Thai Horse Page 8

  Still no response. Hatcher took another sip of wine and continued to stare. He was remembering what 126 had said once about vengeance. It’s depressing, is what he said, and a waste of time. One thing Hatcher had learned to respect in Los Boxes was time.

  ‘That Paris job was inspired, better than the thing we did in London that time,’ Sloan went on.

  He paused for a moment. Hatcher said nothing.

  ‘Some haul, man. That one Monet was worth over three mill. Five pieces, twelve million. I didn’t know you knew that much about rare paintings, old pal.’

  No answer.

  ‘I guess Stenhauser tipped you on what to grab, right?’

  No answer.

  ‘Anyway, you were right up front with that Paris job, kind of set the pace for what’s been going on. I’ll give you a hand for your style, too. I figure you’ve only done the three jobs.’

  He paused and shrugged. ‘And who got hurt? The insurance companies, right?’ Sloan chuckled. He held out his hands, palms up, like a magician about to perform sleight of hand. ‘Who gives a big damn, they probably screwed a lot of little people out of twenty times what you took ‘em for.’

  Still no comment. Sloan sighed and looked up at the ceiling. He was getting annoyed. ‘You’ve changed, Hatcher. You were always good for an argument — about anything. You used to be quite the talker.’

  Hatcher stood up suddenly, took three long steps across the room and hit Sloan with a fast, hard jab straight to the corner of the jaw. The big man flew backward out of his chair, landed on his neck and rolled over against the bulkhead.

  ‘God damn,’ he snapped. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and looked up sharply as Hatcher leaned over him.

  ‘I have this thing about wasting words,’ Hatcher whispered.

  ‘Jesus,’ Sloan cracked, ‘what happened to your voice?’

  Hatcher didn’t answer. He rinsed out his wineglass, slid it into an overhead wine rack and locked it down. Then he went topside. Sloan got up slowly, massaging his jaw. He went to the refrigerator, opened it and took out a light beer. He popped the top off, took a deep drink and then held the cold can against his jaw. Then the four big engines coughed to life and the boat began to move. Sloan rushed to the top. Hatcher was backing the 48-footer away from the dock.

  ‘What the hell’re you doing?’ he demanded, but Hatcher didn’t answer. He swung the boat around in a tight arc and headed back out to sea, cruising slowly through the sound, and then as the boat broke out into the open sea he eased the throttles forward and the engines changed their voices, their basso tones keeping rhythm to the slap of the ocean as the small yacht picked up speed and began bounding from whitecap to whitecap.

  Sloan caressed his jaw with the cold beer can. ‘You didn’t forget how to hit,’ he said. His smile slowly returned. ‘What the hell, I guess I had it coming.’

  Hatcher turned around and stood nose to nose with Sloan.

  ‘Is this a shakedown, Harry?’ his harsh voice asked. Sloan looked shocked. ‘C’mon!’

  ‘Then what’re you doing here? Don’t tell me you came to apologize, I’ll deck you again.’

  ‘You know me, Hatch. I, uh, tuck info away for a rainy day. I always figure sooner or later . . .‘ He let the sentence dangle.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘So now is later.’

  ‘You set me up, you son of a bitch.’

  Sloan shrugged. ‘You do what you have to do.’

  ‘To protect a drunken bum.’

  ‘Shit, it was all politics there. We were just trying to save the country is all.’

  ‘From what — rats and cockroaches?’ Hatcher rasped.

  Sloan shrugged with a grin. ‘From the Commies, who else?’

  ‘And I happened to be expendable.’

  ‘The whole thing went sour,’ Sloan went on in his sincere voice. ‘You were supposed to be in the prison in Madrango. Then the country blew up before I could get back to get you. Next thing I know, they moved you to Los Boxes. So it was a bad call, I’ll give you that,’ Sloan said.

  ‘A bad call!’ the ruined voice whispered.

  ‘I brought you in when I could, laddie,’ Sloan said.

  Hatcher moved the throttles forward a little more. The engines got throatier, the bow lifted a little more.

  ‘What happened to the little fat guy?’ Hatcher said finally.

  ‘Pratt? Ah, the rebels held him for a couple of months. He lost forty pounds and quit the State Department.’

  ‘I wonder who’s better off.’

  ‘He got you out, didn’t he?’

  Hatcher growled between clenched teeth: ‘Our beloved ambassador, Craig, murders a woman and child with his Mercedes, I take the fall, go to Los Boxes, and two months later the government goes down the toilet and Craig is out on his ass anyway. Beautiful.’

  ‘Hatch, you’ve been in the business long enough to know how fast things change. What the hell, I didn’t forget you. Did I forget you?’

  ‘Three years?’

  ‘The timing wasn’t right.’

  Hatcher shook his head. ‘When they passed out heart, Harry, you were in the asshole line. What the hell do you want?’ Hatcher’s voice rasped.

  ‘I’ve got a job to do. A job nobody can hack like you can.’

  Hatcher looked astounded. ‘Fuck off,’ he snarled.

  ‘Listen to me —‘

  ‘Our slate’s clean.’

  ‘I don’t quite see it that way.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn how you see it.’

  ‘I got your pal, Stenhauser, by the gonies,’ Sloan said softly but with menace. ‘I squeeze him, you’re looking to do about twenty years’ hard time.’

  ‘You always did dream big.’

  ‘Look who’s talking.’

  ‘I don’t dream,’ Hatcher snapped, ‘I do it.’

  Smiling, Sloan leaned over and said softly, ‘Chicago, Paris, New York. . . I’m not dreaming, pal. Let me play it out for you. They’ll hit you one, two, three, back to back, nothing concurrent. Three major felonies, three different cities, three different courts, and France is real touchy about its art works. I figure you’ll do at least fifteen years. And they’ll take everything you’ve got. So they won’t find the kiwash you got stashed in Panama or Grand Cayman or Switzerland’ — he smiled his most insincere smile — ‘but they’ll get your boat and everything that shows.’ He winked.

  Hatcher stared at him for a moment.

  ‘I think I’ll just call that hand,’ Hatcher said flatly.

  ‘Maybe you better call Stenhauser first.’

  ‘What’d you do, Sloan, kneecap the poor little bastard?’

  ‘I just tightened his suspenders a little bit. He hasn’t got your class. He folds easy.’

  ‘As easy as blackmail comes to you?’

  Sloan’s anger was beginning to rise, but he controlled himself. The smile stayed, the soft tone, the sincerity. ‘Okay, okay. I got off on the wrong foot. Look, you do this little thing for me, you’ll never see me again. I’m history. You’re forgetting, I taught you everything you know, Hatch. I’ll forget all about—’

  Hatcher suddenly twisted the wheel sharply to the right, then spun it back the other way. The boat started to go into a tight turn, then just as quickly switched into the opposite direction. Sloan was thrown backward. He hit the bulkhead. The beer can flew out of his hand and was swept away in the wind, then the boat yawed in the other direction and he lurched forward, scrambling for his balance and falling to his knees in front of the cabin hatch. Hatcher pulled the throttles back and then jammed them forward, and the defenseless Sloan, once again caught off-balance, vaulted headfirst into the cabin and flipped halfway over, landing on the back of his neck. He scrambled to get his feet under him and started to get up, but the boat turned sharply again and he flew forward and slammed into one of the bronze wall panels. His breath burst out of him as the mirror shattered from the force of the collision. Sloan fell to the floor as shards of the sh
attered mirror tinkled about him.

  Topside, Hatcher pulled the throttles all the way back. The boat died in the water, and he jumped off the captain’s chair and bounded the steps to the cabin. Sloan was on his knees, scrambling across the floor to his briefcase.

  Hatcher moved fast, and, grabbing the briefcase, pulled out the .357. He tossed the case aside. File folders spilled out and their contents splashed all over the floor.

  ‘Damn it —‘ Sloan began, and then felt cold steel under his nose. Hatcher stood over him with a Magnum pistol pressed against Sloan’s upper lip.

  ‘You taught me everything you know, all right,’ his flinty voice snarled. ‘Trouble is, Harry, you stopped learning and I didn’t. Blackmail me, you son of a bitch.’

  ‘You got it all wrong!’ Sloan said, his smile finally vanishing. ‘Just hear me out.’

  Hatcher shook his head — Sloan never quit. ‘Your ace in the hole is that fast mouth of yours. You could coax the devil into a cold shower. You lace it all up with your favorite words. Duty, patriotism — hell, you sell patriotism like Professor Wizard sells snake oil.’

  ‘What’s the matter with patriotism?’

  Hatcher ignored the question. ‘The trouble with you, Harry, is you do lousy math. One time, two and two equals four. Next time, it equals seven or twelve or eighty-two or whatever you want it to equal. Damn it, do you think you can frame me twice in the same lifetime?’

  ‘Just listen for a —‘

  ‘Shut up,’ Hatcher snarled, his eyes flashing.

  Sloan thought to himself, If I can get past the next minute or two, I’m okay. It had been a calculated risk, facing up to Hatcher. So Sloan shut up. He leaned back in the chair and Hatcher stepped back a couple of steps, holding the gun at arm’s length, pointed between Sloan’s eyes. Then Sloan’s smile returned. The hands went out, away from his sides again. ‘I was hoping we could have a friendly talk.’

  ‘Christ,’ Hatcher snorted. ‘You are something else.’

  ‘Will you listen to me? Give me ten minutes of your time and I’m out of here forever —‘

  Hatcher cut him off. His harsh whisper took on a new edge. ‘There was a time, Harry, when the only thing that kept me going, the only thing, was fantasizing about this moment. That’s what kept me alive, imagining what it would be like to have you in the squeeze. Right now you’re a trigger finger away from eternity.’

  The smile faded a little but was still there. ‘Okay, so what’s stopping you?’ Sloan said boldly.

  Hatcher ignored the question. You’ll be out of here forever, all right. I can stash you in the coral, the fish’ll nibble you to bits before you have time to float up. Nobody’ll ever know what happened to you.’

  ‘You could do that, but you’re not going to,’ Sloan said, confidently shaking his head.

  ‘I’ve done worse to better than you. Hell, you ought to know, I was working for you.’

  ‘You think I don’t know you’re nursing a hard-on two miles long?’ Sloan said, and for a moment there was almost a touch of sadness in his voice. ‘Look around. Did I come in here with the whole brigade at my back? Did I come in waving around a lot of iron? Hell, no.’

  Sloan had spent his life studying faces, learning to recognize the slightest nuances: the vague shift in a muscle, the almost imperceptible twitch of an eyelid, the slightest tightening of the mouth, the subtle shift of focus in the eyes. They were all signals to him that in an instant something had changed. Then it was like having a fish on a line. Time to reel in. Hatcher was good about concealing his emotions, but it was there, Sloan sensed it. I’ve got him, he thought. We’re past the real touchy part. He leaned toward Hatcher and his eyes glittered as he put in the fix. ‘I’m here on a mission of mercy, pal.’

  And Hatcher thought, Shit, here it comes. Now he’s got that tongue of his going full speed, now he’s on the con.

  ‘Let’s stop horsing each other around, okay?’ Sloan said. ‘So you’re tough and I’m tough, we don’t have to prove that to each other anymore. I know you, Hatch. I know you know I’m not here to get a tan, so you’ve got to be real curious. Why don’t you put that thing down and listen to me before you do something real crazy?’

  Hatcher sighed. He leaned his gun arm on his leg. The pistol dangled loosely in his hand, pointed at the deck somewhere between Sloan’s feet.

  ‘Okay, let’s hear the part about the mission of mercy,’ he snickered. ‘That ought to be a classic.’

  CODY

  Sloan gathered up his file folders from the deck and put them back in order. He dropped one in Hatcher’s lap.

  ‘Read this,’ he said.

  It was the service record of Lieutenant Murphy Roger Cody, USN. Murph Cody. Hatcher hadn’t heard that name since Cody died in Vietnam a long time ago.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Hatcher asked. ‘Cody’s been history for fifteen years.’

  ‘Fourteen actually.’

  ‘Fourteen, fifteen, what’s the difference.’

  ‘Read the file, then we’ll talk.’

  Hatcher leafed through the 0—1 file. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the record. It began when Cody entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1962, and ended abruptly when his twin-engine OV- 10 crashed and burned while flying a routine search-and-destroy mission near Binh Thuy in the Mekong Delta, April 13, 1972. Cody had been assigned to Light Attack Squadron 6, Naval Riverine Patrol Forces, and had gone ‘in-country’ in July 1971, nine months before he was lost. There were two commendations for outstanding service and a recommendation for the Navy Cross, which had been approved and awarded posthumously.

  Supplementary reports included a tape of the debriefing interrogation of two of Cody’s wingmen and the gunner of an SAR Huey crew that had tried to rescue Cody and his radioman; a confidential report by the MIA commission dated January 1978, confirming that no trace of Cody had been found;. a tape of the review board and the official certification of death in 1979; and another commission report filed when the crash site was located in 1981, reporting that charred bones had been found on-site but were unidentifiable — they could have been the remains of either Cody or his crewman, Gunner’s Mate John Rossiter, or parts of both.

  The only mention of Cody’s father was on the service form under ‘next of kin.’ It said merely, ‘William John Cody, General, U.S. Army.’ Not the Buffalo Bill Cody, commander of all the field forces in Vietnam. A typical bureaucratic understatement.

  There were two photographs, a drab black-and-white that was Cody’s last official Navy photo and a five-by- seven color shot of him with his wife and two small children in front of a Christmas tree. The date on the back was Christmas, 1971, his last Christmas home. There were also some news clippings, including the announcement in the San Francisco Chronicle that Cody’s widow, Joan, had married a rear admiral two years after Cody was officially declared dead. Cold, hard facts and not too many of them.

  Hatcher studied the two photographs. He remembered Cody as being tall and hard with a quick laugh, a man who loved a good time almost as much as he loved the ladies.

  The photographs prodded Hatcher’s memory, but twenty years had dulled it. Hazy incidents flirted with his brain — the good times, oddly, seemed the most vague — then there were other incidents, juxtaposed visions of Murph Cody, that were crystal clear. In one, Cody was the brutish sophomore, a hulking shape in the boxing ring, pummeling his opponent relentlessly, driving a youngster into the ropes, slamming punches in a flurry to the chest and face of the kid until Hatcher and another member of the team jumped in the ring and pulled him off. In the other, Cody was the penitent, showing up at the hospital later that evening, apologizing in tears for hurting the young freshman, who had two broken ribs and a shattered cheekbone, and sitting beside him all night.

  He remembered, too, his own fear as a freshman of Cody, who had a reputation among the new frogs as a mean hazer.

  ‘When did you meet him?’ Sloan asked.

  Hatcher thought for a momen
t as memories bombarded him. Opaque memories like the shape of a room but not the furnishings in it and faces without voices. Then slowly the memories began to materialize as his mind sorted through fragments of his life.

  ‘The first day at Annapolis,’ he answered. ‘I’ll never forget it. .

  August 1963. A bright, hot day. Hatcher and a half- dozen other frogs were lined up ramrod-straight, their backs flat against the wall in the dormitory hallway. It was their first day at Annapolis, and they were all confused and scared. Two upperclassmen had them braced and were giving them their first introduction to the cruelties inflicted on a frog, a new freshman at the academy.

  The worse of the two was a burly midshipman with a permanent sneer named Snyder. Snyder hated all lowerclassmen. Because he had almost busted out himself, he had no tolerance for them.

  The other second-year man merely watched. He was tall, muscular and handsome despite features that were triangular and hawkish and made him appear older than he was. He stood at parade rest, never taking his eyes off Hatcher.

  ‘Look at these maggots,’ Snyder said, stalking the line of frightened young midshipmen. ‘Look around you, maggots. By this time next year only two of you will be left.’

  He stood in front of Hatcher. ‘You’re the juvenile, huh. How did a delinquent like you get into Annapolis?’

  Hatcher stared straight ahead, not knowing what to answer.

  Snyder’s face was an inch from Hatcher’s. ‘What’s the matter, maggot, can’t you talk?’ he yelled.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ the terrified Hatcher answered.

  ‘Are you a maggot?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Are you lower than dog shit?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘I can’t hear you!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Awright, clear the hall!’ Snyder yelled. ‘Move it, move it, move it. On the double!’ And he laughed as they all scrambled to their rooms.

  A minute later the tall cadet appeared at the door to Hatcher’s room.