Vertical Run (21 page)

She nodded, but she wasn’t believing him. “Okay. Suppose it’s possible. What’s your evidence?”

“There isn’t any. Not real evidence. It’s all circumstantial—the way they talk, the high-tech gear they carry, how easy it is for them to order telephones tapped, the fact that Ransome read my Army personnel jacket, the fact that everyone on his side seems to have a Beltway address. And the other thing is Harry Halliwell. My friend Harry, who tried to brain me with a coffee pitcher. He’s a big kahuna, a real political rain-maker. If he’s on Ransome’s team, it has to mean that important people are involved.”

“I still don’t buy it … unless … Do you think it could be something to do with Vietnam?”

“Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know. Something happened there. I was in the middle of it. But I wasn’t the only one involved. If they wanted to silence us, they’d have to come after all of us. Besides, they covered it up—another conspiracy, by the way, a conspiracy of silence. And anyway, it was too long ago. There’s nothing left, there’s nobody that cares. Nobody ever really did.”

“Can you … will you tell me? I mean, maybe you’ve forgotten something.”

Dave’s voice dropped. He almost growled. “Forgotten? Not very goddamned likely. I haven’t forgotten a thing. I wish I could.”

“But …”

“No, Marge. You don’t want to know, and I don’t want to tell you. Just take my word for it. It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s been going on today. It can’t.”

“If you say so. But then why do these people, why would anyone want to kill you?”

Dave threw his arms up at the ceiling. “That’s the sixty-four dollar question. My guess is that I’ve seen or heard something I shouldn’t have. Damned if I know what. But whatever it is, the idea of my knowing it scares the living daylights out of some very powerful people.”

“Scares?” She took a deep drag on the cigarette. Dave sighed.

“Exactly. Scared that I’ll go public. Scared that once I figure out what it is that I know, I’ll blow the whistle. I did that once—blew the whistle. They never forget you if you do that. They never forgive you either.”

“Is that what you’re saying? That they’re afraid you’ll expose … expose whatever it is they’re doing? That they want to kill you because you’re a whistleblower?”

“Maybe, only they’d use stronger words than whistleblower.’ But, yes, it’s possible. In the Army—in the old days—we used the phrase ‘plausible deniability.’ That meant that the senior officers could deny they knew what we were doing. It meant that whatever shenanigans we pulled off, we had to make sure our bosses had the option of saying, ‘Hey, this was a rogue operation. Totally unauthorized. Contrary to orders. Don’t blame us. We didn’t know a thing about it.’ ”

“ ‘Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept it …’ ”

“Something like that. I’ll tell you one other thing. Whatever it is, it’s something that no one is supposed to
know about. Something that no one can afford to have disclosed. The kind of something that makes angry congressmen hold public hearings and reporters from
The Washington Post
bay at the moon.”

“Iran-Contra.”

“For example.”

His eyes had drifted away from Marge’s face. As if they had a will of their own, they were …

You’re looking at her legs again, pal You really shouldn’t do that
.

“Then the reason they’re after you and the reason they’re scared is that you can destroy their cover, their ability to disavow all knowledge of … knowledge of … whatever it is.”

Dave took another sip of brandy. He was feeling warmer now, and a little loose. He set the glass down. Getting tipsy would not be a good thing. “You know what’s weird? What’s weird is that they were going to make me a part of it. I mean if that letter was real, not a forgery I mean, then the FBI was doing a check on me because someone wanted to reactivate my old security clearance.”

“But if they were doing that, why are they trying to kill you now?” She shifted her posture, tucking one leg beneath another. Dave caught a glimpse of pale pink panties.

Speaking personally, it is probably a good thing your balls are black and blue
.

“That’s the other sixty-four dollar question. Maybe they found something in their background check that made them think I’m a bad risk. Maybe by the time they found it, someone had said something to me that I wasn’t supposed to hear. I don’t know. All I can say is that it had to have happened within the past few days. Maybe within the past twenty-four hours. Bernie was exhausted. He hadn’t gotten any sleep. Ransome and Carlucci hadn’t shaved. They’d been up all night. And everything they’ve done to catch me has been on the fly—a seat of the pants operation.
They’re making it up as they go. There isn’t any plan. That’s the only reason I’m still alive. Ransome is no rookie. If he’d had the time to lay out a nice detailed plan of operations, I would have been bagged and tagged before breakfast.”

She gave him a sympathetic look, and pointed a finger at his empty glass. “Would you like another drink?”

Dave thought, Yes! You have one too!

“No.”

“So what have you done the past few days? What have you seen? Who have you talked to?”

“Marge, I’ve racked my brains. There is nothing. Absolutely nothing. I spent the weekend out on Long Island with Scotty and Olivia Thatcher. Sunday night I picked Helen up at the airport. She’d …”

“Helen?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife.” Her voice was as neutral as the look she gave him. She tucked both legs away out of sight.

You took off your wedding ring, pal. Remember? The lady’s been operating under a misconception
.

“Ahh … she’d been out in California for an old college friend’s wedding. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I went to the office. Business as usual. Meetings, conferences, papers to review, decisions to make, calls to return. All routine except that I had to go back out to Long Island on Wednesday for a meeting, and on Monday night I had to play host to some visitors from Japan.”

“Excuse me for a minute.” Marge stood up and slipped out of the living room. She left her cigarette burning in an ashtray. Dave looked at it hungrily. He reached for it, felt guilty, stopped himself, reached again, and felt guiltier still.

Let’s try to resist temptation, pal. By which I mean all temptations the flesh is heir to
.

The smoke hung in the air. Dave salivated and suffered until Marge came back.

She was wearing a pair of blue jeans, and was holding
a long-haired tabby cat in her arms. Earlier Marge had sat curled on the sofa next to him. Now she perched in an easy chair, discreetly separated from Dave by a cheap glass-topped coffee table.

“Nice cat,” Dave said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “What’s her name?”

“It’s a he. His name is Tito. He comes from Colorado.”

“Tito?”

“My older sister married into this enormous extended family. I was out at their ranch this summer. The family patriarch fought with the Yugoslav partisans during World War II. He gave me the cat and named him for me.” She put the animal down on the floor.

Dave stretched out a hand to stroke it. The cat hissed, snapped its fangs, and took a wobbly step out of his reach.

“Careful—I just had the vet fix him,” Marge said. “He’s still in a bad mood from the operation.”

“Oh. Sure. That explains …”

Yup, that explains it, doesn’t it?

Ice formed in Dave’s veins.

There it is. Right in front of your nose. That has to be it, pal. It couldn’t be anything else
.

No, it wasn’t possible.

“Are you all right?” Marge’s voice was concerned.

Dave looked doubtfully at the brandy glass in his hand. He tossed the dregs down his throat, stood, and quite carefully dropped the glass so that it shattered on the floor.

David Elliot sped east on the Long Island Expressway. He passed the exit to Great Neck, home of the overly amorous Greg, whose clothes he was again wearing. Dave suspected that Greg might currently be viewing monogamous family life as a more desirable—or at least less risky—alternative to being the office Casanova.

He rubbed his hand across the top of his newly smooth head. While Marge, who unlike many New Yorkers had a driver’s license, went to get a rental car, he had snipped, then shaved himself a new hairline. Then he had bathed his remaining hair in peroxide. The effect was curious. Now blond and balding, he thought he looked to be a wholly different man, albeit not one whose appearance he much liked. The hairdo was a bit on the effeminate side. If there had been any of Ransome’s watchers stationed on the Triborough Bridge, they had ignored him.

He wondered if Marge had left yet. He hoped so. And he hoped she would forgive him for stealing her rent-a-car keys and the contents of her wallet while she was in the bathroom. He had decided he had to betray her one more time while she’d been out at the Hertz office. While waiting for her return he had hastily pecked out an explanation on her old electric typewriter:

The one thing he hadn’t mentioned in the note was his fear that, if he hadn’t run out on her, she would insist on answers, or worse, insist on coming with him. It was better she didn’t know anything. Ignorance would be her best protection.

He glanced at the odometer. The car, a low-priced Korean import, was new. It had 215 miles on it when Dave pulled away from Marge’s apartment. Now it had 247. He had another thirty or so miles to go.

A voice on the radio announced that it was time for the headlines. Dave turned up the volume. “At the top of the news this hour, a citywide manhunt is under way for David Perry Elliot, alleged killer of New York businessman Bernard J. Levy. Levy, president of the multi-billion dollar conglomerate Senterex, was hurled from his forty-fifth story Park Avenue window earlier this evening. Law enforcement sources report that Elliot is the prime suspect, and state that Levy had recently raised questions about financial affairs that Elliot was responsible for.”

That’s a new wrinkle
.

“Authorities also suspect Elliot of having assaulted police officer William Hutchinson and stolen his uniform and vehicle. Elliot is described as being a white male, six foot one inch tall, weighing 170 pounds, having light brown hair and brown eyes, and in good physical condition. He is described as armed and highly dangerous. Citizens are asked to immediately notify the police if they observe anyone answering to the description. In other news today …”

Dave lowered the volume.

Up ahead a road sign announced
PATCHOGUE
—24
MILES
.
His exit.

He’d been there only the day before. He’d traveled in a chauffeur-driven limousine, one of the four kept ready for the use of Senterex executives. Given the midday traffic, it had taken him nearly two hours to get from Senterex’s offices to Lockyear Laboratories. Now, late in the evening, it would take less than an hour.

It has to be Lockyear Laboratories, doesn’t it? That’s the only place Ransome could have gotten your blood sample
.

Divisional facilities tours are one of the more wearisome burdens of executive life. A visiting prince from the corporate castle is dispatched to an outlying fiefdom, there to be greeted in a musty reception area by a nervously smiling plant manager. This manager shepherds the travel-worn visitor into a freshly scrubbed conference room. He offers his guest a cup of ill-tasting coffee. Courtesy demands it be taken and sipped. Shortly the division’s four or five most senior people troop into the room. Today their shirts are fresh, their collars buttoned, and their tie knots tight. They are wearing suit jackets, which on all occasions other than ones like this slowly wrinkle behind their office doors. The guest stands, shakes hands, and tries unsuccessfully to memorize their names. The local manager walks to the head of the conference table, fumbles with a projection screen and turns on an overhead projector. He says that he has a few transparencies that will describe his operation. He rarely gets to talk to corporate management, and intends to make the most of this opportunity. The visitor tries to look interested. He’s not. Someone dims the lights. The visitor no longer needs to look interested because now no one can see his face. The local manager drones through an interminable presentation about his operation. Founded after World War II by the elder son of an emigrant tinker; graphs illustrating a forty year history of steady growth; organizational chart in tiny print; process schematics of smooth and efficient operations; lists of satisfied customers; more graphs forecasting ambitious growth plans—in summary a family of happy
employees, pleased to have been acquired by a prestigious corporate parent, see a relationship that can only be mutually beneficial. The visitor sits in silence throughout this sermon, either enjoying a relaxing catnap or desperately trying to concoct an intelligent question or two.