Killer, Come Hither

by Louis Begley

  That letter, he continued. Your uncle had extraordinary presence of mind. Thinking up and including in the letter so many signals to put you on the alert. We’ll get it analyzed as well. You never know what leads the right kind of microscope and trained eyes can discover. By the way, I was struck by the mention of the family Bible. Was your uncle particularly religious?

  Good God no! I replied. He went to church occasionally—if he happened to like the minister. And we don’t have a family Bible! It was another way to make sure I got the point. Like saying I’d been in Chile where I hadn’t gone, the weird expressions he never used, the Mark Twain quotation, writing with a blue-ink ballpoint pen when he detested blue ink and ballpoint pens.

  So cool under fire, Scott mused, and yet, when he was on that ladder, he didn’t jump on top of the Voice and take his chances instead of putting the noose around his own neck. He was himself a big and heavy man. How do you explain it?

  I’m not sure, I answered. I’ve been mulling over that question. It could be that the Voice was really huge and strong looking, and Harry realized that he wouldn’t manage to hurt him. Instead he’d be badly hurt himself. Don’t forget the beatings the Voice administered. There’s a kind of despair that sometimes overcomes people in a fight when they know they can’t win. They want it to be over—the sooner the better. He may have also thought that the Voice would hurt the cat very badly, and he didn’t want that. You don’t have a dog or a cat so probably you can’t appreciate Harry’s love for his cat. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Harry would have risked death—hell, would have died—to save Plato. Take an obvious case: the house is on fire. Do you doubt that Harry would have plunged into the smoke and the flames in order to save his cat? Or it may have been a form of disgust. He felt he’d had it. He didn’t want to tangle with the Voice, he didn’t want to face the obvious fact that someone—almost certainly Abner Brown—hated him enough to send the Voice to kill him; he preferred in the end to let the Voice get on with his job.

  There was another explanation, which was shameful; I couldn’t keep it entirely out of my mind. That yellow streak of Harry’s my father and grandfather had suspected. He should have gone for it, but his nerve failed. I didn’t want to share that suspicion with anyone, not even Scott.

  Very strange, Scott continued. Too bad, I suppose.

  And the Brown connection, do you think it’s there?

  That’s a very difficult question, Scott answered. Let’s have dinner. We’ll talk while we eat.

  As it turned out, however, we spoke first about Scott’s life. I knew that shortly before our expedition to Patagonia he’d broken with a woman who worked in the policy-planning group at the State Department. They had been together for more than a year. It was her idea, and he told me then that he didn’t understand the reason. He was sure that he loved her. It had seemed to him that they were getting along just fine, they had the same tastes, they knew many of the same people. She too had been at Yale, three or four years behind him. She refused to tell him why. However, a couple of weeks ago, he ran into her at a party in Georgetown. She was with a man who also worked at the agency, a Russian affairs specialist, whom he had always considered a friend. He was able to observe them for some minutes before they became aware of his presence. It was painful, he said, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She had never been that way with him. It wasn’t a large party, and eventually there was no escaping an exchange of the usual greetings and getting into a conversation.

  We’re grown-ups, right? he said. I run into this guy at meetings, in the elevator, in the cafeteria. So I had to act civilized and detached. Only the entire time they talked they acted so guilty, really so shitty, that they confirmed what my intuition had told me as soon as I saw them. They’d been having an affair while she was still with me. A petty betrayal, the sort of thing that I guess happens all the time, but it left me feeling sour and misanthropic. The perfect mood for Mr. Abner Brown and his enterprises. Let’s see what you’ve got on him.

  What I had, according to Scott, came down to this. First, it was clear that Harry had been murdered. Second, there was Kerry’s account of Harry’s having discovered a pattern of lawbreaking when he prepared for a possible stock exchange listing of some of Brown’s companies, and the fact that Brown, presumably realizing what Harry had found out and what his likely response would be, turned on Harry and asked the chairman of Jones & Whetstone to remove him from work on his companies—after all those years of Harry’s having been his friend and privy counselor. Finally, the very fact that the Voice was a hired killer, and his crack about someone who wanted Harry dead. That last point isn’t a figment of your imagination. It’s right there in the recording. Hit men are used when drug dealers and other professional criminals settle their accounts, but otherwise? I’m assuming that Harry wasn’t involved with drugs and didn’t have big unpaid gambling debts.

  Of course he didn’t, I replied.

  So the hit man would have to be sent on account of some other connection with a big-time criminal activity. Isn’t that about it? Doesn’t your case, if you want to call it that, rest squarely on the proposition that Abner Brown is a big-time criminal who didn’t want to be exposed? he asked.

  I nodded.

  As for the lies Hobson told about Harry’s supposed dementia, Scott continued, and his and Minot’s attempt to get hold of Harry’s personal papers, that’s probably craziness relating to law firm politics. How do you get rid of a respected, perhaps beloved, senior partner who hasn’t done anything wrong that you can point to? Could Hobson have said it’s because an important client says I don’t want him handling my matters and I want him out of your firm? Perhaps you have to invent a reason. How he got Harry to agree to leave is something else. It may be that we’ll never know. The personal papers are a tougher problem. Could Brown have said first I don’t want Harry Dana on my matters, and then, after Harry has committed suicide—let’s call it that for this purpose—could he have called Hobson with another request? Please make sure there isn’t anything derogatory about me or my affairs in Harry’s personal files. I wouldn’t want such material to come into the hands of persons who aren’t bound by a professional obligation of confidentiality? Otherwise, you’d have to posit that Hobson is aware of the illegality that Harry found and is participating in a cover-up. That may be going too far.

  I don’t disagree, I murmured, but don’t forget Barbara Diamond.

  I’m not, Scott said. But as you perhaps don’t know or have forgotten, each year a lot of people, in the hundreds, are killed in New York City by subway trains. Some jump under the train as it approaches, some are pushed, some fall off the platforms in what seem to be accidents, and on and on. You have the coincidence of timing, and a very plausible premise that if someone wanted to kill Harry because of what he knew he might want to kill Barbara as well, and would want to kill her as soon after Harry’s death as possible. But to get with these shards to Abner Brown—I don’t know how you do it unless you learn more about what it is that Harry discovered. Kerry may be able to help. Of course, if we could find a lead to the Voice or his bosses…

  Sure, we can talk to Kerry, I replied. But I doubt she knows anything beyond what she’s already told me. Frankly, I don’t know how you’re going to get to the Voice except through Abner. Searching your database with nothing to go on other than his accent and speech patterns makes looking for a needle in a haystack seem easy.

  Something may turn up, Scott said. We spend a lot of time studying the flows of goods in violation of sanctions, especially the Iran and North Korea sanctions, and the flows of money. They’re like mighty rivers. And a good number of Brown businesses, Abner’s companies, just happen to be on riverbanks. Exactly what is the business of those companies? Apparently it involves nothing that needs to be disclosed to any government, certainly not the government of the U.S., because no disclosure has been made. So that’s one aspect of Brown’s enterprises. How good is the internal system of co
mpliance? Have these enterprises been investigated? Not really. There have been problems with the EPA, but the proceedings have gone nowhere. That may be related to Brown’s political power as well as the EPA being generally fucked up. You’d be shocked if you knew how many congressmen and senators are in effect on Abner’s payroll. Perhaps you wouldn’t be, not if you follow carefully certain investigative reporters. You’d be horrified to learn how his fingers extend into high reaches of the Justice Department and how many higher-ups in the FBI and, yes, in the agency have bought into his political shit. Or are under his sway for other reasons. So we foot soldiers must tread very carefully. But all the same, I’m going to give some thought to how what Kerry calls pervasive illegality both abroad and here might intersect with our interests.

  What Scott said about Brown’s potential ability to have his way with our government brought me up short when he suggested that I leave Harry’s iPhone and letter for further expert study—especially of the phone’s content—and safekeeping. He would give me a couple of CDs and Xerox copies of the letter to take back to New York.

  After your experts have finished, would you place the phone and the letter in some locked cabinet or safe in your office? I asked. Quite frankly, I’m worried about your not being able to prevent someone who’s a Brown ally, for lack of a better word, from removing them.

  I don’t think we’re quite there at the agency. Scott laughed. But don’t worry, that is not what I had in mind. I was going to place them in the safe I rent at the Wells Fargo branch I use here in Alexandria. If you trust me you will be able to look on them as an insurance policy against at least some of the dangers you are likely to be courting.

  —

  I got back to Manhattan the following afternoon. Kerry had gone to Boston for a meeting with a new client, referred by Western Industries, and was coming back on Friday, on the seven o’clock shuttle. We’d agreed that I’d pick her up at the Marine Terminal. She’d have everything she needed for the country with her, and we would drive out to Sag Harbor without stopping off at her apartment. That gave me two full days for work on my book and two other pieces of business. The first I accomplished as soon as I got home. It left me breathless with excitement, and I decided that for the time being I wouldn’t discuss it with anyone, not even Kerry or Scott. The second was straightforward: I called Martin, the FBI man. He was free and agreed to come for a drink at the apartment later that afternoon.

  He turned out to be a conspicuously inconspicuous man of middle height and solid build. Under a black down parka, which I hung up in the hall closet, he wore a navy-blue blazer with brass buttons, a blue oxford-cloth Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, a striped navy-blue-and-red necktie, and gray flannels. The brown boots with reinforced toes were the only item that wasn’t part of the Ivy League middle-management uniform. The kick they delivered, I surmised, could be lethal.

  You realize that what I’ll be doing isn’t foolproof, he told me. Security work never is, and the young lady’s not knowing that she’s being protected and not cooperating is a complication. But I’ll keep an eye on her from when she leaves her apartment until she calls it a day. It will help if you tell me in advance as much as you know about her schedule. That way, if I know she’s planning to stay at her office except when she goes out to lunch—that’s just an example—I’ll know I can take a couple of hours off. I understand that we don’t know the nature of the threat or what sort of person I should be looking out for.

  We don’t, I answered, except that we do know that my uncle was murdered by someone who appears to be a professional killer capable of considerable personal violence. Using his hands, and not just a weapon. Someone who speaks English fluently, with some sort of Slavic accent, and makes mistakes. The danger would come from that source, from whoever sent the killer. But there is no reason to think that if Kerry is attacked it will necessarily be by the same man. It could be anybody.

  Righto, Martin replied. I’ll plan to start on Monday. Without indiscretion, will the young lady be spending that night here or at her place? Let me know when you find out. We’ll do our best and keep in touch. If I don’t answer the phone you may want to send me a text message. Sometimes you’re in a situation where it’s awkward to talk.

  —

  I worked steadily into the evening, ate the cold supper Jeanette had set out for me, and went back to my desk for another couple of hours. The next morning at five I left the building for my first real run of the week. The weather being raw, with no improvement predicted before the weekend, I slipped on my Nike windbreaker. The switchblade fit comfortably in the pouch pocket. I’d put it in the overnight bag I checked going to D.C. and coming back—otherwise, it had been my constant companion. I crossed Central Park at Seventy-Ninth Street and ran north on the West Drive as far as the North Woods before turning east toward the Harlem Meer. For someone who hadn’t exercised seriously for a number of days and had been staying up late and drinking more than usual, I wasn’t in bad shape. I ran effortlessly and fast, leaving behind the few other benighted souls who had ventured out in the early morning dark and the cold. By the time I had left the Meer and was heading south a feeling came over me that partook of irrational exultation and the sort of aura that sometimes saves lives on patrol. I fancied that I was no longer alone, that steadily gaining on me was a runner whose silhouette and togs and gray ski mask were intimately familiar. Bozo-on-the-Beach! I cried out. Aha, this time I’ll get you. I’ll run faster—there’s no limit to my reserves of strength—but, Bozo, I know you’ll catch up with me, and in another minute you’ll be on top of me. But just before that happens, I suddenly face you and drop into a crouch, the open knife in my hand. Inertia propels you with such force that you fly over me and crash headfirst on the asphalt. I stomp you, and when you stagger to your feet I cut you!

  A group of three runners, two men and a woman, running north came into view, putting an end to my hallucination or waking nightmare. I continued south on the East Drive, left the Park at Seventy-Ninth Street, and jogged home.

  Soaking under a hot shower, I reviewed the bidding. If Bozo had really followed me into the park, what would I have done? This time I would have certainly stood my ground, the knife tipping the scales in my favor. Would I have killed him? Not unless he revealed himself to be the Voice, the likelihood of which I now doubted. The Voice was a pro. If sent by Brown—or whoever had sent him to murder Harry—he’d have dispatched me on that Sagaponack beach with the same relentless efficiency. It wasn’t conceivable that Brown would tolerate Bozo’s kind of bumbling. Then who was Bozo, and what was the explanation for his pursuit of me on the beach? This was another question to which, at least for the moment, I didn’t have an answer. He could be just a jerk looking for a fight. Why not? Most of the world’s population are weirdos.

  Some things had become clearer to me. I resolved that if I found the Voice or, more likely, if he found me, I would try, whatever violence it took, to make him spit out the name of his client and the truth about Barbara. Had he murdered her as well as Harry? And I now knew that in order to accomplish this and kill the Voice—in self-defense, ha! ha! ha!—I couldn’t let my friends’ zeal for justice get in the way of my vengeance.

  This last thought requires a word of explanation.

  On the shuttle back to New York I mulled over my conversations with Scott and was struck by the inanity of the answer I gave when he asked whether Harry had been religious. He went to church if he liked the minister, I had said, and we don’t have a family Bible! As soon as I got home, I rushed into Harry’s library. It’s true that we Danas do not have a “family Bible,” or anyway a Bible that any of us, and certainly not Harry, would have been pretentious enough to describe as such. That was—I now understood—yet another of his pathetic brave attempts to get my attention. But he did own a Bible, and it wasn’t some beaten-up paperback. I remembered having seen in his library a Bible with an exceptionally fine leather binding, which he told me had belonged to his and my fath
er’s grandfather, Ezekiel Dana, the founder and for more than thirty years rector of an Episcopal boarding school in southern Massachusetts. And there it was, in the place I remembered, next to a fine edition of the complete works of Dickens. Seek and ye shall find. I turned the pages until I got to the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. And inside it, at chapter 7, I found carefully folded sheets of legal-pad paper. At the top of the first sheet he had written: Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. Matthew again—consistent with the hiding place. The rest of that sheet, as well as the second, were given over to two intricately drawn diagrams that in fact resembled trees. The roots of the first spread wide under the ground, and its branches reached toward the sky, while the second, which on close inspection I realized was the mirror image of the first, had been planted upside down, its branches buried, its roots aloft. Linked to the branches by dotted lines were handwritten notes. More handwritten text consisting of numbered paragraphs followed. It was Harry’s handwriting, meticulous and legible. Perusing the notes and the text I recognized the names of well-known companies and individuals—businessmen and politicians—both American and foreign, as well as citation to laws. At the bottom of the second page appeared an aphorism I couldn’t identify, possibly one that Harry had invented: Each thing has its double and each such double is corrupt. Was that another clue or Harry’s judgment on Abner Brown’s enterprises or perhaps both?

  Kerry would have the knowledge and skill to decipher and interpret these pages. If they were, as I fully expected, a Rosetta stone that unlocked Abner Brown’s and his companies’ crimes, my darling former assistant U.S. attorney would be champing at the bit to turn them over to the government for prosecution. That was what I too wished, so that Harry’s message, of which he had made me the bearer, would dismantle Brown’s operation and put him behind bars. But I would be able to settle my accounts with the Voice only if I succeeded in goading Abner Brown into sending him to kill me, and that was something he would do only if he thought I had to be silenced. The corollary was that if Abner learned that I had already let Uncle Harry’s cat out of the bag—I squirmed at the expression but couldn’t get it out of my head—he would no longer think that siccing the Voice on me was in his interest, and he was far too smart, I was sure, to do it merely out of spite. Yes, I had to goad him into sending the Voice because on my own I would never find him. Then, once I had him before me, I would kill him. Or he would kill me, a possibility I couldn’t dismiss. The grander goal—bringing Abner Brown and his business to account—would be the work of others, whether I lived or died, and would be accomplished if the incompetence, pusillanimity, and corruption of public officials did not thwart it.