CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The post office in Beecham, Maine, was located in one corner of a variety store in a small weathered-shingle building at the top of a short hill which led down to the harbor. The coast of Maine was tourist country, and a lot of shopkeepers had adopted a kind of stage Yankee persona in order to fulfill expectations.
“I’m looking for Last Stand Systems,” I said.
The shopkeeper/postmaster was a fat old guy wearing a collar-less blue and white striped shirt, and big blue jeans held up by red suspenders.
“In town here,” he said.
As he answered me he eyed Hawk. The look wasn’t suspicious exactly, it was more the look you give to an exotic animal that has unexpectedly appeared. The way he might have looked if I’d come in with an ocelot on a leash.
“Where in town?”
“Out the Buxton Road,” he said.
“Does it have an address?” I said.
“Beecham, Maine.”
The shopkeeper was seated on one of four stools bolted to the floor in front of a marble-topped soda fountain, his fat legs dangling, his fat ankles showing sockless above a pair of moccasins. There were donuts under a glass dome, and straws and napkins in chrome dispensers.
“Does it have a number on it?” I said.
“Nope.”
“If I went out the Buxton Road how would I recognize it?”
“See the sign out front.”
“The one that says Last Stand Systems, Inc.?”
“Yep.”
“That should help us,” I said.
“Might.”
“How do we get to the Buxton Road?” I said.
“Right out front. Turn right.”
“You been working on this act for a long time?” Hawk said.
The old fat guy almost smiled for a moment, but fought it off and stayed in character.
“Yep,” he said.
“Real hay shakers wear socks,” Hawk said.
“Some do,” the old fat guy said.
Hawk grinned. We turned and went back out and got into Hawk’s car and turned right. Nearly all the houses were white and set on low foundations. Many had long porches that wrapped around the front and one side where people could sit in rocking chairs and look across the street at people sitting in rocking chairs looking across the street. The Buxton Road barrel-arched over a fast-moving little river and then flattened out between tall pines on the right and the sea-foamed boulder-scattered coastline on the left. The sea birds seemed livelier on this coast. There was very little of the effortless gliding that gulls did in Boston. Here, they flashed above the waves, and dove into the foam, and scooted over the rocks and snapped food out of the tidal ponds that formed among the rusty-looking granite chunks. About a mile out of town there was a narrow drive off into the pine trees. A small sign, black letters on white wood, read Last Stand Systems, Inc. Hawk U-turned and pulled up onto the shoulder at the opposite edge of the road above the ocean fifty yards down past the sign.
“We could be bold,” Hawk said.
“And if it’s the outfit that sent the well-dressed shooters,” I said, “we could be dead.”
“Or, we could be guileful.”
“Guileful?”
“Guileful.”
“I vote for guileful,” I said.
“Good,” Hawk said, “what you suggest?”
“You don’t have a plan?”
“I come up with the strategic concept,” Hawk said.
“Is that what that was?” I said. “I thought you were just showing off you knew a big word.”
“That too,” Hawk said.
“Okay, let’s sneak around in the woods and see what we can see.”
“Covertly,” Hawk said.
“Of course,” I said. “Covertly.”
Hawk and I were both in work clothes, which meant jeans, sneakers, tee shirt. I wore a blue oxford dress shirt with the tails out to hide the Browning on my belt. Hawk mostly used a shoulder holster. To conceal it he was wearing a gray silk sport coat. He took it off and folded it carefully on the backseat. He had a big.44 Mag under his arm.
“Doesn’t the weight of that thing make you tip to the side?” I said.
“It do,” Hawk said. “But you never know when you might have to shoot an elephant.” Hawk put the car keys over the visor.
“Case we need wheels real quick,” Hawk said. “Don’t want to be looking for the keys.”
“‘Course this could be an outfit of pleasant people who make umbrella stands,” I said.
“With an unlisted number and a private jet,” Hawk said.
“Just a thought,” I said.
We crossed the road and went into the woods. It had that bittersweet scent that the woods often have on a hot day. Except for the whine of locusts, and the occasional movement of the wind off the ocean, it was very still. Pine needles were six inches thick underfoot. We made very little sound as we walked. We walked in a wide circle aiming to come to Last Stand Systems, Inc. from a direction other than the road. It was easy going. There was very little underbrush. It was as if the land beneath the high pines had been carefully cleared. In about twenty minutes we saw the compound. Not much to see. It looked like it might once have been a manufacturing facility that had been recycled. There were three cinder block buildings with those high glass windows that nineteenth-century industrial buildings used to have, the kind that have a fine wire mesh running through them. The buildings were painted flat white. The compound was surrounded by a high chain link fence with razor wire on top.
I climbed a tree. From there I could see that the buildings faced onto an open area about the size of a football field. An American flag was on a flagpole in front of one building. A couple of men in dark suits and white shirts came out of the building by the flagpole and walked across the open area and went into the building across the way. I looked down. Hawk had taken a seat under the tree with his back against the trunk and his ankles crossed and appeared to be asleep, though he probably wasn’t.
I sat in my tree some more. There’s something about sitting in a tree when you’re a grown man that makes you feel like a doofus. But it was a feeling I understood, I’d had it before. I sat, doofus-like, and looked at the layout. To my left was a gated entrance with a guard shack manned by a guard. The gate was open, folded back out of the way against the chain link fence. The central building with the flagpole was directly opposite the gate. It was clearly the administrative place. The suits continued in and out of there. The other two buildings seemed to be a barracks and maybe a supply warehouse. A couple of green Jeeps and a black Lincoln stretch limo with tinted windows were parked in front of the administration building. They all had Maine plates. I noted the plate numbers.
As I watched, a man in starched fatigues and wearing a pistol belt strolled slowly along the fence. There was a radio on his belt on the hip opposite the pistol, and a microphone clipped to his epaulets. At the corner he stopped and spoke to another guy with the same equipment who had obviously walked down his length of fence. One of them leaned his hand against the chain link as they talked. Which meant the fence was not electrified. The other two lengths of fence were hidden by the buildings. I watched as my guy turned smartly and strolled back along his fence and, sure enough, met another guard at the other corner. Being a trained observer I concluded that the perimeter was guarded by four men. I watched some more. The guards went back and forth. After about a half hour a squad of four other men in starched fatigues came out of the far building under the direction of another guy and they marched out to change the guard. I sat some more. In the next hour and a half I counted at least twenty men in starched fatigues and sidearms either guarding the perimeter or marching about in the compound in something resembling close order drill. My left knee was beginning to hurt where I’d gotten shot once. I wasn’t sure I could stand the excitement of another guard change, so I climbed back down the tree and stood and stretched out my knee a little. Hawk tilted his head back and looked at me.
“So, Hawkeye,” he said. “What’d you see.”
“Looks like something between an IBM retreat and Parris Island,” I said.
“Got a perimeter guard,” Hawk said.
“I counted about twenty guys in fatigues and sidearms,” I said.
“Don’t seem necessary for a bunch of pleasant umbrella stand makers,” Hawk said.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
“We tough enough to go in there and roust twenty guys?” Hawk said.
“Of course we are,” I said.
“How ‘bout stupid enough?” Hawk said.
“Sure, but then what? I don’t even know what we’re looking for in there.”
“Same thing we looking for when we drove way the fuck up here,” Hawk said. “We trying to figure out the connection between Amir and this outfit.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “And we’re doing that because we think it might help us figure out who threw Prentice Lamont out the window.”
“Exactly,” Hawk said.
“Shooting it out with twenty guys may not be the best way to get that information.”
“Specially if only one guy’s got the information and you kill him.”
“A definite possibility.”
“Or we might both get shot to pieces and then the thing wouldn’t ever get solved,” Hawk said.
“Unlikely,” I said. “But not impossible.”
We both looked at the gleam of the white cinder block buildings through the lacy distraction of the trees. The high locust whine was so much a part of the woods that it had become nearly inaudible. The bittersweet smell of the woods was stronger as the sun had gotten higher.
“I think guile is still our best option,” I said.
“So what the guileful thing to do?” Hawk said.
“Go back home, maybe have a couple beers, and think about it,” I said.
“Works for me,” Hawk said.