“Anyway,” Costanza said, “we figured we’d turn it over to you right away.”
Terrific, Santorini thought. Now I’ll get to talk to that dumb fuck at the Consulate again.
Arthur Scopes had chosen the venue himself; his private office at SeaCoast Limited had been swept for listening devices and further equipped with a babbler to confound long-distance ears. On the telephone, he told Sonny that he knew the place was completely sanitary. The words private office conjured for Sonny a wood-paneled area offering both space and solitude, with windows overlooking on one side Seventy-second Street and on the other Columbus Avenue. But as the ancient elevator in the soot-stained building creaked and whined its way up to the third floor, he began to realize that his expectations may have been a trifle ambitious.
SeaCoast was at the end of a narrow hallway that contained two other offices, one an accountant’s, the other a firm that repaired electric shavers. The door to the shaver-repair firm was standing wide open. An electric fan swept back and forth over a counter opposite the entrance, wafting cool air into the hallway as Sonny walked past. At eight-thirty this morning, just before he’d left the hotel, a television forecaster was predicting temperatures in the high nineties.
The words SeaCoast Limited were lettered in black on the upper, frosted-glass panel of the company’s entrance door. Sonny grasped the brass doorknob, turned it, opened the door, and found himself in a smallish room where two people — one an Asian girl, the other a white male — sat at desks with telephone receivers to their ears.
A pair of windows at the far end of the room admitted mid-morning sunlight. The room was noisily air-conditioned by a single window unit in the window on the left, a virtual babbler in itself. The Asian girl was speaking in what Sonny assumed to be Chinese. The white male was saying “... three-ninety-nine a pound for the chicken lobsters, six and a quarter for the jumbos. May I take your order, sir?”
An organizational cover beyond reproach. A legitimate business that could withstand even close scrutiny. Sonny was impressed. The Chinese girl — she was in her twenties, Sonny guessed — finished her conversation, turned from the phone, and asked, “May I help you, sir?” Her speech was entirely accent-free. She was wearing a white blouse and a blue mini-skirt that rode high on her upper thighs. Sandals with white leather thongs. Good Chinese-girl legs. Long black hair fastened with a blue plastic barrette. Sonny had recently read that Chinese women were undergoing cosmetic surgery to remove the folds in their eyelids and make their eyes look rounder. He figured the women in China were going crazy.
“I have an appointment with Martin Hackett,” he said.
His everyday cover name.
“And your name, sir?”
“Scott Hamilton.”
“One moment, please.”
She rose in a single fluid motion, smiled briefly, and went to a closed door Sonny assumed was Hackett’s private office. She knocked...
“Yes, come in.”
... opened the door, entered, and closed it behind her. Sonny waited. The white male on the phone was still giving prices to whoever was on the other end of the line. He did not so much as glance at Sonny. The Asian girl came out, said, “Mr. Hackett will see you now,” and stood aside for him to enter.
The door eased shut behind him.
He was looking at a large man wearing a white cotton jacket of the sort people wore in supermarkets. Embroidered in red over the breast on the left-hand side of the jacket were the words SeaCoast Limited. The man’s looks were clearly Arabian. Black hair and dark brooding eyes, an aquiline nose. A strapping man of the desert stuffed into a cheap white jacket that was too tight across his shoulders. But this was no camel herder.
“I’m Arthur,” he said, and smiled, and rose, extending his hand.
Arthur Scopes. The Martin Hackett was for civilians, but Arthur was the code name he’d be using for the business at hand.
“Nice to meet you,” Sonny said.
“Sit down, hmm?” Arthur said, and indicated a straight-backed wooden chair in front of his very dark, virtually black, indeterminately wooden desk. The windows here in the front office faced the Columbus Avenue side of the building. On the street below, Sonny could hear cab drivers impatiently honking their horns. The walls were painted a grim shade of grey. There were two pictures hanging on the wall behind the desk, one of what appeared to be a French landscape, the other of a laughing peasant girl with golden curls. Sonny took the chair. It was uncomfortable.
“So,” Arthur said. “You’ve been briefed, hmm?”
“I’ve been briefed, yes.”
“Have you read the letter?”
“I’ve read it.”
“Does it explain everything?”
“Everything,” Sonny said.
He had read the letter at least a dozen times. Remembering the events it had triggered, he became enraged all over again, the anger igniting his eyes — but only for an instant. He was a professional; there was work to be done here.
“What happened to Mother?” he asked.
“Mm, Mother,” Arthur said, and tented his fingers. Huge hands. Blunt fingertips. Manicured nails. “She was murdered,” he said.
Sonny’s eyebrows went up.
“We don’t know who or why. We’re watching it closely. This may be a countermeasure of some sort.”
“How was she killed?” Sonny asked.
“Gunshot wounds. All we really know so far is what we’ve read in the newspapers. The police are still investigating. I’ll keep you informed.”
“I hope you will. If my back needs covering...”
“Oh, no question, we’ll let you know at once.” He hesitated a moment, and then said, “Were you told this is a No-Fail operation?”
“No.”
“That’s what it is. Does that trouble you?”
“Not particularly. I’ve been trained for any eventuality.”
“You understand, don’t you, that a pistol is out of the question?”
“Yes. That’s what No-Fail...”
“Because pistols aren’t infallible, are they?” Arthur said. “We don’t want him surviving, the way Reagan did. And we don’t want him left a vegetable, either. He’s to be eliminated, hmm? Cleanly. Completely. And anonymously.”
Sonny looked at him.
“We’ll claim no credit afterward, we want no later retaliation. Just kill him, Sonny. And vanish.”
Or die if I must, Sonny thought.
“Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. What will you need?”
“A drop.”
“Use SeaCoast.”
“Can I have deliveries made here?”
“Of course.”
“Are we still using the same cobbler?”
“McDermott, yes.”
“Is he at the same address?”
“Yes. East Seventieth Street.”
“I’ll also need some basic information.”
“What sort?”
“Precinct numbers, the addresses of police supply...”
A buzzer sounded on Arthur’s desk console. He hit a button.
“Yes?”
“A Mrs. Fremont on four,” the Chinese girl said.
“I told you not to disturb us.”
“She said it’s urgent.”
Sighing heavily, Arthur hit another button on the console and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” he said, and listened for a moment. “No, don’t be silly,” he said, rolling his eyes heavenward, “always plenty of time for you.” He listened again, nodded, said, “Mmm, I see. Yes, a very good idea, and I quite agree it’s of paramount importance to make certain the fish is fresh. But, you know... SeaCoast is a wholesaler, hmm? Yes. To restaurants and fish markets and the like. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, I see. Well, what I could do... hmm? The seventeenth, did you say? Well, that’s... well, let me see,” he said, and glanced at his desk calendar. “That’s still three weeks off, I’m sure I could...” He rolled his eyes again, impatiently this time, and listened for what seemed an interminably long time. “What I was going to suggest,” he said, “was that I put you in touch with a retailer on the island... yes, I’ll be happy to do that. I’ll find a good one and get back to you. I’m sure I have your number, but let me have it again, hmm? Uh-huh,” he said, writing, “uh-huh, good. I’ll call you as soon as I... what? Oh. Thank you. The seventeenth, yes, I’ll put it on my calendar. Good talking to you,” he said, and hung up and expelled his breath in exaggerated exasperation. “A neighbor,” he explained. “She’s having a fish party, God help me.”