Brewer didn’t care what they thought. He’d be long gone before they learned the whole story—if they ever did. He’d hand them back their grimy little world intact, with the brown crust still on it. In fact, he had only one more bit of business to conduct in their world: two handguns. In less than thirty-six hours he’d be gone—over the hill and far away—with Kotlikoff.
That morning Brewer had let Just John know that he wanted to talk to him.
Slick Willie Walker knew, the moment he saw the three Navy hats come up the steps, that he was somehow cornered. He took a quick look at his right hand.
Their whole manner was wrong. It wasn’t cocky, as it had been the other night. It was deferential, respectful. It was as though they’d come to his viewing, to see him laid out with a white lily in his hand. They regarded him as though he were dead.
The three sailors approached him cautiously. He saw behind them, finally, a young boy or girl, about ten or eleven, with short blond hair.
The sailor called Duke stepped up to Walker. “Willie, are you ready for a little pool?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Straight pool.”
“Straight pool. Okay. Tell me about it.”
“Straight pool. Even up. One hundred fifty balls. One hundred fifty dollars.”
“You want to shoot straight pool even up? No odds?”
“Not me, Willie. Her.”
Willie looked at the girl. “Her? Straight pool? A girl? Me shoot against a little girl? What do you want from me? If it ever got out that I took money from a nine-year-old girl—”
“I’m fourteen,” she said. She signaled Duke to one side with a waving, urgent hand. The three sailors followed her a few feet away, right near Charlie Brewer. “You didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you tell me!”
“Because you wouldn’t have come,” said Duke.
“Boy, are you stupid! That’s Willie Walker. He’s the Eastern Regional Pocket Billiards Champ for like ten years straight. No one can beat him. He’s got the record—oh, my God. Listen. I saw him set the Eastern Regional Tournament Record in Queens when I was nine years old. He sacked a hundred and twenty-four balls in one run. He can shoot the lights out. I wouldn’t be allowed to chalk his cue for him.”
“You can take him.”
“Nah.”
“Play him anyway. I seen him play. I seen you play. You can take him.”
“He’ll make a hundred and fifty balls and out in two runs. I’ll never catch him.”
“Odds. We’ll make him give us odds,” said one of the sailors.
“Stupid! He refused to play me already.”
“No odds,” said Duke. “He’ll play when he sees our money.”
Duke went back to Willie Walker. “Okay. We’re set. A hundred fifty balls, one hundred fifty dollars. Fourteen and one continuous.”
Slick Willie Walker looked unhappily at the girl. One of the sailors took out a segmented cue stick from a leather carrying case and screwed it together. The girl took it and stood waiting. He looked at her hands, examined the hang of her shoulders; then he looked at her eyes: she’d come to play pool.
Willie wondered who was more frightened: she or he. He felt the tremble in his right hand.
“Nah,” he said. “I can’t play no girl.”
“Yes you can,” said Duke. “For one hundred fifty dollars you can.”
“Who is she? Where’d she come from?”
“What do you care? You’re not afraid of a fourteen-year-old girl, are you?”
“Listen, sailor. I have a reputation. I don’t play just any old cat that wanders in here with a custom cue stick.”
“You played them and you played me.”
“Yeah, but that was different. You’re not in my league. I had to give myself a severe handicap even to give you a swinging chance.”
“So—give yourself a handicap. She won’t mind.”
“Nah.”
“What’s worse? To take money from a fourteen-year-old girl or to have everyone know you were afraid to go to the table with her?”
“Hey, kid. Do I need this? Come on, send her home, huh?”
“How else you going to get a shot at one hundred fifty dollars tonight? Seems pretty quiet around here.”
Willie Walker’s instincts all told him to back down. But he was fascinated. She was little more than five feet high and didn’t weigh a hundred pounds. His love of pool shooting prevailed: to win she’d have to outshoot him, and that meant she had to be great. And Willie Walker loved to see great pool shooting, win, lose or draw.
“Why don’t she and me run a few balls and size each other up?”
“We came to shoot pool, Willie.”
Willie Walker gazed about the poolroom to see who was watching. “Maybe we ought to go somewhere else and shoot.”
“What’s the matter with here?”
Willie Walker looked again at the guileless eyes that looked back at him. Fourteen. Jesus. He banged the butt of his cue stick on the floor. “Rack!”
“We’ll toss you for the break.”
Willie nodded and Duke took a quarter out. He flipped it and let it bounce on the green cloth of the table.
“Heads,” said Willie.
It was tails. Willie glumly read his future in the-coin.
Charlie Brewer studied the girl. She was outclassed; she was bracing herself for a slaughter; she wasn’t very happy—her face was as readable as a newspaper. Brewer knew all about her fear—her desire to turn and run. But the teeth were clenched, the eye unflinching. They all waited for Arty to rack the balls.
Just John’s head appeared flush with the top step, rising. Just John looked like a bookie and was very careful at all times to look like a bookie. He was thin as a thread. He had a face that was heavily seamed and dark brown, capped by a nose like a scimitar. He had soft brown eyes and was reputed to carry a long stiletto in his boot cuff—and, on occasion, to throw it.
It was said that he was a full-blooded Indian. Tribe unknown. But some believed him to be a Puerto Rican or a Polynesian. The black residents a few blocks north said flatly he was a black man, born in New Orleans, name of Sterin DeFaunce. Just John never said. When asked for a name, he’d say, “John. Just John.” And that’s all he said.
He was famous around the Sports Complex as the man who had run off one hundred three balls in rack pool the night of the blizzard in the early sixties. He’d claimed a pot, for his efforts, of eighty-three dollars.
No one had ever seen him work.
He smiled easily at familiar faces as he slowly strode toward Charlie Brewer. He watched Arty rack the balls, then stepped up into a high chair next to Brewer. “Mr. Brewer,” he said. His voice sounded like a painful case of laryngitis. “Why do I have the feeling that you’re interested in seeing me?”
“Maybe because a little birdie by the name of Fingers told you.”
“Now that’s a possibility. Is Mr. Walker going to play one of those sailors a little pool?”
“Mr. Walker is going to play that fourteen-year-old girl a little pool.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. These are dark days.”
The girl stepped up to the table, holding the cue in her left hand to break the rack. She positioned the cue ball and set. Without hesitating, she pumped the cue stick. The cue ball rolled softly down the table, just kissed the rack and rolled behind it. Willie looked sourly at her feet, her head and shoulders, and lastly at her hands. He bent over his cue stick. The cue ball just nudged the rack, and the corner ball—the three—opened just a hair wide, but not wide enough for most players.
“Three,” she said. She broke open the rack, and the three ball rolled into the pocket with authority. She began moving balls all over the table. She nodded at the corner pocket. “Five.” It was a kiss. The five dropped. The cue pedaled back, dead on the nine. “Nine.” She nodded at a side pocket. The nine was neatly sacked. “Fourteen.” Fourteen died. “Six.” She bagged it. She put the whole rack
away except for the two. “Rack!”
“Where’d you learn to shoot pool, girlie?” asked Willie.
“In my father’s poolroom.”
“Your father owns a poolroom?”
“Yes. In Queens. You’ve played there.”
Willie studied her face. He didn’t recognize her. Fourteen years in a poolroom.
“Well, now,” said Just John, leaning back to watch. “How can I help you?”
“Oh well, nothing serious,” said Brewer. “Maybe a little advice.”
John nodded. “Yes. Just a little advice. That couldn’t hurt anyone.”
“I have a friend.”
“Congratulations.”
“Yeah. I have a friend who’s worried about burglars.”
“Uh huh.”
“There’s two floors to his home, and he’d like to have a little protection on each floor in case of trouble.”
“Uh huh.”
“Now, my friend has heard no end of times that having a registered handgun in the house is a boomerang. They get stolen and get used in crimes, and the owner finds himself charged with the crime and so forth.”
“And so forth.”
“So what he’d like is to buy two with no history whatsoever.”
John nodded silently and sighed. “Two pieces, no history. Ummmmm. Well now. Ummmmm. I’m not much on this subject, Mr. Brewer. I doubt if there’s anyone in the whole city who knows less about the subject than I do. But I did hear something the other day that might help. I heard that if I was wanting to buy a few pieces, I could make a phone call to a certain unlisted number, then follow instructions. See, what your party should do is call the number. Then he takes a bowling bag to a certain bag checkstand down in the Grand Central stop of the Lexington Avenue subway just down the steps near those turnstiles. Right? Now, in the bag should be the money in old bills. Then he takes the key from the locker to a certain place that he hears about during the telephone call, and he leaves it there. Now that sounds easy, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Then what?”
“Well, that’s it. About an hour later he goes back, gets his key, goes and opens the locker, and presto, two shiny new pieces. No history. Pure as the driven snow. All right there in the bowling bag or flight bag or what have you. Just like Christmas under the tree. Right?”
“Suppose he wants to see the goods first?”
“Oh well. Then he should maybe drop into a pawnshop and examine to his heart’s content.”
“But they’re not clean pieces in the pawnshop.”
“Now you get the picture.”
“Uh huh. Okay. He takes what he gets, sight unseen.”
“Oh no. No no. He gets two pieces in the shape and caliber he orders—all guaranteed clean and ready. All top quality. No tricks. No complaints.”
“And if he gets busted with one of these pieces, and it turns out to have been used in a homicide, he can’t even find the man who sold it to him.”
“If he didn’t know who, I’d say he’s pretty naïve. Wouldn’t you?”
“I see.”
“When would your friend like to buy?”
“I think he’d take them tonight.”
“That could probably be arranged. Did he have any idea of what he’d like to pay?”
“Something fair.”
“Well, then, he should make his phone call and discuss the price with the man right on the phone. I suppose he’d call right after this very interesting little game here.”
“I suppose,” said Brewer.
Word must have been passed around the saloons and restaurants. People were coming up the stairs quickly.
The girl ran another rack and another after that. She ran fifty-one balls before she got into trouble. She left Willie an iced cue ball, dead against a rail, and nothing easy to shoot at.
“Devil,” said Just John.
Slick Willie Walker stepped up. He seemed calm, and he concentrated on the table. He examined several possible shots. He selected a nine ball one cushion. It rolled up to the side pocket, teetered and tumbled in. There were audible sighs.
Willie ran sixty-seven balls. The girl seemed surprised when he missed. He didn’t leave much. But the girl ignored the safest shot and went for the two-cushion bank shot. It was perfect. She ran off fifty-six balls. She’d bagged, all told, a hundred and seven balls when Walker stepped up again.
The crowd had gotten quite large now and more were arriving. Arty had loaded the Coke machines: many of the spectators would remain to shoot pool. It always happened that way.
It was a race between Walker’s skill and his tiring hand. Willie ran eighty-one balls and was home free with a hundred and forty-eight balls pocketed. Then his hand gave out. He missed the next one. It just hung there like a misfired gun. The girl coldly, impassively stepped up and ran forty-three balls and out.
The crowd applauded.
Just John watched Willie pay her. “Had her dead,” said John. “Just went cold. Should never have missed that shot. Had her dead.” He stood up. “You only have to lose your control for a split second—and you’re a dead man.”
Shortly after eleven Brewer sat down in his room and unzipped his flight bag to lift out two handguns. He smirked, remembering the voice on the phone—Just John trying to talk in a high tenor with laryngitis. You just have to lose your nerve for a split second and you’re a dead man. He thought about the bosun’s chair in the elevator shaft the next morning and decided to have a drink—a stiff one.
Part Seven
LEARY
The bookseller was bemused. “Now if I can find that, that’ll be a real conquest. I’ll bet there aren’t fifty copies in the whole country. Maybe not even a dozen. Would you settle for a facsimile? A thermo-facsimile?”
“Maybe so. How long will it take?”
“Well—days or years. First thing I can do is check out other booksellers in this area. There’s a bookseller a few miles from here with over one million old books in a barn. I can also run some ads in the ‘Wants’ column of the Antiquarian Bookseller. That’s read from coast to coast and around the world.”
“Okay. See what you can do.”
“Now, what’s the correct title again?”
“Under Russian Skies, by Boris Kotlikoff. First edition, in Russian, with the original dedication in it.”
“The minute I hear anything I’ll call you.”
Leary walked out of the bookshop toward the parking lot, feeling again a sense of aloneness and isolation. On the streets, faces passed to and fro, to and fro, while bureaucrats fingered bombs and counted troops like poker chips, thinking the unthinkable.
For a moment, that morning, he’d thought he might have gotten help from Stuart Halsey. But even as he was saying it, his theory sounded implausible—especially to a tormented, tense mind like the Undersecretary’s. Halsey was right: thin soup.
As he waited for the traffic light to change, Leary looked into the window of a sporting goods store: Washington’s largest stock of hunting and target guns. Before him, spread out like vengeance’s banquet, was a large selection of pistols.
“If Geller threatened me, I’d get a handgun, and on the very first opportunity I would kill him very dead.”
Leary wondered what the handgun cost.
When he unlocked the door to his apartment and stepped in, he sensed the solitude in it. An empty apartment at midmorning has a forlorn quality.
By his chair he saw several crossword puzzle magazines and on the windowsill the terrarium with the ceramic toad. He felt no connection with the magazines, as though they had been left by another, as though he were a stranger seeing all this remotely through a telescope.
He stepped to the bedroom and saw his suitcase on the bed with some of his clothing assembled on the counterpane around it.
He walked into the bathroom and examined the wound on his scalp. Like a caste mark, it flashed an empurpled message to the world. But what did it say? Coward? Victim? Wise man? Fool?
&n
bsp; He returned to the bedroom and packed his clothes.
His forehead throbbed. Like anger.
When Leary’s secretary got the phone call, it seemed perfectly routine.
Mr. Gus Geller’s secretary informed him that Mr. Geller wanted to reach Mr. Leary.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Mr. Leary is flying to Rome today.”
There was a pause then: “Mr. Geller would like to know what flight Mr. Leary is taking and where he’s staying in Rome.”
During the last embassy meeting in Rome in early March, Leary had been soaked by the chilly rains that had made the walls and streets of the city gray and wet and cold. On the way from the airport in a drizzle, the bus windows had fogged and everyone snuffled.
Now, four weeks later, shutters were folded back, windows and doors everywhere were open to the sun. On ledges and walls, reaching for light, stood freshly potted plants. Sidewalk café chairs, just out of storage and freshly washed, held people eagerly talking away a winter’s worth of gossip. The flower vendors had spread spills of color along the walks with roses, irises and carnations—reds, whites, pinks, yellows. Standup coffee bars were crowded with Romans drinking their cups of cappuccino, and at the Spanish Steps the first tourists of the year were busy taking color slides of the azalea blooms that cascaded like red and white froth down the center of the steps.
After a long, closeted winter, the city was open again, glowing in its unique mellow-golden sunlight.
Leary crossed it by cab with his bags.
The American Embassy in Rome is housed in the former Palazzo Margherita and, along with the U.S. Consulate building to its right, overlooks the expensive shops and hotels of the Via Vittorio Veneto.
Inside, Leary sat by the window in a committee room, slightly light-headed from only three hours’ sleep in his hotel. The monthly review meeting was following its usual agenda.
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