I didn’t have a chance to ask.

“Take it with you,” Buzz said handing me a generous double. “Through the door and downstairs. They’re waiting in the cooler.”

“The cooler?” I asked.

He tilted his head toward the back of the bar. “Nothing to worry about as long as the red light over the door is blinking,” he said. I nodded, sipped the bourbon, and slid off the stool.

It didn’t take long to juice my anxiety once I walked downstairs and pulled on the stainless steel bar that opened the refrigerator door. Six or seven guys stood in front of the cases and kegs that lined the walls. Even with the blinking red light and body heat, the medium-sized room was tight and uncomfortable, retaining its chill. The only thing missing was a slab of dead cow hanging from the ceiling. I pulled my leather tight around my body. And regretted not bringing my gun.

The Avengers wore long-sleeved khaki shirts and khaki pants. A cliche, but a cliche that wasn’t on television and was armed with saps. Blue sat alone at a cheap card table in the middle of the room. He was dressed differently from his crew, wearing jeans and a sweater. His billy club lay on the table in front of him. I gently placed my drink next to it. For a second I questioned my decision to coke up, but knew if it came to using my fists, forenosed was forearmed.

At a nod from Blue, three of the khakis moved in and roughly frisked me, pulling my pen, identification, and notebook from my jacket’s pockets, tossing them down next to the bourbon.

“Where’s your tape recorder?” Blue growled.

“I don’t use them.” I let my mind race. “Makes people uptight. I’d rather take notes.” I looked around the icebox. “No place to plug it in, anyway.”

Blue shrugged and pointed to the seat across from his.

I nodded and sat down.

Blue looked up over my head and I felt a couple of his boys gather behind me. I resisted the desire to turn around, instead found and held Blue’s eyes. “What’s going on here?” I demanded.

“We have a couple of questions, but first I want to look at this.” He lifted the plastic identification very close to his eyes. “It looks real,” he grudgingly said to his friends.

“Of course it’s fucking real,” I said, grabbing it from his hand in a feigned motion of anger. “All you had to do was ask me to show it to you—instead I get cop-house treatment! I’m fucking out of here.”

I started to stand, felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder, and let myself be pushed back into my seat.

“I said a couple of questions,” Blue commanded.

“Ask.”

“What were you doing with the spear-chucker?”

Buzz had saved the glass for me.

“She’s a writer, I’m a writer. She sees me coming out of the bar, bang, wants to know what I’m doing. This is what you got shoved up your ass?”

Blue stuck his face a couple of inches from mine. “I told you this afternoon we watch our backs. You didn’t say nothing about talking to no other writer. Especially a mud.”

I grabbed my pounding nerve endings. “She approached me, asshole, not the other way around. Same as you and Joe. Fuck your freezer, Blue. I’m outta here.”

This time I shook off the hand and turned to face the khaki clad crowd. They looked tense, ready to fight.

“I told you, we have to be careful,” Blue said to my back.

“Yeah, well as far as I’m concerned, you’re too fucking careful.”

“Just tell us what you talked about and that will be it.”

I turned, lifted my drink, and slammed my palm down on the shaky table causing the pen, notebook, and billy club to jump. “I’ll tell you. Get the live beef out and I’ll stay. I’m not here for a Miller commercial.”

I heard some heavy breathing and hoped I hadn’t overplayed. I stared at Blue who finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Everybody upstairs. If I need you I’ll shout.”

There was grumbling and sotto voce protests, still, one by one the overgrown boy scouts filed out of the refrigerator.

Which left me with Blue.

“I don’t like this,” I said.

“Nobody likes nothing right now. You think it’s easy for them to leave me here with you?” As had happened earlier, without an audience Blue’s attitude lost some of its macho. Taking its place was something like worry. He grabbed at a loose thread on his worn wool sweater.

“You gotta understand, I’m new at this. When talking needed to be done it was Sean who did it. Stepping up this way is something I got to do now whether I like it or not.”

“Well, lesson number one is you catch flies with honey, not bazookas.”

Blue scowled. “The way the country is going we need the bazookas.”

“I’m not the whole country. If this is the way you deal with people who want to get your story out, no wonder no one likes you.” I caught my breath, and looked around the fridge. A bright two-hundred-watt bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling but gave off no heat. “It’s cold down here. If you have more questions, ask.”

“What did the mud want?” His voice held none of its earlier threat.

I let my hard-guy recede. “She wanted to know if I found out how to reach you boyos.”

Blue’s face tightened. “And you told her?”

“Of course not. I’m not going to blow an exclusive.”

“Did she see me show up? She wonder what you were doing in the bar for so long?”

I tried to lighten his concerns. “I told her I was drinking. Hell, I have a reputation to uphold.”

A small grimace, maybe a smile, shuddered across his face. “You got any smokes?” he asked.

I pulled the Newports from my shirt pocket and flipped them on the table. Even with three they hadn’t done much of a search, but Blue never noticed. He grabbed the pack, offered me one,and sat back smoking with obvious pleasure.

“You trying to quit?” I asked.

“Sort of. Sean wanted us healthy. No smokes, workouts, shit like that.”

“Why?” I asked as I reached for my notebook and pen.

“He thought the whole country was going soft. Going that way for a real long time. If we were gonna take it back we had to be stronger than everyone else. Strong bodies, minds. He used to tell us The Beatles said it in one of their albums. Something about get back, get back.”

I didn’t think Abby Road had much to do with fascism, but then, I’d been surprised by Manson’s affinity for The White Album. “Who is this ‘we’ you keep talking about?”

Blue sat back in his metal folding chair and took a deep breath. The interview he’d been wanting had just begun. I clicked my pen and leaned over my notebook.

“White people is the ‘we,’” he began. “Ever since the Horns got control of immigration they opened the doors and let in anyone who ain’t White. Browns, yellows, it don’t matter so long as they ain’t really white.”

Blue leaned forward in his chair. “I can still remember when the country wasn’t like this. We had homes where women took care of kids instead of shipping them out, or letting ‘em run crazy. Where sitting at the table eating together meant something. We want it like it was when I grew up. My old man worked near Gary, Indiana. He worked every fucking day and a hell of a lot of overtime. Never missed a shift. We didn’t get rich but we had something. A place, enough food, some spending money.” He stopped suddenly and asked, “Are you writing this down? I ain’t telling you all this for nothing. I want you to understand what’s going on here.”

“I’m getting it,” I said, vowing silently to keep scratching. His sincerity almost made me feel guilty. Almost.

“Good,” he nodded. “Sean never talked about his own life but I think if we want people to understand where we’re coming from they got to remember what they lost.” This was Blue’s attempt to assert his new leadership. He was gonna be plenty pissed when he eventually discovered he’d done it for nothing.

He looked at me with solemn round eyes. “And writer, people already lost a lot. My old man worked his ass off for nothing. As soon as they figured out they could pay muds less, my daddy was history. Let me tell you, you don’t raise no family on waitress tips.”

“He lost his job, huh?”

Blue’s face tightened as he remembered. “He lost everything. We ended up on some relative’s property, living in a fucking barn. No matter how hard we cleaned, you couldn’t get rid of the smell of shit. From what Sean told us, that was about the time it really started getting bad for everybody.”

“What started?”

Blue shook his head slowly and pointed to the refrigerator door. “If you talk to every guy here, you’ll hear the same damn thing. Lives fucked one way or another by the Horns. Their civil rights thing was done to get the muds to worship ‘em. White family after white family pissed on or blown away.” He raised his eyebrows. “Sean said we work together, meet together, pull shit together, to remember how it was to be a family. So we could get back what we all lost.”

I flashed on my own losses but forcibly pushed them away. “And you think it’s the fault of the Jews?” I asked dispassionately.

“Wake up, man. The Horns started with the immigration lawyer thing and then they took over the entertainment business. Especially television and movies. Gave them a chance to put out their bullshit.” He waved his hand. “Sean called it propaganda. See, they started television. Some guy named Smarnoff.”

“Smarnoff?”

Blue shook his head impatiently. “Something like that. What difference does his name make? He was a fucking Horn and he owned television. Newspapers, radio stations, books, everything. But it still wasn’t enough for the cocksuckers. They figured once people caught on they’d be finished. They looked at what happened in Germany and knew they couldn’t control everything by themselves so they started the civil rights thing. Them three Jews who were supposed to be killed in the South.”

I jotted a couple of lines in the notebook. “Supposed to be?”

“Sure,” Blue nodded emphatically. “It helps them get what they want. The Horns make all that shit up. Like the concentration camps.”

“The Avengers don’t believe there were concentration camps?” I flashed on Reb Yonah’s numbers. I didn’t think he branded them himself.

“Look, McMurphy, we ain’t Nazis but they got a bum rap. The kikes pushed their way into power and it was up to the white Germans to get ‘em out. Same as here. I’m not saying they didn’t kill a few. Hell, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. But camps? Fuck, no. That’s the kind of lies the Jew media spread to get people on their side. Made up the stories, pictures, all sorts of shit. Sean said this engineer who studied where the camps were supposed to be can prove there were no gas chambers.”

He looked at me, anxious to assess my response. I kept my head down, scribbled away, seeing myself sitting in the middle of a refrigerator lit by a dangling naked bulb and a flashing red light. And I thought Alice took a pill to get to Wonderland. My synapses were exploding with the last gasps of the cocaine high and Blue’s semi-organized system of ignorance had produced a sweat. Despite the icebox.

“They have that much drag, huh?” I asked, knowing I had to respond. “You guys read up on this?”

“Sean did the reading then taught the rest of us. Now, I got to.” He paused. “The Horns have more drag than you could imagine. See, that’s why we have to keep them off guard. The weird ones with the funny hair on the sides of their head are really the ones in charge. They want everyone to believe in their God called Yahweh. The Jews that look white work for them. But as soon as they take over they’re gonna outlaw us Christians. That’s why we work the Beards over. If we keep them busy they don’t have time for other things.”

“Sean taught you guys a lot, huh?”

“Well, when he understood what was happening he couldn’t just do nothing. See, all of us knew something was wrong but we never put it together. We thought it was us. Sean showed us whose fault it really was.”

“What were you into before the White Avengers?”

Blue looked at the pen in my hand and motioned for me to put it down. “I ain’t gonna talk much about that and I don’t want you to write any of it down.”

I dropped the pen. “Fine.”

“You ever notice that once in a while an armored car gets hit?”

“That’s you?”

He waved his hands. “Oh no, I ain’t saying that.”

But he was and, at first, I didn’t understand why. But he couldn’t keep the pride from his porky face and I finally got it. “You don’t have to answer any of this and it’s not for the story, but I’m guessing you were in charge, not Sean?”

“Bam, bam, take ‘em down quick, get outa there. Leave ‘em with a few knots on their heads, and a couple pounds lighter. Let’s say, one of us did the planning and one of us ran the job.”

“Were you busted?”

“Never.” His barrel chest swelled and his voice filled with pleasure. “Look, before any of us understood this Horn thing we were just angry and acted like it. Stole from anyone. Even people who weren’t no better off than us. Who gave a shit? We never figured we’d have a real chance at things. The dice were loaded but we didn’t know how or who done it. Now when we do something we got a reason.”

“So tell me about the shootings.”

The air went out of him like a snapped popper. “I got nothing to tell. I didn’t even know it was gonna happen.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Sean kept a lot of things to himself…”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he didn’t always tell us what he was going to do. See, Sean wasn’t like the rest of us. He figured we needed a family, but he was different. He learned shit on his own, did things on his own. Offing the Horn was his own thing.”

Blue sounded miffed. “Don’t get me wrong, if he’d a lived he’d a told us his reasons.”

“You’re telling me you don’t know why he shot the Rabbi?”

“I’m telling you he had his reasons. After Sean understood what was what, he never did things wild.” Blue smiled at the memory of Sean. “I’m telling you, McMurphy, he was a genius! Sean could figure out a plan for anything.”

For a second I didn’t recognize my name and almost turned to see if someone else had entered the fridge. But Blue was so intent on his deification of Kelly he didn’t notice.

“I don’t know what happened that night. We were supposed to be laying low. We done a lot of stuff to the Horns since we organized and Sean was worried something negative would come down.”

“What sort of stuff did you do?”

Blue spent the next twenty minutes detailing a long list of harassments: some light, some much more serious and threatening. All done with the purpose of bonding a large old-fashioned white family out of the multi-colored mess they believed America had become. I sat and listened while he regaled me with stories detailing the Avengers’ commitment to scaring the bejesus out of Yeshiva students. I tried to get him to talk a little more about the armored car stickups, but here he balked. He also continued to deny any involvement or knowledge about the Rabbi’s death. He preferred to turn Kelly into a prophet and martyr. A man who stood tall in the cause of White Liberation.

My high was gone and with it any desire for more information. My throat was sore from too many cigarettes and my head felt too big to squeeze back through Alice’s keyhole. I was cold, tired, and disgusted. It was time to leave. But then Blue brought me back to attention. “Why ain’t you writing?” he demanded suspiciously.

I remembered the boy scouts upstairs and worded my answer carefully. “I took down the facts. Listen man, this is my first opportunity to speak with someone who wants to save the country.” I had to keep talking so I threw in, “Now that Communism is gone, you know, it’s easy to let down your guard…”

Blue was suddenly excited again. “Another fucking lie! See, that’s how smart the Horns are. They got the whole world thinking Communism is dead but they’re just keeping it quiet. When they get the chance they’ll shove it right back up our ass!”

I stood. “Look, let me go to work and put an article together.” I paused, picked up my stuff, and shook half my smokes onto the table. “One thing. I thought armored cars were impenetrable. Wells Fargo and all that. I don’t want details…”

“Don’t worry, you ain’t getting any,” he laughed as he scooped up the cigarettes. “If you stake ‘em out real careful, take your time and watch them right, you notice little habits the drivers and guards have.” Blue stood up. “Where they like to stretch their legs, where moving the money goes slow, shit like that. Kelly was a fucking genius when it came to that stuff. The rest is like I told you. Whack, whack, bam, bam. Don’t even have to shoot nobody. Shit, those companies be better off hiring us. Save themselves a couple of bucks.”

“Where did the money go?”

“You gotta live.”

“All of it?”

His voice dropped a notch. “We ain’t the only group defending the country. What we get, we share. Sean took care of all that.”

“You weren’t afraid he’d rip you off?”

Blue’s face darkened. “What are you thinking? We started out as thieves but we ain’t that way now. We pull for each other ever since we understood what was going on.”

He stopped and stared, a mean look in his eyes. “Listen, you better not fuck up this article. If the White Avengers come across wrong, your ass is gonna be in a sling.”

I quickly made amends. “Don’t worry. I understand what it’s like to have your family blown apart, find another, then watch that one go.” I couldn’t believe my words; I had just identified with Blue and his group. “I’ll show you the article before I shop it around,” I added dispiritedly.

His body relaxed. “That’s a good idea.”

“Yeah. So how do I get in touch?”

“Check with Buzz.”

I followed Blue up the stairs. Everyone was bottles and eyes when we came through the door. I made my way through their hostile family. Buzz wanted to know whether Blue had turned the cooler back on but I didn’t wait for the answer. I wanted the chill out, not on.