We came down behind Paul Piggott's cabin and went around to the front door, where Garth knocked. There was no answer, and he knocked again, harder, while I looked down the pathway behind us to make certain we were unobserved. Finally the door opened, and Paul Piggott, silhouetted against the light cast by two hurricane lamps, stood staring at us somewhat uncomprehendingly with bleary, greenish eyes that were the color of jungle mud. His long black hair hung in greasy ringlets around his puffy face. His shirt and sleeveless leather jacket were open, and his paunchy beer belly hung down over his wide leather belt.
'Howdy, Pilgrim,' Garth said in his John Wayne drawl as I drove the stiffened fingers of my right hand up through rolls of fat into the man's solar plexus. 'The little dogie and I are doing a survey to see what the folks in this area think of vigilante justice and fluoride in the water.'
The breath exploded out of Piggott in a beery, belchy whoosh, and as he doubled over I brought my stiffened fingers up into his larynx, not hard enough to crush and kill, but with sufficient force to keep him talking in a hoarse whisper for an hour or two; it was a neat trick I'd learned from Veil Kendry, my
Garth unhurriedly pulled up a stool and sat in front of the couch, and while he waited for our breathless and bleeding host to compose himself, I looked around. Guns of all shapes and sizes were mounted on the walls, which were also festooned with Nazi flags and other regalia that loomed eerily and almost seemed to wave in the flickering light from the hurricane lamps. Cases of beer were stacked up on either side of the doorway. In one corner were a grill and two cans of Sterno, and in another a grimy, stained, portable toilet, apparently for use when it was raining, or too cold-or when he was just too lazy- to use the latrine outside. Against the wall opposite the sofa was a table, and on it was set, most incongruously, a shiny shortwave radio powered by four chunky dry cell batteries linked in series; the outside aerial had been too thin for us to see through binoculars.
Finally I turned and went to stand beside my brother, who was leaning forward on the stool, crowding the cowering Piggott, who was dripping blood from his broken nose and mouth all over his bare chest and stomach. The man's eyes were glazed with shock, and he had the look of a cornered animal.
'So, Paulie,' Garth said in a casual tone. 'How's the assassination plot coming along?'
Piggott wiped his mouth with a trembling hand, then spat blood to the side, over the armrest of the sofa bed. 'Who the hell are you?' he croaked, massaging his bruised larynx with his bloody right hand.
'We are the marvelous flying Frederickson brothers,' I replied, rapping my knuckles on his left kneecap. 'We're annoyed by something that happened to an acquaintance of ours, and we're going to take it out on you. My advice to you is to simply answer my brother's questions the first time, truthfully, because he gets impatient easily. Don't bother trying to lie, because the man's a veritable human lie detector. You're liable to lose the rest of your teeth.'
He didn't take my advice. He obviously recognized the name, for he drew his breath in sharply. Then, whether out of misguided bravado or an even greater fear of someone or something else, he suffered a severe attack of stupid. 'I'll die before I tell you anything,' he rasped, then spat blood at my brother.
'Suit yourself,' Garth replied evenly, then hit Piggott so hard on the side of the head that the man catapulted over the armrest and crashed to the floor, where he lay half conscious, moaning and holding his head as he drew his legs up into a fetal position. Garth rose from the stool, walked across the room, and took a shotgun from a mount on the wall, then came back and pressed the wooden stock against the man's temple. In the same easy tone, he continued, 'If I crack your skull open, how much shit do you think I'll get on my shoes?'
'All right!' Piggott burbled.
'When and where are the assassinations scheduled to take place?'
'I don't know anything about any assassinations!'
'Wrong answer,' Garth said, tapping the stock none too gently on the man's head. 'We saw the two shooters going through their paces this afternoon. Do you expect us to believe they were tuning up for duck season?'
'I don't know what those two plan to do,' Piggott whispered in a barely audible voice. 'I don't even know their names, or the name of the guy who brings them around. I was just told to let them practice here. Nobody's supposed to even talk to them.'
Garth took the stock away from the man's head, then tossed him a dirty pillow from the sofa bed. Piggott pressed the pillow to his beer belly, wrapped himself around it.
'Do they ever stay in the compound?'
'No.'
'Where are they now?'
'I don't know. I never know when they're going to show up to practice, and I don't know where they go when they leave.'
Garth apparently believed him, for my brother's response was to look over at me and shrug his shoulders.
I asked, 'Where's Guy Fournier?'
Piggott moved his head slightly so as to look at me. His eyes shone with pain, humiliation, and fear. 'I don't know any Guy Fournier. It sounds like a frog name, and I don't know any frogs.'
'What makes you so accommodating to these people who come here and go as they please? They're obviously not the types you normally associate with.'
'I'm just following orders.'
'Whose orders?'
'A woman. I don't know her name. She talks to me on that radio over there.'
'Jesus Christ,' Garth said. 'It's like the fucking Wizard of Oz.'
'Pay no attention to the woman behind the radio.'
'It's the truth!' Piggott wheezed.
I walked over to the radio, turned it on, and tapped the microphone. 'Maybe I'll give her a buzz. What frequency does she use?'
'The one it's locked on. It's the only frequency on the radio that works.'
That was interesting. It was also interesting that the steel casing of the radio didn't have a serial number in the place where one would normally expect to find it, nor anywhere else that I could see.
It looked like a specialized piece of company equipment. I considered the notion that beneath his tattoos and greasy hair and potbelly Paul Piggott might be a highly skilled, expertly camouflaged, and very gutsy CIA operative, but just couldn't wrap my mind around the idea. He was just one more company pawn, like so many of the other people we were wading through. I asked, 'Do you have a code name?'
'No.'
'How do you contact this woman when you want to have a chat?'
'I don't. She contacts me when she wants to talk. I carry a beeper when I leave the cabin. When it goes off, I come to the radio and turn it on.'
I leaned over the microphone, pressed the switch on the base. 'Hello, hello, hello? This is spook radio. Anybody out there? Over.'
I released the switch and turned up the volume, but there was nothing but the crackle of static on the speaker. When I turned the dial, even the static disappeared. I looked over at Garth. 'What does your bullshit antenna tell you?'
My brother shrugged again. 'It indicates he's telling the truth.'
'Things just get curiouser and curiouser.'
'It makes sense that they'd seal these pinheads off tighter than a bulkhead.'
I walked over to Paul Piggott, who had rolled over on his back and pressed a dirty handkerchief to his broken nose in what appeared to be a successful attempt to stop the bleeding. I asked, 'Does the name Thomas Dickens ring a bell with you?'
He didn't answer right away, and seemed to be thinking about it. He rolled his eyes first to the right, then to the left, and finally back to me. 'I think that's the name of the nigger you were using to-'
He abruptly stopped speaking and sucked in his breath when I rested my foot on his bulging stomach. I
