The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (25 page)

In five minutes we were through the fence and running
along the perimeter through the courtyard and around the side of the
central building. The arc lights were still on, creating an eerie
gray-yellow sheen on the concrete block. We came around to the side
door and Drill took out a wire cutter, slicing through the wire glass
in four deft cuts of the wheel and then pushing through so softly
with the tapper, the pane fell to the floor with a quiet, easy thump.
Where had he learned that? I wondered. Housebreaking in the Bronx was
reaching new levels of professionalism.

Five-forty-seven. We proceeded past some dormitory
rooms along a corridor leading to the administrative offices that
were at the end, separated by a pair of swinging doors. We continued
through them slowly. No one was about. We walked inside, checking the
empty desks, personal computers, bulletin boards. A large Mercator
projection showed the "outreach" of Cosmic Aid, double red
arrows for special attention pointing at Thailand, Guatemala,
Ethiopia, and the Sudan. There was a list of something called Funding
Affiliates and some framed letters from various foreign politicians
and dignitaries. The hack room had autographed photos of rock and
movie stars, most of them posed with Sandollar, and a set of
Milanese-type black leather furniture with a sign pointing to it
saying DON'T WORRY—IT'S DONATED.

A fire door led out to another corridor, which had
the words SUPPLY AREA-HOLDING & TRANSIT painted directly on the
wall with an arrow. We started along it, going through another fire
door which took us out onto a steel catwalk overlooking a large,
hangarlike internal loading bay. But even before we started across
it, an alarm began wailing and the lights switched on.

"Shit," I said. "Separate!"

I grabbed Chantal and ran along the catwalk as King
and Drill headed down a spiral stairway. Omar and Lancaster started
back in the direction we had come, but there was an immediate burst
of machine gunfire and they staggered back gasping in our direction,
hit in the chest and side. Just as suddenly three of the
paramilitaries appeared at the bottom, racing across the concrete
floor toward King and Drill, firing at them. I grabbed Chantal,
pulling her down on the steel catwalk, when Drill, with the grace of
an antelope, leaped from the spiral stairs onto the canvas roof of a
military-style transport truck and, without losing his footing for a
second, started firing at them with a .45, hitting two immediately
and driving the third back where he came from. He then jumped down to
the concrete, grabbed a machine gun from one of the wounded
paramilitaries, and joined me in a cross-fire aimed at the catwalk
door, hitting the first two who came through. He then ran up the
spiral stairway again, gestured for me to follow him, and the two of
us ran down the corridor, pursuing the remaining paramilitaries,
including their leader, into a cul-de-sac. While Drill slammed him in
the gut with the barrel of the machine gun, I grabbed his AK-47 and
rammed his head into a wall, sending him crumpling to the floor. I
then turned to Drill, who had already disarmed the last of the
paramilitaries and was cooly flicking the shells out of his pistol
cartridge. Where had this man come from? Inside of thirty seconds,
almost single-handedly and without killing anybody, he had
immobilized a small army of vicious counterterrorist thugs right out
of the back pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine. I had the feeling
that if I hadn't been there, it might've taken him as much as a
minute.

"Nice work," I said. "I must admit,
King King has a talent for picking his allies."

"A talent? I am sorry," he said in a
liltingly formal accent. "Until yesterday I do not know Mr.
King."

I stared at him, puzzled, when I noticed the New
Yorker, pulling himself up on a steel railing behind him while
reaching into his right combat boot. He spun around, pointing a
Beretta directly at Drill's back. Before I could raise my weapon, a
shot rang out. The New Yorker went flying backward, his head snapping
and his arms flailing and jerking in the air while his gun skittered
across the floor.

I turned to see Chantal frozen behind us with her
knees slightly bent and her legs spread apart. Her left hand was
unable to stop her right from trembling as she clenched her teeth and
grasped her wrist, still training her new Smith & Wesson
Detective Special Model 36 on the bloody New Yorker. Her face
registered a combination of fear, shock, and nausea as he groaned on
the floor.

I walked over. "You didn't have a choice."

She nodded.

"
Now you know how it feels."

"
Yes. Now I do." She looked down at her
hand, staring at the gun as if it were an alien creature like a sea
slug.

"And now you had better find that money,"
said King King, coming up behind me. "And the proof to free my
brother." He stared at me coldly. Outside I could hear people
banging on the fire door.

I looked down the spiral stairs toward the area where
the last of the paramilitaries had come from. I could see a couple of
shipping crates, another pickup truck, and a door with the words
MEDICAL SUPPLIES—RESTRICTED AREA printed on it in large highway
yellow letters against an olive field. "Down there," I
said. King gave me another cold stare before we left Omar and
Lancaster behind, and King, Drill, Chantal, and I descended onto the
concrete floor again. I glanced through the flap of the transport
truck—it was empty—and signaled for them to follow me to the
door. I expected it to be locked, but it was open and we slipped
through carefully, walking down into a dimly lit corridor that looked
as if it had been tunneled like a mine shaft straight into the side
of the hill. The sound of our footsteps bounced off the concrete
floor, ricocheting off the narrow walls, and I hoped we were right
when we counted only six paramilitaries. But it seemed useless to
turn back now. Down at the end of the corridor I could see another
door which had to be the answer to something. We drew closer to it,
an eerie organ arrangement of "Imagine," Sandollar's theme,
filtering through like background music at a funeral parlor. Suddenly
the door swung open and a huge klieg light switched on, glaring
straight out and blinding us.

"Well, well, Wine, up early, aren't we? I've
been waiting for you. Ever since you visited that scared little
redneck in Glendale. Of course, I didn't know you were bringing your
own militia."

"Well, Eddy, our intelligence told us you
weren't exactly a one-armed bandit yourself. And the way that
unemployed contra of yours chased me around New York . . ." I
took a step forward.

"
Don't go any further," he said sharply.
"Any of you. Unless you believe in reincarnation!"

"Hit the deck!" I yelled as I fired
straight into the light, diving forward onto the hard concrete with
Chantal, King, and Drill like a trio of linebackers. A round of
machine gunfire flew over our heads, smashing against the door behind
us, but the corridor went dark. Then another light appeared.

It was a high-powered Tekna flashlight in the hands
of Drill. He was aiming it straight in the face of Sandollar, who
stood in the doorway with his wife, Kim, a few feet behind him.
Through the door I caught a glimpse of what looked like a staggering
amount of cash stacked against a block wall.

"Very heroic but absolutely useless," said
Sandollar.

"This entire bunker is wired with explosives."
He held a small remote control box the size of a cigarette pack up to
the light beam. "Before I part with one penny, I'd be delighted
to take us all up."

"l imagine you would, Eddy. But then what would
happen to Neutron City?"

"Yeah, I'd hate to see that go. But so what?
Another rock dream bites the dust. It wouldn't be my first."

"
Twenty-five million along with it?" I
slowly stood up and took another tentative step forward.

"Charity money," said Eddy dismissively.
"Everybody got their rocks off on it already anyway. Got to feel
great and generous. Got to go out and rape and pillage like any true
child of the eighties without feeling guilty for one minute. Now,
isn't that a service'? Who else is providing that?"

"I don't know, Eddy. Not a lot of people, I
don't think. Maybe some evangelists like your father-in-law . . ."

"
Him? He's dealing with a different social
class. Completely. He doesn't understand what I'm doing, doesn't
trust me for a minute, does he, Kim'?"

"No, Eddy," she said.

"I mean, what does he know about where we come
from, Moses. The idealism and then the disillusionment. And then
everybody out for the big score, a society like a big lollipop
waiting to be licked. No wonder we all want in. Who wants to be in an
old VW van when your buddy's in a Mercedes? Have a Nakamichi tape
deck that really plays the blues.

Every fucking exercise machine in the Sharper Image
catalog. What can a Korean evangelist know about that? That's not his
scene. That's Mars to him. He knows about midwestern gray-haired
ladies and lost teen·age Jesus freaks. He doesn't know about us. But
he had a great scam going and I knew it. And he knew I knew it. Ever
since we got married, he's been looking for some way to disown me.
But now he's afraid. We know too much about his business. We're
franchised. We're a religion, too. They can't touch us. Soon we'll be
bigger than he is."

I made a move forward, but he waved the remote
control in my face as a warning and I stopped. By now King, Chantal,
and Drill were on their feet too, a few steps behind me.

"Look, Moses," Sandollar continued, "why
don't we get smart and all share in this? There's plenty and more to
come. You're sick of being a private dick, right? I mean, it may
sound crazy, but in the long run we're doing these Africans a favor.
Charity can cure cancer, maybe, but it can't cure poverty. All it can
do is postpone things, cause human over-grazing, you know, like
cattle out in a field that wasn't meant for livestock. That just
makes things worse. Or it fosters dependency, like a father who keeps
supporting his son until he's forty-five. Who wants that? In the end,
they're both fucked. I mean, Wine, you know. Did the Chinese ask for
charity? And are they starving? I'm teaching the Africans a lesson,
increasing their ultimate chances of survival by not giving them the
money. And the rest of us, we'll be happier listening to the sounds
out of Neutron City anyway. Right?"

"Those of use who are still alive."

"
Hey, man. I'm not a murderer. I didn't want any
of this shit to happen. I just didn't have any choice. If Mike hadn't
been so jealous, he could've made a killing too. I would've cut him
in. But he went so crazy over me and Emily, he would've spilled
everything. And this is the modern world. These things happen. It's
just common situational ethics: you don't go and ruin a man's
livelihood over a little libidinal excess. I mean, it didn't bother
Kim. Did it, baby?"

His wife shook her head. "And Nastase. That
Romanian fruitcake I met through my father-in-law. All I wanted was
for him to let us in the Picasso suite. I didn't tell him a thing. Or
his Glendale Christer buddy, that Billy kid. I didn't know they'd go
bonkers the minute you sent that old bloodhound nosing around."

"Burckhardt? What bush did you bury that poor
bastard under?"

"Hey, what choice did I have? If I'd had any
brains, we'd've offed Billy, too, but I don't have the stomach for
this stuff. Not like this guy." He gestured toward King.

"You don't, huh?" I said. "You had
enough stomach to have Carl Bannister butchered with a kitchen knife
and arrange for Otis to take the fall."

"What? Now that's really crazy! What the hell
would I do that for?"

"No good reason, white boy. You're absolutely
right. You didn't do it," said King calmly. Sandollar turned
toward him in amazement at the precise moment King shot him in the
face. The remote control dropped to the floor, away from the
crumpling Sandollar, and Kim started to scream.

"All right. Enough of this bullshit," said
King, suddenly pointing his pistol into my side. "Drop it!"
I let go of my gun. "You too, bitch!" He slammed the
Special out of Chantal's hand, then nodded to Drill, who picked up
our weapons and walked out. King gestured for us all—Chantal, Kim,
and me—to back up in the small room, behind the money. There was
more of it than I had ever seen, even in display windows in Las
Vegas, piled in packets of thousand-dollar bills that came up to the
waist.

"
Gonna retire, King?" I asked.

He laughed softly. Then he looked at us a moment
before speaking. "You know, when Otis was a three-year-old kid,
our mama went out to turn a trick and left the gas on by accident.
Little Otis started choking, but he didn't know what the fuck to do.
I mean he didn't know where it was coming from. How could he? At that
age. So he keeled over and passed out."

I heard a noise and looked over to see Drill coming
down the corridor with a large baggage carrier on rollers. He was
followed by the injured Omar and Lancaster. They parked the carrier
directly in front of us and started to load the bills. King kept his
gun on us and  atched them do it for a moment before continuing.

"And by some stretch of luck," he said,
"just when he would've died for sure, I was coming back from a
basketball game for something to eat—I was eight at the time—and
opened the door and nearly passed out myself. But I was smart enough
to realize what was happening, so I opened the window, grabbed Otis,
and stuck his head out. No big deal, but all his life he thought I
was his savior or something. Maybe 'cause his mother was a junkie
whore and his father was a jailbird, but even though I might've been
the worst dope-dealing motherfucker in the Bronx, to Otis I was more
than a brother. I was his God and I was his parents. Even when he
came to Hollywood and started to be a famous comic. Every night he'd
call me up, tell me how much he needed me, how lonely he was. 'The
Tears of a Clown,' like Smokey says. Even that girl friend of his
couldn't help him. Only Daddy King and cocaine. Cocaine like a mother
and his brother like a father. So when that Malibu shrink made the
mistake of using me as a guinea pig, of making my safety and
livelihood his way of controlling Otis by threatening to reveal
intimate details of my business, that shrink didn't know it, but he
was a dead man. I couldn't tolerate that. And I couldn't tolerate
what he wanted from Otis—contractual servitude for life. He even
wanted to be in his will. Can you believe it? And he was gonna get
it. I know. 'Cause Bannister was fucking with my brother's mind in
the worst way, making him into a slave just when he had a chance, for
the first time, to be free. Free of that Malibu Mephistopheles, free
of me, free even of that motherfucking white powder. That's why I had
him come to New York. So he wouldn't be around when I had Bannister
mashed. Hell, I even had 'em use a weapon from the bastard's own
house. But even that didn't work out, as it turned out." He
shook his head. "You know—it's funny. The only thing that made
me really hate who I was and what I did was Otis's loving me so
much."