Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

But he doubted it.

When he threw back the covers and stood up, his head began to spin again.

In the confines of his holding cell at the Montgomery County Jail, Chapman Davis snapped shut the book he’d been trying to read. He’d gotten through just five pages in the last hour, and he couldn’t recall a thing about any of them. After nearly three days of incarceration, the waiting and the uncertainty were taking their toll.

His lawyer was trying everything to win his release. But attorneys from the Justice Department argued he was a bad risk. Given his resources and the severity of the crimes of which he likely had some knowledge, he probably would flee, they argued, and the courts kept buying that argument. So here he sat, his muscles going to mush, his conditioning going down the toilet.

In the privacy of his own mind, he acknowledged if he got loose, he probably would run. He was in a no-win situation. No one ever would be able to prove he’d killed Parkhall since there was no proof Parkhall was dead, nor could anyone prove he carried the cash that paid for the phony bird evidence. But there was a good chance the Ethics Committee would take Marshall down, and a slimmer but real chance Converse would collapse with him. It would be too easy for too many people to plea-bargain their way to one of the federal golf-club prisons at the price of the skin of their “black boy.” And he had no doubt they would do it.

He threw the book against the cell wall and cursed the stupidity that brought him to this. Then he lay back on his bunk and listened to the shouts and the laughter of children at afterschool play somewhere nearby.

Children were playing outdoors after school everywhere, taking advantage of the warming weather and the lengthening days. As they were playing in Montgomery County, Maryland, so they were playing down in the Tidewater lowlands of Virginia. A few were even playing in places their parents had warned them time and again not to go, areas pocked by mud-filled sinkholes capable of sucking a body into oblivion as fast as a rock would sink to the bottom of a pond.

When something went down in a Tidewater sinkhole, usually it stayed down. Occasionally, however, as flesh decayed and gas built up in body cavities, a carcass would return to the surface, if ever so briefly. The turkey vultures indigenous to the area made the sinkhole region a regular stop on their scavenging tours because more days than not, the remains of some hapless animal would be available for lunch. If there was a little mud with the meat, no matter. The birds’ physiologies could tell the difference, keeping what their bodies needed and excreting the rest.

On this sunny afternoon, two youngsters, ages seven and nine, roamed farther from home than they realized, so engrossed were they in their game of cowboy and Indian. Suddenly the younger one, whose name was Isaac, realized where they were.

“Pauly, we’re not supposed to be here,” he shouted at his friend. “This is where the stinkholes are.”

“Yeah,” agreed Pauly, his eyes wide with wonder. “There’s a big one right over there. Let’s go look.”

“No-o-o!” Isaac objected. “My mama would whup me. We gotta go home.”

“Oh, come on, or are you a scaredy-cat? There’s a buzzard over there eatin’ on somethin’. Let’s see what it is. We won’t get close, or are you afraid I’ll push you in?”

“Oh, Pauly. I don’t wanna go.”

“Then I’m gonna go alone and I’ll tell ever’body Isaac’s an old scaredy-cat.”

Little Isaac made rocking motions, like he wanted to go forward with his friend but he didn’t want to, either. He watched in terror as Pauly got closer.

“Be careful, Pauly,” he shouted.

The vulture in Pauly’s view looked up with its blood-red eyes, then lowered its red head again, correctly assessing the boy as no threat.

Pauly could hear a kind of ripping, slopping sound as the big bird tore at its meal, and his eyes widened in a horror so great it would consume his sleep for months to come.

“Isaac! Isaac! C-c-co-ome here! Quick!”

There was little visible above the surface of the mud, only a head and one grotesquely curled hand. The bird was standing on the head. The eyes were gone, and the holes were filled with mud. The nose was a bloody stump; the vulture had finished off most of it as an appetizer since it was the most prominent feature. The flesh of one cheek was gone, too, and the bird had gone to work on the other, ducking its head to tear away meat and exposing the skull, which gleamed white against the rusty brown of the muddy, untouched places.

“Isa-a-a-ac!” Pauly was about to wet himself, and he grabbed at his crotch to try to stop it. “Isaac! Isa-a-a-ac!”

“Wassa matter with you, Pauly?” his friend asked, so unexpectedly close behind him that the larger boy started in fright. “It’s just a dummy.” The little boy began to chant: “Pauly’s a-scared of a du-u-ummy. Pauly’s a-scared of a du-u-ummy.”

“It’s not a dummy, Isaac,” Pauly insisted in a fear-choked voice so low that Isaac had to strain to hear. “Dummies don’t bleed.”

Isaac looked at his friend, and then he looked closer at the spectacle in the sinkhole. As they watched, the great vulture spread its wings to their full six-foot span and seemed to levitate from the ripped head before it glided directly at the two young spectators.

The boys looked at each other with identical wide-eyed, terror-filled expressions, then turned and ran like hell for home.

“If I woke you, I don’t apologize. This is Harold Marshall.”

Pace had been in a REM sleep cycle, deep in a dream interrupted by the jarring jangle of his telephone. He fumbled for the instrument, fighting not to lose the thread of his fantasy, and thought he mumbled hello. When he heard the identity of his caller, the dream was lost instantly.

“Yes, Senator, I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I didn’t wish to be reached.”

“Then why did you call?”

“To tell you I plan to ask the Senate Ethics Committee for an opportunity to appear before it to answer all questions I deem fit at the earliest possible date. I will request the hearing be public. Then I will leave my fate to Providence.”

“Why would you volunteer to appear?”

“I know a lot of people detest me, Mr. Pace. I am blunt, sometimes condescending, occasionally obnoxious. I have a very short fuse, as your colleague Mr. Brennan can attest. But I am an honest man, and I am loyal. Perhaps in these past weeks, my loyalty has strained propriety, but I don’t apologize. I did what I believed I had to do.”

“When will you make your request to appear?” Pace asked. He was scribbling notes as fast as he could write on a pad he kept on his nightstand.

“Today, although I don’t know when or if the committee will deem such an appearance appropriate. I plan no announcement. I wanted to tell you myself before you found it out from one of the back-stabbers with whom you run.”

“I don’t run with back-stabbers, Senator. I deal with forthright, honest people who feel wrongs have been done.”

“They’re back-stabbers from my point of view.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but I understand.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t understand anything, Mr. Pace. Nothing at all.”

And the line went dead.

Pace replaced the receiver and reached over to turn off his alarm. He wouldn’t need it; there would be no more sleep this morning.

“That was certainly something.” Kathy’s husky voice stated the obvious.