Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Pace nodded and averted his eyes. “Thanks,” he said.

He suddenly felt so weak and disoriented he didn’t think he could stand. He put his head down on his folded arms and tried to make sense of the past week. Had it been only a week? Images dashed around behind his closed eyelids like flies around carrion. The dead Sexton jetliner. Kathy in total despair. His lunch with Mike. Kathy again, always and everywhere. George Ridley. The mess in the main Dulles terminal. The flashing red-and-blue police lights bouncing incessantly off his retinas on Georgetown Pike. The body bags. And faces. The stern cop on the Beltway. Kathy again. Avery, smiling. Paul. Avery, furious. Mike on the last night of his life. Ken Sachs. Kathy, leaning into him, holding him tightly, pulling his face down to hers. Kathy…

The hand on his shoulder was rough. He shrugged it off. It came back again.

“Hey, laddy… Steve, boy… Talk to me, Steve, boy.”

Oh, shit. That goddamned Irish brogue. Go away.

“Boyo, wake up. Yer snorin’ is not doin’ a bloomin’ thing to help concentration around here. Come on, me friend. This is yer old South Boston buddy offerin’ to buy ya a wee beer if you’ll jest lift yer head off yer arms and open yer beady little eyes.”

Pace lifted his head reluctantly and blinked against the bright fluorescent lighting. Had he fallen asleep? He looked at his watch. It was 5:40. If he had dozed, it was for just a few minutes. He stifled a yawn and smiled sheepishly at Brennan, who responded by tugging at his arm.

“Let’s go over to The Grapevine, and I’ll buy you a beer to celebrate the end of this day.” Brennan laughed. “Then I’ll pour you into your car and send you home to bed—or to sleep, whichever you prefer.”

“One beer,” Pace said. “No more. I have plans tonight.”

“It’s a promise.”

Pace called Kathy and told her he’d be home in about an hour.

The Grapevine, as always at that hour, was jammed and noisy, filled with off-duty reporters and press groupies, including some reasonably high-ranking government officials. Each had something to say about the current state of world and national affairs, and everyone tried to say it at the same time. The establishment was laid out in a shotgun design, far longer than wide. The east wall was given to a bar. Every stool under the bar’s padded wine-leather rim had at least one butt on it, and each space between the stools held at least two more. Four bartenders moved back and forth in perpetual motion, passing each other and then doubling back in a ritual dance to alcohol.

The west wall was lined with wine-leather banquettes, each stuffed with more bodies, and in the aisle between the banquettes and the bar—supposed to be kept open for safety reasons—people stood elbow-to-elbow. Waitresses trying to serve the banquettes would turn from the bar, disappear into the crowd and appear again, as if by magic, on the other side to replace stale drinks with fresh and overflowing ashtrays with clean.

Brennan reached an arm over Pace’s right shoulder and pointed to the far end of the bar, where there appeared to be enough room for two more bodies, if the bodies didn’t mind intimacy. Pace turned sideways, slicing his way into small openings between people and pressing his body forward to create openings where none was readily apparent.

“This place is a zoo,” he said when he grabbed a few inches of bar.

“Same every night,” Brennan replied, waving past Pace to attract a bartender. “What’ll you have? I’m buying.”

“Oh, joy and wonderment,” Pace smiled. “Anchor Steam.”

“You’re an expensive date. Remind me never to bring you here again.”

Brennan caught a barkeep’s eye. “Anchor and a Boodles martini, very dry, twist.”

The server turned to fill the order when somebody bumped into Pace’s back. It was to be expected in this crowd so Pace didn’t turn to see the tall, heavily-muscled man shrink-wrapped in tight blue jeans and a turtleneck sweater strained by a size-eighteen neck, thick biceps and a massive chest. Pace wouldn’t have recognized him anyway, but the large man knew Pace well. His name was Sylvester Bonaro. His occupation was muscling people. His recent activities involved driving a ’99 light-blue Ford van with newly acquired damage to the right front side.

Bonaro wasn’t in the bar to drink, although he ordered a Budweiser to avoid looking conspicuous, if it was possible for a man his size to look otherwise. When the beer arrived, he poured half into a glass and then left both bottle and glass sitting on the bar as he turned his full attention to overhearing the conversation between Pace and Brennan.

“Rumor has it you had a rough day,” Brennan said, tilting his martini to Pace in the manner of a toast.

“I’ve had better and hope never to have worse,” Pace replied, ignoring the glass that came with his beer and sipping the Anchor Steam from the sweating bottle. “Avery landed on me hard. Where did you hear about it?”

“From several people, but they only had it secondhand. Something to do with a visit you made to Ken Sachs a wee bit late for the chairman’s taste?”

Pace nodded. “Sometime well after midnight. I was pretty drunk. Woke him up. Accused him of murder. Nothing special.”

“Sounds harmless to me.” Brennan took a sip of his drink. “You sure about Sachs?”

“I was then.”

“Now?”

“I don’t know.”

Pace’s breath caught as images of the lunch at the Dulles Marriott with Mike slammed back at him. Had Mike been right about Sachs being worthy of their trust?

“We’re making a terrible mistake if you’re wrong about Sachs.”

“I’d stake our lives on Ken Sachs being clean.”

Stake our lives… stake our lives… stake our lives… stake our…

The words roared in Pace’s head, louder and louder, until they became unbearable.

“Steve?” He heard the voice close to him and was unsure if it was real or imagined. “Steve, where have you gone?”

He turned and saw Glenn’s face nearly pressed against his own, and the cacophony in the bar flooded in over the memories, burying them in a tide of human small talk. Pace took a long pull at the Anchor Steam, finishing a third of it.

“I think we’d better get out of here,” Brennan said, downing the last of his martini and throwing a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “You’re white to the eyes.”

“They murdered Mike,” Pace said, staring at the bottle in his hand. “They murdered Mike, and they murdered Mark Antravanian to cover up something about the Sexton.” He looked up to Brennan. “They’re not going to get away with it, Glenn.” He set the bottle on the bar and shouldered his way past the Irishman, through the wall of humanity, to the front door.

Two pairs of eyes watched him go. Brennan was simply bewildered. Beside him, Bonaro was frowning deeply, and he acted quickly. He pulled three one-dollar bills from his pocket and threw them on the bar beside his untouched Bud. With his shoulders hunched like a football lineman’s, he bulled his way past the boisterous crowd and followed Pace through the door and into the cover of growing darkness.

Bonaro burst out the door of The Grapevine, nearly knocking down two men and a woman about to enter. Without bothering to acknowledge their incredulous expressions, he strode to the curb and looked up and down H Street searching for a sign of Pace.

There he was, about to enter an alley that cut through to Pennsylvania Avenue. Bonaro suspected Pace was headed for his car and toyed briefly with letting his charge go and reporting in. But he thought it better to see the reporter home, to be certain, and then make his call.