Mathieson watched him. Homer’s fingers were deft inside the thin cloth gloves. He spliced the new wire onto the cut ends of the microphone wiring; he ran it down out of sight behind the metal baseboard heat shield and threaded it around the room in that fashion to the molding by the office door. He mounted the miniature toggle at the edge of the baseboard just inside the door. You wouldn’t notice it unless you knew what to look for; it was a thin plastic contact switch and blended neatly with the baseboard and might have been an insignificant piece of the heating apparatus. He made sure it was in the “On” position and screwed it down firmly. Then he stuffed the original wiring back into the base receptacle and screwed the faceplate into place. The bug was now functioning as it had functioned before; but a nudge of a man’s heel against the newly installed switch by the door would disconnect it and another nudge would switch it on again.
They resumed the search. There was another wireless bug in the junior partner’s office and a second wired mike in the receptionist’s foyer; they left these intact. At 7:10 they began to go through Gillespie’s desk drawers and at 7:30 they gave it up and left the office. Homer locked the door and they put the Yale keys back in the attache case and walked toward the elevator. “We’ll have to sign out, of course. Dream up a plausible name. We were visiting the Johnson Greeting Card Company.”
They waited for the elevator to come. Mathieson said, “Thanks. That was a beautiful job.”
“You going to tell me how it’s supposed to work?”
“Afterward.”
“Why not now?”
Mathieson said, “Maybe I’m just paranoid. A secret’s only a secret as long as one person knows it. But you can see how it’s going to work—you wired it yourself.”
“All I can see is, you expect something to be said in that office, and you want it heard by Ezio Martin but not by federal agents. I don’t get much out of that.”
“Are you sure? Think about it.”
They went down and signed out; they walked to the car and got in. Homer put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it; he was scowling. Finally he shook his head. “No. I don’t get to first base.”
“Good. If you can’t figure it out then Bradleigh won’t figure it out either. He’ll know his bug’s been tampered with, but he won’t know why.”
“Sometimes you’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
“I hope I am,” Mathieson said.
2
He made the phone call at 10:30 in the morning from a pay phone in the lobby of the Hay Adams. “Is Mr. Gillespie in?”
“Who’s calling please?”
“This is Walter Benson. From Oklahoma.”
“I’ll see if he’s in …”
He waited, nervously impatient. He’d rehearsed it endlessly.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Gillespie?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“I gave your secretary the name Walter Benson.”
“I know you did. Who are you?”
“Actually my name is Robert Zeck but it won’t mean anything to you—I’m sure you haven’t heard of me.” He made his voice a fruity tenor, lilting and supercilious. “I happen to have come across some items I believe would interest you.”
“Yes?”
“Let me mention three names to you. Edward Merle. John Fusco. Philip Draper.”
“Never heard of them. What’s this all—”
“Naturally you haven’t heard of them. I really rather dislike telephones, I’m sure you understand—perhaps I could drop by your office for a little chat?”
“Where are you?”
“Not far from your office. I can be there in half an hour.”
“I’ll be here.”
He went into the coffee shop and dawdled over a cup of tea and a newspaper: partly to calm his nerves and partly because it wouldn’t hurt Gillespie to stew a while. Then he went into the men’s room and inspected his disguise in the mirror. It was nothing radical. The padding under his newly bought suit added the appearance of twenty pounds to his weight. The cotton wads between upper gums and cheeks broadened his face. The bleach—a rinse that could be washed out immediately—made his hair and moustache a dirty tawny blond. The glasses with black plastic frames lent pedantic seriousness and further obscured the rectangular structure of his face. Finally there were the rings—six gaudy big rings on the fingers of both hands. The sort of thing that would be remembered at the expense of other detail. The suit was an ill-cut gray pinstripe, the tie was something with dreary red-and-black diagonal stripes. The overall appearance was that of a weary civil servant.
At five minutes to eleven he left the hotel and walked to the taxi rank.
3
When he left the elevator on the seventh floor he pressed his elbow in against the hard weight of the .38 under his jacket. If the scheme worked he wouldn’t need it, but Gillespie was unpredictable and it might take a show of arms.
The receptionist took him back through the partition and he trailed along as though he hadn’t seen the place before. She showed him into the corner office and disengaged herself while Gillespie rose to his feet.
Gillespie was taller than he’d thought.
“Mr. Zeck.” The voice and eyes were guarded.
An attack of nerves stopped him just inside the door. He cleared his throat and pushed his voice into the higher register. “Nice office. Very nice, yes.” He bobbed his eyes around the room, feigned a minor loss of equilibrium and pressed the side of his shoe firmly against the switch that disconnected Bradleigh’s microphone.
He pushed the door shut and stepped forward, contriving a nervous smile.
“What’s this all about?”
“Let’s be circumspect.” He stared whimsically through his glasses at a point a yard above Gillespie’s head. “You’re really quite well fixed here, aren’t you.”
Gillespie sidestepped to sit down and the movement brought his feet in view under the desk: He was wearing platform shoes. That explained it. Yesterday on the street Mathieson had seen him only at a distance. A short man who wanted to be tall.
Mathieson flashed a courteous unconvincing smile. He felt no pity at alclass="underline" He’d thought he might but Gillespie’s sharp arrogant face made such an emotion impossible. He felt a sort of pleasure. “Robert Zeck is not my name, of course.”
“I’m busy, Mr. Zeck.”
“I won’t take long. May I sit down?”
Gillespie jerked his head toward a chair. Mathieson lowered himself and crossed his legs and flashed an unconvincing smile. “As you know, the bureaucracy works in mysterious ways its blunders to perform. Somehow even the most secret of secrets has a way of being filed away in quintuplicate. I came across your name recently on a printout from a government computer.”
“My name?”
“In connection with certain reports turned in by the Witness Security Program office.”
If Gillespie was surprised he didn’t show it. “Do you work for the government?”
“It doesn’t matter who I work for. At the moment I’m working for myself—that’s all you need to know. I may be working for you, for that matter.”
“For me?”
“I’m doing you a service, Mr. Gillespie. The printout had to do with confidential informants—CIs as we call them.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with me.”
“Normally the identities of CIs aren’t put in writing. The identity of the informant usually is a private matter between him and his contact. Now and then in an excess of bureaucratic zeal the government agent makes the mistake of reporting not only the information but its source.”
“I’m losing patience fast, Mr. Zeck.”
“I doubt that.’ I’ve got you over a barrel.”
Gillespie’s laugh was a cruel snort.
Mathieson kept his voice pitched high. “A few months ago you extorted information from a secretary in the Witness Security office. She gave you the current names and addresses of four men—Merle, Benson, Fusco and Draper. You passed that information on to your clients, Frank Pastor and Ezio Martin.”