The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  Lammeck patted his former student on the shoulder. “Dag, my boy, protecting Roosevelt’s your job now, and I expect you’re good at it. You’re poking around in this because you think Roosevelt’s her target. But how in the world did this come to your attention in the first place? I mean, a double murder and suicide in a dinky Massachusetts sea town? A love triangle gone sour? What made you look in to it?”

  Dag appeared weary past a simple physical letdown. He looked suddenly depressed. Lammeck couldn’t figure why. Dag’s efforts and intuition could well have thwarted an attempt on the President’s life. Doesn’t that get a man a ticker-tape parade?

  “A week ago, I read in the D.C. paper about the New Year’s killing of two Civil Defense wardens north of Boston. I wondered, why murder a man and a woman guarding a remote beach? Seemed fishy to me, maybe because it’s just the sort of thing I was trained to do myself, by you and the SOE, right? I called the Newburyport cops and heard about the two knives and the husband’s suicide. The dropped crowbar, with no sign that anybody got hit with it. Those weird cuts on Bonny’s arms and the one on Otto’s ankle. Something smelled bad about this. Didn’t add up to be just a husband-wife domestic murder to me. I hustled up here for a look. I made a few guesses from the photos, the bodies, and that creepy knife. I didn’t like the fact that Arnold laid down to shoot himself either, and left no note. It all gave me a bad feeling. I reckon I smelled a rat most when I pulled those long black hairs off of Otto’s clothes. Didn’t belong to Bonny, sure didn’t belong to Otto or the husband. I went back to my boss, laid it all out, and he gave me permission to get you.”

  It was time to wrap up. Dag would be driving him back to the airport, a job well done for them both. Lammeck patted him on the shoulder.

  “Well, you’ll be a hero now. You’ll get a medal or something. A promotion. Maybe they’ll let you guard someone better than Roosevelt.”

  Dag looked away, dour. He put the car in gear and pulled from the curb.

  “This is another one of your jokes, right?”

  Lammeck stared at the side of Dag’s head. “I’m not following.”

  “Professor, come on. You’re a smart guy. Use your head. Do you really think I can go back to the director of the Secret Service and tell him that some twelfth-century assassin from Persia was dropped off by some sub and is maybe headed to kill the Boss? Based on the wild-ass guesses you and I just came up with?”

  “But, we both agree...”

  “Yeah, we agree.” Dag shifted the Packard higher, going too fast down the narrow street. “But that doesn’t mean my boss is going to go for it hook, line, and sinker.”

  “But you were put on this assignment, right?”

  “After a fashion.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they let me start this investigation without a lot of what you call enthusiasm.”

  “Then take it to the FBI. They’ll follow it up.”

  “No way. If Hoover got wind of this he’d yank the whole thing from us. No, this is a Secret Service case, such as it is. Look, maybe now’s the time to tell you.”

  Lammeck gazed blearily at Dag, suddenly tired again.

  “You remember I said there were only four people in the States who knew what I had to tell you? One was me. The other two are the Director of the Secret Service and the chief of the President’s security detail. The fourth is whoever killed those three people. I’ve been instructed to keep it that way. That was the deal I made.”

  “What deal?”

  “In return for letting me bring you into the case, I’m on my own with this. I’m sort of regarded as a crackpot on this one. So I reckon it’s just you and me.”

  Alarms went off inside Lammeck.

  “You and me? Dag, no. I have work to do. I’m a weapons trainer, an historian, and a teacher. You know this. I’m no secret agent.”

  Dag took his eyes off the road just long enough to grin.

  “Yeah, but admit it, you always wanted to be.”

  This remark struck home. Lammeck’s objection was derailed for a second. Before he could recount his many good reasons to be left out of this, Dag spurred the car away from the neighborhoods and onto the main Newburyport road.

  “Look, Professor, I really need your help. I can put you up in a D.C. hotel for as long as it takes, until we get something concrete. We will, and you know we will. Then I’ll take that to my boss and he’ll give me a task force to track this woman down. But until we dig up something better than us scratching our heads and ginning up facts, we’re on our own. I went a long way to get you. And I’m positive that was the right thing to do. Tell me I was wrong and I’ll take you straight to the airport. Tell me I was right and we’re heading to D.C.”

  Dag halted at a stoplight. He did not move when the light turned green. Behind them, a car horn blared. Dag watched Lammeck, still waiting for an answer. He didn’t get one, so he continued, insistent now. “Your country’s at war, Professor. Someone’s here and planning to kill somebody important. I figure the target’s gotta be Roosevelt. Who else is worth the risk? Who else gets a trained killer dropped off on a beach in the middle of nowhere by a goddam sub? What single person in America today can you remove that’ll make any difference in the war? All the big generals are in Europe or the Pacific. You’d have to kill a hundred scientists spread over a dozen top-secret places to make even a dent in whatever they’re coming up with. No, it’s Roosevelt, if only because I can’t figure out who else it could be. And protecting Roosevelt’s my job. So I don’t give a goddam if you live in Scotland, Prague, or Timbuktu, or if you happen to think Roosevelt is the devil in a red dress. I don’t care what your reason is, but will you please come up with one for staying and helping me stop this?”

  The car to the rear honked again.

  “Go,” said Lammeck.

  “Where?”

  “South. Washington.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  Lammeck crossed his arms and waited until Dag had the car running out of Newburyport, toward Boston.

  “Just so you know, crackpot—”

  “What?”

  “I’m not doing this for God or country, or apple pie and the flag, or that arrogant SOB in the White House. I’m doing it because you’re a friend and you asked.”

  Dag laughed, a full-throated guffaw.

  “And I’m a belly dancer. Don’t kid yourself, Professor. You’re doing this so you can put yourself in your own damn history book. This is a career move for you. But nice try.”

  Lammeck said nothing, grappling with whether Dag was on the money.

  “Trust me,” Dag said, still chuckling, “that’s the only part of this whole fucked-up case I am sure about.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER FIVE

  January 12

  Washington, D.C.

  JUDITH DID NOT ROCK in Mrs. P.’s creaky porch chair, wanting to wake no one.

  She laid the clay pipe across her lap, covered by the quilt Mrs. P. had given her. Unscrewing the top to a tin, she used a penknife to cut a small chunk of resin. Smearing this bit into the bowl of the pipe, she shook from another tin a portion of shredded Egyptian tobacco. With the small blade, Judith blended the tobacco leaves with the hashish. She flicked an American Zippo lighter and sucked the flame into the bowl.

  She held the first white breath, waiting for the sense of unfurling behind her eyes, then in her groin. At this time of the morning the dark alley was vacant, with no human strays, dogs, or trash. The Capitol dome glowed mightily above the roofs.

  Judith exhaled. She preferred the blond Moroccan kif. Its intoxication was milder and more active. The black Indian hashish made her euphoric and laconic. That was for another time, to celebrate the inevitable completion of her task.

  The drug breezed in her blood. She sucked on the pipe again, rising, a carpet ride from the old tales. She thought of how far she was from her home, not only in distance. Here in America a woman could sit on a porch and smok
e a bowl, even in a Negro neighborhood, and be left alone. She wore what she liked, boots and an undershirt, a wool coat and seaman’s cap, stretchy underpants, and the gift of a warm quilt. No one cursed her or tried to chase her inside.

  J’aime cette liberté, she thought. I like this freedom.

  Judith cleared her mind except for the flight of the hashish. Even with the debacle on that freezing beach, she was still an unknown quantity, and that was the best weapon at her disposal. Satisfied, she closed her eyes to the world and the mission.

  Once the clay pipe lost its warmth, Judith stood. The quilt hung in a cape around her shoulders; the cold nipped her bare thighs. The drug’s heat in her midsection melted the cold on her skin. She ran a hand beneath her shirt across her belly, then down into her underpants. She stood like this, robed in the quilt, facing America and its bright dome, pleasing herself.

  She returned to her apartment, careful not to drag the hem of Mrs. P.’s quilt across the porch and hallway. Inside her room, she lapped the carpet over the bed, then moved to open the rickety door of the chifforobe. In the floor of the old cabinet, she pried loose one of the heart-pine boards, where she’d hidden her documents, cash, and poisons. Laying the clay pipe in its leather case along with the tins of kif and the Zippo, she replaced the board.

  Inside the chifforobe hung her coat and three suits of Western clothes, purchased on New York Avenue. Judith looked at the fine American skirts and jackets of wool, one blue, one black, and her favorite the color of desert sand, slightly browner than her own skin. Beside the suits hung two white linen blouses. These were cut too tight for her shoulders—she could not move well in them—but the designs showed off her breasts and narrow waist, which seemed to be the purpose of Ferangi garments. Below them sat two pairs of shoes, both leather with buckles, straps, and heels. Western shoes were not made for walking so much as showing off a woman’s legs to men. She thought of the cloth-soled givas she wore as a servant girl. She admired both, the shoes of her memory and these. Both were the same, a woman’s disguise.

  She’d been able to purchase no hose this time in America; due to shortages of nylon because of the war, most women had forsaken them. Judith had worn stockings the other time in America, before the war, and liked them. But her favorite American things were the undergarments. Western underpants and bras were the most excellent items for women the world over. With regard, Judith slid the underpants off her hips and unclipped the brassiere, laying their smoothness aside.

  She walked to the foot of the metal cot. With both hands beneath the frame, she lifted and tipped it up, leaning the mattress against the wall. A rope, tied to a thick nail driven into the wall then bent into an eye, hung beside the frame. She tightened the line across the bottom of the frame, knotting it to another crooked nail on the other side. She let go. The bedstead stood balanced, firmly held.

  From the corner she grabbed a broom, bought for its sturdy handle. This she set across the legs of the frame protruding at head height.

  Naked, she approached the tipped-up bed frame, looking down into the exposed cot springs. With both hands she gripped the suspended broom handle, collapsed her knees and hung. She pulled, chinning on the handle, five, ten, twenty pull-ups, until the muscles in her back and arms burned. She stopped and sat, her buttocks warm on the cool, scoured floorboards. She spread her legs and bent her forehead until her breasts touched the floor. She reached, stretching the muscles she’d worked on the broom handle, then rose and repeated the set of twenty pull-ups, and the stretch, three more times.

  For the first time since arriving in the U.S., twelve days earlier, Judith improvised ways to work her muscles. The hashish in her system powered her and, in the heat of exercise, slipped away unnoticed. She filled a pail with water and lifted to strain her biceps, then her shoulders. She squatted in the center of the room, hands on hips, building a fire in her legs and bottom, until she closed her eyes and breathed through the pain. The pain is where I begin, she thought, and willed herself through it, doubling the time she spent in this position.

  After an hour working like this, she lay flat, breathing through gritted teeth, sweat slicking the boards. She listened to her heart race in her temples and tread through her extremities. Even so early in the day, the smells of cheap cooked food and spoiling lives crept in from the hall under her door to reach her lying, panting, on her floor. Judith did not mind the odors or judge the people who made them. She was glad of all of them, because this poor place hid her. When they came looking, who would think to look here?

  When her pulse calmed, she took from her closet a carved bit of wood she’d made to replace the knife lost on the Massachusetts beach, with the same shape and weight. Taking it in hand, she went through her exercises, an arduous series of Kali katas. For another hour she swept in and out of the stylized stances and movements of the katas, aping combat with knife, fist, and foot, against one, two, and several opponents. She did not allow herself the martial grunts and bellows called for to accompany the fiercest strikes—the hour was too early and the sounds were designed to harden the spirit and unnerve an opponent. She would have been heard out in the alley.

  The katas left Judith dripping. Toward the end of her routine, as her naked legs spread wide and solid, the wooden knife plunged into a shadow heart, her free hand poised to fend off an attacker from behind, the door to her apartment opened.

  Judith held her position. At the slight sound, she turned only her head to Josh in her doorway.

  “Wow,” the boy said.

  Judith completed the move, retracting the knife in the air. She lowered her hands, crossed them at the wrists, and took a deep, composing breath with eyes closed, a last martial moment before speaking.

  She did not look at the lanky boy until she had put the knife down and wrapped her bare body in Mrs. P.’s quilt. She walked to the door, where Josh stood keen and grinning.

  “Close it,” she said.

  Josh started, unaware that he’d left the door open. His facade failed him for a moment while he turned eagerly to do as he was told. When he faced Judith again, he remounted his attempt at a sneer.

  The boy was again dressed in clothes unfit for the freezing temperature outside. He wore baggy charcoal pants and two-tone shoes, below a cream square-shouldered suit coat and matching white bobby socks and pocket kerchief. The look was that of a band leader, but the face was that of a pimply boy unfit for the army.

  “What are you doing here, Josh?”

  He held up Judith’s busted doorknob. “I saw your note at the office that you was having a problem with this. I was up early so I thought I’d pop by and fix it for you. Then I saw your lights on and figured, what the hey, you must be up.”

  “So you used your father’s key to simply walk into my apartment?”

  “I knocked.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  The lazy eye the boy shared with his father took in the room. He was only an inch taller than Judith, and no more than a few pounds heavier.

  “Josh, those aren’t the clothes someone wears to come out and fix a doorknob.”

  “What, these?” The boy widened his stance to show himself off. “I don’t wear nothin’ else, honey. Hey, do you like Frankie?”

  Many days waiting in her car outside the White House, Judith had listened to Frank Sinatra on her radio.

  “He’s fine.”

  The boy corrected her. “He’s tops.”

  “Josh, do you need something?”

  He ignored her question. “So, you do that stuff buck-naked, huh? Pretty swell.”

  Both stood staring. Under the quilt, Judith continued to sweat. Josh saw this.

  “It looked hard. Maybe I’ll get you to show me sometime.”

  Judith nodded. “Sometime.”

  Another pause fell between them. Clutching the quilt, Judith kept her face and movements empty, to draw the boy out. Slowly, he grew uncomfortable with her stillness.

  “You got anything to drink?”
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  “No.”

  “Why don’t you take a shower or something?”

  “I intend to.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  “Wait for what, Josh?”

  The boy pointed. “You.”

  Judith did not move. Josh shifted his weight to one hip, tucking his thumbs in his pockets.

  “Way I figure it, you need this apartment pretty bad, seeing as how you took it without even looking at it. D.C.’s real crowded these days, and coloreds ain’t got too many places to rent this good. So, I guess if you want to stay here, you just got to be nice to me once in a while. I got my own set of keys, y’ see. I can pretty much come and go as I see fit around here, if you get my drift. My dad don’t care. And don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you.”