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Five O'Clock Lightning

Page 22

by William L. DeAndrea


  The cabs were loaded up and starting to leave. Kennedy had no more time for thinking. He put his rented DeSoto in gear and followed them.

  He decided when he arrived that a simple peek in the lobby wouldn’t do any harm. He walked by the glass doors, watching the Yankees go up the short flight of carpeted steps to the level of the front desk. Someone rose from one of the plush lobby chairs and accosted Mickey Mantle. Kennedy saw he had been right about how well Mantle was protected. Several members of the Yankees stepped between Mantle and the man who’d been waiting. Then they stepped aside. By bending a little Kennedy could see the man’s face. Kennedy quickly ducked away from the entrance (the doorman had begun to eye him suspiciously, anyway) before the man could notice him. As Kennedy walked back to his car, he began to smile.

  Russ Garrett. Garrett was here, in Boston. In Kennedy’s hands. Mantle and Garrett. He had to be able to get one of them.

  Soon he was on the phone to New York. “Nofsinger,” he said. “Bring me one of the devices. The electric one, I think. No, I won’t meet you personally. When can you be in Boston? Very well. A colored man in a short red jacket will meet you a half-hour past that time.” Kennedy named a street corner outside Fenway Park for the rendezvous. It seemed appropriate, somehow. “No, he won’t say anything. He is a deaf mute.” That took care of any possibility of Nofsinger recognizing Kennedy’s voice. “Yes, I trust him. Now I suggest you get moving.”

  Kennedy hung up and decided he’d better get moving, too. It was still raining on and off, and he was going to have to stand around in it tonight. He’d better find a place he could get an umbrella on a Sunday night in Boston.

  4

  Rex Simmons had never had much union support, and Tad didn’t expect any, either. That’s why he wasn’t worried about any political ramifications when he decided to go to the Congressional Office Building Labor Day morning. He took his time among the holiday-weekend crowds.

  He wasn’t going to do much work, anyway. He was just looking for Cheryl. He didn’t know what had gotten into that girl. She could never be reached at her apartment in Silver Spring anymore—he hadn’t found her there since they’d left Kansas City for Washington last Friday.

  At first he had suspected she was out getting laid. It would be like her to run around and rub it in that she had raised the flag on him, the bitch. But anytime he called the office, there she was, just like she said she’d be. She had a lot of work to do, she told him. Putting his brother’s files in shape for him, she’d said.

  Tad Simmons wasn’t buying any of that crap. He’d just amble down to the office and see what she was up to. Maybe she had some gimmick on the phone that would send calls in the office out to wherever she was, doing God knew what. Maybe the slut was having men in the office. On the couch in Rex’s—dammit, his office. She’d done that with Rex, Tad knew. Whatever it was he would find out and lay down the law. He was the congressman now. He’d be making laws. Time to get in a little practice.

  Cheryl was in the office. Alone, in her proper place. She jumped when he came into the room, then smiled kittenishly at him.

  “Hello, Tad,” she said. “I mean, Congressman.”

  Tad’s eyes narrowed in his foxy face. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Cheryl took a puff at her cigarette, then waved her hand at a litter of items scattered on her desk top, making a smoky circle around them. “Cleaning out my desk,” she said. “I was going to leave you a note. Maybe this is better.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Quitting. I’ve had enough, that’s all. No hard feelings.”

  “No hard f-f-feelings my ass!” Tad saw Cheryl studiously ignore his stutter, and that made him all the madder. “You’re not about to run out on me n-n-now, little girl.”

  Cheryl stubbed out the cigarette, emptied the ashtray into the garbage, wiped it with a tissue, threw the tissue away, and stowed the ashtray neatly in a small cardboard carton on the floor beside her desk. “I hope that doesn’t break,” she said absently.

  Tad was turning red. It took him ten seconds to get past the g sound of goddammit. It was a roar by the time it came out.

  Cheryl looked up at him. “Oh, come off it, Congressman. You’ve got days before Congress reconvenes. You’ll find somebody.” Cheryl tilted her head as if pondering something. “Might be a good idea if you went back to Kansas City to do the hiring. Better politics.”

  Tad stood still. He clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and bit his tongue. He would get control of himself. He concentrated on it. He astounded himself by doing something he never thought he’d do—he asked himself how Rex would have handled this. He decided that Rex, with the way he felt about Cheryl, would either have dissolved in hopeless tears or strangled her by now. Or both.

  Tad laughed. That put things in perspective, didn’t it? Stupid to get that worked up over a woman. Especially when you held all the cards.

  “What is it, Cheryl?” he said. “Really, I mean. Just because we don’t sleep together anymore doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Do you want a raise?”

  “No raise, Tad. I’m just leaving.”

  Tad was still being reasonable. “You won’t get away with it. You know I won’t let you.”

  “I know too much?”

  “Something like that. Besides, I need you. You know too damn much to be replaced, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ve got copies of the files, Tad.” Cheryl might have told him it was still cloudy outside or that the Washington Monument was tall.

  “What?”

  “The real files. The files that tell how much money we got from Mrs. Klimber and why. And what you did with it. Those files.”

  Tad didn’t stammer. He didn’t speak. His only thought was Jesus, Rex would have killed her, and he would have been right.

  Cheryl went on. “That’s what I’ve been doing in the office this weekend. Making photostats of the files. For insurance.”

  “Wh-wh-wh-wh ...” Son of a bitch, Tad thought.

  “Where are they?” Cheryl asked. Being helpful. Tad couldn’t stand it. “The originals are in the locked drawers where they belong. Oh, here’s the key.” She picked something up from her desk and held it out as if she expected him to take it. When she saw he wasn’t going to, she placed it gently back down.

  “I’ll just leave it here,” she said. “The copies are all in the mail. To all sorts of places. Reporters, lawyers, friends—even one to my ex-husband. There’s no delivery today, of course, but I really have to get in touch with those people and tell them not to open them unless something happens to me.”

  “Why?” Tad didn’t try to say more than the single word.

  “I told you. Insurance. I want out of here, and this is my way to get it. As long as I stay unmolested, you stay in office. And out of jail. I made dozens of copies.” She looked at him, eyes wide.

  “You bitch,” Tad said. “You’re enjoying this.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Cheryl told him. “Someone said to me recently that I get some sort of kick out of power as a thing in itself. Even sexually.” She shrugged. “It could be. Maybe that’s what I saw in your brother and you. But if that’s the case it makes much more sense if I have power myself. Simpler. Don’t you think so? Now I do have power. Power to leave you, and to see that you leave me alone.” She picked up her carton and folded down the lid. She stood up and got ready to go. Tad was paralyzed; she had to walk around him on the way to the door. Just as she passed him, she stopped and turned around.

  “Oh, and Tad?”

  Congressman Simmons felt as if he were talking in his sleep. “Yes?” he said. He didn’t even feel his lips move.

  “You lay off Russ Garrett, too. Let the police find out who killed Rex. Leave Garrett alone. Or by the time I get through, your seat will be hotter than the Rosenbergs’. And I’ll laugh while you cook. Do you believe me?”

  Tad nodded, but he still couldn’t believe any of it.

 
; “Good,” Cheryl cooed. She blew him a kiss. “Good-bye, Tad,” she said. “It’s been fun, mostly.”

  She walked out.

  5

  They turned on the lights in Fenway Park at the start of the third inning of the second game.

  “About time,” Hal Keating said. “Damn clouds make it look like the middle of the night.”

  Garrett grunted, heard himself, and apologized. He’d been spending too much time with Vicious Aloysius Murphy. “I hear it’s raining again back in New York. I hope we get the second game in before it rains up here.”

  “Long night for the ground crew at the stadium,” Keating observed. Garrett agreed and said they’d probably be getting the field in shape until dawn—assuming it had stopped raining down in New York in the meantime.

  “If it doesn’t stop raining the Yankees may never win another game,” Garrett said glumly.

  The Red Sox had won the first game of today’s double-header 7 to 4, in spite of Mickey Mantle’s home run. Ted Williams had done the most damage, with a homer and a single. George Kell had also homered, but to Garrett’s mind, that one didn’t really count. In Fenway Park a right-handed batter had an easy poke for a home run. A ball that would be a lazy pop-up in Yankee Stadium would clear the big tin-covered wall in left field here in Fenway. Center and right field were fairly normal, and Williams was a lefty, so that homer was legitimate.

  Garrett was not enjoying himself today. Too many people rooting against the Yankees in strange accents. He was tired of hearing people say “Hit it out of the pak!” Garrett was also under the impression that when anybody in the crowd looked at him cross-eyed, it was a Boston policeman deciding he was the guy who’d sent Mickey the threatening note. At that, he supposed he couldn’t blame them. He looked sour enough, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Mickey anytime he was on the field.

  Garrett sat and looked at the field, not seeing it. It wasn’t baseball, he decided, that had been bothering him. He’d been this way ever since he’d heard from Cheryl just before he’d left the hotel.

  He didn’t know why that should bother him; it ought to make him happy. Cheryl had done something for him he wasn’t close to being able to do for himself. Garrett felt pretty sure that Congressman Telford Simmons wouldn’t be around upsetting his mother with stories of “Communist” girl friends in his past.

  “Rest in peace, Annie,” he said.

  Hal Keating risked turning one eye away from the spectacle of Yogi Berra digging in at the plate. “What did you say?”

  Yogi got a hit, driving in a run for the Yankees. “Nothing, Hal. Way to go, Yogi!”

  Having gotten the cheer out of his system, Garrett went back to his thoughts. Maybe that was it. Over the last couple of weeks, he’d finally let go of Ann Devore. She’d been part of him so long, alive and dead, through so much—baseball, Korea, the hospital, and after—that he felt empty, somehow, kind of diminished.

  Or maybe it was how Cheryl showed signs of wanting another session of whatever that was they had done out in Kansas City. He was afraid of Cheryl Tilton. She was a woman who had shown over and over that she would stop at nothing. Bedding her had been fantastic; the idea of dealing with her on a regular basis was something more than intimidating.

  When she’d called him, she’d been so casual, even chatty. It seemed so out of character. “... and Tad wanted to get out of Kansas City, even though Congress doesn’t convene for a while, because Mrs. Klimber was getting to be impossible. Russ, that woman calls twelve times a day. Her man Kennedy had some sort of family business, had to leave town, and she’s always telling us she needs Gennarro to do this, and she needs Gennarro to do that—just the way she talks about her absurd son.”

  All this while Garrett had been trying to make it to his car so he could be there before the bus that was going to take the Yankees to the ball park. “I can see how it would be a nuisance, Cheryl—” he began.

  She cut him off. “Anyway, I figured if Tad wanted out, so did I. Now I’m out, and you’re free, too, and I want to celebrate.”

  Garrett said that sounded like a great idea.

  “Great. I found out from the baseball office that you’re coming back tonight. I’ll meet your train. See you tonight, Russ. ’Bye.”

  She hung up. Good. Maybe she didn’t know the train would arrive sometime close to three A.M. And she certainly didn’t know Garrett was driving back.

  “Damn,” Garrett said.

  Hal Keating was strangely silent. Something must have been going on in the game. Garrett took a look at the field, noted that the Red Sox were up and no one was on base, and thought some more about that damned phone call. Something about that call had gotten on his nerves.

  Hal Keating nudged him. “The game’s over, Russ. Yankees won, 5 to 3. And nobody even mussed Mickey’s hair, let alone killed him.”

  “That’s something, at least.” Garrett thought about it as grumbling Red Sox fans made their way around him and to the exits. “He’s not out of Boston yet, Hal.”

  “Yeah, well, he will be in no time. Soon as the Yankees get all showered up, they’re gonna head for the train. They already checked out at the hotel. Or were you still paying attention back then?”

  “Hal, what are you going to do now?”

  “What am I going to do now? Well, my boy, I am going to take you to another lobster place that’s even better than the one we went to last night. Then I am going to be driven to New York by you in your fancy green car, and I am going to spend a couple of days renewing old acquaintances.”

  Garrett frowned. “I want to stay with Mickey.” Cheryl had put an idea in his head.

  “Oh, come on, now.”

  “No, I mean it. I’ll go down to the locker room and check up on them.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. “Here. You know where my car is parked. You take it, drive it to New York. I’ll meet you there tomorrow, and we can have a laugh about how silly I am. After Mickey is tucked in safe and sound.”

  Keating shook his head. “Russ, I’m starting to worry about you. I admire caution as much as anybody does; I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t. But you’re getting ridiculous. That was a crank letter.”

  “I still think I better take the train back with the team.”

  Keating was disgusted. “You belong on the goddam train. You’ve got a one-track mind. Only trouble is, the gauge is too narrow for any sensible idea to travel on it.” He reached out and snatched the keys from Garrett’s hand.

  Garrett grinned. “Thanks, Hal.”

  “Oh, go to hell. I’m just being nice to you out of habit.” Keating stuck the keys in his pocket. “I plan to take a little walk with you first, though. I might as well visit the Boys in the locker room.”

  “Sure.”

  “And I plan to go to New York by way of that restaurant. No reason for me to pass up a good dinner because you’re a goddam fool.”

  “I don’t care if you go by way of Montreal. Just get the car to New York in shape for me to use it. It’s paid for, you know.”

  6

  “... But I still say we’re gonna have to play better than we played today against the White Sox come Wednesday. Don’t you think so, Rags?”

  Mickey Mantle was the most animated of the Yankees. A lot of them were taking the opportunity to sleep. Mantle was probably just happy to be alive—what the hell, crank or not, a threat like that has got to get on your nerves to some extent.

  Russ Garrett realized all that. He was glad Mantle was alive, too. He turned away from the window of the train—he was tired of the central Connecticut scenery, anyhow—and answered the question.

  “Just keep hitting the ball, Mick, and let Casey worry about the rest. All you can do is your best, right?”

  Whitey Ford perked up at that; probably saw an opportunity to make a good joke. Garrett tuned out and let them talk. Mantle had only been talking to him because he was the only one awake, anyway.

  Garrett had never learned to sleep o
n trains. Sleeping on trains was a major-league skill. Some day soon, he supposed, major leaguers would learn to sleep on airplanes. Garrett’s big skill was sleeping on buses. He’d caught on to that after only a couple of weeks in the minors.

  He still didn’t feel right. He should have gone to the restaurant with Hal. All he’d had was a couple of sandwiches in the Yankee locker room and a few beers on the train before they’d stopped serving. Garrett yawned. It was late—there’d been some kind of delay in Hartford. The train had stood there and growled for what seemed like hours. Garrett didn’t know exactly where they were now, but if the train made Grand Central Station before 3:30 A.M., he would be very surprised. Cheryl would not be happy.

  Cheryl. What the hell had she said? He’d thought he’d had it for a while right after the game, but it had eluded him. He thought about it until it exhausted him, and he dozed.

  He woke up with a start and with a thought in his head he wouldn’t have let come in while he was awake.

  What the hell was Hal Keating doing in Boston? Could he really have come all the way to help just in response to a casual remark of Garrett’s? In his current state of mind, Garrett doubted it.

  Garrett shook his head, trying to shake the idea out of his mind, but the little bastard was tenacious and hung on. All right, Garrett thought, let’s have a look. I’ll demolish you in no time.

  But the idea wouldn’t stay crushed. When Garrett pointed out to himself, for example, that it was impossible for Hal to be David Laird in disguise because Garrett had known him since before Laird had disappeared, the idea had a simple answer. Who says, besides you, that David Laird is really in on this?

  Jenny says so, Garrett responded. Hysterical female, under a lot of pressure. You came around and put ideas in her head.

 

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