Recoil. Part 30

Mathieson swabbed his dry throat with ginger ale; he was trying not to think about Jan, the way she'd sounded on the phone when he'd called her. He tried to force her out of his mind. "Roger, how'd you get into the hotel without being recognized?"

"Fake beard and motorcycle shades."

Homer said, "His own mother wouldn't know him. He looks like a forty-year-old hippie."

"As long as he doesn't talk," Vasquez said. "The voice is a dead giveaway."

Mathieson said, "Anything you can do about that? Fake an English accent or anything?"

"I reckon not. It's the only way I know how to talk."

"I thought you were an actor."

"Old horse, I never said I was." But then Roger screwed up his outdoor eyes in concentration. "But oi suppews oi moight be able to troy. It's me dewty, innit?"

"That's the worst Cary Grant imitation I ever heard," Homer said.

Mathieson said, "But it didn't sound like Roger Gilfillan, did it. Can you sustain that accent?"

"If oi must, old chep, but I should think it could become b.l.o.o.d.y tiahsome." Roger lapsed into prairie tw.a.n.g. "What you fixin' to have me do?"

"We're going to need some movie equipment. Sixteen millimeter, I'd think."

"Silent or sound?"

"Sound. Preferably sound-on-film. We won't want to have to monkey around with a separate tape-recording system."

"What's it for?"

"We'll get to that," Mathieson said. "What we need is a sound camera, a microphone, color film-the new fast kind that can be used indoors under ordinary artificial light. We'll need a projector and a screen. Now we'll want the most compact equipment that's available. Oh, and a tripod camera mount."

"What kind of lenses?"

"A normal zoom should do it. We don't need telephoto."

"How fast you want it?"

"No hurry. We've got other things to take care of first."

"Old horse, that ain't much of a ch.o.r.e. Anybody could do it."

"I've watched you on the set, Roger. The other actors play poker and swap lies. You hang around the cameramen and the sound engineers every chance you get. You're probably more of an expert than they are by now. This equipment has got to work well and it's got to be manned by a professional. You're in charge of it."

Vasquez said, "What's the next step?"

"Glenn Bradleigh," Mathieson said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

New York City: 7 October

1.

ANNA WAS LATE GETTING BACK TO THE PARK AVENUE apartment. In her euphoria she nearly forgot to pay the taxi driver. The doorman's surly face changed when he opened the door for her: She decided it must be the infectiousness of her radiance. It was the first time she'd ever seen a real smile on his face.

She stopped on the curb and looked up. It was one of those rare evenings: the sky autumn-clear, the Park Avenue gla.s.s towers sharply etched against the blue. Dry and cool and beautiful.

After a solitary elevator ride she arrived at the apartment and rang the bell; her key wouldn't work-the police bar would be in place. She glanced up at the lens of the closed-circuit camera.

It wasn't Frank who opened the door; it was Sandy, her hair in curlers, belted into a terrycloth robe. "Hi."

"Hi yourself. How's school?"

"You always ask me that." Sandy closed the door and slammed the police bar across it and went toward the hallway that went back to the girls' rooms. "And I always say the same thing. It was all right. It was school. What can you say about school?"

"Dad home?"

"In there." Sandy pointed toward the study. The door was closed.

"Alone?"

"Ezio's here." She made a face. "I'm watching the Star Trek rerun and I've got to get back under the dryer, OK?"

"Get it combed out in time for dinner."

"Sure, sure." Sandy disappeared on the run.

She knocked. When she heard Frank's voice she went in.

Ezio gave her a glance and a nod; he didn't rise from his chair. Frank was at the desk. She went around it and kissed him.

Frank said, "You're in a good mood."

"I'm glad you noticed. You two look like the building just fell down around your ankles."

"It did. Gillespie hasn't turned up."

She went toward the recliner chair, peeling off her gloves. "He's scared. He's hiding somewhere."

"Scared for sure," Ezio said. "He didn't even go home for his toothbrush that night."

The jammer's light glowed red. The plastic cover was on the pool table and Ezio's topcoat was thrown across it. She put her gloves neatly in her lap. Narrow bands of sunlight fell through the Venetian blinds of the south window.

Frank told her, "Ernie Guffin still hasn't got a make on--"

"Ernie who?"

"The detective in Washington," Ezio explained. "He still hasn't got a make on Robert Zeck. n.o.body meets the description. We told you all this before, Anna."

"There's been a lot going on," she said.

Ezio turned toward Frank. "You listen to the tape again?"

"Three times."

"So what do you think?"

"Anna thinks Zeck's a federal."

Ezio blinked. "And what do you think?"

"It's as good a guess as any. If Zeck didn't get that stuff off a computer like he said he did, then where'd he get it? He had to get it officially. And that makes him a fed."

"Beats s.h.i.t out of me," Ezio said.

"Mind your language." Frank said it gently. Anna covered a smile with her hand; Frank winked at her.

Frank said, "C.K. probably found the microphones, he found out the office was bugged. He figures you had him bugged, Ezio, he knows I must have heard the tape. That's why he disappeared. He's afraid maybe I'll believe this Zeck stuff."

"You mean you don't believe it?"

"I don't know. I'll tell you this much. If C.K.'s straight with us and if he uses his head, what he'll do, he'll think it over and then he'll come to me. He's putting himself in my hands because he knows I'm a fair guy and I'll give him a hearing and all that baloney. He comes in, he shows a white flag, he tells me Zeck was lying. Then he says, 'Look, Frank, here's how we prove who's telling the truth. This guy Zeck, he'll come back to my office or he'll telephone and tell me how to deliver that hundred kay, the payoff money.' That's when we set a trap and we grab Zeck when he comes for the money. We find out the truth from Zeck and that lets C.K. off the hook. That's what C.K. will do if he's using his head."

Ezio said, "That's supposing Charlie's been on the level with us."

Anna said, "Even if he has, I wouldn't count on him doing that. He knows how we work. He's not going to take the chance of walking in here. He's never had much courage."

Ezio said, "That's for sure. Plenty of brains and oily as h.e.l.l but no guts at all, you ask me."

Frank said, "Anna's got something there. If he's too scared to come to us there's only one other place he could go."

She said, "That's what worries me."

"You mean the feds," Ezio said. "Spill his guts."

"It could put us in a very tough place. He knows a lot."

"He's a lawyer," Ezio pointed out. "He can't spill confidential information."

"Can't he? Who's going to stop him?"

"Even if he does, they can't use anything in court. Privileged communications."

Anna said, "He could tell them what rocks to start looking under. That could be trouble enough."

"I think," Frank said, "I think we pay attention to what Anna says here, Ezio. I think maybe you ought to sort things out and see what tracks we can start covering. Anything that C.K. had a piece of, anything he could tie us to. You may have to burn some papers and things. It may force us to cancel some deals."

"We've sweated these things out before," Ezio said. "I guess we can do it again this time. But I'd rather cancel Charlie Gillespie, myself."

"If you can find him. But you haven't been finding people too well lately."

"We're working hard on that, Frank, you know we are."

"Then show me some results."

"We're looking for needles in haystacks."

Frank brooded at the desk top. "I know you are."

2.

They watched a half hour of the Carson show and then Frank reached for the remote switch on the bedside table and turned it off. "Too many G.o.dd.a.m.n commercials."

She stretched and smiled drowsily. Frank rubbed the skin on top of his head; then he placed both hands over it and leaned back against the pillows. "I've got trouble you know."

"We'll get through it. We always have."

"Big trouble. Word gets around that you're losing your grip, that's the biggest trouble you can have. Too many things slipping through my fingers, Anna. First Merle and those others. Now this C. K. Gillespie mess."

His head swiveled under his hands. He looked down at her.

"We're alive, Frank. We've got a lot of good things."

"That could end real sudden. Word gets around, old Frank Pastor spent too much time in the slammer, he got softened up, he's lost his edge. They start moving in on you like hyenas. You start that kind of a fight, you don't win it."

"Then do something spectacular to take their minds off it. To convince them you're still the top."

"Like what?"

She said, "I was in the doctor's office, in the waiting room. I was reading the Sunday Times. You know in the main news section they have that follow-up column about-"