The Lacey Confession

by Richard Greener

  Her car was parked around the corner from the bookstore. She drove an antique classic Aston Martin, a model Harry supposed might be as much as twenty-five or thirty years old. The car smelled of leather and was surprisingly comfortable despite the tight-fit look of it. Ms. Poesy’s driver’s seat was in a forward position so her feet could reach the pedals. Harry had to slide his all the way back to make room for his long legs.

  “Should we pick up your things?” she asked as they drove. “Where have you left them?”

  “What do you mean? Clothes? I didn’t get a chance to . . .”

  “Where did you put the document?”

  “What document?”

  “It’s okay, Harry. I know what this is all about. Mr. Devereaux put me on this assignment himself. He thinks you’re very important. He wants to make sure the document is safe.”

  “It’s safe.”

  “Where . . .” she said, then seemed to think better of herself and stopped. They drove in silence. While she looked at the road ahead, Harry looked at Tucker Poesy. He had been right. Her legs were definitely dancer’s legs. Her coat slipped off to the side, while she drove, exposing her right leg. As she accelerated and braked he saw the muscles in her calf tighten and relax with a practiced ease. He knew if he touched them, her legs would be hard as rock.

  “Where are we headed?” Harry asked.

  “My flat. Safest place in London for you right now.”

  “Do you dance?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Are you a dancer?”

  “No. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “I don’t know. Just something . . . I thought about. Forget it.”

  “I’m in public relations. I have a small company with a few very good clients.”

  “How did you get . . . involved with Louis Devereaux?”

  “You don’t want to know, Harry. Believe me.”

  Harry hadn’t been paying close attention, but when she pulled over and parked, he realized he was on familiar ground. They were near Bond Street in the Mayfair district. Tucker Poesy’s few very good clients paid well. Her apartment was warm, much warmer than most people in London keep theirs. Many Americans, like Harry, who stayed in England for a prolonged time tended to do as the English do—turn the heat down. Sweaters, not usually worn indoors in America, were an everyday thing in England, except during the summer months. Tucker Poesy had her heat on high and immediately tossed off her coat as she entered her foyer. She threw it on a large, wrought iron hook next to the front door. Harry put his on top. The simple black dress Harry saw when she came into Waterstone’s fit snug as a glove. It was sleeveless. Her arms matched her legs for fitness. Her stomach was flat and she was small and high breasted. She was not Harry’s type. He went more for soft lips, long hair and never minded a bit of belly. His taste covered a wide range from Turkish and Indian women to Eastern Europeans, and he had had an occasional Swedish or Norwegian girlfriend too. He had not given up American women, not entirely, although he held to a strict rule never to get involved with any girl working at the Embassy. He was open to women of all colors and cultures, but rarely was attracted to the white-bread, Protestant type he took Tucker Poesy for. She did look very inviting to him at that moment, however. Maybe, Harry thought, it was just the stress of the day and the warmth of her flat. Nothing like a little life-threatening tension to get one horny. Perhaps, he needed to lie down for a while and get some rest, just a little sleep.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I’ll close my eyes and go to sleep.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. If you’d like to lie down on the couch, go right ahead. I’ll make some tea.” Harry dropped like a sack of beans on the couch in front of the window. Tucker Poesy’s flat was reminiscent of a college girl’s apartment. Old furniture, well worn but still in decent shape, looking very comfortable, mixed in with a dark wooden coffee table and a couple of matching, smaller tables at either end of the couch. The floors were hardwood, not especially shiny, but clean. A large rug, predominantly maroon, covered the sitting area where Harry plopped himself down. An Andreas Gursky photo poster dominated the living room. Harry had trouble making it out. It looked like a stadium of some sort, shot from above, filled with people. But there was no stage or field or court anywhere in the picture. Looking more closely at it, Harry recognized the trading floor, crowded with brokers, runners, traders—there were hundreds of them. Paper flew everywhere. At the bottom, on the left-hand side just below the picture, it said Chicago Board of Trade.

  On the wall leading toward the bedroom, two Van Gogh prints hung next to each other. Bookcases lined up against most of the remaining wall space. Harry was too tired to read any of the titles. A pair of floor lamps, each with dark shades, emitted soft light as they bracketed the sofa while a table lamp, the sort used for reading, rested, unlit, on the small dining table in an alcove off the kitchen. Two potted plants sat in front of the window. The flat had high ceilings, ten, maybe twelve feet high. There was a sculptured crown molding at the top of the walls running the full circumference of each room. That made the rooms, which were actually quite narrow, appear much larger. Harry found the couch a welcome relief. It smelled good too. No one smoked in this place. He was sure of that. He closed his eyes, ready to drift off.

  “Before you go to sleep, Harry, tell me where the document is—where you put it. I’ll go pick it up while you rest.”

  “It’s safe.”

  “I’m sure it is, but where is it?” Harry had an uncomfortable sense, a feeling there was an unfriendly edge to her voice. It bothered him. A lot. He fought to stay awake. Who was this Tucker Poesy anyway?

  “Where are you from, Tucker?”

  “Where am I from?” she said. Harry was thinking Connecticut, Maryland maybe Virginia. The kind of girl who went to Vassar or Brown. “Lincoln, Nebraska,” she said. That woke him. Lincoln, Nebraska. He’d never been there, not even close, but always assumed Nebraska to be chockfull of chubby, blonde farm girls who, if they went to college at all, went to one of several Midwestern state schools, the ones with 30,000 students, football teams and Veterinary Medicine departments. Either he had a lot to learn or Tucker Poesy was full of shit.

  She really was from Lincoln, Nebraska. Subterfuge and deception of this kind—casual conversation—were not weapons in her arsenal. They weren’t called for in her line of work and she wasn’t ready to lie about something as basic as where she was from. She had no immediate sense it might be a good idea. Strictly speaking she was not from Lincoln. She said that because Lincoln was the first place she had her own apartment. She had, in fact, been born and raised in a series of small farming towns throughout Nebraska. Her father was a farmer—not the kind who owns a farm, the sort who gets up early in the morning with the crowing of the rooster and the rising sun, eats a breakfast of scrambled eggs with hot coffee and fresh baked biscuits, kisses his devoted wife goodbye and heads out to the fields for a day’s work. Far from it. Wayne Poesy was a drunk with hardly a penny to his name. He always worked, but never had his own place. Tucker was brought up living from farm to farm, wherever her father was a hired man. Usually, the farmer—the real farmer—rented the Poesys a house as part of the deal. As a kid, Tucker never knew why they moved so frequently. She just knew they did. Wayne was a nasty drunk. His wife, to her credit at least, was a secret, quiet one. While Tucker’s dad drank away the family’s spare dollars, her mother often passed out by nine o’clock from the sheer volume of cheap wine she drank every day. Her father beat her as a child, along with her two older brothers. When she got older, he tried even worse. She fought him off as best she could, but she was a twelve-year-old girl and he was a powerful bully. The smell of whiskey and stale cigarette smoke haunted her still. At eighteen, she left, but not before shooting her father. She used his own .38, a large, heavy pistol with which she had practiced endlessly in preparation. A single shot struck him in the middle of his forehead. Wayne Poesy was the first person s
he killed and forever the most satisfying. Her mother knew, and her brothers were fairly certain, but the police never figured it out and probably didn’t care to. Wayne Poesy had few friends.

  Murder for hire is not a thriving business in Nebraska, so Tucker moved to Chicago looking for steady work. It wasn’t hard to find. In real life, mobsters don’t live in splendid isolation, surrounded by loyal soldiers. Quite the opposite. Most gangsters are sad, lonely men constantly frightened by any of a series of legitimate causes. In many cases, people really are out to kill them. The paranoid fantasies of regular citizens are the very essence of everyday life for many modern desperados. Calling Tony the hit man for help is hardly a realistic option. He is never just down the hall or a phone call away. That only happens in the movies. Killers are actually hard to find and good ones command top dollar and preferential treatment. It’s a good living. Tucker Poesy found employment in Chicago the same way most people do—she went around looking for an opening and when she found one, asked for the job. Everybody knew who the bad guys were in the city of Chicago. The best part was they were not like corporate vice-presidents. They were easy to see and friendly to talk to. She made the rounds like a would-be actor seeking an audition until one of the black street gangs retained her to kill a white businessman they couldn’t get close to. She didn’t ask why they wanted him dead—none of her business. All she needed was his name and a photo. The next morning, a single shot to the head, fired in a crowded office building lobby, made her reputation.

  Nine years later, at 28, Tucker Poesy took an assignment in Europe. She had been many places in the United States. Her first time outside the country, her first time in Europe, was a great, new experience. She liked it there, and stayed. There was plenty of international work to be had. Louis Devereaux found her, by reputation only, two years later. She did a job in Prague the details of which he found hard to believe. Tucker was hired to kill a man thought by his enemies to be untouchable. Previous attempts had all failed miserably. The target, a modern-day Eastern European bandit, was ensconced in a rooftop suite in one of Prague’s newest hotels. He was, according to the information she had been given, constantly accompanied by five bodyguards. She was given bad information. Her target actually had seven bodyguards. No problem. She managed to work around it. Tucker Poesy posed as a bellhop bringing dry cleaning to a guest. She entered the suite holding a suit, on a hanger, wrapped in clear plastic in front of her. Two bodyguards, one poised to take the hanger from her, opened the door. She shot each of them through the suit. The silencer on her Israeli-made .9mm was so effective even she had a hard time hearing the shots. As she went farther into the suite, she called out, “Housekeeping. Dry cleaning.” She spent more than a week getting those two words right, in the Slovak dialect expected of a hotel employee. Her accent was pretty good. The third bodyguard came from the hallway to meet her. He carried a pistol in a holster slung over his left shoulder, the gun tucked in beneath his armpit. Tucker handed him the suit in a way that required him to react with his right hand. At that point, when he was disabled, no longer free to reach his weapon, she shot him one time in the center of his chest. She expected to find her target, with two remaining bodyguards, in the sitting room at the end of the hall.

  When she walked in and saw the man she was hired to kill sitting at a small marble table eating what looked to be sausage and vegetables, she also saw the other four men. She calculated immediately. Her handgun held nine shots. Three were already gone. With six remaining bullets she had to hit five targets. She was certain all of them would be in motion as soon as she showed her hand. She decided to leave her primary target for last. He was stuffing his face with food and appeared unarmed. She needed to hit four men before any of them struck back. Three of them were standing and from the positions they occupied in reference to herself, she decided two would peel off to her right and the third to her left. The fourth man was sitting and had his back to her. He could wait. He would be the last bodyguard. In less time than it took to cough up a tiny piece of sausage swallowed the wrong way, she shot all three standing bodyguards. They had moved exactly as she thought they would. The fourth man was slow to react. He turned to see what was going on without pulling his gun out. She shot him in the top of his skull while bounding past the fallen bodies, approaching the target. She had two bullets left. Her instructions were to make this death as painful as possible. She didn’t care much for orders like that, but her client added twenty-five thousand dollars for her trouble. She felt honor bound to comply. The fat man, with food still in mouth, couldn’t get up. He was frozen to the spot. His eyes were the size of tennis balls, filled with dread. Tucker reached over the table and fired a shot into his huge gut. The man tumbled out of his chair onto the floor grabbing his midsection, moaning. She didn’t like that at all, twenty-five thousand or not, and fired her eighth shot into the back of his head. After dropping the dry-cleaned suit on the floor, she retraced her steps to the Housekeeping Department, removed her uniform and put her own clothes back on, then took the elevator to the hotel lobby, went to the bar and had a glass of cold Chardonnay before leaving for the airport. Soon thereafter, Louis Devereaux called to offer fulltime employment at a level of income she would have had a difficult time reaching on her own. She could base herself in any European capital she wished. She chose London, where Devereaux established her public relations company as a permanent cover. When she went to pick up Harry Levine, she had been working for Devereaux’s rouge CIA unit for almost three years. She had never been happier.

  “We need the document,” she said. “Mr. Devereaux wants it right away. Do you want to go with me to get it, or should I go alone? What do you think, Harry?”

  “I’ll take you,” said Harry. “Just let me sleep a half hour, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Close your eyes. But listen for the stove. Water’s boiling. I’m going to use the toilet for a second.”

  “I will,” Harry said. “When the water’s ready, I’ll pour.”

  Tucker Poesy kicked off her shoes and made for the bathroom down the hall across from the bedroom. As soon as she closed the door, Harry rose from the couch, grabbed his coat, which covered hers on the hook next to the front door and, closing the door slowly and silently behind him, quietly slipped out of the flat. Out on the street, he ran as fast as he could.

  The whistle of the kettle on the stove got her attention. “Fuck!” said Tucker Poesy when she came out of the bathroom and saw Harry was gone. “Fuck!” She picked up her phone and made a call to Louis Devereaux in Washington. She told him exactly what happened, how she met Harry, where they went and what they talked about. She was not shy about telling Devereaux she fucked up by going to the bathroom, leaving him by himself. “I had no idea he was suspicious,” she said. “How am I going to find him now?”

  “You won’t,” said Devereaux. “But you won’t have to. I know who will. What you’ll do is follow him. He’ll lead you to Harry Levine. His name is Walter Sherman.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Someone I never thought you—or I—would ever get to meet. The Locator himself. Watch yourself, do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll send you everything you need on Sherman. Pick it up from the Indian in an hour. When Sherman leaves for Europe, which he’ll have to do, I’ll let you know. It might take a day or two. Don’t screw it up again.”

  He met her in 1988. In January, in New Orleans. She was there for a concert at the Superdome when he called. He flew down from Washington hoping his hometown would be warmer. He arrived on the coldest day of the winter, the temperature near freezing and a stiff breeze blowing in from Texas making it feel just as cold as Washington, D.C., worse yet for the disappointment. Conchita Crystal was staying at The Maison de Ville in the French Quarter. In those days, international terrorism was hardly a matter for public discussion. Although its roots have always been ideological, in 1988 terrorism was mainly thought of as a for-profit business that crosse
d national boarders. Few even used the word terrorism. Hijackers, kidnappers, thieves, even bandits were some of the common descriptions. From time to time reports crossed Devereaux’s desk about thieves and killers whose activities appeared to have political connections. Some probably did. Some didn’t. It was not a high priority concern for him or anyone else at Langley. In the main, his task was to review the reports for political and historical import and accuracy. As far as he knew, none of the activities he examined had ever been the cause of a CIA reaction on the ground. Using the resources at their command, the CIA was able to enlist others to do their work for them when called for. Devereaux knew of one such action involving the local police in Frankfurt, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey. The culprits were rounded up, shipped off to jail and the problem solved. To the best of his knowledge, there had never been a valid event in the United States.

  The information that came to his attention right after New Year’s 1988 changed that. For the tiny leadership group with access to this operation, the Conchita Crystal Affair would mark the beginning of Islamic terrorism aimed at the United States. No one at headquarters wanted to broaden the scope of it or bring into the picture new people. Keeping things close was a religion at the CIA and Louis Devereaux, while not yet a Cardinal, was every bit a senior Archbishop. It was left to him to deal with Ms. Crystal.