Line of Succession

by Brian Garfield

  Peggy’s head turned back and forth rhythmically, disputing it. “What are we supposed to do? Buy television time, write ‘Free the Washington Seven’ on shithouse walls? Raid the jail when it’s probbly guarded by a whole regiment? I just don’t see what you think we can——”

  “Seven,” Sturka said. “Seven?”

  Cesar caught it an instant before Alvin did; Cesar explained: “They got Darleen.”

  Sturka absorbed it quickly and without visible reaction. “When?”

  “It was on the radio when you was out. They had cops staked out at the place on Amsterdam.”

  “She should have known better than to go back there.”

  Cesar sat up. “The cops knew.”

  “Barbara,” Sturka said absently. He was thinking.

  “Maybe. But maybe they broke down those others.”

  “No. None of them knew about the Harlem place.”

  Cesar wasn’t willing to let it go. “Line knew.”

  “The hell,” Alvin said, aroused finally. “Line won’t crack easy. They haven’t had time to break him down.”

  “I didn’t say they broke him down. Maybe Line was a plant too—listen, they nailed all six of them practically on the Capitol steps,” Cesar said. “Now that was just too easy.”

  “Not Line,” Alvin said. “I don’t buy that.”

  Sturka turned the hawked stare toward him. His voice was very quiet. “Why? Because Line is the same color as you?”

  Alvin opened his mouth and closed it. Suddenly he felt defensive. Because Sturka was right.

  Cesar said, “Barbara didn’t know the time, she didn’t even know the place. We never told her it was the Capitol. Add it up. Line’s the only one who knew the program and knew about the place on Amsterdam.”

  Peggy said, “Barbara knew about the Harlem place. She was there, remember?” Suddenly her head tipped back. She was facing Sturka. “You guys killed Barbara, didn’t you.”

  “Sure.” Cesar drawled the word slowly, pulling his head around toward Alvin. “Your soul sister finked on us.”

  Alvin played it very carefully. “All right.”

  Cesar shook his head. He had scored a point but he wasn’t pressing it. Finally Alvin said, “I guess you had reason to believe that.”

  “She was a plant,” Sturka said, as if that dismissed it.

  Cesar was studying Alvin’s face; Cesar gave way in the end. “She had this little toy camera in her bag and I caught her with a tin of talcum powder trying to lift Mario’s prints off the bathroom glass. We left her dead for the cops to play with—we messed her up some. Maybe teach the pigs to use plants—maybe make the next one a little scared of what might happen.”

  All right, Alvin thought dismally. If she betrayed them then she had it coming. He had to keep his head.

  Cesar was back on Sturka. “The point is somebody finked. They got our people.”

  “Barbara told them about the place on Amsterdam,” Sturka said mildly. “Nobody told them about the bombs. Line is straight.”

  Alvin felt gratitude; he almost smiled at Sturka but Sturka wasn’t looking at him, Sturka was explaining to Cesar what all of them should have been able to figure out for themselves: “If Line had given the pigs a tip in advance do you suppose the pigs would have stood around outside and waited for the bombs to explode? Don’t you suppose they’d have evacuated the building and brought in the bomb squad? Our people must have tripped on their way out—someone made a revealing mistake at the wrong moment.”

  Cesar was frowning but he curbed his tongue; presently he nodded, recognizing that was the way it had to be. “But we have to figure Barbara made us for them. They know who we are.”

  “And that is why we’re leaving the country tonight.”

  Peggy stubbed out her cigarette. She kept grinding it into the glass ashtray long after it was extinguished. “We’re going to be on every post-office wall in the country by tomorrow, we’re leaving the country on a slow boat to Lisbon, and you’re talking about getting Line and the rest of them out of hock. Sorry but I don’t follow that.”

  “Discipline doesn’t require that you follow it.” Sturka opened Mario’s canvas case and upended it over the bed and Mario’s stock certificates cascaded into a disordered heap like bonfire kindling. “We’ll trash them with these. It’s fitting. Have you counted these?”

  “Why?” Mario went toward the bed, suspicious.

  “I have.” Sturka touched one of the certificates. It was very large and imposing, the size of Life magazine, the color and style of a dollar bill, and it represented one thousand shares of common stock in Mezetti Industries. Mezetti common was selling in the neighborhood of thirty-eight dollars a share.

  Mario’s two hundred shares of NCI were worth about eight thousand dollars. His twelve hundred shares of Coast National Oil were worth just under sixty thousand. His four thousand shares of White-side Aviation were worth about eighteen thousand. And he had altogether thirty-five thousand shares of Mezetti Industries common. All inherited from the patriarchal grandfather who had used proletarian bodies for railroad ties. The canvas bag contained something over $1,200,000 in securities and they had been carrying it around on the streets for a month because Sturka had said they might need it fast when they needed it at all.

  “It’s time, then,” Mario said.

  Sturka began to stack the certificates neatly and slide them back into the case. “It’s time.”

  Mario was dubious. “You can’t just take this much stock into a bank or a broker and tell him to sell it. It would knock hell out of the market. They wouldn’t do it.”

  “Don’t sell them,” Sturka said. “Hock them.”

  “For what?”

  “What can you get? Half a million?”

  “Probably.”

  “A cashier’s check. Then you take the cashier’s check to another bank and break it down into a number of smaller cashier’s checks. Then you go to still other banks and cash some of them.”

  “How much cash?”

  “At least half of it. The rest in internationally negotiable certified checks or cashier’s checks.”

  Mario could become shrewd in the blink of an eye when it came to finance. He had been raised in a family of financiers and the wizardry had rubbed off on him.

  He latched the case. “Large bills, I guess.”

  “Anything else would be too bulky. You’ll have to buy money belts for us. The cheap canvas ones will do.”

  “It’s pig money, isn’t it?” Mario grinned. “We’ll use it to smash the pigs.”

  “Spend an hour in a barbershop first,” Sturka adjured. “Buy a good suit of clothes. You’ll need to be presentable.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Peggy will go with you. You may take the car. Drive it into New York and leave it in a parking garage—tear up the ticket, leave it there. The police may have a description of it from Barbara.” But the police wouldn’t have the plate number; they had changed license plates on the car last night.

  “Your chances of being arrested on the crowded streets are too negligible to worry about. You’ll blend. But in the bank you’ll have to give them a plausible reason for borrowing against the securities.”

  “Sure. Peggy and I are getting married, we want to buy a yacht for our honeymoon.”

  “No. That’s frivolous.”

  Mario scowled; Sturka touched his arm with a fingertip. “It’s a real estate deal. Very big. Be sly with the banker, take him into your confidence. You need the cash for an under-the-table bribe to persuade the land conglomerate to accept your bid. It’s a short-term project and you’ll be repaying the loan within three months.”

  Alvin stared at Sturka. The man had a command of the most unlikely things.

  Mario nodded. “That’ll work.”

  Cesar said mildly, “We’ll have to clean her up.”

  “Jesus,” Peggy muttered.

  Sturka’s finger stabbed toward her. “Your father is a college professor—
you know how to comport yourself.”

  “My father’s a phony liberal drunk. A fucking hypocrite.”

  “You’re Mario’s secretary. A very wealthy man’s secretary—you’ll behave as you would in polite society.”

  “Pig society.”

  “Peggy.” Sturka’s voice was very quiet, very mild, but it shut her up. “While Mario is in the barbershop you’ll buy a demure dress and have your hair done.”

  When she made no rebuttal Sturka went back to Mario. “Impress on the banker that this is confidential. No one is to know about it, it might cause your deal to go sour.”

  “Sure. So no stocks change hands, no sale has to be registered with the SEC or the Exchange.”

  “And your family doesn’t learn about it.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sturka went to Peggy. “When you’ve finished in the city take the Path Tube to Newark and go by taxi to the Washington Hotel. Time it to arrive between six-thirty and seven. Wait at the front entrance.”

  “Inside or outside?”

  “Outside, we’ll be watching. If I’m satisfied you haven’t been followed we’ll pick you up.”

  “What if we can’t make contact there?”

  “Use the usual method of leaving a message for me and we’ll arrange something.” Sturka employed a telephone answering service in the name of Charles Wernick; when you left a message for him you reversed the digits of the number: if you were calling from telephone 691-6243 you left word to call 342-6196.

  Alvin yawned. Cesar said, “Wake up, okay?”

  “I’ve been two days without sleep.”

  “You’ll have a week to sleep on the boat.” Cesar took the pillbox from his pocket. “Take one of these.”

  “Uppers?”

  “Bennies. Just take one.”

  “I guess not.” Alvin had come down off heroin in the Army and hadn’t touched any kind of drugs since, medicinal or otherwise; he was terrified of them, he didn’t want to get back into the spiral.

  Sturka was shepherding Mario and Peggy to the door. Alvin heard the car doors, heard the car start up and drive out of the motel.

  Cesar was dragging out items from the theatrical makeup kit they had bought in New York a week ago. They made one another up: styrofoam pads inside the cheeks to change the shape of cheek and jaw; skullcaps and hairpieces to change hairlines; dye to hue eyebrows and hair.

  A set of cheekpads and a cropped gray smudge of a moustache and a salt-and-pepper gray hairpiece in tight kink-curls added twenty years to Alvin. Cesar said, “Remember walk a little stooped over.”

  A skullcap receded Cesar’s hairline and an application of makeup and eyeglasses changed him from swarthy brigand to middle-aged businessman. Sturka became an ascetic type in a wavy brown wig and neatly trimmed goatee.

  “Let’s go then.”

  Outside the air was heavy with a stink of heavy morning traffic grinding up Route 22 toward Newark Airport and the city. The parking court of the motel was busy with slamming car doors, people hustling luggage into car trunks, kids hollering, salesmen driving out into the heavy traffic. The sky was a murky brown—what passed for a clear day in the smog of northeast New Jersey.

  WEDNESDAY,

  JANUARY 5

  2:15 P.M. EST Lime left Satterthwaite’s White House office in a dour mood and ambushed a taxi. “Police headquarters.”

  Lunch in the office of the President’s sardonic chief security advisor had been dreary with takeout food and Satterthwaite’s sonorous essay on political needs and realities. Lime spent the ride leaning his head far back against the cushion, eyes closed, unlit cigarette askew in his lips, thinking drowsy erotic thoughts about Bev Reuland.

  “Hey man. We here.”

  He paid the cabbie and got out. Sunny today and not so damned cold. He threw his head back and searched for contrails, reflecting on his fantasies. Bev always managed to prove her point without waving banners: she was thirty-four, divorced, feminine, adminstrative assistant to Speaker of the House Milton Luke. He looked at his watch. Right now she would be dictating replies to Luke’s constituents. Dear Mr. Smith, Thank you for your letter of January second. Regarding your request.… Efficient by day; languorous by night; she had compartmentalized herself crisply and Lime envied her.

  The reporters knew him now. They laid siege in the corridor; its musty soot seemed to have settled in their clothes. Lime pushed at the air with his palms and when they subsided from baying to muttering he told them, “No comment—and you may quote me,” and went past them through the cop-guarded doorway to the stairs.

  Upstairs an FBI man had the interrogation; the subject was Sandra Walberg. The young lawyer from Harding’s office sat in a corner, very bored. The kid looked like all Harding’s disciples—shaggy, discontented, righteous. Harding had achieved his notoriety by inciting his clients to riot in court.

  Lime crossed over and sat at the FBI man’s right so that he wouldn’t get the glare from the window when he looked at the girl. As he pulled the chair out and sat down the FBI man acknowledged him with a nod; the defense lawyer ignored him; Sandra glanced at him once. She was a small-boned girl with pinched features, full of sullen defiance.

  The FBI man was young and vinegary, up to date in his field. His questions were compelling and logical. He spoke in a cautious tone, reserving malevolence. Of course none of it did any good: Sandra wasn’t talking. None of them was talking. There had been a few remarks from the prisoners—particularly from Bob Walberg who was more nervous than the others. “A few alterations in the Capitol.” And a grin and a clenched fist raised: “Right on!” But the young lawyer always cut in quickly, shutting them up: “Everything’s cool, baby. Keep it.”

  Harding’s clients were going to be executed and the state could not seriously pretend to offer clemency because Harding had to know such an offer would be in bad faith.

  Harding was handling the case in the full knowledge that there was no way on earth for him to avoid losing his clients’ lives to the executioner. The only advantage gained by anybody would be gained by Harding himself: by defending the bombers he would cement his position as mouthpiece for the radical left. Afterward he would be able to go to his people and say to them that he—the best of his kind—had tried, and had been beaten by the corrupt and unfeeling system: therefore choose violence, which I have advocated all along, because I have just proved to you that nothing else works. Lime despised the Hardings; they would fight to the very last drop of their followers’ blood.

  You had to go through this charade. It was all sham and nonsense; everybody, Harding included, knew it. But you brought the prisoners up separately and interrogated them politely all day long, always with a lawyer present, always with reminders that the prisoner didn’t have to say a word.

  In the evening you returned the prisoners to their solitary cells and the lawyers went home. Then after dinner you rousted the prisoners out again and took them secretly into interrogation cells and you worked them over sans lawyers and sans recitations of rights. You did this because the case demanded it: until you traced this thing to its roots you had no way of knowing how substantial the overall danger was. You had to find Sturka and you had to find out where Sturka would lead you in turn, and one way to find Sturka perhaps was to pry it out of these prisoners.

  The normal pressures had been applied, and had proved minimally effective, so drugs had been introduced. Thus far the results had been poor but tonight might prove more satisfactory. In the meantime the prisoners each morning complained to their lawyers of the nightly roustings and the interrogators replied gravely that the prisoners were either dreaming or lying maliciously, The Establishment could produce a plethora of reliable witnesses to testify that the prisoners had lain undisturbed in their cells all night long; the Establishment could also produce doctors to testify that the prisoners had not been drugged. These radicals, Lime thought, had imagined a fascist police state and had created it.

  In court it would be the Justice Dep
artment’s job to goad the prisoners into confessing their guilt aloud. The issues were inflammatory and volatile and only public confession by the bombers would assuage public unease. Such a confession would be obtained.

  It wasn’t Lime’s department to obtain it and he was thankful for that, but he recognized the Government’s needs and knew that somehow the Government would find a lever to use against one or another of the prisoners.

  He listened for ten minutes to the FBI agent’s questions. Sandra Walberg said very little and none of it was in direct response to the questions. The kid lawyer in the corner yawned without bothering to cover his lips. Lime exchanged jaded glances with the FBI man and twisted past the table and went out.

  In the lobby of the Executive Office Building he found his boss DeFord and Attorney General Ackert talking to reporters. Ackert was talking without saying much, with a politician’s practice. He did it very well; his delivery was as impersonal as a print-out from a computer and he sounded like a cop testifying in court. It made him appear professional and competent; in fact he was both those things, but the act he was putting on at the moment was a conscious and deliberate role, therefore false. DeFord on the other hand was a fool but in public he had a way of giving the impression of informed crispness: he cloaked his incompetence in a fabric of secretiveness: I know the answers of course but security prevents me from divulging them at this time. He didn’t exactly say it in so many words.

  There was more questioning and Attorney General Ackert was saying tonelessly, “Naturally. They’ve been informed, in the presence of their attorneys, that they have every right to remain silent, that anything they say can and will be used against them, and that they have the right to counsel at all times during questioning.”

  Lime and DeFord broke away from the journalists and walked toward DeFord’s sanctum.