At twenty to 11, well fortified by Scotches that he had drunk in his room, Chester went out to keep his appointment with Niko at Stadiou and Omirou. Chester had written the street names down on the edge of his Daily Post. He was not sure Niko would keep the appointment, if Rydal had spoken to him, and of course Rydal would have by now. Chester had seen from inside his taxi on the Piraeus dock that Rydal had got free from the police there. He had made the taxi-driver wait while he watched what was going on at the head of the ship’s gangplank. Chester had hoped, had believed, Rydal had been arrested, they had taken so long with him. And then Rydal had come walking down the gangplank with his suitcase, and Chester had experienced a strange kind of relief which he couldn’t understand, until he realized that if Rydal had been detained, he would have told the police all about Chester MacFarland, alias William Chamberlain. Chester would have had to leave the country at once, or try to, try to cross some border illegally, without showing a passport. Yes, it would have been hell. But now he had a chance at Rydal. He supposed Rydal was staying at some friend’s place instead of a hotel. It pleased Chester to make Rydal feel uneasy. He intended to make him feel far worse than that.
Chester almost did not recognize Niko at first. He wore a new dark-blue overcoat, a new and spotless grey hat. In fact, Chester recognized him only by the dirty gym shoes, his incongruous footgear. Niko smiled, and Chester saw the horrible framed tooth and the gap next to it.
“Hello, Niko,” said Chester.
“Hello, sir,” he said, as if “sir” were a name.
“Well—” Chester looked around, saw a café across the street, and proposed that they go over there to talk.
They crossed Stadiou, a difficult operation that stranded them for a few moments in the middle of the street while traffic whizzed by, front and back. It was a very nice overcoat indeed that Niko was wearing, and Chester supposed that his own money had paid for it. They entered the café, which happened to be a pretty fancy one, and Chester felt conspicuous in the company of the gym shoes until they were seated.
“I suppose you’ve seen Rydal,” Chester said at once.
“Oh, yes. Seen him this morning, just after you.” Niko accepted an American cigarette from Chester.
The waiter came.
Chester ordered a Scotch. Niko asked for coffee and something else that Chester couldn’t understand.
“And I suppose he’s staying with you?” Chester said casually. He hated such blunt prying, but on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine anything surprising or offending Niko.
“No,” Niko said.
“Where is he staying?”
“He stay with a friend.” Niko jerked a thumb vaguely.
“Do you know where?”
“Sure, I know where.”
Chester nodded. “Where?”
“Ah—near Acropoli.” Another jerk of the thumb. “I don’t know the name of the street.”
“But you know the friend he’s with?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Who is the friend?” Chester asked.
Niko leaned closer across the table, smiling. “Why you want to know?”
Chester sat up also. He smiled also, man to man, crook to crook. Niko had made a tidy sum from him. “You know, Niko, Rydal and I are connected—somewhat. We have to keep in touch. He did me a good turn here in Athens about the passports. So did you. In Piraeus this morning, Rydal and I got separated, and it was best for us not to stay together this morning. Understand?” He was speaking softly but distinctly. “But Rydal and I may be able to help each other, and very soon. If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll find out somehow. Or Rydal will communicate with me. I’m easy to find. I’m at a hotel.”
“Where?”
Chester smiled. “I’ll tell you, if you tell me who Rydal is with. Plus the address.”
Niko smiled broadly, and he looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, okay, if you at a hotel, that’s easy. Rydal will find you.”
Chester chuckled tensely, automatically. “That’s right. I’m sure he will.”
A silence fell. Seconds passed.
Did he talk to you about Crete? Chester started to ask, but he had decided in his hotel room not to get into that. Niko might not believe him, if he said Rydal killed his wife. There was no reason for him to waste his energy in convincing Niko that he was justified in what he wanted to do. Niko didn’t care about justice. Chester was breathing a little harder. He picked up his Scotch and sipped it.
The waiter had set down a cup of thick-looking, dark black coffee and a white pastry of some kind in front of Niko.
“I need two things from you, Niko, and I promise to pay you well,” said Chester.
“Yes?” Niko’s front tooth showed.
“I’m in the market for another passport. I brought a photograph with me.” Chester was speaking softly, so softly Niko had to lean forward, but Chester looked on either side of him to see if anyone were within hearing. Their nearest neighbor was a man buried in a newspaper, ten feet away. “How soon can you get another passport?”
“Hm-m. Maybe day after tomorrow.”
“I want you to get it. Here’s the photo.” Chester handed it across the table to him, the photograph concealed in his palm, held there by his thumb.
Niko’s soiled paw came out, whisked it away into his overcoat pocket. He nodded.
“I’ll pay you the usual—advance today,” Chester said.
“Half,” said Niko flatly. “Five thousand. A new passport—ten thousand.”
Chester stared at him. “Ten? Why not five?”
“Ten,” Niko said.
Chester grimaced. “Very well. And no moustache on this one. The moustache has got to be taken off the photo. Got that?”
“Sure.”
“The other thing is—I need a reliable person to do a very important job for me. Someone who isn’t afraid.”
Niko pushed the pastry into his mouth, and bit off a large piece. “What kind of a job?” he asked, barely intelligibly.
“A dangerous job,” Chester said. “Just get me the right man, and I’ll explain to him what it is. But I’d like somebody right away. Tonight, if possible.”
Niko chewed and reflected.
“Do you think you know such a person? A brave man. Or maybe you know someone who would know such a person. I’d pay well. Five thousand dollars.” Chester smiled slightly, letting the figure sink in. Money would make it work, he was sure.
“Yes,” Niko said suddenly, positively.
Chester listened to its echo, trying to tell if it were real. “Good,” he said. “The next question is, can you arrange a meeting tonight? For him and me. Even late this afternoon. Is the man you have in mind in Athens?”
“Oh, yes. I telephone him.” Niko seemed serious about it.
“And—what meeting place would you suggest? You can tell me now. I’ll get there.”
“He work on—Leoharos Street. You know Klafthmonos Square?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Ugh. Write it down. Leoharos.”
Chester let Niko write it for him. There was a restaurant off Leoharos which had a name like “trapezium”, the word for bank. Chester said he was sure he could find it. Niko said he would tell his friend, whose name was Andreou, to be there at 5 o’clock, as soon as he stopped work.
“What does he look like?” Chester asked.
“Oh, he find you. He recognize American,” said Niko.
“Yes, but—What does he look like, anyway?”
“Big fellow.” Niko spread his hands. “Strong. Black hair.” A circular movement with his finger, perhaps to indicate curly hair, perhaps a sign that the fellow was a bit odd.
“You can tell him I will pay him half—tonight—if we come to an agreement. Twenty-five
hundred. Understand, Niko?”
“Yeah,” Niko said.
“Now about the passport,” Chester said softly, and reached for his wallet.
Five minutes later, he parted from Niko on the pavement in front of the café. He had given Niko five thousand. Niko would expect a thousand for himself when the deal was concluded, he had said. Chester had agreed. He walked up Stadiou automatically in the direction of his hotel. He felt better, much better. But he didn’t want to go back to that hotel room. Anywhere but that. Chester turned around. He walked down Stadiou, thinking of the mail that was surely there for him at the American Express post office. Well, with a new passport—day after tomorrow—he could start over, write his friends in New York, and get them to re-write and send their letters to his new name. And to the American Express in Paris. Yes, by God, the minute he got that passport, he was flying to Paris. Just as well he hadn’t asked them as yet to write to William Chamberlain in Athens. He must have known, must have had a sixth sense about that. He wished he had a sixth sense about what was happening in America. It was not at all reassuring to him that the New York Times and the Paris Herald Tribune were not talking about the investigation of Chester MacFarland or Howard Cheever. He knew he was being investigated now, and the silence of the newspapers gave him the feeling that the investigators were building up a mountain of evidence that would really smash him when it fell.
Chester found himself reaching for his money in front of a movie-cashier’s booth. He hadn’t the faintest idea what he was going in to see. It didn’t matter. It turned out to be a Japanese film with a Japanese sound track and Greek sub-titles.
The Restaurant Trapeziou or Trapezium—Chester couldn’t make out the letters—was on a corner, a middle-category restaurant with not very clean white tablecloths and waiters in long dirty white aprons. It was as cold in the place as outdoors, and the handful of patrons, mostly men, were eating in their hats and overcoats. Chester was early. He sat down at a table, and, when a waiter came over and said, “Kalispera,” and handed him a menu, Chester mumbled in English that he was waiting for someone. The man came in a minute later. Chester was positive that he was the man, a big, thick fellow with curly black hair, hatless, in a half-wornout grey overcoat. His lips were slightly parted and there was a frown between his eyebrows as he looked over the restaurant. Chester stared down at the tablecloth and smoked his cigarette, confident that the man would come over to him. But what if he spoke no English? They’d have to get hold of Niko. No, someone else, a friend of this man.
“Chamberlain?” asked a voice quietly.
Chester nodded. “Good evening.”
The man pulled a chair out for himself. He ordered something from the waiter. Chester asked for an ouzo. Obviously, it was not the kind of place that had Scotch. Scotch was always displayed on a shelf somewhere, if a restaurant had it.
“I . . . hope you speak English well enough to understand me,” Chester said, irked by the language barrier which was there, at best. In America, he would have known instantly how to handle a man like this: it was all in the choice of words, all in the way one said them.
“Sure,” said the man.
“I am willing to pay five thousand dollars American for what I want done.”
The man nodded, as if he heard this kind of figure every day. “What ees eet?”
“Are you a brave man?”
“Brave?” He looked confused.
Chester took a breath. If it wasn’t going to work, he didn’t want to prolong the conversation.
A tall pink drink arrived for the man, and Chester’s ouzo.
“You’re a friend of Niko’s?” Chester asked.
“Sure. Yes.”
“A good friend?”
“Good friend,” the man said, nodding. His frown was back.
“I want a certain person killed. Shot, perhaps. Understand?”
The man seemed to hesitate, or balk, one of his thick hands lifted a fraction of an inch from the table, but he nodded. “Sure, I understand.”
“But there is one thing I demand in exchange for the money I’m offering you,” Chester added hastily, “and that is that you don’t tell Niko what you’re going to do. Don’t talk to Niko at all, in fact. Understand? This has to be a promise.”
The man nodded. “Who ees the man?”
“You must first promise not to speak to Niko about this.”
“Okay.”
It was an unsatisfactory promise. Chester slowly reached for his wallet, looked at it slightly below the level of the table, as casually as if he were about to draw out a hundred-drachma note, and pulled out three five-hundred dollar bills. It was time for the money to show, he thought. “I’ll give you fifteen hundred now, on account,” Chester said.
The big man stared at the green bills which were nearly concealed in Chester’s large hand. He moistened his lips and said, “I want all of eet before the work ees done, because . . . eet would not be safe eef I seen you . . . afterward. Unnerstand? Not safe—me or you.” He gestured.
Chester saw his point, but didn’t trust him. He wiped his damp forehead with his fingers. “Well, perhaps first you should tell me if you think you can do it at all.”
“Who ees the man?” He shook his head at Chester’s offer of a cigarette.
Chester lit his, then said, “The man is Rydal Keener.” He saw no sign of recognition in the man’s face. That was good. Unless the man had been so prepared for the statement that he hadn’t had to show surprise. “You know him?”
“No,” said the man.
“He’s an American, dark-haired, about twenty-five—” Chester spoke distinctly. “Medium height, rather slim. But you’ve got to find out where he’s staying. Niko knows. Do you know where Niko lives?”
“No,” said the man in his rather blank tone, shaking his head.
Chester didn’t know whether to believe him. A good friend of Niko and he didn’t know where Niko lived? “Well—Niko knows where Rydal Keener is. He’s either with Niko or with a friend. You’ll have to find out from Niko. It’ll be up to you to find him, and I would like the job done as soon as possible. Tonight, if possible.”
“Tonight?” He considered this. Then shrugged.
“Niko may still be in front of the American Express. It’s up to you to talk to him and find out where Rydal Keener is. Niko will tell you. Won’t he?”
“Sure. He tell me,” said the man, as if this weren’t all his difficulties, he had others.
“Okay. But I think—” Chester glanced around him, then leaned closer. “I think in all fairness, you had better give me some details as to how you’re going to go about it—before I pay you five thousand dollars. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
The man looked as if he had never heard the phrase “fair enough”.
“How do you think you will do it?” Chester asked.
The man, still frowning, put out his thick right arm, then jerked his fist towards himself, the gesture of mugging someone, breaking a neck, from behind.
The gesture somehow reassured Chester. The man’s anxious expression became the expression of a natural and even healthy tension before a dangerous task. “You’re free tonight for the job?”
“For five thousand dollars?” The man smiled for the first time. Two of his front teeth were gold-rimmed. “Yes,” he said.
That “Yes” had conviction to Chester. Chester asked a few more questions. No, the man had no gun. Guns were not safe, they made too much noise. He was a strong fellow who could do things with his two hands. Chester felt sure of that.
When Chester left the restaurant at 5:25, Andreou had his five thousand dollars. Andreou had said he was staying on for a couple of minutes to finish his drink, and then he would go to the American Express to see Niko. Chester took a taxi to his hotel. He thought he would take a hot
bath, get into pyjamas, and have his dinner sent up from the hotel restaurant.
The police were in the lobby when he arrived. A uniformed policeman and a plain-clothes man sat on a couple of the upholstered straight chairs between the desk and the elevator. Chester saw the man behind the desk give a nod to the policemen. The man stood up and came towards Chester. Chester stood where he was. He saw a man who was depositing his key at the desk look curiously at him and the policemen before he went out.
“Mr. Chamberlain?” asked the plain-clothes man. He was dark-haired, with a long nose. There was something humorous, or sly, in the way he tilted his head as he looked at Chester.
“Yes,” said Chester.
“Platon Stapos of the police,” the man said, making a pass with his open billfold, too quickly for Chester to see anything, but Chester was sure he was a genuine policeman. He looked around the lobby, at the quiet area with tables and chairs behind him, but the man behind the desk was obviously all ears, even leaning forward over the desk now so not a word would escape him. “May we go up to your room? It would be more private.”
“Yes, of course. I’d be very glad to talk to you.” Chester looked in a frightened way over his shoulder, through the two pairs of glass doors of the hotel. It was part of his act. Then he went with the men to the elevator. “Oh, my key. Just a minute.” Chester walked to the desk. The fascinated clerk turned quickly and got his key, then handed it to him.
The Two Faces of January Page 19
