“The Congress of the United States is not to be intimidated.”
“They’re only men, buddy. If some are afraid to do things the right way, private individuals will do it for them. All Grady has to do is give them the true picture of a few instances and the lid will come down hard. But thanks for the warning anyway.”
“You will be under indictment yourself, Mr. Mann.”
“That won’t be anything new either.”
“It will keep you out of our hair.”
“I’ll make a deal with you.”
“No deals.”
“You have no choice,” I told him. He didn’t answer, but he was still listening. “Call off the dogs until tomorrow. If the air isn’t cleared by then I’ll be around. Well?”
He took his time, finally saying, “All right. Nothing can happen on a Sunday, I’m sure.”
“I’m glad
you
are,” I said.
I ducked out of the booth, got across the street to the diagonal corner and looked at my watch. It took the police car forty-five seconds to get there. Thomas Watford’s methods of tracing a call could use some polishing up. Hell, I gave him enough time.
Wasting a rainy Sunday in the city wasn’t easy. It took two double features in Times Square movie houses to bring me up to supper and then I had another hour before the
Grenoble Theater
opened. To kill off the minutes I walked there, running the pieces of the puzzle through my mind trying to get it to make sense.
War was like that. You stopped the other guy without having to know his schemes or intentions. You just stopped him and it ended right there. If you didn’t, he took over and you’d find out what he wanted the hard way. So now we did it from back to front. Find a killer. Find Vidor Churis and you found who sent him. It wouldn’t be hard to make him talk. I knew enough ways myself. It might take a little time, but that would just make him talk louder and faster. Find out how the Soviets arranged for the leak in our security. Kill Rondine and you stopped the leak. But you had to break up their organization to do it or they’d find another way.
At seven the ticket window opened and I bought the first pasteboard. One more time through the movie and I’d know all the dialog. I was even beginning to make sense out of it already.
I sat there in the semidarkness of the theater with my hand to my face trying to look bored. No more than twenty people came in before the lights dimmed and the picture started. None of them was him.
Had it not been for the slightly furtive manner of the guy I never would have spotted him, but the uneasy glance around he gave and the way he picked his seat was enough. He could have taken the one I had if I hadn’t been there first. Instead, he took the back row on the opposite side, walked through the empty row to the side aisle and sat down. His hands were in his lap and I knew he wasn’t taking any chances either.
There was one advantage going for me. If I had to take him in here he’d be engrossed in the picture. You could see the way he was settling down, nodding at the dialog, pleased with the action the way a kid would be at a cowboy show.
How’s your hand, you pig?
I thought.
My watch said almost eight. If I were going to move, it would have too be now. A fake trip to the men’s room to see if he was covering himself with anyone else, take that one first, then get back to Churis. I wrapped my fingers around the butt of the .45 and thumbed the hammer back off half-cock.
Then the first move came from his side. Another man moved into the darkness of the comer, leaned over and spoke to Churis and I caught a glimpse of white as he passed something to him. He couldn’t see it there, got up and went around the curtain to the lobby.
Damn!
I took the risk of being seen and lifted the heavy drapes behind my head. The two of them were standing there, Churis with his forefinger at a still, awkward angle as he held the note, the other guy facing him as though he was always saying
“Oh!” His mouth was round, all right. There was the puckered scar tissue from a burn all around it and when he wasn’t speaking he held it in that peculiar way that made him look as if he had a hole in his face.
When Churis finished the note he took a quick look around, struck a match and let the paper flare up until it reached his fingers, then dropped the pieces in a standing ash tray filled with sand, stirring up the charred bits into powder. He nodded for the other one to follow him and went out the front door.
I gave them ten seconds, no more. When I spotted them they were on the comer looking for a cab. I saw one coming, going the other way, crossed the street and flagged it down.
When I got in I pointed to the pair still on the comer and told the driver, “Go up a block and swing around. When those guys grab a taxi, follow it.”
The driver looked at my face and gave me a grin. “Police business?”
“Damn right,” I said.
“Think it’ll be a chase?”
“No.”
“Look, if those are the punks who have been pulling a stick-up on the cabbies I can have them locked in tight in five seconds.”
“Never mind, I’ll take care of it.”
“Sure, officer. You want help you can use my radio. We’re the only outfit that’s got ’em,” he said proudly.
“Just follow them.”
He went ahead, made the turn and headed back as Churis and the other one were climbing in a cab. They headed downtown toward the Village with us a half-block behind, well screened by the traffic. The street they turned in was one of the ones due for demolition, a remnant of the original section, now a flat-faced mass of crumbling brownstone and wood of odd shapes and sizes.
Some of the top floors facing north had skylights built into them for the benefit of the artist bunch that seemed to find this place so fascinating and the air was filled with the smells of cooking kept down by the mantle of misty air that lay like a blanket over the city. Each streetlight was a yellow glow encased in haze, throwing no light at all. A yellow-haired guy with a sweater over his shoulders like a cape strutted by walking a collie, but, outside him, the street was deserted.
I got out on the corner, paid off the cab after spotting the building they went into and stood across the street waiting to see if any lights flashed on in the building. None did, so the chances were their apartment faced the back. There were three floors in the building, the cellar being closed with a padlock on the outside.
Two minutes went by.
I crossed over and went inside.
Kids were bawling on the first floor so that wouldn’t be it. On the second floor the strong odor of garlic-charged spaghetti sauce seeped out under the door from the front apartment and the sounds of some kind of soiree from the back one.
That left one possible. The top rear apartment.
The lower stairs had creaked and groaned all the way up and I didn’t want to announce myself to a funeral. I went back down, into the next building and ran up to the top floor. Somebody peered out the door on the second landing when they heard my feet, but went back inside after I passed him. When I reached the door that led to the roof I squeezed the handle, fought it until the latch gave and swung the door outward on rusty hinges.
At the rampart between the two buildings I swung my legs over, grabbed the tiles and let myself down as far as I could go and dropped the remaining two feet to the next level. I hit easily, but stood there anyway in case they heard the thump, the rod in my hand pointed at the kiosk door on the roof. They’d be dead if they came at me through there, not knowing where I stood.
Nothing happened so I started across the roof, trying to keep the gravel from crunching under my feet. I was almost at the door when I saw the pinpoint of light in the roof and made out a V-shaped skylight that had been painted black on the inside. I eased over, knelt down beside it and put my eye close to the one spot that a brush had missed.
They were there all right, talking rapidly in Russian, Vidor Churis pacing the floor like a caged animal. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a flat automatic, checked it absently and put it back, only to glance at his watch. I looked at my own. It was almost eight-thirty.
A quiet Sunday night.
Right on the half-hour he picked up the phone and when he did I plastered my ear to the window to see if I could catch the clicks of the dial and read off the number he was calling. I couldn’t get it all, but I got part of the conversation. It was in English, this time, garbled, but one word came out loud and clear.
Selwick.
He said something else I didn’t get then I heard him hang up and went back to peering through the peephole. Once again the conversation switched languages and Churis was giving the other one instructions. He was reaching for his coat and the other was nodding until Churis was done talking, then he walked over to a chair, switched on the TV and Churis left.
I didn’t bother about noise now. I ran to the door, grabbed the knob and the damn thing came off in my hand! I had to check myself to take it easy and fit it back on the square shaft that protruded through the door. When I did I had to stick the .45 back in the holster to use both hands to turn it. Long ago the door had warped and only opened a foot, but it could have been wide open without doing me any good. From the sill to the landing the stairs were piled high with boxes and the remains of broken baby carriages and there was no way of getting through the mess at all.
Downstairs an outside door slammed shut and I knew Vidor Churis was gone on an assignment. But the other one would know whom he called. I got back to the skylight, saw the guy still in front of the TV with the sound up loud, felt for the metal edge of the glass and hoped it wasn’t locked.
This time I was lucky. It lifted. I set it in place, got a length of broom handle from the junk in the doorway and held it ready. I lifted the skylight, propped it and was through it before the guy in the chair heard me. He came up with a startled yell, stood there immobile as I hit the floor and fell, then made a dash for a table across the room and I knew he was going for a gun. He had it in his hand as I got the .45 out and when he spun around I shot him right through the middle and he folded over backward knocking the table and lamp sidewise in a heap.
Even then he tried to lift the gun, but couldn’t do it. He was dying with his intestines all churned to pieces and hanging out his back and he was still trying to kill me. I knelt down beside him and smelled the fetid odor of his breath mixing with the blood that was spilling onto the floor.
“Churis,” I said. “Where did he go?”
All he did was hate me with his eyes, his mouth in that startled “O” shape, but white now and twisting with pain.
I put the .45 next to the other hole in his belly. “You won’t die any quicker,” I said, “But you’ll hurt more.”
He knew I would do it. He could read my eyes the way I could his and all the fear in his mind overflowed into one garbled, unfinished sentence. “Selwick ... the girl...”
Then he died.
And I knew whom he had called.
Rondine. Edith Caine. If they couldn’t play with Selwick any more they’d make sure he died before he figured out that he had been made a sucker.
I stood there in the middle of the room trying to sort out the possibles, my ears listening hard for the first sound of a siren. From downstairs came a burst of roaring laughter and everybody joining into a raucous party song. Here in the room the TV was going above normal. I let a couple of minutes pass and then I got it. The .45 made a big bang, but for once nobody heard it. Noise was the commonplace here and the other racket drowned it out.
The possibility then. On schedule, Churis called Rondine and was told Selwick could be induced to go to her place and Churis could take him there. How would they do it? Alexis had enough toxic goodies in his apartment to knock off a hundred people, but would have to be better than that.
No, Rondine knew the ropes. She’d be subtle about it. Some of the other things were lining up now. Like the sodium pentothal, truth serum. How easy it could be if Selwick did have to take an occasional needle for his illness. She could switch contents, put Selwick out and question him until she had the answers.
That was Rondine, all right.
Okay, cutie, here Icome.
I went to the door, not the usual door, but a steel, fireproof affair double-locked with heavy Yales and a barrel bolt. Vidor Churis wasn’t taking any chances on somebody busting in on him. He should have thought of doing more to the skylight than painting it black.
I eased out and let the door close behind me. The cops would have a fine time breaking in to see what the stench was that was coming from behind it.
I called Burton Selwick’s apartment from a drugstore and got the clipped voice of a servant on the other end. He said no, he was sorry, but Mr. Selwick had left a short time before. I identified myself as Dr. Lane attached to the American Embassy, saying that I had treated Mr. Selwick when he had his last attack and idly wondered if my British colleague had called earlier. He had wanted to check Mr. Selwick before he attended Monday’s session. Both embassies were naturally concerned.
The servant said yes, Mr. Selwick left in response to a phone call from a woman without saying where he was going. Almost as a second thought I inquired if his employer had been taking the dosage by hypodermic as was prescribed. The man on the other end was quite certain since he had seen marks on his arms at various times.
When I put the phone back the picture was clear and bright. They had been getting Selwick under a needle and extracting the information from him. Now he’d be ready for another dosage and the next day’s plans would be right out in the open.
Then exit Selwick in a convenient “accident.”
I got a cab and reached Edith Caine’s apartment at nine forty-five. The stake-outs had changed, but I spotted them and got inside and looked for the other. He hadn’t changed. He was still watching the elevator cables from the floor below and I went past him on the stairway.