“You’re asking me to put up a dragnet for him?”
“I’m afraid we are,” Myerson said. “It’s that important.”
“But you won’t even tell us what he’s charged with?”
Cutter said, “He hasn’t been charged. We want him for questioning.”
“Sure you do. In connection with what?”
Cutter contained his temper and deferred to Myerson because he didn’t trust himself to speak calmly. Myerson said, “I’m afraid that’s on a need-to-know basis.”
“You guys are something else,” Tobin said. Now Cutter was amused: this was the kind of treatment the Bureau habitually gave to local police departments and now the shoe was on the other foot.
Myerson said, “It’s a matter of national security.”
“That’s a phrase that’s lost a lot of meaning lately, Mr. Myerson.”
On the curb Myerson put his hat on and scowled. “I’ll have to take it upstairs. Tobin won’t put any enthusiasm into it. It’s going to have to come down from the top before he gets his ass in gear. But that’ll take a day or two. In the meantime keep your people working around the clock-and keep them working afterwards too. I’d like to get to Kendig ahead of the Bureau if we can. Shove their noses in it. Smug bastards.”
“I’ll be surprised if anybody gets close to Kendig very fast. He’s quick. All he ever needed was the smell of an opportunity.”
Myerson shook his head. “He only needs to slip once and the ceiling comes down on top of him. You want to have some lunch?”
“No thanks. Ross will be reporting back at one.”
“Cottage cheese and salad.” Myerson left him.
Cutter caught a taxi to take him back to the Arlington lot where he’d left the motor-pool car. He’ll go to ground for a while, he thought. Now where would he hide?
Ross was early-waiting for him. Ross looked too long for the chair he was in-absurdly tall with pink smooth baby-skin and the brown hair cropped close to the skull like fuzz on a tennis ball, in-candescently eager and energetic. “We had a signal from Follett.”
“Where’s Follett?”
“Marseilles. Kendig bought his papers from Saint-Breheret.”
Something twanged inside Cutter. This was the real start of the hunt.
“Three blank passports-two American, one French. Three blank driver’s licenses, same distribution. But he bought a wallet full of credit cards in the name of James Butler.”
“Okay,” Cutter said. He smiled abruptly. “Okay. It’s a con game but we’ll play it his way. Maybe he’ll tell us something he didn’t mean to.”
“What do you mean a con game?”
“We’re supposed to waste a lot of energy tracking James Butler. It’ll turn out to be a dead end when it suits Kendig’s purpose. But he may leave us a trace or two he didn’t count on leaving.” He reached for the phone. “FBI headquarters, please. Mr. Tobin.”
— 8 -
He spent two days combing the bars and employment offices and late-night eateries of Philadelphia and didn’t find anybody who fit the physical requirements; on the third night he canvassed a dozen places in Camden and on the fourth he hit pay dirt in a jukebox-and-color-TV saloon on the west side of Trenton about six blocks inland from the river. The man had gone to seed but spruced up he’d look the part well enough. Kendig had searched thousands of faces to find this one and he made his sales pitch a strong one.
His name was Dwight Liddell; he was fifty and the calamities had befallen him like bricks tumbling one after another out of a dump truck. At forty-eight he’d lost his wife to a charming real estate broker he’d thought was his friend; at forty-nine he’d been laid off by the aerospace firm that employed him as an aeronautical engineer. He was candid about it: “I was one of the first ones they let go. I should have stayed a draftsman, I guess-I’m not what you’d call a world-beater, I’m no Theodore von Karmann. But I had fifteen years of incredible money. You know the kind of salaries they used to pay guys like me? It was all government contract work, cost-plus. But then the shit hit the fan.”
“What happened to the money? Didn’t you save any?”
“Enough to pay my way to joints like this. But I’ve got to pay alimony and child support and I haven’t got a job. I can see plenty of tunnel all right but I don’t see any light at the end of it.” Liddell wasn’t drunk but he was high enough to be loose and in any case he wasn’t the secretive sort; he’d confide in anybody who looked interested-he’d tell the world his life was an open book.
Kendig bought a round. Liddell said, “Look at this suit-threadbare. You wouldn’t believe this was a guy who used to travel twenty thousand miles on vacation every year. Hell we hit Japan one year and Tanzania the next. You asked where the money went-that’s where it went. We figured we’d enjoy it while we were still young enough to. It was a good thing we did-otherwise my wife would’ve taken it anyway when she left. I wish she’d marry the son of a bitch.”
Kendig said, “Any place around here where you can get a decent meal?”
“There’s an inn up at Washington Crossing that used to be pretty good. You might try it.”
“I’ll treat us both,” Kendig said. “I’ve got a business proposition for you.”
The steaks weren’t bad. Kendig did most, of the talking during the meal. Afterward he tasted the coffee. Liddell said, “I’m sure to be arrested.”
“Yes. Arrested and held for questioning. But after they’ve milked you they’ll let you go. You won’t have committed any crime.”
“What about the phony credit cards?”
“You only use them for identification. You don’t charge anything on them. Of course you can try if you want but I wouldn’t recommend it. You know they’re going to arrest you anyway and if you’ve used the credit cards they can have you up for fraud. Other than that you’re clean and they’ve got to let you go.”
“But what do I tell them when they start bringing out the rubber hoses?”
“Tell them the truth.”
“What?”
“Tell them the absolute truth.”
Liddell squinted at him. “Christ, they’d never believe it.”
“They’ll believe it all right. I promise you that.”
“And then they’ll let me go?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You’re only a decoy, they’ll understand that. They’ll get mad but they’ll be mad at me, not at you.”
“What if they decide to shoot me first and ask questions afterward?”
“They won’t. They’re not that mad yet. They’ll want to question you first. As soon as they do that they’ll know they’ve got the wrong man. They won’t have any reason to harm you.”
“It’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” Liddell said, “but I swear to God I’m tempted to do it. I really am.”
“What can you lose? It’s a lot of money.”
Writing the book was harder than he had dreamed it could be. Early on during training and apprenticeship he’d had to learn the patience of the stakeout but he had never developed the habit of it: he knew himself to be a neurotic man and because he couldn’t afford to make careless mistakes he’d forced himself to be diligent but even so, after all the years, he still was thorough only by training, not by instinct. After the first two days’ typing-sixteen pages rough-most of the fun drained out of it and it became sheer drudgery and he found any excuse to avoid the typewriter for five minutes or two hours.
The third day was Wednesday and on that September afternoon he gave up after the seventh typed page and went outside into the damp dazzling heat. The pine forest was thick with the smell of resin and faintly he could hear the rush of the dark river down below. The broken screen door slapped shut behind him.
The house was a Victorian ruin, a little remaining white paint peeling from its grey clapboards. The yard was high weeds across to the dilapidated barn with its inevitable accouterments: the rusty wreckages of a cultivator and a 1953 DeSoto, the flies buzzing, dragonflies beating from point to point, butterflies jazzing amid the wild azaleas and the aged chinaberry trees.