The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (24 page)

"I don't think much of what you do, either. And
I still say you are a moralist."

"As you wish."

"And what about my brother? Will this free my
brother?"

"There are no guarantees."

King King shrugged and shook his head.

"Perhaps you should see the pictures," said
Chantal.

He shrugged again. "As you wish."

Chantal reached into her purse as one of the brothers
who escorted us in took out a pocket flashlight and handed it to
King. Suddenly someone started to come in through the kitchen door.

"Get out of here!" King shouted.

"Hey, what the fuck? I do what I want. I the one
who's out on bail here. You the fugitive from justice." It was
Otis.

"I'm the fugitive and you're the moron. I told
you a hundred times, every minute you're seen with me is another year
down the road to self-destruction."

"I jus' wanna have a look at this white boy
here." He walked over to me and stared in my eyes. "Hi,
white boy. I got you a little publicity on the six o'clock news the
other day, didn't I? Sorry about that. You know us crazy black
motherfuckahs. We schizomatic. One day we hates ya, one day we loves
ya. It's just like you Jewish motherfuckers—two thousand years of
rocky road makes you walk funny even when it's flat. And I wanna tell
you one other thing: if you save my ass, I'm gonna hate you for it. I
know that sounds weird, but that's the way life is and we all gotta
live with it."

I took the photographs from Chantal and walked over
to King, who flicked on the flashlight, training it on the picture on
the top of the pile. It showed three tiered concrete-block buildings
notched into the end of a valley surrounded with eucalyptus and live
oak. "That's the headquarters of Cosmic Aid."

"Looks like a cross between a minimum security
prison and a bomb shelter. Where is it?"

"Up a hidden dirt road several miles outside of
Ojai, California."

"
Hey, I been there," said Otis.
"Shangri-La. Where they filmed Lost Horizon. Camera dude took me
up there one time to score some mushrooms."

"Not this time," said King.

Otis stared at his brother. "I ain't goin' with
you, sonofabitch. Think I'd go with you?"

"Damn right you're not. You're staying right
where those movie people want you in that fancy hotel in Beverly
Hills. And you're gonna wear a tie and walk around the lobby, talking
white with Purvis and looking like the nicest black boy that ever
came out of the Bronx .... Reggie. Hey, Reggie." One of the
bodyguards appeared out of the shadows. "Make sure Otis gets
home."

"
Yassa, boss. Yassa, massa!" said Otis. He
did a shuffle, still staring back at his brother as he followed
Reggie out. I flipped to the next photo. "That's the security
gate. Three-quarters of a mile of chain link fence that rings the
property. You'll note the barbed wire at the top and the
high-voltage connectors."

"Noted."

I went on to the next one, a closer angle of the
compound itself, several eager young people walking purposefully
between the buildings as if they were on a crucial mission.

"Those are some of the workers, all very
idealistic, all believing they're helping to save the world. Several
we talked to came down from the Rajneeshpuram after the Oregon courts
closed it down." The following photo was a night shot of five
men in paramilitary outfits running across a field behind the
headquarters building. Each one carried what looked like a
308-caliber Steyr gun. "Their security force," I said.
"They don't come outside in the daytime."

"How'd you get that?"

"Ask her." I nodded to Chantal.

"
A Sun Pac Twenty-two flash with an infrared
head," she said. "Works on any camera if you're inside
fifty feet."

I flipped to a closer shot of one of them, my friend
the New Yorker, crouched in the darkness instructing the others in
hand-to-hand combat. "This is their leader. Considering the burn
scars on his back, my guess is he was Special Forces in Vietnam or
Laos. Maybe someplace else, but whatever it is, he knows his
business." I continued to the next photograph: a long-lens shot
of a black Saab Turbo with opaque windows. A man and two women were
getting out, crossing to a side entrance.

"Sandollar!" said King.

I nodded.

"And look at that—Mike Ptak's bitch. Who's the
other one?"

"His wife, Kim. A Korean."

"What're they into? Trios?"

"No. I just think they're into money."

"Fuckin' Ptak."

"Fuckin' Ptak wanted to stop it. It's his wife
that didn't want to. That's my guess, anyway. He's the one who got
tossed off the Picasso. Not her."

"Anyone else in on it with them?"

I hesitated. "I'm not sure at the moment. I hope
not."

"What do you mean you hope not?"

"Look, are you in on this or not? Your brother's
being hung out to dry for some white asshole's rock 'n' roll dream,
and millions of dollars are being stolen out of the mouths of African
babies."

"Where do they keep this money?"

"We don't know," said Chantal. "I went
in yesterday afternoon, pretending to be a volunteer. You don't get
much farther than the front desk."

"But you're sure it's there?"

"Nothing's sure," I said. "But I don't
know what all the security's about if it's not."

21

"Fifty thousand if you prove him innocent?"

"I wouldn't do this for nothing."

"It's not enough. You should've gotten more for
that. But anyway, I'm glad to hear  it. I was beginning to think
you were a fucking liberal idiot."

"Not me, King. I'm a monarchist."

"What?"

"M-o-n—"

"Don't condescend to me, boy. I don't bring my
notebook into situations like this."

It was the next night and we were headed north on
Highway 63 in a rented Ford Bronco—Chantal, King, Omar, and I, plus
two more of King's entourage: one, a fat mulatto with a clublike
right arm, who was known as Lancaster; the other, a dapper, handsome
man in a cableknit sweater with a faint African accent and a briar
pipe who was called Drill. We were all armed but only with the
intention of self-defense. This was to be surgery—quick, deft, and
out—not a protective reaction strike.

The road wound up into the mountains, past the little
blue-flower signs that denoted a scenic road and the offers of VIEW
LOTS—FOR SALE BY OWNER and the truck farms and the isolated
stretches of housing tracts that seemed to pop out of nowhere,
banding together like pioneers against Indians who had been gone for
centuries. The night was overcast and Omar switched on the windshield
wipers to stop us from misting over. The road itself was still damp,
the weather of the last day never having really left, but come and
gone in short fronts.

We hit the intersection for 150 and I told Omar not
to turn for Ojai, but to drive straight toward Meiners Oaks. After
another couple of miles, we reached a stone bridge where a dry
riverbed slipped under the highway and became a rock basin. Just
beyond was the dirt road that cut through the notch toward Cosmic
Aid.

We took it and bounced along the potholes for a few
hundred yards before the road started to go up at a steep grade,
closing in about every fifty feet with large ceanothus branches
brushing against the windshield. A pair of coyotes ran along in front
of us and disappeared down a ravine. We rounded a corner, skidding
toward the edge of a sharp curve, our headlights beaming out in the
darkness, and then slid to our right, coming out on the other side
overlooking the canyon. The Cosmic Aid Foundation was visible below
us, the few building lights that were still on dwarfed by the large
arcs that illuminated the complex.

"Turn 'em off," I said, and Omar
extinguished our headlights.

We began our descent, moving slowly back and forth
along the switchbacks, inching forward on the narrow road until we
had rounded another corner and were out of sight of the Foundation
again. Once more Omar put on the high beams. "Sonofabitch,"
said King. "We're city boys." It had started to rain again,
pelting down on the windshield in large glops somewhere between hail
and sleet. "We don't have no business out here at two in the
morning."

"Would you rather be at an after-hours club?"

There were murmurs of approval from King's pals.

"Over there," said Chantal, pointing out a
fork where an even narrower road fell off to the left with the
suddenness of a ski run.

"We better get what we came for, Wine."

The Bronco jounced down the smaller road until the
brush got so thick we couldn't go any further without a tractor in
front of us.

"We thought we'd camp here," said Chantal.
"The fence is only about a hundred yards off down that trail."

The rain was starting to come down really heavy now
as Omar backed up a few feet and set the emergency brake.

"What're we supposed to do? Sleep in the mud?"
said King.

"We'll have to try to sleep in the car," I
said. "Then go out just before dawn, as planned."

"We won't be able to see anything in this
weather." "And if we try to go out now, we'd be lucky to
make it to the fork. This whole road probably washes out in about an
hour."

"Great for getting aid to Ethiopia."

We slept about three hours in the Bronco, or tried
to, Chantal with her head against my shoulder and me with my knee
wedged under the steering column and my feet tucked under the gas
pedal just beneath the heel of Omar's size thirteen boot. King was in
the back with Lancaster and Drill, their broad shoulders pressed
together, desperately trying for some rest like overnight passengers
in the crowded waiting room of some awful Third World train station.

By three-thirty I gave up and opened my eyes. The
rain had tapered off to a dull drizzle. When I turned around, I saw
King staring at me, wide awake. I wondered if he could sleep in the
country. For many years I couldn't. And he was a businessman, not
used to this sort of field work, although I was sure many years ago
he had to prove himself with his fists and no doubt with blades as
well in the old neighborhood before achieving his vaunted executive
status. Drill too was awake, humming some strange indecipherable
melody to himself, when the beam of a high-powered flashlight danced
through the interior of the car.

"
You all right in there?" came a voice from
behind us. We turned to see a man in his thirties in a Gore-Tex parka
and a cowboy hat approaching with a woman about the same age in heavy
rain gear right out of the Eddie Bauer catalog. They tramped down
toward us, coming up along the right side of the Bronco.

"Are you stuck?" said the woman.

"It's okay," I said. "We just took a
wrong turn and then the rains came."

"Yeah, we had a lot of problems ourselves,"
said the man. "But we're almost home—the Cosmic Aid
headquarters. It's less than a mile up the road. We'll send the tow
truck for you."

"That won't be necessary," I said.

"
You sure?" The man looked inside our car,
puzzled, staring right at the burlap sacks where our weapons were
stowed. "Funny a vehicle like this would get stuck."

"It's not stuck. We're just resting."

"We are on ze way from San Diego to San
Francisco," said Chantal in a thick French accent. "On ze
scenic highway when we got lost. We had to stop and do a relax."

"Tourists, huh?" said the man, who was
wearing a button that said REMEMBER THE RHAGWAN. "Well, it's a
beautiful route. Don't miss Big Sur. And the Seventeen-Mile Drive.
And eat at Nepenthe's. Henry Miller used to hang out there."

"Ah, Henri Meel-air. Zank you. Zank you,"
said Chantal, laying it on thick.

"
Je vous en prie, " said the man in
horrible French. "And holler if you've got any problems."
He started off with the woman, who was still looking back at us with
a puzzled expression. "Our foundation would be glad to do
anything we can. We're a helping institution." They disappeared
into the darkness.

"Fuck," said King, glancing over at Drill,
who didn't say a word.

None of us could sleep for the next hour.

By five-twenty the first gray hint of predawn light
was permeating the valley. We got out of the car and buckled on our
weapons, steadying ourselves in the mud and heading down the trail
through a morning ground fog so thick it made the night seem clear.
The sound of barking coyotes mixed with the intermittent buzz of the
fencewire generator as we marched, Chantal and I up front and Omar in
the rear with an Uzi. We reached the fence quickly and the rest of us
lay back while Drill attached a volt-ohm meter to three points along
the post. Then he isolated a piece of cable and, with extraordinary
dexterity, sliced through two layers of plastic sheath with a buck
knife and separated the neutral wire from the hot wire. There was a
brief spark along the fence top and then everything went dead. Omar
and Lancaster jumped forward with crimpers and Drill showed them
exactly where he wanted the links cut.