Recoil. Part 45

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

New York City: 16 November

1.

THIS TIME THE MESSENGER WAS A r.e.t.a.r.dED YOUTH WITH a club foot; there was no information in him. Ezio signed for the package and Cestone escorted the limping messenger to the elevators.

It contained a single reel of 16mm film. Ezio set up the projector on the pool table and unrolled the screen against the book shelves. Frank shut the door and turned off the lights. Enough illumination came through the closed Venetian blinds to thread the projector. Ezio set up the speaker box and plugged in the wires.

Frank said brutally, "Enjoy the show, folks."

It began with a close-up of Anna. Apparently she was sitting in a chair; the frame showed only her shoulders and head. She looked contemptuously toward the camera and then away.

It was in color with good resolution: very professional. But Anna's movement, her turn away from the camera, was sluggish and her eyes looked dull. She looked doped, Ezio thought. He glanced at Frank to see whether the same thought had occurred to him but Frank stared unblinkingly at the screen and the quiet anger in his face registered no change; he had been in a deadly calm for ten days now-running things with chilly precision but an utter absence of visible feeling. It was a state in which Ezio had never seen him before.

The image of Anna remained on the screen for several seconds in complete silence; there was only the grind of the projector and the hum of the speaker. Ezio was about to check the sound system when abruptly Edward Merle's voice boomed, filling the room.

"She is, as you see, quite alive."

There was a sudden cut: a daylight close-up of Merle, looking into the camera. Ezio felt Frank stiffen. He reached for the volume k.n.o.b and turned it down a bit.

"She'll stay alive if you do certain things. First, you're to cancel immediately the contract on my life and my family. I want you to spread the word where everybody hears it. I want it to be heard where it will be reported back to me. In addition, you will similarly cancel the contracts on these three men: Walter Benson."

Another cut: Benson was there, looking into the camera, showing his teeth-in defiance.

"... John Fusco."

Fusco, his hair gone gray, his eyes hidden in shadow, his jaw squared in determination.

"... Paul Draper."

Draper's fine hair moved slowly in the breeze like seaweed. He stared blankly at them from the screen.

Ezio heard Frank murmur, "So they're in this together."

There was another tight shot of Anna; another setting-it looked like a bedroom; Ezio saw a barred window at the edge of the frame. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. The camera moved and the image jerked: The camera was being hand-held and perhaps this was a different photographer's work; the resolution was less clear. Anna got up and walked slowly to the window and the camera followed her, panning across the room. It was as if she had been told to stand up and walk to the window; she obeyed listlessly. At the window she was in silhouette. The camera zoomed forward slowly until her torso's outline filled the frame. Just before it went to black there was an abrupt cut to a close-up of an arm.

"You'll notice the punctures in the flesh above the vein. These are the tracks of mainline needles." The voice was harsh and cold.

The camera drew back, tipping upward; Anna's face came into the picture. So it wasn't a fake; that was really her own arm.

"At the moment her maintenance dose has been increased steadily to five nickel bags per day."

Ezio gripped his head in both hands. Jesus.

Abruptly Walter Benson was on the screen. He talked straight into the camera. Ezio had no trouble recognizing the reedy voice. "I've got a bullet in my back from your contract. It won't happen again, and we're going to tell you why."

Cut: Now it was Draper, speaking with slow gravity. "There are more of us than you can ever handle. We want you to know that."

And then Fusco. "We've had it, Pastor. One more move against any of us ..."

Cut to Merle: "... and we all come down on you like a ton of bricks. That's a promise."

Now there was a repeat of the opening shot; Anna, head and shoulders, first looking into the camera and then, as if in woozy disgust, looking away. The camera moved up slightly and began to zoom forward through the window beyond her; it kept her head steadily in the frame in the lower corner but she went gradually out of focus as the image went out through the window and picked up a scene of abandoned shacks, barren gray earth, rock-studded hills beyond. At the foot of the slope the camera discovered a knot of men milling slowly about. The lens zoomed forward to high telephoto resolution. Ezio counted five men in the picture: He recognized three of them; the other two were not in focus.

There was a cut that disoriented him momentarily; the camera seemed to be prying its way through a group of people, pushing foreground figures away to the sides, finding more people beyond. Draper looked at the camera and made an obscene gesture. Fusco made a fist. Benson, with an ironic twist to his mouth, lifted a plastic cup toward the camera as if in toast, and then drank. Merle was coming down the slope from a cabin above them; the camera focused on him until he moved into the group. In the background two other figures moved in and out of the view-Ezio realized they were wearing stockings over their heads. Both of them wore pullover sweaters, dark slacks, dark shoes and leather gloves. Six so far, he thought. Then the camera steadied and a seventh man appeared at one side of the frame. He did not face it; Ezio had an impression of bulk, a full reddish beard, long unkempt hair. The man milled among the others, keeping his back to the camera, and soon went out of sight to one side.

The camera cut to another view of the group, taken from a point slightly above them; Merle's voice startled Ezio from the speaker. "These are a few of our group. There are others. You'll notice that you can't recognize three of the people you've seen in these pictures. Remember that. These three are close friends of ours. They've joined us to fight you. You don't know who they are, and therefore you can't reach them before they reach you."

Close-up of Merle; behind him nothing but a blank off-white plaster wall. Talking directly into the camera.

"We've grown into a sizable force. You're not dealing with helpless individuals anymore. We took your wife to prove a point. You're vulnerable. You're just as vulnerable as we are. Your wife and your unborn child are at our mercy. We've made a hopeless heroin addict out of her in a matter of weeks, with carefully controlled increasing doses. We can do a lot worse than that if you force it."

Anna's face appeared. She was sitting in the front seat of a car. It was a close-up; not enough of the car was visible to determine its make or design. The picture had been taken from outside the car, looking in through the open window. She wasn't looking at the camera. She reached up and ran her hand through her hair, dragging it back from her face. Ezio noticed abstractedly that her hair needed washing.

Merle's voice droned on: "You'll hear from us in a little while. You'll receive instructions. Obey them."

Another shot of Anna: a reverse of an earlier shot, Ezio saw. From Anna's face the camera moved down to her arm; it zoomed in tight on the scabs and open sores. Then the screen went bright with a reprise of the downhill shot of Benson and the others; the camera drew back-it was the same shot as the opening frame, in reverse-through the window to a close-up of Anna in the chair; she was looking away and then she turned to face the camera and the screen went motionless, freezing frame on her as she stared into the lens. Now Ezio saw the fear and appeal in her eyes.

The screen went white; the film flapped through to its end.

2.

Ezio didn't speak. He rewound the film to its beginning and threaded the projector and left it set up that way in case Frank wanted to look at it again.

Frank showed no inclination to review it. He sat in the leather chair with his fingers steepled below his chin.

Ezio opened the blinds. The light made him squint. He stood by the window waiting for Frank to speak. Outside it was snowing.

But it was the telephone that broke the silence.

Merle, he thought. He crossed the room, glancing at Frank; Frank didn't even look up. Ezio picked up the receiver. "Yes?"

"It's Belmont, Mr. Martin. I need to talk to you."

"Where are you?"

"Down at your office. Something's come up."

"To do with Mrs. Pastor?"

"No. Something else. That other matter, down around Washington."

"Can it wait?"

"It could but I don't think it ought to. It's pretty bad news."

"I'll get to a pay phone and call you back. Wait there." He hung up.

Frank lifted his face slowly.

"I've got to go out for a few minutes."

Frank nodded.

3.

When he returned with snow on his coat Frank was still in the chair; he appeared not to have moved at all. But he looked up alertly. "Well?"

"Bad news from Washington. Very bad. They had to abort the raid on those files."

"Why?"

"Because there aren't any files any more."

Frank gave him a sour look. He didn't flare up; he only sighed. "Par."

"What?"

"Par for the course," Frank said. "Everything else goes rotten, I should've known this would fall apart too. What happened to the files?"

"They put them in code and fed the code into a computer bank. Only three or four people alive have the code. Corcoran, Bradleigh, one or two others high up in the department. n.o.body can retrieve the information without the key code. So there's no way we can get at them any more."

Frank nodded. "They probably put that in motion as soon as they found out we'd been getting files from the Janowicz woman."

"They must have. It'd take them quite a while to program the whole thing into computers, let alone code it."

"You'll have to pay those men off and send them home."

"I know," Ezio said. "I wish I had some good news for you for a change."

Frank's mouth twisted into a half-smile. "What's left, Ezio? Just what the f.u.c.king h.e.l.l is left?"

4.

When the phone rang again Ezio picked it up expecting nothing.

Without preamble the voice said, "Put Frank Pastor on."

Ezio held the receiver out toward Frank. "Him."

Frank took it. "Yeah, I know who it is. Talk." Then he looked up at Ezio and mouthed the word paper and snapped his fingers. Ezio handed him the notebook and pencil from the desk. Frank wrote something down. "All right. Ten minutes," he said and hung up the phone. He tore the paper off the pad and rammed it into his pocket, getting to his feet. "Wants to call me back at a pay phone."

"Smart. He figures this one's tapped."

"Let's go. Might as well find out how much it's going to cost me."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

New York-New Jersey: 16 November

1.

MATHIESON CHECKED HIS WATCH.

Time. He put the dime in and dialed.