Jack's beeper vibrated through his pocket against his thigh. He checked the readout: one of the Ashe brothers. He went to the phone on the corner and used one of his calling cards to pay for the call.
Joe Ashe came on the line. "Twin Air."
"How'd it go?"
Joe started laughing. "What a pisser you are, boy! What a evil pisser! Frank was laughin' so hard he damn near put us in the drink! Those tires"—the word came through his Georgia accent as "tahrs"—"was bouncin' ever' which way. You shoulda been there, Jack! You shoulda seen!"
"Oh, I'll see it," Jack said, hoping Sal had made a good tape. Exhilaration bubbled through him. It had been a wild idea, one that easily could have flopped. "I thought it might work, but you never know until you do it."
"Jack, it worked so well I don't know why the Air Force don't use tires instead of bombs next time we have another Gulf War or Yugoslavia thang. You know how many tons and tons of old tires we got in this country that we gotta go out and bury or sink in the ocean ever' year? We could load 'em all into B-52s and drop 'em from fifty thousand feet. Can you imagine the commotion of a zillion tires landing after a ten-mile drop? Why, they'll be bouncin' right over buildings is what. Panic in the streets, man. If we'd thoughta this before, we coulda just buried Baghdad and Belgrade and got rid of a whole pile of junk to boot."
"I'd appreciate it if we kept the U.S. Air Force out of this for the time being," Jack said. "We're still set for another run on Sunday, right?"
"Set? We can't hardly wait! Almost seems a sin to be gettin' paid for this! Say, y' know, I was thinkin' maybe I'd add a little music on Sunday, y'know, like special for the occasion."
"Joe, I'd rather you—"
"You remember that ol' Bobby Vee song, 'Rubber Ball,' and the part where it goes 'Bouncy-bouncy, bouncy-bouncy.' Wouldn't it be cool if we could be blastin' that from some speakers while all those tires—"
Jack had to smile. "Let's keep it simple, Joe. Once we start embellishing, we start asking for trouble."
"The ol’ KISS rule, huh? I gotcha. Just a thought."
"And a good one too, but let's do the second one just like the first, OK."
"You got it, boy."
Jack waited for Joe to hang up, then hit the # key to make another call.
12
His guests had gone now, most managing to exit under their own power, some needing assistance. After profuse apologies, Milos had seen the last one off, then got down to business.
He'd had Kim set up Cino in the theater room with the new Keanu Reeves film on the plasma screen and a fresh bottle of Dampierre in an ice bucket as her companion, then had put the Korean in charge of the caterer's staff to start them on the massive clean up job. That taken care of, Milos lined up his men in the security office in the basement.
This was his nerve center, crammed with state-of-the-art electronics. The feeds from all the surveillance cameras were monitored here; all outgoing calls of a sensitive nature were routed through here for scrambling. Milos had spent a fortune on this room so he could stay in the Hamptons and still run his operations with security. But tonight none of it had helped.
Sometimes for effect he acted like a madman, as he'd done in the GEM conference room yesterday. But tonight was no act. He stalked back and forth, red-faced, punching the air, screaming his rage at these men for allowing this to happen. He knew it was not their fault, but he felt he had to loose this pressure inside him or explode into a thousand bleeding, twitching pieces.
Finally he wound down. He stood staring at his silent, white-faced men. He knew what they were thinking: would he make an example of one of them as he had in the past?
Nothing Milos would have liked better—make someone the fall guy and shoot him dead right here. But that would be a waste of a good man, and if he was going to find out who did this, he'd need every one of them.
"Does anyone have anything to say?" he said when the silence had stretched to the breaking point.
More silence.
"Have any of you noticed anyone strange hanging around, anyone snowing unusual interest? You, Vuk." He singled out an ex-corporal from the Yugoslav army who liked to bleach his hair. The man blinked but otherwise remained calm. "You've been on patrol this week. You see anyone paying too much attention to the house?"
"No, sir," he said. "Ivo and I ran off a man and his wife yesterday, but they were just walking on the beach. When they stopped to look, we moved them on. The wife didn't want to go, but the man gave us no trouble."
Milos nodded. "What is on the security cameras?" he said to Dositej, the surveillance man.
Dositej jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the half-dozen monitor screens in the surveillance booth. "I've been checking last week's tapes, sir. Haven't found anything yet."
"Nothing?" Milos said, feeling his anger rising again. "Nothing?"
Just then a phone rang. Dositej, anxious to duck the spotlight, hurried to answer it.
"It's Kim," he said after listening a few seconds. "Says you've got a call."
"I told him no interruptions!"
"He says it's from someone who wants to know if you got any old tires you care to part with."
Everyone started talking at once. Milos felt a sudden calm. He didn't have to search out the enemy; the enemy was coming to him.
Grabbing the phone from Dositej, he pointed to Mihailo, his balding, bespectacled communications man. 'Trace the call." Then he spoke to Kim upstairs. "Put him through."
A crisp, WASP-inflected voice that sounded like a cross between George Plimpton and William F. Buckley came on the line. "Mr. Dragovic? Is that you?"
Milos could hear the same words echoing from across the room where their conversation was playing from a speaker on the communications console.
"Yes," Milos said, straggling to modulate his tone. "Who is this?"
"I'm the president of the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee, Mr. Dragovic. Did you get our message tonight?"
"Message?" Milos said, playing along. "What message?"
"The tires, dear boy, the tires. Surely you noticed them, although considering the simply dreadful house you've built there, I suppose it's possible you might have missed them. Anyway, I'm calling just in case you've missed the point."
Milos felt his teeth grinding. "Just what was the point?"
"That you're not wanted out here, Mr. Dragovic. You are cheap and vulgar and we will not tolerate your type amongst us. You are a toxin and we are out to clean you up. You are garbage and your house a waste dump, and that is how we intend to treat it until you decide to pack up your trashy self, your trashy friends, your trashy lifestyle, and go back where you came from."
Milos clutched the receiver in a death grip and sputtered a reply. "Who are you?"
He heard an exultant "Yes!" from the communications console. He looked over and saw Mihailo giving him the OK sign. He'd traced the call.
"I believe I told you: this is not the militant wing of the LVIS, this is the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee, and we mean business. Be warned, Mr. Dragovic," the man on the phone was saying. "We are quite serious. This is not a game."
"You think not?" Milos said, smiling. "I say it is—one that two can play." He hung up and turned to Mihailo. "Who is he?"
"Can't say," Mihailo said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses nervously, "but he was calling from the city—a pay phone in the East Eighties."
Milos cursed silently. He'd been hoping for a name, but he should have known the man would not call from his home.
"I think I've got something," Dositej called from the video monitoring room.
Milos stepped into the cubicle where Dositej was leaning close to a monitor, his nose almost touching its screen. "What is it?"