The Staked Goat Page 16

  “Sure,” I said, leaning forward and pushing the box button.

  “Sorry about this, sir, but I don’t want to press my luck.”

  “I don’t see any—” I glanced up and over at Ricker, who squirted a cloud of something from a tiny spray can into my face.

  I remember the sound of my forehead bouncing off the dashboard.

  We were slogging through a rice paddy. The men were bunched up, though, in formation like on a parade field. I yelled for them to maintain their interval, maintain interval. They couldn’t hear me because they were singing a Jody call. You know, “Jody, Jody, don’t be blue, ten more minutes and we’ll be through” and so on. They were marching through this paddy and singing to keep in step. Stupid thing to do, mines, mortars …

  There was a flash of light and a tremendous explosion. The platoon was thrown up into the air and just burst. Rifles and arms and legs and heads flying outward and landing with a sploosh all around me. The little goat-girl, too.

  I was kneeling behind an overturned jeep. It was on fire. A sergeant in full dress greens rushed up with a hose. But he had only the nozzle of the hose, there was nothing connected to it. He turned to me with it. It was Ricker, now in the uniform of a National Policeman.

  “Sorry about this, sir,” he said, “but I don’t want to press my luck.”

  The water hit me in the face. I woke up shivering, but my face was dry. I was staring at a Sheetrock ceiling with some peeling pipes and crudely rigged rafter space. There were wide water skis, ancient fishing rods, and chipped wooden oars. It was dark, but not pitch black.

  My eyes smarted and my head hurt worse than my mugging aches. I was tied spread-eagle on an old iron twin bed. My suit, tie, and shoes were gone, my shirt, briefs, and socks still on. My mouth was taped. I could move my head one-hundred-eighty degrees, my line of sight like the arc of an old protractor. I could just touch my chin to my chest, but the additional view wasn’t worth the discomfort.

  There were broken lawn chairs and a dust-covered old bicycle in one corner. Paint cans and a bucket with a rake and broom in another. Some army olive-drab canvas hung from a rafter. A magnified rectangle of indirect moonshine spotlighted a patch of concrete floor from a high, closed window. By arching my back and riding up on my neck like a wrestler, I could see, upside down, the top couple steps of a wooden staircase.

  It was early March, and I was freezing to death in somebody’s cellar.

  I lay quietly for about fifteen minutes. I couldn’t hear anyone walking around upstairs. In fact, no noise at all. No TV, radio, car, or even wind noise. Just a nagging, numbing cold.

  The backs of my wrists were lashed palms outward to the top of the iron bed’s headboard to keep me from grasping the railing with my fingers. My ankles were secured similarly at the other end. I tried throwing my hips ceiling-ward to see if I could rock the bed. It bucked a little, producing almost no noise or progress.

  Then I heard footsteps above me.

  The cellar door opened, and a light flicked on. High heels clattered lightly on the slat steps. I decided to play possum.

  The shoes sounded more muffled on the concrete floor. A whiff of perfume preceded the accented, female voice.

  “Open your eyes.”

  I stayed asleep.

  “My husband put pressure thing on the bed. Wire upstairs. I know you awake. Open your eyes or I hit you in the nuts.”

  I opened my eyes.

  She smiled down at me. She was Vietnamese, maybe thirty-five. Probably five feet tall without the heels. She wore designer jeans, a cowlneck sweater, and a baby blue parka. She held a short hunting knife in one hand and a short leather sap in the other.

  “Better. When my husband come back, you talk. You talk plenty. But now you be quiet. O.K.?”

  I nodded my head.

  She looked me over, head to foot. “You good-looking man.”

  I didn’t nod.

  She set her knife down on the bed. She unfastened the top two buttons of my shirt and slid her hand in. It was warm against my cold skin. She ran the tips of her nails lightly over my right nipple. She spider-walked her fingers over to my left nipple and did the same.

  “You like?” she said, licking her lips.

  I nodded, very slowly.

  She slipped her hand out of my shirt and drew it slowly down my front. She stroked and probed very gently around where my zipper would have been.

  “Ah,” she said huskily. “You like a lot.”

  There was a flash of brighter light through the window and the crunching of tires on gravel. She dropped the sap and used both hands to quickly rebutton my shirt.

  “Too bad,” she whispered as she snatched up her weapons and click-trotted away and up the stairs.

  It looked to be a long evening.

  “We’re in Mexatawney. ’Bout fifty miles from the D. of C. Kind of a fishin’ community come springtime. Probably nobody in a mile to hear you if you was to holler or anything.”

  I still had the tape on my mouth, so all I could do was listen.

  Ricker shifted his butt on the creaky dinette chair. He’d brought it down the stairs with him. He sat on it backwards, the back of the chair toward me and him astride the seat, like a saddle.

  “Yessir, you’re in the house of a friend of mine from the ’Nam. Curly Mayhew. ’Nother Looziana boy. He’s part of, oh, kind of a ‘club’ I belong to. Senior noncoms. Old Curl’s a good man, helps another member out, just like in the ’Nam. Don’t know how he stands this commutin’ though. Fifty miles. Each way, each day. Whew!”

  I blinked a few times. Ricker brought his wrist up to his eye level, exaggeratedly, like an actor in a kid’s play. “Yessir, old Curl ought to be awingin’ his way to Boston right now, havin’ checked out of your hotel for you and havin’ paid cash and all for room, cab, and airfare.” Ricker tilted his head so his face and mine were on parallel planes. “Yeah, he don’t really favor you a lot, Lootenant, but him and you are about the same size and he was wearin’ your suit and all. Even got your overcoat back.” Ricker righted his head. “For room clerks and cabbies and stewardi, I reckon he’ll pass.”

  I heard the cellar door open and the clacking approach of my earlier visitor.

  “Ah,” said Ricker looking up. “Here comes the wife.”

  She came into my view, carrying a TV tray with a towel draped over it. I couldn’t see what was on the tray, but I didn’t smell any food. Despite the cold, I could feel the sweat forming in my armpits.

  “This is Jacquie, my wife.” He winked at me. “But then I understand you met a bit earlier.”

  Jacquie gave her husband a light cuff on the shoulder, then let her hand rest on the back of his neck. She aligned her body in an S curve like the Madonna statues in medieval churches, but without the spiritual aspirations.

  “Hello,” she said to me, smiling.

  I nodded a greeting.

  “Jacquie’s a real helpmate, Mr. Cuddy. Yessir, we met when I was in the ’Nam, of course. I promised her daddy I’d take her back to The World and be real good to her.” He looked up at her lovingly. “And once you promised her daddy something, you made good on it. He was a major in the National Police.” Ricker let his gaze slide slowly, melodramatically over to me. “Interrogation specialist. He taught Jacquie everything she knows.”

  I tried to keep a poker face, but I expect that my eyes might have flickered toward the TV tray. My mind certainly went back to a different basement, halfway around the world, and the condition of Al’s body.

  “Haw!” Ricker slapped his thigh. Jacquie giggled. “Oh, Lootenant, you’re a good one, you are. But you can relax.” He signaled toward the tray. Jacquie stepped to it. She picked up a syringe and did a careful squirt test.

  “Yessir,” said Ricker, rising and stepping behind me. “We can’t have another incident like Lootenant Sachs. No sir, that would be real suspicious. My orders, from another member of that club I mentioned, are truth serum for you. Yessir, I’d run clear out of
old sodium P. Wouldn’t you know it? Would’ve had to chase after some today, but fortunately old Curl had a bit of some new stuff in stock here. He got it through the club. Don’t kill your memory or leave traces in the bloodstream. Now, how about that for progress?”

  Jacquie crossed over to me as Ricker clamped down hard on my left arm, immobilizing it. “Good old Curl. He was Quartermaster Corps in-country. Like a squirrel, Curl is. Even now, he never lets go a nothin’ that might come in handy.”

  Jacquie kneeled down on the floor alongside me. She pushed and bunched my sleeve past Ricker’s grasp and above my elbow. She was wearing terrific perfume. She smiled a little more vividly as she jabbed the needle in. I felt the unwelcome, insistent surge of the drug into my arm. She pulled the needle out, and daubed my arm with a cold, wet cotton ball. Ricker let me go, and they rearranged themselves over by the chair. The perfect peacetime couple, a dream matching of cultures.

  I began to float, and I grew warm. Even comfy. I sank deeper into my cot. It felt like a feather bed. Or more accurately, a bed of feathers, completely cushioned and completely conforming to my body. No matter which way I turned or settled I was equally, infinitely comfortable. I felt my eyelids closing, drooping really, to slits against the now bright-seeming light.

  “You are feeling good, now?” asked Jacquie.

  I nodded agreeably.

  I smelled her perfume again. Her nails gently started a corner of the tape away from my mouth and snicked it, carefully and painlessly, all the way off. I didn’t look up, but I bet she was smiling.

  “Do you have any questions for us first?” she said sweetly into my ear.

  They were going to let me ask questions. That was very considerate.

  “Yes,” I said honestly. “What kind of perfume are you wearing?”

  They both laughed. Her laugh was closer and rose above his, like the clinking of fine crystal glasses over dinner conversation. I hadn’t heard female Vietnamese laughter in a long time.

  I felt marvelous. I was pleasing them.

  “You are wonderful man,” Jacquie said, stroking my eyelids and brow with the tips of her nails. It gave me goosebumps. “Now, what did Lieutenant Sachs tell you when you talk with him?”

  I reported my conversation with Al as carefully as I could. I wasn’t getting it quite right, and I apologized to her.

  “That’s O.K.,” she said, soothingly, “that’s O.K. Keep telling me.”

  I finished with Al. I told them all about the visit to the morgue, and I started to cry. She dried my tears with a handkerchief and gave me a little kiss on the cheek. Right away, I felt much better.

  Jacquie asked me what I told the police. I filled them in on my talks with Murphy and my return visit to Al’s hotel. I tried to tell them the names of the clerks, but I couldn’t remember and she said that was O.K., they didn’t need them. I started to tell them about the Coopers and started to cry again, but she used her hankie and brushed her lips over mine and said to forget about the Coopers, so I did.

  We never reached Nancy Meagher or Marco or any of that. Jacquie asked about Al’s family, and I told them all about my visit to Pittsburgh, Martha and Al, Junior, and Kenny and Dale and Larry and Carol. Then she asked me what I told them about Al’s death. I related the concerns in my talk with Carol and my promise to Martha to get the insurance payment.

  Jacquie praised me for my efforts on my friend’s behalf. She emphasized how much loyalty like mine meant to her. She slid her hand inside my shirt again. It gave me bigger goosebumps.

  “You talk with Colonel Kivens, too?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  “Tell me.”

  I told her.

  “How you make the list?”

  “The list?”

  “The names. On the list in your pocket. How you choose the names?”

  “Oh,” I said, “from the records that J.T. gave me. Excuse me, that he let me look at. The records from Vietnam, when Al was there. The list are people he knew, or arrested, or whatever. He …”I stopped for a minute. Thinking.

  “Go on.”

  I was silent.

  “Why you stop?”

  A photograph materialized in my mind’s eye. “I just remembered. That’s where I saw your husband. That’s why he looked so familiar. He was in one of the photographs. Smiling.”

  Jacquie seemed to turn away for a moment, then came back to me. “Oh,” she said, nuzzling her face against my cheek. “That very good. Very good. You make me very happy now.” She kissed my eyelid, licked my ear lobe with the tip of her tongue.

  I was happy that she was happy. I was gloriously happy.

  “Where is the list?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about list,” Jacquie said. “List gone.”

  I stopped worrying about the list. About everything.

  “Did you call anyone about list?” she said.

  “Call? No, no, I didn’t.”

  Ricker said something. She hushed him.

  Jacquie asked, “Did you tell anyone about list?”

  “No one. No one but you.”

  “Ahh,” she moaned into my ear. “That is perfec’. Just right.”

  Her nails pinched my right nipple, hard but exquisitely pleasurably. Her fingers trembled a little. She withdrew her hand and left my side.

  I heard some noise but nobody talked with me anymore. I fell asleep.

  Eighteen

  MY EYES OPENED. I was shivering, my teeth chattering inside the tape over my mouth. I clamped down on my jaws, but that just made my whole head shake, and it hurt enough as it was. My mouth was desert dry, like from a wine hangover. It was dark in the basement. Whether still dark or again dark, I didn’t know.

  I tried to shift around and remembered too late the motion sensor Jacquie had mentioned in her first visit. I heard her heels above me and then the cellar door. My mouth grew drier, but not from anticipation. The lights came on, and she came down the stairs. She walked up behind me.

  I looked up at her. Her face was upside down and a bit haggard. Her right hand held the knife. No leather sap or other non-lethal weapon this time. A bad sign.

  “You alia time so … active?” she said softly.

  I shook my head.

  “My husband go to call man in Boston. Not Curly, different noncom. Ricker no want phone bill to fuck up old Curl.” She stroked my brow with her empty hand. “We all alone now.”

  The only noise I could hear was the faint scratching her nails made on my eyebrows.

  “If I take off tape, you promise no yell, no scream?”

  I nodded.

  Jacquie peeled off the tape, gently. She ran her index fingernail around the outline of my lips. I kissed it. She moved it down to my chin.

  “Ugh, you need shave.”

  “The price one pays for virility.”

  Jacquie giggled, but while she got it, I’m not sure she could have explained it.

  “You have nice voice,” she said. “I like talking with you.”

  “You made me feel very good with the drug,” I said. “And with your fingers, and lips, and tongue.”

  Jacquie licked her lips, giving me just a peek at the tongue. “Too bad I meet Ricker an’ not you in Saigon.”

  She positioned the knife, cutting edge up, just under my chin. Then she leaned over and kissed me, upside down, tongue thrust hard and often into my mouth. I’d never kissed a woman upside down before, but I did my best to respond.

  “Mmmm,” Jacquie said as she broke off the kiss. “Very nice.” She pulled back the knife. Break off kiss, then withdraw knife.

  She put the knife down next to my head and reaffixed the tape, testing it thoroughly. Careful woman.

  “Yes, very nice. But I must wait for Ricker to get back. He want to watch.”

  Jacquie clacked away and started up the stairs. “You MP, like Ricker. He say he let me be ‘double vet’ran’ tonight. You know what that mean.” She laughed, like glass breaking this time.

  A double
veteran was in-country slang for a GI who, after having sex with a woman, killed her.

  Jacquie turned off the lights. I could still hear her laughing through the closed door.

  Jacquie was watching something on television. Not enough music (and too much noise with the muffled voices) for radio. I was still shivering, wishing I’d hit her up for a blanket on her last trip. Fat chance.

  I pushed the cold out of my mind and concentrated on Ricker. He, old Curl, and God knows how many other noncoms were members of a “club.” Given the “fraternal customs” I’d seen, the club probably centered around contraband. Black market in Vietnam and elsewhere overseas, maybe drugs on-post here in the States. Far-flung, but tightly knit, with a high gross revenue since noncoms functionally ran almost every operation of any outfit I ever knew. Disciplined, savvy, competent. An impressive international organization, in whose near-Washington offices I was presently cooling my heels.

  I was just about out of options. My bonds were no looser than when I had arrived. Even if I could get loose, my hands and feet were so numb it would be a while before I could move around or act effectively. My body ached, but probably more from the mugging and my present accommodations than from Ricker’s spray can and needle. I couldn’t see any way out. I couldn’t see even a way to leave J.T. a message.

  Mindful of the sensor, I arched my back as slowly as I could and rolled up onto my wrestler’s neck bridge. I didn’t hear Jacquie getting up to check on me.

  I scanned as much of the room as I could see in the shadow light. Nothing new. No cutting edge, no communications device.

  My gaze refocused on my hands. My right hand. My pinkie.

  I remembered Jimmy Cagney and Al’s little finger. I fought back a cold rush with reason. J.T. knew nothing of the special meaning of 13 Rue Madeleine. Also, since Ricker used Curly Mayhew to make it appear that I had left D.C., I couldn’t imagine my body turning up in the foreseeable future.

  I took a few deep breaths. I spoke inside with Beth, getting some advice. I said some prayers. I waited awhile, then said some more.

  I saw the headlights’ reflection and heard the gravel crunch and car door sounds again. Ricker’s truck was the only vehicle sound I could remember hearing. He had said it was a deserted neighborhood this time of year, yet both of them seemed real careful about making noise. Knife over gun, taped mouth, promises and all. I had pretty well figured that Jacquie would remove the tape during her first efforts. I decided my last act (I couldn’t quite characterize it as a hope) would be the best hollers for help I had left.