James Bond Anthology (26 page)

‘Chief says to lay off,’ said Dexter. ‘Hope we’ll see some action before long.’

‘Well, the case is all yours,’ said Binswanger grudgingly. ‘But the Commissioner sure don’t like having this bastard crappin’ away on his own front doorstep while Mr Hoover sits down in Washington well to leeward of the stink. Why don’t we pull him in on tax evasion or misuse of the mails or parkin’ in front of a hydrant or sumpn? Take him down to the Tombs and give ’em the works? If the Feds won’t do it, we’d be glad to oblige.’

‘D’you want a race riot?’ objected Dexter sourly. ‘There’s nothing against him and you know it, and we know it. If he wasn’t sprung in half an hour by that black mouthpiece of his, those Voodoo drums would start beating from here to the Deep South. When they’re full of that stuff we all know what happens. Remember ’35 and ’43? You’d have to call out the Militia. We didn’t ask for the case. The President gave it us and we’ve got to stick with it.’

They were back in Binswanger’s drab office. They picked up their coats and hats.

‘Anyway, thanks for the help, Lootenant,’ said Dexter with forced cordiality, as they made their farewells. ‘Been most valuable.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Binswanger stonily. ‘Elevator’s to your right.’ He closed the door firmly behind them.

Leiter winked at Bond behind Dexter’s back. They rode down to the main entrance on Center Street in silence.

On the sidewalk, Dexter turned to them.

‘Had some instructions from Washington this morning,’ he said unemotionally. ‘Seems I’m to look after the Harlem end, and you two are to go down to St Petersburg tomorrow. Leiter’s to find out what he can there and then move right on to Jamaica with you, Mr Bond. That is,’ he added, ‘if you’d care to have him along. It’s your territory.’

‘Of course,’ said Bond. ‘I was going to ask if he could come anyway.’

‘Fine,’ said Dexter. ‘Then I’ll tell Washington everything’s fixed. Anything else I can do for you? All communications with F.B.I., Washington, of course. Leiter’s got the names of our men in Florida, knows the Signals routine and so forth.’

‘If Leiter’s interested and if you don’t mind,’ said Bond, ‘I’d like very much to get up to Harlem this evening and have a look round. Might help to have some idea of what it looks like in Mr Big’s back yard.’

Dexter reflected.

‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘Probably no harm. But don’t show yourselves too much. And don’t get hurt,’ he added. ‘There’s no one to help you up there. And don’t go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn’t ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr Big is “live and let live”.’

Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter.

‘In my job,’ he said, ‘when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It’s “live and let die”.’

Dexter shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but you’re under my orders here, Mr Bond, and I’d be glad if you’d accept them.’

‘Of course,’ said Bond, ‘and thanks for all your help. Hope you have luck with your end of the job.’

Dexter flagged a cab. They shook hands.

‘’Bye, fellers,’ said Dexter briefly. ‘Stay alive.’ His cab pulled out into the uptown traffic.

Bond and Leiter smiled at each other.

‘Able guy, I should say,’ said Bond.

‘They’re all that in his show,’ said Leiter. ‘Bit inclined to be stuffed shirts. Very touchy about their rights. Always bickering with us or with the police. But I guess you have much the same problem in England.’

‘Oh of course,’ said Bond. ‘We’re always rubbing M.I.5 up the wrong way. And they’re always stepping on the corns of the Special Branch. Scotland Yard,’ he explained. ‘Well, how about going up to Harlem tonight?’

‘Suits me,’ said Leiter. ‘I’ll drop you at the St Regis and pick you up again about six-thirty. Meet you in the King Cole Bar, on the ground floor. Guess you want to take a look at Mr Big,’ he grinned. ‘Well, so do I, but it wouldn’t have done to tell Dexter so.’ He flagged a Yellow Cab.

‘St Regis Hotel. Fifth at 55th.’

They climbed into the overheated tin box reeking of last week’s cigar-smoke.

Leiter wound down a window.

‘Whaddya want ter do?’ asked the driver over his shoulder. ‘Gimme pneumony?’

‘Just that,’ said Leiter, ‘if it means saving us from this gas chamber.’

‘Wise guy, hn?’ said the driver, crashing tinnily through his gears. He took the chewed end of a cigar from behind his ear and held it up. ‘Two bits for three,’ he said in a hurt voice.

‘Twenty-four cents too much,’ said Leiter. The rest of the drive was passed in silence.

They parted at the hotel and Bond went up to his room. It was four o’clock. He asked the telephone operator to call him at six. For a while he looked out of the window of his bedroom. To his left, the sun was setting in a blaze of colour. In the skyscrapers the lights were coming on, turning the whole town into a golden honeycomb. Far below the streets were rivers of neon lighting, crimson, blue, green. The wind sighed sadly outside in the velvet dusk, lending his room still more warmth and security and luxury. He drew the curtains and turned on the soft lights over his bed. Then he took off his clothes and climbed between the fine percale sheets. He thought of the bitter weather in the London streets, the grudging warmth of the hissing gas-fire in his office at Headquarters, the chalked-up menu on the pub he had passed on his last day in London: ‘Giant Toad & 2 Veg.’

He stretched luxuriously. Very soon he was asleep.Up in Harlem, at the big switchboard, ‘The Whisper’ was dozing over his racing form. All his lines were quiet. Suddenly a light shone on the right of the board – an important light.

‘Yes, Boss,’ he said softly into his headphone. He couldn’t have spoken any louder if he had wished to. He had been born on ‘Lung Block’, on Seventh Avenue, at 142nd Street, where death from TB is twice as high as anywhere in New York. Now, he only had part of one lung left.

‘Tell all “Eyes”,’ said a slow, deep voice, ‘to watch out from now on. Three men.’ A brief description of Leiter, Bond and Dexter followed. ‘May be coming in this evening or tomorrow. Tell them to watch particularly on First to Eight and the other Avenues. The night spots too, in case they’re missed coming in. They’re not to be molested. Call me when you get a sure fix. Got it?’

‘Yes, Sir, Boss,’ said The Whisper, breathing fast. The voice went quiet. The operator took the whole handful of plugs, and soon the big switchboard was alive with winking lights. Softly, urgently, he whispered on into the evening.At six o’clock Bond was awakened by the soft burr of the telephone. He took a cold shower and dressed carefully. He put on a garishly striped tie and allowed a broad wedge of bandana to protrude from his breast pocket. He slipped the chamois leather holster over his shirt so that it hung three inches below his left armpit. He whipped at the mechanism of the Beretta until all eight bullets lay on the bed. Then he packed them back into the magazine, loaded the gun, put up the safety-catch and slipped it into the holster.

He picked up the pair of Moccasin casuals, felt their toes and weighed them in his hand. Then he reached under the bed and pulled out a pair of his own shoes he had carefully kept out of the suitcase full of his belongings the F.B.I. had taken away from him that morning.

He put them on and felt better equipped to face the evening.

Under the leather, the toe-caps were lined with steel.

At six twenty-five he went down to the King Cole Bar and chose a table near the entrance and against the wall. A few minutes later Felix Leiter came in. Bond hardly recognized him. His mop of straw-coloured hair was now jet black and he wore a dazzling blue suit with a white shirt and a black and white polka-dot tie.

Leiter sat down with a broad grin.

‘I suddenly decided to take these people seriously,’ he explained. ‘This stuff’s only a rinse. It’ll come off in the morning. I hope,’ he added.

Leiter ordered medium-dry Martinis with a slice of lemon peel. He stipulated House of Lords gin and Martini Rossi. The American gin, a much higher proof than English gin, tasted harsh to Bond. He reflected that he would have to be careful what he drank that evening.

‘We’ll have to keep on our toes, where we’re going,’ said Felix Leiter, echoing his thoughts. ‘Harlem’s a bit of a jungle these days. People don’t go up there any more like they used to. Before the war, at the end of an evening, one used to go to Harlem just as one goes to Montmartre in Paris. They were glad to take one’s money. One used to go to the Savoy Ballroom and watch the dancing. Perhaps pick up a high-yaller and risk the doctor’s bills afterwards. Now that’s all changed. Harlem doesn’t like being stared at any more. Most of the places have closed and you go to the others strictly on sufferance. Often you get tossed out on your ear, simply because you’re white. And you don’t get any sympathy from the police either.’

Leiter extracted the lemon peel from his Martini and chewed it reflectively. The bar was filling up. It was warm and companionable – a far cry, Leiter reflected, from the inimical, electric climate of the negro pleasure-spots they would be drinking in later.

‘Fortunately,’ continued Leiter, ‘I like the negroes and they know it somehow. I used to be a bit of an aficionado of Harlem. Wrote a few pieces on Dixieland Jazz for the
Amsterdam News
, one of the local papers. Did a series for the North American Newspaper Alliance on the negro theatre about the time Orson Welles put on his
Macbeth
with an all-negro cast at the Lafayette. So I know my way about up there. And I admire the way they’re getting on in the world, though God knows I can’t see the end of it.’ They finished their drinks and Leiter called for the check.

‘Of course there are some bad ones,’ he said. ‘Some of the worst anywhere. Harlem’s the capital of the negro world. In any half a million people of any race you’ll get plenty of stinkeroos. The trouble with our friend Mr Big is that he’s the hell of a good technician, thanks to his OSS and Moscow training. And he must be pretty well organized up there.’

Leiter paid. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘We’ll have ourselves some fun and try and get back in one piece. After all, this is what we’re paid for. We’ll take a bus on Fifth Avenue. You won’t find many cabs that want to go up there after dark.’

They walked out of the warm hotel and took the few steps to the bus stop on the Avenue.

It was raining. Bond turned up the collar of his coat and gazed up the Avenue to his right, towards Central Park, towards the dark citadel that housed The Big Man.

Bond’s nostrils flared slightly. He longed to get in there after him. He felt strong and compact and confident. The evening awaited him, to be opened and read, page by page, word by word.

In front of his eyes, the rain came down in swift, slanting strokes – italic script across the unopened black cover that hid the secret hours that lay ahead.

5 | NIGGER HEAVEN

At the bus stop at the corner of Fifth and Cathedral Parkway three negroes stood quietly under the light of a street lamp. They looked wet and bored. They were. They had been watching the traffic on Fifth since the call went out at four-thirty.

‘Yo next, Fatso,’ said one of them as the bus came up out of the rain and stopped with a sigh from the great vacuum brakes.

‘Ahm tahd,’ said the thick-set man in the mackintosh. But he pulled his hat down over his eyes and climbed aboard, slotted his coins and moved down the bus, scanning the occupants. He blinked as he saw the two white men, walked on and took the seat directly behind them.

He examined the backs of their necks, their coats and hats and their profiles. Bond sat next to the window. The negro saw the reflection of his scar in the dark glass.

He got up and moved to the front of the bus without looking back. At the next stop he got off the bus and made straight for the nearest drugstore. He shut himself into the paybox.

Whisper questioned him urgently, then broke the connection.

He plugged in on the right of the board.

‘Yes?’ said the deep voice.

‘Boss, one of them’s just come in on Fifth. The Limey with the scar. Got a friend with him, but he don’t seem to fit the dope on the other two.’ Whisper passed on an accurate description of Leiter. ‘Coming north, both of them,’ he gave the number and probable timing of the bus.

There was a pause.

‘Right,’ said the quiet voice. ‘Call off all Eyes on the other avenues. Warn the night spots that one of them’s inside and get this to Tee-Hee Johnson, McThing, Blabbermouth Foley, Sam Miami and The Flannel …’

The voice spoke for five minutes.

‘Got that? Repeat.’

‘Yes, Sir, Boss,’ said The Whisper. He glanced at his shorthand pad and whispered fluently and without a pause into the mouthpiece.

‘Right.’ The line went dead.

His eyes bright, The Whisper took up a fistful of plugs and started talking to the town.From the moment that Bond and Leiter walked under the canopy of Sugar Ray’s on Seventh Avenue at 123rd Street there was a team of men and women watching them or waiting to watch them, speaking softly to The Whisper at the big switchboard on the Riverside Exchange, handing them on towards the rendezvous. In a world where they were naturally the focus of attention, neither Bond nor Leiter felt the hidden machine nor sensed the tension around them.