Running Dog (7 page)

“Not that I don’t remain skeptical,” he said. “I remain highly skeptical.”

“About the existence of the film itself or just the people taking part, their rank and such?”

“About both of those plus one other thing, which is the commercial prospects such a document would have. I call it a document to dignify it. Is there really any demand for such a thing? Is this what people want out of pornography? Maybe it’s too historical. Maybe it
is
a document. I’m asking myself. What do people want? Is there a strong fantasy element involved? Will this kind of material help people upgrade their orgasms?”

Selvy couldn’t help laughing.

“I like your walking stick,” he said.

“Someone noticed. You’re the first. Up until now, nobody saw it. I paid money. This is African wood, right here. The handle is a monkey if you notice.”

“Nice stick, very.”

Lightborne called for the check, noting that his companion had only a cup of coffee before him on the counter.

“Don’t bother,” Selvy said. “He pays.”

“And you think there’s a chance he’d be interested.”

“Oh, he’d be interested all right. I know it for a fact.”

The routine. Cab, terminal, plane, terminal, car. He moved through it apart from other people, sitting in aisle seats, standing at the edge of waiting lines, unobtrusively watchful, last on, first off. He found a place for his car on Potomac Avenue and headed into the building, skirting two small boys playing on the stairs outside his apartment.

“Hey, you the landlord?”

“No.”

“Where you belong?”

“Hey, white.”

“What you be doing here?”

“Hey, white.”

“Where you belong then?”

He took a shower and waited for time to pass. He didn’t mind the waiting. Somewhere to be at 1500. No one he knew, or might talk to in the intervening period, would ever suspect the nature of his business. It was carried on beneath the level of ordinary life. This is why it made no difference where he lived. It was all the same, mere coloration for the true life, for the empty meditations, the routine, the tradecraft, the fine edge to be maintained in preparation for—he didn’t know what. In preparation for what?

He lived in the off-hours. He created his own operational environment, having little outside direction, no sense of policy. Periodically he reported to a house near the Government Printing Office, where he was given a technical interview, or polygraph, or lie detector test.

He was a reader. He read his man. There was nothing cynical in his view of the world. He didn’t feel tainted by the dirt of his profession. It was a calculated existence, this. He preferred life narrowed down to unfinished rooms.

That afternoon at three Selvy stood outside a restaurant on M Street, Palacio de Mexico, as the limousine approached and the back door slowly swung open. There was a fully grown St. Bernard on the front seat next to the driver and three St. Bernard puppies mauling each other across the length of the rear seat. Lomax had squeezed himself into one of the jump seats and he motioned Selvy toward the adjoining one.

“I took them running,” Lomax said.

“They haven’t stopped.”

“They needed the exercise. Dogs this big. It’s crazy, having them in the city. Maybe I’ll buy land somewhere.”

“Fairfax County.”

Lomax took one of the puppies in his lap and began stroking its neck. The car moved past the Executive Office Building.

“I saw Klara Ludecke,” Selvy said.

“And?”

“She wants to know why she’s a widow.”

“Only natural.”

“That’s what I thought. Only natural she’d get around to asking.”

“Is she in contact with Percival?”

“I doubt it.”

“Any clue as to what she was doing back home?”

“Relatives, she says.”

“I hear different,” Lomax said.

The car headed west now, turning sharply on its approach to the Key Bridge. A long silence ensued.

“Why would she mention Radial Matrix?” Selvy said.

Lomax tossed the puppy back onto the seat.

“She mentioned it, did she?”

“She mentioned Radial Matrix.”

Lomax took a box of throat lozenges out of his pocket and put one in his mouth. The car headed south on 29, the Lee Highway. Lomax pushed his way onto the rear seat and began playing with all three puppies, letting them scramble over his head and neck. Up front the fully grown dog sat looking straight ahead.

“The lady’s natural curiosity raises a question,” Selvy said. “It’s not in my jurisdiction but, still, I’ve wondered lately.”

“Mo here’s gonna be stronger than a goddamn moose.”

“Who killed Ludecke?”

“I’m looking at Percival,” Lomax said.

Selvy thought this was stupid to the point of imbecility. He watched Lomax try to extricate himself from the roistering dogs.

“The Senator’s just a high-toned smut collector. His thrills are vicarious, strictly. Murder is too powerful an idea for someone like that, even on a contract basis.”

“Stay on Percival.”

“That line of investigation has nothing left to yield. He wanted the Berlin film. He knew Ludecke had it. It doesn’t go beyond that.”

“I’m looking at Percival,” Lomax said. “And don’t call it smut. You keep calling it smut.”

Selvy glanced out the window at a frame house with a plastic pool on the lawn and about half a cord of firewood stacked under the front porch.

“There’s an outside chance some magazine may do a piece on the Senator’s collection.”

“Christ,” Lomax said.

“There goes our advantage.”

“Ain’t it the truth.”

“So?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

“In the meantime,” Selvy said.

“In the meantime, go to New York.”

The limousine pulled into a gas station and then swung across the road and headed back toward Washington.

“I just got back from there,” Selvy said.

Both men knew this wasn’t a complaint. It was an indirect form of acquiescence, a statement of Selvy’s willingness to blend with the pattern, to travel an event to its final unraveling.

All the way back Lomax remained slumped in his jump seat, talking to the dogs.

The office was cluttered and bright, a sizable room with a fireplace that didn’t work. Grace Delaney sat behind a teak desk, swiveling gradually toward the window behind her. Moll presented her argument, with gestures, trying not to be
distracted by police cars wailing down Second Avenue. Men with guns. That was the aspect of things no one would be able to change. She sensed she was losing Delaney to the view.

“That’s it, Grace. Finis. Das Ende. I can be in Georgetown before the dew is on the rose, or whatever.”

Running Dogs
offices were divided among three sites. A duplex in an East Side brownstone. A suite in an office building way across town. And someone’s house in Sunnyside, Queens.

This of course was the brownstone, top floor, rear, looking south, view of ailanthus trees and small gardens. Grace Delaney was a carefully tailored woman, slim and angular, whose face and hands often appeared to be flaking. She faced the window now, her back to Moll, who sat on the liquor cabinet, waiting for Grace to think of something to say.

“All right. Personal level. It’s not the kind of thing that turns me on.”

“What do you want, a nude torso in his freezer?”

“It’s not political. It has no ramifications.”

“You’re wrong, Grace.”

“Could be. Prove it to me.”

“He’s got a man on staff who runs around the country buying this bric-a-brac. That’s travel dollars plus the guy’s salary.”

“This sun feels so good.”

“Obviously taxpayers’ money.”

“You’re boring me, Moll.”

“Sex is boring?”

“I guess I miss conspiracy.”

“Like how?”

“A sense of evil design.”

“Well, Percival’s investigating this PAC/ORD operation. That’s where the evil design lies, presumably.”

“That’s it, see, I miss an element of irony.”

She swung around in her chair to face Moll.

“Our investigation into Percival’s affairs should yield precisely what the Senator’s investigation into PAC/ORD will eventually yield. I miss the symmetry of this.”

“Grace, we’re not weaving Persian rugs.”

Delaney took a silver flask out of her desk and had two quick snorts, her head jerking mechanically.

“Conspiracy’s our theme. Shit, you know that. Connections, links, secret associations. The whole point behind the series you’re doing is that it’s a complex and very large business involving not only smut merchants, not only the families, not only the police and the courts, but also highly respectable business elements, mostly real estate interests, in a conscious agreement to break the law. Or haven’t you heard.”

“I heard.”

“If you examine the matter, Percival’s got nothing to do with any of this. He’s an art collector with a taste for the erotic. I see it, if at all, as a fun thing.”

“What can I say?”

“I don’t see it as major.”

“You’re telling me not to pursue it.”

“I miss ramifications.”

“One last talk with the man.”

“He won’t let you anywhere near his collection.”

“I have possible access without him.”

“How?”

“Mysterious source.”

“Close to the Senator?”

“Close enough.”

“I have my doubts.”

“Let me work on it.”

“Knucklehead,” Delaney said.

Her voice was husky and a little intimate and sometimes made insults sound like endearments. Often she purred obscenities. In her carefully tailored way, surrounded as she was by photos and layouts, by crushed paper cups, overflowing
ashtrays, cellophane mobiles, by books and scattered magazines, she managed to suggest the rigor that dwells at the heart of successful concealment. Moll watched her pour lotion on her wrists and over the backs of her hands and then slowly, dreamily even, begin rubbing it in. They knew about this even in Sunnyside. It was the way she dismissed people.

It was late afternoon when Moll hailed a cab that took her past the Little Carnegie, where a special Chaplin program was playing. She found Selvy waiting in her apartment and decided not to ask how he’d gained entry. Bad taste, such questions. An insult to the ambivalence of their relations.

Her sweater crackled as she pulled it over her head. Static cling. Current in the tips of her fingers. When he touched her, she jumped. They crashed together onto the bed. The mild shocks ceased as their bodies came to resemble a single intricate surface. She began tossing her head, free and clear of garments, straddling him, noting the blends and scents rising.

Their eyes locked. A reconnoitering gaze. She sensed his control, his will, a nearly palpable thing, like a card player’s unswerving determination, the furious rightness of his victory.

She ran a finger along his mouth. He lifted her then, driving with his hips, pounding, so high she tumbled forward, a hand on either side of his head for balance. They remained that way, reaching the end slowly, without further bursts and furies. On hands and knees she swayed above him, licking her lips to moisten them against the dry air.

Propped on an elbow he watched her walk out of the room. When she came back she brought a can of beer, which they shared.

“You have a third baseman’s Walk.”

“I walk crouched,” she said.

“Like you’ve been spending a whole career too close to home plate, expecting the hitter to bunt but always suspicious, ready to dart one way or the other.”

“Suspicious of what?”

“He might swing away.”

“So that’s my walk. A third baseman. What about my body?”

“Good hands,” he said. “Taut breasts. A second baseman’s.”

“I just remembered something.”

“Won’t get in your way when you pivot to make the double play.”

“We’re going to the movies. I just realized. There’s a Chaplin program at the Little Carnegie and we’ve got four and a half minutes to get down there.”

The dictator in uniform
.

Each of his lapels bears the double-cross insignia. His hat is large, a visored cap, also with insignia. He wears knee-high boots
.

The world’s most famous mustache
.

The dictator addresses the multitudes. He speaks in strangulated tirades. A linguistic subfamily of German. The microphones recoil
.

The story includes a little barber and a pretty girl
.

An infant wets on the dictators hand. Storm troopers march and sing
.

The dictator sits on his desk, holding a large globe in his left hand. A classic philosophical pose. His eyes have a faraway look. He senses the vast romance of acquisition and conquest
.

The celebrated scene
.

To a Lohengrin soundtrack, the dictator does an eerie ballet, bouncing the globe, a balloon, this way and that, tumbling happily on his back
.

The dictator weeps, briefly
.

The little barber, meanwhile, studies his image as it appears on the surface of a bald man’s head
.

The dictator welcomes a rival tyrant to his country. The man arrives in a two-dimensional train. The leaders salute each other for many frames
.