The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  Lammeck dressed impatiently. The elevator operator lowered him to the Blackstone lobby. Only a few people lingered there in leather chairs, occupied with cigarettes and the spread wings of morning papers. Lammeck approached the desk clerk.

  The wan, tired man with a pocked face looked up. “Good morning, Dr. Lammeck.”

  “Jock. Did you just have this envelope sent up to my room?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry if we woke you.”

  “No, it’s not that. Do you remember who gave this to you?”

  “Yes, sir, of course. About ten after the hour this morning, it was dropped off here by a Negro woman.”

  “What did she look like, Jock? This is very important.”

  The morning clerk did not hesitate.

  “Oh, I saw her real good. I guess she was about this tall...” The clerk held a flat hand out just below the level of his own shoulders, at perhaps a height of five two or three. “She was pretty dark. Looked to be, I don’t know, maybe sixty something. Older, maybe. Tough to tell with those old colored ladies sometimes. And she was thick. Not fat like some, but heavyset. You know. She was wearing a kind of raggedy overcoat...”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “No, sir. Just tossed that envelope on the counter and walked off.”

  “Did you see where she went? Did she get into a car?”

  “Don’t know, Doc. I wasn’t paying that much attention. I been on the midnight shift...”

  Lammeck thanked the clerk and walked back to the elevator.

  The woman Jock described couldn’t have been Judith. Five foot two, squat, elderly? The beautiful, looping handwriting on the envelope probably did not belong to the woman who’d delivered it.

  Who sent the invitation? Reilly? Mrs. Beach? Would either have used a little old black woman as a courier? Dag? Who else knew or cared where Lammeck was staying?

  If it came from Judith, then she was very close. She knew his hotel, and she knew where he’d been searching for her. And if she knew these things, what else did she know?

  Lammeck returned to his room and sat on the bed. He considered calling Dag to tell him what had happened. He set his mind loose down the road of what would happen next.

  Dag would insist they both go to the Peruvian embassy tonight, and that they go in force, with armed agents manning every way in and out. If this was Judith, they’d trap her, nab her, and call it a day.

  But what if she smelled too big a rat—Dag and his rigid, surreptitious, dangerous bunch—and didn’t show?

  If she meant to kill him, why invite him to a public place like an embassy ball? She knew the Blackstone, clearly she was following him. She could take him out a million other times and places that carried far less risk of exposure, when he wasn’t expecting her, when there wasn’t the potential of a Secret Service dragnet around him. The only smart reason—and she was extremely smart—for arranging a meeting like this was to talk. Did Judith want to turn herself in? Unlikely. Why did she need Lammeck? What did she want?

  And suppose this envelope didn’t come from Judith at all. What if it was just what it looked like, an invitation offered by some Peruvian diplomat, or even a random woman—or man—who’d taken enough interest in Lammeck to track down his hotel and chance a rendezvous? Lammeck concocted several innocent reasons for this invitation, a few of them creepy but none of them Judith. If one of those scenarios held true, he would lose more credibility with Dag and Reilly than he could ever recover. He might get his wish and be sent packing for home. That would be a retreat at a time and circumstance not of his choosing. Lammeck hadn’t brought the hunt all the way from Massachusetts to be spanked by Mrs. Beach and shipped back to Scotland with his tail tucked between his legs. No.

  He would go to the Peruvian embassy tonight. He’d be careful, quiet, and watch his own back. But there was no choice but to go alone.

  * * * *

  AT THE DOOR, LAMMECK presented only the invitation. The card was taken from him by a woman in the foyer with Asian eyes and warm hands who dropped it into a decorative carved box. He said his name was Dr. Lammeck, and this satisfied her. Lammeck could tell she had no notion of security; she was just processing people into the event with her smile and lovely skin.

  He signed the guest book and scanned the preceding page. Gene Tierney, Oleg Cassini, Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller; senators and society names filled the spaces ahead of his. In a twinge of vanity he scribbled “Ph.D.” behind his name.

  Moving inside, Lammeck was slowed in a reception line. His nerves tingled, on edge in a fusion of worry and excitement, what he imagined it felt like to be on the verge of combat. But he was not a soldier like Dag; he was a teacher. Over the past five years, his war service had been spent in forests and darkness training young men to lay mines and spigot mortars, to shoot with silenced rifles, and to set explosives for sabotage. Nothing he’d learned or taught in that time would help him right now. He was accustomed to wearing tweeds or fatigues, not a tux; his talents had been honed only for classrooms and the woods. The packed embassy was nothing like his preferred terrain. This was a bash, public, perfumed, and raucous. Here the objectives moved, smoked, gossiped, and flirted. Every person and thing was exposed, lit and loud, which meant nothing stood out. Here, Lammeck had no skill or sense he could trust.

  At the head of the reception line, he shook hands with the Peruvian ambassador. The man was a head shorter than Lammeck, nodding with vigor to every guest. Next was the ambassador’s wife, who bowed Lammeck onward. He visualized Judith in line, returning this little Peruvian woman’s bow. Judith would walk into the room tonight just as he did, unescorted. She would look around, for the best positions, for the exits, for adversaries. And for him.

  Lammeck felt his heartbeat quicken. He wiped his palms on his jacket. He shot his cuffs to clear his sleeves, fingered his bow tie, and advanced into the throng.

  There had to be at least five hundred crammed into this room. She was here. He was sure of it, and instantly was just as certain that he was nervous, mistaken and misled. She was not here. Lammeck’s stomach churned with embarrassment that he was being hoodwinked again.

  He walked to the food table, jumpy, scrutinizing every woman he passed or who sidled by and looked up at him. He measured them for the attributes he figured Judith must have: dark hair, height, muscle. In return he got smiles or upturned noses. Some of the men escorting the women bounced territorial looks off him. If Dag were at his back, the two of them could challenge the room. The thought of Dag made Lammeck once again question the wisdom of strolling in here without him.

  The banquet table featured the usual selections of war-rationed foods, mostly chicken, though all were garnished and presented with a tropical theme in what Lammeck supposed was the Peruvian manner. The open bars did a sprightly business, and butlers slalomed through the crowd bearing trays of champagne flutes. Lammeck moved carefully, swinging his shoulders to avoid collisions with well-heeled guests bearing loaded plates or overfull highballs. He paid attention only to the women, pausing to listen above the music and examine them, appearing to them, he was certain, like a gigolo on the make. For the most part, he was ignored. This suited him, and wounded him, too. He felt even more intent and out of place. He hovered and eavesdropped: With the designer Oleg Cassini somewhere in attendance, much of the conversation concerned fashion. The women of Washington were tired of wearing separates, that conservative theme of the war years intended to give the impression of owning more outfits. They wanted longer hemlines. And fuller skirts. Now that Paris had been liberated for six months, the big dress houses were back in business. A few women at the reception were actually wearing designs by Balenciaga or Fath, and someone claimed she’d spotted a Schiaparelli. Lammeck plucked a champagne flute from a fleeting tray. The band struck up a noisy medley of Glenn Miller tunes.

  Lammeck tipped the champagne and drained it. He stood still. Looking for Judith here was foolish. If the invitation did in fact come from her, she surely wouldn�
�t allow herself to be spotted in this crowd; she was far too talented for that. No, clearly it had fallen to him to be the one located. That, by contrast, was going to be easy. Lammeck’s height and girth, planted in the center of the ballroom floor, created a new traffic pattern of dancers and shifting cliques. He was larger than any man he could see in the room. If Judith was searching for him, here he was.

  Lammeck drank another glass of champagne. He exchanged glances with two dozen women, all dressed well, a few of them wearing the lengthy French outfits the other women coveted. He believed he might have caught sight of the elusive Schiaparelli. One woman, a tall brunette wearing tortoiseshell glasses, circled past twice. On her third circuit, she stopped in front of Lammeck holding two champagne glasses.

  “Freshen you up?” she asked.

  Lammeck accepted the drink, placing his empty glass on another of the silver trays that bobbed through the crowd.

  The woman wore a black silk dress that fell in deceptively simple folds to her ankles. The neck was cut high to showcase a diamond necklace; the shoulders were padded; the sleeves stopped below the elbows. A black sash cinched the waist. Not much of her showed outside of the gown, but inside it she was shapely. She wore no perfume he could detect.

  She raised her glass to tip it against Lammeck’s. He hesitated, wondering what to be suspicious of. He sniffed his champagne while she cocked a quizzical eyebrow. Satisfied, he clinked the lip of his flute to hers, but did not take a swallow. The woman drank on her own, gulping her glass. She lowered it and openly sized him up. Lammeck put his full glass on a passing waiter’s tray; she set down her emptied flute. He returned her blue-eyed gaze. She cracked a smile. Lammeck did not.

  “Shall I lie to you?” she asked.

  Lammeck went very still. The expanse of the embassy vanished; the clatter of the band and dancers, all the sounds and images of the vast, ornate room, funneled away until he was focused only on this woman, like a crosshairs.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I could give you a fake name. Tell you some fairy tale. But you are far too clever for that, aren’t you, Professor?”

  Lammeck eyed her. Empty hands. Small handbag over her shoulder. Her voice bore a soft accent on the R’s, almost Irish. Skin the color of damp sand, stretched smoothly over an athlete’s powerful physique. Hair a coppery brown color, twisted in elaborate curls.

  “Clever? I don’t know. You should have tried; I might have believed you. You don’t look like I thought you would.”

  “Is that a compliment or an insult? Actually, I thought I look quite fetching tonight. Are you saying you didn’t think I would be pretty?”

  Lammeck made no reply.

  “You like this gown? It’s a Hattie Carnegie.” Her fingertips brushed the diamonds at her throat. “These are real.” She leaned in, coaxing and relaxed. “It’s all borrowed.”

  He thought about seizing her by the arm. But he remembered the three bodies in the Newburyport morgue. Otto had tried to take her in a fight, and he’d been bigger than Lammeck.

  He struck with his voice instead. “Are you turning yourself in to me? Judith?”

  At her name, the woman’s jaw slacked. Quickly, she regained herself.

  “That disappoints me. Not in you, Professor, well done. But in her. She told you my name?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Judith drew back her head and stared through her spectacles, down her nose: “Did you kill her, Professor?”

  “No. She bit a cyanide capsule.”

  “Well, good. I considered taking care of her myself. She was sloppy. But I try to keep the extra deaths to a minimum. It’s unprofessional. Anyway, no, Professor, I am not turning myself in. You don’t have me anywhere near that cornered. Especially since you came here alone. Tsk, tsk, whatever were you thinking?”

  She put a hand to her hair, smoothing a chestnut curl onto her shoulder. She wore a wig, Lammeck realized.

  “So,” she asked, “shall we sit?”

  Lammeck shook his head. “I can talk to you in your prison cell.”

  She smiled gaily. “Oh, you are the dogged pursuer. I was certain you would be. That’s why I wanted us to meet. But actually, I meant that we ought to sit for your sake. You see, any second now, you’re going to start feeling the effects of the poison.”

  Lammeck went ramrod stiff. His eyes started to go wild on her, he wanted to grab her and shake. He bit his lower lip and breathed until he could respond:

  “I didn’t drink the champagne you gave me.”

  She smiled and wagged a finger between them. “No, I didn’t spike your drink. You’re a big man and I couldn’t get enough in there for an immediate reaction. Besides, a poisoned glass of champagne, that’s such a cliche.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Just a short, quick syringe in your back while you were elbowing your way through the crowd looking for me. You probably felt it as an itch in that handsome but rented tux.”

  “You’re lying. I didn’t feel anything.”

  “You wouldn’t. I’m extremely good at my job, Professor, and you’ve been very distracted. So, shall we?”

  Lammeck stood in astonishment. She moved away, gesturing him to follow through the crowd. He fell in her wake, restraining himself from running at her. Every step behind Judith revealed more reasons for him to be afraid. His mouth had gone terribly dry and the lights seemed to blaze in the ballroom. The words “immediate reaction” went off like fire bells in his brain. He snagged another champagne from a waiter. He drank it walking, spilling some on his shirt.

  Reaching an empty table, she took a seat. Lammeck sat beside her, so close his shoulder touched hers.

  She looked at him through the tortoiseshell eyeglasses. He struggled to keep his mind clear, to scour her for more clues. He noted that the lenses were regular glass.

  “Aren’t we cozy?” Judith remarked. She added, almost sympathetically, “You’re thirsty. That’s the first stage. Judging by your size, I suppose we’ve got twenty minutes before you start to get delirious. Then... Well.”

  Fighting terror and the urge to choke her, Lammeck demanded again, “What did you do?”

  “What I had to do to get your attention. And to keep you from trying anything heroic. You’re not a hero, I hope, Professor.”

  Lammeck’s lips began to feel dry and hot. His throat thickened as if he’d swallowed cotton.

  “What did you give me?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that just yet. But trust me, what I injected you with will kill you.”

  “Do you have the antidote?”

  She recoiled teasingly. “Of course. But first we talk.”

  “No. The antidote. Now.”

  Lammeck shifted to his left, nearer to Judith, to close the distance between them. In a single smooth motion, he pressed his left hand to his right forearm and bent the elbow. Then he lapped his left arm across the back of her chair, to keep her in it should she bolt.

  He stuck the muzzle of the 9mm Welwand in her rib cage, tilting the silencer upward. If he fired, the bullet would pierce her heart.

  “Now,” he repeated.

  She peered down into his cupped hand, at his thumb on the trigger.

  “A sleeve gun! Professor, that’s marvelous.” She tried to lay a hand near it but Lammeck crammed the muzzle deeper into her ribs. She did not flinch. “Well, that does change the dynamic, doesn’t it?”

  “Give me the antidote. Or I swear I’ll kill you right here.”

  They sat close like lovers, his arm around her back. She spoke, fearless.

  “No, you won’t. Be reasonable. Only I know what I injected you with, and only I have the antidote.”

  “I’ll find it on your body.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble. If you look in my handbag, you’ll find four more syringes. All of them are numbered. One is the antidote, the other three are more... poison. And I’m sorry to say there won’t be time for you to get them to a lab.”
>
  Lammeck’s throat began to burn as if he’d swallowed salt. “If I die, you die.”

  “Well, Mikhal... I may call you Mikhal?... let us make sure you don’t die, then.”

  “What do you want?”

  She set an elbow on the table to turn fully to him. He kept the Welwand pressed to her torso, gripping the gun out of sight below the tablecloth.

  “I want you to get out of Washington. Leave me to do my job.”

  Lammeck shook his head. At the motion, his vision swam, the room throbbed with light.

  “Mikhal, I can handle the Secret Service. I haven’t the faintest worry about Reilly and his men. But you. I’ve read your writings. I know a clever man when I see one. Frankly, I’m concerned how well you’ve guessed at what I’m doing from such little evidence.”