The Red Eagles (13 page)

She succeeded in hailing a taxi and the procession resumed, this time heading west. Presumably she was going home. Kuznetsky took a chance and let the distance between himself and the Pontiac widen as they turned up Connecticut Avenue. He was right. Arriving at Amy’s home, near the zoo, he saw the Pontiac park opposite her apartment building, its occupant get out on the sidewalk and light a cigarette. Kuznetsky stopped and watched. The man looked up, looked at his watch, and looked up again. As he did so the light went on in Amy’s apartment. The man threw the cigarette down, causing a cascade of sparks, and got back into his car.

He drove straight toward Georgetown, down Wisconsin, and stopped in front of a seedy-looking building near the Potomac. After exchanging a few words and a laugh with the building security guard, he disappeared inside. Kuznetsky watched until a light went on in a sixth-floor window.

He got out of his car, crossed the street, and slipped into an alley that ran behind the building. At the back he found the fire escape, raised out of harm’s way, but managed without much difficulty to climb a drainpipe to the first floor, then took the fire escape up. At the sixth floor he forced the sash of a window overlooking the fire exit and clambered inside. The building seemed empty; there were no sounds at all and the only visible light came out from under the door at the end of the corridor. A panel on the door announced
that the office belonged to James Duncarry, Confidential Investigations.

Kuznetsky listened but could hear nothing. As far as he could tell it wasn’t locked – why should it be? Slipping the Walther from his shoulder holster, he opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him, all in one fluid movement. Duncarry sat behind his desk, pen in hand, a glass of whiskey in easy reach.

“What the hell …”

“Shut up,” Kuznetsky said softly. “Let me make something crystal clear to you. If you make any unnecessary noise or movement, I will kill you. Understand?”

The man tried to look defiant but failed. He nodded.

“Couch,” Kuznetsky said, gesturing with the gun. He moved across the room to where he could see both the man’s side of the desk and the door.

“Well, Mr. Duncarry, tell me why you were following that woman all evening.”

The detective’s face visibly relaxed. “Ah shit,” he said, “is that what all this is about?”

Kuznetsky searched the desk drawers. “I’m waiting,” he said.

“I can’t give you the name of my client. It’s—”

“Would you rather give me the name of your undertaker?”

The voice was so matter-of-fact that Duncarry shivered. “This guy came in last week—”

“Name?”

“Lee. Richard Lee. He wanted me to follow this woman – his girlfriend, I guess, he didn’t tell me – while he was out of town. Find out if she was sleeping around with some other guy, I guess. That’s all.”

“And what happened tonight?”

“She met a guy all right, and they went for a drive. Met some other car at a truck stop on the Annapolis road – he was doing some sort of deal, I guess – and then they drove
right back. He didn’t even take her home. That’s all.” He was regaining his confidence. “And what the fuck’s it gotta do with you? She your sister or something? Waving guns around …”

“If you have to drivel, do it quietly,” Kuznetsky said. The evening’s events might not mean anything to Duncarry, but they’d probably mean something to Lee, whoever he was. Therefore Duncarry must not pass the information on. There seemed no way around it. Why was he looking for one? “Where are your case notes?” he asked.

“They’re all on the desk.”

“No file?”

“Not for this sort of job.” The tone was contemptuous.

Kuznetsky put the detective’s notepad in his pocket, glanced quickly through the other papers. Three more sheets followed the notepad. “We’re leaving,” he said.

“What? Where to?” Duncarry asked, the tremor back in his voice.

“You can tell the lady what you told me.”

“Okay, okay.”

They walked down the corridor toward the elevator, and as they approached the fire-escape door Kuznetsky brought the Walther down on the back of the detective’s head. He opened the door and looked down into the alley six stories below. There were no lighted windows, no sign of life at all. He pulled Duncarry out and levered him over the railing and down into darkness. There was a distant thud as the body hit the ground.

Closing the door behind him, he descended the steps. At the bottom he made sure that the detective was dead, then walked back to his car. He lit a cigarette and stared out through the windshield.
The world lies heaped up on itself
. He started the engine and headed back downtown.

It was past midnight when he reached Amy’s apartment.
There was no light showing. It was several minutes before she responded to his soft rapping on the door, and when she did he walked straight in, holding his finger against his mouth to signal the need for silence.

She closed the door and stood with her back against it, her arms crossed over her breasts, a half-questioning, half-accusatory look on her face. One part of Kuznetsky’s mind took note of how desirable she looked, sleepy-eyed, her dark hair falling across her face. The other part took charge.

“It’s all right, I’m not here for your body,” he said with a thin smile.

“What is it then?” she asked, inadvertently acknowledging her suspicions.

“Do you know a Richard Lee?”

She felt as if she’d just taken off in a high-speed elevator, leaving her stomach behind. “What about him?”

“Who is he?”

She shrugged. “My boyfriend, I suppose. Or I’m his mistress. Call it what you like. He knows nothing—”

“I’d call it incompetence,” he said flatly, sitting down on the sofa.

Her eyes flared. “I’ve been working ten years in this city. You’ve been here less than a week. How the hell—”

“You were followed this evening,” he interrupted without raising his voice.

“I thought that was the idea.”

“By someone other than me.”

“What?” She was astonished. “But Richard’s in New Hampshire …”

“He hired a private detective to make sure you weren’t cheating on him.”

“Oh Christ,” she muttered, sitting down and pulling the dressing gown across her legs.

Kuznetsky offered her a cigarette and lit one himself. Would she accept the obvious? For some reason, he wanted
to share this decision. She looked at him silently, a bleak expression etched on her face.

“When is he coming back from New Hampshire?” he asked.

“Friday, probably. He calls me up most evenings. To check up on me, I suppose,” she added bitterly. “But the detective may call him there.”

“He won’t.”

She looked at him again, an expression on her face that he couldn’t read. “Faulkner said you’d be thorough.”

“I do what has to be done,” he said calmly. “There’s no pride in it. No shame either.” In his mind’s eye he saw Duncarry’s body plummeting down into the dark.

She didn’t seem to hear. “So Richard will come back, go to collect his report, and find out the detective’s been killed.”

“There’s a chance the police will think it’s suicide. A thin chance.”

“Is that a chance we can take?” she asked, looking him straight in the eye. Her voice was hard, her eyes bewildered.

“No,” he said gently, replying to the eyes rather than the voice. “How long have you and he …?”

“Two years, more …”

“A long time.” He’d known Nadezhda for half that.

“He’s married. We met only once a week. He’s not …”

“Ah.” He lit another cigarette, wishing it was Russian. These American ones were like smoking thin air.

“He might not go to the police,” she said. “I don’t think his pride would let him admit that he’d had a woman followed. And there’s his wife as well – she might find out.”

“Can he risk not going? He won’t know what the police have found in the detective’s office.”

“And Richard is suspicious,” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “I’ve been away so often recently. He kept thinking it was another man, but this will make him consider other things. He’s not a fool.” She looked down at her bare
feet. “There’s no alternative, is there?” she whispered.

“If he’s eliminated” – the word seemed curiously out of place here – “will the police come to you? How secret is your …?”

“Probably,” she said. She seemed calmer now that the issue was out in the open. “No one really knows, but people at work, they guessed long ago.” She gave him a wintry smile. “This is the point in the movie where someone says it’ll have to look like an accident,” she said, taking another cigarette from his package, her hand visibly shaking. “I’m sorry,” she said between puffs, “but I’ve never killed anyone. I think I should tell you that.”

“I will do it. Do you accept that it has to be done?”

“Yes.” She did. It surprised her how easy it was.

“I’ll need his address. A photograph if you have one. And you’ll have to find out the details of his return trip. He’ll be flying, I suppose?”

“No, he hates flying. He’s taking the train. He was going to call me from Union Station.” She rummaged through a pile of books. “Here’s a photograph. That’s him,” she said, pointing out a tall man in his late thirties standing at the back of the group.

“Who are the others?”

“Colleagues. It was a State Department picnic, last summer. He gave me the picture.” She was businesslike now, her hands steady, her eyes devoid of expression.

He got up, feeling sorry for her, wondering why. She stood by the door, hugging herself tightly while he let himself out.

Rafael Soto threw the remains of his lunch into the water and started to make his way along the dockside to the empty berth. He’d spent the last hour watching the Swedish freighter inch its way through the San Carlos narrows toward Maracaibo; now it was so close that he could make out the
captain’s face on the bridge. Gustav Torstensson. Soto’s comrade at the post office had let him see the cable, and Torstensson would soon be learning that he had an extra week for loading the mountains of coffee beans. Doubtless the Swedish crew would be pleased to discover that a fresh consignment of virgins from the interior had just been delivered to the whorehouses on the Ramblas.

Soto took up position some fifty yards from the gangplank and waited for his quarry. He’d been given a description of Sjoberg, but it seemed to fit every seaman he could see. It didn’t matter though. There wasn’t a customs official in Maracaibo who wasn’t willing to help for an extra peso or two.

It was several hours before the crew came ashore, and as they went through the customs shed Soto received the nod he needed. His Swedish comrade was in a group of four men, and he followed them into the town, to a restaurant in the Cathedral Square. After an hour of drinking, the visits to the lavatory began, and Soto introduced himself to Sjoberg as they stood side by side above the stagnant trough. A proper meeting was arranged for the next day.

Kuznetsky watched the passengers from the Boston train stream out into the Penn Station concourse, recognized Richard Lee, and followed him into one of the bars. Richard ordered a whiskey, and from his gestures and the slight slur in his voice, Kuznetsky knew that it wasn’t his first drink of the evening. He ordered one himself but didn’t touch it, smoking a cigarette and taking occasional glances in the bar mirror at his intended victim. He had as yet no idea of how he was going to do it, but that didn’t worry him.
It’s for nothing that I seek something more sure than the throw of the dice
. That was one thing he hadn’t needed Joszef to teach him.

Richard ordered another, looked at the clock, and swigged it down in one gulp. Good, it was the 9:30 train to Washington. Kuznetsky followed him out, across the concourse and onto
the platform. As expected, Richard headed straight for the club car. He ordered another whiskey, took a seat, and picked up a used copy of
The Washington Post
. It was the previous day’s copy, the one with the short report of Duncarry’s demise. “Detectives investigating the case would neither confirm nor deny foul play.” How conscientious of them, Kuznetsky thought, as he watched Lee turn the pages.

Lee found the piece about Duncarry just as the train eased its way out of the station. His hands gripped the newspaper, crumpling the edges; his eyes were wide with the shock. Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty, Kuznetsky thought.

Richard quickly ordered another drink, and once he returned to his seat seemed to stare blankly out of the window, perhaps at his own reflection. Judging from what the woman had said, Kuznetsky could guess what was going through the man’s mind. The detectives were “looking into the dead investigator’s recent cases.” That must have given him a jolt.

The train emerged from the tunnel under the Hudson into the New Jersey night and gathered speed. Richard still sat motionless, the half-empty glass in his hand, the newspaper spread across his knees. The train rushed through Newark, its whistle shrieking, on to Philadelphia, and then out into flat open country.

Midway between Philadelphia and Baltimore, Kuznetsky went to the bar himself, less for a drink than for a look at Richard’s face. The man’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping, for one hand was beating an invisible tattoo on the arm rest. Kuznetsky wondered what Amy had seen in him. He was good-looking enough, but the mouth was weak, and there was something vain about the neatly trimmed mustache. He looked younger than his age, but not in a good way.

The clink of Kuznetsky’s glass on the bar seemed to rouse Richard from his trance. He gulped down the rest of his drink, rose from his seat, and walked down the car toward
the toilet. Kuznetsky followed, stood outside the door listening to the sounds coming out and watching the doors for other passengers. He heard the toilet flush, saw the latch begin to move, and threw his full weight against the door, the Walther in his hand.

There was no need for it. The impact had thrown Richard back, hitting his head against something, probably the washbasin. He was out cold.