“What’s this for?”
“A little grace if you please.”
“Those are break-it-to-her-gently roses.” She unwrapped enough of the green-wrapped package to see the buds. “They are lovely,” she conceded.
It was the middle of the afternoon and the place was nearly empty; conversations were faint distant mutters across the room. He said, “It’s nothing much. I’ll be gone a little while.”
No reply. She got up and went to the counter and he watched her go through the railed route to the coffee urn, a stop at the cashier, her high-hipped stride as she returned bearing two cups of coffee. She sat down on the edge of her chair as if she expected at any moment it would explode beneath her. “How long?”
“Open-ended.”
“They’ve sent you after Fairlie.” A flat statement, but she was very tense with eyes hungry for information.
“I remember Bev Reuland. The girl who only goes with people if they’re fun.”
“Oh shut up David, you’re not funny.”
Things had changed far more than he had wanted. It had always been no-questions-asked between them. She was a girl with a slow carnal smile and a healthy set of appetites and they liked each other. Now she was a different girl because if something happened to Lime a little piece of Bev would go with him. The cup and saucer rattled in her hand; she put them down. “Well. What are we supposed to say to each other?”
“Nothing. I’ll be back—you can think about what you want to say, and tell me then.”
“You weren’t going out in the field anymore.”
“I know.”
“I suppose they turned your head. It must be very flattering to be told you’re the best they’ve got—the only one who can do the job.” Her lips quivered before she drew them in between her teeth.
“I’m not dead yet,” he said very gently. The roses lay across the table between them; he pushed the roses away and covered her hand with his palm but she drew it away in pique and Lime laughed at her.
“It’s not funny.”
“You said that before.”
“Now I’m sure you’re listening,” she said. “God damn it they’ve got millions of people. It doesn’t have to be you. If you don’t find the kidnappers you’ll be blamed for it for the rest of your life—and if you do find them they’ll probably kill you.”
“I like your overwhelming confidence in me.”
“Oh I know, you’re the master spy, you’re the best in the world—I’ve heard all that drivel from your fawning admirers. I’m not impressed. Shit, David, they’re setting you up for a fall guy.”
“I know they are.”
“Then why in the hell did you agree to it?” She sat snapping her thumbnail against her front teeth. “When you were making up your mind,” she said, “you didn’t think of me at all.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s pretty shitty.”
“I know.”
“I’m beginning to wish you loved me a little.”
“I do.”
Now she smiled but it was crooked. “Well I suppose loving is more important than being loved. But really I don’t like this—we’re starting to sound like two characters in an Ingrid Bergman movie. You’re even beginning to look a little like Paul Henreid.”
She was trying to play at his own game and it pleased him, ludicrously; he pushed his chair back and stood. She opened her handbag, fished for a lipstick, spread it on her mouth and squeezed her lips together to distribute it and inspected the result in her compact mirror. She was the closest to an unselfish human being he had ever known; he waited, keeping the jet waiting at Andrews, and heard the small crisp snap of her handbag and watched her get up and come around the table. She coiled her fingers around his arm. “All right. I’ll wait dutifully. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes.”
“One of these days you may learn to express your feelings. At least I’ve got you admitting you have feelings.”
That was true, and it was why he loved her.
Now his hands remembered the feel of her hard tight little ass and he opened his eyes to look at the ceiling and wondered how long he had dozed. The noise that had awakened him was repeated: urgent loud knuckles against the door. He climbed to his feet and unlocked it to Chad Hill.
“We’ve got a make.” Hill had a teleprinter decode in his hand. Lime took it.
FROM: SHANKLAND
TO: LIME
REF: LATENT FINGERPRINT PALAMOS
SUBJECT IDENTIFIED AS MARIO P. MEZETTI X WHITE
MALE AMERICAN X AGE 24 X HT 5–10 X WT 170 X
HR BLK X EYS BRN X NO IMS X WIREPHOTOS ENROUTE
X TRACER IN PROGRESS X SHANKLAND
Lime read it twice. “Never heard of him.”
“Not one of the people you identified with Sturka last week?”
“No.” Lime’s eyes whipped up from the decode to Hill. “Corby. Renaldo. Peggy Astin. One John Doe.”
“Mezetti could be the John Doe.”
“So could the man in the moon.”
“Alvin Corby’s black. Haven’t you had him in mind for the chopper pilot from the beginning?”
“Offhand how many black revolutionaries would fit the description? The helicopter pilot was twenty pounds heavier than Corby. McNeely’s seen the mug shots of Corby and said it wasn’t the same man.”
He walked out into the bullpen and turned toward the UHF table where technicians were feeding incoming signals into the tape printers. There ought to be more coming in now; with a positive make at last there would be data from all over.
It came in bits and pieces during the next half hour. Mezetti was the son of an important industrialist. Five years ago he had been associated with one of the SDS wings and had been arrested, fingerprinted, questioned and released. No other criminal record. No FBI file; Mezetti was on the list of people not on the list.
Two CIA items: Mezetti had turned up in Singapore two and a half months ago ostensibly as a tourist, had been frisked by Singapore Customs because he looked freaky but had not been found to be carrying drugs of any kind; routine CIA coverage with cross-references to Passport Bureau records showed Mezetti had made fourteen trips from UCLA to Acapulco in ten months two years ago: he had been tossed seven times out of the ten but no drugs had been found on him. Narco Bureau had a note in a dead file that Mezetti had been suspected as a courier but had been found clean; whatever the purpose of his trips to Acapulco, it hadn’t been narcotics. Subsequent notation from CIA’s Acapulco stringer revealed Mezetti’s mother and sister had spent the winter in question in Acapulco. Lime made a face.
SEC records by way of FBI showed Mezetti listed as owner-of-record of thirty-five thousand shares of Mezetti Industries Common. An IRS note appended: he was also listed as an officer of the corporation—probably a tax dodge, a funnel through which his father could pour funds into his son’s account without facing inheritance taxes later on.
FBI was commencing washes of subject’s known hangouts. Routine telephone checks established he was not at home; no one knew where he was; his mother thought he had gone to Europe on company business; his father knew nothing of any such thing.
Then a signal from FBI over Shankland’s signature: Mezetti had flown by Air France from New York to Marseille on Saturday, January eighth.
That was thirty-six hours before Fairlie had been kidnapped.
“Christ,” Hill said. “Walking around right out in bare-ass open.”
“Well they must have done it to find out if he was clean.”
“So he’s their outside contact—they need to know he’s still free to move around.”