A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 28

HAWK AND I GOT A ROOM ON THE SECOND FLOOR of the Pequod House, dumped our luggage in it, and went down to the bar.

It was a big square room with a bar along one wall and tables filling the rest. There were three men at the bar and one middle-aged couple at the far end of the room sitting at a table having early supper. The waitress had stiff blond hair and bright pink lipstick. She was thin and her brown waitress uniform was too big for her. She put two mimeographed menus down in front of us.

“Specials tonight are chicken pot pie and calves’ liver with bacon,” she said.

“You have steak,” Hawk said.

“Yes, sir,” she said, “best in the Valley.

“I believe that,” Hawk said. “I’ll have one, medium rare. And a double vodka martini on the rocks with a twist.”

“You want that before the meal, sir?”

“Un huh.”

I ordered the same thing. And the waitress went briskly to the bar.

“You gonna ask her, she seen Susan Silverman,” Hawk said.

“Not yet.”

The waitress came back with the martinis. “Go good with dinner,” Hawk said. “But I thought they’d serve it in a jelly glass with a straw.”

I drank a little of the martini.

“I think I know your plan,” Hawk said. “You, figure we sit here till Russell and Susan decide to go out to dinner and catch them when they come here.”

“Hell, I don’t have a plan that good,” I said.

“You know what you doing?”

“No.”

Hawk drank some martini. “Not bad,” he said.

“Even bad martinis aren’t bad,” I said.

We drank again. “Didn’t want to order champagne,” Hawk said. “This the kind of place you order champagne they bring you Cold Duck in a styrofoam cup.”

I finished mine and waved at the waitress put up two fingers. She came over.

“Did you wish something, sir?”

“Two more,” I said.

“Two more drinks?”

I smiled attractively. “Yes,” I said.

“What kind, sir?”

I smiled harder. “Two more martinis,” I said. “On the rocks, and with a twist. Actually with two twists, one in each martini.”

“Yes, sir.”

She raced off toward the bar.

“Probably hurrying so she won’t forget ‘fore she get there,” Hawk said.

“No wasted motion,” I said.

The waitress came hurrying back, carrying a tray. She put steak and french fries down in front of us. She put out two small dishes of canned carrots, and a basket of rolls. There were squares of foil-wrapped butter in the basket with the rolls.

“I’ll get your drinks right away,” she said. Hawk looked at his plate and then at me. The steaks were wide and flat, covering nearly the whole plate, and about a half-inch thick at best. There was a large bone in each steak.

“Better wait and drink the second martini,” I said.

“What kind of steak you figure this is,” Hawk said.

“Camel.”

Hawk nodded. “Well, we didn’t actually say beef steak, did we.”

The waitress brought the second martinis. Hawk and I each drank some.

“Gin,” we said simultaneously.

“We could send them back,” Hawk said.

“Yeah, but the next one might be made with Kool-Aid,” I said.

“You right,” Hawk said and drank some more.

The steak looked better than it tasted. The french fries were not edible. The carrots had been cooked for maybe an hour and a half. The rolls tasted like sugarless marshmallows.

“Wow, you boys must have been hungry,” the waitress said when she cleared the plates.

The place was filling up, some diners and a lot of drinkers. I paid the check and we moved to the bar. We each ordered beer.

“What do people do for a living around here,” I said to the bartender.

“Transpan mostly,” he said. “Half the people in here tonight work out at the facility.”

“What’s Transpan,” Hawk said.

“They make guns,” the bartender said. He had on a white shirt and a black string tie. His gray hair was short. “They got a big factory about five miles from here. There’s a range and a test course. Big facility.”

“They hiring?” I said.

“Hard to get hired,” the bartender said. “Need specialist skills, you know? Gunsmith, heavyweapons specialist, that kind of stuff. I never heard of them hiring anyone local.”

“We know a little about weapons,” I said. “And we’re not local. Who do we talk to?”

The bartender shrugged. “Got me,” he said. “Guys at the big round table work there. Maybe they can help. Was me I’d go down to the state employment office in Hartford.”

He moved away.

I turned away and leaned my elbows on the bar and sipped the draft beer and looked at the big round table. They were drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer from long-necked bottles and a number of them had collected on the table. They had placed a ring of lit cigarettes on the table and were arm wrestling inside the ring, the loser getting his knuckles burned. The winner of the first two matches was a fat guy with crew-cut red hair and a full beard. He had on a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off and his arms were bright pink and thick as country hams.

I said to Hawk, “Let’s get in on this?”

“Which of us?”

“Whichever one sees the chance,” I said.

“Should we win or lose?”

“See how it goes,” I said.

We went with our beers in hand and stood near the group watching the contests. The fat man won another, slowly overpowering a lean black man and pressing his knuckles briefly against the cigarette. The rest of the table whooped.

The fat man looked around the table. There was another black, a squat man with long arms, wearing a baseball cap backward.

“You want to hold up the honor of the spooks, Chico?”

The black man shrugged and moved over beside the fat man. He set his elbow on the table and they locked hands.

“Anytime,” the fat man said. Chico turned his wrist sharply, trying to catch the fat man unready, and he almost made it. The fat man’s arm went maybe forty-five degrees down before he began to hunch his shoulder and steadily press Chico’s arm back and down toward the cigarettes. Chico held for a moment six inches from the tabletop, then his arm gave way and the back of his hand pressed against the burning cigarettes. The fat man held it there.

“Got to yell, Chico. Got to say ow.”

Chico said, “Ow.”

The fat man grinned. “Goddamned near got me, Cheeks. Goddamned near made it. Be a son of a bitch if I lost my first time to a goddamned spook.”

Chico grinned and put the back of his hand to his mouth.

Hawk said, “How about me?”

The fat man looked up. “Hell yes,” he said. “How about a little money on it. With friends I do it for fun. But strangers…” Hawk took a twenty out and tossed it on the table.

He said to Chico, “ ‘Scuse me, bro,” and sat in the chair.

“Name’s Red,” the fat man said. He was looking at Hawk carefully.

Hawk nodded.

“You got a name,” Red said. “Black,” Hawk said.

“Well, you’re hot shit, ain’t you,” Red said.

Hawk sat opposite Red and placed his elbow on the table. He and Red locked hands. Next to Red, Hawk looked nearly slender.

“Anytime,” Red said.

Hawk nodded and said, “You say.”

Red said, “Now,” and lunged his forearm against Hawk’s. Slowly Hawk’s forearm bent backward toward the tabletop. Red’s teeth showed through his beard. Hawk had no expression. He looked at me. Four inches from the tabletop Hawk’s arm stopped moving down. Red grunted with effort. Hawk kept looking at me. I nodded and mouthed the word win. With no change in expression Hawk began to lift Red’s arm back up the way it had come. It was a steady, apparently effortless movement, except that the muscles in Hawk’s arm swelled so that the hem on the sleeve of his polo shirt split. He pressed Red’s hand firmly against the lit cigarette.

Red said, “Ow,” and Hawk released his hand, picked up the two twenties and folded them neatly lengthwise in half, running his thumb and forefinger along the crease to smooth it. Red stared at him with the back of his right hand pressed against his mouth. No one spoke.

Hawk gestured at the waitress. “Bring us a round,” he said, and handed her one of the folded twenties.

“You got me when I was tired,” Red said. “My right arm was tired.”

Hawk nodded pleasantly.

“Double or nothing, left-handed,” Red said.

Hawk nodded toward me. “Try him,” Hawk said.

Red looked at me. “You left-handed?” he said.

“No.”

“Double or nothing?” Red said to Hawk. Hawk nodded. He stood and I took his seat. Red and I locked left hands.

“I’ll call it,” Red said.

“Sure.”

Red said, “Go,” and I slammed his hand down onto the lit cigarette. The force scattered the cigarettes.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait a minute. I wasn’t ready.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll do it again. You call.” We locked hands again. Red took in a couple of deep breaths.

“All right,” Red said. “When I say go.”

“Sure.”

“Go.”

Red’s grip tightened and he tried to turn my wrist.

“You ready?” I said.

Red nodded, straining against my wrist. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” I said and slammed his hand against the table.

The waitress arrived with a tray of beer bottles and there was silence while she distributed them and picked up the empties. She went away.

“Where the fuck did you guys come from,” Red said. “You guys got to be from another fucking planet.”

“It’s because our hearts are pure,” I said.

“I ain’t got the forty,” Red said. “I gotta owe it to you.”

“When do I get it,” I said.

“Tomorrow, you gonna be around. I get paid tomorrow.”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll be around tomorrow.”

“I’m good for it,” Red said. “Ask any of these guys. I pay what I owe.”

“I believe you,” Hawk said. “But where you work, case we have to come find you, case you forget.”

“Transpan,” Red said, “but I won’t forget. Man, ask anyone. I owe you money, it’s like you got it in the bank. Tell him, Chico. He’s a brother, he’ll believe you.”

Chico nodded.

I ordered another round. “Winner buys,” I said. Red licked the back of his right hand where the cigarette burn was reddening.

“Another goddamned planet,” Red said. Hawk snagged a chair from another table and sat at the round one.

“You guys all work at Transpan?” I said.

“Yeah,” Chico said. “Sort of.”

The waitress brought the beer. “What do you mean, sort of?” I said.

“Contract work,” Red said. “We signed on to do training and weapons testing. Working on a two year contract. After two years we can sign on again or get out.”

“Like the army,” I said.

Red looked at me for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s like that.”