In forty years, Walter’s instincts were highly developed. He refrained from pointless guesswork. He tried to deal exclusively with evidence. That didn’t mean he didn’t think about things, didn’t project his target’s future actions. It just meant his conjecture required a rock-hard foundation of existing fact. Talking to Conchita Crystal about Harry’s life and personality, he hoped to begin constructing that foundation. That’s how he began with most of his clients, usually a photograph, a sad tale of despair and woe, a plea for help. And always, in the background, the unspoken monster, the client’s fear of failure. Because the rich, the famous and the powerful face possible disaster from the goings-on of almost anybody close to them, his clients often told Walter far more than he needed to know, burdened him, in fact, with details so personal and so irrelevant to his pursuit. Walter saw it as an indication of their vulnerability and it frequently showed him things about them they had not meant to reveal. He looked for those qualities, those hidden secrets, those unintended disclosures in Conchita Crystal. It worried him that he found none. But he listened to her. After all, he needed to start somewhere.
Europeans drink more tea than coffee. While in Turkey and Egypt, Harry had a hell of a time finding a decent cup of coffee, American coffee. How he loved it. After smoking since he was a teenager, he quit at 30, but never cut back on coffee. Some addictions were better than others. The six-cup electric percolator he bought in Philadelphia his first year in law school sat in his London kitchen, still working.
Finding the right beans, the kind needed to make a cup of coffee like Harry could get in any of a thousand roadside Waffle House restaurants scattered throughout the South, was a challenge in Europe, even in London. This was so despite coffee’s long history in England. As best Harry could determine, Edward Lloyd opened London’s first coffeehouse, in Tower Street, in 1637. It was still a famous establishment today, albeit while keeping its founder’s name, it long ago stopped selling coffee and began instead arranging commercial insurance. Other coffee shops played an important role in England’s industrial revolution. The once popular Jonathon’s Coffee Shop eventually became the London Stock Exchange. Harry knew that, just as he was aware that today coffee was the second most traded commodity in the world, surpassed only by oil. When he finally discovered exactly the blend of beans he was looking for, at Monmouth’s Coffee House, he bought in bulk and stored it in his freezer. Harry was like that. His pantry always had a month’s supply of things like toilet paper, napkins, garbage bags, toothpaste, the sort of stuff people might run out of if they weren’t careful. And, he also had an extra supply of socks and underwear, dress shirts, flashlight batteries, shaving cream and those little things people dropped in their toilets to make the water blue. He kept it all stashed away, neatly stacked, ready to use when needed. He was very careful, very neat, very thorough.
He thought about his meeting with Sir Anthony as he prepared the coffee. The gurgling noise his percolator made was a sound he’d grown familiar with, a sound as real to him as language. He anticipated, as if by some mysterious feel, when its silence would announce the coffee was ready. Once done, he reached for the sugar bowl putting it down next to the milk he had already taken out of the refrigerator. After inhaling a deep smell of the fresh brewed aroma, he poured the coffee into his mug, adding the milk first, then the sugar, and stirred. From the living room he heard a Vivaldi violin concerto playing on the BBC.
Before taking a sip he reached across the small table in his kitchen and pulled the document toward him. I killed the Son Of A Bitch kept running through his mind. He closed his eyes and said it to himself- “I killed the Son Of A Bitch.” He was amused by his awareness of the cultural divide separating Frederick Lacey and himself. No American, certainly no modern American, would have written Son Of A Bitch. It would be sonofabitch! Then he said it, out loud, softly, slowly with his eyes still tightly closed, both hands clutching the warm mug. “Sonofabitch! Lord Frederick Lacey killed President John F. Kennedy.” A shiver crossed his shoulders. Harry opened his eyes, took a long drink of his coffee and let the idea, fantastic as it was, settle in his mind. Lord Frederick Lacey killed President John F. Kennedy. “Holy shit,” he added aloud. Then he began reading the document, shuffling pages, searching for the ones about Kennedy.
Harry was drained, worn down by the adrenaline rush of Lacey’s revelations. His confusion and bewilderment were compounded by the simple sight of the document he had been reading, lying on his kitchen table. It rested there, next to the morning Times and today’s mail, as harmless as if it were any set of papers. Just a pile of old paper? he thought. No, it was a bombshell, scheduled to explode the day after tomorrow. Harry had rushed through Lacey’s confession, looking for the Kennedy names, but there were others as well. Skimming through the pages he saw many familiar names-Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt and Stalin. Czar Nicholas II was mentioned on more than one page, together with many others. Some Muslim names were strange to him. A big Billy Joel fan, Harry was particularly taken with a name he saw on a page that seemed to be about 1917-Solly Joel. Who was he, he wondered? He made a mental note to come back to that page later. Lacey was apparently fond of writing down interesting or useful quotes. Harry saw them, on pages here and there, in quotation marks with the author’s identity. They stood out because he wrote them in all caps. “MORAL INDIGNATION IS JEALOUSY WITH A HALO” -H. G. Wells. Harry chuckled when he read that one. Did Lacey see himself in that nugget of wisdom? He noticed the names of Chaim Weizmann and Sir Herbert Samuel. He knew who they were. And he wrote down a quote from the Latin for further reference, one for which Lacey gave no attribution. “UBI DUBIUM IBI LIBERTAS.” He wasn’t sure of the meaning, but Harry couldn’t help thinking of Roy Orbison. He was getting punchy. He’d been reading too long. Hey! he scolded himself. This is serious business. This is the confession of Lord Frederick Lacey. He killed John Kennedy!
McHenry Brown was off somewhere. Harry had no idea where, or how to reach him in an emergency. Jesus Christ! This was an emergency. The whole thing agitated him. He paced about his apartment, walking from the kitchen into the living room and back again a half dozen times, wondering what to do, his mind becoming a shambles.
He heard it on the BBC Noon News. “… Sir Anthony Wells…” He heard the name but couldn’t make out the rest, not from the kitchen. He ran into the living room where he heard the BBC news reader saying, “… beaten to death in his office earlier this morning; however, the official cause of death has yet to be released by the Police. Sir Anthony was apparently alone. Authorities said they knew of no appointments on his schedule for today.” Harry’s mind raced crazily. He felt lightheaded. “… said they were unsure as to a motive. While his office was found in total disarray, it appears Sir Anthony was not robbed…” In the bathroom, Harry splashed cold water on his face. Holding his hands over his eyes he let the water drip down his neck. Slowly, he regained the sense of control he had lost. He returned to the kitchen, picked up the telephone and called the Ambassador’s office. He got the Embassy operator who put him through to McHenry Brown’s Administrative Assistant.
“Elizabeth, it’s Harry Levine. Is this a good line? Can I speak openly?”
“Is there something wrong?” she asked, with a cool composure comparable to the best an Englishwoman could muster. “Where are you calling from?”
“I’m home.”
“How important is it?”