The Deadly Embrace (22 page)

He saw that the door was made of heavy-gauge iron mesh, the walls of concrete block. There was no window in the room. He was lying on an iron-framed cot that was bolted to the concrete floor. There was a thin mattress beneath him. Someone had covered his chest with a green woolen blanket. A ceramic chamber pot sat in the far corner next to an open bucket of water. He realized that he was in a jail cell.

He was very thirsty. Sitting up, he slowly turned his body to the right and brought his feet down to the floor. The simple movements were agonizing. He paused to regain his strength. They had taken his belt and shoelaces. His watch had also disappeared. He had no idea what time it was.

The cellblock was very hot, the mattress rank with the odor of sweat and dried urine. He knew the odors well. After fourteen years as a homicide detective, he was a connoisseur of jail smells. But this was the first time he had found himself inhabiting a cell.

Feeling a hundred years old, Taggart slowly levered himself off the cot onto his knees and crawled over to the bucket. A tin ladle was hanging from the edge and he drank several swallows of the tepid water.

After rinsing his face, he used his fingers to explore the back of his head. There were two lumps behind his left ear. The larger one was the size of a walnut. On his way back to the cot, he glanced through the wire mesh at the cell opposite his. A man sat staring at the wall. He was wearing a U.S. Army Air Corps uniform, and tears were running down his face. From farther down the cellblock, Taggart could hear another man retching.

After carefully climbing back onto the cot, he fell asleep again. The next sound he heard was a key moving in the lock of his cell door. A small bandy-legged private came in carrying a metal tray. He set it down on the floor and left.

Taggart looked down at the tray. It contained a plate of runny powdered eggs and a slice of burned toast. Next to the plate were an empty china mug and a small metal pitcher filled with black coffee.

He got up for the coffee. It tasted surprisingly good, even better than the stuff they brewed back on Generals’ Row at SHAEF. It picked him up considerably. He only wished he had a cigarette to go with it. As his brain began to function again, he considered how and why he had ended up in the stockade.

Obviously, he had been set up. Taggart had a vague recollection of lying in a bed somewhere with flashbulbs going off. Maybe this whole murder investigation was too big for him after all. Who knew how high it went and where it finally stopped? He remembered Kilgore opening the file on his desk that included all the details of his wife, Barbara’s suicide. How had they gotten hold of her handwritten note? It had been sealed in a District Court case file in Manhattan.

An hour later, the guards came for the air-force officer in the cell across from him. He was still crying when they walked him out. More hours passed, he had no idea how many. He slept a good part of the time. He awoke again to the sight of the bandy-legged private, standing in front of the wire-mesh door.

“You have a visitor, Major,” he said.

Taggart slowly followed him down the cellblock and into one of the stockade holding cells. Liza Marantz was sitting in a straight wooden chair next to a scarred oak table. Her eyes were creased with worry when she looked up and saw him.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “What time is it?”

“Three o’clock,” she said, glancing at her watch.

“In the morning or the afternoon?” he asked.

“Afternoon,” she said, realizing there were probably no windows in the cellblock. “I went up to your office. It’s empty, Sam. They took everything out of it … even your old couch.”

“They wanted to make sure they got it,” he said.

“What?”

“J.P.’s diary,” he said.

“Where is it?”

“I left it in the safe. I doubt they can crack that old Atlas very easily.”

“They didn’t have to,” she said. “They just took it with them.”

He nodded and said, “When it comes to their own hides, they can be pretty thorough,” he said.

“All my case files were confiscated as well,” she said. “And the order was endorsed by General Manigault.”

Sam’s badly puffed eyes showed surprise for the first time. Slowly shaking his head, he said, “I guess they’ve gotten to him, too. It’s all over, then.”

“I was told that I am being reassigned,” she said.

“They’ll probably send you back to the States,” he said. “God knows where I’ll end up. I know too much for them to allow me to walk around anywhere.”

She took his hand in hers, and gently stroked his swollen knuckles.

“You’re a good man, Major Taggart,” she said softly. “And you tried to do the right thing.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “And look where it got us.”

They took him back to the cell. He was soon asleep again. Some time later, he awoke to the sound of the cell door being unlocked once more. When he opened his bleary eyes, Rusty Courtemanche was standing by the bed.

“I’m sorry about this, Major,” said Courtemanche.

He was in full uniform, with a .45-caliber Colt strapped to his hip.

“So where do we go from here, Rusty?” asked Taggart as he followed him out of the cell block.

“My orders are to get you cleaned up and then escort you to General Manigault’s office,” he said. “After that, I don’t know what happens.”

“Have you ever been to the Aleutian Islands?” asked Taggart, deadpan.

Courtemanche looked at him with his jaw wide.

“Tell me,” said Taggart. “Did you find out whether General Gramm spent the night at the Dorchester?”

“I was ordered not to discuss any pending investigations with you, sir,” said Courtemanche as he signed the release book at the front desk.

“Sure. I understand,” said Taggart.

A staff car was waiting for them outside the stockade. The night sky was clear for a change, and full of stars. When they were alone in the back seat, Courtemanche turned to him and whispered, “Gramm was there all night. According to the night porter, he ordered a bottle of booze from room service at around four. The waiter who brought it to him told me he was fast asleep in his bed when he delivered it to the sitting room of the suite.”

Taggart nodded.

“You’re the best man I’ve ever served under, sir,” said the young soldier.

“You’re still young,” said Taggart.

They drove first to Taggart’s apartment. When he reached the top of the stairs, Taggart saw that the bulbs in the ceiling fixture had been replaced. There was no hint of what had happened except for a small bloodstain near the second-floor railing. Whoever had orchestrated the attack had cleaned up after it very well.

Inside the apartment, Courtemanche waited while Taggart shaved, took a quick bath, and put on his best uniform. When they arrived at SHAEF, Taggart almost felt like a visiting congressman as they whisked him through Manigault’s outer office past a brigadier who was cooling his heels with his entire staff.

The general was waiting for Taggart behind his desk. He didn’t stand up.

“Thanks. You can go now, Lieutenant,” he said to Courtemanche. “I can take it from here.”

“Yes, sir,” said Courtemanche, saluting crisply before he left.

“Sit down, Sam,” Manigault said with a grim smile. “You know, for the first time since you got over here, you actually look like a soldier—just in time for your court-martial.”

Still woozy, Taggart dropped into one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“Well, this is the end of the line, Sam,” said the general, shaking his head sadly. “I told you to be careful when you started this thing. First you riled up half the senior Overlord command. A week later, you get dragged out of a whorehouse dead drunk. And just yesterday you were giving me grief about...”

“It was a setup, General.”

“That’s a honey, Sam,” Marigault said, his voice stiffening. “If I wanted to listen to that kind of bullshit, I’d ask for a meeting with Montgomery.”

“How long ago was it planned?” asked Taggart.

“Was what planned?”

“That crackdown on prostitution last night.”

“How the hell do I know?”

“Tell me who was behind it,” said Taggart.

“Colonel Baird spoke to me about it yesterday afternoon,” said Manigault.

“The whole thing was a setup to nail me.”

Manigault picked up a file folder from the out box on his desk. He quickly scanned the cover page and said, “You’re telling me that a raid on twenty-six whorehouses that resulted in more than a hundred arrests was carried out so that they could get you in a compromising position? You have a problem. It’s called imaginitis. Aside from that, you’re a ball-breaker, Sam. You resent authority.”

“Well, it accomplished its purpose, didn’t it?”

“What purpose?”

“I’m being court-martialed while the murders of Joss Dunbar and J. P. Barnes go unsolved.”

“There’s your imaginitis again, Sam. Colonel Baird says that the autopsy on Lieutenant Barnes proved she committed suicide because she was distraught about her husband, who I gather is a prisoner of the Japanese.”

“It’s not imaginitis, General,” said Taggart. “And that information is out of date. She was murdered, maybe by the same man who killed Joss Dunbar. You should know that Lieutenant Barnes’s murder could prove embarrassing to Everett Kilgore and his cronies. That’s why they set me up.”

“They’ve got pictures of you with a prostitute, Sam. Do you want to see them?”

“Who took the pictures?” demanded Taggart.

“How would I know?” said Manigault, his voice rising in anger. “MPs, I guess.”

“Why?”

Manigault’s cheeks reddened.

“That’s not all, Sam,” he said angrily. “When they searched your office, they found that your petty cash was missing. Colonel Krieger found a whole stack of illegal vouchers you signed.”

“He’s Kilgore’s stooge. I’ve never taken a dime in any job I’ve ever had, General, and you should know that better than anyone. Do you remember the night at Fort Hamilton when you tried to bribe me to let you go?”

Manigault stared hard into his eyes before turning away.

“I never thought you were a thief, Sam.”

“Thanks for that at least.”

“Look … my hands are tied on this. I just wanted the chance to tell you myself. I owed you that much. This isn’t going to be easy for either of us. Everyone around here knows you’re my man.”

“I’m sorry to have put you in an embarrassing position,” said Taggart.

Manigault stood up and walked over to the coal stove to warm his hands. Returning to the desk, he paused as he reached toward the transmit button on his office intercom and said, “You’ll probably be going to a maximum-security prison, Sam, at least until the invasion is under way. At this point you know everything the Germans would love to have.”

“And so does the whoever murdered Joss Dunbar and Lieutenant Barnes,” replied Taggart.

Manigault’s finger remained stopped in midair.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Lieutenant Barnes was murdered because she knew something that would have incriminated the man who killed Joss Dunbar.”

“If you think this is going to save you, Sam, I...”

“Just listen to me, General. I don’t know who committed these murders, but there is no doubt that the answer involves either the ULTRA secret or our D-Day plans or both. And that was what you wanted me to find out when you first ordered me to investigate Joss Dunbar’s death.”

“I suppose you learned all that lying dead drunk in the whorehouse,” said Manigault, his voice laden with sarcasm.

“Will you let me tell you a story, General?” said Taggart, pulling out a pack of Luckies.

Manigault glanced at his watch.

“Tell me why I should,” he said, harshly.

“You have to ask that?”

Manigault’s eyes bored in again for several moments.

“All right … five minutes, then,” he said, coming back to the fire.

Taggart lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He had never talked about it with anyone before. That was part of his nature. He remembered looking down at his dead father after they had poured him into his coffin. He had never said more than a dozen words about himself in his whole life.

“Colonel Baird reported to you that I was drunk last night,” he said, keeping his hands steady. “You know, General, I recently told someone that eighteen years of living with me drove a woman to drink herself to death, and that wasn’t far from the truth. You asked me what happened back in New York. I’ll tell you what happened, but it isn’t pretty.”

Part of him still wanted to stop, even if it meant prison.

“I said five minutes,” declared Manigault coldly. Taggart nodded.

“You never met my wife, Barbara, but we had a good marriage. It only got better when our son, Johnny, was born. He was the best of both of us. You would have liked him, General. At eleven, he contracted yellow fever and we almost lost him. After that, Barbara became very protective of him.”

Manigault was already furrowing his eyes, obviously regretting his decision.

“I thought she was overprotective,” said Taggart, his voice stronger as he committed himself to finishing it. “At school, she wouldn’t allow him to play any contact sports—she treated him like he was still an invalid. It was the one thing we argued about. I finally gave up. A few years later, the Japs struck at Pearl Harbor. Johnny was seventeen by then. Like a lot of his friends, he wanted to fight. He said it was the most important time to fight in human history … and that he wanted to make a difference.”

Manigault’s eyes softened slightly.

“So he enlisted in the Marine Corps. But because he was only seventeen, he needed one of our signatures to do it. Barbara wouldn’t sign the form. I could probably have talked him out of it, but I didn’t. He had thought it all through. I signed the paperwork. Nine months later, he was killed at Tulagi.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t know,” said Manigault, but glancing down at his watch again.

“Barbara couldn’t come to terms with his death,” Taggart went on, his throat dry. “She never forgave me. She began drinking in the morning and she stayed drunk all day. She tried to commit suicide twice before she finally succeeded. She left me a note. ‘It’s all your fault,’ she wrote.”