Walking Back The Cat Page 10

  Thomas's face lit up when he saw Finn. "Say hey, Saint Louis," he whispered.

  Slipping into the room, Finn spotted the two dream catchers dangling over the bed from fishing line thumbtacked to the ceiling. "What do dream catchers do?" he asked.

  Doubting Thomas reached up and twirled one. "Skelt says dreams come from shooting stars," he explained seriously. "The stars scatter dreams over the earth when they enter the atmosphere and burn up. The dream catcher is based on the principle of the spider's web: it traps bad dreams the way spiderwebs trap dew in the morning. The bad dreams bum off the way dew burns off spiderwebs when the sun rises."

  "Do you have bad dreams?"

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  "I used to before Skelt hung up the dream catchers. I used to dream I was in hell for my bad deeds."

  "And this hell, what did it look like in your dreams?"

  Doubting Thomas pulled a face. "For starters, I was barefoot and there were zillions of frogs squashed on the ground. It was real disgusting! There were flames, of course, like when we clear a cornfield by burning off the old stumps, except the fire was going day and night, and every time you breathed in, it smelled like rotten eggs." The boy closed his left eye and squinted at Finn through his right eye. "Have you ever been to hell in your dreams?"

  Finn gave a spin to the other dream catcher. "I've been to hell in real life," he said quietly.

  Doubting Thomas's left eye flicked open. "What was it like?" he asked in awe.

  "It was awful." Finn stared out an open window, his eyes focused on something much further away than the horizon. "Squashed frogs, rotten eggs, they're nothing compared."

  "Oh."

  Walking Back the Cat

  The bored voice of the controller crackled over the radio. "Roger, Alpha Tango Charlie Charlie One One Black. All of our screaming eagles are currently occupied. I can't vector anything your way for ten, twelve minutes. Any chance of yon guys slowing down the action until some of our eagles can take on ordnance and arrive?"

  "Wilco," Lieutenant Pilgrim said. He fished a TOW shoulder-fired antitank missile from under the tarpaulin in the back of the jeep. Taking a coin from a pocket, he flipped it in the air and slapped it onto the back of his wrist. "Winner gets to knock off the tank," he said.

  "Heads."

  Pilgrim looked at the coin. "Some folks have got all the luck."

  Taking the weapon from Pilgrim, crouching low, Finn disappeared into the desert and surfaced at a dune closer to the wadi. Crawling to the top, he armed the TOW, sighted on the Russian tank and fired. The missile streaked in low over the desert and caught the tank on the port beam. It burned through the armor plating and exploded inside the turret. The tank pivoted drunkenly on one tread, blocking the trail through the wadi, then burst into flames. Some of the army trucks behind it attempted U-turns but got mired in the sand. Klaxons screamed. At the rear of the convoy a woman wearing a long black dress and a black lace veil over the lower half of her face pulled an armchair off a moving van and sat down. A coal black bedouin dressed in long flowing robes opened a large golf umbrella and held it over her head. Soldiers in khaki trousers and civilian shirts leaped off the delivery trucks and started to scramble up the steep sides of the wadi. Officers poured out of the Mercedes taxis. Drawing pistols, they shouted for the soldiers to defend the convoy. Shots rang out. Several raglike figures could be seen tumbling back down to the floor of the wadi.

  From the top of a dune Pilgrim squeezed off two short bursts from his Ml 6. The woman sitting under the golf umbrella disappeared into the moving van. Iraqi soldiers, tossing away their boots, scurried barefoot back down the wadi or took cover under vehicles. A deathly quiet settled over Wadi Ta'if. Then a young officer wearing knee-length boots strode out in front of the burning tank waving a white flag attached to the end of a crutch.

  At that moment a flight of slow-flying Navy Hunter Hawks appeared overhead, peeled off and plunged down the spine of the wadi. From his dune Finn could make out sparks spurting from the Gatling guns on either side of the fuselages, and the bullets kicking up spouts of sand on the floor of the wadi. Several of the Hunter Hawks swooped over the convoy and dropped napalm canisters. In seconds Wadi Ta'if was transformed into an inferno.

  Robert Littell

  Flushed, his eyes feverish with horror, Finn leaped to his feet and waved wildly at the planes. "They've surrendered," he screamed. "Stop attacking." His voice was drowned out by one of the Hunter Hawks roaring low over his head, playfully wagging its wings as it circled back toward the wadi.

  Cradling his Ml6, Lieutenant Pilgrim joined Lance Corporal Finn. The two men stood side by side on the top of a dune watching the flames licking at the cars and buses and trucks in the wadi. The heat from the burning tankers grew so intense it dried the tears forming in the corners of Finn's eyes before they could trickle down his cheeks.

  Robert Littell

  "Hey, you sure frightened me. So where have you been for five days, Saint Louis?"

  He sank back into the rocking chair. "I been walking back a cat."

  "What cat? Whose cat?" Shenandoah ran a hand through her hair. "Skelt told me you'd turn up. He said you planned to stash Mr. Early and another dude in the old jailhouse down by the river. What's goin' on?"

  "Early's part of the problem, as opposed to the solution. He's got ties to the people who have been milking the casino."

  "Skelt always said Mr. Early was the Apache's guardian angel . . ."

  "That's what Mr. Early wanted Skelt to think."

  Shenandoah was suddenly very alert. "Did Mr. Early have anythin' to do with all those deaths —Baychendaysan, the Long Nose? Klosen, the Hair Rope? Uclenny, the Rapid Runner? Nahkahyen, the Keen Sighted? Tooahyaysay, the Strong Swimmer?"

  On the night table the wick sputtered, then the flame died. "He set them up," Finn said in the darkness. "Someone else —a professional — pulled the rug out from under them."

  Shenandoah felt a stab of pain in her chest. Breathing with her mouth open, she brought a palm up to her breast. When she had calmed down she said quietly, "Son of a bitch Mr. Early! Did the Long Nose, did the others hurt?"

  "Given the professional in question, chances are they never knew what hit them."

  "What is goin' on?"

  "I won't know until I've reached the end of the tunnel."

  "Are you sure there's an end to the tunnel?"

  "Even tunnel has an end. It's a matter of staying on your feet long enough to reach it."

  "You're a goddamn optimist, Saint Louis. That's one of the things I liked about you the first time I saw vou."

  Finn was thankful for a crumb. "I didn't know you liked me the first time you saw me."

  She smiled bitterlv. "Don't let it go to your head."

  "I never thought of myself as an optimist."

  She shook her head. "If you get in vour balloon and run, it's because vou think there's someplace to run to. Me, I believe in God, but I don't believe he's an optimist or a pessimist. I don't believe things systematically turn out good or bad."

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  "Yeah, I see what you mean," Finn said. He wasn't sure he did, but it didn't matter. He figured that as long as she kept talking, she wouldn't kick him out of her bedroom.

  "Do you really see what I mean?" Shenandoah managed a weak smile. "I had a half sister who was an optimist, she was as fat as I was thin, she was always tryin' out new diets — liquid diets, fat-free diets, Slim-Fast diets, thirty-pounds-in-thirty-days diets. Once she ate nothin' but grapes for a solid month. When she bought clothes, which was every time she cashed a paycheck, she always bought them two sizes too small . . ."

  Fighting back tears, she stared at the lace curtains fluttering in a window.

  Finn prompted her. "Your half sister was buying clothes two sizes too small . . ."

  "Yeah. She bought them two sizes too small so she could diet into them. Skelt thought she was ripe
for the loony bin. She'd eventually pass the skirt or the sweater on to me, even on me it was tight."

  Finn asked, "So what happened to your half sister?"

  "She found a diet that worked —it's called bulimia, which is when you eat all you want and then jam a finger down your throat to make yourself throw up. She lost so much weight she started fittin' into the clothes she bought. Trouble was she kept on losin' weight, she couldn't stop. Pretty soon the clothes she bought two sizes too small were too big on her. She looked like one of those people you see in pictures of concentration camps. Then she caught pneumonia. Then she died."

  Shenandoah fell silent. After a while she put the question she'd been afraid to ask. "Where you off to now?"

  Evasive, Finn told her not to worry if he dropped out of sight.

  "Me worry?" she said, irritated. "You got to be high on somethin' besides altitude." She snatched a Kleenex from a box next to the bed and loudly blew her nose into it. "I got a major confession to make to you, Saint Louis. I flunked geometry in high school. The reason I flunked geometry was I hated it. The reason I hated it was I couldn't swallow the business about parallel lines never meetin'." She shivered under the sheet, causing it to fall away from one shoulder. "I mean, if parallel lines can't never meet, where's the sense?"

  Finn understood she wasn't talking about geometry. "Where's the sense?" he agreed in a husky voice.

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  Robert Littell

  "Like is the limit of my possibilities because I love Skelt," Shenandoah whispered.

  "You don't owe me explanations."

  "If we'd met sooner... if we was to meet in another life . . ." She grabbed the pillow and hugged it to her body. "Oh, we had good moments, Skelt and me, don't think we didn't. They lasted a lifetime. Trouble is, a lifetime's awful short." Staring at Finn in the darkness, she saw the abyss loom and panicked. "Get out of my goddamn bedroom," she breathed. "Get out of my goddamn life. Do yourself and me and Skelt a favor—sail away in that balloon of yours. Please!"

  Robert Littell

  Parsifal's voice, very intense, drifted out of the darkness. "What you say has a grain of truth. I think that we are all prisoners trapped inside our brains, trapped inside our genes. We spend our adult lives trying to become intimate with another human being so that we can break out of this prison; so that we can become someone else. Real intimacy is the work of a lifetime, but there are two shortcuts—through the act we call lovemak-ing and through the act we call murder."

  "You're sick," Finn whispered. "You need help."

  "We all need help. The first time I saw you, back in the rope factory, it struck me that looking at you was like looking in a mirror."

  "You want to be more specific?"

  "You are a very violent person."

  "What gives you that impression?"

  "The nonchalant way you leaned the shotgun barrel against your shoulder when you were searching the rope factory. The sensual way your finger curled around the trigger, almost as if you were caressing a clitoris. You have carried weapons before, Mr. Finn. You are comfortable with them; you hold them the way I hold them —as if they are an extension of your body, as if they are an erection. Watching you move through the rope factory, I understood that you had been trained in house-to-house, room-to-room combat. When I informed you that you were about to commit suicide, you didn't squirm, you didn't sob, you didn't offer prayers to a God you don't believe in, you didn't offer me money you didn't have."

  "Dying was something I didn't look forward to," Finn said. "I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible."

  Parsifal laughed under his breath. "In similar situations I have known people to lose control of their sphincter muscles. I didn't detect a whiff of fear coming from your body." He regarded Finn in the darkness. "If I had to guess, I'd say you didn't feel anything. We are cut from the same cloth," he continued, his voice cold and analytical. "Have you ever killed anyone?"

  Finn didn't respond.

  Parsifal insisted. "One? Several? Many?"

  Again Finn said nothing.

  "Where?"

  "The Gulf. The war."

  Parsifal accepted this with a nod.

  "I had a CO, a black man name of Pilgrim, he used to say war doesn't decide who's right, it decides who's left."

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  "What happened to your CO?"

  "He got left. I heard he's hanging out in Washington working for some congressman or other."

  At the mouth of the canyon, headlights crept into the deserted parking lot and winked out. "That will be Egidio de Wey, alias Dewey, come in his shiny black Cadillac to service the dead-drop code named Clay Pigeon," Parsifal said. He picked up his Russian PPSh 41, jammed a magazine into it and worked the bolt, levering the first round into the chamber. Gripping his shotgun, curling his finger around the trigger, Finn retreated into the low grotto at the back of the cave.

  Minutes later the figure of a man could be seen making his way down the footpath. A three-quarter moon suspended over the cliffs threw his shadow ahead of him. He crossed the narrow footbridge spanning the stream and stopped next to a ponderosa pine. There was the flicker of a match as he lit a cigarette. From time to time the end of his cigarette glowed like a firefly in the night.

  "He's taking his sweet time," Finn whispered.

  "He's sweeping his trail," Parsifal whispered back. "He's making sure he's not being followed."

  Dewey took a last long drag on the cigarette before lobbing it into the stream, then stepped back onto the path and continued up to the ladder leading to the ceremonial cave. Finn sensed more than heard Parsifal slip away to his left as Dewey started up the long ladder. He scampered onto the ledge, brushed dust off his trousers and headed directly for the niche in the face of the cliff behind the flat altar stone. He was reaching into the niche when he heard a scraping behind him. He started to whirl around but froze when he felt the barrel of a gun caressing the nape of his neck.

  "There are thirty-five rounds in the clip," a voice said. "The PPSh forty-one is on automatic, and I have filed down the sear pin—the slightest pressure on the trigger will send at least ten of the bullets into your neck. The soft heads of the bullets have been sawed open, which means they tend to expand on impact. Any one of them would be enough to sever your spinal column and tear a gaping hole in your throat. Ten of them will certainly decapitate you. Are you armed?"

  Dewey nodded once.

  "With what?"

  "A revolver. It is tucked into the belt behind my back."

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  Robert Littell

  Parsifal reached under Dewey's zippered jacket, extracted the weapon and stuck it in his own belt.

  "Is the revolver all you are armed with?"

  "No. I am also armed with twenty-seven years of experience dealing with scum like you."

  Parsifal laughed quietly. "If you come out of this alive, you will have the benefit of being even more experienced. But that's a big if. Spread your feet wide. Place your palms flat on the side of the cliff above your head. Press your forehead against the cliff. Do not move a muscle if you want to remain among the living."

  Dewey did as he was told.

  Keeping his stubby PPSh pressed against the back of Dewey's neck, Parsifal carefully frisked him. Then he backed off a step. "You have good taste in aftershave lotion, though cold water from a tap would serve just as well. You can turn around now."

  Dewey turned slowly to face Parsifal. "I was under the impression that no one could make Harry Lahr talk. How did you swing it?"

  Finn emerged from the grotto. "He slipped a plastic sack over his head," he said. "Harry preferred talking to drowning."

  Dewey angled his head and squinted into the darkness. "So there are two of you." He looked back at Parsifal. "What did Harry give you besides the unlisted telephone in Houston and this dead drop?"

  Parsifal said, "He gave us your pedigree. He said that you had been hi
s lord and master at Special Projects. He said that you had Mafia contacts all over the globe. He said that you left the Agency and signed on to a consortium that was someone's swan song, that was mainstream, that had friends in high places."

  Dewey seemed more surprised that he had misjudged an associate than angry at the betrayal. "Fucking Harry!"

  Parsifal prodded Dewey with his PPSh. Stooping under the lintel, Dewey backed up until he was inside the low oval grotto at the back of the shelf. Finn came in behind them holding a flashlight, which he played on Dewey's face. "Watch him," Parsifal said. "If he moves, let him have a blast in the knees."

  Holding his shotgun in one hand and the flashlight in the other, Finn took a good look at Dewey. He was thin and patrician looking, of medium height, and appeared to be in his early sixties. He wore a zippered suede jacket and oversized tinted eyeglasses with thin tortoiseshell frames. His

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  shoes were made of soft patent leather and black and small and pointed. His cheeks seemed exceptionally flushed.

  Circling around behind Dewey, Parsifal bound his wrists with a length of electrical wire. Then he kicked his feet out from under him, sending him sprawling in the chalk dust.

  "That's not all we know about you," Parsifal informed his prisoner. "We know you were shaking down the Apache casino to provide operating cash for the consortium. We know you were debriefing a Russian defector, a woman, who was hidden in an apartment in Dallas with stinking corridors."

  A shadow of concern flitted over Dewey's face as he squirmed into a sitting position. "Who are you?" he asked in a raspy voice.

  Finn said to Parsifal, "You never mentioned a Russian defector."

  Parsifal said, "There are a lot of things I haven't mentioned." He kicked Dewey sharply in the shoulder. "What did you hope to get from the Russian lady defector? The Cold War is over."

  "Phase One may be over," Dewey shot back. "Phase Two is just starting."