Death Is My Comrade (4 page)

She went with me to the front door. Shotgun was waiting on the portico. I walked down the red brick path with him a few steps behind me.

The gate clanged shut. I drove back through suburban Wheaton and Silver Spring to Washington.

Chapter Four

A
hot Saturday afternoon in June.

When the congressmen in their air-conditioned offices are beginning to put in week-end work so that they can recess by the Fourth of July.

When the government girls in their sun-backed dresses perform the ritual of the coffee break out of doors and without coffee.

When a sky like brass and the snarling, carbon-monoxide-spewing traffic makes you think wistfully of a cabin in the Maine woods.

When a private eye named Chet Drum walks, eyes wide open, into a sandbagging.

I entered the Farrell Building a little after three o'clock, picked up a pack of cigarettes in the lobby and took the elevator up to the top floor, where I have my office. It has two small rooms, the first hardly more than a windowless vestibule with a couple of leather chairs and a table on which are strewn copies of
Time, Newsweek
and
The Reporter;
the second, the office itself, with desk, swivel chair and client's chair, filing cabinets and that view of the Treasury Building. The door connecting the two rooms is on a snap lock. It locks automatically when I leave the office. The hall door I never lock at all, except when I'm out of town on a case.

I went in through the hall door and pivoted, crouching, to pick up the mail that had been pushed through the slot. I didn't quite touch it.

What I smelled was the acrid stench of gunpowder and what I heard was a scraping sound, as of a shoe on the ersatz marble floor.

I got halfway up and halfway around. Then the ceiling slammed down like a punch press and someone found the master switch that shut off all the lights in the world.

On TV they come out of it like men shot from cannons. A level higher up, in the movies, they gingerly touch the back of their heads, blink, smile wryly, strap on their shoulder rigs and go out for bear. What I did first was a slow-motion push-up. That much was instinct: I hadn't begun to function yet. I tried it twice, and each time my chin came to rest on the hard floor again. By then a trip hammer was pounding in the base of my skull and I was thinking a little. I tried a third push-up. Still no soap. I heard the hum of the elevator outside, and two figures passed in silhouette against the pebbled-glass door.

“Hey,” I called weakly.

They were yammering away in loud, confident voices about a sealed-bid contract for those Navy parts. Low bid, one of them said. Fast turnover, the other one said. A small profit and you're on your way, said the first one. They didn't hear me. Their footsteps receded and a door shut behind them.

Alone again. I dragged myself over to one of the leather chairs and clawed my way into a sitting position on the floor next to it. That left me panting like an ex-con on his first heavy date since the big gates closed behind him. It also left me staring at the door between the waiting room and my office.

The door had a pebbled-glass panel. Part of it looked like icicles. Shards of it were strewn on the floor. The hole, near the doorknob, was big enough to shove your head through. More than big enough to poke your hand through to release the snap lock and get inside.

And I still smelled gunpowder.

I let my head hang for a minute. The blood pounded in it. I stood up and wobbled toward the inner door, losing my balance once and sweeping the magazines off the table with an outflung hand.

The door had been unlocked, all right. I went inside. As far as I could see, I had everything that belonged to me. But I had a dividend.

I had a pair of shoes, heels down, toes up, sticking out from behind the desk.

Three steps brought me there. I leaned over the desk.

Ilya Alluliev had finally showed up. Too late to catch me in, too late to save his life.

There was a small hole at the base of his jaw that hadn't bled a great deal. His eyes were open. His face looked lopsided. A small, soft-nosed bullet fired with a low muzzle velocity, I thought. It can smash bone on the inside like that, altering facial contours.

But a shot, even the flat snapping sound of a .22—wouldn't it have been heard somewhere in the building? Still leaning on the desk and staring at him, I answered that one. The answer was no, not necessarily. Assuming it was a .22, and the fact that the slug hadn't left his head seemed to indicate that, it would have made no more noise than a cap pistol. No more noise than the breaking glass when Ilya had smashed his way into the office.

And there was another possibility. The office was undisturbed. Ilya had come to get his envelope back, and whoever had followed him had shot him before he'd had the chance to frisk the office. Or Ilya, looking around, had decided that the only place for the envelope, unless I had it on me, was the safe. So Ilya had waited—for death.

And the killer? The killer had followed Ilya here to silence him, because of course Ilya knew what was in the envelope. Not just a .22, then. That was the other possibility. A .22 with a silencer attached. The more I thought of that, the more it made sense. I'd showed up before the killer could get away. With one murder on his hands, I was as likely a candidate for a bullet as Ilya. Not only might I have seen what was in the envelope, but just plain physically I was in the way. But I'd been sapped, not shot. Why?

I knelt near Ilya. Touched his hand. The flesh was cool, but not yet room temperature. Ilya had been dead only a few minutes. Near his limply outstretched right hand was a Luger. He had probably used it to smash the pebbled glass of the door. It hadn't been fired.

Walking better now, I went to the water cooler and had a half-dozen paper cups of ice-cold water. Then I looked at Ilya Alluliev again. A man with a fast line of chatter, a man with a smile five miles wide and a quarter of an inch deep, a man who can kick doors in verbally if he can't kick them in any other way, that's a private detective. A man who grins at death?

I tasted bitter bile in my throat. Stepped over Ilya's body and went to the safe. My fingers shook so much from the after-effects of the slugging that I couldn't work the combination. I got the Jack Daniels from the deep drawer of the desk and had a slug straight from the bottle. I went to work on the safe again. The envelope had been just an envelope, so far. Now Ilya had died for it.

The safe swung open. I took the envelope out, slit it.

A single sheet of paper, folded twice to fit. And several typewritten lines, in English. They said:

What you have heard about Vasili Rodzianko since he was awarded the Nobel Prize last year is all lies. Vasili Rodzianko did not wish to repudiate the Prize. He does not reject having written his book,
Comrade Shendrikov.
As he does not wish to repudiate the Prize, he will not repudiate the book. He does not turn his back on the West. Nor did he opt to remain in Russia when the government gave him the choice of leaving the country. He was given no such choice. He is a prisoner under house arrest. If he refuses to recant, he is in grave danger. And he will not recant.

That was all. It wasn't signed.

I knew the name Vasili Rodzianko, of course. Anyone who read the papers or the news magazines or listened to the radio within the past six months knew Rodzianko's name. He had capped a long literary career in Russia as a poet and a translator—mostly from English—with his novel,
Comrade Shendrikov.
Last November, in recognition of his lifetime of literary achievement, and specifically mentioning
Comrade Shendrikov
, the Swedish Academy had offered the Nobel Prize for literature to Vasili Rodzianko. As far as the world knew, Rodzianko had rejected it, saying his masterpiece had been misinterpreted and used for propaganda purposes in the West.

The contents of Ilya's envelope denied this.

But what did a wheeling-dealing financier named Mike Rodin have to do with it?

Picking up the phone, I called District Homicide and asked for Captain Malawister. I asked for Malawister because he was a pretty brainy guy and we had worked a couple of cases together, and he didn't think private eyes are two parts con-man and one part thief. Also because he knew Jack Morley, whom I was going to call next, and would cooperate with him.

The desk sergeant told me: “Captain's on vacation till the first of July.”

“Who's holding down his desk?”

“Lieutenant Creel.”

I didn't know Creel, but I asked for him.

“Creel,” he introduced himself.

“This is Chester Drum, Lieutenant. I'm a private detective and a friend of Captain Malawister's.”

“I've heard of you. So?” Creel was not a talkative guy.

I took a deep breath. “A man was shot dead in my office.”

Creel said: “Freeze, mister. Don't touch anything. Freeze, We're on our way.” He hung up.

I dialed Foggy Bottom and got Jack Morley. We'd been through the FBI Academy together back in '50. After serving our two-year hitches, Jack had gone to work for the State Department and I had put out my shingle.

“Got a message you called,” Jack said. “What's up? Hungry for some of Betty's corned beef and cabbage?”

“Jack, a staffer at the Russian Embassy was killed in my office.”

“My God,” Jack said.

“I called Homicide. I hope you can get here as soon as they do.”

“Malawister?” Jack asked hopefully.

“Out of town.”

Jack sighed. “Something in it for State—besides a headache?”

“If the Homicide dicks don't trample on it.”

“That's me you see busting down the door,” Jack said.

“It's already busted.”

I waited at the window until I heard the siren and saw the squad car nose into the curb near a fire hydrant.

Chapter Five

C
reel was an echoer. People who don't talk much often are.

He was also a tall, gallows-gaunt number with thinning hair the color of sand, combed sideways to hide incipient baldness; a freckle-splattered face otherwise as pale as a white asparagus stalk; and a small prim pucker of a mouth.

By a quarter after four I had told him everything. Involved in murder and with no client to protect, I had no reason to hold anything back. But I kept watching the door, hoping Jack Morley would show up.

Creel hadn't been first on the scene. Two patrolmen in blue-and-whites had been first, followed by Creel, then by the lab boys, then by a man named Vickers from the coroner's office. The lab boys were busy popping flashbulbs, dusting for fingerprints and making diagrams. The patrolmen were keeping the hall clear of the other inhabitants of the seventh floor of the Farrell Building, Vickers was on his knees over Ilya's body, and I had Creel and his echo on my hands.

I'd say, “The way I figure it, he must have broken the glass with his Luger,” and Creel would say, “Broken the glass with his Luger, eh?” and I'd say, “Place wasn't searched, so either Alluliev didn't have time to search it or decided the envelope would be in the safe anyway,” and Creel would say, “Be in the safe, eh?” Around and around like that we went.

When I finished my story, Vickers stood up. He was a plump, cheerful-looking little man. “Small caliber bullet,” he said. “Twenty-two, I'd guess.”

“Twenty-two, you'd guess?” Creel said.

Vickers nodded cheerfully. “Anything bigger would have exited, Lieutenant. Unless he was shot with a sniper's scope from the top of the Washington Monument.” Vickers chuckled at his little joke.

Creel said: “Bullet entered the jaw from below, didn't it?”

Vickers confirmed that. “Dead between one and two hours, Lieutenant,” he added. “If there's any food in the stomach I'll pin it down closer than that when I do the P.M.”

“The P.M.,” Creel said. Then he told me, “I'll take that envelope now, Drum.”

“What for?”

“What for? A man's been shot dead because of it.”

“I called the State Department,” I said.

“State Department? Why?”

“Alluliev is a Russian national who worked at the Russian Embassy. They'll make a stink.”

“A stink? We've had them before.”

“State's sending a man from the protocol section. They're geared to handle it.” I didn't add that the man from the State Department was my friend.

“I want that envelope now,” Creel shouted. “It's evidence in a murder case.”

“It could be the cause of an international incident.”

“I don't want any politicians messing in a murder case,” Creel bawled.

“Lieutenant,” I said, “there was no reason I had to tell you about that envelope, but I told you because there was also no reason why I had to hold anything back. Don't make me regret telling you.”

“Regret telling me? Who do you think you are? Two thousand private dicks in Washington and I had to get you.”

Two thousand was quite an impressive number, but Creel had his figure straight. There are more P.I.'s in Washington than in any other city in the country, even though the capital's population is well under a million. Washington is that kind of city.

I didn't say anything. Creel said: “Two thousand private dicks in Washington and he had to pick your office to get shot in.” This time Creel was echoing himself.

“Let's try some other figures,” I said, stalling and looking at the door anxiously and wondering when Jack would show up. “There are
six
thousand people in Washington, Lieutenant, and two thousand more like them in New York at the United Nations, who can walk in that door, shoot you full of holes like a Swiss cheese, apologize to me for bloodying up the furniture, smile at your patrolmen here and maybe sign autographs for them, and walk right out the door again knowing the worst thing that could happen is they'd be told to leave the country inside of forty-eight hours.”