Shadow of the Bomb (A Snap Malek Mystery)

by Robert Goldsborough

  I called both of these pieces in to the city desk, then broke for lunch. "This joint is still ten degrees too cold," I said to Waldron as I headed out the door to the University Tavern.

  I placed my hamburger order with Chester, and had been seated at the bar for about five minutes when the natty Edward Rickman came in.

  "I was hoping to find you here," he said, settling in next to me.

  "Most days that's a pretty good bet. What's new with you?"

  "Well, there's some rumblings," he said as Chester put a cup of coffee in front of him.

  "Like what."

  "I was in my office this morning–actually, it's more of a cubicle, with walls that don't quite reach the ceiling. And I heard a conversation some distance away that wasn't meant for my ears, I'm sure."

  "Go on."

  "I recognized only one of the voices for sure, a colleague in the department named Foster, who I think is working at least part of the time in the Met Lab. Somebody else, I have no idea who it was, had come into his area, which is three cubicles away from me, and said 'Tomorrow's the day.'"

  "What else?"

  "That's all–just 'tomorrow's the day, 6:00 p.m.'"

  "What do you think it means?"

  "That whatever they've been working on in secret is about to crystallize."

  "I still don't get it."

  "Neither do I, totally," Rickman said, "but I think it's got something to do with developing a nuclear reaction, which is frightening. I know the time, but what I don't know is the place."

  I drank coffee and set the cup down, looking at the row of liquor bottles on the back bar. "I think I may know," I told him.

  He looked surprised. "Really?"

  "Stagg Field."

  "What! There are some squash courts down underneath the stands, but I don't think they're being used anymore. The place is deserted."

  "Exactly. Sounds like an ideal location for something secret."

  "You're just guessing."

  "Not entirely. I walked over there yesterday because of something Bergman had said. The place is being guarded by soldiers. I tried without success to talk one of them into letting me inside, and while I was there, three men showed badges and were allowed to go through the gates and on in. One of them was Enrico Fermi."

  "I'll be damned!"

  "I'd give odds that whatever's going to happen tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. is going to happen somewhere inside that old heap of a stadium."

  "You're really something," Rickman said to me in a voice tinged with admiration. "I've been around this collection of Gothic buildings for years, know a lot of people, know where quite a few bodies are buried and where some of the skeletons are, and you've only been around here–what?–a few weeks, and you already know more than I do."

  "Just about this one thing," I told him, "and I'm not one-hundred-percent positive about that."

  "What are you going to do?" Rickman asked as Chester refilled his cup.

  I threw up my hands. "What can I do? Tell the police? It doesn't sound like anything illegal is going on. Tell my newspaper? Hah! If there is a weapon being developed, they're sure as hell not going to print anything about it and reveal some sort of military secret in the process. We got into enough trouble over that Japanese code business, even if we were cleared by the government after an investigation. The Colonel may not be overly fond of F.D.R. and his administration, but he is above all a loyal American."

  Rickman stared straight ahead, resting his chin on his hands. "I don't think I want to be anywhere near this campus tomorrow night," he said soberly.

  I had my own idea about that.

  Wednesday was about as dull as Tuesday as far as my beat was concerned, and the time seemed to drag.

  "Seems like you're looking at your watch every ten minutes," Waldron observed after I'd phoned an item to the city desk about a bookie joint raid on South Halsted. "Got yourself a hot date tonight?"

  "Not exactly," I said, grinning. "I'm not quite sure what to call it."

  "Well, may you enjoy yourself whatever it is," he said, turning to answer his phone.

  At five o'clock, I left the Hyde Park precinct and strolled over to the University Tavern to have a beer. I needed one, and just one, to settle my nerves. Chester apparently had the night off, and an older woman with hair tinged with gray poured me a draught. Most of the stools were empty and she was in a chatty mood, so I became her target.

  "Business is slow so far tonight," she said, passing a rag over the surface of the bar. "Maybe people's beginning their Christmas shopping already. Think so?"

  "Could be," I allowed. "I won't begin thinking about that for at least another week or so."

  "Me too. Anyway, I ain't got that many presents to buy. Husband's dead, daughter in Colorado has just the one kid, my little granddaughter, and that's about it. How 'bout you?"

  "Pretty much the same. No wife, teen-aged son."

  "No girlfriend?"

  "No," I said. "Although there's someone whom I'm getting interested in."

  "Well, if you want her to be interested in you as well, you might consider getting her at least a small gift," she said with a chuckle. "It can't hurt, now, can it?"

  "You make a good point," I told her, as I ordered another beer.

  It was past 5:30 when I left the U.T. and headed west on

  57th Street. The grandstands on the east and west sides of Stagg Field loomed, darker even than the dark skies. But for the moment, it was the lower south end-zone bleachers that interested me. I had noticed on my previous visit that there was a gap in a fence where those end-zone seats almost joined up with the towering east stands. I had a flashlight, but my eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough that I didn't need to turn it on, not that I would have anyway. The surface of the old field was uneven and overrun with weeds. Moving toward the west stands, I gingerly picked my way across the broad expanse where the likes of Walter Eckersall and Jay Berwanger once had romped in front of thousands of cheering Maroon fans and where Red Grange had starred for the visiting University of Illinois team.

  Halfway up the stands, a series of openings led to tunnels that slanted down toward street level. I knew these well, having ushered several times at one of them near the south end of the stadium. It was to that opening that I went, stepping carefully up the tiers where seats had once been. The opening had been boarded up, but not securely. With some pulling and prying, I was able to pull the plywood board loose, thankfully making almost no noise in the process. I stepped into the darkened tunnel, and was forced to use my flashlight.

  The ramp sloped down to a catwalk, and apart from the darkness and lack of humanity, the gray underbelly of the stadium was much as I had remembered it from those festive fall afternoons more than two decades ago. I was glad to have worn soft-soled shoes as I made my way silently along the concrete. I stopped and listened for sounds. Nothing.

  Walking farther north under the stands, I played the flashlight back and forth on the catwalk ahead of me. Then I heard something. Conversation? I moved ahead, switching off the light as my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness.

  Yes, it was voices, and they were getting gradually clearer as I moved ahead. Then I saw a sliver of soft amber light slanting across the concrete hallway several yards ahead of me.

  The light was coming through a window-like hole about three feet square in the brick wall. I stopped short of it and edged forward slowly. Keeping back from the opening so that I was in the shadows, I looked down into a room that was about two stories high. My opening was at ceiling level, giving me an excellent vantage point.

  Slightly below me was a balcony on which about forty people clustered, only one of them a woman. They apparently had been there for some time and were talking quietly among themselves. They all had their backs to me and were looking down onto the floor of the shadowy room, which was about ten feet below them.

  The object of their attention was a bulky square column of wooden timbers and what looked like black br
icks, which nearly reached the ceiling. The column was enclosed on three sides by a sort of fabric shroud. At the east end of the balcony, four men gathered around what appeared to be a control panel. One of them I recognized as Enrico Fermi.

  There was only one man on the floor of the room. "All right, George," Fermi called down to him. "Pull it out another foot." The one called George pulled a rod out of the bulky column. "This is going to do it," Fermi said to the man next to him. "Now it will become self-sustaining. The trace will climb and continue to climb. It will not level off."

  Fermi turned away then and started fiddling with a slide rule. After about a minute, he closed it and turned to the onlookers with a smile. "The reaction is self-sustaining," he announced in a quiet but firm tone.

  Everyone then grew silent for what seemed like a half hour as Fermi and the others around him watched the controls. Twice I was able to stifle a cough, and my feet were complaining about my having to stand for so long. "Okay, that's it," Fermi said. Soon all those on the balcony were talking and smiling, and then they broke into spontaneous but respectful applause.

  One man stepped forward from the little crowd and held out a bottle of Chianti to Fermi. "For you, sir," he said in an accented voice.

  "For all of us," Fermi replied, beaming. Quickly, paper cups materialized and the Italian was pouring small portions of the wine into each of them. There was no toast, but when Fermi held up his cup, they all drank to what one man termed "a truly momentous day."

  It was obvious that whatever I had witnessed was a success, and that the experiment was over. People began to leave the balcony, talking in excited tones to one another. I walked silently back the way I had entered. My eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, so I had no need of the flashlight.

  I picked my way carefully down through the grandstands to the field and headed back southeast. Just as I was about to step through the opening between the east and south stands and onto the

  57th Street sidewalk, I saw a movement to my left, but by the time I turned in that direction, it was too late.

  Chapter 21

  The rope or cord or whatever it was dug into my neck before I realized what was happening. I got the fingers of both hands under it, but the leverage was too great.

  "So, Mr. Malek, nosing around where you shouldn't be. A very bad habit."

  "You!" I managed in a croaky voice as I tried to break free.

  "Reporters!" The voice behind me was disdainful. "Bunch of frustrated gossips, every one of you. Just interested in getting the story, not in anyone or anything else. And not interested in the harm it might do."

  "I didn't get any story tonight," I rasped in a voice I barely recognized.

  "Whether you did or not is immaterial, because you won't ever be able to write it." With a yank, the cord tightened, and I could feel myself losing consciousness. My assailant was behind me, and my arms were useless, even if I had tried to pull them away from my neck, where the cord was biting into my gloved fingers.

  I remember thrashing around, and not much more. I looked down and saw the gray concrete of the sidewalk below just before I was thrown forward violently with a great weight on top of me. I thought I heard a groan, but it might have been me.

  It didn't seem like a bed, but it was comfortable, and I had no desire to get up. However a voice, a familiar voice, was insistent. "Come on, Snap, come on." A cup of water was pressed against my lips and I drank, although it hurt like the devil to swallow. I slowly opened my eyes and found myself looking up into the large, ruddy, and indescribably welcome face of one Fergus Sean Fahey.

  He was leaning into the back seat of a car, where I was lying. "Thought we might have lost you there for awhile," he said gruffly. "Can you sit up?"

  I hurt in about half a dozen different places, including my left cheekbone, which apparently had made contact with the sidewalk, both hands, one leg, and of course my neck. But I was able to lever myself into a sitting position. I peered out into the darkness.

  "Where are we?" I whispered.

  "You are in the back seat of a cruiser, and we're on

  57th Street near Stagg Field. See that fellow there?" He gestured to a young man on the sidewalk talking to a uniformed cop and occasionally looking in my direction with a worried expression. "What about him?"

  "You owe him your life, Snap," Fahey said. "He was walking along on the other side of 57th and saw what was happening to you. He came up behind the guy and landed hard on him, and then all three of you toppled over onto the walk. Your strangler was in the middle, like a slice of ham in a sandwich, and had the wind knocked out of him. That's when the young guy, he's a junior at the university, kicked him in the balls–hard–and called for help.

  "A cruiser got here a few minutes later. The driver knows a little about first aid and checked you out. You were unconscious on the pavement with a cord around your neck. Luckily, it had loosened when you all fell, and our man said he could see that you were going to be okay. I got called at home–I live over in Bridgeport as you know–and it isn't that far away. I've been here maybe twenty or so minutes. That was long enough to talk to someone who's all but confessed to the murders of two professors and the attempt at killing a reporter for the Chicago Tribune."

  "And just where is our lunatic?" I asked in my still-hoarse voice.

  "Right over there, in that squad car on the other side of the street," Fahey said, gesturing with a thick forefinger.

  I looked across the street. The dome light was on in that cruiser, and it cast an eerie glow on the profile of Chester, the University Tavern bartender, who was sitting in the back seat with a uniformed officer. His arms were behind him, suggesting that he was cuffed. Those beefy hands had done enough damage.

  "Yeah, I recognized the bastard's voice as he was trying to strangle me. But why, Fergus? Why me and why those two profs?"

  "He babbled like a goddamn brook, first to the guys in the cruiser and then to me. It was almost like he was glad to be caught."

  "Maybe he was. Tell me about it."

  Fahey nodded grimly. "As you may know, our man Chester–last name Waggoner–has a son in the Navy. Chester's divorced, by the way. His wife took off years ago and he raised the boy alone. He is absolutely obsessed about the kid getting killed in the war. Sounds like that's all he thinks about."

  "So?"

  "I'm getting to it," Fahey said. "Being a barkeep, he hears a lot of conversations. People tend to talk in bars, sometimes too much."

  "As in 'Loose lips sink ships'?"

  "Right, and they tend to forget that the bartender is even there. He becomes like a piece of the furniture. Same way with waiters. It seems that Chester had some idea that an important weapon was being developed down here, and he was all for it. Anything that could win the war for us–and the quicker the better–would bring his son home safely."

  "And?"

  "And he said Bergman often talked too much about his work on the weapon when he was in the bar. It really riled him, thought there might be spies around. Felt the prof was endangering security."

  "So he killed him?"

  "Yep, went to Bergman's apartment, and the guy let him in. Why not? He knew the bartender and didn't have any reason to fear him. Chester doesn't have any remorse at all about it. And this is the same guy who, when one of my men interviewed him right after the murder, praised Bergman as a wonderful fellow."

  "Yeah, come to think of it, Chester lauded Bergman to me as well," I told Fahey. "Had me fooled. Then what about Schmid?"

  "That's a horse of a different color. Chester had heard some other faculty member in the bar kidding him about being a German."

  "I heard about that, too. But he was Swiss."

  "Chester didn't think so. He got it into his head that the guy was a Nazi spy."

  "Screwy. What about me?"

  "Chester has good ears. He heard somebody telling you yesterday that something big was going to happen tonight. And he also heard you talk about Stagg Field, so he pu
t two and two together, got four, and followed you, both to and from the field. He figured you were going to write about whatever had happened in there."

  "There was no possible way I could have written about what I saw, even if I understood it."

  "Yeah, but this Chester of ours, he didn't know that. He thinks that all newspaper reporters are amoral and are more interested in getting stories than they are patriotic. He was determined that no word was going to get out about the weapon, even though he himself doesn't seem to have any idea what the thing is."

  "Nor do I, for that matter, and I actually was present a while ago in a place where I shouldn't have been."

  "I don't want to know about it," Fahey snapped.

  "That makes two of us. Is the FBI here now?"

  The chief allowed himself a brief smile. "No. And I'll call them when I'm good and ready."

  Chapter 22

  The tricky part was the coverage. The last thing any newspaper reporter wants is to be a part of the story himself. How was the Tribune going to write a piece that involved me directly? And how would we tiptoe around the business about the secret weapon?

  The next morning, I was ordered to report to the managing editor's office in Tribune Tower. Pat Maloney greeted me cordially, but with reserve.

  "Well, Mr. Malek," he said, sitting behind his desk as I took a chair in front of it, "as you know, the police have released very little information on the capture of the Hyde Park murderer, which explains why our story this morning, and the Sun's as well, are so brief. I know this man Waggoner, who by the way has confessed to both murders, was caught while trying to strangle you, but I want to know why."

  I had decided to make no mention of my trip inside Stagg Field, and since Chester didn't know exactly where I had been or what I had seen, I felt that my visit would never come to light. "I don't know myself, sir. Since I'm the only reporter who has been down in Hyde Park regularly throughout the period when these professors were killed, I can only assume that he felt I was suspicious of him."