Winter Kills (36 page)

“Is there
any
thing we can do to ease the way for you, Tom?” Francis asked courteously. “Do you need weapons, disguises, master keys, infrared cameras, surveillance equipment—
any
thing?”

“Do you have plants inside the White House detail of the Secret Service?” Pa asked.

“Yes. Eleven men.”

“When the time comes, we’d like to eliminate building checks on the site.”

“Of course.”

“We’ll need some safe weapons. Just what we’ll need we’ll have figured down to a T by the eighth or ninth.”

“Have you set your contacts with the police?”

“We’re doing that now.”

“Have you chosen the marksmen you’ll want?”

“We’re organizing that right now too, Francis.”

“I have a sound list of men, if you think that can help you.”

“No,” Pa said flatly, “I think we’ll be all right there. We’ll have the marksmen and the police and a fall guy for the press and TV. We’ll look to you for weapons and some help from the Secret Service boys, and I think we’ll be all right.”

“We know you’ll understand, Tom, that the Committee decided it would be necessary,” Dr. Pickering rumbled, “to back you up with an independent team.”

“Perfectly all right, Horse,” Pa said. “I certainly understand and approve. I just would like it understood, however, that when my team breaks through and does the whole job in the perfect manner in which it is going to be done, it is agreed that this back-up team, this team that is in effect a witnessing element, will be eliminated by Francis’ people.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Dr. Pickering said.

“That is understood,” Francis Winikus assured Pa. He turned a red carnation from his buttonhole in his two hands and stared into the fire speaking almost wistfully. “These are sad days for all of us,” he said,
“but the saddest for you. I am very, very fond of Tim, as well you know. But, sentimentality to the contrary, I know of no other American whom I would rather have in charge of what must be done.”

“So say we all of us,” Dr. Pickering intoned.

***

When Francis Winikus and Dr. Pickering took off in the Jovair, Pa and General Nolan drove back to the house silently in a golf cart, then settled down to play pinochle. After a while the General asked, “How do we find this corrupt, well-placed cop, Tom?”

“Frank Mayo will find him.”

The General brightened. “Oh—sure. And how will we find the marksmen?”

“We’ll import one and use a local for the other.”

“A local?”

“The cop will find him.”

“Where do we import the other one from?”

“What was your mother’s maiden name?”

“Casper.”

“Okay. You are now William Casper. You go back to Dallas, where you like it, where you came from, and you call Eddie Tropek at the National Rifle Association, the state office, and ask him to dig you out just the names of the three best marksmen in the state. Then you talk to them one by one until you get a feel of the one who’ll move anything for money. Then we import him to Philadelphia.”

“When do I talk to this corrupt policeman?”

“I’ll talk to Mayo right now,” Pa said.

***

General Nolan had been born a Texan, and that had meant just about everything to him. He felt he was a Texan to the marrow of his bones, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. It meant a very great deal to him to get this assignment from Tom to go back to the land of the sons of the pioneers and to become William Casper/Casper Junior. He could talk again as
he had talked as a boy without any fear that he would not be understood. He loved the sound of Texas speech. It was like a concert of massed banjos. At last, after a lifetime of uniforms and eastern clothes, he would be able to dress as his father had dressed. He bought real thick, old b’ar-grease hair tonic. He trained his hair down over his forehead the way his daddy had worn his. He liked the style of it so much that he vowed never to change it back. He got himself a big, old-fashioned gold watch and chain in a New Haven pawn shop. It had a huge elk’s tooth suspended from it. He carried a package of quill toothpicks and one pure gold toothpick for after Sunday dinner. He listed and did all the things his father had done, such as polishing anything he picked up or farting unexpectedly and unself-consciously. It had been near to forty years since he’d even stepped inside the Texas line. He had forgotten how much he liked people like ole Turk Fletcher, who was as plain as a sweaty old hatband.

Everything went well. There was no need to use the back-up team. They were eliminated on the afternoon of the assassination in an airplane explosion over Champaign, Illinois.

There was a certain amount of mopping up to do for the intensive four-month period after the assassination until the Pickering Commission could complete its report and disband. Francis Manning Winikus’ specialists handled the elimination of those people who had either observed something inconsistent in Hunt Plaza or who had followed their own hunches in various directions, such as journalists, blackmailers or amateur detectives.

Then everything settled down. The public bought the Pickering Commission’s recommendations without question, and, happily, the men and women who owned the country could return to their work for a better world, for a better America.

Fourteen years went by, each one of them a busy and profitable year for Pa. General Nolan gained
twenty-six additional pounds. He had to give up coitus and accept fellatio as a way of life, because there was just no other way for him to do otherwise. “I don’t see how can you find it even to pee,” Pa said.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 1974—PALM SPRINGS

The call from Carswell had come at 1:05
P.M.
It was eleven o’clock at night in London and ten in the morning, on Monday, in Brunei, so Pa figured he could pick up about a full day’s start on Nick, considering the time differences and the traveling Nick still had to do. All Carswell knew was that Nick was going to Philadelphia and wanted a meeting with Miles Gander. It could be oil business, but Pa didn’t think so. Nick had two of the best geologists in the world aboard the
Teekay
if he had any geological questions. There was no reason to fly halfway around the world to see Gander because he was a geologist.

When Pa called Keifetz to get the question answered he got a shock equal to a circus sledgehammer crashing into the side of his head. Fletcher had talked to Nick and had spilled everything he knew. Fletcher had hidden the rifle, and Nick knew where to find it. For no reason—and this was what frightened Pa most—when he should have felt metallic and wary and dangerous, he felt suddenly euphoric. He felt extraordinarily released from he did not know what. He sat motionless after he hung up on Keifetz, thinking not about the complex of protective moves he would need to construct but that a strong, warming light seemed to have been switched on within him, illuminating every inner part of him in all the places he could not see and, even now, seventy-four years later, could not understand.
Nick is smart. Nick doesn’t like you. You could get into bad trouble over this
. But he knew the bad trouble he could find was that he loved Nick too. He had loved Tim, but he had cheated himself by loving Tim for what he could bring in, as a cat’s paw. He loved Nick for being a fine man, his own man, a brave and a responsible man—and he didn’t want to have to face any chance of harm for him. But it had been so long since Pa had known what trouble was that the habituated part of his mind spoke to him soothingly and promised pleasure.
This is a game. You must enjoy it. Nick has never lived by his wits. Play with him as long as it amuses you, then send him back to Asia, baffled and empty-handed
.

He paid Cerutti just to outthink people like Nick, and Cerutti had handled far tougher assignments than this one with the greatest of ease. Nolan could certainly use one last adventure before he ate himself to death or some little girl ate him to death. They would line up against Nick and play an exciting game and Pa would have the deep, elemental satisfaction of getting his own back from that smarmy little kid who thought he was a guttersnipe.

All at once Pa was able to switch the reasons for what he was going to do over to and upon Nick’s mother, that tone-deaf, pathetic snob who had scrounged all that money and all that pride out of him all because of one little dose of clap. The mother and the son had thought they were so superior to the father. Nick still thought he was superior. Therefore let it be considered that the chips are down, Pa thought. We’ll see which one is the better man. They would play this out, and when it was done he would let Nick know somehow—with a contemptuous grin or the gift of a tourist-class ticket back to his day-laboring job in Asia—that Nick hadn’t been up to winning the most important thing he’d ever sought.

Pa turned to the telephone console and flipped a red switch. In a moment a green light went on. “Cerutti?”
Pa asked into the microphone.

“Yes, sir.”

Pa watched the small screen as it lined up Cerutti’s voice print and the intermittent confirming light flashed around the edges of the screen.

“I’ll be there in about three hours, probably less.”

“Yes, sir. Do you want to give me a little thinking time on it, sir?”

“The 1960 business has come up again. You remember Turk Fletcher?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He just died in Brunei. He talked to my son Nick before he died. I’ll see you in about two and a half hours.”

Pa flipped off. He told Eddie to find him Miles Gander in Philadelphia and to have the Gulfstream ready to leave for Wisconsin as soon as possible. Eddie had Gander on the telephone in less than five minutes.

“Miles,” Pa said, “I have to be in Philly tonight, and I hear you’re in a bind. I’d like to help you out. Meet me at the Barclay for dinner tonight at eight thirty.” Pa flipped off. He called Eddie Dillon again. “Listen, Eddie,” Pa said, “when I come back we’ll put down at Palm Springs and come in by chopper. I want to come in with maximum flash. I want you to have a real brassy, bright young girl waiting for me at Palm Springs. I’ll tell her what to do when I see her.”

***

At Pa’s apartment at the Barclay that night Miles Gander looked as if the threat of bankruptcy was keeping him from sleeping. He couldn’t eat much either. After Pa had a good dinner he lighted a big, chocolate Monte Cristo, which the CIA got him from Cuba in monthly shipments, and said, “How much are you stuck for, Miles?”

“Four hundred and eight thousand,” Miles said.

“You got any leases you could sign over as collateral if I pick up the tab?”

“Why should you pick up the tab, Mr. Kegan?”

“Because I’m your friend, Miles. You got any leases?”

“Yes,” Miles said sadly. “Leases in Honduras and Morocco. That’s where I should have started drilling instead of letting them talk me into starting where I did start.”

“A man who is his own geologist has a fool for a geologist. Can you get the leases over here by tomorrow morning?”

“I have a breakfast meeting with your son Nick at nine thirty. All right if I come here before that?”

“Make it eight fifteen,” Pa said. “Just one thing. Are these leases worth four hundred and eight thousand?”

“My professional estimate, an objective estimate, as if I were making it for somebody else, is that the leases are more likely worth three hundred million dollars.”

“If we hit with them,” Pa said. “All right. Don’t fret. No matter what comes out of the ground we’ll be eighty-twenty partners on my capital expenditure. If we bring in a field, Miles, your twenty percent will make you a rich man.”

“Not being a bankrupt is the only thing I have on my mind, Mr. Kegan.”

“Miles—when you see Nick tomorrow morning he’s going to ask you to find him a police official to be a witness for something he has to get done. I don’t want Nick to think I’m interfering in his affairs, but I want him protected, I want him to get a good high-up police official if police help is what he thinks he wants.” Pa took a slip of paper out of his vest pocket and tossed it across the table. “Just call that number. It’s Police Inspector Frank Heller. You know how it is. Sons don’t like their fathers helping them out if they can avoid it, so I’ll appreciate it if you keep quiet about our meeting and about my asking you to call Heller.”

***

Gander was back at Pa’s apartment at the Barclay
promptly at eight fifteen the next morning. He endorsed the Honduran and Moroccan leases over to a name of a company that Pa dictated and he received in return a check for four hundred and eight thousand dollars from the Corinna Soar Foundation for Isotope Research which was signed by someone called Denis Ashby-Yassir. He left Pa at five minutes to nine to return to the Petroleum Club to await Nick’s arrival.

General Nolan arrived from Rockrimmon at nine forty-five, which was forty-five minutes late, because he had taken the opportunity to drive across country in his Ferrari, and it had seized up in Trenton and had over-heated in the Philadelphia traffic. He had had to journey the last twelve miles by taxi. Pa and General Nolan spent the next hour and a half on a “conference call” with Professor Cerutti, which Pa was able to set up instantly and with total electronic safety with his portable Signal Corps switchboard.

Professor Cerutti explained the Z. K. Dawson-Muskogee road scenario to General Nolan, then dictated his lines into Pa’s recording equipment so that the General could study them at his leisure. Then he laid out the scenario for the woman who would flag Nick down on the Muskogee road, outlining what would follow it. When he finished he asked General Nolan to check in at the Hadley Hotel, Philadelphia, registering as William Casper. “I’ll have the woman there at noon. You’ll be running her, and she knows that. She is a good, professional actress with a criminal record. The full scenario, her first pay envelope, and her background are waiting for you at the Hadley now.”

When the conference call was done, Pa said to the General, “I have a clear understanding with Cerutti, kiddo, and I want just as clear an understanding with you. No rough stuff with Nick. We’ll just handle Nick with our heads and not with assault weapons—get it?”