The Matlock Paper

by Robert Ludlum

  The explanation had to lie somewhere in Lucas Herron’s immense capacity for sympathy. He was a friend to many, a dependable refuge for the troubled, often the deeply troubled. And beneath his placid, aged, unruffled surface, Herron was a strong man, a leader. A quarter of a century ago, he had spent countless months of hell in the Solomon Islands as a middle-aged infantry officer. A lifetime ago, Lucas Herron had been an authentic hero in a vicious moment of time during a savage war in the Pacific. Now over seventy, Herron was an institution.

  Matlock rounded the corner and saw his apartment half a block away. The campus was dark; aside from the street lamps, the only light came from one of his rooms. Had he left one on? He couldn’t remember.

  He walked up the path to his door and inserted his key. Simultaneously with the click of the lock, there was a loud crash from within. Although it startled him, his first reaction was amusement. His clumsy, long-haired house cat had knocked over a stray glass or one of those pottery creations Patricia Ballantyne had inflicted on him. Then he realized such a thought was ridiculous, the product of an exhausted mind. The crash was too loud for pottery, the shattering of glass too violent.

  He rushed into the small foyer, and what he saw pushed fatigue out of his brain. He stood immobile in disbelief.

  The entire room was in shambles. Tables were overturned; books pulled from the shelves, their pages torn from the bindings, scattered over the floor; his stereo turntable and speakers smashed. Cushions from his couch and armchairs were slashed, the stuffing and foam rubber strewn everywhere; the rugs upended, lumped in folds; the curtains ripped from their rods, thrown over the upturned furniture.

  He saw the reason for the crash. His large casement window, on the far right wall bordering the street, was a mass of twisted lead and broken glass. The window consisted of two panels; he remembered clearly that he had opened both before leaving for the Beesons. He liked the spring breezes, and it was too early in the season for screens. So there was no reason for the window to be smashed; the ground was perhaps four or five feet below the casement, sufficient to dissuade an intruder, low enough for a panicked burglar to negotiate easily.

  The smashing of the window, therefore, was not for escape. It was intended.

  He had been watched, and a signal had been given.

  It was a warning.

  And Matlock knew he could not acknowledge that warning. To do so was to acknowledge more than a robbery; he was not prepared to do that.

  He crossed rapidly to his bedroom door and looked inside. If possible, his bedroom was in more of a mess than the living room. The mattress was thrown against the wall, ripped to shreds. Every drawer of his bureau was dislodged, lying on the floor, the contents scattered all around the room. His closet was like the rest—suits and jackets pulled from the clothes rod, shoes yanked from their recesses.

  Even before he looked he knew his kitchen would be no better off than the rest of his apartment. The foodstuffs in cans and boxes had not been thrown on the floor, simply moved around, but the soft items had been torn to pieces. Matlock understood again. One or two crashes from the other rooms were tolerable noise levels; a continuation of the racket from his kitchen might arouse one of the other families in the building. As it was, he could hear the faint sounds of footsteps above him. The final crash of the window had gotten someone up.

  The warning was explicit, but the act itself was a search.

  He thought he knew the object of that search, and again he realized he could not acknowledge it. Conclusions were being made as they had been made at Beeson’s; he had to ride them out with the most convincing denials he could manufacture. That much he knew instinctively.

  But before he began that pretense, he had to find out if the search was successful.

  He shook the stammering lethargy out of his mind and body. He looked once again at his living room; he studied it. All the windows were bare, and the light was sufficient for someone with a pair of powerful binoculars stationed in a nearby building or standing on the inclining lawn of the campus beyond the street to observe every move he made. If he turned off the lights, would such an unnatural action lend credence to the conclusions he wanted denied?

  Without question. A man didn’t walk into a house in shambles and proceed to turn off lights.

  Yet he had to reach his bathroom, at that moment the most important room in the apartment. He had to spend less than thirty seconds inside to determine the success or failure of the ransacking, and do so in such a way as to seem innocent of any abnormal concerns. If anyone was watching.

  It was a question of appearance, of gesture, he thought. He saw that the stereo turntable was the nearest object to the bathroom door, no more than five feet away. He walked over and bent down, picking up several pieces, including the metal arm. He looked at it, then suddenly dropped the arm and brought his finger to his mouth, feigning an imagined puncture on his skin. He walked into the bathroom rapidly.

  Once inside, he quickly opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed a tin of Band-Aids from the glass shelf. He then swiftly reached down to the left of the toilet bowl where the cat’s yellow plastic box was placed and picked up a corner of the newspaper underneath the granules of litter. Beneath the newspaper he felt the coarse grain of the two layers of canvas he had inserted and lifted up an edge.

  The scissored page was still intact. The silver Corsican paper that ended in the deadly phrase Venerare Omerta had not been found.

  He replaced the newspaper, scattered the litter, and stood up. He saw that the frosted glass of the small window above the toilet was partially opened, and he swore.

  There was no time to think of that.

  He walked back into the living room, ripping the plastic off a Band-Aid.

  The search had failed. Now the warning had to be ignored, the conclusions denied. He crossed to the telephone and called the police.

  “Can you give me a list of what’s missing?” A uniformed patrolman stood in the middle of the debris. A second policeman wandered about the apartment making notes.

  “I’m not sure yet. I haven’t really checked.”

  “That’s understandable. It’s a mess. You’d better look, though. The quicker we get a list, the better.”

  “I don’t think anything is missing, officer. What I mean is, I don’t have anything particularly valuable to anyone else. Except perhaps the stereo … and that’s smashed. There’s a television set in the bedroom, that’s okay. Some of the books could bring a price, but look at them.”

  “No cash, jewelry, watches?”

  “I keep money in the bank and cash in my wallet. I wear my watch and haven’t any jewelry.”

  “How about exam papers? We’ve been getting a lot of that.”

  “In my office. In the English department.”

  The patrolman wrote in a small black notebook and called to his partner, who had gone into the bedroom. “Hey, Lou, did the station confirm the print man?”

  “They’re getting him up. He’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  “Have you touched anything, Mr. Matlock?”

  “I don’t know. I may have. It was a shock.”

  “Particularly any of the broken items, like that record player? It’d be good if we could show the fingerprint man specific things you haven’t touched.”

  “I picked up the arm, not the casing.”

  “Good. It’s a place to start.”

  The police stayed for an hour and a half. The fingerprints specialist arrived, did his work, and departed. Matlock thought of phoning Sam Kressel, but reasoned that there wasn’t anything Kressel could do at that hour. And in the event someone outside was watching the building, Kressel shouldn’t be seen. Various people from the other apartments had wakened and had come down offering sympathy, help, and coffee.

  As the police were leaving, a large patrolman turned in the doorway. “Sorry to take so much time, Mr. Matlock. We don’t usually lift prints in a break and entry unless there’s injury or loss of pr
operty, but there’s been a lot of this sort of thing recently. Personally, I think it’s those weirdos with the hair and the beads. Or the niggers. We never had trouble like this before the weirdos and the niggers got here.”

  Matlock looked at the uniformed officer, who was so confident of his analysis. There was no point in objecting; it would be useless, and Matlock was too tired. “Thanks for helping me straighten up.”

  “Sure thing.” The patrolman started down the cement path, then turned again. “Oh, Mr. Matlock.”

  “Yes?” Matlock pulled the door back.

  “It struck us that maybe someone was looking for something. What with all the slashing and books and everything … you know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d tell us if that was the case, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yeah. It’d be stupid to withhold information like that.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “No offense. Just that sometimes you guys get all involved and forget things.”

  “I’m not absentminded. Very few of us are.”

  “Yeah.” The patrolman laughed somewhat derisively. “I just wanted to bring it up. I mean, we can’t do our jobs unless we got all the facts, you know?”

  “I understand.”

  “Yeah. Good.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, Doctor.”

  He closed the door and walked into his living room. He wondered if his insurance would cover the disputable value of his rarer books and prints. He sat down on the ruined couch and surveyed the room. It was still a mess; the carnage had been thorough. It would take more than picking up debris and righting furniture. The warning had been clear, violent.

  The startling fact was that the warning existed at all.

  Why? From whom?

  Archer Beeson’s hysterical telephone call? That was possible, even preferable, perhaps. It might encompass a motive unrelated to Nimrod. It could mean that Beeson’s circle of users and pushers wanted to frighten him enough to leave Archie alone. Leave them all alone; and Loring had specifically said there was no proof that the Beesons were involved with the Nimrod unit.

  There was no proof that they weren’t, either.

  Nevertheless, if it was Beeson, the alarm would be called off in the morning. There was no mistaking the conclusion of the night’s engagement. The “near-rape” by a dirty, drugged “old man.” He was Beeson’s academic ladder.

  On the other hand, and far less preferable, there was the possibility that the warning and the search were centered on the Corsican paper. What had Loring whispered behind him on the sidewalk?

  “… There’s only one thing they want more than this briefcase; that’s the paper in your pocket.”

  It was then reasonable to assume that he’d been linked to Ralph Loring.

  Washington’s assessment that his panic at finding Loring dissociated him from the agent was in error, Jason Greenberg’s confidence misplaced.

  Still again, as Greenberg had suggested, they might test him. Press him before issuing a clean bill of health.

  Might, could, possible, still again.

  Conjectures.

  He had to keep his head; he couldn’t allow himself to overreact. If he was to be of any value, he had to play the innocent.

  Might have, could have, it was possible.

  His body ached. His eyes were swollen and his mouth still had the terrible aftertaste of the combined dosages of Seconal, wine, and marijuana. He was exhausted; the pressures of trying to reach unreachable conclusions were overtaking him. His memory wandered back to the early days in ’Nam and he recalled the best advice he’d ever been given in those weeks of unexpected combat. That was to rest whenever he could, to sleep if it was at all possible. The advice had come from a line sergeant who, it had been rumored, had survived more assaults than any man in the Mekong Delta. Who, it was also rumored, had slept through an ambush which had taken most of his company.

  Matlock stretched out on the barely recognizable couch. There was no point in going into the bedroom—his mattress was destroyed. He unbuckled his belt and kicked off his shoes. He could sleep for a few hours; then he’d talk to Kressel. Ask Kressel and Greenberg to work out a story for him to use about the invasion of his apartment. A story approved by Washington and, perhaps, the Carlyle police.

  The police.

  Suddenly he sat up. It hadn’t struck him at the time, but now he considered it. The crass but imperiously polite patrolman whose primitive detection powers had centered on the “weirdos and niggers” had addressed him as “Mister” throughout the nearly two hours of police investigation. Yet when he was leaving, when he insultingly referred to the possibility of Matlock’s withholding information, he had called him “Doctor.” The “mister” was normal. The “doctor” was most unusual. No one outside the campus community—and rarely there—ever called him “Doctor,” ever called any Ph.D. “Doctor.” It struck most holders of such degrees as fatuous, and only the fatuous expected it.

  Why had the patrolman used it? He didn’t know him, he had never seen him to his knowledge. How would the patrolman know he was even entitled to the name “doctor”?

  As he sat there, Matlock wondered if the combined efforts and pressures of the last hours were taking their toll. Was he now finding unreasonable meanings where no meanings existed? Was it not entirely plausible that the Carlyle police had a list of the Carlyle faculty and that a desk sergeant, or whoever took emergency calls, had checked his name against the list and casually stated his title? Was he not, perhaps, consigning the patrolman to a plateau of ignorance because he disliked the officer’s prejudices?

  A lot of things were possible.

  And disturbing.

  Matlock fell back onto the couch and closed his eyes.

  At first the noise reached him as a faint echo might from the far end of a long, narrow tunnel. Then the noise became identifiable as rapid, incessant tapping. Tapping which would not stop, tapping which became louder and louder.

  Matlock opened his eyes and saw the blurred light coming from two table lamps across from the couch. His feet were drawn up under him, his neck perspiring against the rough surface of the sofa’s corduroy cover. Yet there was a cool breeze coming through the smashed, lead-framed window.

  The tapping continued, the sound of flesh against wood. It came from the foyer, from his front door. He flung his legs over the side onto the floor and found that they both were filled with pins and needles. He struggled to stand.

  The tapping and the knocking became louder. Then the voice. “Jamie! Jamie!”

  He walked awkwardly toward the door.

  “Coming!” He reached the door and opened it swiftly. Patricia Ballantyne, dressed in a raincoat, silk pajamas evident underneath, walked rapidly inside.

  “Jamie, for God’s sake, I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “I’ve been here. The phone didn’t ring.”

  “I know it didn’t. I finally got an operator and she said it was out of order. I borrowed a car and drove over as fast as I could and …”

  “It’s not out of order, Pat. The police—the police were here and a quick look around will explain why—they used it a dozen times.”

  “Oh, good Lord!” The girl walked past him into the still-disheveled room. Matlock crossed to the telephone and picked it up from the table. He quickly held it away from his ear as the piercing tone of a disengaged instrument whistled out of the receiver.

  “The bedroom,” he said, replacing the telephone and going to his bedroom door.

  On his bed, on top of the slashed remains of his mattress, was his bedside phone. The receiver was off the hook, underneath the pillow, muffling the harsh sound of the broken connection so it would not be heard. Someone had not wanted it to ring.

  Matlock tried to remember everyone who’d been there. All told, more than a dozen people. Five or six policemen—in and out of uniform; husbands and wives from othe
r apartments; several late-night passersby who had seen the police cars and wandered up to the front door. It had been cumulatively blurred. He couldn’t remember all the faces.

  He put the telephone back on the bedside table and was aware that Pat stood in the doorway. He gambled that she hadn’t seen him remove the pillow.

  “Someone must have knocked it over straightening out things,” he said, pretending irritation. “That’s rotten; I mean your having to borrow a car.… Why did you? What’s the matter?”

  She didn’t reply. Instead, she turned and looked back into the living room. “What happened?”

  Matlock remembered the patrolman’s language. “They call it ‘break and entry.’ A police phrase covering human tornadoes, as I understand it.… Robbery. I got myself robbed for the first time in my life. It’s quite an experience. I think the poor bastards were angry because there wasn’t anything of any value so they ripped the place apart.… Why’d you come over?”

  She spoke softly, but the intensity of her voice made Matlock realize that she was close to panic. As always, she imposed a control on herself when she became emotional. It was an essential part of the girl.

  “A couple of hours ago—at quarter to four to be exact—my phone rang. The man, it was a man, asked for you. I was asleep, and I suppose I didn’t make much sense, but I pretended to be upset that anyone would think you were there.… I didn’t know what to do. I was confused.…”

  “Okay, I understand that. So?”

  “He said he didn’t believe me. I was a liar. I … I was so surprised that anyone would phone then—at quarter to four—and call me a liar … I was confused.…”

  “What did you say?”

  “It’s not what I said. It’s what he said. He told me to tell you to … not to stay ‘behind the globe’ or ‘light the lower world.’ He said it twice! He said it was an awful joke but you’d understand. It was frightening!… Do you? Do you understand?”