Authors: Harry Bingham
‘Gosh – sir! – I mean Captain.’
Willard thrust his legs to the floor, stood up, raised his hand in what started out as a military salute and ended as a strange kind of wave.
‘When you dropped that note to me, the one you enclosed with the movie poster, you said I should look you up. I hope now’s OK.’
‘Gee, Captain, I didn’t hear you knock. How did you get in for that matter? The door was locked, wasn’t it?’
Abe smiled, dangled a passkey from his hand, and dropped it into his pocket. This was the man Willard remembered: the pilot who was always in the right part of the sky at the right time; the pilot who couldn’t be followed, couldn’t be tracked.
‘Is that coffee?’ said the airman.
‘Yes, you want some?’
‘Please.’
‘You want milk? Sugar? The pot’s gotten a little cold. We took breakfast kind of early. If you want, I could call room service. They’re not always too fast, but I could hurry ’em up, if you –’
‘Black. It’s fine. I don’t mind it cold.’
Willard poured coffee from the hotel’s silver coffee pot into a white porcelain coffee cup. He put the cup on its tiny saucer and passed it over to his one-time commander. While cup and saucer were in Willard’s hand, they jigged a tinkling dance of nervousness. When Abe took the saucer, the cup went instantly still.
Abe smiled again.
‘Nice suite.’
‘Yes, it’s OK, isn’t it?’ said Willard, before instantly regretting the word ‘OK’. He knew his old commander had never been well-off before, wasn’t well-off now. This suite must seem like an unthinkable luxury to him. ‘I mean, it’s great, really. Terrific.’
‘May I?’
Abe pointed to a small wooden chair with a covered seat.
‘Huh, sorry? Oh, sure.’ Willard had already sat down, but now got half-up again, waved at Abe to sit, then sat again. ‘Sorry.’
‘I called unexpectedly.’
‘No, that’s fine. I wasn’t doing much…’
Willard gulped. His brain was in turmoil.
Here was the situation. Abe Rockwell had voluntarily walked into Willard’s room. Willard was bigger, stronger, younger, taller. Abe would hardly be a pushover, but if Willard really wanted to, he was pretty sure he could jump on Rockell, fight him, beat him – capture him, in fact. To put it bluntly, Powell Lambert’s most dangerous enemy had placed himself in Willard’s power.
But here was the strange thing: Willard had no impulse to do anything of the sort. Get up and punch Abe Rockwell in the face? It was unthinkable. He’d likelier punch his own father. Meantime, though he knew he ought to call someone, or interrogate his visitor, or do something, he did nothing at all. He just got tongue-tied, embarrassed, flustered.
‘Things OK on Wall Street?’
‘Sure. Yes. Fine. Busy, always busy.’
‘I’m sorry I never got to see your pictures. I knew others who liked them though. You did well.’
‘Thanks, yes. Some of them weren’t so good, but you know one or two, they did OK. And they’re only pictures, I mean. After all, what can you expect?’
‘That kid you sent the movie poster to, he was thrilled.’
‘Great, that’s great.’
There was a pause. Abe looked down at his coffee cup, swigged it all in one go, then put the cup down.
‘The booze, where did that come into things? How did you get mixed up in all that?’
Willard could hardly be surprised that the question arrived, but he was thrown by it all the same. There was no anger in Abe’s voice, no accusation, not even sadness.
‘The booze? Well, you know, who isn’t mixed up in that? Do you know anyone who doesn’t take a drink now and again? I don’t.’
‘I wasn’t talking about taking a drink now and again.’
Willard felt a moment’s anger. He felt angry at his hangover, angry at Abe’s intrusion, angry at the world. And then he did something odd. He spoke the truth.
‘I got into debt. I made a movie. I mean, my own movie. Produced it, directed it, everything. It wasn’t too bad, only … well, no, I guess looking back, it was a stinker. It’s harder than you’d think. Anyway, I owed money I didn’t have. One thing led to another. I didn’t know about Powell Lambert before I joined them.’
Abe’s quiet eyes rested on the younger man for a moment or two.
‘I’m sorry, Will, that sounds tough.’
‘It was actually. You wouldn’t even guess how tough.’
Willard looked up as though asking forgiveness. Abe nodded as though giving it.
‘These things happen.’
The silence came back into the room. Willard remembered the long pauses of his old commander. To begin with, they’d worried him. He’d tried to fill the gaps with chatter. Later on, he’d come to realise he didn’t need to. These silences weren’t like his father’s domineering silences, they were different, shared. Willard could talk if he wanted to, not if he didn’t. Willard relaxed. He was about to help himself to more coffee, when the phone went, crashingly loud in the quiet room.
‘Excuse me.’
He took the call. It was his father.
‘Willard, my boy, are you up already?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Mixed news, mostly good. McBride is dead. So is Bosse. We haven’t got the judge yet, but we know where his family lives. We don’t see him causing us difficulty. There were some others who got away, but nobody of importance.’
‘And the evidence, Pa? The papers?’
‘We have some of it. The fire service has most of the rest. We’ll ask our friends in the police to retrieve it from the fire service in due course. The police will hand it on to us.’
‘Excellent. That’s excellent. Did you …? Was there …? I mean, was a lot of force required?’
There was a half-second’s pause, which was Junius Thornton’s way to register his irritation at his son’s tongue-tied tendencies.
‘There was very little shooting if that was what you wanted to ask. McBride and Bosse virtually killed themselves, it seems. Our own men took some casualties. Three dead, I believe. Some others wounded.’
‘I see.’
‘And I wanted to thank you. You saw the danger. You alerted us. You were right.’
‘Really, Father, gosh, I had no idea. I didn’t know if you were sore at me. All this waiting around in Washington has been driving me crazy.’
‘Has it? Why?’
‘Well, you know. Nothing to do. Communications cut. That type of thing.’
‘I don’t understand. You were able to speak to whomever you wanted, weren’t you? To come and go as you wanted?’
‘Yes, only … it felt strange, you know, what with everything going on.’
‘Powell felt you might feel close to Rockwell. If so, I can understand it. But feelings can get in the way of good commercial judgement. It seemed to make more sense to keep you away.’
‘Yes, Father. I see.’
‘I had intended for you to enjoy your vacation. Geddes made sure you had everything you wanted, I suppose? Car, driver, arrangements made, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh yes, it wasn’t that.’
‘Good.’
There was a short pause. Willard felt the heat of Rockwell’s gaze on the back of his neck. He felt the pressure of his father’s presence looming from the telephone. He felt squeezed between the two men.
‘I am sending Roeder to you now. That was the reason I phoned.’
‘Roeder?’
‘Rockwell is still at large. He managed to escape. Roeder thinks you may be able to assist.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Roeder’s coming here?’
‘Yes… Are you drunk, Willard?’
‘No, Father.’
‘He’ll be with you in twenty minutes. And well done. I wanted to say well done.’
‘Thank you.’
The two men hung up. Willard swivelled to face Abe, who nodded an enquiry at the phone.
‘Your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘Powell Lambert.’ Abe pronounced the two words as though he’d never heard either of them before. ‘You know, my colleague – my late colleague – Haggerty McBride found Mr Powell easily enough. He never found Mr Lambert.’
‘That was him, my father.’
Abe smiled, as if he had found something to smile at. ‘It makes sense. I couldn’t see you mixed up with mobsters. I thought there was something I wasn’t seeing, else I’d got you figured wrong. Well, your Mr Lambert makes sense of it. I had you right, after all.’
Willard began to say, ‘We aren’t mobsters. We only sell the stuff wholesale. We’re not mixed up with all the rackets on the street.’ But he didn’t. He didn’t get any further than the first two words. Because of course it was true. Roeder and Mason and all the others. They were mobsters. Just because Willard worked on Wall Street and wore a fancy suit didn’t make him any less of a mobster. Instead, he said something that surprised him.
‘You thought I couldn’t be mixed up in it? Because of who I was?’
‘I knew you weren’t perfect, Will, far from it. But I couldn’t see you mixed up in that. Not you.’
Willard scowled at the floor, pleased at what Abe had just said, but scowling because he was about to say something he knew he shouldn’t.
‘McBride and Bosse are dead – but you knew that?’
Abe nodded.
‘The judge is still free, but they have his family…’
‘I understand.’
‘The other folks mostly got away, it seems. As for the evidence you folks collected. It seems like the fire service has most of it. We think … that is, my father thinks…’ Willard tailed off, not wanting to tell his old commander that his final mission had comprehensively failed.
But Abe nodded. ‘You’ll send a few friendly cops down to the fire station to collect it up. The fire guys will hand it over, thinking they’re doing the right thing. Yes, I thought that might happen. We gave it our best shot.’
There was another pause.
‘They’re on their way here now,’ said Willard.
‘Huh?’
‘Roeder.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Willard. I came by here to dig you out of trouble. I think maybe I just created some.’
‘To dig
me
out of trouble?’
All through their conversation, Abe’s hat had lain beside him on a little side-table. He moved the hat to reveal a black cloth-bound ledger.
‘We took four ledgers from the bank. Your name didn’t figure in three of them. It figured a whole lot in this one. I wanted you to have it. To destroy it, or do whatever. If we had won out down there at the warehouse, I wanted you to make yourself safe. But as it is, I guess your man Roeder noticed the missing book. I reckon that’s why he thinks it’s worth a trip over here.’
Willard took the book uncertainly. To be found with it now would be catastrophic. God only knew what his father would think if Willard were found with gifts from the enemy. He shoved the book under the sofa, wondering if Roeder would attempt to search the place. His mouth went dry.
Abe said, ‘Sorry. I was trying to do you a good turn.’
‘I appreciate it.’
‘Do you have any friends in the hotel?’
‘Huh?’
‘I don’t think the couch is the best place to put that. The hotel will have an incinerator in the basement. Perhaps you know someone who could take it there.’
Willard nodded, still dry-mouthed. ‘Good idea.’ He went to the phone, called down to the lobby, asked for the bellhop he knew. The bellhop was there and promised to come up right away. Willard paced the room impatiently until he arrived, then gave the kid the book and a twenty-dollar note. The boy promised to have the thing destroyed immediately.
‘Be sure you do,’ said Abe.
‘Yeah, OK mister, sure.’
The boy left. Willard watched the door close with relief. ‘Gosh, I hope it’s OK to trust him. Maybe I oughta go and watch. These kids, you never know –’
‘He’s fine. You can trust him.’
‘Really? It’s just that –’
‘Will, you don’t want to be running up from the incinerator when Roeder comes knocking.’
‘Jeez, no.’ Willard looked at Abe for a moment, before his belly gave a sudden lurch. ‘But,
jeez,
Captain, you need to get going.’
Abe nodded.
‘But I mean
now
.’
Abe nodded again. He indicated the open window. ‘I can always step out there, if necessary. Don’t worry. I won’t let them find me with you.’
Willard looked, jaw dropped, at the window. Just as he had done when Abe arrived in the room, Willard had the eerie sense that Abe could just step in and out of the sky at will. ‘The window? We’re fourteen floors up here.’
‘There’s a ledge. It runs along to the elevator lobby. If I have to use it, I will. I’ll be fine.’
‘Gosh.’
The pause returned. Then Willard remembered something. He scrambled for his jacket and produced the envelope he’d been carrying around with him. He thrust it into Abe’s hands.
‘Look, I’d got this to give to you if we ever met up. Then everything got so complicated, I couldn’t figure out a way to find you. It’s cash, a passport, and a liner ticket to Sydney, Australia. I figured you’d be safe there.’
Abe didn’t open the envelope. He didn’t even toy with it. He just held Willard’s gaze.
‘That’s big of you, Will. I hadn’t expected it.’
‘You need to leave. Now. Nobody knows about the boat, I swear it. You’ll be safe there. I thought Australia would suit you. Plenty of sky.’
‘Yes, plenty of sky.’
Willard stood up. ‘So long, then.’
Abe shook his head very gently and tossed the envelope back to Willard.
‘I can’t take this, Will.’
‘What? Why not? Don’t worry. It wasn’t much. If you really want, you can pay me back some time. Only you needn’t worry about it. Honestly.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about the money.’
‘Huh?’
‘I’m not leaving. I mean, I won’t be in here when your guy Roeder arrives. But I’m not leaving America. I started a job, you know.’
‘You’re not giving up?’
Abe shook his head.
‘Christ, Captain, we’ve got everything. We’ve got McBride. We’ve got Bosse. Quite soon we’ll have the papers and the judge as well. We’ve got everything. We’ve got half of Washington.’
Abe smiled. ‘I know. That’s why I can’t quit. You understand.’
There was a pause. Willard looked at his watch.
‘How long?’ asked Abe.
‘About fifteen minutes.’
‘OK. I’ll be gone in ten.’
Willard nodded. Abe turned away and rummaged amongst the breakfast things for more coffee and some cold toast.