Scruff

by Robert Ludlum

  Deals were made on the waterfront, in the factories. Paul knew that. But that was different. That was as far down the line as “dog territory” was for him. De Spadante and his gunmen weren’t on the waterfront or at a factory last night. They were at Trevayne’s house. Couldn’t the brigadier see?

  “General.” Bonner spoke slowly but with intensity. “What I made contact with eighteen hours ago, on the property of the chairman of a subcommittee appointed by the President and the Senate, were two hired killers and a Mafia boss who wore iron spikes on his fist and took a lot of skin off my arm and my neck. For me that’s different from stealing files and trying to louse up or outsmart some congressional committee that’s determined to knock us out of the box.”

  “Why? Because the fight’s physical? Not on paper but in the flesh?”

  “Maybe.… Maybe it’s as simple as that. Or maybe I’m just worried that the next step will be for the De Spadantes to be appointed to the Chiefs of Staff. Or made part of the faculty at the War College.… If they’re not on both already.”

  “Is he dead?” asked Robert Webster into the telephone, holding his briefcase between his knees in the booth on Michigan Avenue.

  “No. He’s a tough old guinea. They think he’ll pull through now,” said the doctor at the other end of the line in another public phone booth in Greenwich, Connecticut.

  “That’s not particularly good news.”

  “They worked on him for three hours. Tied up a dozen veins, spliced twice as many and patched walls all over. He’ll be on critical for a few days, but the odds are he’ll make it.”

  “We don’t want that, doctor. That’s unacceptable to us.… There’s got to be a miscalculation somewhere.”

  “Forget it, Bobby. This place is swarming with guns. Every entrance, the elevators, even the roof. The nurses aren’t even ours, they’re his. Four priests rotate the last rites watch inside his room; if they’re priests, I’m Mother Cabrini.”

  “I repeat, some way has got to be found.”

  “Then you find it, but not here. If anything happened to him now, they’d burn the hospital to the ground with all of us in it. And that’s unacceptable to me.”

  “All right, all right. No medical accidents.”

  “You bet your ass!… Why the elimination?”

  “He asked too many favors; he got them. He’s become too much of a liability.”

  The doctor paused. “Not here, Bobby.”

  “All right. We’ll think of something else.”

  “By the way, the discharge papers came through. I’m clean. Thanks a lot. You didn’t have to add the citation, but it was a nice touch.”

  “Better than dishonorable. You must have made a killing.”

  “I did.” The doctor laughed. “If you’re strapped for a buck, let me know.”

  “Be in touch.” Webster hung up and awkwardly manipulated his briefcase and the phone-booth door. He had to figure out what to do about De Spadante. The situation could become dangerous. Somehow he’d use the doctor in Greenwich. Why not? The doctor’s debt wasn’t nearly paid off. The doctor had run a series of abortion mills, in one Army hospital after another. He’d used government equipment and goddamned near advertised in base newspapers. The doctor had made a fortune two years after he’d finished internship.

  Webster hailed a taxi and was about to give the driver the White House destination. Then he changed his mind.

  “Twelve-twenty-two Louisiana.”

  It was the address of the Gallabretto Construction Company. Mario de Spadante’s Washington firm.

  The nurse opened the door solemnly, silently. The priest removed his hand from his jacket, and the gold chain with the cross attached rattled slightly. He got out of the chair and whispered to the visitor.

  “His eyes are closed, but he hears every fuckin’ word.”

  “Leave us,” said the weak, rasping voice from the bed. “Come back when William’s gone, Rocco.”

  “Sure, boss.”

  The priest put his finger between the clerical collar and his skin and stretched his neck. He picked up his small leather missa solemnis and opened the door, slightly embarrassed.

  The visitor and Mario de Spadante were alone.

  “I can’t stay more than a few minutes, Mario. The doctors won’t let me. You’re going to be all right, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Hey, you look good, William. Big West Coast lawyer now, huh? You dress good. You make me proud, little cousin. Real proud.”

  “Don’t waste breath, Mario. We’ve got several things to go over, and I want you cognizant.”

  “Listen to the word. ‘Cognizant.’ ” De Spadante smiled lamely. It took strength to smile, and he was pitifully weak. “They sent you in from the Coast. Imagine that.”

  “Let me do the talking, Mario.… First of all, you went to Trevayne’s place in hopes that he might be home. You didn’t have his unlisted number; you were in Greenwich on business—you’re doing some work down here—and you’d heard his wife was in a hospital. You knew him in New Haven, reacquainted yourselves on the plane to Washington. You were simply concerned. That’s all. It was purely a social call. Perhaps a bit presumptuous on your part, but that’s not contradictory to your … expansiveness.”

  De Spadante nodded, his eyes half-closed. “Little Willie Gallabretto,” he said with his faint smile. “You talk good, William. I’m real proud.” De Spadante kept nodding his frail affirmation. “You talk so good. So quick, William.”

  “Thank you.” The lawyer looked at his gold Rolex watch and continued. “This is most important, Mario. At Trevayne’s house your car got stuck in the snow. The mud and the snow. We’ve got confirmation from the police. Incidentally, it cost a thousand with a man named Fowler, and the tracks have been erased. But remember, the mud and the snow. That’s all you remember until you were attacked. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, consigliori, I’ve got that.”

  “Good.… Now, I should go. My associates in Los Angeles send you their best. You’ll be fine, Uncle Mario.”

  “Fine.… Fine.” De Spadante raised his hand an inch or two off the blanket. The lawyer halted. “Now you finished?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Now, stop talking the fancy talk and hear me. Hear me good.… You put out a contract on this soldier boy. I want it tormento lento. You put it out tonight.”

  “No, Mario. No contract. He’s Army, federal. No contract.”

  “You dispute me? You a caporegima dare to talk back to capo di tutti capi! I say a contract. Ten big ones a contract. Put it out.”

  “Uncle Mario, the days of The Godfather are finished.” William Gallabretto spoke calmly, sympathetically, to his relative. “We have better ways.”

  “Better. What’s better than tormento lento? A slow death for the pig that took my brother! You know. I know. A knife in the back. Miole. A contract. I say no more.” De Spadante inhaled deeply and rested his head back on the pillow.

  “Listen to me, Uncle Mario. This soldier, this Major Bonner, will be arrested. He’ll be indicted for murder—one. He has no defense. It was wanton killing without provocation. He’s been in trouble before—”

  “A contract.” De Spadante interrupted, his voice growing weaker.

  “No. It’s not necessary. There are a lot of people who want to see this Bonner not only finished, but discredited. Right up to the top.… We even have a newspaperman, a famous columnist. A writer named Roderick Bruce. This Bonner is a psycho. He’ll draw life. And then—somewhere in a penitentiary—he’ll get the knife.”

  “It’s no good. You talk crap.… You stay out of the courts. No lawyer shit. That’s no good. You put out my contract.”

  William Gallabretto retreated from the bedside. “All right, Uncle Mario,” he lied. “You rest now.”

  34

  Trevayne sat on the hotel bed, fighting to keep his eyes open, to keep his attention on the neatly typed pages in front of him. He knew he was losing the fight, and
so he reached for the telephone and requested a call for seven in the morning.

  He’d left Aaron Green shortly after one o’clock, much earlier than he’d expected. Green had offered him lunch, but Andy had declined, making a feeble excuse that he had to drive into New York—business undisclosed. The truth was that he couldn’t stand being near Green. There was nothing he could say to him. The old Jew had destroyed any argument he might have presented. What words could be found to counter the sight in Green’s back lawn or lessen the motive created nearly forty years ago alongside a fence in Auschwitz?

  Aaron Green was no anomaly. He was totally consistent by his lights. He did believe in all the liberal reforms for which he was noted; he was a compassionate man, a generous man, who lavished huge personal sums on causes that strived to better the plights of the unfortunate. And he would spend the last dollar of his fortune, use the last energies of his financial genius to make sure his adopted country would maintain the climate that permitted his philosophy. Such a nation had to be the strongest on earth. Its borders could not be weakened by the necessarily soft flexible interior; the shell had to be impenetrable.

  Green was blind to the fact that the more absolute strength permitted the protectors—the shell—the greater the possibility that they would usurp the rights of the protected—the interior. It was the classic manifestation, the a priori conclusion, but Green rejected it. If it were possible to build a fortress from the finances of the marketplace, that power would be penultimate, he thought; the ultimate would remain where it was conceived—in the civilian economy. It was a ludicrous assumption, as ludicrous as the Wehrmacht animals counting off numbers to which the naked dead were to march. But the memory of that sight shattered Aaron Green’s perception.

  And there was absolutely nothing Trevayne could say to alter the old man’s thinking.

  When the Lear jet had landed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, Trevayne immediately telephoned Sam Vicarson in Salt Lake City. Vicarson told him the Ian Hamilton dossier was typed and waiting for him at his hotel. It had been a simple one. The American Bar Association was immensely proud of Ian Hamilton, and its professional biography was extensive. Additional information was supplied by Hamilton’s son. The choice of the son was another Vicarson touch, thought Andrew. The Hamilton boy—young man—was the “now” generation; the break with the family’s long establishment tradition. He was a folk singer with his own group, a graduate of the acid-rock scene who made the transition to the new-new music successfully. He had no hang-ups talking about his father. The son considered—or arrived at the conclusion—that the old man did “his thing” with more intelligence than imagination, but did it well because he was dedicated to the proposition that the elite had to show the way for the unenlightened.

  That summation turned out to be the most perceptive analysis of Ian Hamilton that Trevayne would find.

  Hamilton came from very old, very secure upstate New York money and traced his ancestry back to the British Alexander and his antecedents in Ayrshire, Scotland, where the Hamiltons were lairds of Cambuskeith. He had attended the proper schools—Rectory, Groton, Harvard—and been graduated near the top of his class at Harvard Law. A postlaw year at Cambridge in England opened the door for him to spend the war years in London as a Navy legal officer attached to Eisenhower’s General Staff. He’d married an English girl from the small social sea of acceptable British fish, and their only child, the son, was born in the Naval Hospital in Surrey.

  After the war, Ian Hamilton’s credentials—and brains—secured him a series of enviable positions, culminating in a partnership with one of New York’s most prestigious firms. Specialty: corporate law with heavy diversification in municipal bonds. His wartime associations, beginning with the Eisenhower administration, brought him frequently to Washington; so often that his firm opened a Washington office. In succeeding administrations Ian Hamilton became more and more identified with the Washington scene. Though nominally a Republican, he was not doctrinaire. His working relationships with a Democratic House and Senate were solid. John Kennedy offered him the London embassy—which was a logical and politically shrewd decision—but Hamilton gracefully declined. Instead, he continued his progress up the Washington law ladder to the rung that allowed him the description of “adviser to presidents.” He was experienced enough to warrant attention and yet young enough—in his middle fifties—to be flexible. His friendship was an asset.

  And then, two years ago, Ian Hamilton did what no one expected him to do. He quietly resigned from his firm and stated—again quietly, to friends—that he was going to take a “long, I hope deserved, sabbatical.” There were the obvious jokes that he’d make more money managing his folk-rock, guitar-playing son, and less pleasant speculation on his health. Hamilton heard them and accepted them, characteristically, in good grace.

  Nevertheless, he left Washington and with his wife took a world cruise for twenty-two weeks.

  Six months ago Ian Hamilton again did the unexpected and, again, without fanfare or excessive press coverage. Hamilton joined the old Chicago firm of Brandon and Smith. He cut his ties with Washington and New York and moved into a mansion in Evanston on the shores of Lake Michigan. Ian Hamilton had apparently decided on a less hectic life and was welcomed—quietly—into the social confines of the Evanston executive rich.

  There was the matter of the bond issue raised by Genessee Industries and given to the firm of Brandon and Smith—the result of Hamilton’s breaking silence while a member of the President’s Steel Import Commission.

  Genessee Industries now had the services of the most esteemed law firm in the Midwest—Brandon, Smith, and Hamilton. Genessee was covered in the highest financial echelons on both coasts: Green in New York; the company plants and Senator Armbruster in California. So it was logical that they establish a seat of influence in Middle America.

  If what Trevayne perceived was the emerging pattern was correct.

  And with Ian Hamilton that pattern spread into the area of the executive branch of the government. The President of the United States. For Hamilton, adviser to presidents, moved cautiously with quiet but enormous power.

  In the morning, Trevayne would drive out to Evanston and surprise Ian Hamilton on the Christian Sabbath, as he’d surprised Aaron Green on the Hebrew Sabbath in Sail Harbor.

  Robert Webster kissed his wife good night and swore again at the telephone. When they lived in Akron, Ohio, they never got calls at midnight that required his leaving the house. Of course, when they lived in Akron they could never have afforded such a home for him to leave. And how many Akron boys got calls from the White House? Though, God knew, this call wasn’t from there.

  Webster backed his car out of the garage and sped off down the street. According to the message, he had to be at the intersection of Nebraska and 21st in ten minutes—eight minutes now.

  He spotted the car, a white Chevrolet, with a man’s arm out the window.

  He pushed the rim of his horn with two short blasts.

  The white Chevrolet responded with one long sound of its horn.

  Webster continued down Nebraska Avenue as the Chevrolet whipped out of its parking place and followed.

  The two cars reached the immense parking lot of the old Carter Baron Amphitheater and came to a stop adjacent to each other.

  Robert Webster got out and walked around to meet the man. “Christ! I hope this is worth it! I need a night’s sleep!”

  “It’s worth it,” said the dark man in the shadows. “Move against the soldier. Everybody’s covered.”

  “Who says?”

  “Willie Gallabretto; that’s who says. It’s straight. I’m to tell you to go for the mark. Put him away. Loud.”

  “What about De Spadante?”

  “He’s a corpse as soon as he gets back to New Haven.”

  Robert Webster sighed and smiled at the same time. “It’s worth it,” he said as he turned and walked back to his car.

  The iron sign with the brass l
etters read one word: “Lakeside.”

  Trevayne turned the car into the snow-plowed drive and started down the gentle slope toward the main house. It was a large white Georgian structure that seemed uprooted from some antebellum plantation in the Carolinas. There were tall trees everywhere. Beyond the house and the trees were the mostly frozen waters of Lake Michigan.

  As he drove his car into a parking area in front of the three-car garage, Trevayne saw a man in a mackinaw coat and a fur cap walking with a large dog on a path. The sound of the automobile caused the man to turn, and the dog, a beautiful Chesapeake retriever, to start barking.

  Andrew recognized Ian Hamilton immediately. Tall, slender, elegant even in his lumberjack clothes. There was a quality about him that reminded Trevayne of Walter Madison, another eastern-establishment corporate lawyer; but Madison—as good as he was—had a slight vulnerability about him. Hamilton had none whatsoever.

  “Yes? May I help you?” said Ian Hamilton, holding the retriever by the collar as he approached the car.

  Trevayne had rolled down his window. “Mr. Hamilton?”

  “Good Lord. You’re Trevayne. Andrew Trevayne. What are you doing here?” Hamilton looked as though he’d misplaced his senses but would quickly find them again.

  Another one alerted, thought Trevayne. Another player had received his warning. It was unmistakable.

  “I was visiting friends several miles from here …”

  Trevayne repeated a variation of the lie, and other than serving as a social buffer to lessen the awkwardness, it was no more believed than his previous lies had been. Hamilton, ever-gracious, pretended to accept it—without enthusiasm—and led Trevayne into the house. There was a roaring fire in the living-room fireplace, the Sunday papers strewn about the sofa and on the floor around a gold velvet-covered reclining chair. On a table in front of a bay window looking over the lakefront was a silver coffee service and the remnants of a single breakfast.