Northern Exposure

by Michael Kilian

  At the ferry terminal, the youth loped ahead of the crowd to a chained bicycle, unlocked it, and peddled off down Queen’s Quay. Beckett, walking slowly, found a taxi. His two pursuers followed in an old brown American car. When he got out at the campus of Toronto University, they pulled to the curb behind him. Knowing that the youth on the bicycle would shortly be at his destination, a Greek bar on Queen Street, Beckett entered one of the university buildings. It was the last the two men saw of him, though they were only a minute or two behind.

  Marie-Claire, lying in bed indulgently late that morning, had been waiting for the telephone call when it came, thinking it would be Dennis. It was not. The voice was older, American, and educated and refined, but no one she had ever heard before.

  “Mrs. Showers?” Hugh Laidlaw said. “This is Rex Hammond of State. Is Mr. Showers there?”

  “No. He’s gone out of town, on State Department business. What do you want?”

  “Out of town?”

  “I don’t know where. He left a note saying there was an emergency and he had to go out of town on State Department business. He said he’d call later. You say you’re with the State Department?”

  “Yes. The personnel section. It concerns your move to Ottawa.”

  “He said in his note he would be calling his secretary.”

  “Judy Sadinauskas.”

  “Yes. You’re with the State Department? Vraiement?”

  “Of course. When you hear from Mr. Showers, would you have him call me?”

  Laidlaw gave her a phone number, then repeated it after she had found paper and pencil.

  “I’ll have him call you, Mr. Hammond.”

  “Thank you. Have a nice day, Mrs. Showers.”

  They both hung up. Marie-Claire lay beneath her thin sheet a long moment, her index fingers pressed against her lips. The mid-morning heat had brought a trickle of sweat between her breasts. Suddenly, she snatched up the phone again and called the number Laidlaw had given her.

  “Personnel,” said Madeleine.

  “Monsieur Hammond, please.”

  “One moment,” Madeleine said.

  After a lengthy delay, Laidlaw came on the line.

  “Yes?”

  “Monsieur Hammond. It’s Mrs. Showers again. Is there something wrong with our moving arrangements for Ottawa?”

  “Oh, no. Everything is in order. That’s what I called Mr. Showers to tell him.”

  “Bien. Thank you—Monsieur Hammond.”

  Pressing down the disconnect button, she hastily dialed another number and sat up, swinging her naked legs over the side of the bed. She had such beautiful feet. She stared at them admiringly, even after Arthur Jordine had answered the phone.

  “Arthur, Dennis is gone.”

  “And you get angry with me for calling you from the office,” he said.

  “Arthur. Dennis has left Washington. He didn’t say where, just that it was on State Department business. He left a note.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. Unless it’s something to do with the White House, he’s been very secretive about that. Did he say when he’d be returning?”

  “Non. Not a word. He said he’d call me and that he would call his secretary.”

  “Well, it sounds like we have the evening, at least. Shall we go out to the boat?”

  “No, Arthur. I’m very nervous about this. Private detectives, and now this call. Do you know a man named Hammond, Rex Hammond, in your personnel section?”

  “Not off hand, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

  “Would you find out for me?”

  “What?”

  “Find out for me if there is a Rex Hammond, Arthur. I’m very frightened, very frightened. Dennis hasn’t been himself, lately. He’s been drinking very much. I want to see you. Let us have lunch, today.”

  “I’m to have lunch with someone from the antiterrorism section.”

  “Have your secretary cancel it. I need to see you. Twelve-thirty. At Maison Blanche.”

  “And you’ve been complaining about our being too conspicuous.”

  “Twelve-thirty, Arthur. Maison Blanche. I’ll drive down. He left me the car, as always.”

  Marie-Claire was dressed and in her kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee as she read through the front news section of the Washington Post. It was just a few minutes past 11:00 A.M. She refilled her cup and turned to the columns on the op-ed page. The doorbell rang.

  It was Lila Merridew, stunning, as always, in a lemon-colored summer dress, an expensive strand of pearls about her tanned neck, her blond hair absolutely perfect despite the heat.

  “Marie-Claire, thank heavens you’re home. I’m having my board over to lunch today and the salmon I ordered hasn’t come. I have to run to get some more and my car won’t start. May I borrow yours? It’s only for twenty minutes or so. My order got cancelled somehow. I’d call a cab, but I’m so short of time. If it’s no imposition …”

  “Of course,” said Marie-Claire. “Il n’y a pas de quoi. Wait a moment. I’ll bring to you the keys.”

  “This is so kind of you.”

  “It is nothing,” said Marie-Claire. She returned quickly with the keys. “You were so nice to lend us your extra crystal for our last dinner party.”

  “Merci-beaucoup, Marie-Claire,” said Lila, with her Vassar French. She waved a quick good-bye and hurried down the walk.

  Marie-Claire went back to her newspaper. She was well into Joseph Kraft’s column, a discourse upon the widening fissures in the Atlantic alliance, when a sharp, singing explosion shook the house, knocking over glasses on the sink, dropping her spice rack to the floor with a shattering thud. A wisp of smoke drifted past the window.

  Marie-Claire ran to the front door, flinging it open and lunging outside. She shrieked, again and again. On the walk by the curb was one of Lila Merridew’s legs. The Mercedes, its doors, hood, and trunk lid flung open by the blast, was smoldering, little flames licking along the edges of the windows. Clenching her hands, Marie-Claire edged closer, sobbing now. She looked within. Lila’s other leg had disappeared. Her clothes had vanished. Her body beneath her waist, still strapped to the smouldering seat, was blackened. Her arms were thrown outward, her head flung back, her large blue eyes staring upward. Her blond hair was singed, but her face was still perfect. Then, at once, blood began to gush from her mouth.

  Marie-Claire ran back to the house, sobbing and shouting: “He tried to kill me! He tried to kill me!”

  13

  “Now what?” said Thatcher, at the emergency meeting he had called in the first-floor cafeteria at Langley.

  It wasn’t to look like a meeting of any kind, of course. Just a gathering for coffee. Had there been time, Thatcher would have had them gather far off premises, but there didn’t seem to be much time at all.

  “What do we do now?” asked Thatcher. “Declare a balls-up and abort the project?”

  Madeleine was not with them. She had taken a table at the other end of the room, sitting with the top two buttons of her blouse unfastened and her skirt a fair bit above her crossed knees, making a considerable distraction of herself. Few were paying any attention to Thatcher, Laidlaw, and Mendelsohn. Laidlaw himself was not paying full attention to Thatcher and Mendelsohn.

  “I don’t believe it’s that serious, yet,” said Laidlaw, speaking quietly. “The timing has become more acute. Very acute. But it’s still possible. Still imperative, I think. How badly is this out of control?”

  “‘Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out,’” said Mendelsohn, from behind his steaming cup of espresso. “John Webster.”

  “Please, Freddy,” said Laidlaw.

  “Give him a fill, Freddy,” said Thatcher.

  Mendelsohn never used notebooks. He might spend days rummaging bookshelves and old files, or running through computer data banks, but never left any evidence behind of what he had chosen to remember.

  “Dennis Tobias Showers is wanted for questioning in the murder of his
neighbor, Mrs. Lila Merridew, and for the apparent attempted murder of his wife, Marie-Claire de la Boise-Laurent Showers. There are arrest warrants now out for him in Virginia and Maryland as well, though they are probably superfluous. Showers and a Miss A. Reston purchased tickets for a late-night flight to San Francisco and were logged aboard.”

  He pulled down his thick glasses to peer at the others over the rims, his eyes only vaguely focused.

  “All very neat and theatrical, complete to the mademoiselle,” he said. “A bit of post-modernist melodrama, we have here, with a nice Gallic touch. ‘Only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood—sex and the dead.’ William Butler Yeats.”

  “Freddy, stop it!” said Laidlaw angrily.

  “Was there an APB?” Thatcher asked.

  “Eh?”

  “He means All Points Bulletin,” said Laidlaw. “How far has the police alert spread?”

  “Sorry,” said Mendelsohn, with his irritating grin. “These domestic details sometimes elude me, since they’re supposed to be outside our purview. But, no, there has not been an ‘APB’ as yet, though I imagine there shortly will be one. How efficient are the District police these days?”

  “Their long suit is still traffic tickets,” Laidlaw said.

  “How about Customs, or Passport Control?” Thatcher said. “Have they put a stop out at border crossings?”

  “No, but then they have no idea that Showers is going to Canada. Of course, we don’t know for sure that he’s going to Canada, either.”

  “That’s the down side,” Thatcher said. “The guy isn’t even in Canada yet. And he refuses to cooperate with us. You put a murder rap and a fugitive warrant on top of it, and, well, you’ve got a balls-up.”

  “It can still be done,” Laidlaw said quietly. “I will see to it. I’ll require a few things more from you, William, but I’ll attend to this.”

  “You’d better hurry. Ottawa One reported this morning that Harry York has scheduled parliamentary debate on the constitutional amendments. All hell as we know it could break loose on the border in a week.”

  “Also,” said Mendelsohn, “inquiries concerning this matter have been received from Max Diehl at the NSC, the DIA, the NSA, Army G-2, and the U.S. Intelligence Board. The deputy could be hearing from the Oval Office très vite.”

  “I’ll be out of contact by mid-afternoon. Some arrangements are already in place, but I’ll set everything else in motion as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll give you what you need, Hugh,” said Thatcher. “And I’ll give you a few days for start-up. But you better come up with a payoff soon or the deputy will be sending an army up there.”

  “That would be foolish and possibly tragic.”

  “But necessary. Now let’s get out of here. Poor Madeleine over there is wearing out her thighs.”

  Stansfield Joyce met Showers and Alixe at the San Francisco airport, waiting just beyond the security baggage checkpoint, looking unhappy. A few hours later, he was unhappier still. Showers refused the rooms Joyce had reserved for him and the girl and instead insisted on the best hotel in San Jose, the Hyatt. Worse, Showers insisted on checking into the Hyatt then and there, to afford the girl and him an opportunity to “freshen up.” When they finally emerged—he dressed in gray flannels, striped tie, and blue blazer, she in a white sun dress and sandals—they looked more appropriately prepared for a diplomatic garden party than the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office.

  Showers frowned as Joyce snapped open the back door of his nondescript rental sedan.

  It wasn’t that he disapproved of the car, a Chevrolet Citation, although he did, and had remarked to Joyce that he might have gotten something more suitable, undoubtedly meaning something more suitable for diplomatic parties. It was Showers expressing his liberalism. For the ride from the airport, he and the girl had made a point of both sitting up front, Alixe in the middle. Joyce was not exactly one to shy away from the lady’s wonderful, fragrant, and obvious charms, but it was a long drive in traffic on a hot morning down the Bayshore Freeway, and it wasn’t exactly comfortable with three full-sized humans wedged together like 5:00 P.M. passengers on New York’s IRT. In their little subtleties, rich people were more goddamn obvious than they ever realized.

  “Look, man,” Joyce said. “I appreciate it that you don’t want me to look like a chauffeur or feel like a chauffeur, but I really don’t care diddly about that. It’s a long drive over the mountains, and why don’t we just all be comfortable?”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Showers, pushing shut the rear door. “We can all ride in front.”

  “No, man!” said Joyce, pulling the door open again.

  “I’ll ride in front,” said Alixe, going around the rear of the car. “Mr. Showers can be in back. We’ll all have room.”

  Showers finally accepted this, and slid into the rear seat. If he was discomfitted by the arrangement, she made it up to him by sitting sideways and reaching over the seat to hold his hand. And to lean over the seat and look endearingly at him. And to reach and touch his face. Joyce knew they had broken the virginal ice; he just wondered how long ago. He wondered if they had had a Pullman berth on the plane.

  He turned onto the freeway to Santa Cruz, moving rapidly to good speed and keeping it as they headed south through the endless stretching miles of cheek-by-jowl housing developments and shopping centers that had made San Jose one of the country’s major metropolises that was not an actual city. The ridgeline of the coastal mountains could be seen to the right. The mountains to the east were already masked in smoggy haze. California might be paradise, but it was a brown, yellow, dusty one. Between April and October, it might as well be part of the Mexico it had been stolen from.

  “You ever been out here before, Mr. Showers?” Joyce said.

  “Once, a long time ago. At the Monterey Presidio, at the foreign-language school. I had to quickly learn some African languages.”

  “Swahili.”

  “Among others. I’ve forgotten them now. It was in 1964.”

  “I was out here for a year. In the army. At Fort Ord. When I got back from Nam, they put me in command of a basic training company. Were you in the service, Mr. Showers?”

  “No. That was a pleasure denied me.”

  They had passed Los Gatos and the freeway was lifting in sweeping curves into the mountains, into the pine trees, a green relief from the lowland drab.

  “I’ve never been this far north in California before,” Alixe said. “We have friends in Santa Barbara. I visit them occasionally, in the winter. I’m not sure I quite understand the way of life.”

  “There is no way of life here,” Showers said. “Only life. Formless, self-centered, pleasure-oriented, utterly lacking in tradition, value, or point. Gertrude Stein wasn’t talking about Oakland; she was talking about the whole damn state.”

  “No, ‘there’ there,” said Joyce, remembering.

  Showers glanced at him, as though surprised.

  “I thought she was talking about Baltimore,” Joyce said.

  “There’s not a city in California to compare with Baltimore. California is the antithesis of urban civilization. It’s a place for people to surround themselves with playthings, to sit around in the sun, to be amused by their own breathing. When I left, I said these were people who’d be content to spend the rest of their lives lying in pools of warm water. A few years later, they invented hot tubs.”

  “How long were you here?” Alixe asked.

  “Nine months, in aggregate. I was six months at the language school. I came back and spent a long leave here.”

  Alixe rested her chin on her arm, looking at Showers’ eyes.

  “They care a lot about the environment here, Toby,” she said, smiling. “Didn’t that appeal to you?”

  “I met a few forest rangers who cared about the beauty of this place, a few old sourdoughs up the Mokelumne River in the Sierras. If you mean those vacuous, noisy children, who march about with
signs and adorn themselves with jewelry, the worst redneck possum hunter in Virginia cares more about his woods than those people really care about anything beyond their own gratification.”

  “You’re certainly bitter, Toby.”

  “I’m sorry. I have some bad memories. And now I’ll have another. What I understand least about all this is how Felicity came to be here.”

  “A New York City slum makes sense, but California doesn’t?” she asked.

  “If you knew Felicity. Her heart was set on Europe, on France. She had a considerable intellect.”

  “She came out here with some guy,” Joyce said. “A radical dude with an arrest sheet.”

  Showers glared at him, but said nothing. Joyce picked up his notebook from the seat beside him and extended it toward Showers. “It’s all in here, if you want to read it.”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t need to go into every detail, I guess. It was the same scene as New York, only she was busted just once here, on a disorderly. A street rally in San Francisco. Antiwar stuff. She had trouble holding a job. Day-care-center attendant. Nurse’s aide. Waitress. She was a barmaid for a while. She lived all over the Bay Area—Oakland, Berkeley, Frisco, Sausalito, San Jose, and down in Big Sur. The only time she seems to have left was to make a couple of trips up to Vancouver.”

  “What happened to the man, the one she came out here with?”

  “He got busted early on. Federal arms charge, and later a state attempted murder conviction. A lot of the lady’s friends ended up that way, or got wasted. Like I say, man, it was the same bad scene, the same drugs, and bad politics, and violence.”

  They were nearing the summit of the main ridge. The air streaming through the open windows was significantly cooler. Alixe turned to face forward, brushing her blowing hair away from her face.

  “Do you want to hear how she died?” Joyce asked.

  “Your description over the telephone last night will suffice. I just hope it was quick.”

  “Quick enough, but not nice.”

  “Have you seen her body?”

  “No. The law’s satisfied with the ID. They’re holding it for next of kin, which they can’t find, or claimant, which is you.”