FrostLine (27 page)

I was thinking, What did I want from him? Other than his mistress. What did I want for Mr. Butler? And I was wondering, would Henry King blow up his lake to protect an overzealous security employee? Throw in trespassing and Dicky's tattoos, and it wouldn't amount to more than accidental death.

“But the English yeomen were not peasants in the European sense of rabble. Nor could they fire longbows from concealment. No, Ben, it was crossbows, massed, that devastated Saladin's forces at Arsuf.” He held up the bolt, and studied it by the light of the window pouring over his shoulder. “What's this quarrel made of?”

Son of a bitch even knew the correct word for the bolt.

“Carbon fiber, it looks like.”

“Don't they make sailboats out of that?”

“And stealth planes.”

“A similar world-changer. Imagine an enemy—”

“We're not at war in Newbury, Henry. Why'd your man shoot at me?”

“
You
may not be at war, Ben. But Fox Trot was attacked.”

“Come on.”

“
And
I will defend it.”

“Dicky Butler's dead. His dad's in jail. Who the hell are you defending against?”

“Why were you on my property?”

“I fled onto ‘your property' when your employee started stalking me on Mr. Butler's property.”

“Do you expect us to buy that?” Wiggens interrupted.

King gestured for silence. “Ben, is it possible you panicked? What made you think he was stalking you?”

“I felt him tracking me in the trees.”

“It sounds to me like an awful misunderstanding. How are you so sure?”

“Some sort of ‘sixth sense'?” asked Josh. I glanced at Julia. She looked away.

“I saw the sun glint on his sights.”

“Is it possible he was merely watching you?”

“Henry, would you like me to watch you through a telescopic sight? Maybe at night, when you're ready for bed and you stop in the window to look at the stars?”

“You have a peculiar imagination, Ben.”

“Call that helicopter back.”

King looked at Wiggens.

Josh nodded at the window. “The pilot said there's a front approaching.”

The sky had gone steely and a dark, anvil-topped thunderhead was looming from the west. “If he doesn't get around that now, he'll be socked in for a day….”

“I don't care if he's socked in for a week.”

King said, “Julia. Bring me the Institute checkbook. And send in what's-her-name—the one who takes dictation.”

I hated the way she jumped to obey him. She hurried out and returned with a leatherbound register. As she opened it for him, she glanced defiantly at me as if to say, If you don't like my life, tough.

King took a gold Mont Blanc from his shirt pocket and wrote with a flourish. He tore the check from the page, blew on the ink, and pushed it across his desk toward me.

“What's that, a bribe?”

“Read it.”

I got up, still holding the big-ears, big-eyes helmet, and picked up the check. The Henry King Institute of Geopolitics had just contributed twenty-five thousand dollars to the Richard Butler defense fund.

The receptionist hurried in with a laptop and typed what King dictated: “‘In my opinion my neighbor Richard Butler has suffered far too much from the loss of his son. I see no good purpose pursuing a shaky conspiracy case against him and therefore I contribute this twenty-five thousand dollars for his defense in the event the state's attorney refuses to drop the charges.' Print that up and bring it back immediately.”

There are bribes no decent person would accept. And there are bribes no decent person could refuse.

“Leave the helmet,” said King. I put it on his desk, and again he grimaced, this time at the earthy sawdust from the inside of the silver birch. I had a pretty good idea what was coming next. So I turned to the window, and concentrated on the first raindrops splashing the glass in order to collect my spirit.

When I was a boy, Connie taught me that lying was the worst sin on the planet. On the rare occasions I do, I still have to brace myself.

“And the glove,” said Josh Wiggens.

“I dropped it when I ran.”

“Where?” asked King.

“In your stream.”

Chapter 26

I'd come up with too little too late.

I delivered King's check and letter to a delighted Tim Hall. But when Tim called Ira, Ira scotched our hopes for bail, much less dropping the charges. The J.J. Topkis testimony about the timer had convinced the state's attorney to prosecute Mr. Butler. Detectives Marian and Arnie were wrapping up his case for the grand jury.

I slunk home, wolfed gloomily at a late lunch of pesto and beefsteak tomato on Portuguese bread, and wondered what the hell to try next. Alison Mealy burst through the kitchen door, scattering rainwater from her yellow slicker.

“Aunt Connie says get over there right away.”

“Is that how she put it?”

“She said to ask you if it was convenient to stop by her house.”

DaNang had lurched stiff-hipped from sleep. “Care to join us?” I asked, and the three of us trooped across Main Street like the tag end of a modest circus.

Connie was studying her television, an ancient nineteen-incher, which she kept in the old cook's parlor off the pantry. She had procured a videotape version of the King A&E “Biography” from the Newbury Library. It was shivering, freeze-framed, on the tag-sale VCR that Alison had repaired with a thirty-cent part.

“Ben, look at this.”

Alison interrupted. “Connie? DaNang's on the porch. Can he come in the house?” Connie looked puzzled. “Has some meteorological event transpired I'm unaware of?”

“Huh?—I mean, I beg your pardon?”

“A change in the weather? A sudden blizzard, perhaps.”

“It's raining.”

“Would you call it a nor'easter.”

“No.”

“Then DaNang will be perfectly dry and happy on the porch. And
not
on the chaise longue—Ben, look at this…. What do you see?”

Same thing I had seen at our earlier viewing, a shot of King and four former State Department poobahs exiting a helicopter at a luxurious Aspen, Colorado nonprofit think-tank mountain ranch maintained by our tax dollars.

“What else?”

“Five middle-aged guys enjoying the rewards of public service.” By some remarkable coincidence, each was attended by an aide in her early thirties. Julia was by far the most attractive, but none had to fear being kicked out of bed.

“What else?”

I studied the scene, rewound it when it stopped, and played it through. Connie said, “I don't understand, but I think I've discovered an odd pattern. Move the picture ahead, Ben. Stop at any travel scene that has your pretty friend in it.”

I fast-forwarded to where the group got back on the helicopter. I stopped the tape again when King's entourage bustled into Heathrow, and again where he was greeted by Arabs looking princely on horseback. In Beijing, he bowed to a cadre of bloody-minded old men.

“Henry King carries his own bags,” Connie marveled. “The others have loaded their young women like pack animals. But he carries his own. Don't you find that unusual?”

“Why?”

“An ill-mannered, ill-bred, unprincipled lout, globetrotting on the public dollar, who carries his own bag? He treats your Ms. Devlin like a lady.”

“
My
Ms. Devlin?”

Connie's blue eyes cut like glass. “How lovely she looks, striding beside him.”

“Lovely,” I agreed, long stretches of our night permanently burned in my memory's eye, even as I wondered about my cool reception at King's office.

“Look at that other girl struggling like a porter, for pity sake. Why do you suppose he carries his own bag?”

I rewound to the beginning. A&E had resurrected a snippet of Kinescope eight-mil home movie film that showed a burly seventeen-year-old King pushing a wheelbarrow on a Manhattan construction job. His friends starting ragging him, the way kids do for the benefit of the camera, and King had waded in and put a headlock on the ringleader. The next old shot showed him alone in Harvard Yard, hurrying by with a load of books. He barely nodded at whatever relative was recording the moment, and it was clear his heavy-lifting days were nearing an end.

And indeed, from the mid-Vietnam era into the late Eighties he sprang from aircraft and limousines, bag-toting acolytes scrambling after him like apprentice machine gunners with fresh bandoliers. Until, as Connie had noticed, Julia entered the moving pictures after he had “retired” to private life. With her King carried his own bags.

“Perhaps he carries his own bags because he's in love with the woman,” Connie ventured, dubiously. “Though the thought of King in love makes one shudder.” She smiled at her jibe, then turned seriously to me. “Be careful, Ben. Henry King would make a vicious enemy.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Alison, cover your ears.” Alison did. Connie whispered, very seriously, “Jealousy.”

“Did she—”

“No, Alison did not ‘rat you out.' You're staring at that film like a slack-jawed orangutan.”

Alison, who had not covered her ears very well, fell over giggling. And suddenly I could explain to Connie why King treated Julia like a “lady” when they traveled.

“She's his bodyguard.”

***

“Bodyguard?”

“A professional. She keeps her hands free.”

“That little thing?”

“She's not that little. And she's in terrific shape.”

I sat down and talked it through. “She said she had been a civil servant. But she was really Secret Service. She's either been detached to him officially, or she resigned and works directly for him. But that's why she doesn't carry anything. She's there to protect him.”

“How strange you must feel, Benjamin.”

To put it mildly.

I had slept—and was hoping to, again—with a woman who could kill me with her bare hands. Bodyguards had a long and honorable tradition of rising in their charge's estimation. Patty Hearst had married hers. Julia was bright. Why wouldn't she gradually become one of King's confidantes? And finally his runner.

A handy woman to have around. Confidante, travel companion, manager, protector, and loyal defender.

Assassin? asked a little voice. A little voice that next asked why, when any sensible man would be making a play for a perfectly lovely woman like Vicky MacLachlan, I was pursuing an already-involved woman who happened to be a trained killer.

“Alison, dear,” said Connie. “Would you please run out to the kitchen and put on water for tea and lay out a platter of cookies? Thank you, dear.”

She watched Alison clump reluctantly down the hall and when she was out of earshot asked, “May I ask, seriously, are you involved?”

“You'll like her. She's a solid person. Lot of depth. And from what you've figured out, an interesting background.”

“Is she ‘involved' with King as well?”

“Looks that way.”

“Be careful.”

“I can handle him.”

“I mean, of her.”

“I feel a connection with her. It feels special.”

“She has to protect him.”

“If that's her job.”

“I mean in
addition
to her job. Benjamin, forgive me, but look at your past. You are so stupid about women. Particularly when they have long dark hair like your mother's.”

“Come on, Connie. That's such a cliche.”

“
You
act like such a cliche….Ben, you understand people so well, most of the time. Try and understand this women. If she is giving herself to that married man—being his servant and assistant and doormat—she will do anything to prove to herself that she's not wasting herself on him.”

“I think she wants to change.”

“I should hope so. But don't you understand that she must hate herself for everything she gives to you?”

“Maybe giving to me helps her break away.”

“The only person she will never hate is Henry King.”

I passed on tea and cookies.

Back in my office I stared at Dicky's glove. After awhile, I fished A & D Piggery's business card from my pocket and telephoned. I got an answering machine. I left my name and number and said I wanted to discuss a manure delivery.

I put the glove under my desk lamp and snapped a few photographs, top and bottom, with my Polaroid property camera. Then I went down to my workbench in the cellar and sliced small pieces of deerskin from inside the palm with an Exacto knife.

Back upstairs, I telephoned the Admiral, again. Again, they promised my old boss would call back. Twenty seconds later the phone rang.

A silky voice, no preamble. “What can I tell you, Ben?”

It was not a rhetorical, What can I tell you. He was cautioning, Don't ask the wrong question. The category of wrong question might include the password to enter the computer that controlled Spy In The Sky Satellites, the name of Our Woman in Cairo, or more than he cared to spill about Henry King.

I knew this and he knew I knew this. “Tell me where King returned from the day of his party.”

“London.”

“Tell me his route.”

“Heathrow to Bradley International by General Motors corporate jet. Bradley to Newbury in his helicopter. Arrived 1300.”

As said the Party Box lady.

“Tell me who his client was in London.”

“No.”

“Tell me what he did in London.”

“Fouled up.”

That I hadn't expected. I wasted a moment coming up with my next question. “What kind of fouled up?”

Silence.

“For us?” I asked, “us” meaning U.S., and doubting he'd answer.

But he did. “No. For our offshore island friends. Both of them.”

Britain and Japan. GM supplied his free transport. “The ceramic engine! He blew the deal with the Brits and the Japanese?”

“Royally. The ceramic engine was only the beginning. He was supposed to herd them into a long-term techno-industrial agreement.”

“They were talking about it at the party.”

“He'd been planning a big splash announcement. ‘The Fox Trot Accord.' The man has an ego the size of Mars.”

“And an eye on the IRS,” I added. “To write off the party and a good hunk of his construction costs.”

“I wouldn't know about that.” The Admiral affected a patrician disdain for commerce. “More your line.”

Not any more, I thought. I'd been off-line so long that I had mistaken blown-deal-blues at King's party for a deal in progress.

“Anyway,” the admiral volunteered, “instead of signing contracts, Henry King was scrambling around trying to pick up the pieces when one of your yahoo friends blew his dam. Any more questions?”

“King keeps a drunken ex-spook around. Josh Wiggens. Is he for real?”

“Josh Wiggens served his country,” came the cold reply. “He was a fine officer, in his time. Any more?”

“Yes, what made him a fine officer? What's he like?”

“He was a hell of a fighter.”

“An infighter?” I asked.

“Very imaginative.”

I listened to silence, while the Admiral reflected more upon the ex-spy. “Loyal,” he said after a long time. “If I had to chose one attribute to describe Josh Wiggens, I would say it was loyalty. A rare asset, loyalty, when everyone's got his own agenda. And his own morality to justify it.”

Josh Wiggens had testified against Mr. Butler at the inquest. He tried to scare me off helping Butler. Then he turned around and saved my bacon from the Derby Death. Loyal to whom? To King? To Julia? To the United States government?

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Is Josh Wiggens still in the loop?” Meaning the CIA loop.

The Admiral sighed. “Anything else?”

“How does he happen to work for Henry King?”

“Needed work.”

“How about Bert Wills? Did he need work, too?”

“Everybody needs work, Ben. Anything else?”

“Is Julia Devlin currently employed by the Secret Service?”

“Anything else?”

“Were Julia Devlin and Josh Wiggens ‘involved' before they worked for Henry King?”

“I figure that's nobody's business.”

“Sir, I'm working for an old farmer, a Vietnam vet, who's rotting unfairly in jail.”

“Anything else?”

“No sir. Thank you.”

“Let's not make a habit of this,” was his goodbye and it stung.

I still didn't know whether Henry King worked for the United States government. But he had indeed been far away the night before the explosion. Anticipating triumph, he'd come home in defeat. I had to marvel at his composure. He had looked tired and drawn, but only his caterer knew of his misery. For his guests, he had acted every bit the proud squire of Fox Trot, happy homeowner and generous host. At least until Mr. Butler's fly attack

One hell of an act. What else did it hide? But corporate statesmen of the new world order didn't kill farmers to get their farms.

I still hadn't heard back from A & D Piggery.

I telephoned. Got a machine.

I stared some more at Dicky's glove.

I stepped outside to rescue flowers and tomatoes from the rain. I recalled Mr. Butler's tomatoes rotting on the vine. I telephoned again. Got a person. He didn't apologize for not responding to my message. All he said was, “We don't deliver to Newbury, Mr. Abbott.” And hung up.

“What?”

I dialled again. “Wha'd you hang up on me for?”

“I told you, we don't deliver to Newbury.” And hung up.

I dialled again.

“If you hang up on me again, I'm going to drive over to wherever the hell you are and throw a brick through your window. Okay?”

“Try it, Buddy.” He hung up.

I got in the Olds and headed west. It was a slow drive in the rain, up through Sharon and across to Millerton, New York, up 22 and west on a shortcut to County 7 that I remembered from visiting a Millerton shopkeeper I'd once fallen for while she was between husbands. Her farmhouse was freshly painted and framed with flower gardens and—yikes—a bright new slide and swing set.