“Did you know him well?”
“The President? No, not very well. I’ve met him, of course, but I can’t say I knew him. He was charming. But that’s beside the point.”
“Which is?”
“It was his project. He okayed it. Now it’s anybody’s guess—”
“Truman opposed it?”
“He doesn’t know about it.”
“What?”
Oppenheimer smiled. “You know, I’m constantly surprised at security’s being surprised when something secret is kept secret. No, he doesn’t know. Nobody there knew except Roosevelt and the committee. And I expect he’ll be furious when Stimson tells him what he didn’t know.”
“Touchy, anyway,” Connolly agreed. “But he’s not going to pull the plug at this point.”
“How well do you really know Washington? This project has cost nearly two billion dollars.” He watched Connolly’s eyes widen. “None of the men you sent to Washington to spend your money knows a thing about it.”
“That’s a lot of money to hide,” Connolly said, thinking about his own paltry search.
“Only Roosevelt could have ordered it,” Oppenheimer said. “It had to come from the top. Still does.”
“So you’re off to Washington, hat in hand?”
“No,” Oppenheimer said, “nothing that drastic. General Groves will take care of it-he knows his way around those land mines better than anybody. But it’s—” He hesitated, grinding out his cigarette. “A complication. We were always racing against time, and now it’s worse. It’s a bad time to get a new boss.”
“It always is.”
“This is a particularly bad time.”
“Can I ask you a question? What if it doesn’t work?”
“I never ask myself that. It will.”
“Because it has to?”
“Because the science is there. It will work. The question now is what happens after that. The generals will want to own it. We’ll need a whole new kind of civilian control. Otherwise, all our work here—” He looked away, rehearsing some talk with himself. “Otherwise, it will be a tragedy. Roosevelt saw that. Now we have-who? Some politician nobody ever heard of. How can he be expected to make such a decision? For all I know, he’ll think it’s just a giant hand grenade.” He stopped, catching himself. “Well, let’s hope for the best,” he said, looking back at Connolly. “A little music for the soul. Seven o’clock. Weber’s on Bathtub Row-just ask anyone. By the way, I hope you’re not looking too closely at my bank account. It feels like someone’s going through my laundry.”
When Connolly got back to the office, there was a message to call Holliday.
“I have something for you,” he said, not even bothering to mention Roosevelt. Most people on the Hill had taken an unofficial holiday and left early. “We found out where your boy went that night. Or at least where his car went.”
“You found the bar?”
“He wasn’t drinking. He went to church.”
“Church?”
“San Isidro, out on the Cerrillos Road. A Mex place.”
“What would he be doing in church? He was a Jew.”
“I didn’t say he was praying. I just said his car was parked there. An alley next to the church. Not a parking lot, exactly, but people park there.”
“What’s around?”
“Houses. A gas station. No bars. Quiet.”
“And one of the neighbors saw him?”
“No. Actually, one of my men. You were right, put out the word and you always haul something in. The night of the killing, he was driving past on his way to some complaint and noticed the car there. Didn’t think anything of it until I put out the description of the car.”
“What made him notice it?”
“A ’forty-two Buick? In a Mexican neighborhood?”
“But he didn’t stop?”
“There’s nothing illegal about parking there. Figured it must be somebody visiting.”
“The church was open?”
“Not for mass. They don’t lock churches around here. This one pulls in a tourist now and then. They’ve got an old reredos there that’s supposed to be something special.”
“At that time of night? What time was it, anyway?”
“Nine maybe, more or less. He’s a little fuzzy about that. If you ask me, he was taking his own sweet time about answering the complaint and didn’t want to say so.”
“Where’s the church in relation to where Bruner was found?”
“Well, it’s out a ways, but you go straight down Cerrillos over the bridge and you’re on the Alameda.”
“So it’s the first park?”
“In that direction, yes.”
“Okay. So he saw Bruner?”
“No, just the car. He thought it was funny, a car like that, but like I said, he figured it was somebody visiting. You know, some Anglo with a girlfriend down there.”
“Is there a lot of that?”
“All over the world.”
“Very funny. So if he didn’t see him, we don’t know for sure he was actually there.”
“Oh, we know. We found his blood.”
He imagined Holliday’s face as he said it, the jaws clamping shut in satisfaction. He listened to the silence for a minute. “Want to tell me about it?”
“There’s a patch of ground near the church, right under where the tile sticks out. Seems it never rains there, so we got some dry ground with some blood on it.”
“And it’s Burner’s.”
“O negative. I figure it’s a safe assumption.”
“So Bruner gets hit next to some Spanish church and his body winds up in the park and his car disappears.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“I wish I could say any of it made sense.”
“Well, I wish you could too. And while you’re at it, try making some sense of his pants now. Kinda changes things, don’t you think? Doesn’t fit, that kind of activity at a church. Would they do that there? Then driving him all over with his pants down. No sense to it. Could be we’re sniffing around the wrong tree here. You know, maybe he wasn’t that way at all.”
“It was your idea.”
“Well, I’ve been known to be wrong. Once or twice.”
“Then how do you explain the pants?”
“I can’t. Yet. I’m just saying it’s a hell of a place to have sex.”
“Well, for that matter, it’s a hell of a place to kill somebody. But why move him?”
“The thought that occurred to me was that they didn’t want him found so easy. He’d stick out like a sore thumb at the church, but he could have been days in the park. Well, one.”
“Then why not just take him out to the country and bury him?”
“Well, if you get a better idea, let me know.”
“You talk to the neighbors?”
“Sure. Nada. Amazing how the Spanish mind their business when the police come around. I never knew a people for going to bed so early.”
“But why move him? That’s what I don’t get.”
“I don’t know. But I tell you one thing, it sure wasn’t out of respect for the church.”
6
Perhaps people needed to be together after a death in the family, or perhaps Professor Weber’s evenings were always better attended than he liked to think, but his house was crowded. A cluster of music stands had been set in one corner of the living room, and people spilled out in groups down the hallway in a line to the kitchen, where the coffee and trays of cakes were arranged on a crocheted tablecloth. The air was warm and close with cigarette smoke and the overpowering scent of butter, sugar, and cinnamon. Connolly felt wrapped in the cozy sweetness of a prewar bakery and wondered for a minute where all the coupons had come from; did the bachelors trade Frau Weber their ration books for these once-a-week memories of home? The coffee smelled rich and strong, but as many people held glasses as coffee cups, and the hum of conversation rose and fell in the familiar lapping waves of a cocktail party. Pregnant women occupied the few upholstered easy chairs, with friends draped on the broad arms, balancing plates. Oppenheimer was there, a martini glass in one hand, his hair so short that without his hat his head seemed almost shaved. He barely acknowledged Connolly with a nod. His wife, Kitty, sat near him, her legs curled beneath her on a sofa, an ashtray in her lap, but paid no attention to her husband as she stared through her smoke, preoccupied with some interior conversation. She had clearly ceded all hostess duties to Johanna Weber, who bubbled all around her, directing people to food and making introductions.