Dream of a Falling Eagle

pressed down, but not too hard. Piggott was finished, and needed only to be asked the right questions. There conies a point, probably already passed in this cabin, where a little appropriate physical persuasion becomes torture. I did not need nor want to inflict any more pain. I said, 'Watch your mouth.'

'For Christ's sake, is that what this is all about?!'

'What did you think it was about?'

'What do you want from me?!'

'Who told you to call Taylor Mackintosh and tell him to come to my office and try to bribe me?'

'The woman on the radio,' Piggott mumbled, rolling over, getting to his feet, and collapsing once again on the sofa bed. 'I'm answering all your questions. Your brother isn't going to hit me again, is he?'

'That depends,' Garth said quietly.

'What exactly did this woman say to you?'

Piggott took the handkerchief away from his face, touched his crooked nose, winced. 'She said you were using this nig-this African American to blackmail some guy by the name of Cranny, or Crans, or Kranes. I had it right at the time, but I'm not sure of the guy's name right now. She said this African American was going to claim that this Crans guy had stolen some poems. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but the woman said it was important.'

I glanced over at Garth, who looked as incredulous as I felt. I asked Piggott, 'You don't know who William P. Kranes is?'

He regarded me with a combination of suspicion and fear. 'That's the guy's name. I don't know who he is. Should I?'

'Do you have any idea who you're carrying out these little chores for?'

Light glinted in his murky eyes, and the corners of his bloody mouth pulled back in a malevolent grin. 'People who are going to make this country a fit place for decent Christian white folks to live in again.'

'That's encouraging. Precisely what did this woman want you to do?'

'She said the situation was unclear, and she wanted to explore it-those were her words. She said it looked like you and the African American guy might be cooking up some plan to make this Cranny guy look bad, and she couldn't allow that to happen. I was to send some suit from our organization to talk to you and see if you and the African American guy would take money to make the problem go away. I didn't understand how there could be so much fuss over some poems, but she insisted it had to be taken care of. The suit would be authorized to offer you up to two hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet about whatever it was you knew. A couple of days later she gets back to me and tells me to forget the whole thing, that the problem was going to be handled a different way, but by then I'd already called Mackintosh.'

I removed the checkbook I'd taken from Taylor Mackintosh from my pocket, flapped it in front of Piggott. 'The money would have been taken from a Guns for God and Jesus checking account?'

'Yeah.'

'Where do you get that kind of money?'

'The woman and her people put money into the account when we need something, or when they want us to do something that requires cash.'

'Why did you pick Taylor Mackintosh as your bagman? Is he the only suit in your organization?'

'No, but he's the most famous. He's a movie star. I figured you'd be impressed.'

I glanced over at Garth, who sighed and looked down at the floor. I knew what he was thinking, shared his sadness and outrage, and sense of total frustration. In the final analysis, Moby Dickens had lost his life because of no other reasons than the company's paranoia, indecision, execrably poor choice of personnel to task, and the sheer stone stupidity of those personnel combined with Guy Fournier's hubris and indifference.

'Hey,' Piggott continued. 'You want to tell me now what's going on? How come you two have got such a hard-on for me?'

I looked at him, replied, 'Thomas Dickens was murdered by people associated with your lady friend on the radio.'

He just couldn't help himself; he leered, then barked, 'Good! One less nigger we'll have to kill when the war starts.'

Uh-oh. I'd obviously been wrong about Piggott being finished, and his psychotic hatred appeared to have given him a second wind. I considered smacking him in his broken mouth, but didn't have the stomach or heart. Besides, considering his remark, it was beginning to occur to me that Paul Piggott had not really found the beating he'd already taken all that unpleasant, and I didn't want to do him any favors. Garth apparently felt the same aversion-although he might well have some other punishment in mind for Paul Piggott, like a quick death. He walked across the room to where a collection of knives was mounted on the wall and selected a huge Bowie knife. Then he walked back to Piggott and pressed the tip of the blade up under the now thoroughly terrified man's chin. For a moment I was afraid he was going to drive the blade straight up through Piggott's skull, but he didn't. Instead he lazily worked the tip back and forth in the sweaty flesh until a tiny hole had been opened in Piggott's quivering jowl. A drop of blood became a stream that ran down the man's throat and over his chest.

'Garth. .?'

'Not to worry, Mongo,' Garth replied in a whisper. 'Everything's under control. I'm just lowering his blood pressure.'

'Hey, all I ever did was send around somebody to try to lay a lot of money on you!' Piggott burbled. 'I didn't kill the African American guy!'

I said, 'We know that. Let's get back to your lady friend. What makes a big macho guy like you so eager to act as a gofer for some woman you've never met?'

Piggott's eyes were wide and crossed as he gaped down his nose toward where the tip of the Bowie knife was stuck in his jowl. 'Take the knife away,' he mumbled. 'I can't talk.'

Garth took the knife away from the man's jowl. Piggott cowered as he pressed his blood-soaked handkerchief to the fresh wound in his throat. He croaked, 'Are you going to kill me?'

'A distinct possibility,' I replied. 'The only thing you've got going for you is my brother's deep sympathy for the mentally handicapped, and your continued cooperation. Answer my question. Why are you so hot to do everything this woman tells you? Because she and her people give your group money?'

In an instant the light in his eyes had flickered from fear to hatred, and he glared at me. 'I don't have any say where that money goes,' he said through clenched teeth. 'And none of it goes into my pocket. I do what she asks because she and her people get things done.'

'Explain. Start by telling us how you got your hands on this particular radio in the first place.'

'It was delivered a little more than a year ago, along with some batteries and the beeper.'

'Who delivered it?'

'Some guy in a pickup truck. He didn't say anything-just put the radio and stuff down on the ground and gave me an envelope with a grand inside along with a note. The note said the radio and money were from people who wanted to help us fight ZOG. It said that if I was really serious about fighting for the rights of white Christians, I'd take the radio, set it to that frequency, and wait to be contacted. Me, I'm not stupid, so I figured it was just the goddamn government trying to trick me into doing something they could nail me for. But I figured it couldn't hurt to set up the radio and see what happened, so I did. Then the woman started calling me.'

'And she asked you to do certain things?'

He shook his head, mumbled, 'Not at first. I wouldn't have done anything for her in the beginning because I didn't have any reason to trust her. She said she understood that, so she was going to provide me with what she called her bony fideys. She said her people were going to do certain things to show me I could trust her, and they did.'

'What did they do?'

'They killed people,' he replied nonchalantly, wiping blood off his chin. 'Kikes, niggers, spicks. Mud people. So-called community leaders around the country. First I'd get newspaper clippings about some troublemaker. Then, a few days later, I'd get an obituary notice saying the man or woman had been killed in an accident. I knew they were no accidents, because I'd been told about them in advance.'

I shook my head, swallowed hard to try to work up some moisture in my mouth. 'This still goes on?'

'Sure, it still goes on. ZOG is still in control, isn't it?'

'Who delivers the clippings?'