I didn’t speak to him again.
“I don’t have to tell you I don’t like any of this, do I?” I asked Thompson.
“I didn’t exactly expect you to, Smitt.”
“How do I know this is on the level, really FBI and all?”
“You don’t.”
“How do you know I’ll even go though with the damn thing, whatever it is?”
“You will carry it out, just as I outline it to you, because if you don’t you’ll sour my entire assignment and I’ll be forced to eliminate you.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
“You motherfucker.”
“Shut-up, Smitty.”
I did.
We drove on through the cold crisp October night and I pretended I didn’t hear the sounds going on behind the black padded partition. Unidentifiable sounds, but sounds. Then I relaxed. Tried to ignore the press of Vin’s automatic in my side.
The whole damn set-up sounded far-fetched as hell, but then I didn’t have much say about it.
Vin and his men were assigned to guard the daughter of Edward Stewart, a United States Senator who’d been murdered a few weeks before. The daughter, whose name was Susan — Suzie to her friends — had seen the murderer, but hadn’t revealed her knowledge until recently, within the last several days. I’d seen the girl’s picture in the papers; it had been getting some big press. I asked Vin why she’d waited to talk and he told me that she was twenty years old and probably scared half out of her mind, which I could easily understand. After all, I was thirty-five and completely scared out of my mind.
Anyway, Vin and a couple other government agents were supposed to watch Susan Stewart closely, until proper steps were taken. Whatever the hell the proper steps were.
Now and then I would stop and ask Vin a clarifying question or two and Vin would tell me to shut-up. But I was pretty well convinced of all this. As you would’ve been, had someone with an automatic been doing the convincing.
The pay-off was that there’d been some related emergency come up in the past few hours which called for Vin and all of his men. And they needed someone to watch the girl for the hour they’d have to be gone, the exact hour being three-thirty to four-thirty a.m. Fifteen minutes away. And I was the lucky candidate. Why me, you ask? Don’t you think maybe I was asking that question enough?
Not that Vin didn’t have some answers for me. He and I had been friendly during Korea and he knew I lived in the city, since we’d exchanged goddamn Christmas cards for a few years after service. And, because I was an insurance investigator, I was in some vague way further qualified for the job. According to Vin he immediately thought of me when he’d gotten in this spot, and supposedly the “office” Vin worked out of had prepared a list of likely civilians to recruit in such emergencies. And I was the only one on this sucker list Vin knew personally.
So there I sat. In the front seat of a black Lincoln Continental, a manned automatic sitting on my one side and a hunk of pock-marked concrete on the other.
At five till four the driver brought the Lincoln to a halt in front of an aging brownstone.
It had to be said, and the nerve to say it came to me, God knows from where. “Damn it, Vin, what is all this crap you’re spoon-feeding me supposed to mean? How can you expect me to believe you? That you can’t spare just one of your men for this task? And how can you be sure I’ll be an obedient dog and not just head for the proverbial hills after you guys dump me off?”
Vin shrugged, backed the automatic off. The long-lost-war-buddy look took over his face again. “I’m not going to wave any flags, Smitt, but...”
“Put a hold on that crap, pal. It won’t take with me. You say for security sake you can’t call the cops, so you haul in a civilian, take him into your confidence and lay the whole bag on his shoulders. My ass! And why me, for Christ’s sake, Vin, I’m anything but a hero. Hell, man, you could’ve done better picking a bum off the...”
“You hold it, Smitt. I told you we couldn’t tell you everything. Do you want to know too much? It’s on your shoulders, you say, and why you? I said this was spur of the moment, Smitty, I’m taking a chance, a big one. Believe me, my head’ll be on the chopping block if you blow this. It isn’t the way I want it, Smitty, but so help me God it’s the only possible way it can be.”
I sat there for a moment.
“Well, Smitt?”
“Give me a cigarette, damn it.”
He did, lit it for me off the dash lighter.
“What would you do, Vin, if I got out of this car and walked away from it?”
Vin lifted his shoulders and set them back down. “Not a damn thing, Smitty. Not a damn thing.”
I bit my lower lip. Sure, sure he says I can walk away. But those eyes, damn flint-gray deep-socketed eyes say he’ll shoot me down as I get out of the car. Let me fall to the gutter as he drives off.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good, Smitty, good.”
Play the Star-Spangled Banner, why don’t you, you red-white-and-blue bastard? Damn you, damn, damn, damn this whole thing anyway. If security’s so important, doesn’t that mean I’ll be a loose end left to tie up, to make sure the secret’s still a secret? No, never — the FBI wouldn’t do that. Like hell.
“I’ll do it. Not that I really had a choice.”
Vin shrugged again. He did that a lot. “Okay, Smitt, let’s get out of the car and I’ll introduce you to Suzie Stewart.”
“That sounds like a new doll from Matel.”
“Just get out and we’ll get your babysitting over with. We’re on a pretty tight time schedule, you know, Smitt. Oh. Here’s a box of shells for you.”
Some babysitter.
When I got out of the Lincoln I tried looking into the back seat to see who or what was behind the black panel, but the windows were shaded, like a hearse. Vin tugged me along and we went up the half flight of stairs. Behind us concrete-slab sat at the Lincoln’s wheel, gunning it now and then. Sounded like a purring cat. Jungle cat.
Inside the brownstone, beyond the vestibule, were more stairs, four flights of which we climbed, ignoring dozens of closed numberless prison-gray doors on each different floor. The building was unnaturally soundless. Like a massive tomb. The smell of paint was in the air.
Finally, on the fourth floor around the corner and at the end of a narrow corridor, waited another of the unnumbered grey cells. Vin gripped the automatic firmly as he worked a key in the Yale lock. He eased the door open, whispered:
“Vin, Hal.”
“Okay. He with you?”
“Yeah.”
The room was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. It smelled musty, like a run-down funeral parlor. The color scheme of the room was in charming faded browns: two chairs, a bureau, a bed and a standing lamp wearing its shade crooked. There was a doorway to the left of the bed, either to a closet, I supposed, or to the john. Possibly the john, because there was no one in the room except Vin, his buddy Hal and me. And I didn’t think Susan Stewart would be waiting in a closet.
Hal said, “You Smith?”
I said, “Me Jane.”
Vin frowned, said, “Cut it out, Smitt.”
“Sorry,” I said to Hal, “just trying to brighten a dreary situation. Glad to meet you, Hal.”
I held out my hand to Hal and got a sneer in return.
“Don’t mind Hal, Smitty.”
But I did. I did mind Hal, Hal’s attitude, Hal’s B.O., and Hal’s neanderthal appearance. This was an FBI man? He wore a tacky brown suit two sizes too small for his five foot wide frame and white socks glared up over his brown shoes. All of him but the white socks blended in nicely with the room’s mud-brown decor.