Chameleon (7 page)

4

It was an enormous room, menacing in its darkness, the hand sculpted molding around its ten-foot ceilings vaguely discernible in the eerie shadows cast by one small Oriental lamp in a corner. Bare hardwood floors glistened like the surface in an ice-skating rink; corners were pools of shadows. The only windows in the room, lining one entire wall, had once been exterior French doors, now glassed in to reveal a windowless hothouse filled with tropical ferns and flowerless leafy plants. The three or four small grow lights on the floor of the hothouse accentuated its greenery but succeeded only in creating ominous silhouettes of what little furniture there was in the main room.

The temperature in the room was exactly 82 degrees; it was always exactly 82 degrees.

The place was as quiet as a library. Except for the incessant ticking, like a time bomb ticking away the minutes of someone’s life.

Near the door was an ensemble of leather furniture: two large easy chairs and a seven-foot sofa separated by a low teak coffee table. The end tables were made of matching teak, and each held a Philippine basket lamp. The coffee table was empty except for a single oversized Oriental ashtray.

Two of the other three corners were bare except for antique temple dogs that squatted angrily under tall leafy ferns.

The other corner was dominated by a large oak campaign desk with eight hard-back chairs in front of it. The top of the desk was bare except for an old-fashioned wooden letter file, a large ashtray, a leather-bound appointment book and an elaborate red Buddha lamp with an old-fashioned fringed lampshade and a pull string.

And the box.

It was a plain white box about the size of a large dictionary. There was a red ribbon around it with a large frivolous Christmas bow.

The chair behind the desk loomed up like a throne, its giant back rising into the darkness. A cloud of smoke eddied out from the dark tombstone of the chair. ‘The only lamp on iii the room was the Buddha lamp. It slanted an eerie light over the desk, casting the white box in harsh shadows. Its heat sucked the smoke away from the chair, sent it swirling in little whirlpools, up through the lampshade.

There was a sound in the box, a scurrying. The top moved slightly, and then was still again.

The man in the chair moved forward. His long, narrow, skeletal head was topped by thin strands of white hair, carefully brushed from one side to the other. His cheeks were deeply drawn, each line and wrinkle accentuated by the light from the single lamp; his jaw tight, the -veins standing out along its hard edge like strands of wire. It was a face from the past, from history books and old newsreels and magazines, a stern, hawklike face, promising victory while defeat was still sour in his mouth, a vengeful face that conjured memories of the wrath of Moses and the zeal of John Brown.

General Hooker. The Hook. He had been called a military genius, compared by militarists and historians to Alexander the Great, Stonewall Jackson and Patton. Hooker, chased out of the Philippines by the Japanese early in the war, becoming the architect of the Pacific War, plotting every strategic move, studying every island as he edged closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.

Hooker had almost become a legend.

That son of a bitch, he said to himself. He was thinking about Douglas MacArthur. Dugout Doug, who had run the war from Australia while the Hook plodded wearily from one bleak atoll to the next in the bloody march toward Japan. True, the old bastard was quick with the praise as Hooker scored the victories, but he knew just what to say to the press, and when to say it, and ultimately the mantle of victory fell on MacArthur’s shoulders. There was no way to top the son of a bitch. On the day Corregidor fell, one of the blackest days in American history, while everyone else was in a panic over how to tell the public, the old bastard had turned the melee into a personal victory chorus with his goddamn ‘I shall return.’ It had become a slogan, a war cry, the ‘Remember the Alamo’ of World War II. But, even the Hook had to hand it to the old s.o.b., it was also a promise of victory, said with such stalwart authority that no one ever doubted him. And when he did get back, with that I have returned’ shit, everybody knew it was all over. The photographs even made the old bastard look like he was walking on water, just in case there were any heretics around.

So MacArthur became the legend, and the Hook became a mere folk hero, along with Wainwright, Chennault, Stilwell, and a few others.

After that, there was nothing but disaster ahead. Hooker could see it coming. People were tired of war. MacArthur got the sack in Korea. A hot war was brewing in Indochina. And the Hook knew the Orient, knew that Vietnam, as it would come to be known, was no place to be.

Screw it.

Let Westmoreland or some other daisy take the rap for Vietnam. The Hook hung it up and retired. There were other things to do.

Two years later the rigors of those years claimed their toll. A massive coronary almost killed Hoo.ker. The ticking in the room came from deep in his chest; a pacemaker, flawed yet effective, and much too dangerous for doctors to replace. It was a constant reminder of his mortality and would one day be a harbinger of his death. When its ominous note stopped, for that fraction of a moment before everything stopped with it, Hooker would know he was a dead man. In the meantime he continued to defy the odds; he was pushing seventy-five, but he still had the brilliance and the obsessions of a man much younger.

There was a knock on the door.

‘If that’s you, Garvey — come!’

The voice, too, was unforgettable. Deep, commanding, authoritative, intimidating and yet paternal; a voice that engendered every word with reassurance. A war correspondent had once written: ‘To know what God sounded like, one need only hear General Alexander Lee Hooker speak.’

The door opened and Garvey entered the room. He was Hooker’s oldest friend as well as his closest wartime aide, and although both had been retired for at least fifteen years, Garvey, who was a year shy of sixty, still carried himself with the ramrod posture of a Marine honour guard. He stood at attention in front of the desk. Hooker and Garvey, two men, born to the khaki, their hearts and minds shaped inexorably by the cry of the bugle, retired into an alien world of peace lovers where they still fantasized about that one last battle to ride out to, even though the dream had died years before; two men whose friendship stood second only to the charade they continued to play.

‘Good evening, General,’ Garvey said. ‘Happy New Year.’

His eyes strayed to the box.

Hooker’s harsh blue eyes stared with hatred across the long Irish clay pipe he was smoking and foe used on the box.

‘Thanks, Jess. And you. At ease, have a seat.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Let’s deal with pleasant things first.’ He reached behind him, into the gloom, to the bottle of champagne nestled in a silver bucket on a small table behind his chair. He poured two glasses and handed one to Garvey.

‘To the Division,’ he said. Garvey echoed the toast and their glasses rang in the solitude of the room. Garvey took a sip, smacked his lips and leaned back, staring up into darkness.

‘Taittinger, definitely.’ He took another sip, pursed his lips, let the bubbles tickle his tongue. ‘Uh, ‘seventy-one, I’d say.’

The older man laughed. ‘Can’t fool you. Never could. Well, here’s to the years. Been a long time, Jess.’

‘Forty years exactly, General. I joined your staff at Hickam Field on New Year’s Eve, 1939. I was a nineteen-year-old shavetail.’

‘Best I ever saw. I used to tell my officers, “That Garvey, he can be another Custer. He’ll have a star before he’s thirty.”

‘Didn’t quite make it by thirty,’ Garvey said.

‘Hmmp. There were a lot of disappointments in that war. And the rest to follow. Goddamn that old son of a bitch, playing politics at the last minute. He should have fought Truman over Hiroshima. They should have let us go in there and do it right. We deserved that shot. Damn, we deserved it. He got to do his act in the Philippines. We earned the right to Japan.’

It was a complaint heard frequently when the two men were together.

He looked down in the glass, watching the bubbles tumble to the surface. ‘What the hell,’ he said finally, ‘it’s all just history. Kids sleep through it in classrooms. They’re all gone now, anyway. Bless ‘em all. At least we won it. It’s the last goddamn war we won.’ And he raised his glass again.

‘May I smoke?’ Garvey asked.

‘Of course, Jess. Smoking lamp’s always lit for you.’

Hooker reached into a desk drawer, took out a box wrapped in silver paper and slid the package across the desk.

‘A little something to start the new year off right, Jess. With thanks for all the good years.’

It was a tradition with them, exchanging gifts on New Year’s Eve. Garvey handed a slightly smaller package to Hooker.

‘And Happy New Year to you, General.’

He stared back at the box for a moment, then watched as Hooker opened his present. It was a watch fob, a replica of the insignia of the First Island Division, The Hook’s old regiment, forged in gold with the motto ‘First to land, first to win’ inscribed across the bottom of two crossed bayonets.

Hooker was visibly moved.

‘By God, old man, that’s something to cherish. Yessir, I’ll be wearing that when they put me away.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Garvey said and smiled with satisfaction. There was a sound from the box. A scraping sound. Garvey cast a nervous glance toward it but said nothing.

‘Well, sir, your turn,’ Hooker said, and Garvey tore the silver paper from around his gift. It was a pewter wine goblet, hand-crafted, with the artist’s name etched in the base, and inscribed on its side were the words ‘Major General J. W. Garvey, US Army (Ret.).’

Garvey held up the chalice by the stem. ‘Beautiful, sir. Has a great feel to it.’

‘Well, I know your love for the grape, old man. About time you had a proper goblet.’

There was a more urgent sound from the box. The top moved again, just a hair.

Hooker struck a match and relit his pipe. ‘It came about an hour ago,’ he said, without looking at the box. ‘Done up like a goddamn Christmas present, that bloody heathen.’

He opened the center desk drawer and took out a knife, a malicious stiletto with a curved blade and a hand-tooled leather handle. He slid its razor edge under the string, turned the box slightly and snipped the string off. With the point of the knife he lifted the lid and slid it slowly back.

They heard it before they saw it. Scratching, slithering along the bottom of the box and up the side.

Hooker saw its horns first, the two tusks protruding straight out from over its eyes, the third, like a needle, between them. Then its head peered over the side of the box.

It was bright-green to start with, its eyes lurking under hoods of wrinkled skin, its tail switching slowly back and forth.

Eighteen inches long or so, he guessed. Hooker knew the species, all eighty kinds of Chamaeleontidae. For thirty-six years now, he had been studying them. This one was the Chameleon jacksoni. African, most likely, although it might have come from Madagascar, its eyes moving independently, looking for prey before they focused together and the tongue struck. And arrogant — they were all arrogant.

It crawled down the side of the box and very slowly across the desk to the base of the lamp and then just as slowly up over the belly of the Buddha. It changed slowly, its eyes picking up the change in the light rays of the new colour, signalling down the nervous system to the pigment cells in the skin, first mud-brown, then beige, then pink, then blood-red, like a salamander. Its tongue continued to work the air, its head turned, its stony eyes studying the darkness beyond the desk. Then it switched again and moved on t the letter box.

Hooker watched it turn again, this time to the colour of teak.

He reached in the box and took out a note. His hand trembled as he read it.

‘What’s it say?’ Garvey asked.

Hooker handed it to him. There were three names on the slip of paper:

AQUILA

THOREAU

WOLFNAGLE

‘He’s everywhere,’ Hooker croaked, ‘he’s like the mist, like some foul fog.’ He tilted the box, looked inside and paused for a moment before reaching in and taking out a man’s gold watch. He turned it over and read the name engraved on the back.

‘We’ve still got Bradley,’ Garvey said. ‘He’s one of the best assassins in the world. If anybody can terminate Chameleon, he can.’

‘Afraid not,’ Hooker whispered and his voice quivered with rage. This is Bradley’s watch.’

A true friend always stabs
you
in the front

—OSCAR WILDE

I

The frigid February wind swept in off Boston Bay, and Eliza Gunn and George Gentry huddled in the arched doorway to avoid the stinging snow that was swept along with it. The car was half a block away. James, the sound man, a latter-day hippie who was only slightly larger than Eliza, would be sitting in there with his cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes and the heater on, listening to the Top Forty while they froze their onions here on Foster Street.

It had been four days since they started following Ellen Delaney, making like the FBI, changing cars twice a day, keeping in touch on CB Channel 11. So far, it had been a waste of time. But by now George knew better than to bitch. The minute he did, the Delaney dame would o something dumb. And they would score. It always turned out that way. Eliza had strange instincts, but they worked. So he kept his mouth shut and turned the collar of his jacket up a little higher and pulled his head down into it. ‘I’m catching pneumonia,’ he said. ‘Somebody ought to put a sticker on your butt, It should say:

“Caution, the Surgeon General has determined that Eliza Gunn is dangerous to your health.”

‘A big guy like you, complaining,’ she said. ‘You should be ashamed.’

‘There’s three times as much of me to get cold,’ he growled.

George Gentry was over six feet tall, and his weight ranged between two-twenty and two-fifty, depending on how well he was eating. Eliza Gunn was barely five feet and weighed ninety-eight pounds, no matter what the ate. Mutt and Jeff, freezing their onions in a doorway because Eliza had a hunch.

‘How come James always gets the car and I always get the Street?’

‘He drives better than you do.’

‘I’ll be goddamned!’

‘Now, Georgie—’

‘Don’t gimme any of that sweet-talkin’ shit.’

‘Trust me, Georgie-boy. My instincts are going crazy. All my Systems are on go.’

‘The last time this happened,’ George said ruefully, ‘I had four Mafia torpedoes baby-sitting me while I shot your exclusive interview with Tomatoes What’sisname.’

‘Garganzola.’

‘Hell, his name isn’t Garganzola. Tomatoes Garganzola sounds like something off a Mexican menu. I thought at any minute you were gonna ask the wrong question and we were all gonna end up in the foundation of some bridge somewhere.’

‘But I didn’t. Besides, Tomatoes was cute.’

‘Right. The DA’s after him, the Feds are after him, everybody but the goddamn Marine Corps was on his ass, for every felony on the books — and you, fer Chrissakes, think he’s cute.’

‘It won us an Emmy, Georgie.’

‘I work for wages, not glory.’

‘Oh, bullshit.’

And George started to laugh. He always laughed at her profanity. It was like hearing a child cuss.

She ignored the cold, watching the office building through binoculars.

‘If we had—’ he began.

‘George!’

‘Hunh?’

‘There she is,’ Eliza said.

‘Lemme see.’

She handed him the binoculars. ‘Coming out of the bank building, in the mink jacket.’

‘How about the blond hair?’

She took the glasses and zeroed in on the Delaney woman

— tall, over five-ten, and stacked. Eliza checked her out again, especially the legs, the walk: It was Ellen Delaney, all right. She was positive. ‘It’s a wig. Look at the coat. I’d know that mink anywhere. She was wearing it the day Caldwell disappeared. Must have cost ten thou at least.’

‘You know how many mink jackets there are in the city of Boston?’

‘Not like that one. That’s a sweetie-pi e mink, George.’

The woman, holding her jacket closed with gloved hands, started up Foster toward Congress.

‘That’s just the kind of coat the head of the biggest bank in Boston would give his honey,’ she said, still watching.

‘Now what?’ George asked.

‘She’s hoofing it toward Congress,’ Eliza said. ‘Gimme the walkie-talkie. I’ll follow her; you go back to the car with James and stand by, just in case she decides to make her move.’

‘Which you’re convinced she will.’

‘Sooner or later. She’s a lady in love, George, and I know how a woman in love thinks. She’s going to want to see her man.’

She grabbed the walkie-talkie and took off on the run, her short legs propelling her along the snow- swept Street, her short black hair dancing dervishly in the wind. George walked around the corner to Eliza’s car, a dark green Olds whose front end looked as though it might have been used, on more than one occasion, as a battering ram. He climbed in and flicked off the radio.

‘You’re not gonna believe it,’ George said to the sound man, ‘but she actually spotted the Delaney woman.’

‘Oh, I believe it,’ James said and laughed. ‘I been wrong too often not to believe it.’

‘You know how she spotted her?’

‘Tell me.’

‘The mink coat.’

James laughed again. ‘Neat,’ he said, ‘if she’s right.’

Five more minutes in that goddamn doorway, I woulda been in intensive care.’

Eliza followed the tall woman in the mink coat along Foster to Salem to Congress. The woman entered a drugstore and went straight to the prescription counter in -the rear.

Eliza crossed the street, looking at the posters in front of a theatre, her back to the store. ‘This is E.G., you reading me?’ she said into the walkie-talkie.

‘Gotcha,’ George answered.

‘Salem and Congress, across from the Rexall drugstore. Get in close.’

‘On the way.’

Ellen Delaney got a package, signed the slip and came out. She started up Congress again, then suddenly veered across the street to Eliza’s side, flagged a cab, jumped in and headed back down Congress in the opposite direction.

‘Oh, shit!’ Eliza said to herself.

The green Olds appeared seconds later and she jumped in. ‘U-turn! She’s in the Yellow Cab heading back that way,’ she yelled.

James swung the Olds in a tight turn, cut in front of a truck, almost went up on the curb, and screeched off after the taxi. ‘Is she on to us?’ he asked.

‘Nah,’ said Eliza, ‘she’s just seen too many James Bond movies,’

‘They’re headin’ for the tunnel,’ James said.

‘Shit, Caldwell wouldn’t be caught dead in North Boston,’ George answered.

‘That’s probably what he hopes everybody thinks,’ Eliza said. They followed the cab through the tunnel and out into the north side. It moved slowly, weaving through the trucks and vans that choked the narrow streets of the market section.

‘That slowed her down,’ James said.

The cab turned into a quiet street of restored town houses and stopped. The woman got out, looked around and went inside one of the houses.

‘He’s in there. Betcha a week’s salary.’

‘Instinct again, Gunn?’ George said sceptically.

‘Guessing,’ she said. ‘We’ve been on her for — what, four days now? Caldwell’s a diabetic. I’m betting she just picked up his insulin for the week.’

‘Wanna cruise down past the place?’ James asked.

‘Let’s just cool it and see what happens. I don’t see her Mercedes anywhere.’

‘Lemme see the glasses a minute,’ George said, and began to appraise the street. He focused on the house she had entered.

‘It’s got a garage built in,’ he said.

‘So much for the missing Mercedes.’

‘Where’s the equipment’?’ Eliza asked.

‘Back seat on the floor, in case we need it fast.’

‘Good.’

‘If he’s in there, he’s not coming Out,’ George said. ‘We’re dealing with a sports freak, George, he jogs five miles a day,’ Eliza said. ‘How long can he stay holed up without coming up for air?’

‘If he’s in there,’ George said.

‘Yeah,’ said James, ‘and if he is, what’s to say he hasn’t been jogging every morning? Nobody’s looking for him over here.’

‘Well,’ George said, ‘at least it’s someplace new. We sure know all her other haunts.’

‘I got that feeling,’ Eliza said.

Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty. Thirty. Nothing. George casually checked out the street again through the binoculars.

James said, ‘Mooney’s gonna have all our asses if we don’t come up with something, soon. Four days following this maybe girl friend around.’

‘She’s his girl friend. No maybe about it.’

‘She’s probably got the flu, picked up some nose drops,’ James said.

‘Maybe not,’ George said. ‘Lookee here.’

The garage door was slowly rising.

‘Take it,’ Eliza said. ‘Block the driveway so she can’t get out.’

James threw the Olds in reverse and backed crazily down the street. He screeched to a stop in front of the driveway just as the Mercedes started out. Eliza was out of the car on the run.

Jonathan Caldwell was in the car with Ellen Delaney. Ellen Delaney put the stick in reverse and headed back into the garage, but Eliza ran alongside the car and into the garage before the door swooshed shut.

There they were. A Mexican stand-off. Caldwell, who had once been a middleweight boxer at Harvard, glared at her through the windshield, his ice-blue eyes afire with anger. Eliza glared back.

‘You’re trespassing,’ he said finally his voice trembling with rage.

‘Mr Caldwell, do you know who I am?’

‘I know who you are,’ he said flatly.

‘Mr Caldwell, nobody’s heard yon side of this mess. I’ll make a deal. I’ll give you five minutes. You can say anything you want.’

‘And if I refuse?’

Eliza stared at him and said nothing for a moment. Then she smiled. ‘You wouldn’t do that. You’re too smart to pass up five minutes of free air time.’

He nodded toward his girl friend. ‘She’s out of it. It’s just you and me.’

‘You got it.’

When the garage doors opened up again, a minute or two later, the boys were facing it. George had the video camera on his shoulder and James was plugged in and they were ready to shoot. They knew their Eliza very well.