The Hearing (11 page)

Harrington, referring to what had happened to his assistant’s ankles, said, “I wouldn’t call that politics.”

The senator had lost a son in the Vietnam War, another lesson in the violence of politics. He said, “More like police brutality?”
Then he smiled, if that’s what it was.

The FBI, working with the chief of security for the Sony Corporation, had identified the videocassette Warren Gier handed
over as one of a batch Sony originally shipped to Singapore. Sony’s Singapore wholesaler identified it as part of a consignment
to Hong Kong, where it had been sold locally.

So Carl flew to Hong Kong. It was his first visit in seven years.

He had not been in his hotel five minutes when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Carl?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Doug Cabot.”

“Well, Doug Cabot. How are you?” A Honk Kong—based DEA agent. Carl wasn’t surprised to hear his voice. He’d seen the surveillance
around his taxi on the way in from Kai Tak Airport. The Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau had the best surveillance teams in the
world, men and women on foot, bicycles, motorcycles, in cars, trucks, and taxis, weaving in and out, coming and going, here
one moment, gone the next. They didn’t fight the traffic, they became the traffic. They didn’t watch you, they enveloped you.

“Fine. How was the flight?”

“Great.”

Carl had worked with Cabot sixteen years earlier in the Chicago office and found him sly and manipulative. What did he want?

“I’m just calling because I saw a cable this morning from the Congressional Liaison Office asking for a daily update on your
activities. Thought you might like to know.”

“I appreciate that.”

Carl felt a sudden pang of disappointment. How cheaply some people sell their loyalty. He could guess where the congressional
request had come from: Senator Eric Taeger, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Leading the stop-Parham campaign in the Senate,
Taeger would naturally want to know what a pro-Parham investigator was doing in Hong Kong. And Cabot was ready and eager to
curry a little favor, help him find out, look good with the senator.

“You need anything, Carl, give me a call. How’re you fixed for transportation?”

That’d really make Cabot’s job easy, know everywhere Carl went.

“Just fine, thanks. I’ll call if I need anything.”

“Do that. We’re here to help.”

“Of course you are.”

So now Cabot had something to put in his answer to the cable. “Special Agent Falco arrived Hong Kong. HKNB surveilled him
to the Kowloon Park Hotel, where Special Agent Cabot telephonically confirmed his presence.”

Later on, Cabot would hit HKNB for the surveillance reports and for transcripts of Carl’s telephone conversations from the
hotel room. Send it off to Washington, make it sound like he did it all himself—wouldn’t Cabot look like a good little boy
then? Politics screws up everything, even sixteen-year-old friendships.

Carl hadn’t been to bed for almost thirty hours, but it was just past midnight, perfect for what he had to do. He left the
hotel, ignored the taxi rank, walked two blocks, flagged down a cab, took it through the tunnel under the harbor, and got
out at the Mandarin Hotel. He gave the concierge a hundred-dollar bill and said, “I’m looking for a
friend who plays piano in a bar or nightclub. Problem is I don’t know which one. Where should I look?”

Wordlessly, the man fished a sheet of notepaper from under the counter and began listing names. When he’d put down eighteen,
he gave the paper to Carl.

“If it’s not one of these, it would have to be—”

“Low-down.”

The man smiled, a tiny quiver at the corners of his mouth. “I’d try these, sir.”

“Thanks very much.”

By the time the sun came up and the bars and nightclubs had closed, Carl had been to eleven of the names on the list, talking
to managers, flashing his DEA badge, showing his picture of Larry Young. None admitted to seeing him.

He went back to the hotel, slept four hours, and at noon set out again. Just after five that afternoon, he found a food and
beverage director at a hotel in Kowloon who remembered Larry.

“We had him in our piano bar for four months, then he decided not to renew his contract. He said he had a job in London, wanted
to get back to Europe for his daughter’s education.”

Carl showed the man a picture of Samantha, taken from the video.

“Yeah, that’s her, pretty girl. Nice girl, what I saw of her. Larry didn’t like bringing her to the bar.”

Carl went back to his hotel, grabbed his bag, and headed for Kai Tak Airport. He reserved a seat on a Swissair flight leaving
in an hour for Zurich, connecting to London. Then he found a pay phone and called Doug Cabot at the DEA office.

“Dinner tonight?”

“Love to, Carl. How was your day?”

“Can you meet me at the Mandarin bar at eight?”

“Fine. Perfect. Everything okay?”

“Terrific. I’ll be around for another four days, then I’m off for Caracas.”

“Caracas? What’s in Caracas?”

“You won’t believe it, Doug. Tell you all about it tonight.”

“Great. See you then.”

Give Cabot something to put in today’s cable. Tomorrow he can try to explain how come he got it all wrong.

This time he didn’t have to worry about surveillance. London cops couldn’t follow a train through a tunnel. Trying to make
ends meet on a government expense allowance of $175 a day, he asked the Heathrow cab driver, a Pakistani, to take him someplace
small, cheap, and off the beaten path.

It was practically on another continent. The neighborhood was a sea of black faces, and when he walked into the entrance hall
the smell of curry almost knocked him down. A desk, a stairway, six rooms upstairs.

He was in his room—no TV, no phone—trying to get the window open when the young man who’d checked him in downstairs knocked
on the door.

“Telephone.”

Carl said, “There isn’t one.”

“Downstairs. Telephone for you.”

“No. That’s a mistake.” He hadn’t told anyone where he was.

“No mistake. Telephone for you.”

Carl followed him downstairs, into the cloud of curry stench. He took the phone, put it to his ear. “Hello.”

“Welcome to Caracas.”

Doug Cabot. Carl couldn’t believe it.

“You guys are better than I thought.” Flatter him.

“We have our moments.”

“I’m going to bed, Doug. You should, too. It’s late in Hong Kong.”

At seven that evening—followed or not, he wasn’t sure—Carl found himself in the large, wood-paneled office of the manager
of a Mayfair gambling club. The club had a piano bar, and Carl was about to hand over a photograph of Larry Young. Dressed
in a tuxedo, a deep tan, and arrogance, the manager roamed regally around the office, talking into a gold-colored, fold-open
cellular telephone hardly larger than a cigarette lighter. Absently, he waved Carl to a chromium chair. Something a little
too imperious in that wave kept Carl on his feet. An enormous Saint Bernard sprawled on the beige carpet.

The manager, still on the phone, wandered over to the dog, his back to Carl. The Saint Bernard, its head the size of a microwave
oven, lumbered to its feet and moved next to Carl, panting.

Carl patted the dog’s head and waited.

The man hung up but remained silent, his back to Carl.

Carl said, “Thanks for seeing me. I’m looking for someone they told me downstairs used to play the piano here. He—”

The phone rang. The manager raised a hand for silence, flipped open his gold cellular phone, listened, whispered, and resumed
his random walk around the deep-piled carpet, mumbling into the phone.

Carl waited.

The man hung up.

Carl said, “As I was saying, his name is—”

The phone rang again. Another raised hand. More whispering and wandering. The manager hung up.

Carl said, “His name—”

The telephone rang again.

Carl said, “Excuse me—”

The man, now on the other side of the Saint Bernard, again raised a hand.

Carl had had enough. He stepped around the dog, gripped the man’s wrist, and removed the phone. Then he closed the phone,
slipped it into the panting mouth of the Saint Bernard, and held the jaws closed. He felt a heavy gulp. He released the jaws.
The dog, licking its mouth with a tongue as big as a dishcloth, looked placidly at Carl.

The stunned manager stared incredulously at the Saint Bernard. “You gave him my telephone.”

“You’ll get it back.”

“He swallowed the telephone.”

“Forget it. We have to talk.”

“He swallowed—”

The dog dropped lazily to the carpet, lay its head on its paws, and gazed contentedly up at its master.

The manager said, “Is he all right?”

“He’s fine. I’m looking for a man named Larry Young who used to play piano here. Do you remember him?”

Still watching the dog, the manager said, “Yes, that’s right. Larry Young.” He looked up from the dog, and his eyes fixed
on Carl. “Larry Young. Yes.”

“Tell me about him.”

“I wish he’d never left. He had a great way with the
clients. The richer they were, the more they liked him. I always thought it was the Albanian thing. Do you know him?”

“The Albanian thing?”

“He was from Albania, related to the old royal family, at least that’s what he said. He said he changed his name when he went
to the States. He went to Saint-Tropez for the summer. Said he wanted his daughter to see the Continent.”

“Did you meet her?”

“Yes, unfortunately. A little bitch.”

“Really?”

“Precocious. Very demanding. Thirteen years old and she’s acting like she’s his agent. Larry tried to keep her out of here,
which suited me fine. Guys had started to hit on her. Very mature.”

A mild explosion, followed by a stench worse than the hotel curry, filled the office. Carl and the manager turned to the Saint
Bernard, whose expression had gone from dreamy to mildly concerned.

After a moment, Carl said, “I think he’s about to return the phone.”

The Saint Bernard rose heavily to his feet, stood uncertainly, then sat back down with the preoccupied expression of a dog
having an unfamiliar internal experience.

The manager said, “Should I call the vet?”

“I don’t think so. Just be patient.”

C
arl sat at the end of the crowded bar with a Heineken that cost exactly four times what he’d have had to pay in Montgomery.
The place was packed, but the piano was silent.

He asked the bartender, a pretty redhead with a smile and an English accent, when the music started.

“He’s just on his break. Coupla minutes.”

The tables, reaching from the bar to an open terrace bordering the port, were filled with vacationers Carl guessed had come
to the south of France for the sun, sex, and imagined glamour. Carl had been in Saint-Tropez long enough—about two hours—to
see the yachts along the port, smell the
sea air, and have his eyebrows almost singed off by a fire-eater performing in the crowd oozing through the narrow medieval
streets. He saw a lot of young girls, many with men who were not so young. But he saw no one who looked like Samantha. He
wasn’t happy to think she might be here.

Carl smiled back and said, “What’s his name?”

The bartender reached under the bar and handed Carl a black-and-white leaflet, French on one side, English on the other.

LIVE

At the Papagayo

Larry Young

11 to Dawn

The picture showed a handsome, tuxedoed young man at a piano, smiling into the camera. He was the man in the photograph Doreen
had given Carl, the one he’d been displaying all over Hong Kong and London.

Carl saw a door open in the shadows at the back, and a man came in. He stood for a moment in the half-light, back bent, looking
tired. Then he smoothed the front of his tuxedo jacket, took a deep breath, straightened himself, and started toward the piano.
Before he entered the light, his face changed, a smile came on, and by the time he reached the piano he was beaming greetings
to customers. A few nearest the piano smiled and nodded.

He played a few show tunes, some modern pop numbers, Cole Porter, even a little Bach jazz, working hard to propel the magic
beyond the fans at the piano’s edge. It wasn’t easy. Compelling conversations—seductions and con
stories, Carl guessed—resisted intrusion at the outer tables. Carl listened and watched, impressed. Larry was a fighter,
throwing personality and talent against a fortress of apathy. His head was back, eyes closed, playing from the heart, or giving
a good impression of it. Sweat rolling down his cheeks darkened the white collar. A professional, Carl thought, good at what
he does, and he’s gonna do it whether anyone listens or not. What had his relationship been with Doreen? What was it now with
Samantha? What had that family been like, when it was still a family? Where was Samantha? As Carl watched Larry playing, he
thought, I’ve found him, now how do I keep him?

Larry was on the run with his daughter. If Carl followed him back out that door the next time he took a break, Larry might
make a run for it. It was dark out and Carl didn’t know the streets. But if he confronted him here in the bar, Larry could
still take off. An entire side of the room was open to the port.