A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 30

“MAN GOT HIMSELF A PRIVATE ARMY,” HAWK said. “like a chinese warlord.”

I nodded. We were driving toward Hartford, east, directly into the morning sun. The road was curvy and not wide.

“We could kick the shit out of Lionel and Teddy,” Hawk said. “Maybe persuade folks we could do their job better.”

“That’s always an option,” I said. “Let’s try this way, first.”

Hawk shrugged. “Hate getting tied in to those government assholes,” Hawk said. “They could fuck up a square knot.”

We found a diner in West Hartford with an outside pay phone. Hawk went to order breakfast and I called Ives on the number he’d said was always manned. He’d misstated slightly. This morning it was womaned. She said a noncommittal hello. I said I wanted to talk with Ives and she said could he call me back. I gave her the pay phone number and hung up and waited.

Ives called back in five minutes. “Good to see you early-birding it,” he said. “Caught any worms yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Here’s what we need. We need two guys that work at the Transpan weapons facility in Pequod, Connecticut, to disappear.”

“Permanently?” Ives said.

“A month ought to be plenty,” I said.

“What are their names?”

“Lionel Elson and Teddy Bright.”

“Teddy Bright?”

“Would I make it up,” I said.

“What else can you tell me?”

“They are instructors in hand-to-hand combat and physical training at the Transpan test range.”

“Why does a manufacturer have a hand-to-hand combat instructor?”

“We’ll find that out,” I said. “After you scoop Lionel and Teddy.”

“Do you care how we do it?”

“No. We’re angling to get hired in their place and so it shouldn’t look rigged and it shouldn’t connect us.”

“Hurry?”

Behind me a big ten-wheeler ground past, down-shifting as it slowed for a stoplight in the next block.

“Ives,” I said. “You need to remember why I’m in this?”

“Ah yes, the maiden in the tower.”

“After this is over, Ives, you and I may have to discuss your tone. But right now I want her out of that tower,” I said. “And every day she’s not out of it is a long and wearing day.”

“We’ll move with judicious speed, young Lochinvar. Sit tight.”

“Do it in the evening when Hawk and I are sitting around the bar in the Pequod House.”

“We know our business,” Ives said. “We don’t need too much advice.”

“Didn’t you guys engineer the Bay of Pigs.”

“Before my time, laddie buck. I’ll call you at the Pequod House when it’s done and tell you your order has been delayed.”

I hung up and went into the diner. Hawk was on a stool eating steak and eggs. There was a teen-age girl behind the counter wearing cutoff jeans and rubber shower clogs. She looked at me when I sat down.

“Coffee,” I said. “Cream and sugar.”

She brought it black in a thick diner mug and pushed the cream pitcher and the sugar shaker at me.

“Ives gonna do it?” Hawk said.

“Yeah.”

“He gonna fuck it up?”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Folk at Transpan might think it funny that these guys disappear right when we come on the scene.”

“Maybe, but if they do what have we lost. We’re outside looking in now.”

“They get suspicious,” Hawk said, “maybe they decide to clip us.”

“They’ll decide to try that sooner or later,” I said. “I still don’t see us being any worse off for trying.”

Hawk wiped up some egg yolk with his toast. He put the piece of toast in his mouth and wiped his fingers on a napkin.

“And it might work,” he said.

“We never lost money yet,” I said, “underestimating the intelligence of the Costigans.”

Hawk put the last piece of steak in his mouth and chewed carefully. He wiped his mouth with the napkin. “Good point,” he said.