The Devereaux File

by Ross H. Spencer

  “That’s how the Mafia found out.”

  “But how did they single out Devereaux?”

  “How did the KGB single him out?”

  “Lacey, the KGB has three hundred thousand operatives in this country!”

  “Uh-huh, well, the Mafia has fifty times that many sources of information—every tenth person you meet has Mafia connections of one sort or another. If they aren’t genuine Mafioso, they know somebody who is. Killing Juarez was a serious offense—you just don’t knock over a Mafia drug shipment and get away with it. The outfit turned all the dogs loose on this one!”

  “All right, so they knew that Devereaux had killed Juarez and stolen their cocaine. Did they know that Devereaux was the Copperhead?”

  “Of course—they knew it long before we did, but the Mafia didn’t give a damn about the Copperhead. The Mafia wanted the man who’d grabbed their coke. They knew it was Rufe, but they didn’t know where Rufe was.”

  “And they believed that you did.”

  “Yes, but they were working from other angles—a Mafia enforcer named Bugsy Delvano back-tracked a basket of flowers that Bobbie Jo Pickens had sent to Rufe’s phony CIA wake. That revealed a link between Bobbie Jo and Rufe. Delvano went to Bobbie Jo’s apartment above the Club Howdy, and he beat her to death in an effort to learn Rufe’s location. She held the line—all he got was blood on his hands. The same ape cornered me in the funeral home parking lot later that night. My partner cold-cocked him.”

  “The Mafia believed that you were an accomplice of Devereaux’s?”

  “Probably not, but they believed that Rufe had turned to me when the going got rough.”

  “Well, they must have known that Devereaux was somewhere in Ohio—they were waiting at O’Hare when he flew in from Cleveland.”

  “He could have flown from Minneapolis to Cleveland and then to O’Hare. And knowing that he was holed up somewhere in Ohio wouldn’t have helped much. Ohio’s the most densely populated state in the country.”

  “But how did they know that he was coming to O’Hare?”

  “There might be a hole in the CIA.”

  “Chawrt vuhzmee, nobody’s honest!”

  “I had the cocaine, but I didn’t know it. Rufe had given everybody the slip at Mike’s Tavern—he’d taken a cab to his house on North Onines Avenue, he’d loaded up, he’d stopped near my apartment building and jammed the stuff behind the backseat of my car. Then he baited me to Youngstown with an empty matchbook and a thousand dollars. I was Rufe’s delivery boy.”

  “The Mafia could have killed Devereaux when he was in Chicago. Why didn’t they?”

  “A matter of economics—there was a couple million dollars’ worth of cocaine floating around. In Chicago, Rufe’s luggage amounted to an attaché case—obviously he wasn’t carrying the entire stolen shipment. The Mafia had it ass-backwards—it thought that the cocaine was in Youngstown and that he was bringing it to Chicago, when it was the other way around. It tried to kill Rufe but only after it was certain that it’d located the remainder of the stuff.”

  “Where did they think it was?”

  “They believed that Peggy was storing it.”

  They rolled westward through a twenty-minute silence. Natasha’s brow was furrowed. She was readying another barrage of questions, Lockington thought. Lockington was right. She asked, “Why did Billy Mac Davis try to kill you?”

  “Davis thought that I was onto Rufe. Rufe was Davis’s top gun—as the Copperhead he was invaluable. When Davis was sure that I was headed for Youngstown, he went for me.”

  “But if Devereaux and Davis were close, Davis would have known that Devereaux had sent for you.”

  “They weren’t that close—Davis wouldn’t have gone with the drug business. He’d have seen it as a focus of unwanted attention. No, Davis didn’t know that Rufe wanted me to come to Youngstown.”

  “But Davis knew that Devereaux was alive, that his murder had been staged?”

  “No doubt about that—Davis wouldn’t have been attempting to shield a man he believed to be dead.”

  “And then the Mafia killed Davis.”

  “Right—the Mafia was tagging me, figuring that I’d lead them to Rufe and to the cocaine shipment. If they’d lost me, the trail would have gone cold. Davis was interfering. Davis had to go.”

  “When did they think they’d located the cocaine?”

  “Night before last. When Peggy picked me up to take me to Rufe, Mercurio and Calabrese followed us. She dropped me off and they trailed her back to the New Delhi. They saw her take the coke from my car, they added two and two and came up with thirteen. They planned to kill Rufe and me, then beat the facts out of Peggy when she returned to Rufe’s—clean sweep.”

  “Where’s that kilo of cocaine now?”

  “Peggy had it—if she’s smart she doesn’t have it now.”

  “Do you think that the word got back to Chicago?”

  “No, there wouldn’t have been time. Mercurio and Calabrese are gone, courtesy of your friendly KGB.”

  “Don’t knock the KGB, Lacey—it watched over you.”

  Lockington swapped subjects. “You reached Youngstown ahead of schedule.”

  “Yes, I was concerned because of the LAON contract on you. We made the trip at night—I phoned from an Austintown restaurant, not from Chicago. We followed you to the Flamingo Lounge, back to the New Delhi, to the Flamingo again, then to Hubbard and Warren. You were busy!”

  “So was the KGB man who searched my motel room.”

  Her half-smile was sheepish. “Standard procedure—I didn’t dare violate it. My men kept a protective eye on you that night. When Peggy picked you up they realized that a green Trans Am was on your trail. When she delivered you to Devereaux’s place, they parked up the road to the west, staying close to you. When Peggy came back to the motel, the Trans Am was with her, but it returned to Devereaux’s property before she did. It pulled into the drive, and after the gunfire my men pursued the Trans Am, eliminating its occupants.”

  “On your orders, of course.”

  “If your life was endangered, yes—on my orders.”

  Lockington felt icy fingers tickle his spinal column. She’d been very ho-hum about it. He said, “Look, just what was the KGB’s stake in the game? Rufe had circulated word that he’d written a book. You appeared to be interested in that story, but you weren’t.”

  Natasha shook her head. “His ploy was as obvious as the CIA’s mock murder and wake. Devereaux thought that he’d be safe so long as he held the threat of a revealing manuscript. It was wishful thinking on his part, nothing more.”

  “From the very beginning, it was your assignment to kill him, wasn’t it?”

  “No, not from the very beginning—only from the time we realized that he was the Copperhead.”

  “That would have been after the killings in Miami.”

  “Yes. On instructions from LAON, Devereaux was murdering Communist sympathizers in this country. These people have been the backbone of the Soviet movement here—they’re in every walk of life, particularly the media. They doctor the news, so that the news disseminated is slanted. Eighty-five percent of America’s news distribution is Communist owned or controlled—press, radio, television.”

  “Misinformation.”

  “Yes, misinformation.”

  “The Communists aren’t doing too badly on Capitol Hill, either—there’s a couple hundred left-leaners up there.”

  Natasha was nodding. “The Soviet Union has a strong foothold in the United States but LAON and Devereaux were knocking a hole in the infrastructure.”

  “You couldn’t kill Devereaux before you found him. I found him for you.”

  “You were our best bet—probably our only bet.”

  “I didn’t spring the trap, but I put the noose around his neck.”

  “Regrets?”

  “Of course.”

  “He had every intention of killing you, try to remember that.”

  �
��He was sick—try to remember that!”

  “Lacey, a rabid dog is a rabid dog.”

  “Enough of this. Why was the CIA chasing Rufe?”

  “The CIA was the only organization really taken in by his manuscript hoax—it actually believed that he’d written a damaging book. It knew that others were interested and it attempted to throw them off the scent by staging his assassination—it intended to hold matters in abeyance until it could determine how harmful Devereaux’s writings might be, until it could round up all copies of the manuscript. Then the CIA would have killed him—depend on it. He was an agent gone bad and there’s just one way to deal with that type in any branch of secret service.”

  Lockington said, “Yesterday evening, when you went to Room 5 to change for dinner—your men were there and you keyed them for this morning’s action.”

  Natasha winked at him. “Yes, that would have been when you were keying the CIA men in Room 8.”

  They hammered along Interstate 80, the old Pontiac eating up the miles. In a few minutes Natasha said, “What was your clincher, Lacey—the names of those old baseball players?”

  “That was it—you’d mentioned that the Copperhead had killed a Wallace Vernon from an apartment he’d rented under the name of Sam Sheckard. You said that he’d killed a man from an automobile that’d been rented by an Orval Overall, and that he’d knifed a man in a restaurant booth that he’d reserved under the name of Carl Lundgren. At that time these names were meaningless to me. Then I learned that the Club Crossroads had been bought by a man named Jack Taylor, that Peggy’s red Porsche was owned by a Patrick Moran, and that the property on North Dunlap Avenue belonged to a Harry Steinfeldt and I still hadn’t caught the brass ring, but I should have!”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s a standard baseball trivia question, one that I’ve asked and answered dozens of time—‘Who was the fourth man in the Tinker to Evers to Chance Chicago Cubs infield?’ The answer is Harry Steinfeldt.”

  “I’m afraid that I’m not with you.”

  Lockington went on. “Then, when Rufe told me that he was using the pseudonym of Joseph Tinker, I had a hunch, and when I said that he should write a sequel to his book under the name of John J. Evers, he gave me a strange look. He passed over my remark but I got the impression that I’d hit a nerve.”

  Natasha said, “John J. Evers—the property on Western Reserve Road is owned by a John J. Evers! Devereaux thought that you’d cracked his cover—he had to kill you!”

  “He’d have tried anyway—what the hell, fifty G’s is fifty G’s. An old baseball encyclopedia wrapped it up. The Copperhead was using the names of the 1906 Chicago Cubs—Sheckard, Overall, Lundgren—and so was Rufe—Pfiester, Schulte, Taylor, Moran, Steinfeldt. There comes a time when coincidences cease to be coincidences. The Copperhead and Rufe Devereaux were the same person—the nineteen-oh-six Chicago Cubs were Rufe’s favorite baseball team!”

  “A slender thread.”

  “Also, there was the fact that his instructions for receiving the manuscript had been too damned explicit—I was to be sitting in my car, waiting for Peggy’s delivery at precisely six o’clock. Why did it have to be that way? Why couldn’t she have brought it to my door and let me take off for Chicago when I was ready? He was setting me up.”

  “Do you think that Peggy knew that he’d try to kill you this morning?”

  “No—she showed no surprise at my visit.”

  Another ten miles had fallen behind them when Natasha said, “Lacey, you’re a good man.”

  Lockington said, “No, but once in a while I get lucky.”

  Natasha squeezed his arm. She said, “So do I.”

  They were west of Toledo, bearing down on the Indiana line.

  76

  It was eight o’clock on that evening. The heat was still in Chicago. He sat buried in the shadows of a Shamrock Pub rear booth, nipping at a double Martell’s, looking back. Lacey Lockington spent a great deal of his time looking back, probably because he could find so few reasons for looking ahead—tomorrow had never been Lockington’s favorite day.

  He was taking inventory. He was living in a city that was coming down around his ears. He had $386 in his pocket. He had $721 in the bank. He owned a blue Pontiac Catalina that was due to explode sometime during the span of its next five hundred miles. He owned a private investigation agency that didn’t have a client to its name. He’d fallen hopelessly in love with a woman who’d used him shamelessly, one he’d probably never see again. He’d cooperated in the execution of a man whose friendship he’d once valued. He was half-drunk. He needed a shave. He had a headache.

  He watched a gross creature leave the Shamrock Pub bar. She lurched toward the ladies’ room, passing Lockington’s booth, stomping on his feet. Lockington groaned, gritting his teeth, seeing stars. The woman screeched, “You tried to trip me, you swine!” She belted Lockington alongside the head with a handbag that must have contained an anvil.

  Lockington said, “Sorry.” He meant every word of it.

  Edna Garson came in. She sat at the bar and ordered a screwdriver, watching the door. Lockington raised his hand, waving to Edna. Edna didn’t notice. Moose Katzenbach came in. He sat beside Edna at the bar. They embraced, chatting for a few minutes, laughing. Now he knew the identity of the blonde in Moose’s booth at the Roundhouse. They hadn’t wasted much time. Lockington watched them go out, holding hands. He shrugged. What the hell, he was glad for them. It felt good to be glad.

  77

  Lockington had been sleeping for three minutes, or perhaps it’d just seemed like three minutes—he wasn’t sure. Lockington wasn’t sure of a lot of things. In fact, he wasn’t sure of more things than he was sure of, but there was one thing that he’d have bet his shirt on—somebody was sitting on the edge of his bed. His .38 police special was in his shoulder holster where it should have been, but his shoulder holster was slung over the back of a chair in the kitchen where it shouldn’t have been. Sometimes one mistake like that is all a man ever gets. In the darkness Natasha Gorky said, “I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  Lockington said, “Did I forget to lock my door?”

  Natasha said, “No, it was locked. Why?”

  Lockington said, “Just thought I’d ask.”

  Natasha said, “You know, it really wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.”

  “Picking my lock?”

  “No, convincing my superior that Devereaux really had written a book.”

  Lockington sat up in bed. He turned on the nightstand lamp, found a pair of cigarettes, lit them, and gave one to Natasha. He said, “I thought that the KGB was laughing at that book yarn.”

  “It was, but it’s stopped. I said that it was a very big book, and very well written. I said that Devereaux had told of the Athens matter.”

  “The Athens matter?”

  “Yes—also the Belgrade business.”

  “The Belgrade business?”

  “Uh-huh—Boris turned pale when I said that Devereaux had gotten into the Belgrade business.”

  “Boris?”

  “Boris Kaputchev—he’s in charge of Midwestern KGB affairs.”

  “You’ve been in bed with Boris Kaputchev?”

  “He’s my superior.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Yes, it does. But that was before my retirement.”

  “Your retirement—when did you retire?”

  Natasha took Lockington’s wrist, tilting it against the light, peering at his watch. “Fifty-three minutes ago.”

  Lockington said, “Hell, it could be an hour—you can’t trust that watch.”

  Natasha yawned. “Small matter—time’s of no consequence when you’re retired.”

  Lockington got out of bed, hitching up his pajama bottoms, walking toward the darkened living room, Natasha following him closely. In the living room he tripped, falling like a redwood. He said, “Lights, for Christ’s sake!”

>   Natasha switched on a lamp. She said, “I don’t believe I should have left it there.”

  Lockington sat up dazedly. “You don’t believe you should have left what where?”

  “My overnight bag—I don’t believe I should have left it in the middle of the floor.”

  Lockington was shaking his head. He said, “At the risk of seeming presumptuous, I believe it is time that I learn just what the hell is going on here.”

  Natasha said, “Oh, yes—well, you see, this evening I went to see Boris Kaputchev. He was at work.”

  “Uh-huh, and where does Boris Kaputchev work?”

  “He’s night janitor in the Chicago CIA offices.”

  “Ah, yes—Boris has access to the Telex room?”

  “Certainly—I met him there tonight. Noisy place.”

  “How did you get into the installation?”

  “I told them that I was taking up a collection for charity.”

  “What charity?”

  “They didn’t ask, but I raised seventeen dollars.”

  “Nothing like airtight security. Back to Boris, please.”

  “We had a long talk—I told Boris that there are many copies of Devereaux’s manuscript. Then I made certain inferences and stressed certain conditions.”

  “Certain conditions?”

  “Yes, we were discussing my severance pay.”

  “The KGB gives severance pay?”

  “It does now—in my case, one hundred thousand dollars.”

  Lockington didn’t say anything.

  Natasha said, “Plus the black Mercedes I’ve been driving—I’ve become accustomed to it, you see.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s parked out front—my luggage is in it.”

  “But your overnight bag isn’t.”

  “No, I brought it in because I didn’t know what you might have in mind. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to leave now or in the morning.”

  “Leave—for where?”

  “I was thinking in terms of Youngstown, Ohio. It has trees—like Odessa.”

  Lockington got to his feet. He said, “It’s now or in the morning?”