How many S. Hawkes-Mitchells could there be? And could this Hawkes-Mitchell be the government agent who wrote the original Omega Force report, which had been leaked to me by the woman on whose loggia I had spent a night one month before? Was Hawkes-Mitchell working for us or them? Was he a man who merely dreamed up techno-thrillers? Or did his work involve consulting on national security issues, such that the thrillers were almost certain to have encoded military information contained within them? Did Omega Force: Code White precede the actual Omega Force, which I now believed was bent upon attacking the coast of the Northeast, such that the Omega Force was an effect of the novel? Or vice versa? Was Hawkes-Mitchell employed by one of the conservative think tanks? Was he associated, in an earlier era, with plots to furnish arms to the Nicaraguan Contras?
I did my best to enunciate when I called the FAA hotline to ask if there was a telephone number listed for the licensee of the Cessna in question. I made clear that there were legal issues involved. The operator asked if I had a head cold.
“I’m in excellent fettle, and while I’m touched by the thought, I don’t have time to discuss my health.”
She declined to give me the necessary telephone number, but directory information served ably in that regard. There was a feeling of momentousness when at last I was in possession of the telephone number of Stuart Hawkes-Mitchell. I was not sure of protocol with respect to an actual, living author. Should I tell Hawkes-Mitchell that I’d found myself eager to learn how his novel would end, though in truth the ending was hackneyed and predictable? Was it appropriate to tell him that I hadn’t found the character terribly sympathetic? And what if he was not the same Hawkes-Mitchell who composed Omega Force but was, rather, an assassin who could instantly cause to be distributed to the island a lethal dose of some rain forest venom that would be admixed with my antidepressants and my antiseizure medication, causing my instantaneous death before the eyes of my horrified loved ones?
I could sense that I was being delivered to the center of the mystery. I waited as the bell tolled on the other end of the line. Apparently there was no answering machine, because the ringer kept tolling and tolling long past what is acceptable in this day and age. At last a tired woman grumbled a curt greeting. Her voice sounded as though she’d had cigarettes for breakfast since years before the surgeon general’s first report on the hazards of that product, a health campaign I personally helped implement.
I asked for Stuart Hawkes-Mitchell.
“Excuse me?”
I asked again for S. Hawkes-Mitchell. Or Mr. Hawkes-Mitchell.
“I’m inquiring into the whereabouts of Stuart Hawkes-Mitchell.”
“Well,” she said, sighing mournfully, “I’m sorry to tell you then that Stuart is dead.”
“Dead?” As the author might have said himself, I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. “But I just read his book, and it was. . a pretty good book.”
“Stuart died last year, I’m afraid.”
“Would it be possible to ask how he died?”
“Who’s asking?”
I blanked for a moment, trying to come up with an appropriate pseudonym. “Well, this is Ned Roberts Jr. I’m an amateur pilot, looking for a, uh, I’m looking to buy a Cessna Skyhawk or similar model, and I was doing some inquiries into persons in western Massachusetts who might be interested in—”
“We don’t have the plane anymore.”
“I see, well, I—”
“Stuart had an accident in the plane.”
“He—”
“That’s right.”
“You mean the plane with serial number DB-81404 met with a. . with a fiery conclusion?”
“I hated the plane right from the beginning, and I told him to get rid of it.”
I continued to stress the consonants in my words, such that I probably sounded like a speech professional to her. “And you say this tragedy took place last year?”
“About fourteen months ago.”
“So there was no chance that he was. . because you see I could have sworn I saw the plane. . ”
It was then that I began to hear in her voice a growing suspicion. I couldn’t help, however, but push my inquiry to its logical conclusion. It was all clear to me now. I could see it as plain as the headlines on tomorrow’s daily papers. Stuart Hawkes-Mitchell, by virtue of his imagination, had breathed into life the Omega Force series long before recent global political events. Hawkes-Mitchell was trying to make an honest dollar, though he had in fact dreamed up a rather dreary thriller with unappealing characters. He was naturally unaware that the story had somehow spawned a genuine Omega Force, this cadre staffed entirely by dark-complected persons. Naturally, in the course of beginning to use their assault capability just as Hawkes-Mitchell had planned it, it had become necessary for the Omega Force to kill off the author himself, the artificer, lest he reveal the linkage between his pulp novels and the planned assault on the PIADC or the Osprey Nuclear Power Plant.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Hawkes-Mitchell said. “I’m going to hang up now.”
“Wait,” I cried. “Just one more question!”
Many points remained to be resolved. Why was our island now central to the Omega Force? Why had I happened to find Hawkes-Mitchell’s all-important piece of fiction on the porch of that house, when the Omega Force would have perhaps preferred that I never find the book? And why did the plot, here in the real world, feature woebegone individuals: a modernist architect, a German barmaid, my learning-disabled son, and an out-of-work surf-casting lobsterman?
I had my face in my hands. And I would have stayed that way for a while were it not that I suddenly felt Skip’s large, meaty palm on my clavicle.
I looked up into his soulful eyes.
“Shall we go for pizza?”
10. On Beach Parties and International Disarmament
There was only one venue on the island for that popular culinary item known as pizza pie, and that was the bar named Dumpling’s. A dangerous location, Dumpling’s, and not simply because of the presence there of sodium and trans fats. Sinister characters lurked in the margins of Dumpling’s. They nursed lethal intoxicants meant to prove, through ingestion, their ability to survive anything, any degradation or humiliation at the hands of the affluent. I should not have gone into Dumpling’s. I was not dressed properly, for one. In any kind of scuffle that would result from our presence, Skip and I were sure to fare poorly. Neither of us was terribly strong, nor were we schooled in the proper sorts of self-defense techniques.
Additionally, my wife had taken the car. And I had given the domestic help the afternoon and evening off. There was no recourse but to walk to Dumpling’s, and as we went, I held tight onto the arm of my son to steady myself. I am sure that in Skip’s view this amounted to a noble responsibility, being able to guide his old father along in the world. As we walked, we played the rhyming game. That is, I allowed Skip free rein with respect to this peculiarity of his character. I would select a word, like storm, and then I would challenge Skip to come up with the greatest number of possible rhymes. Swarm, warm, dorm, and the dazzling fungiform. I even allowed Skip to use the ersatz rhyme of orn, so naturally he scored heavily with warn, torn, scorn, mourn, and, to my horror, porn.