“Did he get it?”
Jones’ eyes flickered away from them. “He plays poker with the chief.”
All right. They wouldn’t be able to match ballistics.
“The congressman asked to meet me. He thanked me particular for looking after his son.” He swallowed. “Said he’d remember my name.”
Gennady looked at Daniel. His eyebrows rose very slightly, as if to say, Do we pursue this?
“Even a congressman is subject to the law,” Daniel said. He turned his attention back to Jones. “What kind of car does Peter Abbott drive?”
Jones relaxed, just a little. “1958 Thunderbird,” he said. “Turquoise.” He managed a weak smile. “Sweet car.”
Daniel hoped Peter had been stupid enough to drive it on the day of the assassination attempt. People might remember such a flashy car.
“I don’t suppose,” Daniel said, “that you got a mugshot.”
Jones slid a photograph across the table, and Daniel and Gennady both leaned in to look. Peter Abbott was a fair-haired young man, good-looking in a nondescript way.
“Is he a big man?” Gennady asked. “Big feet?” And then Daniel remembered the size fourteen boots.
“Oh, gosh. Six-four maybe? I didn’t look at his feet, sorry.”
“Did he smoke?” Gennady asked.
“Chain-smoked Marlboros the whole time we had him in custody. Real nervous,” Jones said, and sighed. “I wish you’d been here. He would’ve spilled the beans if I’d just known the right questions to ask.”
Goddammit. Daniel understood why they had to keep the assassination attempt hush-hush, but it was maddening to know that Peter Abbott could have been cooling in his heels in a cell right then, and instead… “I hope his daddy didn’t spirit him out of the country.”
“Gosh!” Jones looked startled. “What’d he do?”
“I wish I could tell you,” Daniel said, with real chagrin. “But it’s classified.”
“Oh, well…” Jones looked disappointed, but accepting. “Well, I don’t know. In the station the congressman was mostly just scolding Peter. You know. Peter ought to spend more time studying and less hot-rodding. Typical old-man stuff.”
“Studying?” Gennady said. “He is a student?”
Jones nodded. “Durrell College. Little liberal arts college on the edge of town. He told me, ‘cause he was on his way there when I pulled him over. Gotta get back in time for curfew, that’s why he was going forty miles over the speed limit.”
Daniel and Gennady looked at each other. Daniel looked back at Jones. “I don’t suppose,” Daniel said, “that you know if Peter Abbott has any priors?”
“Just some speeding tickets,” Jones said, and then, rather bashfully, took out a notebook and pushed it across the table. “I wrote them down…”
“God bless you,” Daniel said, and Jones blushed red.
“I just thought it might be useful.”
“Here,” Gennady said, and jabbed his finger at the third speeding ticket.
September 23, 1959. Stopped going 85 miles an hour, heading east on County Road K22, just inside the limits of Honeygold County.
Gennady and Daniel looked at each other again, and Daniel just about kissed Gennady right there, in front of Jones and God and everybody. “We’ve got him.”
***
“You suspect who now?” Mack said, in a tone that suggested he hoped against hope that he had heard them wrong.
“Peter Abbott,” Daniel said.
“Son of Congressman James Abbott,” Gennady said. He added, with perhaps an unnecessary level of zest, “The Congressman plays poker with the Des Moines chief of police.”
Mack groaned.
“We’re Feds, Mack,” Daniel reminded him. “We can take on a member of the poky old Iowa State Legislature.”
“Christ.” Mack rubbed both hands over his face, then drank some coffee out of a near-empty cup. “Get your suit pressed,” he told Daniel. “You’d better start dressing like an FBI agent again if you want to take on the goddamn Abbotts.”
***
Daniel had been dressing down for the last few months while they were undercover, and it felt strange to put on his crisp FBI suit again. Pants with creases so sharp they could probably cut butter. His best tie: a present from his father, the last Christmas before Dad died. He had been so proud of Daniel. His son, the FBI agent.
Thinking about that gave Daniel a funny feeling in his stomach as he adjusted his tie. He met Gennady’s eyes in the mirror. “Very pretty,” Gennady told him.
Daniel laughed and turned sharply away from the mirror, as if that would make Gennady less likely to notice he was blushing. “You don’t call men pretty,” he told Gennady. “Men look handsome. Or dapper. If you have to comment on their appearance at all,” he added, rather desperately.
“Dapper,” Gennady said, as if tasting the word.
Daniel’s desire to kiss him surged. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth instead, and said roughly, “You look like something the cat dragged in.” Gennady looked down at his rumpled Soviet suit, and Daniel added, “We should get you a new suit.”
Daniel was appalled as soon as he said it. It was a terrible idea to take Gennady to a clothing store, and watch him try on suit after suit, clothes that actually fit him for once, until they found one that looked especially good…
“An American suit?” Gennady said. “No. It will cost too much.”
“Really? All of a sudden you don’t want to use your expense account?”
“I am not going to waste the money of the Soviet working people,” Gennady responded indignantly.
Daniel nearly laughed at him. Where had that indignation been when Gennady insisted they had to eat dinner at King Cole, the swankiest restaurant in Indianapolis?
(“I will put it on my expense account if you can’t explain it to your FBI,” Gennady had informed him grandly. He ordered with such munificence – frog legs, escargot, cherrystone oysters, two bottles of wine, a filet mignon and a rack of lamb – that the chef sent out crepes Suzette for free, and as they walked back to the hotel, Gennady could speak of nothing but his delight at seeing the dessert set alight at tableside. “Whoosh!” he cried, miming the upward rush of flames. He tripped over an uneven place on the sidewalk and laughed when Daniel caught him, and Daniel felt a mad urge to push him into the nearest alley and press him against the brick wall and kiss him, wanted Gennady to kiss him back, as greedy for Daniel’s mouth as he had been for the oysters and wine.)
But now Gennady’s face was tense. His indignation, for once, was not an act. Daniel remembered then that Khrushchev had refused to wear evening clothes when he visited the US: he had appeared at swanky dinners in a regular suit and tie, and forced everyone else in his entourage to do the same. Perhaps this suit had more symbolic value than Daniel appreciated.
Or possibly Gennady had noticed Daniel salivating over the prospect of seeing Gennady all dressed up in a fancy suit. That might well make him wary, too.
“You’re not going to look like an FBI agent if you’re dressed like that,” Daniel said, trying to explain.
Gennady lifted his chin. “Mack dresses like this.”
“Mack can get away with it because he’s been with the Bureau for decades,” Daniel protested. But then he sighed. “Oh, fine. Wear your horrible suit if you want. Maybe it’s just as well if Peter Abbott hears there’s a man with a bad suit and a Russian accent after him. It might scare him into talking.”
***
“We’ll hit up the registrar first,” Daniel said, as they drove across town to Durrell College. “I gave her a call from the field office; she’ll have Peter Abbott’s transcripts ready for us.” At least he hoped she would. She hadn’t sounded too happy about it on the phone. “His attendance records, his schedule. It’s another brick in our case if he wasn’t in class September 23rd. Then we’ll hit up the yearbook office…”
“Yearbook?” Gennady interrupted.
“I
t’s a book that colleges print every year. High schools, too. Photos of all the students, which clubs they belonged to, things like that. We can find out which frat Peter’s in – which fraternity,” Daniel clarified, and then clarified again: “Fraternities are social clubs for men. They’re a big deal on most campuses. Lots of frats have a house that their members can live in…”
All of a sudden, quite stupidly, he could feel his face getting hot. He hoped it wasn’t turning red.
But Gennady seemed focused on assimilating this new information about the American fraternity system. “So these fraternity members – ”
“Brothers,” Daniel corrected. “The members of a frat are called brothers.”
“Brothers.”
“Yes. We’ll want to interview the brothers in Peter’s frat.”
“They will mention these interviews to Peter, I think.”
They were driving through campus now: handsome red brick buildings, stately trees just beginning to bud. “I sure hope so.”
“Ah.” Gennady’s eyes narrowed. “You want him to hear? So he will know that we are closing in on him, like wolves circling. Perhaps if he is frightened enough, he will…” He paused, just for a moment, and then smiled as he remembered the phrase. “‘Spill the beans’?”
Daniel nodded. “Now that we’ve lost the Mauser, all we’re ever going to have is circumstantial evidence,” he said. “We’ll never be able to touch him if he doesn’t confess. But he may break down and tell us everything if he gets nervous.”
He pulled into a parking space in front of the registrar’s office, located in a gracious white house with white and purple crocuses sprinkled over the lawn. “Very pretty,” Gennady said.
“Liberal arts colleges usually are. I went to one,” Daniel added, quite unnecessarily, “before I went to fight in Korea. Transferred to a state university after I got back.”
“Why did you change schools?”
It was a perfectly reasonable question, but Daniel’s face got hot again. “Oh… Well… My class had already graduated. It just seemed easier to start over fresh…”
Gennady, thank God, was not fully paying attention. He was already getting out of the car, intent on the registrar’s office. Daniel followed hurriedly up the porch steps.
The registrar was a motherly woman: portly, prematurely gray, with a pair of glasses on a chain that she slid onto her nose to study Daniel’s badge. “You really are FBI,” she said, and sighed. “I’m sorry I was so abrupt on the phone, but frankly I suspected it was a prank call. I mean, the FBI calling about Peter Abbott…”
“It seemed unlikely?” Daniel asked.
“Well, yes, honestly. He always seemed like a sweet boy… Of course I know people can hide all kinds of perfidy behind a well-mannered mask, but still.”
“Do you know him?” Daniel asked.
“Oh, just a little bit. He’s in here just about every semester – always signs up for a heavy course load, then needs to drop one of the classes. Always so apologetic and polite.” She slid a folder across the table. “Here you go. Everything you asked for. He’s had some problems with his grades, of course, but no disciplinary issues.”
Daniel glanced over the transcript. The Bs and Cs of Peter’s freshman year deteriorated into Cs and Ds, with an increasing number of Fs beginning in his junior year. “Is he on academic probation?”
“Well…” The registrar shrugged. “His father’s on the Board of Trustees.”
“Ah,” Gennady breathed, a soft satisfied sound, as if pleased by this evidence of American venality.
“He wants Peter to be a doctor,” the registrar said. “I had a good chat with Peter about it once, back in his sophomore year. ‘Peter,’ I said, ‘why don’t you major in English? Every time we talk, you’re telling me how much you’re enjoying the English course that you’re just about to drop, because you need that time to study for biology.’ But he told me his dad thought English was a waste of time.” She shook her head. “You said on the phone that you wanted his attendance records for last September, too, didn’t you? Here they are. He went to class every day except…”
“September 23rd.” Daniel’s gaze had already jumped down the page.
He tried to check his excitement, but some of it must have leaked into his voice, because the registrar’s forehead crinkled with worry. “A lot of students skipped that day,” she said. “They wanted to go see Khrushchev, and who can blame them? It’s not often you get to witness a piece of history like that.”
“It may not mean anything,” Daniel agreed, and flashed her a smile. “I don’t suppose you could direct us to the yearbook office?”
***
Sylvia Winfield, the yearbook editor, wore a black turtleneck that gave her a vibe about as beatnik as you were likely to find in Des Moines. “Peter Abbott?” she asked. “What’d he do to get the FBI interested in him?”
“It surprises you that the FBI would be interested in Peter Abbott?” Gennady asked.
She tucked a strand of her unfashionably long blond hair behind her ear. “I’m surprised that anyone would be interested in Peter Abbott,” she said, and laughed, a sudden booming laugh that filled the room. “I went on a date with him,” she explained, “after he got the Thunderbird…” Another laugh burst out of her. “Don’t look at me like that!” she told Gennady.
“I was admiring your enterprise,” Gennady assured her. He had his hands in his pockets, a tilt to his head, a bright intent look in his eyes that made Daniel’s heart squeeze with jealousy.
“You were thinking nice girls don’t admit they go out with men for their cars.” Sylvia was grinning. “Well, it wasn’t just for his car, I assure you. He’s not bad-looking. Here, let me show you a picture. That’s probably what you’re here for, anyway. Mug shot?”
“Something like that,” said Daniel, with a smile.
She pulled a 1959 yearbook off the shelf. Within ten seconds, she’d located the page with Peter’s picture, and pushed the yearbook across the table to them. “There. Not bad-looking, right? And he seemed so nervous when he asked me out that I couldn’t bring myself to turn him down. But he turned out to be a bit of an egghead,” she said, “an egghead without actually being smart, which is a bad combination.”
“An egghead,” said Gennady. “I’m sorry, what is this?”
“Oh, an intellectual. A fake intellectual, in Peter’s case. I told him my major was psychology and he started explaining psychology to me – I know,” she said, grinning at Gennady when he laughed. “According to Peter, the root of all psychological problems lies in man’s disconnection from nature. He tried to quote Wordsworth, and he got muddled before he even reached the ‘host of golden daffodils.’ Unfortunately for Peter, I learned the poem by heart back when I was a little pigtailed schoolgirl in a one-room schoolhouse. ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high over dales and hills…’”
Gennady’s eyes brightened as if this quotation were a piece of buried treasure.
“Of course I didn’t say anything,” Sylvia added, “it was so hard to get him talking in the first place that I wasn’t going to stop him. But he must have seen I wasn’t impressed, because that’s when he started driving like a maniac. We’d driven out to a drive-in movie theater, see, way out in the country – he parked way in the back so we could barely even see the picture – and on the way back to campus he started going a hundred miles an hour on one of those little gravel back roads.”
“Jesus,” Daniel said.
“Oh yeah. I screamed at him to stop, and when he finally pulled over I yanked the keys out of the ignition and told him that either I was driving us home or I’d throw his keys into the cornfield. His choice.”
“Which did he choose?” Gennady asked.
“Oh, I drove us home. That made it all worth it, getting to drive the Thunderbird, but…” She shook her head. “Dead silence the whole drive. And then when we got back – ” She huffed out a sigh. “He asked if I’d like to go out agai
n. Honestly!”
A little silence followed. Daniel inspected the yearbook photos; not just Peter’s, but the other photos on the page. The quotes they had picked, the listings of clubs and fraternity affiliations, the in-jokes. He slid the yearbook halfway across the table toward Sylvia and tapped the blank space below Peter’s name. “Did Peter just forget to turn in his club affiliations?”
Most of the other names had clubs listed in that space: French club, basketball, glee club, whatever. At least 75% had a Greek affiliation: fraternities and sororities clearly ran the social life at Durrell.
“No. He’s not a fraternity member,” Sylvia said. “He wouldn’t have asked me out if he was, because I’m not in a sorority. But there’s a difference between not doing Greek life because you don’t want to…”
“Like you?” Daniel said.
Sylvia grinned. “…and not doing Greek life because they don’t want you.”
“Yes,” Daniel agreed. “He looks like a composite of a thousand fraternity portraits.”
Laughter bubbled out of Sylvia. “He does, doesn’t he? Poor kid.” But then she looked concerned. “He’s not dangerous, is he? Like Ed Gein? I know you can’t tell me exactly what you’re looking into, but if we’re in danger then we ought to know.”
“No, nothing like Ed Gein,” Daniel assured her.
She looked into his eyes, as if trying to read the truth there. Then she shrugged. “Oh, well. Maybe he’s smuggling dope across state lines or something.”
“How did you guess?” Gennady asked, with comic fake dismay. Sylvia laughed and flipped her hair over her shoulder.
Daniel cleared his throat. “Do you mind if we keep the yearbook?”
“Go ahead. We’ve got spares. Is there anything else you need? I’ve got Abnormal Psychology starting in…” She checked her wristwatch. “Fifteen minutes.”
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