He was left alone again, bereft, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.
7
“The senator is sorry he couldn’t be here to see you, Mr. Catledge. He’s chairing an intelligence committee hearing right now. I’m counsel to the committee, and I should be there myself, but the senator is very grateful for your past support, and he wanted to know what we could do for you.”
They were in the small conference room adjacent to the office of Senator Benjamin Carr, Democrat, the senior senator from Georgia. Carr’s chief administrative assistant sat across the table from Cat.
“I understand, of course,” Cat said. “I’ve taken too much of his time already.”
“Not at all,” the man replied. “He’s been very concerned about your situation.” The younger man, fortyish, Cat thought, placed his elbows on the table, folded his fingers together, and rested his chin on them. “I’ve been doing all the liaising with the State Department, though, so it’s just as well that you and I should talk. You’ve just come from Foggy Bottom, have you?”
Cat nodded. “I saw the head of the Colombian desk.”
“Barker?”
“That’s the one. He was very sympathetic.”
“But...?”
“But he says he’s done all he can. The Colombian police are unwilling to open a new investigation on the basis of a single word spoken on the telephone from somebody who’s been confirmed dead.”
“I was afraid of that,” the assistant replied. “After all, you saw her dead yourself, and the Coast Guard frogmen confirmed what you saw.”
Cat shook his head. “What I saw was only for a fraction of a second, not long after I’d taken a shotgun blast in the chest. I wasn’t a very reliable witness. I know I saw Katie; she was lying on her back on the port settee, but Jinx... the girl I thought was Jinx... was facedown on the saloon table, naked. I haven’t seen Jinx naked since she was nine or ten, I guess, and as I said, I looked away immediately. Since we were the only three on the boat, I naturally assumed she was Jinx.”
“Who was the girl you saw, then?”
“There was a girl on the boat with the Pirate, Denny’s accomplice. Maybe she was somehow substituted for Jinx — I don’t know, I know it doesn’t make any sense. I only got a glimpse of her — I think she was probably older than Jinx and that she was Latin, but in the state I was in when I came to — well, it’s the sort of mistake I could easily have made.”
“I can understand that.”
Cat leaned forward. “What I didn’t make a mistake about was the voice on the telephone. It was Jinx. She said, ‘Daddy.’ It was almost the first word she ever said to me, and I’ve heard her say it all her life, at least until she started to grow up and decided to call me Cat. I’d know Jinx’s voice anywhere, and I’d know it especially well saying that particular word. It was Jinx.”
The assistant was staring down at his reflection in the table. “I believe you,” he said finally. “What are your plans now? Are you going back down there?”
The mere thought of returning to Colombia filled Cat with panic. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Barker, at State, advised against it in the strongest terms. He says I’m not equipped to conduct my own investigation, and God knows that’s true. He won’t give me assistance of any kind if I do go. Says the department won’t take any responsibility.”
“So what are you going to do?” he asked, watching him closely.
Cat leaned back and sighed. “I’m going to go back down there,” he said. “It’s all that’s left, and I could never live with myself if I didn’t do everything I possibly could to find Jinx.”
The man seemed to search Cat’s face for doubt. “That’s your final decision, then? You won’t be dissuaded?”
“No. I’m going. I’ve got some money; maybe I’ll go to the newspapers and offer a reward.”
A twitch of alarm seemed to cross the assistant’s face. He stood up. “Will you excuse me for a few minutes? Don’t leave; I’ll be right back.” He left the room.
Cat walked to the window and looked out toward the Capitol dome. There really was nothing else left to do. He dreaded the thought, but he would have to go back to Colombia, to Santa Marta, and make a start. Somebody, somewhere in that country knew something. Maybe he could buy the information. The money was all he had left. They could have it all if they’d give Jinx back to him. He watched people enter and leave the Capitol, his mind growing numb with the fear of what was ahead of him.
Ten minutes passed. The assistant walked back into the room. “Sit down, will you?” he said.
Cat dragged himself back to the table.
The younger man placed his hands on the table in front of him and opened his fingers, as if to spread out some invisible map. “Let me be sure you understand this,” he said. “Our conversation ended when I left the room a few minutes ago. I expressed my sympathies, said there was nothing further the senator could do, we shook hands, and you left.”
Cat snapped back to the present, puzzled.
“This part of our conversation never happened,” the assistant said, seriously, “and no one — not the senator, or anyone else — is ever to be told about it, do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Cat said, his pulse accelerating. “Of course.”
“You’re staying at the Watergate?”
“Right, though I’d planned to check out before lunch and go back to Atlanta.”
“Stay another night. Sometime tomorrow, probably in the afternoon, you’ll get a phone call from someone who will introduce himself as Jim. Just Jim.”
“Jim. Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Maybe sooner. Don’t leave your room until you hear from him. Don’t expect too much, but he will probably have some advice for you. I can’t promise you’ll like the advice, but this is the only other thing I can think of to help you.”
Cat stood up and offered his hand. “Thank you for believing me. Nobody else has.”
The man took his hand. “Mr. Catledge, I only wish I could do more,” he said.
Cat was asleep when the phone rang. He hadn’t slept much the night before, and late in the afternoon he had dozed off in front of the TV. It took him two rings to orient himself. He glanced at the bedside clock as he picked up the phone. Just after six.
“Hello?”
“My name is Jim. I believe we have a mutual friend.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Come to 528 now.”
“Where?”
“Room 528, here, in the hotel.” The man hung up.
Cat threw some water on his face and slipped on a jacket. He rode the elevator down to the fifth floor, found the room, and knocked. The man who opened the door was in his late fifties, nearly completely gray-haired, and was dressed in a three-piece suit, button-down collar, and a paisley tie. He didn’t look very fresh. He was wearing a day’s growth of beard, his shirt collar had a sweat ring, and his hair was greasy. He beckoned Cat into the room and pointed at one of a pair of wing chairs.
“Take a pew,” he said, walking to the other chair.
Cat sat down and glanced around the room. It didn’t look occupied. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said.
“Any friend of the senator’s,” the man said.
Cat relaxed a little. “Let me tell you about my problem,” he said.
Jim held up a hand. “I’m acquainted with your problem,” he said. “I read the newspapers. Just let me do the talking for a while.”
Cat nodded.
Jim opened a briefcase, the smaller of two beside his chair, and took out a file folder. “Let’s see,” he said, flipping through pages. “Born Atlanta, Northside High, decent fullback — not good enough for college, though; Georgia Tech, Class of ’53, missed Korea with a student deferment — smart move, let me tell you. Naval ROTC, took your commission in the Marines. Why?”