(Chicago, 8/28/68)
O’Hare was bad. Big arrival numbers, big departure numbers, big get-into-town/get-out-of-town volume. The terminals were refugee camps. The check-in lines and baggage lines were stay-all-day propositions. Tantrums flared. Epithets flew. Little shoves snowballed into fistfights.
News vendors made out. Everyone read the Trib. Dig the Lincoln Park riot. Dig the Grant Park riot upcoming. News pics captured mouths poised to scream.
Wayne read the Trib. Reporters and left-wing priests jostled him. They were baggage-line comrades. They’d spent two hours together. Let’s talk outrage-we’ll be here nine more.
The Trib, page six: “Radicals captured with bomb diagrams. Sedition charges discussed.”
Wayne balled the paper up and tossed it. A dykey nun with a peace-dove button scowled at him. He was trashed. The Golden Cavern meet was two days out. The Grapevine felt imminent.
Cabs dumped outgoing passengers and snagged incoming meat. Wayne glanced around. This one kid looked familiar-the dumb bow tie and crew cut.
Wayne made him. The Miami tail kid, looking raw now. He told Mesplede to clip him.
He didn’t see Wayne. The dykey nun got aggressive. She motioned two Negro nuns to cut in front of him.
Wayne let it go.
(Las Vegas, 8/29/68)
Butterfingers. The wires kept slipping and missing the holes. His hands were that trembly. His brain was that cooked.
Fred Turentine said, “You got the yips, son.”
Crutch tried to re-concentrate. Bug work: suite 307 at the Golden Cavern Hotel. The Otash/Tedrow meet was tomorrow. This was their final spot check.
He pushed wires up the lamp base and crimped them. The pliers slipped. The lamp jiggled and almost toppled. Fred T. went whoa, son.
He killed two men. He wasn’t quite straight with it. The Frogman was back in Miami now. He kept calling him. The phone just rang and rang. The dead spies were Commies and Cuban Cause traitors. They took lives and he took theirs, and that part didn’t hurt. The picture replay hurt. He was zorched then. The replay ran in VistaVision and Cinerama. His world was double-imaged. The pictures re-ran with double clarity and at half the speed.
Fred caught a loose wire and re-taped it. Crutch fumbled the toolbox.
He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t think about his case. He kept looking at the pictures of Joan.
(Los Angeles, 8/29/68)
The ceiling fan fluttered the sheets. The cool air gave them goose bumps. Dwight felt a contraction. He knew why- Eleanora just kicked.
Karen said, “I should be in Chicago. I shouldn’t be in a folding bed in an FBI drop-front.”
She was fuller now. Her nipples were bigger. Her hipbones had disappeared.
“It was bad. I’m glad you didn’t go.”
“What’s-His-Name was at Lincoln Park. He called it a ‘massacre.’ ”
Dwight grabbed his cigarettes. Karen looked tempted. Dwight put them back down.
“Don’t make me jealous, or I’ll hang a sedition case on him.”
Karen laughed. “Did it feel inevitable to you?”
“If you mean preordained and mutually agreed upon, yes.”
“You’re very religious, you know. You understand your personal responsibility to God, but you’re remiss and outright negligent in your secular practice.”
Dwight smiled. “I rely on you for these perceptions. And I quoted you to a man in Chicago two days ago.”
“How did you describe me?”
“As very wise.”
“Not as duplicitous and compromised in my affections?”
“We didn’t get that far.”
Karen kissed his shoulder. “Did you find your infiltrator?”
“Yes.”
“Then something’s wrong.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re tense, but you’re trying not to appear tense. You always do little things with your hands when you’re trying to convince me that things are all right.”
Dwight flexed his hands. His law-school ring fit loose. He was missing meals and running on coffee.
“Okay, you’re right.”
“Is it some bad thing you’ve done or some bad thing you’re planning?”
Dwight gave Karen the look-case closed on that. She rolled onto her back and cupped his hands on the swell of Eleanora.
“I’ve got my infiltrator. He’s brilliantly good, but that’s all I can tell you right now.”
“All right. And now you need an informant.”
“Right. And you know that woman Joan.”
Karen stretched. “I’ll have to ask around. I don’t know her personally. Someone will have to find her for me.”
He felt a pulse on his hands. Soft-like Eleanora had moved more than kicked.
Karen reached for his cigarettes. Dwight grabbed them and threw them on the floor. Karen laughed and made her belly jiggle. Then Eleanora kicked.
Dwight said, “Do you love me?”
Karen said, “I’ll think about it.”