The Judas Goat Part 2

"Okay," I said. "But don't be so bossy. You know how I hate a bossy broad."

"Bossy?"

"Yeah."

"Did you have a plan for our farewell celebration?"

"Yeah. "Forget it."

"Okay, boss." She squeezed my arm and smiled. It was a stunner of a smile. There was something in it. Mischief was too weak a word. Evil too strong. But it was always there in the smile. Something that seemed to be saying, You know what would be fun to do? I held the door for her and as she slid into my car the jumpsuit stretched tight and smooth over her thigh. I went around and got in and started the car. "It strikes me," I said, "that if you were wearing underwear beneath that jumpsuit it would show. It doesn't show. "

"That's for me to know and you to find out, big fella."

"Oh, good," I said, "the celebration is back on."

4.

I found out about the underwear, and some other things. Most of the other things I already knew, but it was a pleasure to be reminded. Afterward we lay on, top of my bed, with the afternoon sun shining in. Her body, strong, and a little damp from mutual exertion, glistened where the sun touched it. "You are a strong and active person," I said. "Regular exercise," she said. "And a positive att.i.tude."

"I think you wrinkled my white linen suit."

"It would have wrinkled on the airplane anyway." We got dressed and walked up Boylston Street and across the Prudential Center to a restaurant called St. Botolph. It was one of the zillion California-theme restaurants that had appeared in the wake of urban renewal like dandelions on a new seeded lawn. Tucked back of the Colonnade Hotel, it was brick and had hanging plants and relative informality where one could actually get a good meat loaf. Among other things. I had the meat loaf and Susan had scallops Provencale. There wasn't much to say. I told her about the job. "Bounty hunter," she said. "Yeah, I guess so. Just like the movies."

"Do you have a plan?" Her make-up was expert. Eye liner, eye shadow, color on the cheekbones, lipstick. She probably looked better at forty than she had at twenty. There were small lines at the corners of her eyes, and smile suggestions at the edges of her mouth that added to her face, gave it pattern and meaning. "Same old plan I always have. I'll show up and mess around and see if I can get something stirring and see what happens. Maybe put an ad in the papers offering a big reward."

"A group like that? Do you think a reward could get one of them to turn another in?" I shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe it would get them to make contact with me. One way or another. I have to have a contact. I need a Judas goat."

"Might they try to kill you if they know you're there?"

"Maybe. I plan to thwart them."

"And then you'll have your contact," Susan said. "Yeah." She shook her head. "This will not be a pleasant time for me."

"I know... I won't like it that much either."

"Maybe part of you won't. But you're having a grand adventure too. Tom Swift, Bounty Hunter. Part of you will have a wonderful time."

"That was truer before I knew you," I said. "Even bounty hunting is less fun without you."

"I think that's true. I appreciate it. I know that you are what you are. But if I lose you it will be chronic. It will be something I'll never completely get over."

"I'll come back," I said. "I won't die away from you."

"Oh, Jesus," she said, and her voice filled. She turned her head away. My throat was very tight and my eyes burned. "I know the feeling," I said. "If I weren't such a tough manly b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I might come very close to sniffling a little myself." She turned back toward me. Her eyes were very shiny, but her face was smooth and she said, "Well, maybe you, cupcake, but not me. I'm going to do one excerpt from my famous Miss Kitty impression and then we are going to laugh and chatter brightly till flight time." She put her hand on my forearm, and looked at me hard and leaned forward and said, "Be careful, Matt."

"A man's gotta do what he's gotta do, Kitty," I said. "Let's have a beer." We were chatty and bright for the rest of the meal and the ride to the airport. Susan dropped me off at the International Terminal. I got out, unlocked the trunk, took out my luggage, put the .357 in the trunk, locked it and leaned into the car. "I won't go in with you," she said. "Sitting and waiting in airports is too dismal. Send me a postcard. I'll be here when you come back." I kissed her goodbye and hauled my luggage into the terminal. The tickets were at the Pan Am desk as promised. I picked them up, checked my luggage through and went up to wait at the loading gate. It was a slow night at the International Terminal. I cleared the security check, found a seat near the boarding ramp and got out my book. I was working on a scholarly book that year. Regeneration Through Violence, by a guy named Richard Slotkin. A friend of Susan's had lent it to me to read because he wanted what he called "an untutored reaction from someone in the field." He was an English teacher at Tufts and could be excused that kind of talk. More or less. I liked the book but I couldn't concentrate. Sitting alone at night in an airport is a lonely feeling. And waiting to fly away to another country, by yourself, on a nearly empty plane was very lonely. I half decided to turn around and call Susan and say come get me. I minded being alone more as I got older. Or was it just Susan. Either way. Ten years ago this would have been a great adventure. Now I wanted to run. At eight-thirty we boarded. At eight-fifty we took off. By nine-fifteen I had my first beer from the stewardess and a bag of Smokehouse Almonds. I began to feel better. Tomorrow perhaps I could have dinner in Simpson's and maybe for lunch I could find a nice Indian restaurant. By ten I had drunk three beers and eaten perhaps half a pound of almonds. The flight was not crowded and the stewardess was attentive. Probably drawn by the elegance of my three-piece linen suit. Even wrinkled. I read my book and ignored the movie and listened to the oldies but goodies channel on the headphones and had a few more beers, and my mood brightened some more. After midnight I stretched out across several seats and took a nap. When I woke up the stewardesses were serving coffee and rolls and the sun was shining in the windows. We landed at Heathrow Airport outside of London at ten-fifty-five London time and I stumbled off the plane, stiff from sleeping on the seats. The coffee and rolls were sloshing around with the beer and Smokehouse Almonds. For simple hodgepodge confusion and complicated extent, Heathrow Airport's name leads all the rest. I followed arrows and took Bus A and followed more arrows and finally found myself in the line at the pa.s.sport window. The clerk looked at my pa.s.sport, smiled and said, "Nice to see you, Mr. Spenser. Would you please step over to the security office, there."

"They've reported me. I'm to be arrested for excessive beer consumption on an international flight." The clerk smiled and nodded toward the security office. "Right over there, please, sir." I took my pa.s.sport and went to the office. Inside was a security officer in uniform and a tall thin man, with long teeth, smoking a cigarette and wearing a dark green shirt with a brown tie. "My name is Spenser," I said. "People at the pa.s.sport desk sent me over." The tall thin guy said, "Welcome to England, Spenser. I'm Michael Flanders." We shook hands. "Do you have baggage checks?" I did. "Let me have them, will you. I'll have your baggage taken care of." He gave the checks to the security man, and steered me out of the office with his hand on my elbow. We came out a different door and I realized we'd cleared customs. Flanders reached inside his tweed jacket and brought out an envelope with my name on it. "Here," he said. "I was able to arrange this with the authorities this morning." I opened the envelope. It was a gun permit. "Not bad," I said. We came out of the terminal building underneath one of the walkways that connects the second floors of everything at Heathrow. A black London cab was there and a porter was loading my luggage in while the security man watched. "Not bad," I said. Flanders smiled. "Nothing, really. Mr. Dixon's name has considerable sway here as it does in so many places." He gestured me into the cab, the driver came around and said something I didn't understand and we started off. Flanders said to the cabbie, "Mayfair Hotel, if you would." And leaned back and lit another cigarette. His fingers were long and bony and stained with nicotine. "We're putting you up in the Mayfair," he said to me. "It's a first-rate hotel and nicely located. I hope it will be satisfactory."

"Last case I was on," I said, "I slept two nights in rented Pinto. I can make do okay in the Mayfair."

"Well, good," he said. "You know why I'm here," I said. "I do."

"What can you tell me?"

"Not very much, I'm afraid. Perhaps when we get you settled we can have lunch and talk about it. I imagine you'd like to freshen up a bit, get that suit off to the dry cleaners. "

"Sure wrinkles on an airplane, doesn't it?"

"Indeed."

5.

The Mayfair was a big flossy-looking hotel near Berkeley Square. Flanders paid the cabbie, turned the bags over to the hall porter and steered me to the desk. He didn't seem to have a lot of confidence in me. A hired thug from the provinces, can barely speak the language, no doubt. I checked my heel for a cow flap. My room had a bed, a bureau, a blue wing chair, a small mahogany table and a white tiled bathroom. The window looked out over an airshaft into the building next door. Old-world charm. Flanders tipped the bell man, and checked his watch. "One o'clock," he said. "Perhaps you'd like to take the afternoon and get settled, then we could have dinner and I could tell you what I know. Do you need money?"

"I have money, but I need pounds," I said. "Yes," he said. "Of course. I'll have it changed for you." He took a big wallet from inside his jacket pocket. "Here's one hundred pounds," he said, "should you need it to hold you over."

"Thanks." I took my wallet out of my left hip pocket, and dug out $2500. "If you could change that for me, I'd appreciate it. Take out the hundred." He looked at my wallet with some distaste. It was fat and slovenly. "No need," he said. "Mr. Dixon's money, you know. He's been quite explicit about treating you well."

"So far so good," I said. "I won't tell him you got me a room on an airshaft. "

"I am sorry about that," Flanders said. "It's peak season for touists, you know, and the notice was short."

"My lips are sealed," I said. Flanders smiled tentatively. He wasn't sure if he was being kidded. "Shall I come by for you, say six?"

"Six is good, but why not meet somewhere. I can find my way. If I get lost I'll ask a cop."

"Very well, would you care to try Simpson's-on-the-Strand? It's rather a London inst.i.tution."

"Good, see you there at six-fifteen." He gave me the address and departed.

I unpacked and rea.s.sembled my gun, loaded it and put it on the night table. Then I shaved, brushed my teeth and took a shower. I picked up the phone and asked the front desk to call me at five-thirty. Then I took a nap on the top of the spread. I missed Susan.

At five-forty-five, vigorous and alert, with a spring in my step and my revolver back in its hip holster, I strode out the main entrance of the Mayfair. I turned down Berkeley Street and headed for Piccadilly. I had a city map that I'd bought in a shop in the hotel, and I'd been in London once before a few years back, before Susan, when I'd come for a week with Brenda Loring.

I walked down Piccadilly, stopped at Fortnum and Mason and looked at the package food stuffs in the window. I was excited. I like cities and London was a city the way New York is a city. The fun it would be to stroll around Fortnum and Mason with Susan and buy some smoked quail's eggs or a jellied game hen or something imported from the Khyber Pa.s.s. I moved on up into Piccadilly Circus, which was implacably ordinary, movie theaters and fast foods, turned right on Haymarket and walked on down to Trafalgar Square, Nelson and the lions, and the National Gallery and the G.o.dd.a.m.ned pigeons. Kids were in compet.i.tion to see who could acc.u.mulate the most pigeons on and around them.

Walking up the Strand I pa.s.sed a London cop walking peaceably along, hands behind his back, walkie-talkie in his hip pocket, the mike pinned to his lapel. His nightstick was artfully concealed in a deep and inconspicuous pocket. As I walked I could feel an excited tight feeling in my stomach. I kept thinking of Samuel Johnson, and Shakespeare. "The old country," I thought. Which wasn't quite so. My family was Irish. But it was the ancestral home, anyway, for people who spoke English and could read it. Simpson's was on the right, just past the Savoy Hotel. I wondered if they played "Stompin' at the Savoy" over the music in the elevators. Probably the wrong Savoy.

I turned into Simpson's, which was oak paneled and high ceilinged, and spoke to the maitre d'. The maitre d' a.s.signed a subordinate to take me to Flanders, who rose as I approached. So did the man with him. Very cla.s.sy. "Mr. Spenser, Inspector Downes, of the police. I asked him to join us, if that's all right with you." I wondered what happened if it weren't all right. Did Downes back away out of the restaurant, bowing apologetically?

"Fine with me," I said. We shook hands. The waiter pulled out my chair. We sat down.

"A drink?" Flanders said.

"Draught beer," I said.

"Whiskey," Downes said. Flanders ordered Kir.

"Inspector Downes worked on the Dixon case," Flanders said, "and is a specialist in this kind of urban guerrilla crime that we see so much of these days."

Downes smiled modestly. "I'm not sure expert is appropriate, but I've dealt with a good many, you know."

The waiter returned with the drinks. The beer was cold, at least, but much flatter than American beer. I drank some. Flanders sipped at his Kir. Downes had his whiskey straight without ice or water, in a small tumbler, and sipped it like a cordial. He was fair-skinned with a big round face and shiny pink cheekbones. His body under the black civil-servicey-looking suit was heavy and sort of slack. Not fat, just quite relaxed. There was a sense of slow power about him.

"Oh, before I forget," Flanders said. He took an envelope from inside his coat and handed it to me. On the outside in red pen was written, "Spenser, 1400."

"The exchange rate is very good these days," Flanders said. "Your gain and our loss, isn't it." I nodded and stuck the envelope in my jacket pocket. "Thank you," I said. "What have you got to tell me?"

"Let's order first," Flanders said. He had salmon, Downes had roast beef and I ordered mutton. Always try the native cuisine. The waiter looked like Barry Fitzgerald. He seemed delighted with our choices. "Faith and begorra," I murmured. Flanders said, "I beg your pardon?" I shook my head. "Just an old American saying. What have you got?" Downes said, "Really not much, I'm afraid. A group called Liberty has claimed responsibility for the Dixon murders and we have no reason to doubt them."

"What are they like?"

"Young people, apparently very conservative, recruited from all over western Europe. Headquarters might be in Amsterdam."

"How many?"

"Oh, ten, twelve. The figure changes every day. Some join, others leave. It doesn't seem a very well organized affair. More like a random group of juveniles larking about. "

"Goals?"

"Excuse me?"

"What are the goals of their organization? Do they wish to save the great whales? Free Ireland? Smash apartheid? Restore Palestine? Discourage abortion?"

"I think they are anticommunist."

"That doesn't explain blowing Dixon up. Dixon industries aren't practicing state socialism, are they?" Downes smiled and shook his head. "Hardly. The bombing was random violence. Urban guerrilla tactics. Disruption, terror, that sort of thing. It unravels the fabric of government, creates confusion, and allows the establishment of a new power structure. Or some such."

"How are they progressing?"

"The government seems to be holding its own."

"They do much of this sort of thing?"

"Hard to say," Downes sipped at his Scotch some more and rolled it around over his tongue. "d.a.m.ned fine. It's hard to say because we get so b.l.o.o.d.y much of this sort of thing from so many corners. Gets difficult to know who is blowing up whom and why." Flanders said, "But, as I understand it, Phil, this is not a major group. It doesn't threaten the stability of the country." Downes shook his head, "No, surely not. Western civilization is in no immediate danger. But they do hurt people."

"We all have reason to know that," Flanders said. "Does any of this help?"

"Not so far," I said. "If anything it hurts. As Downes knows, the more amateurish and unorganized and sappy a group like this is, the harder it is to get a handle on them. The big well organized ones I'll bet you people have infiltrated already." Downes shrugged and sipped at his Scotch. "You're certainly right about the first part anyway, Spenser. The random childishness of it makes them much more difficult to deal with. The same random childishness limits their effectiveness in terms of revolution or whatever in h.e.l.l they want. But it makes them d.a.m.ned hard to catch."

"Have you anything?"

"If you were from the papers," Downes said, "I'd reply that we were developing several promising possibilities. Since you're not from the papers I can be more brief. No. We haven't anything."

"No names? No faces?"

"Only the sketches we took from Mr. Dixon. We've circulated them. No one has surfaced."

"Informants?"

"No one knows anything about it."

"How hard have you been looking?"

"As hard as we can," Downes said. "You've not been over here long, but as you may know, we are pressed. The Irish business occupies most of our counter-insurgency machinery. "

"You haven't looked hard." Downes looked at Flanders. "Not true. We have given it as much attention as we can."

"I'm not accusing you of anything. I understand your kind of problems. I used to be a cop. I'm just saying it so Flanders will understand that you have not been able to conduct an exhaustive search. You've sifted the physical evidence. You've put out flyers, you've checked the urban guerrilla files and the case is still active. But you don't have a lot of bodies out beating the bushes on Egdon Heath or whatever." Downes shrugged and finished his Scotch.

"True," he said. Barry Fitzgerald came back with food. He brought with him a man in a white ap.r.o.n who pushed a large copperhooded steam table. At tableside he opened the hood, and carved to my specifications a large joint of mutton. When he was finished he stood back with a smile. I looked at Flanders. Flanders tipped him. While the carver was carving, Barry put out the rest oi the food. I ordered another beer. He seemed delighted to get it for me.

6.

I rejected Flanders's offer of a cab and strolled back up the Strand toward the Mayfair in the slowly gathering evening. It was a little after eight o'clock. I had nowhere to be till morning and I walked randomly. Where the Strand runs into Trafalgar Square I turned down Whitehall.

I stopped halfway down and looked at the two mounted sentries in the sentry box outside the Horse Guards building. They had leather hip boots and metal breastplates and old-time British Empire helmets, like statues, except for the young and ordinary faces that stared out under the helmets and the eyes that moved. The faces were kind of a shock.

At the end of Whitehall was Parliament and Westminster Bridge, and across Parliament Square, Westminster Abbey. I'd walked through it some years back with Brenda Loring and a stampede of tourists. I'd like to walk through it when it was empty sometime. I looked at my watch: 8:50. Subtract six hours, it was ten of three at home. I wondered if Susan was in her counseling cla.s.s. It probably didn't meet every day. But maybe in the summer. I walked a little way out into Westminster Bridge and looked down at the river. The Thames. Jesus Christ. It had flowed through this city when only Wampanoags were on the Charles. Below me to the left was a landing platform where excursion boats loaded and unloaded. Susan and I had gone the year before to Amsterdam and had a wine and cheese cruise by candlelight along the ca.n.a.ls and looked at the high seventeenthcentury fronts of the ca.n.a.l houses.

Shakespeare must have crossed this river. I had some vague recollection that the Globe Theatre was on the other side. Or had been. I also had the vague feeling that it no longer existed. I looked at the river for a long time and then turned and leaned on the bridge railing with my arms folded and watched the people for a while. I was striking, I thought, in blue blazer, gray slacks, white oxford b.u.t.ton-down and blue and red rep striped tie. I'd opened the tie and let it hang down casually against the white shirt, a touch of informality, and it was only a matter of time until a swinging London bird in a leather miniskirt saw that I was lonely and stopped to perk me up. Miniskirts didn't seem prevalent. I saw a lot of harem pants and a lot of the cigarette look with Levis tucked into the top of high boots. I would have accepted either subst.i.tute, but no one made a move on me. Probably had found out I was foreign. Xenophobic b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. No one even noticed the bra.s.s touch on the ta.s.sels on my loafers. Suze noticed them the first time I had them on.

I gave it up after a while. I hadn't smoked in ten or twelve years, but I wished then I'd had a cigarette that I could have taken a final drag on and flipped still burning into the river as I turned and walked away. Not smoking gains in the area of lung cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures. At the edge of St. James's Park there was something called Birdcage Walk and I took it. Probably my Irish romanticism. It led me along the south side of St. James's Park to Buckingham Palace. I stood outside awhile and stared in at the wide bare hard-paved courtyard. "How you doing, Queen," I murmured. There was a way to tell if they were there or not but I'd forgotten what it was. Didn't matter much. They probably wouldn't make a move on me either.

From the memorial statue in the circle in front of the palace a path led across Green Park toward Piccadilly and my hotel. I took it. I felt strange walking through a dark place of gra.s.s and trees an ocean away from home, alone. I thought about myself as a small boy and the circ.u.mstantial chain that connected that small boy with the middle-aging man who found himself alone in the night in a park in London. The little boy didn't seem to be me very much. And neither did the middle-aging man. I was incomplete. I missed Susan and I'd never missed anyone before. I came out on Piccadilly again, turned right and then left onto Berkeley. I walked past the Mayfair and looked at Berkeley Square, long and narrow and very neat-looking. I didn't hear a nightingale singing. Someday maybe I'd come back here with Susan, and I would. I went back to the hotel and had room service bring me four beers. "How many gla.s.ses, sir?"

"None," I said in a mean voice. When it came I overtipped the bellhop to make up for the mean voice, drank the four beers from the bottle and went to bed.

In the morning I went out early and placed an ad in the Times. The ad said: "REWARD. One thousand pounds offered for information about organization called Liberty and death of three people in bombing of Steinlee's Restaurant last August 21. Call Spenser, Hotel Mayfair, London." Downes had promised the previous evening to have the file on Dixon sent over to my hotel and by the time I got back it was there, in a brown manila envelope, folded in half the long way and crammed in the mail box back of the front desk. I took it up to my room and read it. There were Xerox copies of the first officer's report, statements taken from witnesses, Dixon's statement from his hospital bed, copies of the Identikit sketches that had been made and regular reports of no progress submitted by various cops. There was also a Xerox of a note from Liberty claiming credit for the bombing and claiming victory over the "communist goons." And there was a copy of a brief history of Liberty, presumably culled from the newspaper files.

I lay on the bed in my hotel room with the airshaft window open and read it over three times, alert for clues the English cops had missed. There weren't any. If they had overlooked anything, I had too. It was almost as if I weren't any smarter than they were. I looked at my watch: 11:15. Almost time for lunch. If I went out and walked in leisurely fashion to a restaurant and ate slowly then I would have only four or five hours to kill till dinner. I looked at the material again. There was nothing in it. If my ad didn't produce any action, I didn't have any idea what to do next. I could drink a lot of beer and tour the country but Dixon might get restless about that after I'd gone through a couple of five grand advances.

I went out, went to a pub in Shepherd's Market near Curzon Street, had lunch, drank some beer, then walked up to Trafalgar Square and went into the National Gallery. I spent the afternoon there looking at the paintings, staring most of time at the portraits of people from another time and feeling the impact of their reality. The fifteenth-century woman in profile whose nose seemed to have been broken. Rembrandt's portrait of himself. I found myself straining after them. It was after five when I left and walked in a kind of head-buzzing sense of separateness out into Trafalgar Square and the current reality of the pigeons. The ad would run in the morning, they had told me. I had nothing to do tonight. I didn't feel like sitting alone in a restaurant and eating dinner, so I went back to my room, had a plateful of sandwiches sent up with some beer and ate in my room while I read my book.

The next morning the ad was there, as promised. As far as I could tell I was the only one who'd seen it. No one called that day, nor the next. The ad kept running. I hung around the hotel waiting until I got crazy, and then I went out and hoped they'd leave a message.