gave it to him. Then I pulled out three different drivers’ licenses in three names, some credit cards that matched each of them, and one of those little envelopes that you get at hotels, to hold your key and tell you what your room number is. I handled them all by the edges. I took them over to my copy machine, copied both sides of everything, and put it all back together.

“Does the wallet itself have your prints on it?” I said to Wilkie.

“It would have to, yeah.”

“I meant on the inside.”

“No. I didn’t open it.”

I took a tissue from a dispenser on Agnes’ desk and wiped down the entire outside of the wallet. Then I threw it in a drawer of my own desk and locked it.

“What happened to leaving it on the sidewalk?”

“I just got a better idea.”

“Which is?”

“You’re better off not knowing. What about the other thing, the fingerprints from the snow shovel?”

“That’s another big awshit. We lifted some okay prints, but they’re not in the criminal info computer.”

“You still have them?”

“Sort of. I’ve got a CD that describes them to a computer. Or I think that’s what it does.”

“That’s even better. Do you happen to know if The Prophet is still in business at his old digs?”

“The crazy guy? As far as I know.”

“He’s not crazy, he just marches to the beat of a different kazoo.”

“He talks to people who aren’t there, Herm. And I mean without using a phone.”

“Well, there is that, yes. But he also talks to just about any secure data base you can think of.”

“And we need that?” His face told me he was hoping for a no.

“We need it, Wide. I’m thinking our fingerprint might be in a military or government file. But you don’t have to come along, if you really can’t stand the guy.”

“Well, I’m already in the game, you know?” He sighed. “I’ll see the next card.”

I told Agnes that if Anne Packard called, she should give her Wilkie’s cell phone number. Then he and I headed for the door.

“Have a nice day, Miss Agnes.”

“Why, thank you, Wendell. You, too.”

***

He insisted that his only name was The Prophet, so that’s what we always called him to his face. To ourselves, we mostly called him the Proph. In the summers, he lived in a junker of a step van that was permanently parked in the alley behind a defunct furniture store. He spent his days misquoting scripture and dispensing pearls of incomprehensible wisdom to anybody who would listen. But when the weather turned cold, he moved back into an old two-story brick building on the far East Side, next to some railroad tracks. I think it used to be a switch house or some other kind of railroad maintenance building, back when there were lots more tracks and the BN&SF was the Soo Line or even earlier, when it was the Great Northern or the Union Pacific.

Whatever railroad it was, it lost interest in the building a long time ago but didn’t bother to wreck it, and The Prophet had been squatting there for several years. He stole power from a nearby transformer that didn’t get looked at much and phone service from who knows where, and he supported himself and his ersatz ministry by engaging in some of the most effective hacking known to nerd-dom. I had used his services before.

Like his van, the building was painted with a lot of strange proclamations, like crude, oversized bumper stickers. “Yah! Is my god!” done in six-foot-high shadow lettering and four colors was the most prominent. Off to the sides were slogans that hadn’t been rendered quite so elaborately. “THE LIVING ARE NOT NEARLY SO ALIVE AS THE DEAD ARE DEAD,” was one. Another said, “He that diggeth a pit shall fall in it,” and a partially painted-over one said something about “A Land Flowing With Bilk and Money.” The over-painting said, “The meek shall inherit the earth, complete with windfall profit, state, dog, and syn taxes.”

There was a door on the side of the building facing the tracks. Wilkie pulled it open, and we found ourselves looking into a small black closet with a full-length mirror facing us. We stood there a while, looking at ourselves looking stupid, and then the ceiling spoke.

“Praise Yah!” it said, in a tinny voice.

“Yeah?” I said.

“You pronounce it wrong,” said the ceiling. I smiled, because we had had this exact conversation before.

“There’s a lot of that going around,” I said.

“Pilgrim? Is that you?”

“In the willing flesh. Wilkie’s with me.”

“Praise Yah, already,” said Wilkie, looking disgusted. He knows that I’m the only one who gets to go inside without saying that.

“Make it!” said the ceiling.

There was a loud buzzing noise, and one of the walls of the closet turned into a door that popped open. We went through it, bumbled around two more corners, and finally emerged into the main building. Most of the windowless room was taken up by a huge workbench covered with multiple-screen computers, printers, and a dozen other gizmos that I couldn’t identify. Tangles of wire were everywhere, as were little plastic boxes that had colored lights blinking in no identifiable pattern. Behind it all, in a rattan peacock chair, sat a small, wizened black man with a full beard and a Nike headband. He smiled broadly at us.

“Welcome to my inner sanctum,” he said. “You have been a long time wandering in the wilderness, Pilgrim.”

“Well, there’s a lot of it out there.”

“Disheartening, is it not?”

“What’s with the new door setup?” said Wilkie.

“You like that?”

“No.”

“It repels bad joss.” He continued to smile as if Wilkie hadn’t spoken. “Good joss meanders and insinuates and can always get in, but bad joss travels in straight lines and gets reflected back by the mirror. Also, it can’t get around all the corners.”

“Told you,” I said.

“You never.”

“Yah told me you would come,” said The Prophet.

“Well, he always does, doesn’t he?” I said.

“I bet he doesn’t say when, though, does he?” said Wilkie.

“He said you would be seeking enlightenment. Have I told you how the world tripped into the beginning of its present utter, irreversible madness in 1955, when people wanted coffee tables and picture windows?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Really? How was it?”

“Long.”

He frowned a bit and pursed his lips. “Hmm. Maybe I did tell you. What is it you seek today?”

“Is information the same as enlightenment?” said Wilkie.

“No,” said The Prophet. “Enlightenment, if you can find it, is free. Information costs. If it’s illegal, five hundred, minimum.”

“Steep,” said Wilkie.

“But worthy of it,” said the Prophet.

“‘A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,’” I said.

“Very good, Pilgrim. Proverbs, Chapter 22. But Ecclesiastes says, ‘Wine maketh merry, but money answerith all things.’ Five cee won’t ruin my good name or your profit-and-loss sheet.”

If he only knew.

“‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver,’” I said. You have to do a lot of homework to dicker with The Prophet.

“Could be,” he said. “Have you got one?”

“Sure. ‘The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way the smart money bets.’”

He looked at me for a while with some surprise on his face. Finally, he broke out into a smile.

“That’s not bad,” he said. “I can use that. All right, for the sake of your golden words, two-fifty, but it could go up if the stuff gets tricky.”

“Fair enough.”

I laid five fifties on his desk, and we got down to business. “Army personnel records,” I said. “Vietnam era.”

He began massaging two separate keyboards with great concentration, shutting out anything else we might say for a while. I noticed that although his chair was straight off the set of some Tennessee Williams play, it was nevertheless fitted with swivel castors, and he had a good time whizzing around on them, sometimes for no apparent reason. Finally he stopped and asked me for some more specific direction.

“I need the roster of a company that was in-country in about 1965. Echo Company, with the First Air Cavalry.”

“Brigade and Battalion, Pilgrim.”

“Excuse me?”

“The First Air Cav would be a division. It splits into brigades, then battalions, and then finally companies. That’s a lot of damn heathens.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about army organization, for a holy man.”

“When the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, I said
Kaddish
for the people buried under the rubble. I was a chaplain in the Fifth Roman Legion at the time. When the—”

“You’ve also got an organization chart on the screen in front of you,” said Wilkie.

“To download is to know, oh great one.”

Wilkie snorted. The Prophet continued to work mouse and keyboard. Sometimes I wished he weren’t so useful, so I could tell him how full of shit I thought he was.

“So a division is how many souls?” I said.

“Ten or fifteen thousand, with bodies attached.”

“That could cost fifty bucks just for the paper to print it out,” said Wilkie. I could stand for him to be a lot less helpful at times.

“Let’s attack it from the other end,” I said. “Find the record of Charles Victor, and see what unit he was in, back then.” I gave him Charlie’s service number, which I had pulled from one of his bond files.

“Which year, Pilgrim?”

“Work that backward, too, if you can. Go for a time when he was a newly minted corporal.”

He fired up a second screen and did a lot of looking back and forth between the two of them.

“July, 1966. Looks like the company had three platoons, about twenty people per. You want all of them?”

“What I really want is the last known address of each of them.”

“You’re a hard taskmaster.”

“Remember the golden apples.”

“Hmm. I’ll write a short program to pull them up. Perhaps you would like a cup of my famous tea while you wait?”

“Is it hallucinogenic?”

“Only a little. It will not affect your ability to drive, I think.”

“Um. Got any coffee?”

“Timid souls. There’s instant over by the sink, hot water in the carafe.” Wilkie and I helped ourselves, and the Prophet got back to work. After a while, he punched a last key, and machines began to click and whirr on their own. Now and then, a list of names would come out of the printer.

“Anything else, while we’re waiting for that to finish?”

Wilkie reached into an inside pocket a pulled out the CD in its plastic envelope.

“Fingerprint,” he said. “Put into some kind of electronic code, I guess. It’s not a picture anymore, anyway.”

“And you want me to check it for a criminal record?”

“Nah, we already tried that and came up dry. We were thinking maybe it would be in the Army’s records.”

“Ah.” He took the disc and fed it into yet another machine. Almost too fast to be believable, he said, “It’s there, all right.”

“And?”

“Classified.”

“How the hell can a Fingerprint be classified?” said Wilkie. “I mean, aren’t all these files we’re looking at classified? Why can’t we look at it anyway?”

“This is classified the way the true name of Buddha is classified, big man. I mean,
nobody
has the key to this.”

“Black ops?” I said.

“Could be. That, or the man simply had a friend in records and put the lock on it himself. Some sojourners prefer to go about anonymously.”

“Isn’t that the truth, though?”

“Anything else?”

“One thing,” I said. “While your machine is still back in 1966, see which brigade Charlie was in.”

“Easy. Q.E.D.”

“Why brigade?” said Wilkie.

“Because I think that’s the highest level that still has a commanding officer who is actually in the field, with the troops.” And therefore could have been assassinated in the field. Also because I had a hunch, but I wasn’t sure enough of it to say so just yet.