The Staked Goat Read online

  I heard their combined footsteps above. The door opened, and they descended the stairs, Ricker in the lead.

  “Well, now,” he said as he pulled up the chair, “I understand my bride here has sort of given away the rest of tonight’s program.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  I just stared at him.

  He frowned. “Oh, come on, now, Lootenant, be a sport, huh? You realize how many guys go out a lot less happy than that? You forget how many grunts got killed on perimeter guard, floggin’ their dogs when they should have been lookin’ front?” Ricker spat on the floor. “Not to mention the insult you imply toward my wife’s attraction level.”

  I looked up at Jacquie. She was a little unsteady. Drinks or drugs. A little slip by the careful lady?

  “Anyway, there’s nothin’ you can do about it. I just talked to old Curl. He got into Boston and took a cab to your place. He used the keys you had to open your apartment—he said you don’t have near enough security devices on your premises, by the by. He dropped off your suitcase and unpacked your stuff. He said he didn’t have to mess up your covers none. Says you live like a slob. He opened your mail and put it on your desk.” Ricker chuckled. “He even ripped up your junkmail and tossed it in the wastebasket. That Curl, he’s a caution. I told ya, he don’t miss a trick.”

  Ricker pulled a 9 millimeter semi-automatic from behind his back. He dug into his jacket pocket and took out a silencer. He screwed the three-inch muffler into place, then leveled the weapon at me.

  “Take off the tape, honey.”

  Jacquie moved behind me, her hips rippling under the jeans. She peeled back the tape a little less gently and steadily than before. I puckered and bit on my lips to work the sting away.

  “Well,” prompted Ricker.

  I just stared at him.

  He arched an eyebrow. “Y’all gonna talk or what?”

  I eyed Jacquie. “Maybe I’m just saving my tongue for your bride.”

  Jacquie stiffened a bit, as if only her husband could talk about her that way. Ricker just laughed, though, low and throaty.

  “Lootenant, you’re a better sport than I thought. You’re tryin’ to make me mad, so’s I’ll do something stupid.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Good tactics, but what with you all trussed up like that, kinda bad strategy.”

  I smiled back. “Did old Curl happen to mention whether he played back my tape?”

  “Tape?” said Ricker and immediately cursed, then laughed again. “You’da made a good boxer there, Lootenant. You had me alookin’ at your right hand, and then caught me with your left.” He made a tsk-tsk sound, then said, “Nope, old Curl never did mention any tape, and I shouldn’t have let you know that, should I? Well,” he paused for effect as he cocked the semi- and aimed it more specifically at my face, “maybe you’d best tell me about that tape.”

  I looked at the gun, then back up at him. “I think I’d prefer the truth serum.”

  “Five seconds,” said Ricker, not smiling.

  I waited three. “I have a tape machine attached to my telephone. It records all my messages. I’ve been gone since Thursday, the twenty-fifth. If your boy went through my mail but not my messages, it’s going to be obvious to the police that I never got home.”

  Ricker closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “It was late when you got in, too late to call anybody back.”

  I shook my head, slowly. “First, some of the people trying to reach me are clients who would want to be called back at any time. Second, some of the other people trying to reach me are, ah, romantic interests who I would want to call back at any time. Lastly, the machine shows a little red light when a call has been received. It goes out only when the tape is played back. When the cops eventually get to my place, they’ll see that red light, play back those old messages, and realize somebody tried to fake my return.”

  Ricker closed his eyes a little longer this time. “Damn.” He snorted and slowly stood up. “Well, I guess old Curl will have to do a little more visitin’ in Boston. Damned gadgetry.”

  Ricker looked down into my face. “If there’s no machine attached to that telephone of yours, you’ll wish old Alexander G. Bell had never been born.”

  He turned to Jacquie. “Honey, I’m gonna have to catch Curl in his hotel before he gets too drunk to walk. I’m …”

  Ricker noticed Jacquie was staring down at me, her breathing shallow and rapid. I didn’t think she was paying attention to him, and he didn’t either.

  He slapped her. A snappy, short whack like a carpenter driving a nail.

  Jacquie nearly tumbled off her heels. Her hand went up to her face. She rubbed her cheek with her knuckles. He now had her attention.

  “Like I said, honey, I have to risk callin’ Curl from here to catch him.” He stuffed the nine-millimeter in her other hand. “You keep a close eye on this trophy, now, you hear?”

  Jacquie nodded, her eyes downcast, and said, “Yessir.”

  Ricker leaned over, pecked her on the cheek. He then scampered, no easy effort for a man his size, up the stairs.

  Jacquie turned to me and licked her lips. There was a rosy blush where he’d hit her. She began to rub the barrel of the silencer slowly up and down one thigh, then the other. She licked her lips again and stared at me. Her eyes were glassy.

  “How about a kiss,” I said.

  Jacquie assumed her behind-my-head position. She leaned over and put the business end of the gun in my right ear. Then she smothered me with a wet, tongue-driven kiss, moaning throatily. Her breath tasted sweet, like marijuana, but given hours of semi-consciousness, my palate wasn’t exactly good litmus paper.

  Jacquie came up for air. “You know,” I said softly, “you could kill him, and we could go away together.”

  She favored me with another kiss, still sloppy but shorter. She broke it. “No, my father promise me to Ricker. Beside,” she said, straightening up as we both heard Ricker’s footfalls upstairs, “I don’t think you let me be double vet’ran like Ricker.”

  Her husband stomped down the steps. He was seething.

  “That fuckin’ drunk ain’t in his room! Or he ain’t answering his phone. And that fleabag he’s staying in won’t check on him.”

  “Which one is it?” I said. “Maybe I have some pull with the manager.”

  Ricker laughed, louder and longer than before. “My Lord, Lootenant, you do have a set of balls. You surely do.”

  He took the gun back from Jacquie. “The hell with the machine. If you even got one. The more times Curl goes to your place, the more likely he is to get spotted. Besides, even if he got the machine squared away, he still couldn’t very well call your clients and friends and pretend he was you. No, I guess we’ll just have to risk it.”

  He took his seat and nodded to Jacquie. “You be good to my little bride, now, you hear?”

  His wife shook off her parka and swayed over to me. She was trembling, but not, I thought, from the cold. I had stopped shivering and started sweating. Profusely.

  Jacquie began undoing the last three buttons on my shirt. “I’d like to take a leak first,” I said.

  “No,” said Ricker.

  “Shower and shave then?”

  “No.”

  “At least a little mouthwash.”

  “No, Goddamn it,” said Ricker, his free hand awkward on his zipper. “Damnation, I never did see a man try so hard not to get laid.”

  Jacquie finished with the buttons and pushed my shirt tails under my back and behind my neck. She was humming and singing to herself in Vietnamese.

  “Jacquie do a lot of this in Vietnam, Ricker?”

  He had his own member in his hand, playing with it.

  “Yeah,” said Ricker. “Lots of guys. Lepers, mostly.”

  So much for even trying to get him mad.

  Jacquie slid my briefs down to my ankles. She backed off half a step. She undid her designer jeans and shoe-horned her hands down between the pants and the rump. She worked her legs a
nd hips alternately up and down until she’d shimmied her way out of them. She kicked off her heels and stepped out of the pants. Her legs were chunkier than the jeans and heels had suggested. There was a six-inch scar on her right thigh.

  Jacquie smiled at me and reached down to tug up her sweater.

  “Put your heels back on first, babe,” said Ricker, a crack in his voice.

  Jacquie complied. Her legs looked better again, dancerlike.

  She pulled her cowl sweater slowly over her head. Her bra and panties were black and lacy. The panties were crotchless.

  “You like?” Jacquie said to Ricker.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  She turned to me, smiling and licking her lips. Her smile faded, her face darkened.

  I had no erection for her. I had been picturing Beth, in her hospital bed and connected to a dozen tubes alternating life and death for her.

  “Ricker, he not ready,” she said.

  “Make him ready, babe.”

  “Ricker …”

  “Make him,” Ricker said sharply.

  She slipped off her bra. Then she daintily plucked at the little bow that held her panties together. Her hand lingered down there a bit longer than necessary.

  “Make him,” he said, his voice more desperate than sharp.

  She straddled me and lowered her shoulders. Her mouth was even with my navel, her breasts assuming the outline of my crotch. She began to move very slowly. Fingertips, breasts, lips, and tongue.

  She was very good. I thought of Beth. And the tubes.

  I heard Ricker groan and rise partly from his seat. Jacquie moaned to him and worked harder.

  “He still no good.” Now she was the one who sounded desperate.

  “Shit,” said Ricker, standing up and reaching to his back pocket. He pulled out a clasp knife and tossed it to her. “Finish him, then. Any way you want.”

  Jacquie opened the blade, slashing herself as she did so. She cursed, and the knife clattered to the floor.

  She pummeled me in the balls with her good hand. I clenched my teeth and built up toward a hell of a yell. Jacquie hopped off me and onto the floor to retrieve the knife. Ricker said, “The hell with it,” and leveled his semi- on me.

  I heard the glass shatter but the tinkle of the shards was drowned out by the rifle coughing through its own silencer. Ricker’s chest opened in three places, the size of peaches, as the high-velocity bullets tumbled through him. He dropped the gun. One of the rifle rounds struck Jacquie in the shoulder as she straightened up with the knife. It knocked her off balance as Ricker dropped to his knees at her feet, his chest a fountain of blood.

  Jacquie shrieked something in Vietnamese as her knife hand went up. She got rattled by the rest of the shooter’s magazine. She fell across my groin area, draped lifeless except for blood and the release of the continency muscles.

  I heard a door give way upstairs and more than one set of boots hit the floorboards above my head. Two MPs in combat fatigues preceded J.T. down the stairs.

  Kivens looked around at the mess and said, “Goddamn fuck up.”

  “I’m fine, J.T. Thanks for asking.”

  He waved a hand at me absently and put the other to his face. “I know, I know.”

  Nineteen

  THE DRIVER HAD STOKED the heat up in the parked car. My shoes had been under the iron bed. Even wearing a pair of “Old Curl’s” fatigue pants and one of his blankets around me, however, I was still shivering.

  I also had a splitting headache. They had moved Ricker’s pickup out of the driveway and replaced it with a nondescript Chevy van. There was a lot of quiet activity around the back of the van.

  Casey came over to our car. J.T., who was standing outside, spoke to him briefly. Casey returned to the van, and J.T. got back in the car next to me. I still didn’t have any real strength, or even feeling, back in my hands and feet. My rescuers had carried me out of the basement, cradled between two MPs like an oversized infant.

  J.T. asked me his twentieth question, which I answered the way I had the previous nineteen.

  By silence.

  “Jesus, John, you might at least have thanked Casey. That was one hell of a piece of shooting he did.”

  I glared at J.T., then rested my head back against the seat to control my shaking. I hitched up the blanket a little.

  “John, please—”

  I broke. “You son of a bitch, J.T.! You pulled all those strings and called all those favors to get me a look at the files, and all the time you knew.”

  “John, we didn’t know in the way—”

  “Oh, c’mon, J.T.? You knew like you were writing the script. You put me in that office like it was a clearing and I was a goat. You fucking staked me out to shoot a tiger.”

  J.T. turned gloomy. “We didn’t want to shoot him.”

  “That’s great. Terrific. Makes a big difference to the goat.”

  “You don’t understand, John. I don’t know what happened to Al. Truly I don’t. He was more your friend than mine, but I want to find out who got him, too. We’ve known for a long time that there was something going on with the noncoms all through the corps. The MPs, I mean. But we weren’t sure just what. Some kind of world-wide network, linked in with the quartermasters and probably set up during ’Nam, or even before. For all we know, it’s damn near eternal, passed on from one corrupt sergeant to the next, generation to generation. I was pretty sure Ricker was dirty because of his lifestyle. Not crazy or flamboyant, just higher than it should have been with his Army pay. I thought he might be part of the network. We figured to let him take you and then tap his telephone calls.”

  “You got a warrant for that?”

  J.T. screwed up his mouth. “C’mon, John, this is the Army, remember? We clean our own laundry.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well, he used only pay phones and a different one each time. So we put a bug on the cellar window there, and we hoped he’d tip something while you kept him talking.”

  “But all he did was confirm that he, and Curly Mayhew, and somebody else was in ‘the club.’ ”

  “Yeah, I know.” The gloomy look again. “And now we’ve got two unauthorized bodies.”

  “What about ‘Old Curl’?”

  J.T. waved his hand. “We haven’t touched him. He’ll probably come back here sometime tomorrow. He’ll find a broken window and door and a lot of blood sort of clumsily cleaned up in his basement. Then he’ll try calling Ricker to piss and moan about it. When he doesn’t reach Ricker, maybe our luck will change and he’ll call somebody else in the network. Or maybe he’ll panic and run. Maybe even run to someone else in the club.”

  “How do you plan to prosecute these boys with so much ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ lying around in the form of wiretaps, and homicide, and—”

  “We don’t prosecute, John. We just get ’em.”

  I looked back over to the van. A sub-official graves registration. It all started to sink in.

  “Can you take me back to my hotel now?”

  J.T. tapped the driver, a slim blond MP in dress greens. “Go ahead, Squires.”

  “Yessir.” He shifted into drive, and we pulled away from the house.

  J.T. said, “You don’t have a hotel anymore, or even luggage. Remember? Mayhew checked you out. I’ll take you to a safe house we use sometimes. We can outfit and feed you there.”

  And debrief me and debrief me and debrief me. “Fine,” I said and started thinking again.

  Squires drove along the Interstate. I had a rough idea where we were. I saw a sign saying “REST STOP, THREE MILES.”

  “We’re going to have to stop at that rest area ahead,” I said.

  “John, we’re only—”

  “Now, look, J.T., goddamn it!” I snapped. “I’ve been knocked out, shot up, and stabbed at, and I goddamn want to go to the head. A real head. Now.”

  “O.K., O.K.,” said J.T. “You’re entitled. Squires?”

  “Yessir?”

&nbs
p; “Pull in at the stop.”

  “Yessir.”

  A few minutes later Squires swung the sedan off the highway and into the rest-area lot. There were only two other cars and a brightly illuminated log cabin with a small sign promising restrooms and snacks.

  The MP parked curbside and turned off the engine. He pocketed the key. “Sir, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go, too.”

  “Sure, Squires. Go ahead.”

  Good trooper, I thought. Knew enough to make coming with me seem his request rather than J.T.’s order. So I wouldn’t feel “in custody.” Squires was lifer material.

  We got out, me leaving the blanket and walking quickly but uncertainly to the cabin doorway. A fat man, who wore a park ranger uniform none too well, sat behind a counter marked “Tuckville Rest Area.” He barely glanced up from a magazine as we walked by him.

  Squires held the door for me. I walked in and sagged a little against a sink.

  “You all right, sir?” asked Squires.

  “A little unsteady, but O.K. Thanks.”

  “Yessir.”

  I made my way to the nearest stall and clanged in. I dropped my pants, let out a groan, and smacked my hand hard, like it was my head, against the sidewall. I stumbled and shuffled to my left so that my right shoulder faced the door.

  Squires knocked. “Sir?” He gingerly pushed the door inward.

  I truly was groggy, and he was a lot younger and more recently trained than I was. I was slumped half against the toilet paper dispenser, using my left hand to clutch the toilet seat.

  Squires leaned down. “Sir?”

  I swung my right elbow up and out as hard as I could. It caught him on the right cheekbone and snapped his head back into the part-open stall door. I rose up and gave him a short, quick left to the nose, and he caved in. I didn’t think I’d broken anything on either of us.