Death Is My Comrade (9 page)

“His FBI training,” Pappy observed dryly.

I felt a grin tugging at my mouth. The tension of the long night and the chase drained out of me. And Jack's attentiveness to the twins meant that Laschenko was under control, not that that really mattered. There wasn't anything we could do to Laschenko: he had diplomatic immunity.

I looked at the dark, huddled shape of Leo's body in the alley. “The other one's all trussed up in his car,” I told Pappy. “But the damn thing is, he was just working for Leo here. Leo was the contact man. Which means we'll never learn the details of the snatch.”

“What-all you talking about, Chester?” Pappy drawled. “The details? We've got them.”

“You sure got here fast,” I said. “Jack must have called Mrs. Gower back right after I phoned.”

“He didn't call anybody.”

I just looked at Pappy blankly.

“You-all gave him the whole setup,” Pappy explained. “Remember? Jack's ex-FBI too, Chester. You have your way of doing things and he has his.”

“That too tight?” I asked, tieing the handkerchief. “Bleeding's stopped.” Pappy shook his head, and I asked: “What was Jack's way?”

“Well, after he called me I called the Russian Embassy. Laschenko wasn't there, so I picked up Jack in Georgetown and we took a ride over to La Duhamel's town house. A big woolly bear of a guy comes rushing out after a few minutes, and Jack says that's him, that's Laschenko. He gets into a car and takes off, and we take off after him. Right here to Custer Street. End of story. Laschenko came to collect the lettah, didn't he?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

Pappy snorted. “You
guess
so? The trouble with you, you're in a fog. The trouble with you—” and now Pappy was grinning—“is, why don't you marry the girl?”

“Marianne?” I said, a little stiffly. “We're just good friends.” I added, “Let's go inside.”

Because by now the gunfire would have drawn a Custer Street crowd to the front of the clapboard house, we went in through the back window. Pappy headed for the living room, where Laschenko was sitting sprawled on the sofa. Funny, I thought, he could have got the hell away. And another thought occurred to me: why'd he bother coming at all? Part of Leo's job could have been delivering the letter, couldn't it?

Laschenko looked up at us. His eyes drifted over Pappy as if Pappy didn't exist, then they caught my eyes and fastened there.

“Mr. Drum, I—”

“Save it,” I snapped. Then I added: “We can't touch you here, Laschenko, but—”

This time he interrupted me. “Have the children been hurt?”

“You know damn well they haven't.”

“No thanks to you, fat man,” said Pappy, putting on the drawl full force now. “Like Chestah told you, we can't touch you-all here, but your Russian bosses, now, they have ways.”

Laschenko was still looking at me. “You mean, exile to Outer Mongolia, or a firing squad? Don't be childish.”

“Save it,” I said again, and headed for the bedroom. At the hall doorway, huge Mindy stood with her arms akimbo. “Okay, okay,” she was shouting out into the hall in her childlike treble. “Break it up. You better all go home; the cops'll be here any minute.”

Someone shouted something back at her, and she said:

“A snatch. Don't that beat all? Leo had the kids in here right under my nose; I didn't even know. When I get hold of him.…” She shook a big fist, her fat arm quivering.

“It ain't likely you will,” Pappy said. “He's out in the backyard, ma'am.”

Mindy whirled ponderously.

“He's dead,” Pappy said.

Laschenko's eyes under their bushy brows narrowed speculatively. I shrugged and went into the bedroom. Jack had one of the twins in his arms. The baby was giggling, trying to snatch Jack's glasses off his face.

“This one your namesake?” Jack asked me.

I looked at the twin in his arms and the other one kicking its plump legs on the bed. I couldn't tell them apart. “Unless his name is Wally,” I said. There was a phone on the night table. “Marianne's the only one who can tell them apart.”

I called her.

Chapter Twelve

T
en minutes later I was back in the living room. A couple of prowl-car cops had arrived, but they were just going through the motions, listening respectfully to Pappy's story after he'd shown them his FBI ID card, taking notes, fulfilling their duty in response to the call that had gone through the police complaint board. Pretty soon, I knew, the first team would arrive, the calm-eyed men in mufti from the detective bureau who would listen to everything all over again. And pretty soon, too, Mrs. Gower would be here. Marianne hadn't been too coherent on the phone. Half-drugged by what Dr. Nickerson had put in her drink, half-delirious with joy, she'd said she was sending Mrs. Gower.

As I re-entered the living room, Laschenko's eyes caught mine again. He was still sprawled on the sofa, sweating, mopping at his face with a damp handkerchief, sucking his moustache. “Mr. Drum,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

“Okay, talk.”

“Not here.”

One of the cops swung toward us. “That guy can't go anyplace, mister. I don't care if he's the president of the U.S.S.R., the bureau bulls will still want a session downtown with him.”

“Just a few words, Mr. Drum,” Laschenko said, as if the cop hadn't spoken. “Outside?”

The cop's eyes brightened. “Say, are you Drum? The Special Agent here told me all about you. Maybe you should have called the complaint board right away, mister, but that's water under the bridge.” He had a nice smile, a friendly smile, and he used it to show me what he thought of water under the bridge. “You want a few words outside with this bucko, I guess you've earned them. But at the moment he's technically under arrest, and don't you forget that.”

Laschenko lunged to his feet and led the way past Mindy and the crowd in the hall. The gathering was really something, for Custer Street. The people there usually avoided cops like dengue fever, but then a kidnaping, even on Custer Street, was something special. Another patrol-car cop stood on the porch, eying the crowd that had overflowed to the sidewalk. I touched his shoulder and pointed to the green Buick.

“What about it?” he said.

“The kidnapers. One of them's dead in the back alley.”

“Yeah? So?”

“The other one's tied up in the back of that car.”

“Hey, Johnnie!” the cop called, and the door of one of the patrol cars at the curb opened. Johnnie stalked toward the Buick a moment later, gun drawn.

Laschenko and I went down the stoop and a third of the way up the block. He didn't say anything right away. I didn't press him. He stopped under a street light beyond the fringe of the crowd. He looked anxious. Not nervous, just anxious. He lit a cigarette. The bright street light cast a pool of shadow at his feet.

“Mr. Drum,” he began finally, “you and I are both men of the world. We—”

“You have your name for what you are and I have mine. Get to the point, Laschenko.”

He nibbled at his moustache. He wasn't looking at me now. “If I admit I arranged the kidnaping, what then?”

“They can book you and give you a rough session of questioning. It's less than you deserve. But they can't send you up before a grand jury for indictment. You have diplomatic immunity.”

“Which means I go free? I cannot be punished?”

“You know you can't.”

Laschenko spread his hands out. “Then is my day at the police station worth all the trouble it will cause?”

“What kind of trouble would that be?”

“I am here not on a diplomatic mission but a cultural one. Our nations, Mr. Drum, are going through the difficult process of learning to live together. This summer, for the second time, my country will attempt to explain its way of life at the Coliseum in New York. This summer, also for the second time, an American Exhibition will open in Moscow. Same purpose, Mr. Drum. If publicity developed from the unfortunate incident here, the entire cultural exchange program might have to be called off.”

“And Semyon Laschenko might be working in Outer Mongolia. Piersall spelled it out for you, didn't he? If you had so much to lose, why'd you resort to the lowest crime in the book? Was it worthwhile? Say you got the letter back. You were still acting like a damn fool from the word go. The letter could have been photostated, couldn't it? But no, you had to—”

“Please, Mr. Drum,” Laschenko said. It wasn't his words that stopped me, it was his face. Even by the light of the street lamp you could sée that his face had reddened. And for the first time his eyes wouldn't meet mine. “Suppose we say that in the heat of the moment I acted unwisely. Suppose we say that if I had it to do over again I never would have done that. Suppose we say—”

“Suppose we say you're a big bag of wind trying to get your tail out of a sling,” I cut in. “What are you getting at?”

He took that, but his face got redder. “This, Mr. Drum. Leo Ring is dead. He was the contact man. He alone knew who ordered the kidnaping. There is nothing to connect me with the crime but my presence here tonight. Nothing.”

“How are you going to account for your presence? Out seeing the sights on Custer Street?”

“You phoned me. I was as—outraged—as you were. I came to help. You see, I know Leo Ring. He was a longshoreman and a member of a Communist cell in this country. He—” Laschenko licked his lips. “He could have known Ilya Alluliev had the letter, could have done the whole thing on his own. Well, couldn't he?”

The answer was no. The story couldn't hold together, and even Laschenko would know that if he thought about it for a while. There was no possible way Leo Ring could have learned what Ilya had been trying to do unless Laschenko or someone at the Russian Embassy had alerted him. But that wasn't bothering. me. If Ring had belonged to a Red cell here in this country, and there was no reason to doubt that, Laschenko wouldn't have known him.

The Red cells, what is left of them here, are small groups of usually four men each, and the only member with contact outside his particular cell is the leader. Sure, Laschenko could have asked for help and the Red apparatus could have selected Leo Ring for the job, but that wasn't the way Laschenko had told his story. What had his words been?
I
know Leo Ring
, he had said.

But Laschenko had only arrived in this country last month on his cultural mission. It was a thousand-to-one shot that he'd known Leo Ring previously. It didn't make sense, but neither did Laschenko's lying now. What was going on here? I didn't know, but I was suddenly very interested in anything Laschenko had to say.

“Just how did you know Leo Ring?” I snapped at him.

He looked at the sidewalk, at the pool of shadow at his feet, at the crowd down the block. Everywhere but at me. He cleared his throat and nibbled at his moustache. And he said: “Five thousand dollars, Mr. Drum. If you tell the story my way, you earn five thousand dollars, in small bills and with no record of the transaction. Tax-free money, Mr. Drum.” He gave me a we're-both-men-of-the-world look. “These confiscatory taxes in your country.…”

He never finished whatever he was going to say about confiscatory taxes, because just then he looked over my shoulder, his eyes got big and he backed up against the lamppost.

I heard high heels click-clacking on the sidewalk. Turning and looking where Laschenko was looking, I saw Eugenie. She was really something to see. There are entrances and then there are entrances, but Eugenie could have up-staged the Maharani of Peshawar, complete with gold-caparisoned war elephants. The backdrop was a silver Mercedes-Benz sports car that belonged on Custer Street the way Eugenie,. dressed the way she was and carrying what she carried, belonged in a convent.

Eugenie was dressed to kill. She wore her single thick auburn braid in a coronet piled high on her head. She wore a black off-the-shoulder blouse cut low enough to remind you that Eugenie was a delightfully precocious seventeen-year-old. She wore a sheath-tight copper-colored skirt that gleamed metalically where her firm young thighs thrust against it as she strode toward us. And, to complete the dressed-to-kill picture, on her right hand she wore a small automatic with a mother-of-pearl grip.

“Mother thinks I'm at a party,” she said sweetly. “But I followed you instead, Mr. Laschenko. I thought you'd never come out of that horrible old house.” She stopped when she was about ten feet from me, and she was pointing the small automatic at Laschenko's face.

Laschenko looked as if he were trying to climb the lamppost backwards.

I remembered what Marianne had had to say about Eugenie, remembered how Eugenie had ripped her blouse and hollered rape last night. I edged toward her, sideways like a scuttling crab but, I hoped, less obviously. If Eugenie had an automatic in her hand it wasn't for decoration. She had come here to use it.

“Pretty smart move, not going inside,” I said conversationally, and edged toward her some more. “It would have played hell with your getaway. The place is crawling with cops.”

“I know, I saw them,” Eugenie said, also in a conversational tone.

More sidewise scuttling, in slow motion. I still had six feet to go.

Her eyes narrowed and her gun hand came up stiffly. I had a hunch Eugenie would be a crack shot.

“Why would you want to shoot him?” I said.

Her answer was a question asked right back at me. “What are
you
doing here tonight?”

“The letter you gave Marianne Baker for safekeeping,” I said, and moved again. “They wanted it back. They kidnaped Marianne's kids to get it.”

“How positively gruesome,” Eugenie said. “And you came here, taking the law in your own hands, to rescue them?” She gave me the kind of once-over a man gives a woman before he lets loose with the wolf whistle. “I'll bet you're like that,” she mused. “I'll bet you always live dangerously. I'll bet you always go around carrying your life in your hands. I'll bet I could learn to like you.” Eugenie laughed throatily. “Am I too fast for you, Drum?”