Sometimes he felt he was scrambling up an impossible slope or being made, like Sisyphus, to fulfill a horrible task. You could not cover everything, you could not create a blueprint that would account for every single contingency. Poor Ted.
“I think we can assume that Hollander has some vital information on Asterisk,” he said. “I think we can also assume that he means to go public with it eventually.”
“Nobody would print such a thing,” Nicholson, somewhat shocked, said.
“Wrong,” Dilbeck said. “You have an underground press in this country, a fact that may have escaped your attention. You have alternative news media. If Hollander went public, he would find plenty of takers.”
“You’re ruling out the Soviets?” Whorley asked.
“In Ted’s case, yes.” Dilbeck felt his shoulders sag. He badly needed to be home, in bed, dreaming. Away from all this. Away. This was the moment he hated. “You’re all agreed to leave this with me?”
The other faces nodded. Mob rule, he thought. The committee and the donkey. The whole and its parts.
He looked to the opposite end of the table. “Congressman?”
The congressman also nodded. As chairman of the House Science and Astronautics Committee he had some pull with this crew.
“I agree,” he said. “Deal with it as you like, Dilbeck.”
“I will,” Dilbeck said. He turned his face away from the congressman. It had been obvious to him for some time that Leach was a dying man. So are we all, he thought, so are we all dying men.
“Thank you for your confidence,” Dilbeck said in a hollow way, and gathered his papers together. The ball had been already set rolling; and even if they had disagreed he wasn’t sure he could have stopped its momentum anyhow.
It made Tarkington sick. Ted Hollander, Not Ted Hollander. He had had to ask Sharpe three times if there was some misunderstanding. There was none. Ted Hollander. What the fuck was going on? He got out of the Catalina. Lykiard emerged a moment later, having taken a length of nylon rope from the glove compartment. They stood in the rain outside the apartment building. This was no Nazi, Tarkington thought. This was no funny Greek patriotic business, dead of night, blow away a couple of Gestapo babies. This was Ted Hollander.
He stared gloomily through the rain. Christ was not in his heaven tonight. Jesus, he thought. Hollander had stood by him during that whole London business when everyone else was screaming for his head or his resignation, preferably both. Even Lykiard, with the soul of a barracuda, even the Greek had to feel some twinge.
Holy fuck. His stomach was going to turn. He had taken more white crosses and he was jangling, sick and jangling. He beat his fist into the open palm of his hand and watched Lykiard stick the sliver of rope into his coat pocket. The fucking Greek, no feelings, nothing in his heart.
The Greek nodded.
A car had drawn up outside the building. He saw the familiar figure of Hollander get out, slam the door, move toward the entrance-way. According to Sharpe it was apartment number thirty-six. Hollander had some cutie stashed away up there. Which figured, Tarkington thought. The wife was long since gone. It was an emptiness that Tarkington, in a dulled way, understood.
I can’t hack this, he thought.
The Greek had already begun to cross the street. The rope in his pocket. Hand over the rope. Lykiard’s eagerness was revolting, loathsome. Oh, shit, Ted, what have you done to bring this on yourself? He put his fingers inside his jacket to the holster. Pray you don’t need to use it. Pray the Greek can do it fast with his nylon doodah.
He followed Lykiard. It was warm inside the building. You climb the stairs, make believe it’s a stranger you’re going to see. To eliminate.
Ted, sweetheart.
They used the stairway, reached the third floor.
“Lykiard, wait,” Tarkington said.
The Greek paused. He turned to Tarkington, who saw nothing in those eyes but hardness. He said nothing. He looked up the stairwell. At the very top there was a black skylight smeared with rain. A night like this, Tarkington thought. Fuck it all. You had to feel sick.
They went along the corridor. Thirty, thirty-two, thirty-four.
Thirty-six.
Yeah, Tarkington thought. To be an insurance salesman right now. Excuse this late call, my dear fellow, but your policy contains a slight anomaly.
Your expiration date has been somewhat altered.
Christ on crutches.
“Wait,” he whispered to the Greek. But the Greek wasn’t much good at waiting.
She was asleep. Hollander bent over, kissed her lightly. He wondered how many had been here tonight. How many had come and gone? He took off his jacket. He hung it on the back of a chair. She didn’t wake. He went into the kitchen. He turned on a light, looked at the messages on the blackboard. Dave 12:30. Cancel karate. Susie’s answering service 342/2050. At least she didn’t walk the streets, it hadn’t come to that. What was the phrase they used? An escort service? Lonely businessmen burning with lust at conventions in slick hotels. Out-of-town strangers, carrying a telephone number furtively tucked inside their billfolds all the way from Reno to D.C. It was hardly more than one a night and, on some nights, not even that. What did it matter to him? He would have vanished out of her life soon enough. Time would pass. Things would continue. It didn’t matter.
I knew him intimately, I didn’t think he was capable of such an act. They would interview her. She might even make money. I was a traitor’s mistress. He took off his shoes. He opened the refrigerator and found a half-empty bottle of retsina and he poured himself a small glass. It tasted sour. He would have to get used to vodka, there was nothing else for it.
The right thing, he thought. It was too late for doubt.
Too late for that.
He raised his face. Someone was on the other side of the door. In the corridor. He went quickly and quietly into the bedroom and woke the girl.
“Ted,” she said. She put her arms around his neck. He drew away from her and put a finger to his lips.
“Sshh,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He put his hand over her mouth. Say nothing.
He went into the sitting room and sat in the darkness.
From the pocket of his pants he took out a switchblade knife and released the spring. He waited. He stared at the door. The girl appeared in the bedroom doorway, drawing a nightgown over her shoulders; a flimsy garment. It would flutter hearts in Cedar Rapids.
He motioned her away.
She stood, with the light falling behind her, and looked at him in a puzzled manner.
“Ted—”
He saw the front door handle turn. They were at the lock. He could hear the faint scratch of metal on metal, the tumblers of the lock clicking. He got out of the chair.
“Go back to bed,” he told the girl.
She was staring at the doorknob. “Ted,” she whispered.
The door opened.
He recognized the ropeman, Lykiard, and behind him, moving as slowly as ever, Billy Tarkington. Lykiard had the nylon taut between his two hands, the hands extended. The Greek was strong.
He came forward.
He stepped into darkness.
Grunting, Hollander thrust the blade upward between the ribs, dead into the chest cavity. In the bedroom doorway the girl was retching. The Greek went down on his knees and Hollander reached across the space in the dark and seized the hair and snapped the head backward, pushing Lykiard aside.
“Tarkie,” he said.
Tarkington stood with his hands at his side.
“Ted, look,” Tarkington said.
“Orders,” Hollander said.
“Fucking orders,” Tarkington said.
Hollander saw terror in the fat face.
“What’s it going to be, Tarkie?”
Tarkington looked at the Greek. “I didn’t want this, Ted.”
“You take orders, that’s all you do, Tarkie. Don’t ask questions.” H
ollander felt a curious stabbing pain in his side, a stitch, he was beyond this kind of exertion. His lungs worked furiously. His eyes, there were dark spots floating before his eyes.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Tarkington said.
“No,” Hollander said. “What’s it going to be?”
Tarkington glanced at the girl. Hollander’s cutie. She had her hand across her lips. He looked down at the Greek who was staining the rug. Old Ted; you had to hand it to him, he still knew the moves, coming up through the darkness before the Greek knew the time of day.
When he spoke his voice was shaky: “Ted, listen—”
“I could kill you,” Hollander said. “Before you had time to reach your holster, I could kill you.”
It was bluff, pure bull, Hollander felt weak, all his strength draining out of him.
“Or you could drag your dead friend out of here, go back, make up some convincing fiction, and give me a little time.”
Tarkington had thoughts of death. The girl in the doorway moved, went out of his vision; he heard water run and a toilet flush. He could, he supposed, do what Hollander wanted. He could do that. It was a problem with Sharpe.
“What do I say to Sharpe?” Tarkington asked.
“That’s your business,” Hollander said.
Tarkington looked at the dead man. He was glad it wasn’t Hollander.
“Make it up, Tarkie,” Hollander said. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”
“No,” Tarkington said. He reached down, felt for the Greek’s pulse. Still and silent.
“Take him,” Hollander said.
“Okay.” Tarkington got down on his knees. He wasn’t even sure he could drag Lykiard, never mind get him down several flights of stairs.
The alternative was to go for his holster.
But Ted: Ted was too fast. Ted still knew his stuff.
“Okay,” he said.
“Go someplace, fire your gun a couple of times,” Hollander said. “If Sharpe wants to know, you can always say you took a couple of quick ones at me while I was running away.”
Hollander waited. He wasn’t sure that Tarkington would go for it; he was counting on the fat man’s inborn fear. Tarkington straightened up, dragged the Greek by the heels toward the door. The toilet flushed again.
Hollander held the knife distastefully. In the doorway, Tarkington paused, sweating. He was already thinking of Sharpe, Sharpe’s face, the whole fuck-up he would have to suffer through. The holster, he thought. Would there be time?
He knew there wouldn’t be before Hollander was on him with the knife.
“Maybe,” Tarkington said. “Maybe we’ll run into one another again, huh?”
“I doubt it,” Hollander said.
Tarkington looked down at the Greek a moment. “I’m glad you got him first, Ted. I’m glad about that much.”
2
The Post’s editorial was sharply critical. Thorne cut it out and put it aside. Maybe, maybe not, he thought. It was headlined “Appealing to Nobody.”
President Foster, in attempting to be all things to all men, runs the grave risk of being nothing to anybody. It would probably bring Bannerman down on his head, as well as Farrago, but he would send it up in his summary anyhow.
His telephone rang.
Farrago, on the other end, said: “Your cold better?”
“A bit,” Thorne said.
“Guys like you,” Farrago said. “You spend too much time on the nest. It weakens your resistance to germs. Take vitamins, John. Especially the B12 complex and a healthy dose of C.”
“It works for you?” Thorne asked.
“Nothing works for me,” Farrago said. “Including you. You finished yet?”
“Almost.”
When Thorne hung up he called Sally Winfield in and raced through his dictation to her. At the last moment he included the Post editorial. There was some critical stuff from the New York Times and an article in the Star that wouldn’t do Foster’s blood pressure much good. He put them all together, added something pleasant he found in yesterday’s Phoenix Gazette. He may be a Democrat but he has the solid fiscal instincts of a conservative. There, Thorne thought: your open-ended policy is paying off in the sticks. Next thing would be a letter of praise from Senator Goldwater.
When he had finished his dictation, he put on his jacket and went out. He told Sally he would be back in thirty minutes. He drove to the same seafood restaurant he had gone to before, the Shrimp’s Hideaway. Erickson was already at the table, a cup of coffee in front of him. Fidgeting, looking somewhat like a nervy Clark Kent.
Thorne slipped into the seat facing Erickson.
“Did you get me the stuff?”
Erickson was flustered. “Man, you’re going to skin me, I tell you no lies. This is the second favor this week. I can’t keep this kind of thing up, you know that.”
“I know,” Thorne said. “I appreciate.”
Erickson opened his briefcase and took out a bulky envelope. He slid it across the table, then picked up his coffee. “What the hell’s going on anyhow?” he asked.
Thorne picked up the envelope and put it into his own briefcase, locking it.
“First it’s Major General Whatsisname, now it’s the heavy shit. What gives?”
“It’s something Bannerman wants,” Thorne said.
“You expect me to buy that one? Bannerman only has to pick up his telephone. He doesn’t send out an errand boy. He doesn’t go in for this kind of crap.”
Erickson, narrowing his eyes in a look of both scrutiny and disbelief, finished his coffee. “Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know. Okay? And do me a favor.”
“If I can,” Thorne said.
“No more favors,” Erickson said. “Store’s closed. Gone to lunch. Savvy?”
“I’m with you,” Thorne said. He watched Erickson rise and leave the restaurant. After a few moments he picked up his briefcase, went outside, unlocked the VW, drove away. A black Mercury that had followed him down Pennsylvania Avenue slipped away from the sidewalk and tracked him back to the White House.
In his office he found a telephone message on his desk. It said simply: Senator Jacobson called. Call back. He asked Sally to get him the senator’s office. What did Jacobson want? Another old friend of his father’s, Jacobson had fitted neatly into the slots left vacant by Senator Thorne’s death. Politically, both men had been the closest of allies; but whereas Ben Thorne had been open, gregarious, and sometimes, according to his critics, indiscreet, Jacobson was the kind of man who played whatever cards he held in a furtive way. Thorne realized that he had not seen the senator in more than a year—so why this call now?
He heard a woman’s voice say, “Senator Jacobson’s office.”
“John Thorne, I’m returning—”
“Ah, Mr. Thorne. The senator wanted to know if you would be free for lunch today.”
Thorne looked at his desk diary. The day was blank. He had intended seeing Marcia between her classes. But that could wait.
“I think I am,” he said.
“Fine. The senator has a meeting that ought to finish around twelve fifteen, twelve thirty. Shall I call you back when he’s free?”
“Fine,” Thorne said.
Senator William Jacobson: in cartoons he was always characterized as having the collar of his raincoat turned up, as if he had something dreadful to hide. He had an oddly bland face, the kind you had to concentrate on to remember. How does a man go so far in politics with such a curious anonymity? He was in the papers a great deal, usually in connection with Senate investigations of organized crime. He had published a book on the Mafia. Before entering politics, Thorne remembered, he had been a professor of law at Columbia.
His telephone was ringing again. It was Farrago.
“I just had Bannerman chewing my balls off,” he said. “What the fuck are you playing at? Can’t you find something in the fucking papers to cheer the Old Man up?”
“I’m doing my best,” Thorne
said.
“Try a little harder—”
“If I tried any harder, I’d be sending up obituaries,” Thorne said. “In case you hadn’t noticed it, the papers aren’t exactly falling over themselves to give the Old Man merit marks—”
“Fuck,” Farrago said. “Go back to sleep.”
Thorne heard the click of a dead line.
He sat back, put up his feet, and thought about the briefcase. It was tempting to open it here and go through Erickson’s envelope—but that would be running a needless risk. Farrago could come in, or the oleaginous Duncannon, or even Bannerman himself on one of his irregular tours. Later, he thought. There would be plenty of time.
“Lykiard’s in the fucking Potomac,” Tarkington was saying.
But Sharpe was hardly listening; there was a time for excuses and a time for explanations, but right now was a time of planning what to say to Dilbeck. His anger was a slow fuse.
“I don’t give that”—he snapped his fingers—“I don’t give a monkey’s fuck about the Greek. What I don’t get is how two of you couldn’t deal with Hollander. That’s what I don’t get.”
Tarkington was trying to look through the slats of the blind. He wanted to believe it was daylight out there and not the continuation of some endless night.
“I might have wounded him,” Tarkington said. “Look, he surprised us. He knifed the Greek. Before I could get my gun out …” He shrugged his shoulders. Was it going to wash? You could never tell with Sharpe. He was sitting behind his desk, his fists clenched.
“So where’s Hollander now?” Sharpe said.
“I don’t know.”
“You know what you’re good at, Tarkington? You know what?”
Tarkington waited, holding his breath.
“You’re good at sweet fuck all,” Sharpe said. “That’s what you do best. You couldn’t operate a pinball machine without the help of a Guide Dog.”
Tarkington screwed up his eyes. There was sun out there. Over D.C., a flat white sun. A brand-new day.
“Okay,” Sharpe said, rising from his desk.
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