“Where was this?”
“Detroit.”
“When?”
Dolan either sighed or blew out some cigar smoke. “Ten days ago, but nobody ever got around to letting us know until this afternoon. The Senator’d already taken off for Santa Fe and some weekend politicking and I haven’t been able to reach him yet. He’s gonna raise all kinds of hell. I’ve raised my fair share already.”
“Why do you think Brattle came back?”
“I’d say he might need to clear up a few loose ends.”
“Like Spivey?”
“Maybe. You talk to him yet?”
“This afternoon.”
“He agree to give you a deposition?”
“He already gave it to me, fully sworn.”
“Anything in it?”
“It’s what’s not in it that’s interesting.”
“What’s he want for what’s not in it — immunity?”
“Right.”
“What’d you say?”
“I nodded.”
“Well, he can’t get a nod on tape.”
“There’s something else,” Dill said.
“I don’t like your tone, Ben. It hints of calamity and unmitigated disaster.”
“I got mugged.”
“Jesus. When?”
“About fifteen minutes ago in my hotel room. They got the file on Spivey.”
“What else?”
“That’s all they wanted.”
“They?”
“He was big enough to be a they. He used a chokehold on me, and no, I’m not hurt, but it was kind of you to ask.”
“I’m thinking,” Dolan said. “The file itself isn’t important. We’ve got copies.”
“And Spivey’s going to send me another copy of his deposition. I told him somebody’d stolen my attaché case.”
“You haven’t got an attaché case.”
“Spivey doesn’t know that.”
There was silence from the Washington end until Dolan said, “I was thinking some more. What was in the deposition — between the lines?”
“Between the lines, if I heard and read it right, Jake Spivey could hang Clyde Brattle, if he wanted to, and if we’d grant him immunity so he wouldn’t hang himself at the same time.”
“After Detroit,” Dolan said slowly, “I wonder where Brattle went.”
“You’re not wondering, you’re suggesting he’s right here and that he wanted a quick peek at Spivey’s file.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Maybe I’d better warn Jake.”
“Go ahead, but if Clyde Brattle wants him dead, he’s dead. Our problem is to keep Spivey alive long enough to—” Dolan broke off. “Look, if I can get it cleared up here, talk to the chairman and to that shit, Clewson, well…” His voice trailed off. Clewson was Norman Clewson, the subcommittee’s majority counsel. Dolan despised him. “I can do it,” he said suddenly.
“Do what?”
“Schedule a subcommittee hearing down there for next Tuesday or Wednesday. The Senator can chair it. Hell, it’s on his way back. I’ll come down and we’ll hold it in the federal building, give Spivey immunity, and let him talk his head off while he’s still alive.”
“They’ll never clear it,” Dill said.
“They’ll clear it,” Dolan said, his tone confident. “They won’t have any fucking choice after I tell ’em if they don’t, they’ll never get Jake Spivey’s unvarnished testimony because he’ll goddamn well be dead.”
“You really believe that?”
Dolan paused a short moment before answering. “Sure. Don’t you?”
“You don’t know Jake as well as I do.”
“You mean Brattle might be the dead one?”
“He might.”
“What the hell, Ben. If you’re right, we still come out ahead.”
Chapter 15
At three minutes to six that Friday evening, Anna Maude Singe, the lawyer, answered her office phone with a crisp and businesslike “Anna Maude Singe.”
“This is Ben Dill.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well. Hi.”
“I wasn’t sure I’d catch you.”
“I was just leaving.”
“The reason I’m calling is that they — they being the cops — are sending a limousine for me tomorrow, and I was wondering if you’d care to go with me to the services and then on out to the cemetery.”
There was a brief silence until Singe finally said, “Yes. I’d like that.” There was another pause and then she said, “I need to talk to you anyway.”
“What about tonight?” Dill said.
“Tonight?”
“Dinner.”
“You mean like a real date?”
“Reasonably close.”
“With real food.”
“That I can promise.”
“Well, it sounds better than Lean Cuisine. Where’ll I meet you?”
“Why don’t I pick you up?”
“You mean at home?”
“Sure.”
“Christ,” she said, “it really is like a real date, isn’t it?”
Anna Maude Singe lived at Twenty-second and Van Buren in a seven-story apartment building that had been built in early 1929 by that same syndicate of oil men who later bought the bankrupt speculator’s skyscraper. Ostensibly, the oil men built the faintly Georgian building to house the parents of the new oil rich who didn’t want the old folks underfoot anymore. It was a well-thought-out, carefully designed building, and the new oil rich promptly snapped up long leases — only to discover that their parents balked at the idea of apartment living (most thought it wicked) and refused to set foot in the place.
The syndicate members, stuck in 1930 with what seemed to be a white elephant, had shrugged and lodged their own girl friends and mistresses in what came to be known derisively as the Old Folks Home, although its real name was the Van Buren Towers.
It was a solid, extremely well-built structure that employed a lavish amount of Italian marble, especially in the rather gaudy bathrooms. Later, as the oil men and their paramours aged, parted, and died, the apartments began commanding premium rents, with two-bedroom units going in late 1941 for as much as a hundred dollars a month. To the delight of the lucky tenants at the time, it was there that rents were frozen by wartime controls until late in 1946.
Dill had been in the building only once, and that was back in 1959 when evil Jack Sackett had invited him and Jake Spivey up to meet Sackett’s “Aunt Louise,” a thirty-three-year-old beauty who turned out to be the well-kept girl friend of Sackett’s father, then the Speaker of the state House of Representatives. Aunt Louise had served her young gentlemen callers Coca-Cola and bourbon and later led them one by one into her bedroom. Dill and Spivey were not quite fourteen. Sackett, the future premier pool hustler of the West Coast, was fifteen. It remained for Dill a memorable summer afternoon.
As he waited in the Van Buren’s marble lobby for the lone elevator that would lift him up to the fifth floor, Dill noticed how the lobby’s rugs were now a bit frayed, its walls soiled by sticky fingers, and its thick glass door in need of washing. In the elevator, which smelled of dog urine, he tried to remember Aunt Louise’s apartment number, but couldn’t. Dill knew better than to hope Anna Maude Singe’s number would be the same.
She was wearing a striped, nubby cotton caftan when she opened the door after he pushed the ivory-colored button. She smiled and stepped back. As he went in, she said, “Welcome to faded splendor.”
Dill looked around. “You’re right. It is.”
“You know its lurid history? The building, I mean.”
He nodded.
“Well, this particular apartment was occupied from 1930 till early last year by one Eleanor Ann Washburn, but then Miss Ellie up and died, leaving it all to me — furniture, clothing, books, paintings, everything — including her memories. It went condominium, you know.”