Atropos

by William L. DeAndrea

  No. No. He would not have a drink. The last time he faced Trotter with a bellyful of Dutch courage. This time, he’d just have to home-grow some of that, too.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “MURPHY,” TROTTER SAID AS he opened the door. He sounded almost glad to see him.

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” Murphy said.

  “I got your message last time,” Trotter said. One friend to another. You couldn’t find a threat in Trotter’s tone if you played a tape of it over and over for a year. Murphy shivered.

  Trotter must have seen it. “Come inside,” he said. “It’s cold out there—I don’t want to tighten up.” Trotter turned his back on Murphy and went back inside. Murphy followed.

  “Come down to the basement,” Trotter said. “I’ve got a couple more miles on the exercise bike and I’ll be through for the day. We can talk while I do that. Or grab a drink and wait.”

  “I’ll come down.”

  Trotter was wearing sneakers and socks, shorts and a sweatshirt. His face looked drawn. Scars like white zippers marred both legs. There was stiffness in the younger man’s walk as he went down the stairs, as if he were forcing himself not to limp.

  Murphy felt faintly encouraged. It was closer to human than he’d ever let himself imagine Trotter to be. On the other hand, Murphy had about convinced himself that Trotter’s reported heroics on the catwalk had been a fabrication. Here was evidence the man really had thrown himself and a gunman thirty feet through space to a concrete floor. He’d had a bad smashup with something, that was for sure. A man who’d get himself hurt like that on purpose, Murphy knew, was dangerous. He swallowed.

  Trotter climbed on a sleek object in textured white plastic with matte-black accessories. The only thing that marked it as an exercise bicycle were the pedals. Trotter pushed a few buttons, then began to pedal. Aside from beeping once in a while, like a microwave oven, the thing made no rattle, no whiz, no noise at all. Murphy decided he didn’t care for exercise equipment that wasn’t even human enough to clatter every once in a while. Trotter’s voice was breathy, but calm. “What can I do for you?” Murphy took the photo out of the envelope. Trotter took one hand off a dull black rectangle that was supposed to pass for handlebars and took it from him.

  Trotter looked at the picture with no expression whatever. Then he looked up, pointed to a stack of towels on a nearby table, and asked Murphy to get him one. Murphy complied. Trotter handed the picture back when he took the towel. He removed his glasses and wiped them carefully with the towel, then wiped his face. He put the glasses back on and asked for the picture again.

  He’s stalling, Murphy thought. I’ve stung the bastard. He doesn’t know what to say.

  Murphy thought he’d help him along a little. “Recognize it?”

  Trotter was still looking at the picture. “Mmm?” he said, without looking up.

  “I asked you if you recognized it.”

  Now Trotter met his eyes. His face was bland. “There’s a caption right here.”

  Murphy kept hold of his Irish temper. “That’s not,” he said quietly, “what I meant.”

  “I know,” Trotter said. He smiled. The son of a bitch was smiling at him. Like he was kidding around with an old friend or something. “Of course I recognize it,” Trotter went on.

  “You do?” It couldn’t be this easy.

  “Sure. It’s Cliff Driscoll. He used to work at the State Department. People used to say we looked alike.”

  Murphy had his eyes closed. “What people?”

  “People who knew us both. When I worked for the Sun. Baltimore’s not all that—” There was a long beeping noise. Trotter let out a sigh and let his legs stop pumping. He took the towel from where he’d draped it on the pseudo handlebars, took off his glasses and wiped his face again.

  If I had a knife, Murphy thought, I could stab him in the belly when he’s doing that, when he’s wiping his eyes. I could kill him. I could kill him and not even go to confession after.

  Trotter put his glasses back on, smiled, and picked up his train of thought. “Baltimore’s not all that far from Washington, you know.”

  “I’d like to interview this guy. This Driscoll. Maybe you could help me get in touch with him.”

  “Can’t be done, Sean.”

  Murphy could feel his fingers tightening into fists. “Why’s that, Allan?” Even to himself, his voice sounded like the voice of a man being strangled.

  “Because Driscoll’s dead.”

  “Driscoll’s dead,” Murphy echoed.

  “Right after Liz Fane was returned. He had a car crash on his way back to town to take part in debriefing. Girl’s mother was killed, too.”

  Murphy was kicking himself for not having followed up on the career of “Mr. Driscoll” after he’d found the photograph. There was undoubtedly something fishy about this Driscoll’s “death.” Murphy might have been able to spot what it was.

  Too late now. Better to brazen it out than to let himself be tossed any curveballs.

  “Bullshit!” he said. “Driscoll isn’t dead. You are Driscoll, and I’m giving you just five seconds to admit it!”

  Trotter wiped his face again, muttering something into the towel.

  “I can’t hear you,” Murphy said.

  “I said, ‘Five seconds to admit it, or else what? What have you got besides a wish to make me play along with your fantasies?”

  “It’s no fantasy, damn you. And if you don’t do what I tell you, this picture and the rest of the evidence I’ve collected gets a blanket release to the media, not just the Hudson Group.”

  “Uh-huh.” Trotter threw one scarred leg over the exercise machine and stood up wincing. “Ouch. That’s it, screw the sit-ups today. What do you want me to do?”

  Murphy could feel himself losing it. He was an experienced reporter; he’d played cat and mouse with too many people too often not to know that if he were in control of this situation, it wouldn’t seem so easy.

  Nothing to do but play it out. “I want you,” he said, “to disappear. Fake your death. If Driscoll could do it, so can you. Just take off. Get out of Regina’s life before you get her killed. Before you hurt her worse than she’s already been hurt.”

  “Uh-huh,” Trotter said again. “I suppose you’ve got a lot of those envelopes squirreled away with people you think you can trust.”

  “Enough. And if anything happens to me, they all go out.”

  “You’re afraid something is going to happen to you?” Trotter sounded incredulous. “Come on.”

  The fact was Murphy had not been afraid that anything might happen to him. Until right now. He suppressed another shudder. He was glad he’d taken precautions.

  “I suppose,” Trotter went on, “that the very first packet of evidence, whatever it is, goes to Regina herself.”

  Murphy stared at him.

  “Doesn’t it?” Trotter asked. “It’s not that hard to figure. What you want to do is get me away from Regina. Or her away from me, I guess, from your point of view. The best way for you would be if I take this conversation to heart and just split. The next best would be for you to discredit me just in

  Regina’s eyes. If she doesn’t trust me, I can’t achieve whatever nefarious things you think I’m up to.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “The media blitz is the last resort. It would, the way you see it, neutralize me, but it would also make a new scandal for the Hudson Group, which has barely gotten over the last one. And anything that hurts the Hudson Group hurts Regina. Hey!”

  Murphy jumped.

  “I’m being a terrible host,” Trotter said. “You’ve been sitting on that stool all this time. Let’s go back upstairs; the chairs are more comfortable and I’ve got to drink some Gatorade before I cramp up.”

  “Lead the way,” Murphy said.

  Trotter grinned. “Okay, but I’m pretty slow going upstairs these days.”

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  “And you’re not letting me g
et behind you, either. Okay, okay. Here goes.” Trotter walked over to the stairs and started lifting himself up. “I’m so damned stiff,” he said. He looked back over his shoulder at Murphy, who was keeping a cautious, four-stair distance between himself and his host. “Oh. How am I doing, by the way?”

  “You’re getting there. Don’t put on a show for my benefit.”

  “I wish it were a show. But I’m not talking about the stairs. How am I doing at figuring out your strategy?”

  “Nobody ever said you weren’t smart.”

  Trotter brought him to the living room. “Take a chair. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the kitchen. That’s where the Gatorade is. Want to come along, see I don’t come back with an Uzi or something?”

  “No, thanks. Anything happens to me, those documents go out.”

  “Right, right, the documents.”

  Trotter walked stiffly from the room. Murphy could feel himself growing more paranoid by the second. What if Trotter was calling for help? What if he had agents tracking down and killing everyone Murphy could trust, so those documents couldn’t go out? Murphy tiptoed across the rug to the doorway and listened hard. He heard a refrigerator open and close. He heard ice clink in a glass. He heard liquid being poured. He heard footsteps returning.

  He just got back to his chair before Trotter returned. The younger man had a tall glass with ice and a pale-green liquid in his right hand, a squat bottle of the same green liquid in his left.

  “You want anything?” Trotter asked, plunking himself down in the middle of the leather couch.

  “Nothing.”

  “Right,” Trotter said. “Might slip you a hypnotic drug and make you get the documents back by yourself.”

  “I don’t find anything about this funny, Trotter.”

  “Sean, I like you. I really do.”

  “Don’t like me,” Murphy heard himself saying. “Don’t you dare like me.”

  “I can’t help it. But forget that for a minute. Can I ask you a question?”

  “You haven’t answered any of mine yet.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time. I might surprise you.”

  “Ask. I don’t promise to answer.”

  “Why do you hate the idea of my being with Regina so much? What is it you think I am?”

  “I know damn well what you are. You’re a spy, almost certainly for the American government. You work for a group so secret I couldn’t get a sniff of you through ordinary channels. You were there in the Liz Fane case, and a lot of people, probably innocent people, died. I get the feeling you didn’t care, as long as you got your job done. Now you’re working on Regina, you’ve got her to the point where she thinks she’s in love with you; for God’s sake, she thinks she’s going to marry you. You’re setting her up for something, and I won’t have it.”

  Trotter pursed his lips. “Well,” he began.

  “You sound like Reagan.”

  Trotter laughed. “Are you accusing me of being Reagan, now?” He waved it away. “It doesn’t matter. I deny it. I deny everything, of course.”

  “I don’t care what the hell you admit or deny. Just get out of town. Out of Regina’s life.”

  “You wanted to talk. We’ll talk first.” Trotter’s face told Murphy it was not a request.

  Trotter drank Gatorade. “Let’s assume, though, just for the sake of argument, that you’re right. That I am a spy, in deep cover, working on some top-secret operation. You say yourself that if I were, it’s the United States I would be working for. Doesn’t that make a difference?”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Hey, it’s your government I’m working for, according to you. I could be engaged in a project that could save millions of lives, bring world peace, if only I got a chance to finish the job. Wouldn’t that give you second thoughts about blowing the whistle? Could I appeal to your patriotism at all?”

  “I’m a reporter, Trotter. I have a job to do. I’m bending my ethics enough just offering to let you skip town. I should have phoned you for a comment, then plastered your face across the front page of this afternoon’s papers.”

  “Even if it would have ruined months, maybe years, of delicate maneuvering and secret negotiations? Even if lives would be lost and a chance to increase your country’s security is ruined?”

  “I do my job, Trotter. Don’t try to snow me.”

  “Okay, let me see if I’ve got you straight. A reporter has a job to do; he has to print what he thinks he’s found out, no matter what.”

  “Don’t you know that? Aren’t you supposed to be a reporter?”

  “We’re pretending I’m a spy, remember? So he prints what he knows, no matter what. Unless, of course, he has some personal ax to grind, the way you do, then he uses the information for blackmail. Right?”

  Murphy wanted to shout indignant denials, but honesty compelled him to admit to himself that that was exactly what he was doing. He could argue he was doing it for the good of someone he loved, but that wouldn’t carry a lot of weight, since he’d already scoffed at the idea of Trotter’s doing what he did for his country.

  “Go on,” Murphy said.

  Trotter nodded. “Our ideal reporter, then, just does his job. He does what he’s been trained to do, what he’s promised his employers he’ll do.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He doesn’t give a shit who gets hurt.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Then what’s the difference between you and me, friend? Why the hell should I give a shit about Regina, or you, or anybody else?”

  Trotter was leaning off the couch now. His eyes shot flames. Murphy could smell Trotter’s sweat, a feral smell. The last thing the rabbit knows, Murphy thought, is the breath of the wolf.

  Trotter closed his eyes and let out his own breath in a whoosh. He leaned back, took a sip of his drink, and opened his eyes again.

  “Let’s take it from another angle. If I didn’t like you, I’d just let you publish the stuff and be done with it. You’d have to leave town.”

  “Don’t be an ass.” Murphy had been afraid his voice would crack; he was proud of himself that it hadn’t.

  “You’d be a laughingstock. Look, you checked me out, Allan Trotter. Everything you were able to find supported the idea that I’m who I say I am. Now you say that Clifford Driscoll isn’t dead, that I’m Clifford Driscoll. Okay, you dig him up, you compare dental records, fingerprints, whatever. How much would you like to bet everything you check supports my version of things? And makes you look like an idiot?”

  Murphy clutched his envelope tight. He’d put it together believing his salvation was inside it. He couldn’t let go of it now, no matter what Trotter said.

  Trotter was far from through. “You say I’m a spy, but you’ll never find a nickel paid to me on any government payroll ever. An agency you can’t even get a sniff of? Who’s going to buy it?

  “Oh, you’re right about one thing. Nothing would ever happen to you. If you were to have an accident, conspiracy nuts might begin to take you seriously. On the other hand, if you go ahead with this, everybody will take it as the pathetic spleen of a lovesick drunk.”

  Murphy stared at him. The envelope slipped from his fingers. He had come here this afternoon fighting the fear that Trotter would kill him. Now he almost wished he would.

  “No,” Trotter said. “Wait a minute. Sean. I know that look in your eye.

  Don’t go planning any of your own accidents to lend yourself credibility, okay?”

  “It never crossed my mind,” Murphy lied. “But why not?”

  “Because there’s something else you didn’t think of. Or wouldn’t let yourself believe if you did.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That whoever or whatever I am, I truly do love Regina Hudson. That whatever there is to know about me, she’s known since before I went off the catwalk.”

  “But ... but ...”

  �
�You’re shocked that she hasn’t printed it.” Trotter shrugged. “From the publisher’s chair, maybe journalism is a little more complicated. Or maybe Regina can just see around the edges of it a little bit better.”

  “You’re lying to me.”

  “Well,” Trotter said, then smiled. “Reagan again. We’re just supposing here, remember. For now. Unless you’re wired. I’ll tell you what. You talk to Regina. I’ll tell her to limit what she tells you only by her trust for you. From what she says about you, that’s a pretty loose limit.”

  Murphy didn’t believe it. He didn’t dare believe it. But he was damned if he could figure out what the trick was.

  “When is this supposed to happen?”

  “Today. Now. I’ll call Regina right away.” Trotter reached for the phone. He paused with his hand on the receiver. “Oh,” he said. “Just one thing.”

  “I knew there was a catch.”

  “If you in your nosy amateur way do anything to put Regina in danger, I’ll kill you.”

  “Pretty aggressive talk for a reporter.”

  “If you put the woman I love in danger, I’d kill you if I were a soda jerk. Still want me to make that call?”

  “Make it.”

  But he never did. Just then, the phone rang. Trotter brought it to his ear and said hello. “No, as a matter of fact, I had my hand on the phone.” He said yes a few times, then he said “Jesus.” He said he wasn’t alone and couldn’t go into details. He said he’d be down there by tonight. He hung up the phone.

  To Murphy, he said, “You’ve got to leave now.”

  “What about the call to Regina?”

  “When I get the chance. Tonight, probably.”

  Trotter was on his feet, somehow propelling Murphy toward the door.

  “I know a stall when I hear one, Trotter.”

  Trotter rolled his eyes in exasperation. “To hell with you then. I’ve got no time to go easy on you. Publish whatever you goddam want.”

  The door slammed behind him. Murphy was out on the front walk. He didn’t have his envelope. He thought of knocking on the door and asking for it, but he’d used up all the courage he could muster for one afternoon.

  He wondered if he’d accomplished anything this afternoon. He wondered what he was going to do now.