Deadline (13 page)

“You make me feel good.”

“It’s always easier the second time around. My profundity of the week, in case you’re interested.”

“You make me feel that I could do anything.”

He leaned over and kissed her. At first she didn’t move. Then her hand came up and touched his cheek.

“There’s another reason I left home,” she said some moments later. “The Amish, as you might imagine, have rules about…fooling around. As I grew older, I found it hard to obey those rules.”

They looked at each other.

“That’s why you’re here now,” he said.

“One of the reasons. Not as strong as the others, but there’s no use denying it.”

Again he touched her shoulder. “Would you like to stay here tonight?”

“I thought I had.”

Walker dreamed of a line of Rockettes, all naked, doing high kicks on NBC. He stirred and came awake. Once awake, he tried not to move because Diana had her head resting on his bare chest. He felt drained yet full, a fullness he hadn’t known with a woman in years.

He had always been able to find sex, and in his youth that had been enough. Bar-hopping. Whore-hopping. Just the brutal, physical act of getting off with someone. Give him an hour in any strange town and he could find someone to sleep with. Someone lonely, like himself, and maybe she would be as good-looking as the ones with all the ideas about permanence and a lasting thing. Looks didn’t have anything to do with it. The foolish fantasies of youth, come back now to haunt him. In his early twenties, he had seldom been without female company, sometimes a different woman each night. He had developed a thick skin and a brash manner. If one woman turned him down, the one just a seat or a table away was ready and waiting.

He must have been thirty years old before all that started wearing thin. Now he went a week or two, sometimes longer, without a date. Even when he did date, he didn’t always make a pass at the girl. He wondered if he was losing his juice. Then he fell in love, with a Jewish girl named Lois Berman, and she loved him back. Fairly late in his sex life, Lois Berman had given him the gift of giving, and he had never been satisfied with store-bought sex again.

Diana knew about that too. She was no thirty-year-old virgin as she came to his bed. It was clear from their first contact that, to her, he came first. And he had. She knew what she was doing, and there was simply no way he could make it for her. It had been too long.

Later. In another hour, things would be different.

He slipped out of bed without waking her. Going into the kitchen, he sat at the table and thought about being happy. He had never been a happy man. But at this moment, he was as happy as he had been in years.

Maybe, just maybe, it was good enough.

He had been there about ten minutes when he thought he heard her stir, but then realized the noise had been distant, farther away, and muffled. It sounded almost like someone knocking at his door. He slipped into his pants and went into the living room. Half a room away, Diana stirred and called his name.

“I think somebody’s in the hall.” He draped a shirt across his shoulders.

She sat up. In the dark he could see the pale hint of her breasts. “What time is it?” she said.

He looked at the clock. “Quarter to five.”

There was no question. Someone was outside.

“Who is it?”

The knock came louder.

“Who is it?” he said again.

Still no answer. He looked at Diana and his male ego got the best of him. The girl would think he was afraid of his own shadow.

Walker opened the door, and the woman came toward him, forcing her way into the room. Melinda Baker. Joanne Sayers. She looked like a drowned rat. Her hair streamed down her face and the makeup around her eyes had run down her cheeks. She had lost the bifocals, but not the gun. She held that steadily in her hand, pointed straight at his throat.

D
ONOVAN SPENT MONDAY MORNING
in his office, doing busywork and waiting for the telephone to ring. It did, several times, but that one call he expected never came. The silence was enough to drive a man nuts. They had zipped up the Lewis-Sayers case and put a lid on it thirty-six hours ago. Roland Simon had told him to sit still and wait for further word. Since then, nothing. The fact that Walker had blown the lid off the case should have produced a few waves, but so far, not a damned thing. The phone call he had been expecting since Saturday night, when Walker’s story had hit the streets, had still not come. Donovan had stayed home all day Sunday, the phone within arm’s reach. He had no further word on the Sayers girl, either from the Bureau or from Walker. The way things were going, he half expected Walker to find her first.

Donovan was nervous. It was another of those strange ones. He hadn’t liked the smell of it from the first and it didn’t get better with time. So he had called Walker and had given him just enough to find the rest. He thought his conscience was clear, but his first reaction, when he sent Kim over to Jersey for the Saturday
Tribune,
was one of horror. No matter how well you know a reporter, you can never quite visualize his story in print. It was never even close to the way you would have done it. The words were the same (Walker had been hard on the Bureau in a few places, but that was Simon’s fault), but somehow the images were different. Put it under a roaring headline, strip it down the right side of Page One, and damn, it sounded as though the world was ending.

Donovan always had very mixed emotions whenever some tip of his resulted in a big story. Power and guilt were the usual feelings. He felt like a traitor, and at the same time he enjoyed seeing what he had done materialize into an important event. He salved the guilt by telling himself that Simon was wrong, it would have come out anyway, there was simply no way you could hold a thing like that back. And because Simon had mishandled it, both Simon and the Bureau would look like hell in the press. The thing that bothered Donovan most was Simon’s parting shot: that the
Tribune
must bear responsibility if the Sayers girl wasn’t captured without a fight. If Walker had to bear that cross, the full weight of it must finally be passed on to the shoulders of Al Donovan.

He was constantly amazed at how little government agencies like the FBI knew about dealing with reporters. Donovan’s attitude was simple. You kept sensitive material out of their hands as long as possible, but why try to fight them when they had it anyway? That’s when you stepped in and helped them. You only fought the fights you could win. He had learned that from Hoover, long ago. Young agents coming along today didn’t seem to understand that, or believe it. They came with ready-made chips on their shoulders, always ready to stonewall everything. Trying to tell them how to get decent press was like reciting Longfellow to a tree. You might think it penetrated, but when you went back the next day, the tree hadn’t changed.

At midmorning, he put his desk in order, locked up his work papers and went into New York for his lunch date with Virgil Craig. He was glad he and Craig had agreed to meet at the restaurant: he didn’t want to be seen in the field office today. Craig was early as always: sitting alone in a corner looking like an old doctor, or perhaps a broker. Donovan slipped in opposite him and they murmured a few words of greeting. Donovan noticed, as he had on the telephone, that Craig seemed distant, almost remote. They ordered lunch, then Donovan said, “Well, Virg, I guess you can forget about those pictures.”

“Turned into quite a fracas, didn’t it?”

“That it did.”

“I figured you’d want to be there.”

“I appreciate the call. I’d appreciate something else, too. I’d like to know what’s eating you.”

Craig didn’t answer.

“I’m serious,” Donovan said. “Ever since I gave you those pictures, you’ve been cool as hell.”

“Have I?”

“Now see, that’s just what I mean. What kind of bullshit answer is that? We go back too far for that kind of grind.”

“You know me,” Craig said. “Always the careful one. Always trying to follow the book, right, Al? I almost didn’t call you Friday night.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I still wonder if I made a mistake. I told you on the phone, make up something if you have to. Just don’t tell them I tipped you.”

Donovan sighed and looked at the table.

“I’ve always played it too safe,” Craig said.

“Funny. I was thinking the same thing about myself just the other day.”

“You never played safe a day in your life. You don’t know what playing it safe is. Me, I look for a cool spot if things get too warm. We’re different kinds of animals, Al, and you might as well admit it. It still surprises me that we’ve stayed friends all these years.”

“What kind of talk is that? You don’t see me sticking my neck out.”

“You would, though, if you had to.”

“Sure I would. That’s why my career’s been so much brighter than yours.”

Craig shook his head. “The fact that we’ve ended up at about the same level’s got nothing to do with it. It’s for different reasons and you know it. You never could stand office politics, and I couldn’t stand the heat at the top.” He stirred some sugar into his tea. “The thought hit me the other day, and it was a pretty rude shock. I’ve spent thirty years in the wrong business. It’s true. I never should have been in the FBI, Al. I should have been what you’re always saying I look like. A country doctor. A lawyer, maybe.”

“You are a lawyer.” Donovan smiled.

“Maybe I should have practiced. Now all I want is to retire quietly. No fuss, no bother. Just retire and do whatever retired people do.”

You poor bastard, Donovan thought. He said, “Okay, so what’s it all mean? You’re beating all around something. Can you just give me a simple answer?”

“Sometimes there are no simple answers. Sometimes, no matter how hard we look, two and two just don’t add up.”

“Then give it to me raw and I’ll add it up.”

Craig thought for a long time. “Here it is, then, as much as I know. And Al, after this it’s your baby. Do with it or don’t do whatever you want. Just don’t tell me about it and don’t say we talked.” Craig sipped his tea. For a while, Donovan thought he wasn’t going to talk at all. Then he said, “For a couple of days after you gave me those pictures, it was pretty normal procedure. Then funny things started happening.”

“Funny how?”

“There was a lot of flutter from above.”

“Stands to reason. They had made them. Somebody knew we had some pretty important criminals on our hands.”

“A
lot
of flutter, Al. From
way
above. This started coming down Wednesday, and went all through Thursday. There were notes between here and D.C., and I was cut completely out of it, which you know isn’t normal procedure at all. Normally these things would work back through me to you, as originating agent. Right? So Simon called me in twice. Asked a lot of questions about the pictures. Where I’d got them. When. How.”

“You told him?”

“Sure I told him. What would you have done?”

“I’m not blaming you, Virg, I’m just asking. Go ahead.”

“I told him I’d received them from you on Monday. He wanted to know where you had got them. I said I didn’t know. He said he’d get back to me and never did. He never got back to me at all.”

“That it?”

“That’s some of it.”

“What’s the rest of it?” Donovan was beginning to believe that Virgil Craig was right. He should have been a lawyer.

“Well, think about it. When were the Lewises killed?”

“Friday night.”

“And when did all this static start floating around the office? More than forty-eight hours before. Does that sound right to you?”

“Nothing sounds right to me. How does it sound to you?”

Again, the long silence. “What do you usually do when you’ve got identity on people like George and Michelle Lewis? When you’ve got them and you know where they are, what do you do? Do you wait forty-eight hours, give them a chance to get lost again? In any office I ever worked in, you go out and pick them up.”

“Maybe they didn’t have them made yet.”

“Then why all the fuss?” Craig frowned. “Al, you’d have had to be there Thursday morning to believe it. They burned up the wire between here and D.C. Simon was on the phone all day. Later I heard that some people were coming into Kennedy around midnight.”

“What people?”

“I didn’t ask and they didn’t say. It was after closing time. I was still in the office, getting my stuff together to go home. All the secretaries had left, and Simon was in conference with that young kid, Kevin Lord. They’d been at it over two hours then, between phone calls to Washington. The door opened and Lord came out. He got some papers out of the box and went back into Simon’s office. Just before the door closed, I heard him say, ‘You want me to go to Kennedy tonight?’ And Simon said, ‘Hell no, you stay out of it.’”

“That might have meant anything. Might not have related to this at all.”

“Like you said, Al, you add it up. Frankly, I don’t know or care. I’m just telling you what happened.”

“Okay. Then what happened?”

“Then I went home and got myself a drink.”

“Is that it?”

Craig nodded. But there was something else. Donovan could feel it.

“Virg?”

Again the long silence. Finally Virgil Craig said, “Did you see the
Daily News
Sunday?”

“Sure. I read all the papers.”

“The last edition?”

“Jeez, I don’t remember what edition. Is it important?”

“Here.” Craig reached into his coat pocket and took out a small clipping. The headline said
MAN IN CRITICAL CONDITION AFTER ROBBERY ATTEMPT.
Donovan read through the story and gave it back.

“The guy isn’t named,” Craig said.

“Happens a lot in journalism,” Donovan said. “They can’t make the guy, or if it’s a likely fatal they’ll hold up the name till next of kin’s been notified.”

“That’s not the case here. This man’s one of us.”

Donovan blinked.

“He’s from the Bureau,” Craig said.

“How do you know that?”

“Simon put a ring of people around his room at Riverside Hospital. I was on it for a while. We were to let no one in, especially reporters. But I guess Simon covered his tracks pretty well, because no one came.”