Montezuma’s Revenge

Government. They were all federal employees, but government piped in this respectful tone of voice meant something above them, another agency, the weight of authority visited. So Hawkin had waited and it had done his temper no good at all. Normally a peaceful man, a relatively happy individual secure in his position and getting pleasure from his work, he had now been rudely shocked from his complacency and he did not like it. All morning the man from government had been in sight and, more often than not, showing a greater interest in the manager than in the goods displayed, with those eyes of his, not unlike spotting scopes half hidden under the jungled ledge of his brow, radiating a peculiar piercing power that was continually disturbing and eventually caused Hawkin to brood uneasily and to wonder what crimes he might secretly be guilty of. As noon approached the tension grew and he welcomed the minor relief of correcting an overring on one of the registers. But as he turned away from the machine he started visibly when he discovered the thickset man now standing no more than a foot away from him.

“Your office,” was all that was said and Hawkin led the way in silence, almost eagerly now that the moment had arrived.

“Cigarette?” Hawkin asked, sliding the box across the desk, then withdrawing it and lighting one himself at the solemn shake of the other’s head. “Now what is it I can do to help you?”

“My identification.” With grim precision he extended his hand and flipped open the leather case to disclose the glittering badge inside, a gesture quite familiar to anyone who has so much as ever glanced at a television, then snapped it shut again almost instantly. “Davidson, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I am here on a matter of great importance.”

Behind his calm expression Hawkin’s subconscious hauled up a number of criminal possibilities, visions of all traffic violations, stop lights passed, unthinking expectorations on sidewalks. No, this was foolish, the agent could not be here for minor items like these. Didn’t the FBI handle only major offenses? This thought simply changed the internal display to kidnapped babies, bombed airplanes, stolen cars streaking across state lines, a ghastly parade speeding through his mind. What could he possibly be guilty of?

“Do you mind if I see that badge again?” he asked. Closer examination of the shield, heavy golden metal, deeply embossed, federal bureau of investigation, number 32786, helped not in the slightest and he watched it disappear from sight a second time still no wiser. “Might I ask you what your business is, Mr. Davidson? Something about the staff perhaps?” Hopefully.

The FBI man ignored this weak gambit and removed a sheaf of papers from an inside pocket which he held to the light and proceeded to read from in a cold and courtroom witnessish manner.

Souvenir Shop to be opened in the lobby of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Building.”

“Thank you. I appreciate the offer but I am afraid I must decline.”

“That is unacceptable. Transfer papers are being drawn up—”

“What do you mean unacceptable? I am an adult American and cannot be coerced against my will. I may have been born an Indian but my father left the reservation and saw to it that I received a good education and was drafted early like any other American boy. I’ve done my service. And I like it here.” Volubility drove him to reclessness. “I appreciate the offer but tell J.E.H., thanks a lot, but no thanks.”

Davidson leaned forward slowly, his mouth a tight-clamped slash, his eyes arctic and devastatingly penetrating. “Have you ever been investigated?” The words dropped crackling from his lips, frigid as glacial ice. “That is what you are requesting. A man who rejects an opportunity like this must have something to hide and, I can assure you, we are specialists in uncovering what men have hidden. Everything. Are you concealing something, Mr. Hawkin?”

Tony’s heart gave a great leap in his chest, plunging up against the base of his throat so he could not swallow, had trouble breathing, while at the same instant a speeded-up film of the transgressions of his life rushed by the eye of memory. A seedy hotel in Nome with his captain’s wife, torn-up parking tickets, certain exaggerations and interesting omissions on his income tax returns, unpaid and long forgotten utility bills, a gap in the barbed-wire fence around Camp Upton much used after hours because of its proximity to a nearby tavern; these and others of their kind raced by, minor, perhaps, and were he a Catholic they would be worth no more than a Hail Mary or two or a bit of fasting, but looming large to his lapsed Protestant conscience, growing even larger still in the presence of the dark figure of possible disinterment and retribution.