Soft touch (17 page)

It was certainly thorough. They took me through the entire period from when I had first reported to Vince at Galle to when I last saw him from the airplane window in Calcutta. Their questioning was polite but thorough. Under the continual pressure I was able to remember names and incidents that I had thought completely forgotten. At one o'clock we took a break and had lunch brought up to the suite. I was down to my last cigarette, and Barnstock, on the phone, ordered up two more packs along with the sandwiches and coffee. The chill and hum of the air-conditioning made the suite a small private world.

During the half-hour break while the recorder was turned off, we talked baseball and bass fishing. I felt at ease. There was nothing ominous about them. I had nothing to hide that had transpired during the period we were covering. Their official curiosity about Vince seemed curiously compulsive. Habits, tastes, fragments of background.

By quarter after two we had covered the war part of it.

"When did you next see Biskay?" Quellan asked.

"Last month."

Barnstock interrupted, saying, "Ed, I think we can save a little time here by telling Mr. Jamison that we know that Biskay arrived at the Vernon Airport at ten minutes of five on Friday, April twenty-fifth, on American flight 712 out of Chicago. He had entered the country on an Eastern flight from Mexico City to New Orleans. He was using a forged passport which identified him as a Paraguayan national named Miguel Brockman. He left Vernon Airport at one-fifteen on American flight 228 to Chicago, made connections there to New Orleans and picked up his reservation on Eastern to Mexico City."

Barnstock had not referred to any notes. All the in-

formation had been memorized. It made me distinctly uneasy.

"Fine," Quellan said. "We know from tracing his movements that Biskay came to this country for the sole purpose of visiting you, Mr. Jamison. Did you have prior knowledge of this visit?"

"No."

"Then we can pick up the thread again at the time he appeared. What time did he arrive at your home, and who answered the door?"

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I could see just how carefully and thoroughly I had been mouse-trapped. Up until that point I had made a great effort to be completely frank and honest with them. Why not? All that war stuff couldn't do me any harm. But for a long time I had been very detailed and explicit, and I could not show a shift of attitude, a sudden reticence. And I knew that my powers of invention were not adequate to the job. I could not continue with the exhaustive detail, even though this last meeting with him was much clearer in my mind.

They talk about trap questions. This was not a trap question, but a trap situation. They both looked at me. The silence grew longer. The big reel on the tape recorder turned, recording the silence. They looked at each other. Barnstock reached out and turned the recorder off. Quellan took one of my cigarettes and lighted it.

"Jamison, we're not interested in any criminal prosecution. We're not interested in accumulating facts that might lead to a criminal prosecution by some other legal agency." I did not fail to note that up until that little speech it had been Mister Jamison. Now it was Jamison.

"Can you make that a little clearer?"

"Biskay came to you. He had a proposition for you. Apparently you accepted it," Barnstock said.

"Just suppose, for the sake of argument, I can't remember a thing about it?"

"You've co-operated beautifully up until now. Without coercion. But coercion is possible." 130

"How?"

Quellan stood up. He was a damn tall man. "Through a ... a sister agency, Jamison, the Tampa police department has been advised not to establish any crash priority to the solution of the fatal shooting of a Mr. Zaragosa, a foreign national, at Tampa International Airport on the afternoon of the seventh of May, twelve days ago. Nor is the South American government involved eager to make a big fuss about the death of Alvaro Zaragosa. The Tampa police have little to work on. We received, indirectly, what little they have. A rental sedan was involved in the assassination. Gasoline had been used to wipe a decal from the door of the sedan. The bottle which had contained the gasoline was found in the gutter at the time the sedan was recovered. On the bottle were two clear fingerprints, the index and middle finger of the left hand. Tampa's attempt to check them out through central records resulted in a dead end. When we learned Biskay had been here with you, we got your prints out of the military files. Your prints are on the bottle. Tampa has no way of tracing you. Unless we inform them. Then they'll want a very complete story, Jamison. It would be simpler to give it to us."

I looked at my left hand. When I had dropped the bottle I had expected it to break. But it didn't. I had tried to stamp it with my heel, but I had missed because it was rolling, and I had been in a hurry.

I looked at the recorder. "Turn it on," I told Barnstock. He did.

"What time did he arrive at your house and who answered the door?" Quellan asked.

"It was about six-thirty, I think. I answered the door."

"Now tell us the complete events of the time he was here, the proposition he made you, and your reaction to it and your reasons for accepting it."

My mind had raced ahead, and I saw a way out. A little glimmer of light. I left out the big wad of money. I left out his detailed analysis of the political climate of the Peral government and the Melendez insurrection. I told them that I was broke at the time Biskay made the pro-

position, that I was having wife trouble, that I was feeling restless.

"Just what did he want you to do for him?"

"To arrive in my own car in Tampa on Tuesday, May sixth, and check in at the Tampa Terrace Hotel under the name of Robert Martin. Which I did. He had explained to me in April that it wasn't anything particularly illegal. He said the cops wouldn't come into it in any way. I got the impression it was more of a ... a hijacking operation. All I had to do was be in my car at a certain time and a certain place in Tampa on the afternoon of the sixth. He'd come in another car and then we would get the hell out of there. I was supposed to drive him to Atlanta to the airport there."

"What was his offer?"

"Twenty-five thousand cash."

"Didn't that seem like a great deal of money for just a job of driving?"

"Yes, it did. But he said he had to have somebody he could trust implicitly. And he had elected me. Understand, I didn't jump at it. But he kept telling me nothing could go wrong."

"He came to the hotel on the sixth?"

"Yes. And he went in my car and he showed me where I was to park, near a side entrance to the hospital. He said he would come out that entrance."

"I thought you said he said he would come in another

car."

"Did I? That was a mistake. It turned out that he came in another car. He said he'd come out the entrance and I was to watch for him, and start the motor as soon as he arrived. We drove over the route we would take out of town a couple of times."

"Describe what happened."

"I parked where he told me to at quarter after three. The car was gassed up. I kept watching the hospital door. At three forty-five, maybe a couple of minutes later, a black sedan pulled up directly behind me. I didn't know what to think. I looked back and recognized Vince. As I got out of the station wagon, a man got out of the sedan 132

and started walking down the street rapidly. He didn't look back, so I didn't see his face. He was a big man in a gray suit. He wore a chauffeur's hat. The suit could have been a uniform. He carried a small satchel. Vince was bloody. He'd been shot in the leg and the shoulder, but he could walk. He was nearly out on his feet, but anxious to get out of town. He had a big black tin suitcase in the sedan. I put it in the station wagon at his request. Our luggage, Vince's and mine, was already there in the station wagon. We'd put it in at noon. Vince gave me a bottle of fluid and told me to go wipe the decal off the side of the sedan. I did so, and dropped the small bottle in the gutter. I drove out of town fast."

I told them about giving him crude first aid. I told them the places we had stopped, the time we made, about Vince's infection and about bribing the doctor—at Vince's request.

"You must have heard about the murder of Zaragosa. There were enough details in the press and on the radio so that you must have known Biskay was involved in it. Didn't you question him? You didn't contract for anything like that."

"Yes, of course. Vince assured me that he had not killed Zaragosa. He said somebody else had come along with the same idea."

"What idea?"

"Taking whatever it was Zaragosa had."

"The black tin suitcase?"

"I guessed that was it."

"Did he tell you what was in the suitcase?"

"No. I know it was damn heavy."

"When did he give you your money?"

"The first night out of Tampa. In Stark, Florida."

"Did it occur to you the suitcase might contain money?"

"I thought of it, but it seemed too heavy."

"Did he mention any names?"

"Yes. Some woman named Carmela. I read about her in the paper. She was killed when a plane crashed that

she was flying. He said it belonged to a man named Melendez, the man he had been working for."

"No other names?"

"Maybe. But I can't remember any."

"How about a man named Kyodos? Did he mention that name?"

"It doesn't ring any bell. I'm not saying he didn't, but I just can't remember."

"What denomination was the money he paid you?"

"Hundreds. All in hundreds. Two hundred and fifty of them. He said the money was safe to spend, that it wasn't marked or anything."

"But you couldn't drive him to Atlanta."

"No. He was too badly hurt to catch the plane he wanted."

"So you offered to let him come to your house again."

I tried to look embarrassed. "It wasn't exactly an offer. I mean I felt that he was asking me to share a risk I didn't know enough about. So I wanted to be paid for taking that risk. So . . . we dickered. And finally agreed on another twenty thousand. In advance."

"What denominations?"

"Just the same. All hundreds."

"And still you hadn't decided the black suitcase held money?"

"I'd become a little more certain it might be money."

"Did you ask him?"

"Yes. Several times. He didn't want to tell me. When he was sick I tried to look in it. It was locked. I thought about busting it open but decided against it. After all, he'd gotten hold of me because he felt he could trust me. And he could trust me. We went through a lot together. I ... I thought a lot of him until ... he took off with my wife."

"We'll get to that later, Jamison. Now let's go through the Tampa thing again in more detail. Everything you can remember. I particularly want to know if Biskay seemed very wary, if he had any idea he might be followed."

"He seemed a little jumpy." 134

"In what way? What did he say to give you that impression? What did he do that led you to believe that?"

And so it went. I stuck to my yarn of the guy in the chauffeur's hat. I couldn't be certain, but I felt that I was getting it across. When I had been able to stick to the truth it had been easy to answer their questions. But with one lie added, I had to keep constantly on the alert to avoid any inconsistency. Yet I had to give the impression of being as relaxed as when I had been telling them of Central Burma. It was singularly exhausting, particularly when they gave the impression of not being entirely satisfied with my story.

At four o'clock there was another ten-minute break. They went into the bedroom and talked in low tones to each other. Then they started again. They were concerned now about what had happened after I had brought Vince back to the house. I had been over it enough times with Paul Heissen so that I felt a little more confident.

Barnstock came up with a jim-dandy question. "Jamison, does it seem inconsistent to you that Biskay should take off with your wife?"

"I don't think I know what you mean."

"You've painted a picture of your wife as a lush, and a tramp. Biskay had made a big haul. He's a clever man. An unreliable woman could be dangerous to him. Isn't she precisely the sort of woman he wouldn't take with him?"

They were both looking at me intently. I swallowed. "I see what you mean. Of course. But he wasn't in good physical shape. And she had transportation. I suppose he could figure that . . . they could go hole up somewhere until he was able to take off alone. He knew from the clipping I showed him that he had to take off. And I certainly was in no mood to help him. You can understand that. Hell, maybe he even made her an offer of money. She's pretty . . . greedy."

They seemed to buy it, but I couldn't be certain. They moved to other questions. At seven we went to my house. I got the money from the bureau. Quellan read the serial numbers onto the tape. I thought they were going to im-

pound it. Instead it was handed back to me. I stood, holding it, staring stupidly at them.

"I guess you earned it, Jamison," Barnstock said in a nasty way. "You better declare it as income. That wraps it up for now. Maybe we'll be back."

I walked to the front hallway with them.

"Is it against the rules for you guys to enlighten me a little about what's going on?"

They turned on me with identical expressions of cold amusement. Quellan looked questioningly at Barnstock, who nodded.

Quellan said, "Your old pal used you for a sucker, Jamison. We're in it because of the international implications. We've got to prove that the Federal Government had no part of any secret deal to sell or supply arms to anybody. Biskay used you to help lift some very heavy funds. At least a million. Maybe five. He had his hidey hole all planned. And, my friend, several groups of very rough people know there was that much and very probably know who lifted it. And they will go to great lengths to get hold of that much money. We traced you. They can trace you. I think you're standing out in the cold cold breeze, boy. They won't use a tape recorder. They'll want a lead on Biskay and the black suitcase. They'll keep asking."