by R.J. Ellory
Travis knew he had to straighten things out, get things back on an even keel. Permitting himself to be drawn into any kind of personal relationship with these people could do nothing but compromise the integrity of the investigation.
Travis tried to focus on the report, but his mind was elsewhere.
The fact that his attention was also drawn to the single sheet of paper beside his typewriter, upon it the word regulus, was no help. He still struggled with the explanation he had been given by Saxon and Beck. He was still haunted by the possibility that someone had done this, that there had been no instance of sleepwalking, that it had been a direct effort to influence the direction of his investigation.
Travis turned the page over. He could not think about it. He had to focus on what was real, what lay there within the borders of the probative and credible.
The simple fact that Doyle, Mironescu, and Benedek had all possessed some direct or indirect connection to military or paramilitary activities had no bearing on the case, save to recognize the fact that they were all familiar—to a greater or lesser degree—with the very physical aspect of war. What did that suggest? That they were all capable of killing a man? Perhaps, perhaps not. Again, so much hinged on the identity of the man, and that identification was paramount. Travis believed himself sufficiently divorced from the personality of this case to be able to let go if it were determined to be of nonfederal interest. If he was recalled to Kansas, would it concern him? No, not at all, except if his recall were in some way a reflection of his failure to fulfill his duty. That could not be allowed to happen. Today would be different. Today would be a model day.
Travis looked over his notes. He was interested to speak next with the Thin Man, Oscar Haynes. Then there was the dwarf, Chester Greene, the contortionist, Akiko Mimasuya, and the five Bellanca brothers. Harold Lamb, aka Mr. Slate, would need another visit, but not as yet.
Travis left the report undone; it could wait until later, and then he would summarize the results of both days’ interviews.
Downstairs, he asked Danny McCaffrey for the use of a private phone line.
“There’s one back in the kitchen,” he told Travis.
Alone, Travis called the Kansas office, asked for Tom Bishop.
“Travis,” Bishop said. “About time we heard from you. Got the information you sent through, and yes, looks like your dead guy belongs to some crime gang.”
“They’re called the Fekete Kutya,” Travis interjected. “It means Black Dog. From what I have been able to establish, they are a Hungarian crime organization.”
“Good work, Travis. That’s more than we had. We were simply able to establish that this kind of tattooing is employed to denote membership of certain Eastern European gangs. So where are we with this now? We any further forward on finding out who he was?”
“No, sir,” Travis replied. “I am going to have to ask for assistance on that. I sent through the prints, and I am wondering if they can be run on the system.”
Bishop paused before replying. “It hasn’t yet been confirmed as a federal matter, Agent Travis. Until that is done, I do not see it’s possible to utilize Bureau resources.”
“But my concern is that without Bureau resources, we will not be able to identify the deceased. Without accurate and confirmed identification, there will be little chance of determining where he came from, why he was here, where he was going. That will inhibit determination of—”
“Agent Travis?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Stop talking for a moment, and listen.”
Travis held his tongue. Bishop’s tone had changed ever so slightly.
“Have you stopped for just a second and asked yourself why Section Chief Gale assigned you to this case? Not only to this case specifically, but alone, and as a senior special agent?”
Travis said nothing, knowing that he could very easily answer the question incorrectly. Better not to take the risk.
“You are a good agent, Travis, no doubt about it. You follow the rules, you color inside the lines, and you follow protocol and Bureau procedure to the letter. However, it has to be said that despite all the best advice, all the rules and regulations, no advancement in investigative technique was ever brought about by those who did precisely what they were told and only what they were told. Are you following me?”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“You recall meeting Mr. Hoover?”
“I do, sir, yes,” In truth, Travis could remember it word for word.
“Something about lacking imagination, remember?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did he mean, Travis? What did the director mean when he said that?”
“I’m sure that—”
“I’ll tell you, Agent Travis. I’ll tell you what he meant. He meant that you possessed potential, that he saw a great future for you, yet such a future would perhaps be inhibited by your routine and predictable approach—”
“But, sir, I—”
“You remember the Scarapetto case, Travis?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We followed your lead on that one, Travis. You stepped outside of your fixed ideas for just a moment, and you found the Jarvis woman. You made a decision in that kitchen that could have resulted… well, let’s just say that it might not have turned out as well as it did. That specific case is one of the reasons you are out there in Seneca Falls, Agent Travis, and that is one of the reasons I will not be able to assist you with federal resources until you determine that this is a federal case. If I do not operate in this way, then anyone might as well come along here and utilize federal resources and appropriations to find lost cats and dogs.”
Travis did not reply; he could hear Bishop breathing.
“Are we clear on this, Agent Travis?”
“It’s a test, sir.”
“It’s a murder investigation, Agent Travis.”
“Yes, sir, but from what you’ve said— ”
“I have advised you to use your imagination, Agent Travis. Sometimes, the use of one’s imagination allows for the possibility that you do not communicate everything undertaken in the field to determine the truth.”
Travis opened his mouth to ask another question and then decided against it. He had the message loud and clear. This was a test. This was his trial by fire. If he did this, if he actually conducted and concluded this investigation alone, then who knew what he would be offered? It unnerved him a little, but it also excited him.
“So, are we done asking questions, Agent Travis?”
“Yes, sir. We’re done.”
“Good. I am glad to hear that. So, let me tell you what I want from you. I want you to vigorously investigate this homicide. I want you to vigorously investigate the people that were present when this body was found. I want you to submit one final report. I do not want daily situation reports. I do not want interview transcripts. I want you to spend your time as an investigator, not as an office boy. I want you to act alone. I want you to use whatever resources you deem fit to employ, but they cannot include this office, nor the office in Wichita. Expenses will be met by the Bureau, within reason, of course, and we want to see this matter addressed and resolved with the greatest expediency.”
“Yes, sir,” Travis said.
“Good. So, let’s get out there and solve a murder, Agent Travis.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line went dead.
Travis sat there at Danny McCaffrey’s kitchen table with the receiver in his hand. He stood up, replaced it in the cradle on the wall, and then walked to the window. From there he could see out into a small yard behind the hotel.
He knew what was going on now. He smiled to himself. He would have done better to ask no questions at all, but if this was what it had taken to level the playing field, then so be it.
He was being given f
ree rein to run this case as he saw fit. Bishop, as his supervisor, Gale as his section chief, perhaps even the director himself, wanted to see what Michael Travis was capable of when he was let off the leash.
Nevertheless, the forward progress of this investigation was almost exclusively dependent upon the identification of the dead man. It seemed realistic to now move forward on the basis that he was indeed Hungarian, that he did belong to this organization, Fekete Kutya, that he had himself murdered seven people.
Travis went upstairs to his room. He sat on the edge of the bed. He knew that he possessed nothing of any real worth. Doyle and Mironescu had said nothing to either incriminate or absolve themselves, nor Slate, nor Benedek. In fact, the only striking thing about any of their testimony, for want of a better word, was the simple lack of reaction to this situation. These people ran a carnival. The carnival traveled the United States. A dead man had been found beneath a carousel, stabbed in the back of the neck, and there had been no uproar, no drama, nothing. It was almost as if they were taking the whole thing in their collective stride. Maybe that was down to the simple fact that each of them had come from backgrounds where such things as unexplained deaths were really not that noteworthy. There had been talk of Nazis in Ireland, the French Resistance movement, Auschwitz, the Hungarian uprising. It was as if each of these people had come rushing out of some hot cauldron of violence and mayhem, and one more dead body was of no significance at all.
No, there was too little that made sense and too much that confounded Travis for him to pass off their lack of reaction as anything other than complicity or collusion. These people knew something, and they were hiding it well.
He had no choice now but to continue his questioning. Oscar Haynes, the human skeleton, was next. Travis was curious to see what he had to say for himself, whether he too hailed out of some terrible past, whether he too was running away from a history of violence and drama.
There was a time for thought, and there was a time for action.
Travis got up and put on his jacket.
22
Despite the lateness of the evening, Oscar Haynes had been all too willing to accede to Travis’s request for an interview. Travis met with him in the marquee.
“So what is it that you want to know?” Oscar Haynes asked.
“You were here when the body was found, Mr. Haynes.”
“Yes, I was,” Haynes replied. “I was not near the carousel, but I heard the commotion and came over. I hung around until the sheriff turned up, and I saw them bring the body out. I know it was akin to rubbernecking as you pass a car crash, but you sort of can’t help it, can you? Natural human curiosity wins over every time.” He smiled sardonically, and with a sweeping gesture of his hand, he added, “And that’s the reason people keep coming to things like this.”
“Meaning?”
“They want to know if we are real, Agent Travis.”
“If you are real?”
“We have been doing this for centuries. We are the caravan of lost souls and castaways. We are the ones who float at the edge of society and are viewed with equal amounts of suspicion and curiosity.”
“Can I ask about your own background, Mr. Haynes?”
“You can ask, for sure. Whether or not I tell you the truth depends upon whether or not you give me cause for concern.”
“I am sorry.”
Haynes leaned forward. As he did so, not only did he place his hands on the table between them, but he further exposed his wrists. They were so very thin, almost painfully so, and Travis reacted visibly.
“We upset you, don’t we? Me and Mr. Slate with his fourteen fingers, and Akiko when she turns herself inside out. But all of that is nothing compared to the way Doyle and his crazy woman seem to see inside your mind.”
“Crazy woman?”
Haynes laughed and looked directly at Travis, and there was something altogether disturbing in his expression. His face was a skull, near as damn it, and his eyes were shadowed and sunken. Haynes was right; these people did unnerve Travis, but not in the way that they believed. Each of them, for no explicable reason, made him feel transparent. They did indeed play his own insecurities against him, and that was the reason he had so easily been taken in by Doyle’s charms. That’s why he had shared food and wine with them. They made him feel as though he had to earn their cooperation. They were legally bound to cooperate. The law was the law, and they were obligated to uphold and abide by that law as much as anyone else. He—Michael Travis—was the Bureau representative here, and he would dictate the terms of play.
“So why have they sent you, Agent Travis? Tell me that much at least.”
“I am surprised you are asking me. You already know why I am here.”
“Apparency and reality are not necessarily the same. Why you think you are here and why you are actually here might not be similar at all.” Haynes nodded his head. “I know who you are, Agent Travis. Well, I say I know who you are, and that is not entirely true. I know of you. I have heard your name before.”
“You have?”
“I am from Chicago, Agent Travis. I ran with a certain crowd. I floated around the edges of that scene for a while, and then I got out.”
“What scene, Mr. Haynes?”
“The Chicago scene. The hoodlums and bootleggers and button men. I knew all of them—Capone, Bugs Moran, McErlane, Shorty Egan, and Morrie Keane. Hell, I did a handful of years in Menard Correctional, occupied the same cell that van Meter had occupied back in twenty-four. I even met Dillinger one time, a year or so before he was killed.”
“And you know of me because?”
“Because I heard about what happened to Tony Scarapetto…”
A brief flash in Travis’s mind. Standing there in the backyard behind the Jarvis farm. Gun in his hand. That sense of rage and injustice boiling inside his chest, how he could do nothing but pull the trigger.
God darn it, boy, you sure as hell is your father’s son.
Travis flinched, as if shocked by a current of electricity.
“You were the one who killed him, right?”
Travis focused on Haynes’s face, corralled his thoughts. “I did, yes.”
“I remember hearing about it, remember your name, not so different from Melvin Purvis, you see? You ever meet Melvin Purvis?”
“I did not, no,” Travis said, feeling his heart beating just a little faster.
“Hardheaded son of a bitch. No sense of humor. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after killing Dillinger, after actually getting Public Enemy Number One, he’d lighten up, right? No, sirree, he was just as much of a ball breaker after that as he was before.”
“Why did you go to Menard, Mr. Haynes?” Travis asked, wishing to steer the conversation away from Tony Scarapetto.
“I was a smuggler, Agent Travis. Pure and simple. I drove those trucks down from the Canadian border into Chicago for more than ten years.”
“And you were caught?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Meaning what?”
“I got tired of the life. I gave it up. I had to give it up. I saw too many dead guys, too much blood, and it started to make no sense.”
“So you gave yourself up?”
“I allowed myself to be caught for something dumb, but it got me out of the loop. You don’t get out of that racket unless you get killed or go to jail, Agent Travis. I got myself busted on a seven-to-ten beef, did five years in Menard, got paroled, and stayed the hell out of Chicago until I was cleared to leave the state. Then I just traveled a while until I met this crowd of hobos and dropouts. I’ve been here ever since.”
“And you earn a living by being—”
“The skinny guy?” Haynes laughed. “Oh no, the skinny thing is just for effect, you know? That’s just to charm the ladies, right? No, sir. I am the illusionist. I am the one
who draws a veil of disbelief and wonderment around you and will not let you go.”
“You do tricks?”
Haynes smiled at Travis as if he were a child. There was something almost disappointed in that expression. “Yes, Agent Travis. I do tricks.”
“I didn’t intend for that to sound derogatory, Mr. Haynes. I am just not quite sure what you mean.”
“Edgar tells me that you are considering permitting us to open the carnival again tomorrow night.”
“I am considering it, yes.”
“Well, you should let us do that, Agent Travis. You should come and see the show for yourself. It is quite a thing, let me tell you.”
“I will make a decision, Mr. Haynes, and I will let Mr. Doyle know that decision as soon as it has been made.”
“I think you might be surprised, Agent Travis, but then you might see some of what you have been looking for all along.”
“What do you mean by that, Mr. Haynes? I might see something that relates to the death of this man last Saturday?”
“Is that why you are here, Agent Travis? To find out who killed that man? I heard from Gabor that he was part of some foreign crime gang.”
“That may well be the case, yes. Can you please explain what you mean, Mr. Haynes? You say that if I allow the carnival to run on Friday night, I will see some of what I have been looking for. You also seem to be questioning whether my presence here is solely for the purpose of investigating this homicide. What are you trying to say?”
“I am not trying to say anything, Agent Travis.”
“You are implying something, Mr. Haynes—”
“Did you never tire of it, Agent Travis?”
“Tire of what?”
“The lies, the falsehoods, the pretense, the bullshit.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand, sir.”
“No need to be sorry, Agent Travis. Sorry is the very last thing you have to be here.”
