«Fascistas!» screamed an elderly bearded Zorba from the table nearest the rear counter. «Look! He signals the Germans!»
As one, the former overage partisans from Salonika stumbled forward to attack and capture the hated enemy of fifty years ago even as Sam’s two guards rushed to his side, their weapons drawn. The object of the aged Greek warriors’ assault slashed his arms and kicked his feet out at his attackers, parting them with a certain professional expertise, and raced to the door, stopping just briefly enough to reach into a fishtank by the entrance.
«I know that man!» yelled Devereaux, breaking away from the grips of his protectors. «He wore a swastika on his collar! I saw it when we were in the elevator!»
«What elevator?» asked the Scandinavian cohort.
«The one we rode down on from the office!»
«I didn’t see no colored swastikas in the elevator,» proclaimed the Polish contingent.
«I didn’t say color, I said on his collar!»
«You talk funny, you know?»
«You hear funny, have you ever considered that?… He’s closing in, I can feel it!»
«Feel what?» asked Knute.
«The Titanic. He’s on his disaster course—for me—I know it! He’s the most devious son of a bitch that hell ever created. Let’s get out of here!»
«Sure, Mr. D. We’ll pick up the porterhouses at that meat market in Boylston and head right to your place.»
«Hold it!» cried Devereaux. «No, we won’t… Give your coats to a couple of those fellows over at the tables and pass out a few hundred dollars to convince them to get into Aaron’s limo and be driven around the harbor… You go out first, Knute, and tell Paddy to drop them off at some gin mill on the way to the Pinkus house and I’ll meet him there. Stosh, you call for a cab, and we’ll coordinate the whole thing.»
«This all sounds crazy, Mr. D.!» said Stosh, taken aback at Sam’s sudden tone of authority. «I mean, sir, it doesn’t sound like yourself … sir.»
«I’m going back in time, Stanley, and I was taught by a master. He is closing in. I really do know it. But he made a mistake.»
«What was that … sir?» asked Knute.
«He used a real U.S. Army man to do his dirty work. The uniform was plucked like a chicken, but did you notice the posture, the clipped hair on the back of his neck—that bastard was government issue!»
«Loco man, where are you?»
«Around the block, stuck in the goddamned traffic! Which one are you?»
«Desi-Dos. Desi-Uno is wid me.»
«Hello, loco man. You are crazier than a bunch of coo-coo parrots.»
«What’s the on-scene evaluation?»
«Cut the crap, man, I got almost killed!»
«A firefight?»
«Wid fish? Don’t be dumb … wid crazy old men wid beards who don’t speak no h’English.»
«You’re not making sense, D-One.»
«There h’ain’t a lot of that goin’ around. Specially wid the tall skinny gringo you got a bad thing for.»
«Be clearer, Corporal!»
«He sent some old men away in the big black car wearing silly clothes—he thinks we don’t catch on. He’s one dumb gringo!»
«Catch on to what?»
«He’s waidin’ for annuder car. One of his amigos is standing in front, lookin’ around.»
«Goddamn, I’ll never get back there in time. We’re going to lose him!»
«Not to worry, loco man—»
«Not worry? Every hour counts!»
«Hey, man, how far do these liddle radios go for talkin’?»
«They’re military-cellular megahertz frequencied. Up to a hundred and fifty miles over land, twice that over water.»
«We h’ain’t goin’ swimmin’ in no cars, so everything’s h’okay.»
«What the hell are you talking about?»
«We’re gonna follow the gringo and his amigos.»
«Follow …? For the love of Caesar’s legions, in what?»
«Desi-Dos already hotwired a nice Cheffy. Not to worry, we’ll stay in touch wid chu.»
«You’re stealing a car?»
«Hey, we don’ steal nudding. It’s like you say—good estrategia. Right, loco man?»
Paddy Lafferty was definitely not amused by the three bearded, elderly Greeks in the back of the Pinkus limousine. One, they smelled like a combination of dead fish and baklava; two, they kept turning on every switch they could find, like mental cases in a Video World; three, they looked ridiculous in the ill-fitting jackets belonging to Sam, Stosh, and Knute—especially with their beards half-covering the lapels; four, there was a distinct possibility that one of them had blown his nose—twice—on the velour window drapes; five—oh, hell, what was the point? He’d have to do a complete detail job on the car before Mrs. Pinkus stepped into it.
It wasn’t that Paddy objected to what Sam was doing; actually, it was kind of exciting and surely broke up the monotony of his daily driving schedule, but nothing was really clear to Lafferty. In truth, the whole truth was known only to the Devereaux boyo and Mr. Pinkus. Apparently, Sammy had been mixed up in some terrible shenanigans a few years ago and now someone was coming after him to settle a score or two. That, of course, was enough for Paddy; he was very fond of Devereaux, even though the hotshot lawyer could be a little squirrelly at times, and anybody who knew the name of one of the army’s great men, General MacKenzie Hawkins, was someone sort of special in Lafferty’s eyes. Too few people these days, especially the yuppie types, paid the respect due the great old soldiers, so it was nice to know that among Sam’s qualities was a regard for the country’s true heroes.
All this was on the plus side for Mr. Pinkus and his favored employee, but what wasn’t so plus was the information Paddy felt they all should be given. For instance, who was after Sam, and why, and what did they look like? Surely the answers to these simple questions were vital to Devereaux’s protection. Well, not necessarily the why, because that could be a legal thing, but the who and what the hell they looked like were pretty damned important. Instead, all they were told was that Sam would know, Sam would raise an alarm the instant he recognized the bastard or bastards coming after him. Well, Lafferty had never been an officer, but even a combat sergeant knew a short, proper response to that kind of reasoning. As that great soldier Mac the Hawk might have said: «You don’t make a primary target one of your forward scouts.»