The Lacey Confession (12 page)

Harry's mind raced. Sir Anthony's words faded to background buzz. He stared, in disbelief, at the page Sir Anthony had put before him. It began . . .

I killed the Son Of A Bitch. Goddamn him to Hell forever, so far away from my sweet, dearest Audrey.

After Conchita Crystal had gone back to her hotel, Walter remembered sitting alone on the deck. The rain had stopped. The late afternoon sun was high and hot again, like it had been earlier that morning on the dock. Sailboats were afloat, drifting calmly off the shore of St. John, some of them headed out toward St. Thomas. Others gently rode the breezes in, out, and around the small, uninhabited, hilly islands that lay off in the distance to the north. The intense humidity, that always hugged the rear end of a rainstorm, was the best part. Walter knew some people didn't like it that way, but he was not one of them. The moist, heavy air was like dessert to him, something sweet and delicious. It was a faithful reminder of how much he loved the Caribbean and it was something he missed when work took him much farther north. A good sweat was always satisfying, especially if it took no obligation, no commitment in the way of exercise to bring it on.

She told him quite an amazing story. Conchita Crystal,
the
Conchita Crystal herself. She said her nephew, Harry Levine, had called her from London. He was frantic. He had come into possession of something—“evidence,” he called it. She said that to Walter. She called it evidence. She said that powerful men would kill to get their hands on it, to prevent it from seeing the light of day. The nature of the “evidence” was explosive. Harry had the confession of the man who assassinated JFK. She named the killer—a Frederick Lacey—but it made no difference to Walter. He'd never heard of the guy before. He grilled her about why this man Lacey might have done it, but Chita had no idea. If Harry knew, he hadn't told her. Where did Harry get this confession? brought the same reply. She said she didn't know. Who gave it to him? How did Harry Levine come into possession of such a startling, original document? Again, Chita pled ignorance. What she did know was that Harry had left London, taking with him whatever it was that put him on the run. “He's afraid,” she said. “He knows they're after ‘it' and that means they're after him.” She told Walter where Harry lived, where the Embassy was located in relation to his flat, and she mentioned Harry's well-known dislike for official transportation. “He'll be on his own,” she said. “He walks. He has a bicycle and, if I remember, he had one of those little scooters in France. I'm pretty sure of that.”

Again, Walter questioned her. “What's he going to do about this? He can't simply hide forever.”

“I don't know,” Conchita said. “But I do know they'll find him. That's why you must find him first.”

This was the story she told him on the dock, and she had nothing more to offer later that afternoon, no more details of the confession that had put Harry Levine in mortal jeopardy. When Walter realized she either didn't know any more or—for some reason he had yet to decipher—wouldn't tell him more, he encouraged her to talk about Harry's life in general.

That was his way. Move quickly from generalities to specifics. Don't linger on speculation. Concentrate on facts. Gather information. Walter worked on instinct more than method. It had always been so. His mother told him that as a youngster he was the one she turned to to find her car keys when she'd misplaced them. He never lost things the way other kids did—socks, shoes, homework. And when his friends, even into high school, forgot where they parked their car, plunked down their wallet or put the beer they'd hidden from their parents, it was always Walter Sherman who found these things. In Vietnam, he found people because . . . well, just because. Sure, there was a reason why he did it, but no real method or system to guide him. He seemed to sense the direction he had to move in. When he began doing the same thing for a living, he found many similarities among his targets—that was the word he came to use for the people he was hired to find. He used it unemotionally and without any hint of violence or aggression. No judgment was attached. Those who hired him were clients. Those for whom he searched were targets.

In forty years, Walter's instincts were highly developed. He refrained from pointless guesswork. He tried to deal exclusively with evidence. That didn't mean he didn't think about things, didn't project his target's future actions. It just meant his conjecture required a rock-hard foundation of existing fact. Talking to Conchita Crystal about Harry's life and personality, he hoped to begin constructing that foundation. That's how he began with most of his clients, usually a photograph, a sad tale of despair and woe, a plea for help. And always, in the background, the unspoken monster, the client's fear of failure. Because the rich, the famous and the powerful face possible disaster from the goings-on of almost anybody close to them, his clients often told Walter far more than he needed to know, burdened him, in fact, with details so personal and so irrelevant to his pursuit. Walter saw it as an indication of their vulnerability and it frequently showed him things about them they had not meant to reveal. He looked for those qualities, those hidden secrets, those unintended disclosures in Conchita Crystal. It worried him that he found none. But he listened to her. After all, he needed to start somewhere.

Europeans drink more tea than coffee. While in Turkey and Egypt, Harry had a hell of a time finding a decent cup of coffee, American coffee. How he loved it. After smoking since he was a teenager, he quit at 30, but never cut back on coffee. Some addictions were better than others. The six-cup electric percolator he bought in Philadelphia his first year in law school sat in his London kitchen, still working.

Finding the right beans, the kind needed to make a cup of coffee like Harry could get in any of a thousand roadside Waffle House restaurants scattered throughout the South, was a challenge in Europe, even in London. This was so despite coffee's long history in England. As best Harry could determine, Edward Lloyd opened London's first coffeehouse, in Tower Street, in 1637. It was still a famous establishment today, albeit while keeping its founder's name, it long ago stopped selling coffee and began instead arranging commercial insurance. Other coffee shops played an important role in England's industrial revolution. The once popular Jonathon's Coffee Shop eventually became the London Stock Exchange. Harry knew that, just as he was aware that today coffee was the second most traded commodity in the world, surpassed only by oil. When he finally discovered exactly the blend of beans he was looking for, at Monmouth's Coffee House, he bought in bulk and stored it in his freezer. Harry was like that. His pantry always had a month's supply of things like toilet paper, napkins, garbage bags, toothpaste, the sort of stuff people might run out of if they weren't careful. And, he also had an extra supply of socks and underwear, dress shirts, flashlight batteries, shaving cream and those little things people dropped in their toilets to make the water blue. He kept it all stashed away, neatly stacked, ready to use when needed. He was very careful, very neat, very thorough.

He thought about his meeting with Sir Anthony as he prepared the coffee. The gurgling noise his percolator made was a sound he'd grown familiar with, a sound as real to him as language. He anticipated, as if by some mysterious feel, when its silence would announce the coffee was ready. Once done, he reached for the sugar bowl putting it down next to the milk he had already taken out of the refrigerator. After inhaling a deep smell of the fresh brewed aroma, he poured the coffee into his mug, adding the milk first, then the sugar, and stirred. From the living room he heard a Vivaldi violin concerto playing on the BBC.

Before taking a sip he reached across the small table in his kitchen and pulled the document toward him.
I killed the Son Of A Bitch
kept running through his mind. He closed his eyes and said it to himself—
“I killed the Son Of A Bitch.”
He was amused by his awareness of the cultural divide separating Frederick Lacey and himself. No American, certainly no modern American, would have written
Son Of A Bitch
. It would be
sonofabitch
! Then he said it, out loud, softly, slowly with his eyes still tightly closed, both hands clutching the warm mug. “Sonofabitch! Lord Frederick Lacey killed President John F. Kennedy.” A shiver crossed his shoulders. Harry opened his eyes, took a long drink of his coffee and let the idea, fantastic as it was, settle in his mind. Lord Frederick Lacey killed President John F. Kennedy. “Holy shit,” he added aloud. Then he began reading the document, shuffling pages, searching for the ones about Kennedy.

Harry was drained, worn down by the adrenaline rush of Lacey's revelations. His confusion and bewilderment were compounded by the simple sight of the document he had been reading, lying on his kitchen table. It rested there, next to the morning
Times
and today's mail, as harmless as if it were any set of papers. Just a pile of old paper? he thought. No, it was a bombshell, scheduled to explode the day after tomorrow. Harry had rushed through Lacey's confession, looking for the Kennedy names, but there were others as well. Skimming through the pages he saw many familiar names—Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt and Stalin. Czar Nicholas II was mentioned on more than one page, together with many others. Some Muslim names were strange to him. A big Billy Joel fan, Harry was particularly taken with a name he saw on a page that seemed to be about 1917—Solly Joel. Who was he, he wondered? He made a mental note to come back to that page later. Lacey was apparently fond of writing down interesting or useful quotes. Harry saw them, on pages here and there, in quotation marks with the author's identity
.
They stood out because he wrote them in all caps.
“MORAL INDIGNATION IS JEALOUSY WITH A HALO”
—H. G. Wells. Harry chuckled when he read that one. Did Lacey see himself in that nugget of wisdom? He noticed the names of Chaim Weizmann and Sir Herbert Samuel. He knew who they were. And he wrote down a quote from the Latin for further reference, one for which Lacey gave no attribution.
“UBI DUBIUM IBI LIBERTAS.”
He wasn't sure of the meaning, but Harry couldn't help thinking of Roy Orbison. He was getting punchy. He'd been reading too long.
Hey!
he scolded himself. This is serious business. This is the confession of Lord Frederick Lacey.
He killed John Kennedy!

McHenry Brown was off somewhere. Harry had no idea where, or how to reach him in an emergency.
Jesus Christ!
This was an emergency. The whole thing agitated him. He paced about his apartment, walking from the kitchen into the living room and back again a half dozen times, wondering what to do, his mind becoming a shambles.

He heard it on the BBC Noon News.
“. . . Sir Anthony Wells . . .”
He heard the name but couldn't make out the rest, not from the kitchen. He ran into the living room where he heard the BBC news reader saying,
“. . . beaten to death in his office earlier this morning; however, the official cause of death has yet to be released by the Police. Sir Anthony was apparently alone. Authorities said they knew of no appointments on his schedule for today.”
Harry's mind raced crazily. He felt lightheaded.
“. . . said they were unsure as to a motive. While his office was found in total disarray, it appears Sir Anthony was not robbed . . .”
In the bathroom, Harry splashed cold water on his face. Holding his hands over his eyes he let the water drip down his neck. Slowly, he regained the sense of control he had lost. He returned to the kitchen, picked up the telephone and called the Ambassador's office. He got the Embassy operator who put him through to McHenry Brown's Administrative Assistant.

“Elizabeth, it's Harry Levine. Is this a good line? Can I speak openly?”

“Is there something wrong?” she asked, with a cool composure comparable to the best an Englishwoman could muster. “Where are you calling from?”

“I'm home.”

“How important is it?”

“What?”

“How important is it,” Mrs. Harrison repeated.

“It's important!” Harry yelled. “It's critically important!”

“Let me call you back,” she said. “Hang up now.” A moment later the phone rang. Harry answered before the first ring finished. Elizabeth Harrison told him they were now on a secure line.

“What is it, Harry?” she inquired.

“When can I talk with the Ambassador? How soon?”

“Well, it's just after noon. I don't expect him . . . Harry, what is it?”

“I can't tell you Elizabeth, but I must speak with Ambassador Brown and I need to talk to him right now.”

“You won't be able to reach him until early this evening. He'll be returning, not here, but to his home. He should be there by eight-thirty or nine o'clock.”

“Isn't there a number, a way you can . . .”

“No, Harry. Not today. I don't have a number to call him. He didn't think anything would come up,” she said. “Not today.”

“What? Are you saying you don't have a number to reach him? I thought that was standard procedure.”

“He didn't leave one,” she said coldly.

“I don't . . . understand . . .,” said Harry. “How could he not leave a number? Where is he? This is important, damnit!”

“Harry.”

“Yes?”

“You don't know about Ambassador Brown, do you?”

“What? Know what?”

“You really don't know,” she said, more to herself than to him, with what seemed to Harry to be a touch of amazement in her voice.

“Elizabeth, what are you talking about?”

“The Ambassador . . . how can you not know?”

“Elizabeth . . .”

“McHenry Brown is gay.”

“Jesus!” Harry said. “So what?”

“On Saturdays he meets his ‘friend.' They play tennis and . . . go off together . . . somewhere. I don't know where. Sometimes he tells me where he'll be, if he's expecting something or someone, you know. But mostly he just goes . . . and today in particular . . . nothing's supposed to happen today.”

“Give me the special number for the White House. The hotline, or whatever you call it.”

“Harry, that's a communication link for extreme emergencies, to be used only by the Ambassador and the President of the United States.”

“I know that. That's exactly why I need the number. I'm going to have to talk to the President. I know it's early in the morning there, but I can't wait until this evening. I'll turn this all over to the Ambassador when he gets back, but I've got to do this now, right now.”

“Are you sure?” asked Elizabeth Harrison. Now the tone of her voice reminded Harry of his Aunt Sadie. It made him feel very uncomfortable. Harry spoke so firmly it chilled Elizabeth Harrison, to the bone.

“This is a matter directly related to my meeting with Sir Anthony Wells, whose murder has just been reported by the BBC. This is a matter of critical importance. I need the special number and whatever calling instructions go with it. Have I made myself clear?”

He entered the numbers in the exact order called for. Elizabeth Harrison had read the entire instructions to him and he followed them precisely. To his surprise, there was no ringing on the other end. Almost as soon as Harry pushed the last number, he heard . . .

“Please identify yourself.” It was a man's voice.

“Who am I speaking to?” asked Harry.

“Please identify yourself,” the man repeated.

“My name is . . . no wait a minute. Who are you? I placed this call and I want to know who you are.”

“Please identify . . .”

“Hold on!” Harry shouted in a voice dangerously near the breaking point. “I want to speak with the President of the United States. That is what this telephone is for. Who the hell are you?”

“You are speaking to Lawrence Albertson. I am a special assistant to the President and it's my job to handle this communication link. Will you please identify yourself and state your location.”

“My name is Harry Levine. I'm calling from London, from the American Embassy, to speak with the President.”

“That's not a credible response.”

“What?”

“Your reply is incorrect.”

“What the hell are you talking about! I am Harry Levine from the American Embassy . . .”

“No sir, you're not calling from the American Embassy in London.”

“No, no, no. You're right. Wait a minute,” said Harry. “I'm not calling from the embassy. I didn't mean to say that. What I mean is, I'm from the American Embassy. My name is Harry Levine. My job is . . .”

“I know who you are, Mr. Levine. Where are you calling from?”

“I'm home. My flat. My apartment.”

“Yes, that's correct. Thank you. How did you get access to this link and what is the purpose of your communication?”

“I need to speak with the President.”

“How did you get this number, Mr. Levine?”

“Who did you say you were? Lawrence who? What the hell's going on here? I called this number to talk to the President. How I got this link and what my purpose is, is none of your goddamn business. Now, you will please put me through to the President of the United States at once.”