The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) (55 page)

“Same to you, Spook,” Jack responded, eradicating the grin. “You got here in a hurry.”

“Cashed in a favor and moved to the front of the line for a contract 707 out of Tan Son Nhut,” Rick said. He was torsion-bar taut, and haggard, as though he’d been rerun through Ranger training. “Your typical spook rides Air
America.” Arms akimbo, Rick cocked his head raffishly. “Don’t tell me these dizzy broads’ve got you on the rag, too.”

“With four of the wildest women I know in that condition right now, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a spot or two in my shorts. Trisha laid it all out for you, huh?”

“Damn near six years since I’ve seen her, and it’s ‘How are you, sweetie, you and Jackie be sure and get good lawyers.’ Jesus, I don’t know which part of this cluster-fuck surprises me the most, the twins’ freestyle crystal-balling, their telling your mom, or her telling Trisha. When did they get so goddam tight, anyway?”

Jack walked over to the suite’s sliding glass doors and peered out at the beach. “They’re neighbors; seems as how she’s a Noo Yawk joynalist now. What would you put past one-a dem?”

“I can’t believe Mom gave her my number; hell, that makes her woman number five in this fucking travesty. And you know the best part?”

“What?”

“Trisha said that she was calling because she loved me.”

“I’ve heard worse reasons,” Jack said as he slid the door open. “You’ve got some travel agent;
Virginia Beach. Who in hell thought of this place?”

“Shit, it’s a landmark; used to have its own railroad siding, so the swells could ride in from the
Midwest
without touching their tootsies to the pavement. It’s all in the guestbook over there. Off-season, though, it’s deader’n a wedge; just the sort of place we murderers need for a hideout. Not exactly splitting the distance between Bragg and
New York, but you weren’t interested in being seen in public with me right now, were you? Just in case there’s an APB out?” Rick’s smile stopped short of his eyes.

Sitting down in an armchair, Jack crossed his legs and put his hands behind his head. “Oh, this’ll do fine; you seem to do some of your best bullshittin’ in hotel rooms. What was that you told me down in
San Juan? ‘I told him I didn’t want anything to do with it because the job was in the States.’? Goddammit, you’d already done it. What the fuck, Rick, why’d you think you had to lie to me? Do you think I’d ever give you up? Ever?”

Rick squatted directly in front of Jack and locked his eyes on him. “That’s one thing I do know, sure as the sun’s comin’ up tomorrow, buddy. I hated lying to you, but I didn’t have any choice. I was under orders.”

Raising his hands above his head, Jack slapped the chair arms as hard as he could. “Under orders? What kind of fucking orders are you talking about?”

“Orders to find out what you knew about the missing Albatross. To see if there was any chance at all that your partners pulled a fast one and took their passengers prisoner. Instead they just killed them, and you helped them disappear. So don’t get too sanctimonious with me about lying to you, buddy, because you did the same goddam thing to me.”

Jack leaned forward, leaving inches between Rick’s nose and his own. “Just as I wouldn’t give you up, I won’t give them up. Their lives are at stake.”

Rick stood up and walked to the other side of the room. “You’re damn right they are. So is yours. So is mine, for that matter. Anyone who can testify to the fact that President Kennedy’s assassination was a conspiracy is on very fucking thin ice. Underhill didn’t know it; he just suspected it, yet they sent me after him. And don’t think that there’s anywhere on the face of the earth that your friends’ll be safe, because there isn’t.”

The briefest flicker of a smile crossed Jack’s face. “No, there probably isn’t. Now, I’ve got a question for you.”

Rick sat down on the corner of the bed. “What’s that?”

“Why’d you kill the guy? Certainly not for money.”

Rick’s head moved a centimeter or so from side to side. “No, definitely not for money. I thought it was a good career move.”

Jack laughed in spite of himself. “A good career move? What the fuck’re you talking about? How’s that gonna show up in your service jacket? ‘Highly adaptable, kills on command.’?”

Rick acknowledged the irony with a split-second smile. “In my case, it’d be a 201 file. If I were writing it, I might say ‘Does what’s necessary with little need for supervision,’ or something like that. See, the deal I made was the Underhill job in exchange for an officer slot in CIA. It was my way of getting out of the assassin game.”

Jack blinked inadvertently, then produced a thin smile of his own. “Ever the joiner. That your idea of fun?”

“What it is, is my idea of serving my country in as effective a way as I possibly can. You see what happened with
Cuba; the Cold War came within a gnat’s ass of becoming a hot war. They’ll be trying it again, who knows where, and I want to be in a position to stick it in their eye, every time they try it. And now that you mention it, I do expect to have a little fun along the way. Just as you will with your Lear Jet.”

“Well, I hope it won’t involve assassinating a President. Or anyone else, for that matter.” Leaning back in his chair, Jack exhaled deeply, willing tension to drain out of his body. Then his head swung up as he said, “Jesus Christ, Rick! The bastards killed Jack Kennedy in cold blood, and you’re part of the fucking cleanup crew? He was no favorite of mine, but killing a president is about as wrong as you can get.”

“In a vacuum, I’d agree with you, but politics doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Kennedy’s old man had Sam Giancana, the
Chicago
mob boss, get enough ballot boxes stuffed to put
Illinois
in the Kennedy column and win the election for him. And once he got in, it didn’t take him long to show his true colors. Stranded the Cuban exile force by shutting down air support at the
Bay of Pigs. Then saying he’d ‘scatter the CIA to the four winds’ and pull American forces out of Vietnam ASAP. His bubble-headed economists had him convinced that the oil companies’ depletion allowance should be scrubbed. Kicking the props, in other words, out from under this country’s military establishment. He had to go.”

“You believe that.”

“I do. And here’s the best part; Kennedy and Giancana had been boffing the same babe for a couple of years. And on top of that, he and his little brother took turns for a while on Marilyn Monroe.”

“Sounds like what we’d do- if we could,” Jack muttered.

“So- you met the plane in Bisque?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you know it was headed there? Their destination was
Miami.”

“They were coming up for Thanksgiving, after dropping the passengers and refueling. Thought it’d be a nice touch; traditional Thanksgiving with my partners in the old home town, which one of them had never seen, and no bookings until December.”

“But then they showed up with three corpses and a bunch of hardware. How’s that work?”

“One of the ‘passengers’ shot Linda with some kind of dart when she came back in the cabin to see what was causing the aircraft to yaw. Killed her on the spot, or so they thought. Another one came up to the cockpit to bitch at Pete, saying that she was dead and that they’d damn well been briefed that the crew was to stay out of the cabin. When he heard that Linda’d been killed, Pete lost it and pulled the yoke back hard, which dumped them all into the tail. Then he put it on autopilot, set his MAC-10 on full-auto and shot all three of them. Then he went back to the cockpit, sat for a while, and figured he’d just head straight for Bisque. He radioed Bisque airport, gave them an ETA, and Gene Debs- he manages the airport now- called me at the house. They showed up, I hopped in and we took off.”

“Where to?”

Jack wagged a finger at his boyhood pal. “That I’ll keep to myself. Didn’t the CIA tell you about ‘need to know’?”

Rick struggled to control himself. “Unless we can be sure that these damn women will put a sock in it- permanently- eventually the word’ll get to one or the other of the control group, and people you choose to call ‘the cleanup crew’ will deal with everyone who’s involved, and maybe a few who aren’t involved, just for good measure. Whatta you think it’ll take to keep ’em quiet?”

“Well, we could marry ’em.”

“D’you think they’d go for it? Ah, shit. Sure, they’re spooky, they’re smart, they look great, they fuck like minks, but marry ’em? Jump in that looney bin for a lifetime?

“I said we could. That’d be one way, at least from a legal perspective.”

“You say that like you know another way.”

Bringing steepled fingers up to his lips, Jack smiled behind them at his boyhood chum. “Maybe. Might be worth a try. Let’s take the twins, Trisha, and my Mom out to Montauk for the weekend. Some friends of mine’ll meet us in a nice big craft sitting off the Point. I’ll rent a Twin Beech over at Teterboro.”

“What good do you think that’ll do?”

Jack smiled as his eyes went skyward. “You’ll see.”

THE END

EPILOGUE

Gil dropped into the Cunningham’s passenger seat at Mile Marker 105 outside
Charlottesville,
Virginia. Jack, en route to
Wichita, had by then put an hour or so of fresh US Interstate Highway 64 concrete under his wheels. “How’s she feeling?”

“Not bad.” Jack glanced at the speedometer to confirm a steady 90. “It felt pretty much OK when I drove it off the Naval Station’s holding lot, but I thought it’d be a good idea to have it gone over before a 1400-mile run. The Norfolk Chrysler shop’s service writer said that the carbs weren’t too far off sync, which is amazing considering the circumstances.”

“Yeah, Harry sort of left you high and dry with that handful of carburetors.”

Jack turned to his passenger, who had chosen what looked to be a regulation tan Navy flight suit for the trip, or whatever part of the trek to
Wichita
that Gil intended to share with him. “At least I had all day that Sunday to figure it out. And damn if I didn’t need something to take my mind off Harry’s getting packed off to
Fort
Brooke. I didn’t hear any more about it until Monday, when I went down to the hangar and saw that they’d taken me off the flight schedule. When I went up to Ops to see what was going on, they told me to lay down to Admin, where Matt Brok was laying for me, you should pardon the pun, and told me to go get changed into the Uniform of the Day and stand by in my quarters until he called.” Jack paused to look over at Gil. “Hey; you must remember all this, don’t you?”

“Some I do, some I don’t; don’t forget, it’s been quite a while since I was in your shoes. Bottom line, you and Harry are out of the Navy and moving on. I’d like to talk about what happened during your and his visit to Mom.”

Behind the ghost of a smile, Jack said, “Don’t you mean you’d like to talk about Hap being our Daddy?”

“Yeah, that’ll do for starters. Then maybe we should chat about how this might change the situation between you and Harry. But let’s begin with the obvious. Goes without saying that Harry’s blithe reference to your and Hap’s striking resemblance gave you a lot to think about while you and he were knocking around
New York.”

“You’re goddam right it did! You’ve known it all along, and didn’t tell me. No. I had hear it from Harry, drunk as a goat, and have it shock the living shit out of me.”

“Total, three out of four in the room. And four out of four, as soon as Harry sobered up. Like any other fact, this one’s undeniable; it just took a while to come home to roost. Since this was one of the very few times that you’d actually seen Hap, close-up, since you were a baby, it’s understandable that Mom probably kept putting off telling you about hers and Hap’s affair while they were all still at Columbia- Mom, the guy we’ve known as Dad, Hap and his wife Maggie- thinking that you might never see him.”

“And I hope that I never do- again. I won’t be looking Mom up any time soon, either. And I’m damn glad to have a few days away from Harry, while he visits his son down in
Memphis.”

“As time passes, you’ll see it differently, I promise you.”

Jack gave him as long a stare as he dared before switching his gaze back to the road. “Of course! I keep forgetting- you know every fucking thing that’s going to happen to me, as I gradually merge, day by day, into you. Tell me something; from your multimillennial perspective, is it worth it?”

“Does living beat dying? As long as you’re not in too much pain. You- and I- we’ll have to take it as it comes. You took a gut-level shot in
New York, but the more time passes, the more you’ll see your parents- and I use the term advisedly- as peers, and as human beings who, like all of us, are prone to error. And on the Watkins side of our family, I must say we’re goddam prone, at least in the sex department.”

Well, speaking of sex maniacs, how long do you suppose my buddies’re going to be happy in the ol’ Scow?”

“Well, if Trisha and Rick’s experience is anything like Linda’s and Pete’s, I’d be hard put to imagine that they won’t enjoy it. Since they’re not pilots, they may not get into flying the scout ships the way Linda and Pete have, but they’ll certainly have some fun rides, to say nothing of high living of one sort and another. The question is, at what point is it safe for them to re-enter society without any great fear of being done away with, as so many witnesses to the JFK coup have been, and will continue to be? Given the memory tweaks, of course, Rick and Trisha could come back tomorrow, but I think a little decompression’s in order. I have-n’t told them about you and me yet, but I think it might solve more problems than it creates. Do you have an opinion about that?”