Rip cord, p.19
Rip Cord, page 19
That pleased Taylor for the most part; he was always gratified when his plans were executed exactly as he had envisioned them. He enjoyed strategic and tactical planning. He liked being a commander, with the authority and responsibility it entailed.
Fred Taylor had grown up in Lubbock, Texas, the son of a carpenter who was too easygoing and too nice a guy to get much respect from Fred. In high school and in college at El Paso, both of which were academic struggles, Taylor had not been able to make the football teams or even the baseball teams. He joined all kinds of clubs — debate, thespian, aviation — but the memberships would never elect him an officer. Only in ROTC was his natural leadership recognized.
At Fort Benning and at Fort Bragg, he had been orally reprimanded by commanders for fraternizing too closely with enlisted men, but damn, those guys would work for him. He had proven that in Vietnam, and he had been recognized for it. He had proven that to Boxer and his buddies over and over since ’Nam.
Taylor was grateful for Boxer, though he would never have told the man as much. Without Boxer, the STRAC Unit would not have a purpose, a reason for existence. And Taylor respected Boxer, as well as Rebel and Cottonmouth. They were men of conviction, not afraid to take action, determined that debacles like Vietnam would not happen again. Their vision made the STRAC Unit possible, and Taylor lived for the unit.
Yes, Taylor liked his command.
He had the power of command, and he had the power of fear. He was not afraid of using either.
He also thought he might give Blessing a call and pat him on the head. It was amazing the way compliments could instill the same kind of fear that threats did.
*
Ellington met Sanders and Mayhew at their familiar pub in Arlington, and they all ordered martinis. It was an out-of-the-way place, not on the schedule of watering holes for government or military people. There were self-contained booths with high walls, black Naugahyde bench seats, and small, forty-watt light fixtures suspended over the tables. Coming inside the lounge from bright daylight resulted in temporary blindness.
Under the watered-down light of the fixture, Harold Mayhew had a self-satisfied smirk on his broad face. Ellington had seen it any number of times before, when they were working the Saigon SOG together.
Mayhew had already been with the CIA at the time, working on rural pacification projects, and he had been as dedicated as Ellington, who was then with the State Department’s intelligence division. They worked out of the Saigon Embassy, frequently on the same projects. Ellington remembered long late night conversations over drinks and dinner in the balmy breeze on the Caravelle’s roof terrace, bitching about the corruption rampant in the revolving door Vietnamese governments — and using it where necessary, of course.
They had perfected the art of manipulation in Saigon. Washington made the decisions, and they were told to implement them, however they could. They dipped frequently into the bag of covert funds and used the money to buy history, to influence elections, to eliminate opposition to White House desires. What was good for America had to be good for Vietnam.
It had not changed much since.
Mayhew had been the first to meet Douglas Sanders, when the colonel stopped by the Embassy and offered the use of a squad of gung ho paratroopers. Sanders had been seeking brownie points toward promotion, of course, but when Ellington met him, he had liked the brusque battalion commander.
The three of them had a lot in common, then and now. Twenty years had served only to cement their friendships, and Ellington appreciated that. Not many men could claim, and rely on, the loyalties exchanged between Harold Mayhew, Doug Sanders, and Mark Ellington. Sometimes, Alice Mayhew and Sandra Ellington showed a little jealousy over the relationship of the three men. Sanders was widowed and no longer had to explain himself to a spouse.
Mayhew’s good humor had resulted in a new suit, Ellington thought. A nice lightweight summer wool in silver gray. He was also wearing a new pale gray shirt and dark maroon tie, both in silk. The Deputy Director for Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency could be downright natty sometimes, despite the heft of his physique.
“Well?” Mayhew asked them.
“I guess Taylor pulled it off, Hal,” General Sanders said. He was wearing a suit and tie, too, but had a few hundred dollars less invested in it than Mayhew had in his. He always looked less comfortable in civilian attire than he did in a full dress uniform.
Ellington had been surprised by the recent news, too. “I don’t know how he reached that new sheriff, but that man’s in his pocket. The New Mexican may keep some pressure on him, but I think maybe this Blessing will be able to stonewall it.”
Mayhew grinned, “Hell, Mark, I think it’s a nice wrap-up. Now maybe we can get on with the rest of it?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Ellington agreed.
“No contingency plan called for?” Mayhew pushed.
Ellington looked at Sanders. “Doug?”
“No. I guess not.”
“I’ll suspend my request then, too,” Ellington said.
The waitress arrived with a new round of martinis, placed them precisely in front of each man, then waltzed away.
Sanders played with his olive. “Is anyone seeing any effect yet?”
Mayhew swallowed his own olive. “It may take a couple years before we see the total effect, Doug, but yes, I’m seeing a couple benefits. The requests for information are down, the voices sound a hell of a lot less strident. That helps my shop a lot.”
“Well, we’re still in a defensive posture,” the general said.
Mayhew reached out to pat the general’s shoulder with a beefy hand. “Yes, but that’s a result of some global issues that we can’t control. Keep the faith, babe. It’ll come around again.”
*
Luisa Rodriguez and Jerry Hayman said they had driven down to Albuquerque to get drunk and had decided to stop and get Wayne to help them.
Wayne thought they might be well on the way. “You sure you need help?”
“Ah, hell yes!” Luisa said.
“Well, don’t stand in the hall. Come on in.”
“Cece here?” Hayman asked.
“No.”
“Booze here?” Rodriguez asked. Her hair was in slight disarray, and the small amount of lipstick she wore was smudged. Wayne decided he would not ask about her husband.
“Scotch and brandy and a few cans of beer.”
“That’s all righ’. We can mix ’em together.” Rodriguez led the way into the living room, and the medical examiner followed, hitching up his pants.
Wayne got three cans of beer out of the refrigerator, popped them, and they all sat in the living room.
“I got fired awhile,” Rodriguez announced.
“But now she’s an investigatin’ captain,” Jerry enlightened. “That’s what we’re celebratin’.”
“What happened?”
“Delwin, ol’ asshole, can’ me. Had to. Wouldn’t resign. Nice ’n’ neat like he wanted it.” Rodriguez took a long swig from her can of Budweiser. “Wants ever-’thin’ nice ’n’ neat ’n’ all package’ up. Screw’ up his head plans, did.”
“You want to try, Jerry?”
“Keith went over and raised unholy hell. Discriminatin’ ‘gainst Mexican-Americans and women and that stuff. Comin’ on top of that hellaciously bad press conference, Delwin went right to the wall. Ca-pit-u-la-ted. And Luisa’s a cap-i-tan.”
Wayne decided the night was a loss and went across the hall to borrow two six-packs of beer from his neighbor. By the time Cece got home from her meeting, everyone was happy.
Cece took one look around the living room, then opened up the Hide-a-Bed in the spare bedroom for Luisa, tossed blankets and a pillow on the sofa for Hayman, and collected everyone’s car keys.
*
Wayne awakened at 5:30 in the morning, slipped out of bed without waking Cece, and carried clothing into the bathroom. He showered and shaved, put on jeans and a plaid sport shirt, and went into the living room.
He peeked into the spare room. Luisa Rodriguez was twisted up in a comforter and pillow. Hayman was sprawled out on the couch in the living room in rumpled shirt and suit pants, but that was normal. His clothes always looked as if he had slept in them.
Passing through to the kitchen, Wayne started a pot of coffee, then checked the refrigerator for bacon and eggs. No bacon, but he found a dozen link sausages. He laid them on the counter and took a loaf of frozen bread from the freezer and tucked it into the microwave oven.
By the time he could pour himself a cup of coffee, Cece appeared. Fully dressed.
“I hate having company around,” he told her.
She grinned and kissed him. “Oh, I don’t know. You’re making breakfast for a change.”
“Practice. I may end up a short-order cook.”
He kissed her again and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Do I get to grade your efforts? At the stove?”
He could not reply before a hoarse voice spoke, “Oh, sorry.”
They parted, and Cece smiled. “Come in, Jerry. You look awful.”
Hayman straightened his shoulders and came to his full height, his trousers dangerously low on his hips. “Thanks. I feel like a daisy.”
“Is that a medical euphemism for an aspirin?”
“It wasn’t until just now. I’ll love you as much as Anne will let me.”
Hayman flopped in a kitchen chair, and Cece got him the bottle of aspirin and a glass of water while Wayne poured three mugs of coffee. He poured a fourth when the deputy appeared. Her skirt, blouse, and jacket were wrinkled.
Rodriguez had her head tilted back, and she looked through half-squinted eyes at the bottle of aspirin Hayman was tipping over his palm.
“That’s a nice bottle you have.” She took a chair at the table. “Pardon me for ignoring you, Cece. You’re looking muy esplendido.”
“Gracias, señorita benevolo.”
“No es benevolo. Yo es desconcerto.” Rodriguez pointed the fingers of both hands at herself. “See what Hayman’s done to me?”
“I’ve never had a more willing follower.” Hayman passed the aspirin to Rodriguez.
“Jim’s going to kill me,” she said. “Providing I don’t die first.”
“Jim?” Cece asked.
“My husband. He doesn’t think I’m supposed to act like a cop out of a Joseph Wambaugh story.”
Wayne retrieved the bread from the microwave and plugged in the electric skillet. Cece sat down with her back to Wayne and held her coffee mug in both hands. “I’m sorry you lost the election, Luisa.”
“I wouldn’t be, except that Blessing’s such an as — a sniveling wimp. I got my job back, but I’m not going to like it much, working for him.”
Wayne started the toast and broke eggs into a pan to scramble them.
Hayman sat up straight in his chair and leaned toward Cece. “You doing all right? After your experience in California?”
She had not talked very much about it to Wayne, and he was alarmed that Hayman brought it up.
“I’ll survive,” she said.
“Most of us do that,” Hayman said, “but it’s not much good if you’re hiding some feelings. I’ve seen some bad things come out when cops have to kill.”
Cece did not respond right away, but then said, “I can’t say that it doesn’t bother me, but Steve did what he was trained to do. I’m glad he did.”
“Good,” Hayman said. “I don’t want you two to get all fouled up.”
“Steve didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what? He’s a closemouthed SOB.”
“That we’re buying a house in Santa Fe?”
“Oh, oh,” Rodriguez said, holding her head. “This an excuse for another celebration?”
“Damned right,” Cece said. “We close on the house in three weeks, and we’ve set June fourth for another closing.”
They accepted congratulations on their coming wedding while Wayne served his breakfast. He got As from Rodriguez and Hayman, but only a B-minus from Cece, who said that people with hangovers had numb palates.
Cece left right after breakfast, on her way to Santa Fe to look for commercial space for the new McComb-Davis branch office. Wayne poured the last of the coffee and started another pot.
“What made you decide on Santa Fe?” Hayman asked. “To live in, I mean.”
“Carlos once made a comment about the size of Albuquerque and the direction it was taking. He was right.” Wayne still got a lump in his throat when he thought about Rivera.
“The more time that passes since the funerals,” Hayman said, “the easier you’d think it would be to say, ‘well, we got one of them,’ and let it slide. I can’t though.”
“After I moved back here from LA, Carlos was my mentor, taught me almost everything I know,” Rodriguez said.
“You lived in LA?”
“I spent a year with the Los Angeles sheriff’s department, thinking I needed to be far from home. I was wrong. I needed the ties. And I needed Carlos, too.”
Wayne could not forget the dead sheriff either. He vividly remembered his conversations with Carlos, Myra, and Jeff Rivera. He wished he had gotten to know Tracy.
His two guests looked better after breakfast and showers and calls to their spouses. Wayne opened all the drapes, and they sat in the living room with another round of coffee.
“Is Blessing going to get away with closing the case?” he asked.
“No,” Hayman said, “Keith won’t let him. But good ol’ Del is playing PR and politics and budget. He seems convinced that he’s got the primary perpetrator, and he’s told Keith that his resources only go so far. He can’t afford to devote dollars and manpower to it the way Carlos and Luisa did.”
“I’m supposed to work on it in my spare time,” Rodriguez said. “It’s no longer a priority.”
“So what have you done in your spare time?”
“I’ve got a friend named Hogan, one I met in the LA Sheriff’s Office, who’s now a sergeant with the LAPD. He’s on Robbery, but what the hell? I gave him a call, he verified that one Frederick Taylor lives out in Malibu, and he’s going to run him down and interview him.”
“All right. Good.”
“Maybe we’ll learn something that gives us a new path to follow. Who knows?”
“In this whole damned thing,” Wayne said, “I’ve been stymied by the lack of motive. Or the lack of knowing what the motive may have been.”
“For Carlos, the motive was silencing him,” Hayman said. “For Andy, information. Or, if I’m wrong, maybe just a message sent to person or persons unknown.”
“Okay, sure,” Wayne said. “I’m talking about a reason for Andy and Andrea to be in Santa Fe.”
“Boyles didn’t come up with anything,” Rodriguez said. “There wasn’t much out of the ordinary going on when Andy was in town.”
“Give me an example, Luisa.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I wish my head would quit throbbing. Let’s see. There was an art auction. There are lots of auctions during the year, but this was a big one, brought in some heavy spenders.”
“Art, huh? The Andropoulous house was cleaned out when I got there. I don’t know whether or not they collected Southwestern art. We might be able to check it out with the man who runs United Moving. What else?”
“On that weekend? Carload of teenagers ended up in the hospital. One of them died. A Greyhound bus broke down and stranded a college choir in town overnight. DeLamma died in a motel room.”
“DeLamma? Senator DeLamma from Connecticut?” Wayne knew who the Appropriations chairman had been. He was always a topic of conversation when the Bureau’s budget was up for review, and the man’s committee usually cut any substantive increases from the budget request.
“Yeah. He and a couple of his aides were touring Los Alamos. He had a heart attack sometime Sunday morning.”
That did not go anywhere.
“You two are the cops,” Hayman said. “Where are we going from here?”
“One, we have to wait for Hogan’s interview with Taylor in LA,” Rodriguez said.
“I just thought of another angle,” Wayne said. “After Jerry said he felt like a daisy this morning, I remembered Dazi.”
“Who’s Daisy?” Hayman wanted to know.
“Spelled with a Z and an I. You’d love her. She told me she was supposed to have married Howard Pyle, but I think she’d be happy with anyone who could afford endless giant pizzas.”
“You’re losing me,” Hayman said.
Wayne grinned at him. “Pyle apparently told Dazi several times that he still performed special assignments for the government.”
“What agency?” Rodriguez asked.
“She didn’t know. And it sounded to me like Pyle loved to tell stories, true or not. I didn’t put much credence in it. But since Peter Conrad, the company commander, mentioned the secret missions of the Special Operations Group, I’ve started to wonder about it.”
“What would the CIA, or one of those three-letter gangs, want with Pyle and his friends?” Rodriguez asked.
“Sabotage? Espionage? Executions? Assassinations?” Hayman suggested.
“It happens,” Wayne said. “Could be anything.”
“And then something went wrong within the group,” Rodriguez said. “Andy may have spilled the beans, or threatened to spill them.”
“Something happened, and the thing got out of hand.”
Hayman sat back on the sofa, his face slightly puzzled. “I guess I can grasp that theory, even if it isn’t much of one. What do we do with it?”
“It’d be nice to know from Taylor, or someone, just who all was in the group,” the deputy said.
“Andy and Pyle probably were,” Wayne said. “Again, I didn’t think about it at the time, but Andy seemed to be doing pretty well. He had a nice house and three businesses. Nothing ostentatious, but more than I would expect him to earn out of a skydiving club. I’d like to know more about Andy’s and Pyle’s life-styles. Did they spend more than they appeared to make? From Dazi, I’d guess Pyle did. Fancy car and an airplane, big-buck condo in Newport, and as she said, ‘jillions of dollars.’ ”
