And still the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: why was his disappearance so important? So vital to the White House?
I fell asleep on that soft hospital bed, still not knowing the answers to any of those questions. Almost not caring if I ever knew.
It seemed somehow as if I might never have any answers.
It's very easy to feel that way when you're not one hundred percent healthy. When your eyes are bothering you.
Ask anybody with eye trouble.
But don't ask private eyes.
They ought to know better.
KILL ME IN PICCADILLY
□ The Regent Palace had about a thousand rooms, but no private baths. You had to walk down the hall. It didn't matter, though. The hotel's proximity to Piccadilly Circus —just about a good pitching throw from the front door to Shaftesbury Fountain, if you could really throw a curve ball—was all that mattered. I needed a central London location, easy accessibility to West End, Whitehall, Westminster, Grosvenor Square, Leicester Square, and the lot, as Laurence Olivier would say; and the Regent Palace was right on target. On a clear day, you could almost see the Victorian Embankment. I could see the gaggles of sightseeing double-decker red tourist buses, the glare of Broadway-style neon at night, and the sheer Times Square bustle and hustle of the section. From my tenth floor window, I was closed off by narrow sidestreets flanking each side of the hotel, but the front view gave me a real overhead, bird's-eye view into the heart of the Circle.
I could see the Boots Chemists shop on the avenue, which catered to the long lines of mod and hippie London kids who queued up nightly around midnight for their prescription drugs that made the next twenty-four hours of London air easy to take. Maybe it wasn't the real answer to the dope problem, but it seemed to work. Nobody got mugged with the frightening regularity one does in old Manhattan across the ocean. Past Boots, there was the gaudy marquees of the cinemas, the souvenir shops, the eateries, arcades of slot machine, pinball, and games-of-chance traps. For the tourists and the regulars too. You had to walk around the corner, down Shaftes-bury Avenue or into Soho, with its garishly, cheaply wrought skin houses where Strip and Bought Sex went on around-the-clock to the blare of terrible phonograph records, to lose the essentially New York flavor of Piccadilly. There you also find the very cream of legitimate theatre, showhouses closer to each other than the pages of a book: the Globe, the Lyric, the Strand, with actors like Guinness, Morley, Olivier, and Redgrave working the boards in some major play, either vintage or new. Shaftesbury Fountain itself, rising like a silver arrow with its famous statue of Eros at the pinnacle, is the cherry in the very center of the Piccadilly cake. Bovril Watches, the Schweppes sign, and the Coca-Cola neon monsters make of the circus an illuminated dream at night. Make it a nightmare for some people, a Technicolor wonderland for others. It looks like Broadway to a visiting fireman. To a native Londoner I suppose it looks like imitation chaos.
Anyhow, I hadn't come to enjoy the scenery.
Or to dine in the well-known eating places, like Wheeler's, Isow's, Le Moulin D'or, or La Terrazza, a Sinatra hangout when he's in London. Nor was I going to take the time to browse in Foyle's great bookstore on Tottenham Court Road. I might even have to pass up those supra-department stores like Harrod's and Fortnum and Mason's, which were close enough to Piccadilly to stroll to. But none of that for me. I had other fish to fry. Bigger game.
Dr. Green-Jones, who had turned out to be butterball-fat and very hairless when they took my bandages off, gave me a clean bill of health, provided me with a pair of enormous sunglasses for my first week in the sun, and sent me on my merry way. It seemed BOAC was going to pick up my medical tab, and I wasn't to worry about the cost. I took a cab from Tower Parkside, which was a sprawl of buildings somewhere behind Kensington High Street, and got my first good look at London. It wasn't raining, either. Just a warm summer day with nice clouds and a pleasant sun. The cabbie rode me past Hyde Park, which was Central Park with a stone wall and gates, and we even scurried past the London Hilton en route to Piccadilly. It looked somehow out of place, towering high above the sensible lowness of everything else, and as we cruised down Regent Street on the left side of the avenue, I lost all sense of the anachronism of that kind of travel. In London it just seems right to be on the wrong side of the street. It always does.
As we wheeled to a stop before the mouth of the Regent Palace, which is the corner of the block it is built on, facing the square, the meter was all of sixty-three new pence. Which is peanuts in any New Yorker's language. Roughly, a dollar and a half. I gave the driver a twenty-pence tip and asked him if it was a suitable gratuity. He winked broadly, tipped his cap, and chuckled, "Lovely, Guv'nor, lovely." Imagine any cabdriver in Manhattan saying that to what amounted to a fifty cent tip. I had overtipped, actually.
The London cabs were aces. Small, fast, could turn on a dime or a sixpence, Deisel engine with bucket jump seats for extra passengers. Great for intra-city travel. I intended to use a lot of them. The double-decker buses were for sight-seeing and time on your tourist hands. Time was something I had run out of, thanks to Mr. Badger and his new game with cameras. Some focus he had.
I checked into the Regent-Palace—attache case, luggage, and all—and was promptly installed in that tenth floor, front room. The decor wasn't British, either. Plain yellow walls, old furniture, cheap curtains. The view and the accommodation was all that counted.
There was so much to do. To get started, I mean.
There had still been no word from Washington, either direct or indirect. I had a feeling I had been forgotten, or the Man had gone off to Saigon or Tangier or some place. After all, he is really the only person that knows I exist—in the capacity he made for me.
Melissa Mercer, my secretary, was on her two-weeks vacation in Nassau. I suspected she'd never even heard or read about my accident at Heathrow. Which was just as well. Women that love you can be a drag in that department. I'd left a note for her on her desk in the mouse auditorium so she could find it when she returned. Something to the effect that I was off to London and would send her a postcard of the Tower.
So much had happened since I'd written that note in a jocular vein.
Like somebody going for the jugular.
Like nearly losing my eyes.
They felt much better now, but they still hurt a little whenever any light penetrated them. The sunglasses had come in mighty handy. And I still had to thank Miss Maralee Mitchum properly, though I had no idea just yet of how to make contact with her. That, too, would have to come later. Would have to wait. Like so many things.
There was still the matter of picking up the very cold trail of Desmond Allan Cursitor. I hadn't brought his diary with me; it just wasn't necessary. I had all the facts. And the most salient one was that he had stepped into the hall outside of his room at the Embassy Hotel to see the porter about getting tickets for that night's performance of Kean with Alan Badel. I had bought a copy of the Evening News in the hotel lobby, and while I was arranging my clothes and belongings in the closets of my room, I had time to check out the theatre listings. Kean was still playing at the Globe, but, more pertinently, the same hall porter was probably still working at the Embassy Hotel. That was one kind of a lead, even though the poor guy, whoever he was, had probably answered a million questions already. But I had nothing else to go on at that moment. And a lead is a lead is a lead, according to Gertrude.
The Chief simply hadn't given me much to go with.
I was strictly on my own. Right down the line, all the way.
Our usual, standard, familiar modus operandi, a two-dollar Latin phrase meaning—it's up to you, Eddie, baby!
T'was ever thus.
The way of the Man with his made-to-order private investigator.
Nuts.
My .45 and harness seemed to be in order. Full clip and extra cartridges. The attache case, which had been designed to get through Customs, couldn't have been opened unless the opener knew how. A complicated no-ke
y trick of touching the hasps in a certain chronological sequence and then standing the thing on its right side. Otherwise, it merely opened the standard way, showing only what you wanted the Customs people to see, and not the false bottom no more than an inch in height. When I explored that section of the case, everything was as it should be.
I was equipped with the usual James Bond supply of mankillers, which have now become so standard in cold war circles; explosive sticks of chewing gum; Aunt Jemima flour that kneads the same way and only needs to be ignited to become plastic dynamite; a jar of corrosive acid which could eat into a steel bank vault; tubes of jelly compound which could raze small structures; a cigarette lighter which was actually a .22 calibre pistol; a buttonhole lapel camera; and a ball of steel, no bigger than a marble, which was a transistorized homing device. All the highly technological stuff which I try to avoid using.
I'm not a mechanical man at all. I never was.
When it comes to TV repair, fixing electrical wiring, or playing around with the laws of physics and electronics, I always call in an expert. My own peculiar law of survival. It had worked for me, too.
For a very long time.
Still, you have to know your tools as best you can. Just in case. It's that kind of a world, too. A highly complex one.
During my stay at the Regent Palace, I kept the room door locked. Not wanting any surprise visitors and very mindful of the treatment Mr. Badger had given me, I stayed on the alert, a twenty-four-hour alert. In the evenings, I surrounded my bed with the newspapers I purchased during the day, spreading them out all over the floor so that no one could approach the bed without rustling up a storm. The room window, ten floors above the street, had no ledge, and the nearest window was far enough away to tax the manpower skills of a human fly. Houdini couldn't have entered my room via the window. I liked that. My eyes continued to heal. Slowly but gradually, and all the time, I thought of ways and means to pick up the trail of Desmond Allan Cursitor. The porter at the Embassy Hotel was still the best bet. It was impossible to phone or wire the White House for a message or further instructions. We didn't work that way. I didn't have my special red-white-and-blue telephone to call him. The Man knew where I'd be staying. It was up to him to make the next move.
Meanwhile, there was nothing in the London papers to indicate or suggest that Mr. Desmond Allan Cursitor was still a newsworthy item. In fact, it was almost as if he had never existed.
The Piccadilly days and nights droned on. With me healing, the time passing, and no word of any kind. Below my window, in the street, the murmuring, illuminated mass of civil populace, tourists, and low-key excitement throbbed on. And all the while I was chainsmoking Camels, getting down on my supply, faced with the prospect of having to buy Player's or Regents or any one of a dozen other English brands of the weed. It's like that on most cases. This one was proving no different. You drink a lot of coffee, smoke like a nicotine fiend, and you—wait.
For the one break that will catapult you off the road again. The big bait that will speed you into the core of things once more. With or without sunglasses. With or without results.
It came.
The phone tinkled merrily, the peculiar British sound that is so vastly different from Bell in the States. It was the good high part of a sunless afternoon, and I had just dined on a poor meal of sausages and scrambled eggs in a dull restaurant on Dean Street in the heart of the Soho district, just a few minutes walk from the hotel. I'd come back to the room solely to take another gander at my James Bond equipment. The room seemed in perfect order, and the tiny hairs I had left on the doorsill and the window were unbroken and undisturbed—until I broke them and disturbed them. I hadn't even had time to doff my porkpie hat when the telephone on the night stand by the made-up bed tinkled its message. I scooped it up in a hurry. I was spoiling that much for some action. I'd been too long in dry-dock, licking my wounds.
"Hello?" I said.
"Is that you, Mr. Noon?"
I frowned at the transmitter. The voice was male, but very young. Almost like a small boy's. I relaxed though, because you just don't associate Death and Menace with boys who sound like their voices haven't changed yet. Things haven't gotten that bad, yet.
"The one and only," I said lightly. "What can I do for you?"
"Would you be good enough to meet me sometime today? Really, it's terribly urgent, I'm afraid. And I just don't know which way to turn it's been the most awful time waiting for you to get out of hospital—and really, if we don't get cracking very soon, you just never will know all there is to know—"
"Hold on," I said. I took a deep breath. "Wait a minute. I'm a little slow today. Who is this?"
"Oh, sorry—I really am all sixes and sevens—Torin Bird, Mr. Noon. Didn't you know?" The youthful soprano sounded amazed.
Vaguely, like a half-remembered melody, I could hear Detective Allister's harsh voice jabbing at me through layers of subconscious wool: "—Torin Bird. What do you say to that one?"
I didn't know what to say to that one. But I do think fast, and I knew this wasn't the time for hedging, coy, stupid questions.
"You almost waited too long," I jollied my tone. "Where do you want to meet me, son? And when?"
"The Albert Memorial. Do you know where it is?"
"Sure. What time?"
"Would two o'clock suit you? I am awfully keen. There's been too much delay as it is, and poor Mr. Cursitor is in great danger for every extra hour we waste. Do hurry, Mr. Noon—and don't let anything happen to you this time. Please, sir. It's most awfully important."
The young voice was shrilling on, going an octave higher. If I hadn't known any better, I could have thought it was a teenage girl all upset about a bad mark in school exams. Torin Bird. Who was he, and what the hell was he, and how could he know anything about Desmond Allan Cursitor when the police of three continents were trying to find him?
It was too much, too soon. I was holding my breath, almost painfully. My young boy had descended upon me like the proverbial bolt out of the blue. Even Scotland Yard was interested in him.
"—are you still there, sir?"
"Still here," I said with all the flatness I could produce. "Two o'clock. The Albert Memorial. Check. That's like an hour from now. You be there and I'll be there. Would you mind telling me where you are calling from ?"
"Sorry, Sir. I'll explain it all later, I promise. Ta, Sir."
He hung up, wherever he was, whoever he was, and I stared for terribly long seconds at the dead phone in my hand. "Ta," I echoed quietly and shook my head like a dumb marionette.
I was only sure of one thing in that room of the Regent Palace.
I didn't know anything.
THE NOON AND SIXPENCE
□ You couldn't miss the Albert Memorial.
Women's Lib would have had a lot to say about a towering Gothic spire of gleaming marble, gilded metal, and brightly colored stone representing a Queen's tribute to a husband, but there was no denying the shining monument glowing in the grayness of the afternoon. It cost about one hundred and twenty thousand pounds way back in the days when Victoria wanted to tell the world what a great guy Prince Albert was, and she had it done with a marble statue of the man surrounded at below-pedestal depth with friezes showing the greatest figures in the history of civilization. But whether Big Al is all Victoria thought he was or not, he's been there a long time. Just about a city block in from Kensington thoroughfare in the wide, green, lovely environs of Hyde Park. The golden facade of the structure seemed to twinkle in the daylight, even though the sun was a pale shadow behind a leaden sky. My cab let me out just across the street from Albert Hall, another of the old Queen's tributes to her Prince Consort. Both of the edifices are rather too Germanic and Gothic for jolly old England, but four generations of young and old alike had taken large dollops of both. The Hall for music and the Memorial for a nice place to meet a girl or simply loll in the fresh park air. The atmosphere was peaceful, pastoral, and downright restful. I could s
ense the attraction of Big Al's private plaza even as I took the curving stone path up to his base. But my eyes were peeled, and my mind was on the .45 nestling in my left armpit holster. I was still wearing the enormous sunglasses, and I was still very vividly aware of why I had to wear them.
I wasn't going to be Badgered twice. Not if I could help it.
Massive stone stairs, without bannisters or rails of any kind, ran around the monument on all four sides. Iron picket-style fences with open entrances formed a decorative border to the entire monument. I hadn't expected throngs of sight-seers, because Al isn't one of those kinds of exhibits that dot all of London. He is simply there, rain or shine, and you don't have to buy a ticket to visit him. But there were scattered pairs and groups of hippie types and Mod singletons loitering on the stone stairs, talking and plucking indolently at guitars, sitars, and makeshift musical instruments. Not noisily—just quietly and contentedly. There was a mild thrum and hum to the atmosphere.
For hundreds of yards in every direction, wide, measured green expanses of lawn stretched. Toward Rotten Row and its acres of flowers of all colors and variety, toward the paths that led to the Round Pool in one direction, the Serpentine in another. The trees were high and enormous, spreading ancient limbs closely, giving a sheltering ceiling and roof to the inner depths of the park. It was a lovely spot, all things considered. One of the loveliest, but there was no time to dawdle. This didn't call for Thoreau, it called for a wide-awake operator with a quick noodle and quicker reflexes. The race was to the swift. I hadn't come to gather rosebuds. Flowers were definitely out.
I drew closer to the stone stairs, looking up them. Statues of poets, musicians, philosophers, painters, and all the other workers at private and universal truths, stared stonily down at me from their frozen bas-relief walls at the base of Albert's throne. The lolling teenage Hippies and Mods ignored me, as if I weren't there in my square suit of Books Brothers cut, porkpie fedora, and conservative tie and shoes. That didn't bother me. What bothered me was that I couldn't spot anyone who seemed to match the voice and manner of the Torin Bird I had talked to on the phone. No one seemed nearly young enough. And the thin Timex on my wrist was working on five minutes past two. It was fourteen hundred hours plus. And no Torin Bird. My Fair Kiddie.
London Bloody London Page 5
