She smiled at me again, letting me see how well she took care of her teeth. "Can I help you?"
"Sure you can."
"Some particular book in mind?" She played the game beautifully. No spinster she. She fluttered her lashes. She had obviously picked up men in the library before.
"Yes. The Care and Keeping of Institutions. I think the author's name is Edward Noon."
Her face fell. She had meant to wow me with her insight and knowledge of her business. That was one book she had never heard of. Nobody had.
"Oh. Fiction, Nonfiction? Biography?"
I smiled. "Fiction, sister. Strictly fiction."
I left her still racking her sweet little academic brain about that, and took the swinging glass doors to the West 42nd street sidewalk.
Kidding I had been. But dead serious I was.
Henry Hallmark was an institution. And the care and keeping of him had been entrusted to me by the man who held the highest office in the United States of America.
2. Bon Voyage, Private Spy
On Tuesday I was a busy man. I didn't go to the office. I called Melissa Mercer at nine thirty sharp and gave her my itinerary for the day. Going to Europe in a hurry was not easy. There was the not-so-malleable matter of getting ready for the trip. Not to mention the thousand and one details of keeping my own house in order until I got back.
So I chased all over Manhattan that morning, buying accessories, making phone calls to friends and ladies I wouldn't want poking around making troublesome inquiries in my absence. You have to keep the normal run of house bills, phone bills, and bill bills at a standstill when you disappear.
When I got back to my little gray home on Central Park West, all caught up and raring to go, I found that a special delivery letter was waiting for me. Pete the doorman told me to ask for it at the desk.
It was the usual long white envelope, addressed to me and bearing the familiar return information. Samuel Hill, Box 1, Washington, D.C. I knew what it would contain, I just didn't know how much. We had set up this form of communication in the very beginning. Samuel Hill was my Uncle Sam, of course; Box 1 designated my position in his plans. The post office seems to be one organization the best enemy agents in the world haven't quite succeeded in licking yet. What is more innocent-seeming than a letter, and how could you spot the one you wanted to see out of the thousands that flood a post office daily? Anyhow, it always worked.
After I locked the apartment door I made myself a Scotch-on-the-rocks, then flicked on a reading lamp at the desk. I slit open the envelope with a letter opener I had won in a raffle at a highbrow bash in mid-Manhattan when I had hired out to protect a millionaire's oversexed son from the claws of a number of grasping call girls of whom he had apparently made a harem.
There was no message in the envelope. Just a neat banded sheaf of brand-new, just cut, hundred-dollar bills. Fifty in all. I whistled. Five thousand fine green men was a great retainer for any assignment. Patriotically, the job had no price for me. Realistically, I can't swim, fly, or eat on my brand of wit. Or good looks.
It was time to check my arsenal. I shoved the small fortune in long green into the center drawer of the desk and locked it.
Times had changed for me, as for everyone else. In the good old days, a .45 and your own brand of nerves were all you had to work with. But modern times, with the leaping strides made by technology in all the departments of investigation and enforcement, had altered my arsenal considerably. It was government issue, of course, and made me feel like Buck Rogers. But it was worth every card in the deck. Spy games demand spy weapons. Thanks to Uncle Sam, I had them.
I laid them on the desk to check them out for working effectiveness.
First, there was the compact transmitter and sending device, which fit easily into a false pack of Camel cigarettes. You could get Hong Kong on that set without even raising static. I had a homing device no larger than a marble—that gadget once planted anywhere will keep your friends radared in on your location within a fifty-mile radius. I still carried my licensed .45 and private investigator's bonded permit. But the clip of the .45 held enough plastic jelly compound to blow up a building when set as a charge with a timing device. The permit was specially treated plastic which, whenever dampened, would emit a powerful vesicant gas that would irritate the hell out of the skin of anyone you didn't like. My cigarette lighter didn't only light cigarettes. It was an artificially gimmicked weapon that was actually a .22 caliber pistol. I also had an assortment of neckties that were fairly amusing. The material on those ties was woven of fibers that could burn through steel plate once ignited. Uncle Samuel Hill kept adding to the arsenal as soon as the research and experimental boys came up with anything new in the science of killing men. It was a science, believe me. Gone were the days of simple gunshot wounds and plain old manual strangulation.
You had to be up on your karate, judo, savate, and assorted mayhems. The Marquis of Queensberry was dead, and he wasn't resting in peace. Long live dirty pool.
Now that phone line that existed between me and Mr. President, that was in a class by itself. Apart from its being a completely private line, the wires and reception and transmission were so geared that if any other voices but ours, mine and his, spoke into the phones there would be nothing but a scramble of sound, such as you get when you play a 33 r.p.m. record at 45 r.p.m. speed. Or vice versa. Who could have understood Donald Duck? Also, it was an impossible line to tap. If any foreign appliance was affixed to that line the same old scrambled sound effects would occur. This was explained to me at great length by the President himself when I had argued the merits of both of us having a code set of names or passwords to identify each other on the phone. Thanks to the wonders of science, it just wasn't necessary.
When I was a kid, my friends and I had read Buck Rogers, played with ray guns, and blammed the guys on the block out of existence, just as American youngsters had been doing for years. Little had we known that our games would not remain a kid's green dream.
I stowed the arsenal away then, and began to think about a wardrobe for the trip. The grey Tourister suitcases and attaché case ought to be enough. I was never a clothes horse, preferring in the main a couple of good suits, enough shirts, and several rather handsome ties.
My cover, and that was the beauty of the whole operation, was my own identity. A successful private detective with kind of a worldwide reputation for himself, enjoying the fruits of his private enterprise. Even if I was going to Europe on business, the cover would still work. There were foreign clients for private detectives, too, especially for an American detective, if the client was rich enough to afford him.
The first Scotch-on-the-rocks led easily into a second. My mood was moody. A lot of lubrication was needed for the turning of the wheels. I went to the windows that opened on Central Park and reflected on the long, long days since the time when I had hopefully gone into business for myself, laying down a police detective's shield to do so. It was a long jump from the twentieth precinct to Mr. President.
How many years had it taken? How many bullet holes and wild capers? And how long does a man have to live before he finds the work that sets his clocks, makes his motor run? Faces blurred and wavered in front of me. Hard times and good times merged in a kaleidoscope of memory. The voices of soft and hard women spoke once more. Love me, kill, hate, and need me, Ed. . . .
Was I young anymore? I thought not. I had fallen into Jack Benny's easy way out. I'm thirty-nine. You had to stay thirty-nine to be in the sudden death business. It's no life for a man over forty.
The phone on the desk rang. It was Melissa, tracking me down to my lair.
"Hi, Mel. What gives?"
"Betsy Ross has been ringing every half hour since one o'clock. I pick it up. and all I get is Donald Duck."
"Okay. Be right down. Anything else?"
"Quiet day. You all set with your arrangements? Tickets? Et cetera?"
"My et cetera is fine. Don't worry. I still have two days
. A lot happens in two days. Be seeing you."
I caught a cab in front of the apartment right away. We sailed down to West 46th without hitting a red light. It was another nice fall day. October was giving the customers all they could want in the departments of fresh air, sunlight, and Vitamin D. The cabbie was a novelty. He didn't have one thing to say all the way in.
Melissa smiled at me from her desk when I walked in. Her face, something that might have been composed by Rodin in a lovely mood, was visible above a high hill of folders.
"Thought I'd go through the files. Not even a lazy man like me can sit around all day doing nothing."
I treed my porkpie with a neat toss as I headed for the inner office. "Betsy ring again?"
"Nope. But give her time. She never lets up until she nails you."
I nodded and said nothing to that.
Easing myself down behind the red, white, and blue phone, I took out a Camel. Five minutes I'd give him, and then I'd ring him myself. Now that he had given me an assignment, the don't call me rule was out. Still, I didn't want to pull him away from anything that might be important. I knew he'd find his own good time after brushing some office matters out of his hair.
I had counted all the paper clips in the tray and smoked half a Camel when Betsy Ross sang out.
"Noon," I said. "Go ahead, Chief."
"Ed." Relief sounded in the name. "There's been a change in plan, accounting for the delay in your passage tickets."
"Check."
"Henry Hallmark is not taking the S.S. United States. For some unexplained reason, he has transferred his passage to the Francesca of the Amadeo Line. The sailing date is the same. Friday. Pier Forty-five."
I frowned. "I know the ship. Three stacks, second largest thing on the water. Italian line. Fastest number from here to the Continent."
"Good. There's been no real trouble, yet. I don't understand this change of schedule for our friend. It may be that he, too, is on his guard, and has said nothing to anyone about it. Did you receive the green papers?"
"Yes, Chief. The amount will do me fine."
A dry chuckle escaped from the other end of the line. "You're underpaid, Ed."
"Thank you, sir."
"Thank your fellow taxpayers. They are put upon more than even they will ever realize."
"I shall try to stretch the green as far as it will go."
"We'll meet again someday, Ed, and I will thank you personally. But for now—you understand."
"Right. And don't you worry about H. H."
"I'll try not to. Good-bye and good luck, then. I will not call you back unless we have another unexpected development. I leave it to you."
"So long, Chief."
"Bon voyage," he said warmly, and hung up. I placed Betsy Ross carefully on her blue cradle bed and stubbed out the Camel in a glass ashtray.
Henry Hallmark had changed ships. Why? That was a stumper. Very seldom does anyone switch ocean liners within two days of departure, especially when he's still heading the same way. That was something to worry about.
"Ed?"
I looked up. Melissa was standing in the doorway, two containers of coffee in her slender hands. Her eyes were wistful.
"Nobody died. Pull up a chair and tell me how much you're going to miss me and my funny jokes."
"I won't kid about that. I will. You're a terrible boss. Mix with the help, don't snap the whip, and hardly ever have to have your arm twisted to give a girl a raise."
"You always give me a raise," I said, making room for the containers she set down on the glass-topped desk.
She would have blushed except that she knew me better. Her eyes were serious. "Ed."
"I haven't gone away yet."
"Will you talk straight for a full minute?"
"Sure. Shoot." The coffee felt good. Warm, sweet enough, and thick.
"This special phone setup. You're onto something big. I know it. I know you. Can't I help? I promise I wouldn't get in the way."
I looked at her. It was always easy to talk to Melissa Mercer.
"Listen, Bright Eyes. I love you. I love having you around here. I would have fired you when that phone was put in here last year because it would have protected you. Not ever knowing about it. But I need you. Get that? Need you. But don't wonder about the phone, or me, or anything. It's a private line, and that's all you need to know. It will never come up as a problem in our business because it's about as exclusive as the moon. So forget it. As a favor to me. Make jokes about it with me, but don't worry about it. The day you know just what that phone is, I'll probably have to fire you for your own good. And that is as far from what I'd want to do as anything I can think of. Right?"
She laughed. "Right. But I do worry."
"So worry. Come here first."
She did, tripping into my arms, her eyes sparkling. I kissed her. Long, diligently and with care. She pushed back, laughter bubbling.
"Hey, if that's a farewell kiss, you must be planning on being gone for a long, long time."
"That, Real Girl Friday," I said, "remains to be seen."
"Just don't come back as remains. Promise?"
"Promise."
I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep that promise. Traveling without official portfolio could very easily mean the kiss of death. Spies are expendable. All kinds of spies. Personal, too.
And my remains would be just as dead as the next agent's.
3. The Not-So-Merry Francesca
The sailing was on Friday. Fittingly enough, at high noon. Three towering funnels poked into the misty skies around Pier 45. Nobody saw me off; I was probably the only loner aboard. Once I found my way through the vast shed housing the entranceway to the fastest liner afloat, I felt as though I were someone crashing a party. Hordes of friends and relatives surged up the covered gangplank, bearing fancy gifts of bottles, candies, and fruits for the customary before-sailing gatherings that mark every passage across the ocean. Italian stewards and ship's personnel, smartly uniformed and all wearing that studied look of politeness and great patience, pointed, directed, and murmured soft Latin words and awkward English. The Francesca reverberated with the pounding feet and happy cries of the ones who were going and the ones who were staying behind. It was hard to tell exactly who was a ticket holder and who wasn't, as a matter of fact.
I didn't bother going to my stateroom. My luggage was already there. The tickets had come special delivery on Thursday, late in the afternoon. First Class. Stateroom 119 on E deck. The Hallmark entourage would be a cigarette toss away. Even if I hadn't known him, I couldn't have missed him if I tried.
The forward deck, as clean and orderly as the top of a model home, overflowed with TV camera equipment from CBS and NBC. Batteries of photographers and newspapermen had come to record the departure of the great man. I spotted a veritable platoon of solemn-faced young men, all wearing turned-down fedoras, their hands buried in their coat pockets. I didn't need a scorecard. The whole area of E deck looked like the setting for shooting a segment of one of the TV series shows.
You couldn't get any closer than the outer perimeter of the camera equipment. Gigantic cables lay across the deck like so many snakes. Technicians glared at me as I approached. A medley of voices, firing questions and popping the corks of news commentary, vied with the harbor noises of Manhattan. The heavy mist lying over the tall funnels of the Francesca couldn't spoil the festivities. TV makes its own daylight, if the price is right.
Over the grouped heads of the cameramen and the newshounds I could see the face of Henry Hallmark. His head was massive, like a lion's in repose. I noted the shaggy mane of flowing white hair, the leathery complexion, and the manner that could be a textbook for all politicians.
He was flanked by two people. A little, birdlike woman in a cloche hat and long net gloves, and a tall, handsome young man with pince-nez. The woman looked somewhat dated. The gentleman did not. His suit was Brooks Brothers, his haircut a Beatle mop. He was running interference between Henry Hallmark and
the newsmen. The ambassador had one arm locked about the elderly little woman's shoulder, propping her up the way you might a lovable old drunk.
I moved back from the noise, the lights, and the confusion, and positioned myself on the starboard rail. The port side of the Francesca lay like a friendly whale against the dock poles of Pier 45. I looked out to the narrow inlet, bordered by New Jersey and New York, watching the tugs and launches and small craft crawl up the Hudson River. It was a poor day for sailing. The gulls were flying low, picking refuse and garbage out of the choppy, dirty water. A horn hooted somewhere.
There was still plenty of time to check out the Hallmark entourage. Nothing to do now but take ten, reassemble some plans and ideas, and wait for the news media boys to move out. Stewards were hovering, gawking at the famous American. Fellow passengers and citizens were chattering away, pointing, crowing, reveling in the aura of history that formed an almost visible cloud about Henry Hallmark's head. I took my cue from the platoon of solemn-faced men surrounding the fringe of his family circle. No one could give Henry Hallmark so much as a dirty look without their spotting it. America's Churchill was safe for the time being. I checked the watch on my wrist. It was nearing eleven thirty. The gongs would sound soon all over the expensive insides of the Francesca; the army of well-wishers would be shunted ashore; and the business of taking an eighty-thousand ton toy out on the briny deep would get under way.
I had a moment's sorrow about Melissa Mercer. I would miss her. Departure from familiar haunts always has a moroseness all its own. It's inescapable. But then I remembered the worried sound of the Chief's voice, and I shook away the cobwebs. Hell, I could always send her a corsage from Paris.
An elbow suddenly jostled me at the rail. I shifted. On my left, a gigantic Japanese man had anchored himself at the expense of my ego. I found myself looking up, up, up. Talk about atypical Orientals. This one was close to 6 feet 6, as wide as the state of Texas, and just about as heavy. He didn't look at me, merely grunted something, folded his arms, and stared toward New Jersey. He was a mountainous fat man. Not the fat of lard or jellyfish. As tight-fitting as his seersucker suit was, as outlandish as his Panama hat, the bulk bursting from bondage was as hard as new potatoes. I gave him some elbow room and inched away. He flung me an oblique glance. His smile was jolly, but somehow it did little to warm me. Then he looked away again, which gave me a chance to see what his left hand was doing. I goggled. His arms were folded, but the fingers of that left hand, poking from beneath his right elbow, were quite casually, almost absentmindedly, folding a Kennedy half-dollar into a sandwich of crushed metal. The fingers unfolded the mass and folded it again. Two glittering halves of a once perfectly good coin fell from his fingers. I watched them plummet like silver arrows into the dirty green water lapping at the hull of the Francesca.
Assassins Don't Die in Bed Page 2
