The Assassin (12 page)

‘There is a guy, isn't there? I don't want to come calling if it's serious and get a busted nose.' This wasn't part of his job, but he was curious. They moved in a small circle, exclusive because of its wealth and social activities. It couldn't be anyone he knew or someone would have mentioned it. Elizabeth didn't answer him.

‘Tell me about yourself,' she said. ‘How's Wall Street these days?'

‘I don't know,' Mathews shrugged. ‘I left Hannings; money bores me. Making money, anyway. I'm in government service now.'

‘Don't tell me,' Elizabeth leaned back and smiled, mocking him. ‘Don't please tell me it's the Peace Corps?'

‘No, Internal Revenue Service. I hunt down tax evaders.

‘You're joking,' she said. ‘
Tax
—you? It's not possible.'

‘Oh yes it is. I change the carbon in the typewriters and if I go on at this rate I'll get to change the ribbons next. As a matter of fact, Liz, that was another reason why I wanted to see you. My boss is dealing with some of the overseas aspects of your father's estate. Sorry to bring this up, but when you leave ten million bucks it can get complicated. Did you know he had property abroad?'

‘No,' Elizabeth said. ‘Why haven't you got on to my lawyers. They handled everything.'

‘My boss thinks it would be quicker if he talked to you direct.'

‘You're not suggesting there's been an evasion!'

‘Of course not. There's just something we can't sort out. Look, Liz, I'll come right out. I said I knew you pretty well; my boss wanted to see you and I opened my big mouth and said I could fix it. It might just get me to change the ribbons if you'd call on him. Please?'

‘All right,' she said, ‘if you want to get inky fingers. Who is your boss, anyway?'

‘His name's Leary,' Matthews said. ‘You'll like him; he's quite a guy.'

‘I can't imagine you and anything like income tax. It's so respectable!'

The old casual grin flashed back at her. ‘Don't worry; I'm still a shit in private life. I suppose you won't change your mind and have dinner with me?'

‘Sorry.' She held out her hand. ‘I already have a date. I don't want to keep them waiting.'

‘What the hell do you mean—there's no one there?'

King's voice began to rise. He had got in from Europe in the late evening; he had enjoyed the week spent in Frankfurt, although he didn't like the Germans. He had become quite attached to his little publishing empire over the last fifteen years. But he was tired; there had been a three-hour wait at London because of some engine fault and he hadn't been able to relax for the rest of the flight. First he had dropped into a hot bath and given himself a large Bourbon, then he called his middle contact just to check that the arrangements for Keller were satisfactory. There were still three weeks to go and he wanted to be sure he was kept happy and out of trouble. He made the call as a routine; when he asked the prearranged question about his friend from overseas, hoping he liked the accommodation, he was in no way prepared for that answer.

‘He never showed up.' The man at the other end had been frantic for two weeks; he had a job to do, and that was to take over Keller when he got to the rooming house on 39th. But he never came, and because it was forbidden to contact King in Germany under any emergency the middleman could do nothing in his absence. He had found out that Maggio was run over by a truck and that told him where the link was broken. He tried to get this across to King.

‘You remember my chauffeur?' Chauffeur was a pickup's code name between them.

‘Yes.' King stiffened. Christ, if he'd got arrested. He had never been happy about using the petty criminal element like Maggio, but this was not his responsibility. That section of his network was controlled and organised by someone else. He had the use of it but no say in how it operated. ‘Yes, what about him?'

‘He got run over. Killed outright.'

‘Too bad.' So that was what had happened. Keller hadn't been met at Kennedy. His contact had been killed, and the whole elaborate set-up fell to pieces. Just wait till I put in a report about this. King's mind raced ahead in fury at the incompetence which hadn't prepared for any emergency including sudden death. Just wait, you stupid bastards.

‘All right,' he snapped down the phone. ‘I'll just have to phone round some of the hotels and see if I can trace my friend. But keep the room booked. I'll be in touch as soon as I've located him.' He crashed the receiver back on its cradle; the whole instrument jangled in protest. His hands were shaking; Keller had got lost. Just because he had gone to attend to other business and left the last hook-up to the New York people, it had got completely out of control. He remembered his confident remark to Druet in the Paris brothel. ‘Everything's going according to plan.' He could imagine the report Druet would send in once this was known. Blaming his own reception network wouldn't help him. This was his operation; he had emphasised that too strongly to slide backwards now. If it misfired, if his killer was lost, picked up, traced back to Beirut. He wiped his face with a handkerchief; the sweat made a stain on the white silk. There was one chance; one hope. It was just possible that Elizabeth hadn't walked out on him at Kennedy without waiting to see he was met. Unlikely. She had said very clearly that she didn't like the look of the man, and he had been emphatic yet again, telling her to just walk him through and leave. He looked at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. He picked up the phone. It rang for so long that his hand was going down reaching for the cradle to hang up when through the distance he heard Elizabeth answer.

They had been watching television. Keller was fascinated by it; it was such a childish quirk that Elizabeth indulged him through every B movie, quiz game and series. He had never seen anything like it. And it was comforting to sit together, close in his arm, watching him discover this facet of America. They had been watching a news programme; he had turned to her at the beginning and suggested that they might be tired. And she had laughed, and taken his hand away from her breast and said that this time there was something
she
wanted to watch. ‘That's a remarkable man,' she said. The image of Cardinal Regazzi had come on the screen; he was giving a news interview on the problem of drug delinquency in the pre-teens.

Keller sat forward a little and listened. ‘You mean your
children
take the stuff?' He sounded shocked; in the countries he knew where life was lived on such a sub level anything was possible, but here, in this rich indulgent city, bursting with opulence like an overfilled shopping bag, it seemed incredible.

‘More and more. Listen to Regazzi. He really knows about poverty.'

‘There isn't any poverty here,' Keller said. ‘And I've never seen a poor cardinal. You're not a Catholic, are you?'

‘No.' Elizabeth shook her head. ‘But you must be, brought up by nuns.'

Keller didn't answer. He sat watching the small screen; the man could really project himself, even in a few minutes.

‘What do you think is the cause of this?' The interviewer's voice came through, off camera.

‘When a child wants to escape from his world so badly that he can't get enough fantasy from books and movies and television, all the escapist aids we have to offer, then that means he's getting starved of everything he has a right to—opportunity, security, love and hope. If some of the money spent on keeping these children in reform schools was spent on re-housing and better education they wouldn't need drugs.'

Keller said, ‘He's not making sense. Everybody's rich here.'

‘Oh no they're not,' Elizabeth said. ‘All you've seen is this little golden acre. There's desperate poverty in this country. Regazzi knows what he's talking about, he came from that kind of background himself, and he's spent his life fighting for the poor. I think his religion's all wrong, but he's a great man.'

‘All religion is a lie,' Keller said. He remembered the Sister of Charity who had given him a rosary when he left the orphanage, and stood by the gate wiping her eyes. ‘Catholics are no more wrong than anyone else.'

And that was when the phone began to ring. ‘Answer it,' Keller said. ‘It may be for me.'

‘That's what I'm afraid of.' Elizabeth stood up slowly. ‘Nobody rings at this hour. Leave it, Bruno. Let them call tomorrow.'

‘Answer it,' he said, ‘or I will.' And that was when King heard her speak.

She turned her back to Keller, trying to keep her face hidden. ‘Why, hello—how was your trip?'

‘Fine,' King pitched his voice just right, sitting on his anxiety like a box lid. ‘What about you—how was our friend?'

‘Stranded,' Elizabeth said. There was no use pretending to Keller, she turned round and nodded to him. He got up and came beside her. ‘Nobody picked him up. No, we hung around waiting and so I thought he'd better stay with me.' She made it sound casual. ‘No, no trouble at all. I've hardly seen him. He spends his time sleeping mostly.' There was a sudden gleam in Keller's eyes; he put both hands round her waist and squeezed.

‘With you,' he said under his breath. ‘Give me the phone.'

‘Do you want me to call him?' Elizabeth asked.

King sounded very gay on the other end of the line. He was so relieved he couldn't hide it. ‘No thanks, my dear. I'm so upset you've had this trouble.' He injected some concern. ‘You're sure he hasn't bothered you? You should have put him in a hotel—Elizabeth, I can't tell you how sorry I am—look, let me arrange for someone to pick him up first thing in the morning. Let me come round and take you out to lunch and make it up to you.'

‘I can't lunch,' she said. ‘I've got an appointment at the tax office; I don't know how long it'll take.'

‘Just leave everything to me from now on,' King said. ‘And of course you did the right thing keeping him with you. I'll explain when we meet. I'll get him out of there tomorrow.'

She put back the receiver. ‘That was the man I was with in Beirut,' she said. ‘Eddi King. He's fixing to move you out tomorrow. Bruno, I don't want you to go.'

‘I've got to go. I'm being paid.'

‘But paid for what? We're lovers, darling, why can't you trust me?'

‘I'm being paid to do what I'm told,' Keller said. ‘And I go tomorrow if that's what your friend said. What I do tonight is on my own time. Come here and let me teach you something. Tomorrow is a question mark. Tonight we can be sure of, so don't waste it.'

Francis Leary's office was on the seventh floor of a big office block on Lower Broadway. Two complete floors were rented by Leary's people under the title of the Trans-Oceanic Shipping Company, which was registered and traded on the eastern seaboard. It provided a working cover for Leary's New York headquarters.

Leary had his desk facing the window, so that the panorama of the great city moved constantly before his eyes. He found the changing scene a powerful stimulant to thought; aesthetically he loved it for its typical admixture of beauty and ugliness. The sluggish stream of cars, the hurrying crowds in the street below, its perimeter cut by the jagged horizon of tall buildings, the glimpse of trees, festooned with flashing lights as the evening came—this was part of the city where Leary had been born, where his grandparents had landed from a starving, desolate Ireland, to found a family and a new life. Leary was part of America, but more especially he was part of the beautiful, violent city itself; it had spawned him from the squalid ghettos of the West Side where the immigrant Irish congregated. Leary had fought his way out into the affluence and taken a piece of it for himself. He had a successful business selling commercial-radio advertising space when the war broke out. He had been transferred to Intelligence from the infantry and that was where his life changed direction until he ended in the office on the seventh floor. He had spent an hour reading everything available on Miss Elizabeth Cameron. Like Eddi King there wasn't much material with which to make a file. She was twenty-seven years old, born of money married to more money, orphaned in a crash that killed eighty-four people. He had underlined this in thick pencil. He made marks on all his papers; the most confidential dossiers were scrawled and smudged by that pencil. Leary's files were famous for their untidiness. There was a Presidential memo to that effect. Leary had it framed and hung it in his study at home. She had been living with Peter Mathews but there was no evidence of any association with another man, and from Mathew's own report that morning, she was not involved personally with Eddi King. Mathews had emphasised her devotion to her mother. Leary looked at his watch. It was eleven-forty-five; she should be there any moment. He picked up a wooden box about nine inches long, and moved it till it was in front of him. It looked as if it contained cigars. The buzzer on his desk announced both Mathews and Miss Cameron.

Leary buzzed back to send them in. When she came into his office he came round the desk, his hand held out to her, a neat almost dapper man, with a thin Irish face and bright blue eyes.

‘Good morning, Pete. Miss Cameron? How nice of you to come along. Take a seat here, won't you.'

He hadn't expected her to be so pretty; photographs weren't that reliable because they missed the expression; in the clips on the file she looked like any other well-dressed socialite posing for the camera. The expression was the person; even without the advantage of her colouring and the honey haze mink coat, she hit right over the heart when she looked at him. What the hell, he thought immediately, had she seen in a bed-hopper like Mathews?—even allowing it was four years ago. ‘Do you smoke?'

‘Thank you.' Elizabeth took one and he lit it for her. He noticed that she held it steady.