Northern Exposure

by Michael Kilian

  He had locked himself in this cage. His mistress kept telling him to try to contact his American friend, whose life he had saved on Mont Blanc, back in his days as a diplomat. The thought of reaching out to Dennis Showers, as Showers had desperately reached for him in that crevasse, intrigued and comforted him, for he still felt Showers to be his very good friend. They had met as minor diplomats in Luxembourg. He had been repaid to a partial degree for saving Showers’ life when Showers had twice intervened on Porique’s behalf and saved his job. Porique did not doubt that there was still trust between them. Showers, if discreetly, shared Porique’s dedication to saving the wilderness. He would understand why Porique was attempting this, why he felt he had no other choice. Good God, York was granting oil and timber leases as though responding to requests for autographs.

  But Showers was a man who valued his own respectability above all else, a man of duty and of honor, and demonstrable compassion, but not a man to risk his reputation. He might give his life for Porique, repaying the debt, but never his reputation. Porique was now disreputable, an outcast, an outlaw, for all practical purposes a terrorist.

  Porique glanced at his reflection in the night-darkened window. He looked disreputable. Always a stocky, muscular man, he had let his weight increase some thirty pounds. He had dyed his reddish-blond hair a greasy black, along with the beard and mustache he had grown. He wore a T-shirt and blue jeans, and, when outside, an old American army field jacket, just like some student or derelict. Once he had rivaled Trudeau himself as one of the best-dressed men in Canada.

  He stubbed out the cigarette and lighted another. He wanted something to drink, but would have to wait. He went to the radio. With a jazz band playing in the background, someone was singing “Southern Nights” in French. Mon Dieu. He changed stations, at length settling on a French-Canadian folk song he remembered and liked. Going to the bookcase, he looked over the few volumes he had brought with him, deciding finally on Camus’ The Fall. He had barely returned to his chair when he heard the footsteps outside the door.

  He had the small revolver in his hand so fast it startled him—he, the conservationist who hated guns.

  It had to be her, yet he could be sure of nothing.

  She opened the door, struggling with a large parcel of groceries, not noticing as he quickly lowered the pistol to the floor and pushed it under the chair. Her bleached-blond hair had fallen over her eyes and, in the dim light, she looked quite young.

  “Where have you been?” he said. “You’ve been gone almost an hour.”

  “I was being careful. I thought someone was following me. Un sinistre.”

  “Let us hope it was only a Papineau Fils.”

  “I don’t hope that. I never shall,” she said, proceeding into the tiny kitchen. She emerged a few moments later with a glass and an opened bottle of wine, which she set carefully before him. “Are you hungry, Ric? I’ll make some spaghetti.”

  He touched her slender arm and smiled. “Tu es si aimable.”

  She filled his glass with wine. He both admired and pitied her for staying with him for so long.

  Within three hours, he knew very well, she would be lying nearly comatose from wine and her drugs. He had several times thought of taking the damned stuff from her and hiding it, but feared she’d only find a way to obtain more, or worse, would leave him.

  The Key Bridge is the highest of Washington, D.C.’s Potomac River spans, connecting the Victorian quaintness of Georgetown with the gross high-rise towers of Rosslyn in Virginia. The bridge’s walkways are much frequented by strollers at night, and there was nothing unusual about the dapper old man with white hair who stood leaning on the railing on the upriver side, no matter the late hour. His name was Hugh Laidlaw. He might have been a professor at Georgetown University, but as those who had died at his hand or direction might attest, this was not his interest. His interest was the defeat of the enemies of the United States of America, whether the Soviet Union, Libya, or the right wing of the Republican Party, which he had long considered almost as dangerous.

  Laidlaw was wearing a spotless light blue seersucker suit and brown oxfords, his elbows placed carefully on the old steel railing to avoid the grime. He gazed at the lights twinkling along the shoreline in the darkness, but saw and heard everything that moved around him, including the large, athletic man in shorts and T-shirt who came peddling a ten-speed bicycle toward him from the Virginia side. He was William Thatcher, Laidlaw’s superior, right on schedule. The T-shirt bore the emblem of the United States Air Force Academy. Thatcher’s crew cut completed the ensemble. He had been an engineering officer with the Air Force before joining the agency.

  “I had dinner with the deputy tonight,” he said, after leaning the bicycle against the railing. “I got the word.”

  “And the word is good?” said Laidlaw. “If I may be biblical.”

  “Maximum good. The latest NIE has him convinced now that it’s coming down heavy north of the border.”

  “This is a National Intelligence Estimate that has been forwarded to the White House?”

  “Roger. Straight to the NSC. He doesn’t know what they’ll make of it, but doesn’t care. We’re to go ahead on our own. You’re officially out of retirement again, retained as a consultant at full comp.”

  “Comp is the least of my concerns right now, William. What about Number One?”

  “The director knows nothing about this and it will be a big hassle for him to find out. The deputy’s cooperating, just like with Iceland.”

  “May I have Freddy Mendelsohn?”

  “That’s pretty steep, but he said you’re to have anybody you want.”

  “Who’ll be the case officer on this.”

  Thatcher fell silent.

  “Me,” he said, finally.

  “Mr. Thatcher. You are a very important personage. You’re in charge of the entire Soviet section.”

  “Was. It seems Number One has been unhappy with my product. Haven’t found any Rooskies trying to blow up Mount Rushmore. Anyway, I’m TDY on this, Hugh. I’ll console myself with the high priority.”

  “Did he assign it that—officially?”

  “No. But I have.”

  “It is high priority, Bill.”

  “I’m witcha.”

  “I want to try working Dennis Showers into this.”

  “I read his file, Hugh. He ain’t gonna be too friendly.”

  “With or without his cooperation, we’re going to need him. It’s imperative.”

  “You want some help with the persuasion? A little muscle?”

  “No. I’d prefer to handle it myself. I want to learn some more about him.”

  Laidlaw stared at the river light, drumming his manicured fingers on the railing.

  “Did you know Ottawa is the second coldest capital in the world after Ulan Bator?” said Thatcher.

  “Many, many people are going to be killed in this, William. I cannot think of any way to avoid that. It will be very, very bloody.”

  “It’ll be a hell of a lot bloodier if we let them have their way.”

  6

  The bar that Frank Trench had been directed to in Key West was called “Gippie’s” and it was crowded and stank of sweat and strong cologne. Trench had never known nor cared whether homosexuals used perfume the way women did, but this crowd surely needed all they could get. Except for the slammer, he hadn’t smelled anything so bad since Vietnam.

  Men were packed close together along the bar, some holding hands, most of them staring at the prancing and swooning bodies on the dance floor. One man, a fat, ugly bastard, was wearing a pinafore, and from the looks of it, nothing else.

  Trench wore what he most always wore, blue jeans and a sports shirt: his only concession to the subterfuge was the leather vest he had been told to buy and wear. There were a couple of others in leather vests, but no one in a green-checked cotton sports shirt.

  He worked his way through the crowd all the way to the far end of the bar, again foll
owing instructions, and ordered a beer. Two tanned youths with long blond hair and lipstick were standing close together, eyeing him prospectively. Making his contact in a Key West queer joint wasn’t Frank Trench’s idea. As far as he was concerned, the $100,000 he was asking was as much for having to put up with this as for the actual hit.

  Swearing, he pushed away a sweaty bald man in glasses who abruptly tried to put his arm around him. Trench moved back to the wall, where he could better defend himself. The bald man was the wrong bald man. The right bald man was supposed to have a flower behind his ear.

  Trench sipped his beer, longing to machine-gun everybody in the room. He had read about that happening in Germany in the 1930s, straight Nazis in the SS taking out a bunch of fag Nazis in the SA. Trench had liked that book.

  There were few people in the United States, in or out of prison, more nonchalant about killing human beings than Francis Louis Trench. There could be no one more skilled at it. The army had been so appreciative of this talent it had accorded him the Silver Star and E-7 sergeant’s stripes. After Vietnam, the civilian world wasn’t so appreciative. Trench had twice done time for armed robbery. After the last stretch, four years, he had decided to abandon robbery and stick to his specialty. He learned some additional skills—disguise, fast-driving techniques, forgery—and went into business. He was now among the highest-paid hit men in the country, and very proud of it. Except for the Silver Star and the sergeant’s stripes (he had eventually left the army a corporal), that monetary recognition was about the only respect that had been shown him in his entire life.

  Trench stood watching the distasteful groping on the dance floor, to the tune “Feelings,” remembering unhappily how long it had been since he had had a woman. He should have stopped a little longer in Miami.

  The right bald man came up to him before his first beer was half gone. He wore too-small shorts, a purple Mexican shirt, and had a yellow flower tucked behind his ear.

  “Good to see you, darling,” he said, his voice heavy with a foreign accent. He took Trench’s hand. “Come. We must dance.”

  “No.”

  “We must. This is to look natural.” He laughed at his little joke.

  “No.”

  “Just once. You are being very well paid. Do as I say. You have only the police to worry about. I have many others.”

  His teeth clenched tightly, Trench finally assented. They danced awkwardly until the record was over, then slipped through the crowd and left in the bald man’s car. Trench had parked his own more than a mile away, close to the causeway leading back to the mainland.

  The breeze had died, and there were insects flitting over the screen door of the bald man’s house. It was far from the highway; very close to the waters of the gulf. Inside, Trench took a chair by a window, staying clear of the couch. A large yellow insect batted buzzing against the screen near his head.

  “Turn off the lights,” Trench said. “I don’t want to be seen.”

  “Soon. Not yet. This has to be natural.”

  The bald man made drinks for them both, a Tom Collins for himself, straight gin for Trench. He pulled a wicker chair close to Trench. “The manila envelope on the table contains what you need,” he said.

  “The money?”

  “That too. Fifty thousand dollars. The second half will be delivered as promised.”

  “Within twenty-four hours of when the job is done, you said. How?”

  “There are two telephone numbers in the envelope, both in Washington, D.C. One you may use only if you are in serious trouble and need help. And you may use it only once. The other number is for when you are done. Call, and the remaining fifty thousand dollars will be delivered wherever and however you wish.”

  The money was twice what had been his maximum fee. He was in a hurry for that kind of money and they hadn’t hassled him when he asked for it. He needed to get out of the country for a while. He’d had to kill his last client, a rich car dealer in Wilmington, North Carolina, along with his target, the car dealer’s wife. Then the maid had surprised him and he’d only wounded her. He’d go to the Bahamas. He could use some down time in Freeport. He reached for the envelope.

  “Not yet,” said the bald man. “This has to be natural. Many at the bar were looking at you. Good-looking young men.”

  Trench was thirty-seven years old. He drank the gin, wishing for beer. A woman and some beer.

  “I heard something out there,” said the bald man.

  Trench had too, but did not worry. It sounded like a dog. The noises Trench had trained himself to worry about were those he could not hear, but only sense.

  “We are going to take off our clothes, in sight of the window.”

  “Shit no,” said Trench.

  “We are going to stand up, take off our clothes, and then turn out the lights. Do it. Earn your money.”

  Trench stood, but did nothing more. The bald man began to dance around the room, removing his clothes item by item.

  “You, too,” he said. “This is cover. Earn your money. Strip.”

  Trench made his decision. Pulling off his jeans and undershorts, he glanced at his watch, calculating the driving time to Miami.

  The bald man, completely naked, giggled and then turned off the lights. Trench heard the man move to the wicker chair. His eyes, the best night eyes in Vietnam, quickly adjusted to the darkness, and he could see the bald man’s ugly body.

  “In the envelope you will find a dossier on your target. His name is Showers, Dennis T. Showers. He is a high-ranking American foreign service officer stationed in Washington. He is important and very visible. You will have difficulties.”

  “Is there a photograph?”

  “Yes. The dossier is complete. I would destroy everything as soon as you commit it to memory.”

  Trench heard the clink of ice from the bald man’s drink.

  “Why did you agree to so much money?” he said.

  “We pay what is necessary. This is short notice, and very difficult. The man must be killed very soon. If you can finish this in two weeks, there will be an additional ten thousand for you. There are only two conditions. Showers’ killing is to look like an ordinary crime, an automobile accident, a mugging, something like that. Also, no one else connected with Showers is to be killed, or hurt in any way. No complications, please. Just an ordinary crime. Showers only. Is that clear?”

  “Will I have to deal with you again?”

  “Not after tonight. Make your contact with the phone number.”

  The buzzing and batting of insects against the screens filled a long pause.

  “Who wants him dead?” Trench asked.

  “No. I cannot tell you that.”

  “It’s important for the hit, for tactical reasons.”

  “Out of the question, Mr. Trench.”

  The bald man should not have known his name. Trench had been operating the last two years with the name of Tyrone Samuels, a black first lieutenant he had fragged with a percussion grenade in Vietnam. Trench moved quickly and silently.

  The chopping blow of his hand hit the bald man’s sweaty neck exactly, breaking the windpipe and sending him rolling from the chair. But he fell groaning, and continued to groan. The blow hadn’t broken the spinal column. Trench was getting old. He knelt and groped for the bald man’s Mexican shirt, which he had dropped near the chair. Snatching it up and twisting it quickly into a thick rope, he looped it around the man’s neck, yanked, and the groans ceased. He did it because the man knew his name, but he could have done it just because the man had made him go through the fag routine.

  Hurrying, he pulled his underwear and jeans on again, then his heavy boots. He wiped the fingerprints off his own glass and picked up the envelope. There was only one thing left to do. He kicked the bald man’s genitals with all his strength, flattening them. The bastard wanted to play fag, did he? Now he’d go to his grave less than a man, the pig son of a bitch. It would look like a fag murder. They must have murders like this in
Key West all the time.

  Trench crept quietly out of the house, stopped to listen a long moment, and then began an easy loping run over the sandy ground. He reached his car without being seen. By noon the next day, he was in Miami, having found everything in the envelope the bald man had described. He’d never made a hit in Washington before. He’d have to think this one through very carefully. There were two dozen different kinds of police in Washington.

  He got himself a female quickly, a tall, nice-looking kid with long red hair he picked up on highway AlA in Fort Lauderdale. Her only possessions at the moment were her bathing suit, a vinyl jacket, a pair of clogs, a dozen marijuana cigarettes, and a box portable radio. He took her to a cheap motel and fucked her three times. The police found her body in a canal. Trench kept the radio.

  Jordine was behaving out of character. He had asked Showers to his office in the meekest and most deferential of terms. Usually, it was with an imperious summons. He had ushered Showers to his $1,000 leather chair, the one he normally only let visiting nabobs of the Seventh Floor sit in. He poured them each a generous glass of very excellent Spanish sherry. When he at last settled back in his own chair, he pulled a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his camel’s-hair jacket and tapped it against his cheek.

  “This came this morning,” he said. “From upstairs. From all the way upstairs. It says you are to report to Ottawa in three weeks.”

  Only a year or two older than Showers, Jordine looked every inch the WASP he was not. He had blue-gray eyes, a short, pointed nose, slightly flushed cheeks, and dark hair graying elegantly to white at the sides and parted foppishly down the middle. If Showers dressed conservatively, as his father and grandfather had done, Jordine dressed British. Prominent was his Harvard ring.

  “I’m to give you as much time off as you need to take care of your affairs. I’m to do whatever else is necessary to facilitate your speedy departure.” He placed the paper back in his pocket. “Dennis, did you seek this early posting?”