McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (13 page)

 
          
 
Tuck was right, of course. Boog would know
about the Smithsonian, or if he didn't know he would find out. Boog had more
sources than the Post and the Times put together, which is why large segments
of the staffs of those papers were apt to be found in his kitchen at any given
moment.

 
          
 
Since it was plain to me that I wasn't going
to learn anything by watching Blink Schedel and Mrs. Lump, I left and headed
for Boog's office as fast as I could go. When I passed the National Portrait
Gallery, which I knew to be a part of the Smithsonian, I half expected to see
Blink's minions loading the national portraits into the fleet of trucks. The
fact that it wasn't happening gave me heart.

 
          
 
Boog's office was in a sinister-looking black
building on
First Street
, not far from Union Station. I didn't expect to find him in it, and I
didn't. Since he had left politics to become an all-purpose consultant he felt
free to use his time inventively.

 
          
 
His lobby was filled with lobbyists, all of
them wearing expensive suits and hopeless expressions. The hopeless expressions
probably meant that they knew in their heart of hearts that Boog wasn't going
to show up and tell them what they needed to know.

 
          
 
Boog's secretary was a grizzled old girl from
Winkler
County
named Bobbie Proctor. She was smoking as
fast as she could smoke, and reading the National Enquirer when I came in. So
far all my efforts to get on her good side had failed. It was entirely possible
that Bobbie didn't have a good side.

 
          
 
"Morning," I said.

 
          
 
"Yeah, it is,” Bobbie said, glancing at
her watch.

 
          
 
"I just need to see Boog a minute,"
I said.

 
          
 
"I don't know why you come here, then,"
she said. "This is just where he keeps his telephones."

 
          
 
"Got any notions about where he might
be?"

 
          
 
Bobbie sighed, not happy to have her reading
interrupted.

 
          
 
"I got a notion he's off gettin' his
rocks hauled," she said.

 
          
 
Beyond that she refused to contribute a
syllable of information, though even that was enough to inflame the lobbyists'
hopes. When I went out, five or six of them were strung out down the line of
pay phones in the foyer, calling various madams and massage parlors, in the hope
of stumbling on Boog.

 
          
 
After some thought, I picked up my car phone
and called Boss. Micah Leviticus answered.

 
          
 
"Hi, Micah," I said. "Can I
speak to Boss for a moment? I need to find Boog."

 
          
 
"Isn't he at the Little Bomber's?"
Micah asked.

 
          
 
"The what?"

 
          
 
"The Little Bomber's Lounge," Micah
said, impatiently.

 
          
 
Then he began to giggle.

 
          
 
"What's the matter?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Oh, nothing," he said. "Boss
is just tickling me with her hair."

 
          
 
"Where's the Little Bomber's
Lounge?"

 
          
 
"It's in
Arlington
," he said. "If you find Boog tell
him not to forget to buy the new TV Guide. The ones they put in the Sunday
papers don't have much depth."

 
          
 
"I'll tell him," I said. "Sorry
if I called at a bad time."

 
          
 
"It's not a bad time," Micah said.
"Bob Newhart doesn't come on for half an hour."

 
          
 
I zipped right across in front of the Capitol,
which was looking very white in the bright fall air. Then the next thing I knew
I was in the south parking lot of the Pentagon—no real surprise, but something
I had been sort of hoping to avoid.

 
          
 
When I claimed mastery of every freeway system
in the country I should have
excepted
the bewildering
vortex that innocent travelers get sucked into when they cross the
Potomac
going south.

 
          
 
Instead of being filled with soldiers, the
south parking lot is usually filled with bewildered old couples in Buicks and
Winnebagos, from places like
Minnesota
and
Nebraska
, who stand around scratching their heads
and wondering what their chances are of escaping the parking lot and getting
back home. The freeways near there don't seem to quite connect with one
another, so that if the old couples did find their way out of the parking lot
they were probably doomed to swirl around in a vast concrete roller-rink for an
hour or so before they could get pointed toward
Nebraska
.
Seeing them always made
me slightly melancholy, since I knew that the Buicks and Winnebagos were filled
with ashtrays with the Capitol stamped on them, or else with hideous little
embroideries showing the pandas in the National Zoo.

 
          
 
Eventually I found the Little Bomber's Lounge,
squeezed in between a 7-Eleven and a TV repair shop.

 
          
 
There was no doubt that Boog was somewhere
near, since a muddy black
Lincoln
with his name on the license plate sat directly in front of the Little
Bomber's Lounge.

 
          
 
Even if the car hadn't looked like it had just
come out of a swamp I would have known it was Boog's by the back seat, which
was piled with whiskey bottles. Penguin paperbacks, Xeroxes of bills Boog had
an interest in, and piles and piles of brochures on every imaginable product,
from antitank weapons to racquet-ball paddles—all of which one of the lobbyists
waiting hopelessly in his office probably hoped Boog would persuade some
contact in the procurement division of the Pentagon to buy in vast quantities
and disperse to army bases around the world.

 
          
 
When I stepped into the lounge I immediately
met a couple of little bombers, both in the process of getting bombed. They
were both as plump as ducks and as cheerful as they could be. At most they were
in their early twenties and a happier two girls would have been hard to find.
Between giggles they drank rum Cokes and watched the same Bob Newhart rerun
that Micah was probably watching across the river in Boss's bedroom.

 
          
 
"Lookit them yell-ah boots," one
said, in a voice I would have said belonged to
South Carolina
, possibly the vicinity of
Myrtle Beach
. In fact the girl, whose name was Lolly,
hailed from
Nashua
,
New Hampshire
.

 
          
 
"Hi, girls," I said. "Do you
know a man named Boog?"

 
          
 
The girls laughed heartily. They were so
cheerful I felt like laughing myself, though up to that point I had been
feeling rather tense.

 
          
 
"I guess we should know him," Lolly
said. "He's putting us through secretarial school."

 
          
 
"Yeah, only I'm fixin' to quit," the
other one said. "I don't see why ah need it."

 
          
 
"Well, if you quit I'm quittin',"
Lolly said. "I ain't goin' all the way to
Thirteenth Street
by myself, I can tell you that."

 
          
 
"I don't mind the typin'," the
would-be drop-out said. "Shoot, I don't even mind the niggers. What I hate
is that shorthand."

 
          
 
"All right, Janie Lee," Lolly said.
"You know good an' well Boog ain't gonna let us be his executive
secretaries unless we can take shorthand."

 
          
 
The notion that the two plump blondes were
being groomed to succeed the redoubtable Bobbie Proctor struck me as funny. It
also afforded me a rare glimpse into Boog's working methods. Probably half the
secretarial schools in the D.C. area were filled with chubby teenagers whose
tuition Boog was paying.

 
          
 
"Well, you know what," Janie Lee
said defiantly, "I'd rather stay over here in
Arlington
and suck people off in whirlpool baths than
to learn shorthand. I don't mind suckin' people off in whirlpool baths.
Sometimes it's kinda fun,
'specially
if you drink a
bottle or two of champagne first."

 
          
 
"I know," Lolly said agreeably,
"but it still ain't glamorous, like bein'
an
'xecutive secretary.

 
          
 
"Besides," Lolly added, tapping
Janie Lee on the wrist, "Boog said once we get our diplomas he'd introduce
us to Teddy Kennedy."

 
          
 
Janie Lee looked sulky for a moment. Obviously
a chance to meet the Senator was not to be taken lightly—on the other hand, her
dislike of shorthand was great.

 
          
 
Nobody was in the lounge except
myself
, the two girls, and a small Mexican with a mop. The
small Mexican had become engrossed in the Bob Newhart show and was leaning on
his mop, watching it. The question of whether fellatio was a better way to make
a living than typing and shorthand did not appear to interest him.

 
          
 
In fact, it had even ceased to interest the
girls. They were giving my outfit the once-over.

 
          
 
"I seen somebody like you in
Las Vegas
," Janie Lee said. "Only he had
red boots instead of yell-ah."

 
          
 
"We both been to
Las Vegas
," Lolly said. "We won the Happy
Hooker contest."

 
          
 
"Who organized that?" I asked,
though I could have guessed.

 
          
 
"Why, Boog," Janie Lee said.
"He's real generous. It was an all-expenses-paid weekend."

 
          
 
"The only bad thing about the weekend was
the plane ride made my ears ring," Lolly said.

 
          
 
"Where is Boog?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Up at the Bubble Bath, two doors up the
street," Lolly said. "We'll take you. We gotta get to work
anyway."

 
          
 
"Hey," Janie Lee said. "We
could offer him the Double Bubble Brunch. It ain't but ten-fifteen."

 
          
 
The suggestion seemed to dispel all thoughts
of secretarial school. I was being looked at significantly by two happy little
professionals, their faces slightly pinked by early-morning rum Cokes.