The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01]

by David L. Robbins

  “No, sir, he didn’t.”

  “Damn sure did to me. I was fooled. I figured we had him. How ‘bout you, Professor?”

  “Next,” was all Lammeck said, simmering.

  Hewitt drove them to the western part of town, down a more affluent street than the first. He stopped in front of a Victorian with elaborate columns and a wide wraparound porch. Again, Hewitt knocked while they waited below. A pleasant-looking woman, maybe in her fifties, answered the door. Hewitt spoke, using the same cover story about a local car theft ring. The woman nodded, turned, and motioned them inside.

  They sat in the parlor. Hewitt introduced Lammeck and Dag as officials from Washington, D.C. Before he could say another word, the woman fell apart. She burst into tears, dabbing at her face with her bare hands, searching as she bawled for something more proper to wipe her eyes with. She pointed a shaking hand at a table on the far side of the room, to a box of Kleenex. Dag fetched them.

  Her story, told between sniffles, unveiled a crime, but nothing like the one Lammeck sought. In October, her only son had returned from the army, on leave from France. All last summer the boy had fought through the terrible hedgerows of Normandy. He told her he couldn’t take any more; he was going AWOL. She’d begged him not to, then gave him the keys to her car. Her husband was furious with them both, but did not report his son. He bought another ‘41 Pontiac, same make and color, which he had with him right now at the hardware store. Her son had telephoned once, at Christmas, from somewhere in Nevada. She begged Lammeck and Dag to promise that her son would not be hurt.

  Dag stood, saying, “We’ll see what we can do, ma’am. Good afternoon.” He headed out the front door with Lammeck in his wake. Hewitt stayed behind to mop up.

  Dag climbed in the police car and honked the horn.

  “Check that out, Hewitt,” Dag said when the cop had folded behind the wheel.

  “She’s telling the truth,” Hewitt replied. “I know her son. He was always a shitheel.”

  Lammeck caught Dag’s eye; the two agreed to stay silent. Dag knew, and Lammeck understood, that a man had limits. He can hit those limits—many did in the hedges of France, many more would on the German plains and the beaches of the Pacific—without being a shitheel. Hewitt, with his bad feet, would never know.

  The last house stood near the river, on Woodland Street, close to the town’s center. Hewitt drove past the police station, then the Town Hall and the morgue where Bonny, Otto, and Arnold had been kept in cold storage. Lammeck wondered how their deaths had affected little Newburyport. He hoped the three had been given good funerals, even under such dour skies and into rock-hard earth. He pondered if Bonny had been laid near husband Arnold, the wretched man accused of murdering her and her big boyfriend.

  Again, Hewitt parked and led the way. Snow had been shoveled from the drive and sidewalk. The little house was neat; the open garage held a late-model Buick. Lammeck walked over to set a hand on the hood. Warm. Someone had just come home.

  The woman who answered Hewitt’s knock had gray hair but appeared youthful and cherry-cheeked. She wore fur-lined boots and a bright sweater that looked hand-knit. To Lammeck she seemed the ultimate New Englander, hardy and capable.

  “Come in, come in,” she commanded, cheerfully waving, “don’t stand out there.”

  Inside, Lammeck already sensed their efforts were going to come up empty and the flight back to Washington would be sullen and tired. This Newburyport woman would have yet another plausible explanation and again he’d be out of ideas. This time tomorrow he’d be back to thumbing through files, to staring across the chilly grounds of the White House, Wondering on more nights, with folders in his lap, or a map, or a book, or nothing, if their assassin even existed, if she were only theoretical and nothing more, and if he’d been stupid, too eager to believe. Or worse, if she did exist, and he wound up being fatally stupid.

  For the third time this morning, Hewitt told his fairy tale about car thefts. The woman sat them on her sofa and chairs. She remained standing, asking about tea or coffee. All three requested coffee. She disappeared into her kitchen. Dag jutted his chin at Hewitt to stand and not lose sight of her. The cop unfolded from his chair and moved to where he could keep an eye on her.

  “So, you’re from Washington?” she called, over the clink of mugs and water running at the sink.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dag answered.

  “Why on earth are two fine-looking men like you all the way up here in our little town worrying about car thefts? Isn’t that what we have our little police department for?”

  Hewitt hitched his belt at this slight. “Yes, ma’am. They’re just observers.”

  “I see.” She emerged with a tray of cups and a piping coffee pot. She poured, none for herself, set the pot on a trivet, and stayed standing.

  “Now, talk to me, boys.”

  Dag looked at Lammeck, but he lacked the heart this time. Dag took over.

  “Is that your Nash out in the garage?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Was it recently purchased?”

  “Just last November.”

  “Ma’am, what happened to your previous automobile? There’s no record of a sale or other disposition of it. Can you tell us, or maybe show us, where that car went?”

  The woman stared at Dag for a long moment, unblinking. Then she clasped her hands under her chin as if some message she’d waited a long time for, and feared to receive, had just been delivered.

  “Would you like biscuits for your coffee? I just got some from the store.”

  Lammeck sat straight. “No, ma’am. We’d like to know what happened to your car.”

  Hewitt reminded her, “A burgundy ‘39 Nash.”

  “I’m going to get a biscuit for you boys.” She turned decisively for the kitchen.

  Lammeck and Dag shot off the sofa. Hewitt fingered his holster.

  With the three men crowding the doorway to the kitchen, the woman opened a cabinet, searching among boxes on a high shelf.

  Lammeck stepped into the room. He asked, “Where do you keep your knives?”

  She froze, arms raised toward the cabinet overhead. Without turning, she answered, “Left of the sink.”

  Lammeck slid open the drawer. He pulled out a four-inch knife, one of a set. He held it up for Dag to see. “Wüsthof.”

  The woman found what she looked for. She turned to them.

  Lammeck and the woman stared at each other. She held no tin of biscuits in her closed right hand. Her face took on a sorrowful look.

  “Well, good job, boys. You’re very clever.”

  Lammeck said, “Talk to us.”

  Her eyes flicked back to Dag. “Mr. Secret Service agent. How much trouble am I in?”

  “Accomplice to two murders. Probably three. Maybe more, depending on what happens from this point on. Lady, I’d say you got a world of trouble and you don’t want to add to it.”

  “I agree,” she said, evenly.

  Lammeck set down the knife and closed the drawer. He stepped aside so Hewitt could come into the kitchen to take the woman in hand. She did not open her right fist.

  “You know,” she said, “I think not.”

  “Pardon?” Hewitt asked, stopping.

  The woman’s head shuddered.

  She addressed Lammeck. “I didn’t like her very much.”

  Lammeck felt a thrill tag his chest.

  “Her?”

  “I liked Arnold. He was an inoffensive little man.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lammeck kept his voice level. The Assassin was real!

  “So, I’ve decided,” she said. She smiled, showing fine teeth. “Her name is Judith.”

  “Judith,” Dag and Lammeck repeated, both stunned. The young cop stayed motionless.

  “Now, gentlemen. Good-bye.”

  “Ma’am,” Hewitt said, patiently, “I’m pretty sure you’re coming with us.”

  “It’ll be alright,” Dag added, trying to disarm the tension coiling sudd
enly in the small, crowded kitchen.

  The woman shook her head, gazing straight at Lammeck.

  “Well, well,” she laughed richly, “maybe you boys aren’t as clever as all that.”

  Lammeck sprang forward, knocking the cop aside. He grabbed for her arm but reached her too late. By the time he clamped on the woman’s right wrist she had tossed the capsule into her mouth and bitten down.

  As Lammeck lowered her limp body to the kitchen floor, the bitter odor of almonds swirled from her nostrils.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  February 19

  Washington, D.C.

  MRS. BEACH SET HER scrawny elbows on her desk, fingers steepled over her lips.

  “Judith,” she repeated.

  Dag nodded. “Just Judith.”

  Lammeck watched the two Secret Service employees hold themselves in check while they bounced between them the name and the new reality of a confirmed and identified assassin.

  Mrs. Beach muttered, “Joseph, Mary, and Jesus,” just the way her Irishman boss would have. Then she asked Dag, “And a cop heard her say this?”

  “I can get the kid on the horn if you like. I got his written statement.”

  “Later.” Mrs. Beach pulled her hands from her lips but kept them joined, fingertips pointing at Dag. “Tell me again. This happened.. . ?”

  “Saturday afternoon. Around three.”

  “And right now it’s noon Monday. You’ve got some crazy woman coming to kill the President and it’s a day and a half later. Where in hell have you been?”

  Lammeck opened his mouth, to remind Reilly’s right-hand woman that their assassin was not insane but highly intelligent and superbly skilled, probably more than Dag, Reilly, and him combined. That he and Dag had been nowhere except on this case and doing nothing else since he’d stepped off a plane five and a half weeks ago. He’d gotten no sleep except what he could cobble together out of hours spent in cars and airplanes and on police station sofas.

  Both Dag and Mrs. Beach shot him a glance and he bit back his response. Lammeck was not Secret Service, and he was not responsible for the President, not like they were. Dag answered the question.

  “Look, first this woman keels over dead right in front of us. So then we had to go through her house, I mean with a fine-tooth comb. Plus we had to sanitize the whole situation. I laid down the law with Hewitt, told him not one peep gets out about this or he doesn’t want to know what we’d do to him. All he’s gonna tell his bosses is the lady was under government surveillance, he doesn’t know for what, and she dropped dead during our visit, he has no idea why. Then I had to come up with a cover story about the old woman for the neighbors. She had a heart attack when she found out her car had been stolen, blah blah blah.”

  “What about the body?”

  “Way ahead of you. I had it flown back here; she’s at Bethesda. That way we control the autopsy report. She’ll be buried tomorrow in a government cemetery out in Maryland. Hewitt’ll spread the story she had kin there.”

  “Cyanide capsule?”

  “No question. She went down like a sack of dirt. And the smell. Like French coffee.”

  Mrs. Beach aimed her pince-nez glasses at Dag, not ready for Lammeck yet. She was not in need of more speculation or a history lesson. She dredged the agent first for facts. Lammeck saw why Reilly could leave town with the confidence that she could handle things.

  “Who was the woman?”

  Dag opened his briefcase for papers. He shuffled up a few sheets and skidded them onto Mrs. Beach’s desk.

  “Birth certificate, driver’s license, Social Security, passport. Her name was Maude Lily King. Born in Scituate, Mass. Went to Wellesley. Lived in Newburyport the past twenty-two years. Retired schoolteacher, owned a local bookstore. Age sixty-three. Never married. One sister, deceased. Traveled some between the wars but nowhere controversial. Paris, London, Rome—retired-old-lady kind of trips.”

  Mrs. Beach glared over the top of her glasses. “I beg your pardon. Sixty-three is not old, and those are lovely cities of the world for any person of any age.”

  Dag backed off with a shrug.

  “Continue,” she ordered.

  “Parents, sister, her, all squeaky-clean. No commie meetings; in fact, she was known to be extremely anticommunist. No suspect associations. “

  Mrs. Beach raised an eyebrow at this last statement.

  Dag admitted the mistake. “Okay, well, obviously that last one is incorrect. Not so’s we can tell yet, is all.”

  Mrs. Beach accepted the retraction in silence. She mulled the open file, tapping a finger on the paper remains of a seemingly average New England woman’s life. Where was the crossroads in that life? Lammeck wondered. What had radicalized Maude Lily King enough to make her part of an assassination plot? Madwoman, patriot, hireling: Where did Maude fit in?

  “Judith.” Mrs. Beach slowly rolled the assassin’s name on her tongue like a cognac, as if it might release some secret. “What’s the story with that name, Dr. Lammeck? Is it made up?”

  Lammeck explained the story of Judith the Jewish princess, slayer of the Assyrian Holofernes, one of the many saviors in the warrior tales of the Israelites.

  “I thought you said she was Persian. Aren’t they Muslim? Why would she take a Jewish name?”

  Lammeck wanted to answer: Welcome to my world, where nothing adds up; the assassin’s a ghost, I’m confused every day, and I’m still the one with the best chance of finding her before she kills the President of the United States. Instead, he replied, “Maybe she sees herself as some kind of heroine. Maybe she’s a Jewish girl from Brooklyn. I’ll ask her when I meet her.”

  Lammeck watched the woman work up a sour grin; he expected a scold for being a smart-ass. Instead, old Mrs. Beach eased her thin smirk into a smile.

  “Do that for me, Doctor.”

  She stood. The two men followed suit.

  “Alright,” Mrs. Beach said. “I’ll report everything you’ve said to the chief. I’m sure he’ll tell me that you can expect all the help you need, money and manpower, but that everything goes through this office first. Dr. Lammeck, I know you’re a private citizen but we’d appreciate it if you’d see this through with us. Dag seems to think you’re a whiz. From what I’ve seen, despite your cavalier mouth, you might well be. At any rate, you seem to make the ideal partner for Agent Nabbit here. You have similar... attitudes.”

  Lammeck nodded. Even if Mrs. Beach had told him to go back to Scotland he would have kept searching on his own for Judith.

  “Now listen, the both of you. The President knows nothing about this, and when he gets home next week he will not be told. The job is to make our precautions invisible to him, but impenetrable to our little assassin. Chief Reilly is going to want this kept out of the paper and out of the White House. No snafus. Also, your killer might have confederates around Washington just like she did up north. There may even be more of her associates left in New England. It’s impossible to tell how wide her network might be. Keep your ears to the ground, and we’ll get on it from our end. Chief Reilly will be back soon. Doctor?”

  “Ma’am.”

  “You’ve come up with a humdinger of a lead. Keep it up. Is your hotel suitable?”

  “For as much as I’m in it.”

  “Fine. Let me know if that changes. Dag.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I know I speak for Chief Reilly and the entire free world when I say I don’t give a good goddam if you catch this woman or kill her. But we want her stopped. Do what you have to do, and we’ll sort it out later. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A moment later, Mrs. Beach looked up and said, “You’re still here.”

  * * * *

  February 20

  Washington, D.C.

  JUDITH STEPPED OFF THE Ninth Street trolley at Pennsylvania. She folded the Post under her arm. The front-page photo showed U.S. Marines raising a flag over Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
On the trolley she’d read about Russian advances through Poland, Americans charging to the Rhine against crumbling German resistance, and an earthquake in Iowa. Roosevelt had not returned to Washington, though the paper said he was expected next week. An address to Congress reporting on his mission to Yalta had been announced for next week.

  Rubbing shoulders with dozens of overcoated clerks and businessmen, Judith entered the Apex Station Post Office. She found her mailbox, kneeled, and looked through the little glass pane into her slot. No letter waited inside, though it was due yesterday. She spun the combination lock anyway and reached in her hand to feel the cool confines of the empty little cubby. The postal service, she felt, was the best part of America. If there had been a letter from Newburyport, it would have been delivered.