Hush Money

“We could be bold,” Hawk said.

“And if it’s the outfit that sent the well-dressed shooters,” I said, “we could be dead.”

“Or, we could be guileful.”

“Guileful?”

“Guileful.”

“I vote for guileful,” I said.

“Good,” Hawk said, “what you suggest?”

“You don’t have a plan?”

“I come up with the strategic concept,” Hawk said.

“Is that what that was?” I said. “I thought you were just showing off you knew a big word.”

“That too,” Hawk said.

“Okay, let’s sneak around in the woods and see what we can see.”

“Covertly,” Hawk said.

“Of course,” I said. “Covertly.”

Hawk and I were both in work clothes, which meant jeans, sneakers, tee shirt. I wore a blue oxford dress shirt with the tails out to hide the Browning on my belt. Hawk mostly used a shoulder holster. To conceal it he was wearing a gray silk sport coat. He took it off and folded it carefully on the backseat. He had a big.44 Mag under his arm.

“Doesn’t the weight of that thing make you tip to the side?” I said.

“It do,” Hawk said. “But you never know when you might have to shoot an elephant.” Hawk put the car keys over the visor.

“Case we need wheels real quick,” Hawk said. “Don’t want to be looking for the keys.”

“‘Course this could be an outfit of pleasant people who make umbrella stands,” I said.

“With an unlisted number and a private jet,” Hawk said.

“Just a thought,” I said.

We crossed the road and went into the woods. It had that bittersweet scent that the woods often have on a hot day. Except for the whine of locusts, and the occasional movement of the wind off the ocean, it was very still. Pine needles were six inches thick underfoot. We made very little sound as we walked. We walked in a wide circle aiming to come to Last Stand Systems, Inc. from a direction other than the road. It was easy going. There was very little underbrush. It was as if the land beneath the high pines had been carefully cleared. In about twenty minutes we saw the compound. Not much to see. It looked like it might once have been a manufacturing facility that had been recycled. There were three cinder block buildings with those high glass windows that nineteenth-century industrial buildings used to have, the kind that have a fine wire mesh ru

I climbed a tree. From there I could see that the buildings faced onto an open area about the size of a football field. An American flag was on a flagpole in front of one building. A couple of men in dark suits and white shirts came out of the building by the flagpole and walked across the open area and went into the building across the way. I looked down. Hawk had taken a seat under the tree with his back against the trunk and his ankles crossed and appeared to be asleep, though he probably wasn’t.

I sat in my tree some more. There’s something about sitting in a tree when you’re a grown man that makes you feel like a doofus. But it was a feeling I understood, I’d had it before. I sat, doofus-like, and looked at the layout. To my left was a gated entrance with a guard shack ma

As I watched, a man in starched fatigues and wearing a pistol belt strolled slowly along the fence. There was a radio on his belt on the hip opposite the pistol, and a microphone clipped to his epaulets. At the corner he stopped and spoke to another guy with the same equipment who had obviously walked down his length of fence. One of them leaned his hand against the chain link as they talked. Which meant the fence was not electrified. The other two lengths of fence were hidden by the buildings. I watched as my guy turned smartly and strolled back along his fence and, sure enough, met another guard at the other corner. Being a trained observer I concluded that the perimeter was guarded by four men. I watched some more. The guards went back and forth. After about a half hour a squad of four other men in starched fatigues came out of the far building under the direction of another guy and they marched out to change the guard. I sat some more. In the next hour and a half I counted at least twenty men in starched fatigues and sidearms either guarding the perimeter or marching about in the compound in something resembling close order drill. My left knee was begi

“So, Hawkeye,” he said. “What’d you see.”

“Looks like something between an IBM retreat and Parris Island,” I said.

“Got a perimeter guard,” Hawk said.

“I counted about twenty guys in fatigues and sidearms,” I said.

“Don’t seem necessary for a bunch of pleasant umbrella stand makers,” Hawk said.

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

“We tough enough to go in there and roust twenty guys?” Hawk said.

“Of course we are,” I said.

“How ‘bout stupid enough?” Hawk said.

“Sure, but then what? I don’t even know what we’re looking for in there.”

“Same thing we looking for when we drove way the fuck up here,” Hawk said. “We trying to figure out the co

“Oh yeah,” I said. “And we’re doing that because we think it might help us figure out who threw Prentice Lamont out the window.”

“Exactly,” Hawk said.

“Shooting it out with twenty guys may not be the best way to get that information.”

“Specially if only one guy’s got the information and you kill him.”

“A definite possibility.”

“Or we might both get shot to pieces and then the thing wouldn’t ever get solved,” Hawk said.

“Unlikely,” I said. “But not impossible.”

We both looked at the gleam of the white cinder block buildings through the lacy distraction of the trees. The high locust whine was so much a part of the woods that it had become nearly inaudible. The bittersweet smell of the woods was stronger as the sun had gotten higher.

“I think guile is still our best option,” I said.

“So what the guileful thing to do?” Hawk said.

“Go back home, maybe have a couple beers, and think about it,” I said.

“Works for me,” Hawk said.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Heading back to the car we were maybe twenty yards from the highway when we both stopped short at the same time.

“You smell it?” I said.

“Cigarette,” Hawk said.

I nodded. Hawk took his elephant gun from the shoulder holster and stuck it into his belt at the small of his back. He shucked off the shoulder rig and dropped it and moved off to the right. I went left. We emerged onto the highway bracketing the car, Hawk ten yards beyond it, me ten yards this side. There were four of them leaning on the car. They had on uniforms and carried side arms. An unmarked blue Jeep was parked behind Hawk’s Jag. I sauntered toward them with a big friendly smile.

“Hi,” I said. “You waiting for me?”

One of them turned toward me. He was still wearing his hornrimmed glasses and it still made him look smart. Of course, appearances can be deceiving.

“This your car?” he said. After he said it, he stared at me and I could see recognition begin to form behind his lenses.