The Senator couldn’t quite keep the exasperation out of his voice as he turned to Dolan and snapped, “For God’s sake, Tim!”
Dolan stared at the Senator. And then a look of comprehension and deep appreciation spread across the handsome Irish face. Dill also thought there was a touch of awe in the expression when Dolan slowly turned back to Brattle and said, “Oh. Yeah. I see. You don’t necessarily want ’em in jail. What you’re doing is offering us the opportunity to keep ’em out.”
Brattle smiled at Dolan much as he might have smiled at a dim student who showed unexpected promise. “Exactly,” he said and turned to Ramirez. “Well, Senator?”
Dill felt he knew which way the Senator would go. Nevertheless, he gave him some silent advice. Put important men in jail, young sir, and you gain but fleeting fame. Keep important men out of jail, and make sure they know it’s you who’re keeping them out, and you gain immense power. And power, of course, is what your chosen profession is all about: how to get it; how to keep it; how to use it.
Ten seconds must have gone by before the Senator replied to Clyde Brattle’s question. “I think,” he said slowly, “that we can reach some kind of accommodation, Mr. Brattle.”
And it was then that Dill knew, providing the dead Harold Snow hadn’t lied to him, that Jake Spivey need never spend a single day in jail.
Chapter 35
Dill walked Clyde Brattle down the stairs. When they reached the last step, Dill said, “Jake wants to meet. He wants to cut a deal with you.”
Brattle turned and examined Dill carefully. He started with Dill’s shoes and worked his way up to the eyes. He seemed to find Dill’s eyes particularly interesting. “When?” Brattle said.
“Tonight at ten.”
“Where?”
“My lawyer’s apartment. Here’s the address.” Dill handed Brattle a scrap of paper on which Anna Maude Singe’s name and address were written. Brattle didn’t read it. He stuck it into his jacket pocket instead.
“What’s it like?” Brattle said.
“The only way up are the stairs and one elevator. Jake’s bringing two of his Mexicans. You can bring Harley and Sid. They can all stand around and glare at each other.”
“Who else’ll be there?” Brattle asked.
“Just you, Jake, and me.”
“Why you?”
Dill shrugged. “Why not?”
After a moment or two, Brattle nodded his fine Roman head. “I’ll think about it,” he said, turned, and went through the door and out into the August evening.
It was not yet eight o’clock when Dill came back into his dead sister’s living room. By walking Brattle down the stairs, he had given the Senator and Tim Dolan time to think up the plot that would enable them to accept Brattle’s proposal. But first they would have to ease Dill out. He wondered how they would go about it. He knew they would be devious; he almost hoped they would be clever.
As he came back into the living room, Tim Dolan asked him a question and Dill immediately ruled out clever. Dolan asked, “D’you think he bought our act?”
“Brattle?”
“Yeah.”
“He seemed to,” Dill said.
The Senator smiled. “I think we all played him rather expertly, don’t you?” Before Dill could answer, the Senator went on, “Especially when Tim here went into his dumb guy role.”
Dill nodded. “That certainly was convincing.”
“He bought it,” Dolan said, his expression confident, but his tone a trifle dubious.
“He did that,” Dill said and asked the Senator, “What now?”
“Now? Well, now we play him along for just a day or two and then we’ll reel him in. I think, though,” he added slowly, letting a wise, thoughtful look spread across that almost perfect face, “I think we should let Tim here handle all negotiations with Brattle from now on, don’t you?”
“He’s counsel,” Dill said. “It should be his job.”
“Good,” Ramirez said. “By the way, Ben, I want to compliment you on the way you’ve handled everything down here. Really excellent. First class.”
“Thank you.”
The Senator had one more question. He asked it as casually as he could. “Do you think it’s true?”
“You mean about those four names he gave you of the guys he made rich?”
The Senator nodded.
“Sure,” Dill said. “It’s true. If it weren’t, why would Brattle bring them up? What good would it do him?”
“My thinking exactly.”
“And mine,” Dolan said.
“Well,” the Senator announced in a too bright, too cheery voice, “I’m starved. Why don’t we all go get a big steak somewhere?”
“I’ll take a raincheck,” Dill said and noted the small look of relief that appeared on the Senator’s face, but which almost immediately changed into one of mild suspicion. Dill went quickly into his explanation. “I’ll be going back to Washington tomorrow or the next day and this’ll probably be the last chance I’ll have to look around here to see if there’s anything of Felicity’s I want — family pictures, letters, stuff like that. Why don’t you all take the car and I’ll call a cab later.”
After Dill handed the car keys to Dolan and asked him to leave them in his hotel box, the Senator took one last glance around the living room and said, “Your sister lived here quite a while?”
“No, not too long.”
“Cozy little place, isn’t it?”
After the Senator and Dolan left, Dill carried the kitchen stool back into the bedroom. He slid open the closet door, shoved Felicity’s clothes to one side, and placed the stool in the closet beneath the ceiling trap that led up into the carriage-house attic — or crawl space.
Standing on the kitchen stool, Dill pressed his palms against the trap. It gave way easily. He shoved it over to one side. The kitchen stool was only three feet high and Dill’s height brought the top of his head even with the nine-foot ceiling. He grasped the edge of the trap hole, jumped, got his elbows over the edge, and after some frantic scrambling, managed to get a knee up. After that it was relatively easy.
The ceiling joists were covered with pieces of scrap plywood that formed a kind of path. Dill took from a pocket the candle he had found in the kitchen and lit it with a wooden match. He followed the plywood path toward the area of the living-room ceiling. As he crawled along the plywood, he talked silently to the dead Harold Snow: You wouldn’t have lied to me, Harold, would you? No, not you. Never. A thousand dollars for fifteen minutes’ work. So why would you lie to me?
When Dill reached what he guessed was the center of the living-room ceiling, he stopped, held the candle up, and found that Harold Snow hadn’t lied after all. The small voice-activated tape recorder was just where Snow had said it would be. Dill pushed the rewind button, removed the cassette, and put it in a pocket. He left the tape recorder where it was and backed his way along the plywood path to the trap hole. It was much easier going down than coming up. Standing on the kitchen stool once more, he put the trap lid back into place.
After he carried the stool back into the kitchen he stopped and listened. It was not any particular sound that caused him to listen, but the absence of one. He went to the kitchen window and looked out. The view was of the alley, and across it was a backyard that boasted six tall silver poplars. The poplars usually swayed, shivered, and trembled even in the slightest breeze. They were now perfectly still because there was no wind — none at all. Then suddenly it came, down from the north, down from Canada and Montana and the Dakotas. The poplars trembled at first, then swayed, and finally danced madly in the cool hard north wind.