League of Terror

by Bill Granger

  “A piece about the renaissance in city life in Pittsburgh. Also this story in Phoenix, about the crime syndicate. It was about the reporter who was killed there years ago. Don Bolles, blown up in his car,” Hanley said. “Her editor, MacCormick, he told me that. He didn’t seem surprised that I had called him. I told him I was with the Bureau but I knew he didn’t believe me. He knew about you, about her… relationship to you.”

  “That was past,” Devereaux said.

  “But he knew I wasn’t FBI,” Hanley said.

  “What else was she working on?”

  “Nothing of importance, nothing to get shot over. It was the anniversary of his death, this Bolles fellow, it was a retrospective and a look at the city today. I don’t really understand journalists but he told me it was routine.”

  “Is he sure? Who has her notes on the Outfit?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Devereaux closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “The crime syndicate in Phoenix. Did he have her notes?”

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “I notified the Bureau, I told you. They’re looking into it.”

  “Yes. You told me.”

  More silence.

  “Are you coming to Washington?”

  “Yes,” Devereaux said.

  “We can send a man to the airport to meet you. Drive you to the hospital. You can have a car at your disposal.”

  “Yes.” He said it in a dull voice, keeping the conversation from flickering into silence now because he was suddenly afraid of silence, afraid he would hear her voice.

  The apartment was dark. He had been sitting in the dark, drinking vodka, listening to the roar of the city outside his windows. He had not thought about Rita Macklin for days and he had wondered if he would eventually reach the point when he would not think about her at all. Memory can be contained and all old wounds turned to healed scars by new experience. It wasn’t the passage of time at all that did it but burying the past under each new, unrelated experience. Now she was back in all his thoughts, she was all old wounds torn open again.

  “There’s been a lot of this. Murder. In the capital. The police think it was unrelated to her, perhaps—”

  “Don’t tell me that. Not in Bethesda, not in the morning. That’s bullshit, Hanley.”

  “You’re upset. You have every reason to be. I called you as soon as I was told…”

  Hanley’s voice craved sympathy. He wanted Devereaux to be glad that he had acted so humanely. He wanted Devereaux’s forgiveness for whatever it was he had ever done.

  Devereaux replaced the receiver.

  He walked into the bedroom and turned on the small brass lamp at the side of his bed. He rarely slept in the bed but on the couch, under a single prickly wool blanket, generally falling asleep while he read a book. The apartment was littered with books. They were stacked on the floor everywhere because the safe house had no bookshelves, although it contained two television sets. The books made some mark of his on the place. And he kept vodka in the refrigerator, neat rows of bottles of vodka so that he would never be without it.

  He placed the 9-millimeter Beretta in the bag with a few bits of clothing. And the blue passport. And the British passport, too, in case he would have to become someone else. He slipped the money pouch—Velcro close, waterproof—inside his waistband.

  He zipped the canvas bag and turned toward the door. The front entry had four locks. He opened the door, stepped into the tiled hall, and closed the door. He relocked all four locks, sending the dead bolts home four times, four thuds of metal against metal in the silent chamber of the hall. The door was solid steel and so was the framing around the door.

  He walked to the elevator cage and pressed the button. The machinery pulled the elevator slowly to the sixth level.

  “Call me,” she had said on the message tape. He had wanted to purge her from his life.

  The doors opened and he stepped inside the cage.

  Call me.

  He wanted tears in that moment but none came. He listened to her voice over and over as the cage descended.

  4

  Devereaux sat in the lounge on the second floor. The hospital was full of night sounds, groans from the darkened halls and television sets. All the fear of sickness and death in a hospital is concentrated in the night corridors and is endured through the narcotics of conversation and banal TV entertainment, punctuated by groans.

  He was alone. He didn’t need the driver or the car. Or goddamned Section and the goddamned sympathy of someone like Hanley. Section had tied him to remain an agent—to abandon Rita—because they knew all the secret things that Devereaux had done. They had Devereaux tied forever to them because they needed him. Goddamned Section. For one moment a long time ago, he had traded his soul for something Section knew he wanted to have. Thought he needed—until he met Rita Macklin.

  Section. He felt hate and he didn’t know if it was for himself or Section, but Section was sitting out there and he could kick at it, maybe bring it down, shoot to kill…

  She was dying. He felt it. Dying was pure cold, pure white.

  “Mr. Devereaux?”

  He looked at the surgeon and was shocked to see how young he was. Or was it merely that Devereaux was growing old?

  “Your friend is out of surgery now,” the surgeon said. He had changed his smock because of the blood on it. For a surgeon, he had learned sensitivity somewhere.

  Devereaux waited. He almost never asked questions because the silence makes a better questioner.

  “She’s in guarded condition.” He waited for a question but none came.

  Devereaux sat, staring at him, not with curiosity or hostility or any emotion on his face.

  “There was a lot of damage. She’s lost part of her right lung. That’s what took so long. There was no way to save all of it. When the bullet entered, it exploded. Fortunately for her life, the bullet was not dead-on. It entered below her right breast but exited sharply up, through her shoulder. The shoulder muscles were damaged; I don’t know how great the neurological damage is. While she was under, I tried to get a grasping response from her right hand but she couldn’t manage it. But this can be temporary. I mean, the partial paralysis.”

  He was telling Devereaux everything, as calmly as possible. Devereaux’s silence demanded everything.

  “The point is, she has a healthy heart, she has good circulation, she was undoubtedly athletic. These are the pluses. The lung. Well, you can live with one lung, let alone only losing part of one… but the trauma of losing it this way and the loss of blood before surgery count against. I’m trying to be as honest as I can.”

  Devereaux knew dying was cold, was white. It was still there and he could sense it. “Is she going to die?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  Devereaux got up. He saw the surgeon was shorter than he was and that his eyes were very tired. “Is there anything anyone can do?”

  “She’s being monitored, I’m on call… there’s nothing to do now.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “There’s… look, Mr. Devereaux. Her head is bandaged. From the concussion. There’s a lot of healing going on right now, tubes, a sling. I really wish you wouldn’t.”

  Devereaux saw her anyway, from the door of the bright-lit room where she lay. Her eyes were closed and her beautiful red hair was capped by a crown of bandages. He saw the machines that measured the course of her life and the green lines that noted she had advanced another heartbeat.

  “Oh, goddamn it,” Devereaux said. He let the door close without a sound.

  5

  Room 803 of the Dupont Plaza Hotel was small and marginally clean. The window overlooked the neighborhood around the Circle. It was just after one in the morning. The city looked seedy and dark at night because of the overgrowth of southern trees on small northern lots and the dangerous shadows of street lamps obscured by the trees. The usual derelicts occupied t
he park in the middle of Dupont Circle.

  It was just after one in the morning and they had given him a bottle of vodka at the liquor store on Wisconsin in Bethesda. In the empty lobby of the hotel, he had dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter to order a bucket of ice and a large glass brought to his room. The clerk explained that the bar was closed and there was an ice machine on each floor and that the plastic glasses in the room would have to suffice. Even money could not buy service.

  Devereaux began to feel all the aches of all the wounds he had received over the years, physical and psychic. The clerk at the front desk watched him limp to the elevator bank and press the button and wait. The clerk thought the gray man must be ill and he hoped he wouldn’t die in his room on his shift.

  Devereaux would not sleep. He fetched a bucket of ice from the buzzing machine in the alcove down the hall and brought it back to his room. He unwrapped a plastic glass and filled it with ice and vodka and went to the chair by the window and sat down.

  For a long time, he sat at the window and stared out at the darkness, a palpable darkness under the orange glow of the street lamps. Anticrime lights, installed long before the city understood what crime it would have.

  They called the capital Murder City now. Anarchy was the rule of law. The Ellipse and the Mall were the same as ever, surrounded by trees and grassy fields and federal buildings of classical splendor and open tour buses full of kids. But beyond, on the narrow neighborhood streets, drug dealers killed each other at the drop of a bag of crack. Drug dealers killed each other and those in between. The trail of drugs reached across the capital into the suburbs. Everyone, it seemed, was drunk or drugged or about to be made a victim.

  The Bethesda police detective at the hospital wanted to know if Miss Macklin was into drugs. Devereaux had stared through him for a moment until he repeated his question. Devereaux had turned without a reply and started down the corridor. “I asked you a question,” the detective had said.

  Devereaux had said, “I answered it.”

  He closed his eyes because he was tired and because he wanted to think about what Rita had been doing, the story about the Outfit in Phoenix. He had to think of concrete things, of reasons to assassinate her, or he could not endure any of the pain. He did not know how to grieve a loss because he had burned out that process from his soul. The vodka was cold and warmed him. He would get a little drunk but he knew he would not sleep until Rita finally recovered or died. And if she died, he thought he would kill the man who hurt her and then he would kill himself quickly and not slowly, the way he was doing it with the alcohol.

  He was very close to being out of control and part of him knew it.

  He kept himself under a strict control all the time, but every now and then the sheet of calm was cracked and the shards of shattered glass in his soul made him a dangerous beast who does not reason but acts through instinct. Before that, though, before he killed the person who shot Rita Macklin, he would have to find him.

  So he needed control.

  He opened his eyes. Suddenly, he slammed his fist against the plasterboard wall. He dented it. Pain shot into his wrist. He did it again to feel the pain.

  There. It was ebbing. The beast in him growled reluctantly but slunk away into his belly, away from his heart.

  He put down the glass of vodka to pick up the ringing telephone.

  He held the receiver next to his ear. The voice was familiar and he understood everything in that moment.

  “Hello, Dev,” Henry McGee said. As close as the next room. The voice was couched in country accents and belonged to the worst man on earth.

  Devereaux waited. His hand stung.

  “I shot her. This morning. She gonna make it?”

  Never answer.

  “It wasn’t nothin’ about her, except she had this connection to you. Remember, I knew about that. So when it comes time to settlin’ scores, I figure the best is to let you hurt a little. I mean, before I kill you. I’m gonna kill you, you know.”

  Devereaux said nothing.

  “Now, it could of been that she was just a piece of tail for you and you might have felt passing bad about her gettin’ shot, but I sort of guessed it was more than that. You been real good stayin’ away from her but that’s all right, you’re in D.C. now so I know I scored.”

  “You going to talk me to death?”

  Henry chuckled. “Honest to God, I hardly ever do anything except for money unless it’s a pussy to pass the time but I figured I owed you for the two years in that shithouse in P. A. Also, for gettin’ my trail dirty with the Soviets so I can’t go back to Mother Moscow. I owed you for a lot, Dev, and now I’m paying back. Didn’t you figure I was gonna pay you what I owed you?”

  “You’ve been seeing too many old gangster movies.”

  Silence.

  “Tell me it don’t hurt, Dev.”

  Devereaux said nothing.

  “I wanted to wound her, not kill her, but what the hell, you can’t always get what you want.”

  Devereaux closed his eyes. Was she dead?

  “But I called the hospital, they say she’s in ‘guarded’ condition. Fucking hospitals can’t talk English no more. Means they put a guard on you or what?”

  “When do you want me to kill you?” Devereaux said.

  “There. I see I scored hard, didn’t I? Well, Dev, it’s this way. I shot your girlie and I’m comin’ after you now, but it won’t be a shootout at high noon, I can tell you. I been getting smarts up about how to do things and there’s money in it. So when I come to kill you, you’ll be so surprised there for about one second before you die. It’ll be like that. Meantime, just think about your piece of tail in the hospital, all fucked up by your old friend, Henry McGee.”

  The connection was broken.

  The beast roared out of his skin and filled the room with its growls and rumbles.

  Devereaux did not make a sound. His eyes glittered, even in the dim light. He took the 9-millimeter Beretta out of the bag and checked the clip and put the pistol into his belt holster.

  He picked up the telephone and called the operator of the hotel.

  “That call was placed from the lobby, sir,” the operator said.

  That close. He took the automatic out of his belt and unsnapped the safety.

  He walked out of the room to the elevator bank and waited, pacing up and down before the row of closed doors.

  Then the middle door opened and he entered the cage and pressed “L.”

  The beast scarcely breathed. His breath was very deep, very slow, yet as sensitive as the adrenaline that alerted every muscle and nerve.

  He stepped into the lobby and it was empty. The bar off fee lobby was closed. The restaurant was locked and in darkness.

  He went to the front desk.

  Yes, they had noticed a man calling his room. A dark-haired man, they thought. No, he had gone out the Connecticut Avenue entrance a few moments ago.

  The streets were nearly empty. A beggar slept in the doorway of an Italian restaurant across the way. Devereaux slowly panned the street and then walked to the corner. The side streets were in twilight, orange and leafy from trees and street lamps.

  He saw a man on the next corner and started for him. Ten feet away, he said, “Henry.”

  The man turned. He was the same height and build but that was all. “Whaddaya want?”

  Devereaux did not reply. He turned down the block and completed the circle back to his hotel, entering from the side street.

  There was only one clerk on duty in the lobby, not the same as a moment before.

  “Has anyone come in just now?”

  The clerk looked up from the Post. “Are you a guest, sir?”

  “Yes. I’m a guest.” He showed the key with the large square top embossed with his room number. “Did anyone come in, in just the last few minutes?”

  “Another guest,” the clerk said. He was trying to be annoyed, as though he had other things to do.

  “What
did he look like?”

  “I didn’t take a look.”

  “Did he have a key?”

  “He had a key,” the clerk said.

  “A dark-haired man,” Devereaux said.

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  Devereaux went to the three-door elevator bank and pressed a button. A cage opened for him a moment later. Once the door closed, he pulled the pistol again and cocked it. He held the pistol out from his body and turned slightly, to present a smaller profile.

  The door opened at the floor above his floor without a sound. He got off and waited for the door to close behind him. An exit sign glowed feebly at the far end. The hotel was shaped like a V with the point facing Dupont Circle. His room was on the southwest side of the V.

  Devereaux went to the stairs and opened the stairwell door. He moved to the concrete stairs and then removed his shoes. He stepped in stocking feet down the stairs, the pistol scanning the next flight at the landing a moment before he peered over.

  He held his breath. Henry McGee was very good, and Devereaux had drunk vodka and thoughts of Rita Macklin were pushing clear judgment into emotion. He knew all this and he was very cautious.

  He opened the stairwell door at his own floor and waited and then stepped into the corridor. It was empty.

  He edged along the gray wall to the point of the V and looked around. Silence. Corridors with littered trays set before some doors. Not a sound but the hum of the building that trembled with the suppressed noise of fans from the cooling and heating plant.

  He held the pistol in his right hand and the key in his left.

  He unlocked his door and pushed it with his foot. The room was as he had left it, in darkness. He fumbled for the switch on the wall by the door.

  He turned the lights on.

  The force of the explosion drove him headfirst across the hall into the door opposite. He hit the door with his head and left shoulder and then the rest of his back. The explosion blew the door of his room from its hinges and splattered shards of wood into the man momentarily impaled on the door opposite. The shards of wood tattooed his face and body, driving through his clothes into his flesh.