“Keep going,” she said when they stopped behind the cab in front of them, the one letting Walter and Harry out at 310 Heerensgracht. “Go around to the other side of the canal. Now! Hurry!” They made a quick left and crossed the bridge at the next corner, turned back in the direction they had just come, and finally rolled to a stop directly across from the building Walter and Harry had gone into. She got out of the cab and sternly told the driver, “Go to the next corner and wait for me. You’ll be well taken care of.” As the cab pulled away, she stood on the narrow cobblestone street, just inside the bike lane, looking across the icy canal. She recognized Walter Sherman standing in the window. That was all she needed, for now. She walked to the corner, got back in the cab and told the driver to take her to the Hotel Estherea on the Single.
The sound woke Walter, a sound he knew he’d heard before. It was the sound of a door opening, the door at the front of the building. Someone from upstairs, he thought. Second or third floor. Coming home late. After all, it is Amsterdam. Must be alone because he heard no voices. Two or more people, they’d be talking, wouldn’t they? Laughing, maybe giggling, urging each other not to wake the neighbors. The door had opened. He waited for the sound of it closing. It never came. Someone must have grabbed the heavy wooden door just before it thundered shut and then silently slipped it into place. An act of consideration at—he glanced over at the small clock he always traveled with—2:53 am? Perhaps. He listened for footsteps. One, two, three, and they stopped. It was seven steps to the stairway leading to the upper floors. It was three to the door of their apartment. Someone was standing just outside, on the other side of the door. Someone was right there, an inch or two away. Walter lay on the couch, in the darkness. Reaching down to the floor beneath him, using only his left hand, he found the pistol Aat had given him earlier that evening. He held it aimed at the middle of the door just left of the latch. If it opened, whoever came in would walk directly into his sights. Then he sat up, moving his body slowly, trying to keep the couch from making noise while he shifted his weight. When both feet were firmly on the floor, he stood in one quick move. The .9mm held its aim throughout, now leveled at what he figured to be chest height. Gliding on the balls of his bare feet, Walter reached the door in two long steps, flipped the latch, turned the doorknob and threw it open. Instantly, the barrel of his weapon was jammed against the forehead of the man standing in the hallway.
“Not a sound,” Walter said. “Just follow my lead.” With that he pushed the gun forcefully against the man’s head to the left as he stepped to the right. This placed the man inside the apartment with his back to the couch, the one Walter had been sleeping on. Now, closing the door, he pushed him harder, into the apartment. As he did so, he flipped the light switch. “Put your hands on top of your head,” he said, very quietly, very calmly, almost reassuringly. “Get down on your knees and lay flat on the floor, face forward.” The man did as he was told. “If you make any movement or gesture,” Walter went on, “anything at all that disturbs me, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” the man said in a voice muffled by the fact that his face was flat on the floor and he was unable to raise his neck with his hands on the back of his head as they were.
“Good,” said Walter. “I’m going to search you and then ask you to remove your coat. Don’t be alarmed. I will not hurt you, unless you make me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said the man.
With the gun pushed against the back of the man’s head at the base of his skull, Walter ran his free hand down and across the man’s body, his arms and legs, looking for a weapon, including any small ordnance that might be hidden in his socks or hitched on his ankle, around his waist and belt, under his armpits and into his groin. He was unarmed. Walter removed the man’s wallet from the left breast jacket pocket, opened it and dropped it on the floor next to the man’s head.
“I’m going to ask you to do something, Sean,” he said. “When I do, do exactly as I say. Take as much time as you need. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Good. Roll over on your back. Take your hands from your head and unbutton your coat. Then remove the coat, one arm at a time, without getting off the floor. Do it now.” Walter stepped back a pace and watched the man turn over and begin unbuttoning his long overcoat. “If you make a move other than with your buttons, I’ll shoot you. You understand me?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Good,” said Walter.
When his overcoat was unbuttoned and the man lay on top of it, Walter reached with his right foot and kicked the coat from under him, away in the direction of the ugly barstools near the kitchen. It slid on the hardwood floor nearly the length of the room. “Now take your pants off.”
“What?”
“Don’t speak. Just remove your pants and your underwear.” The man hesitated. This was not the first time Walter had engaged in this particular piece of melodrama. He was not surprised by the man’s reluctance. He knew that any man who did not instinctively recoil from such an order was a very dangerous man indeed. Any man who could maintain his concentration and keep his cool while his balls were set free to flap on the floor was already working on a plan of escape. Such a man, Walter knew, would be devising a way to kill him. This one was not such a man.
He managed his pants without incident, but again stopped before taking his underwear off. “Do it,” said Walter, this time with an edge to his voice. The man was clearly frightened and that pleased Walter. When he lay there, his genitals fully exposed, Walter said, “Pull your shirt up over your eyes. Let it cover your head.”
“Hey, wait a . . .” He was stopped by the sound of Walter’s gun clicking into a ready position. “Okay, okay,” the man said and did as he had been told. Finally, he lay there, on the floor, naked below the neck, his face covered and his hands at his side.
“Hands on head,” said Walter. The man complied immediately. At that point Walter brought the gun down and moved the hammer to rest. If that sound made the man feel better, Walter couldn’t tell because the man’s face was covered by his shirt. It made Walter feel safer. He certainly did not want to shoot someone, in the middle of the night, on the quiet and reserved Heerensgracht. How much attention would that bring? And there was Harry. He didn’t want to wake him.
Walter asked, “Where are you from, Sean Dooley?” The man on the floor mumbled something through his shirt. “Speak up,” said Walter.
“Waterford.”
“Waterford?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Where’s that?”
“Ireland.”
“Right on the River Suir,” came a voice from the hallway at the end of the room. It was Harry Levine. “Waterford, you know, the glass people. Nice town. Very pretty really.”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Walter said.
“Well, I’m up and look what I find. Somebody, naked, face up on the living room floor. And you’re holding that gun on him.”
“At least you’re in a good mood,” said Walter, then turning his attention back to the naked man on the floor, he asked, “Who are you working for?” Dooley said nothing. “Look Dooley,” Walter said with a sigh, “When I ask a question, you have to answer me. Those are the rules. Otherwise I’ll shoot you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you, Sean?”
“Thirty-one.”
“If you’d like to be thirty-two, you need to know that any inclination you might have to tell me less than what I want to know or to give me information which is less than truthful, could lead to me killing you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” and this time he added, “sir.”
“Then tell me what you are doing here and who sent you.”
Harry found himself much more accepting of the situation than he ever dreamed he would be. Of course, he never dreamed anything like this at all. It was like fishing, he thought. You drop your line and
hope for a catch. Only thing was, he wasn’t wading in cool water somewhere along the Chattahoochee River, flicking his rod, tossing his lure way out from shore. He was a world away from a warm spring morning in the north Georgia mountains. To be sure, he was the fish. And it looked like Walter Sherman just caught the fisherman.
Fear gripped Sean Dooley as surely as if he had come face to face with the Devil himself and Beelzebub had thrown him, naked, into Hell’s firestorm. The flames nipped at his dick. Satan’s spear surely awaited him. The anticipation of jagged pain made his stomach churn and he convulsed involuntarily, right there on the floor. Walter had pegged him right. Now he was afraid the Irish pussy might throw up. This Sean Dooley was no more than a regular guy, not a trained operative. Too often, Walter knew, when you use loud aggressive threats with civilians, instead of cooperating they tighten up, harden their resistance as a reaction to the violence they sense is about to come their way. They can’t help it. They instinctually react in a manner inconsistent with their own self-interest. With them, the calm and quiet assertion of authority, coupled with the prospect of impending bodily harm or even death, works much better. Be reasonable, he told himself. They respond to reason. On the other hand, Walter found over the years, pros fell into two groups. The first were people who would die before talking. It was a waste of time to question them. The second bunch often needed a specific sign of what was to come before giving in. They could manage the abstract threat of violence, but not a taste of the real thing. A kick in the groin, a gun barrel shoved up their ass. Something to get their attention. Why they didn’t believe, at the start, in the certainty of their own misfortune was a mystery. One thing was for sure, you could never tell what impulse would make a man willingly give his life rather than surrender information. It was irrational, but what could you do? Sean Dooley talked, and Walter was well enough convinced, after a while, that the Irishman told the truth. How many men had Walter interrogated over the years? More than he could remember. He knew how to ask the same question, in different ways, in unconnected context, to test the truth of the initial answer. Mostly these were simple questions, the kind a regular person, a truthful person, had no time to figure out.
“When did you get to Amsterdam?” Walter asked. Dooley told him he’d just arrived. “You came here straight from the airport?”
“Yes,” he told Walter, “straight from the airport.” A few minutes later, Walter asked, “What time was it when you got off the plane?” The question demanded an immediate answer and he got one. He knew that someone like Sean Dooley would look at his watch as he walked off the plane, leaving the jetway and entering the terminal area. People in a hurry, on a schedule, always do. Dooley gave Walter the right answer. He really had come straight from the airport. How the hell did he know where to go? Walter motioned to Harry pointing at the overcoat on the floor near one of the flamingos. Harry snatched it up. “Check the pockets,” Walter told him. Dooley’s plane ticket was there, one-way from London to Amsterdam. He’d been in Holland less than an hour. Harry pulled something else out too, unfolded it and gasped.
“What is it?” Walter asked.
“My picture,” said Harry.
It was indeed. There, on the page, was a photograph of Harry Levine and underneath it, written in hand—Harry Levine, 310 Heerensgracht, first floor. Amsterdam.
At the top of the page was a fax-generated telephone number—the sender’s number—an American number with an area code Walter didn’t recognize. He looked at Harry.
“Area code 617,” he said. “You know where that is?”
“Boston.”
Walter looked down at the man lying on the floor. “Sean, are you with me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who do you know in Boston?”
“I dunno.”
“Young man,” said Walter, now sounding every bit the genial family doctor. “Tell me who sent you a fax of Harry Levine’s picture or I will step on your balls and crush them into the floor. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir. Please don’t . . . It was Miss O’Malley. She sent it for me.”
“Who is she?” asked Walter looking over at Harry who shrugged. He had no idea who this Miss O’Malley might be.
“She’s a woman I done some jobs for before. American, but that’s all I know of her. I don’t ask questions.”
“What sort of jobs?”
“You know, just jobs, all kinds of stuff here and there.”
“Tell me about this job.”
“There’s this thing, she called it a document. She said that Harry Levine has it. She wants it.”
“And your job?”
“Get it.”
Sean Dooley was not the brightest light shining from the Emerald Isle. It went on this way—Walter asking a question and Sean giving a short, simple answer—for what seemed to Harry to be a half-hour. Actually it was only a few minutes. Finally, Walter said, “Pull your shirt down.” The Irishman did and for the first time Harry saw his face. Sean Dooley may have been only thirty-one, but he looked like fifty. His Irish mug was both puffy and deeply lined at the same time. Probably the result of a lot of time spent outside, Harry concluded, and a lot of beer drinking when he was indoors.
“Put your pants on. Go ahead, it’s all right.” Dooley pulled his pants up from around his ankles, tucked his shirt halfway in and buckled his belt. He was breathing easier now. Walter thought the vision of his balls ground into the hardwood floor was still very much in Sean Dooley’s mind. “I want you to do two things for me, Sean, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. First, I want you to give Miss O’Malley this number.” He handed the Irishman a small slip of paper. On it was written a telephone number. “You won’t lose it, right?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I won’t lose it.”
“And second—and Sean, listen very carefully because your life depends on this—I want you to leave Holland, right now, and never come back. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Leave right now. When you walk out of here go straight to the airport. Sleep at Schiphol, if you have to wait before you can get a flight back home.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dooley.
“Here’s the part where you have to listen carefully.” Dooley looked up at Walter from the floor and nodded in a manner that showed Walter he wanted to comply completely and he was eager for Walter to know it. Walter said, “If I ever see you again, I will kill you. Tell Miss O’Malley that if I see anyone else she sends, I will kill them and then, Sean, I’ll come back and kill you too. Even if you’ve done everything I’ve said, I’ll come back for you. Miss O’Malley sent you. If she sends anyone else, you’ll pay too. You have good reason, a powerful incentive to convince Miss O’Malley of my bad intentions.” He waved Dooley’s driver’s license in his face and then tossed it over to Harry. The rest of the wallet he gave back. “I won’t have any trouble finding you, you know that don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” said Walter. “Get the fuck out of here.”
–––––
“Pack,” said Walter as Harry poured himself a glass of milk.
“What? I beg your pardon. What do you mean?”
“We have to leave. It’s too dangerous here.”
“But you let him go. You threw him out.”
“It’s not him I’m concerned about. Our boy Sean hasn’t been killing anybody. Sir Anthony Wells, and your Ambassador Brown, they were killed by pros, mean ones at that. They were beaten for information. Can you imagine a hundred-year-old man taking that sort of abuse?” Walter stopped for a moment and shook his head. He didn’t have to ask what kind of man would do such a thing. He knew. “We need to get out of here,” he said, looking at the little clock next to the couch. It said 3:20 am.
Ten minutes later, after Walter made two phone calls, a taxi pulled to a halt in front of the building. Walter and Harry walked quickly down the stone steps and into the waiti
ng cab. As they drove off, Walter looked in all directions. He saw no one. He gave the driver specific instructions—“turn here . . . turn there”—taking them through the empty residential neighborhoods in the Jordan section and then, quickly and unexpectedly, in the opposite direction toward the newly developed part of Amsterdam where clusters of gleaming glass skyscrapers surrounded the Heineken Music Hall. The streets were empty. Nobody followed them. Finally, no longer visibly on edge, Walter leaned forward and said to the cab driver, “Rotterdam.”
Louis Devereaux was angry. Tucker Poesy was pissed. He was talking mostly to himself, but she held the phone to her ear anyway.
“Twice? Jesus fucking Christ! Twice?”
“I . . .”
“You lost him, again? First you lost him when he was in your apartment?—in your apartment! And now you lose him—again!”
“Look,” she said.
“No! You look . . .”
“I am not a fucking babysitter!” She was shouting at him. “Do you hear me? I don’t find people. I kill people. You tell me where to go, I go. You tell me who to shoot, I shoot. All the rest of this is bullshit! Now if you have nothing more to say, I’ve got better things to do than chase around Europe after Harry Levine and some psycho named Walter Sherman.”
The Lacey Confession Page 23
