Tower Records was a large two-storied store brightly lit with neon, strewn with promotional posters, and simply choked with records, tapes, and CDs. The Tower Records in-Washington, D.C., which Scarborough normally patronized, had a video section, but in New York there was a separate store up the street marked Tower Video.
He’d always collected records, particularly jazz records, from the late fifties on. He had maybe three or four thousand records, many of them collectors’ items worth a lot of money. The advent of compact discs, however, and CD players had been a double blessing. First, they saved his collectors’ items from further deterioration due to playing. He owned several copies of Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out,” for instance—and all but one was extremely scratchy by now. With CDs, you could play them forever, and there was no wear because there was no friction involved—only a laser reading bits of data. Second, CDs made a midlevel system sound great. Oh, maybe the purists screaming in the Absolute Sound were right; maybe if you had a $30,000 stereo system with vacuum tubes, you had superior sound. But you still had the snaps and pops and scratches from older records—the brilliant remixing and engineering jobs being done on old jazz records simply weren’t being reissued on vinyl format ... they were only coming out on CD. Besides, there was something sexy and snappy about the shiny disks in their neat, easily filed jewel-boxes.
That and at least these disks didn’t fly·
Yes, CDs had put a brand-new sheen on his music collection, and since CDs of old stuff were being released ever so gradually, part of the fun was going out to shops and looking for them. There was the thrill of finding that old Charlie Parker collection—or that new anthology of Stan Getz recordings from the fifties, say. A harmless addiction, since Scarborough had the money to pursue it.
After a while, disappointed with the selection here, he decided to give up on jazz and go check out the classical section. Of course, he wasn’t actually going to buy anything, but just being among these things, panning for gold as it were, connected him to more relaxed and certainly gentler times.
The classical collection here was huge. Cultured people in jackets and ties, with well-trimmed facial hair and the telltale air of CD-fever examined the new-release sections carefully. Down here it was air-conditioned. Four Seasons by Vivaldi was playing quietly on discreetly placed BOSE speakers. Calming immediately, Scarborough settled down for the hunt.
There was that collection of Julian Bream guitar interpretations of Bach that he’d lost. Maybe if they had it down here, he might even shell out thirteen or fourteen dollars to pick it up. Stupid, maybe, since he didn’t have access to a CD player, but the very act of tendering the plastic-wrapped treasure, along with money, was an inevitable part of the CD shopping ritual.
He found the Bream-Bach CD and felt the familiar thrill of discovery.
It was then, when he looked up unexpectedly, that he noticed the two men.
They looked much like most of the other men in the store; generally office workers on their way home from work, stopping in to browse. Pinstripes, ties. One looked to be in his late twenties, early thirties; the other closer to Scarborough’s age, with salt-and-pepper hair. They had also been up in the jazz section, over in big-band territory. Now they were down here, and what was more, Scarborough had the distinct feeling that he’d seen them somewhere before. Not here in the record shop, not here in Manhattan, but somewhere else.
But then one went off to look at Mozart disks, while the other wandered over to the soundtrack section.
Scarborough continued his idle searching, again shaking the notion that these guys were following him.
Anyway, who could they be? If they were CIA the FBI or plainclothes policemen, and they knew who he was, why didn’t they just come up, arrest him, and cart him off? It was pretty clear that Scarborough was unarmed—he wore jeans and shirtsleeves today. Besides, there was no way anyone could have followed him. He’d well and truly weaved a tangled web, and nobody but Marsha and Cindy knew he was anywhere near Manhattan.
No, he decided. Just his jumpy paranoia, hopping up again.
He forced himself to look for ten more minutes, then went up and bought his Bach CD.
He wandered up Broadway to find that Chinese restaurant.
It was a rested and well-fed Everett Scarborough that stepped off the D train into the Columbus Circle subway station. He’d had to walk a ways uptown to catch the D, but that was what he’d promised Cindy. and that was what he had taken.
When he got off the train, he walked over to the newspaper stand, his eyes sweeping over the crowd. For some reason, the station was more crowded at seven-thirty than he remembered it being from previous visits. Still, it was far from rush-hour level. At the newsstand, however, he saw no sign of Cindy. Nervously, he looked up at the clock, and noted that it was only 7:25. He was early, then. Well, better than later, he supposed.
His back to a green-painted, steel-girder brace, he waited for his appointment, watching the people walking through the station, leaving on the roar of subway trains, arriving in a humid rush of moving bodies.
Every time he came to New York, two things always surprised him. One, it was even more expensive then he remembered, or even expected it to be. Two, it was dirtier, with a peculiar grey squalor unique to this place, touted as the greatest city in the world.
He’d always heard that you had to have been raised in the New York environs to be truly inured to the sandpaper on nerves, in-your-face-and-up-your-nose sensory overload it confronted you with every single waking moment (and who knew, maybe sleeping as well). Scarborough was just very happy he didn’t have to live there, only had to visit once in a while.
Offensive as the topside was, it was the subways of New York City that always shocked him. They were clangorous horrors, dark and dingy, smelling of old and fresh urine when they didn’t smell of body odor and rat droppings. They were horror dungeons, connected by the dank tunnels of Hades, illuminated fitfully by splashes of electrical sparks and seemingly phosphorescent ghost stations. Scarborough, when he rode them, half-expected to gaze out into a scene from the twisted landscape of Hell, and find it a marked improvement to the war bunker coming up on 14th Street, or Tenth Avenue, or wherever.
The Columbus Circle Station, in which he stood, waiting, was typical. Upstairs would be the usual bums and homeless people, defecating in dark comers and begging for spare change. “Reagan’s people,” Scarborough called them, and while D.C. more than had its share, thanks to Ronnie R.’s Nazi-like programs; the species seemed particularly virulent and lice-ridden here in New York. Scarborough always gave them money. He couldn’t help himself. Friends here told him, just don’t make eye contact. But he couldn’t help looking, feeling a surge of pity and fear. One of the nice things about being well-off financially was that you could make contributions to charities for the unfortunates like these, but no amount of charity could hide the scars of the mismanagement of the social mechanism that should prevent this kind of thing.
Yes, the Columbus Circle subway station was filled with the newspaper-shod homeless and it smelled; its ceilings were low and the girders were ugly and it was filled with trash. It was a study in Industrial-Age concrete and metal gone wrong, through which screaming worm-monsters rolled ceaselessly through their haunts of the dying city.
Despise the subway system of New York as he did, however, Scarborough always had to go down and ride it. Why, he didn’t know, he just did.
He figured that the Columbus Circle station was a good place to meet Cindy for three reasons: one, it was easy to get to for both of them; two, it was public, and he could melt into the crowd; three, it was easy to get away from, with numerous avenues of escape.
At exactly 7:36, he saw her coming down the stairs from the ticket-buying level, looking around for him. He took a moment to check the area before he waved her over, to make sure that no one was following. But what did he expect? he asked himself. Men in trench coats who looked like Robert Ludlum. He made himself rela
x, stepped out from behind the steel girder and waved.
She saw him, smiled, waved back and continued down the stairs toward him.
She was an attractive woman with styled and highly moussed auburn hair and round aquamarine designer glasses with their frames cut low for better peripheral vision. She had an oval face, freckles from a recent Caribbean vacation unhidden by makeup. She wore a black business suit, low pumps, and carried a large black bag slung over her shoulder.
Scarborough viewed Cindy with a curious ambivalence. On one hand, here was a bright and attractive, highly ambitious young lady, an excellent editor, with excellent taste in clothing. painting, interior decoration, food, what have you. She also had excellent taste in men. It had been clear from the very beginning that she fancied Scarborough—this was even before his wife’s death. This schoolgirl crush had mellowed out as she’d matured, into an uneasy friendship below the professional relationship, and then into more cynical lust that they both joked about, once Scarborough decided that he didn’t want to get physically involved with her. It will jeopardize our editor/author relationship, he had told her, but it was more than that. There were things about Cindy that bothered him, certain areas of coldness and neurosis that showed through from time to time, like chunks of icebergs in the Tropics. Chalk it up to normal New York psychological disorders, he’d thought. This wretched city did that to women. Oh, he’d had his share of New York women, and they generally complained at the lack of straight, unmarried potential partners in this town. Anyway, he’d steered clear of ending up in the sack with Cindy, even though there had been a few close calls at champagne-fueled ABA-and book-parties.
“Ev,” she said now, walking up to him with crisp, confident strides, her breasts jouncing beneath the crisp white silk blouse, her sleek smooth legs scissoring along, motored by those nicely tailored, nicely proportioned hips. “Hi. There you are. I’m so glad you’re safe.”
She kissed his cheek and he got a whiff of White Linen perfume, heaven amidst the olfactory horrors of the subway train station.
“Thanks for coming, Cindy. You didn’t see anyone following you, did you?”
An odd expression passed over the rounded angles of her face. “No. Should I?” Her accent was Ivy League smooth, with excellent diction, a perfect complement to her bright but troubled eyes.
“I just can’t be too careful, you know.”
“I understand, Ev. With all this craziness. Good disguise, by the way. I’d hardly have recognized Everett Scarborough, poorly dressed.” She gave a little flicker of a smile. “So. Where to from here? Do I get the honor of having my most popular author spend an illicit evening in the boudoir of his editor?”
He had to smile at the tart joke. “Actually, that’s not what I had in mind. They might trace me to you and figure out I might stay at your place. Show up at three in the morning. Catch us flagrante delicto.”
“That’s unlikely, with our history.” But the joke was through a frown, and he got a sudden strange feeling. It started at the base of his spine and moved up like an icicle on centipedal legs. Something was wrong here. Very wrong. It wasn’t that Cindy was acting strange. It was just the opposite—she was acting normal. No tics, no neurotic fidgetings she occasionally had when under pressure. Here she was, meeting with a wanted criminal, and she was acting like she was meeting him for drinks and a flick.
“Look, Cindy, I need traveling money. Did you get that advance?”
“Sure, but I’m not carrying it around with me. I’m afraid you’ll have to brave the jungles of West End Avenue for that, Ev.” He sensed a forced friendliness. A brittleness.
“I really appreciate it, Cindy. I can’t be too careful. I’ll call you tomorrow morning and make arrangements to pick it up somewhere, all right?”
“Everett, are you okay? You’re acting very funny.”
“I don’t know, Cindy. I just don’t know. You’re just going to have to go along with me on this. Go on home now, or wherever. I’ll be in touch.”
He turned away.
GET AWAY FROM HERE! something screamed inside of him. GET AWAY FROM HER!
“Everett!”
He started walked toward the exit. The southbound A-train was barreling into the station, covered with graffiti.
“Everett Scarborough, stop.”
The voice was closer. She was behind him, keeping pace.
“Sorry, Cindy. I have to go.”
The doors of the train opened, disgorging passengers, taking them in.
“Scarborough.” Her voice was hard now, tough and determined. “I have a gun on your back. Stop or I’m going to shoot you.”
Surprised, Scarborough wheeled around.
Cindy stopped; one hand supported her open purse, the other was shoved inside it. There was something hard pushing against the black material. The gun? The forefinger-in-the-pocket trick? Whatever it was, Scarborough was stopped well enough by the plain obviousness of the fact that this woman was not on his side.
“Cindy,” he said, his insides tightening as though someone had punched him in the solar plexus. “Cindy, what’s going on?”
“I’m taking you in, Everett. For your good, for everyone’s good. You’ve become too much the loose cannon.”
She was looking around, and Scarborough saw who she was looking for before she did. A man in a grey suit and short hair, every fiber of him spelling FBI was walking down the stairs, with another pair of grey legs behind him.
She followed his gaze. He took his one chance of getting out of the situation, and he jumped forward, knocking her purse and hands to one side and clipping her a hard blow across her face. She went down without firing. He grabbed her, picking her off the filthy floor, looking up at the men.
They were starting down the stairway, their hands reaching past the buttons of their jackets.
One hope. Scarborough, adrenalized by the danger, found that Cindy seemed light as a feather. He picked her up, and dragged her into the nearby car of the C train, just the split-second before the doors closed. The train started up, and was rolling along quickly by the time the two men in grey pounded up beside it, looking angry and helpless. Not taking any chances, Scarborough shied away from the windows, pulling the stunned editor with him.
“Let me go!” she screeched suddenly. “Get away from me!”
The agents (FBI? CIA? What difference did it make? They were after him, that’s all he knew.) slammed against the door, screaming at the motorman to stop the train. But the screeching of the wheels and sounds of the station swallowed up their orders. The subway train soon slithered into the dark tunnels, away from them.
The passengers of the sparsely populated train moved away from the two as though they had the plague.
“Help me!” cried Cindy. “He’s a criminal!”
“Sorry about my wife,” said Scarborough, smiling over to the motley collection of passengers.” She’s distraught about this affair I’m having with my secretary.”
“There’s a policeman on this train! Call him!” cried Cindy. A man near the exit pulled the door open and hurried off to the next car.
Yes, maybe there was a cop on the train, but it would take him awhile to get here. They couldn’t stay on the train, of course. Not for long, anyway. But as long as he had her here, hand gripped hard on her forearm so she couldn’t run away, Everett Scarborough had some questions for the executive editor of Quigley Books.
“Who were those men back there?”
“What men?”
“Your backup. FBI? CIA? What’s going on, Cindy? Did they have your phone tapped? Did they force you to do this?”
“That’s right. They made me, Everett.”
He looked at her, but although fear shone in those blue eyes of hers, sincerity did not.
“Who are you?”
“Cindy Clinton, Everett. They knew you’d contact me, so they made me try and bring you in.”
“No, who are you really?” That feeling again, deep in his gut. He realized tha
t it had all been just an act for her, from the very beginning.
“I don’t understand.”
It came to him in a flash. A realization like lightning, ripping his ego’ apart. No, no, it couldn’t be ... But maybe it was ... It had been Cindy who had bought his first book when all the other publishers had turned it down. It had been Cindy who had worked with him, chapter by chapter, promotion by promotion. She had risen as he had risen, she claimed.
Funny though. She’d always had a nice apartment. She’d always had nice clothes, a car ... And those exotic vacations. Scarborough had always wondered about those. A little family money, she had always claimed when he’d inquired. But that wasn’t the truth ... No, not the whole truth, he realized. She’d come down to Washington a hell of a lot come to think of it ... more than necessary just to work with an author. To see daddy she’d claimed. He’d been so blind. The connections were so plain, so clear. But then, in the ecstasy of success, he’d never noticed the strings they’d been planting in him even then. Especially then!
“Tell it to me, Cindy! Tell the truth!”
“Stop! You’re hurting me.”
“You don’t just work for Quigley, do you? You work for the Publishers and Editors!”
A little jar of shock in her eyes (how did he know those names?), fading quick as she got hold of herself again.
“Publishers and editors. Well of course I work for publishers and editors. That’s my career.”
“Don’t play dumb. I mean, the CIA. A shady part of ... Maybe even more than the CIA. I don’t know ... but you’re going to tell me!”
“How can I tell you what I don’t know? They’re right, Everett. You have gone over the edge.”
“No, I’m just wising up, Cindy.”
“They don’t want to hurt you, Everett. They want to help you. Come back to my place. We’ll arrange for a peaceful conference. Them and you, that’s all they want.”
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 48