Harrigan made a face at Tanner. “Apparently I've just asked a very foolish question. They're not friends and they don't talk, but they know each other. So, Sonnenberg and Tortora are enemies, right, Charley?”
“No.”
“It can't be both ways, Charley. If Sonnenberg is Baker's friend, and if Tortora is trying to hurt Baker, Sonnenberg and Tortora must be enemies, right, Charley?”
“Noop noop noop.” He grinned.
“Then,” Harrigan barked, “what the hell does it mean?”
Charley's head snapped up at Harrigan's angry tone and both fists now pressed against his cheeks. He reddened suddenly like a scolded infant, and his finger jabbed out toward Harrigan.
“They'll hurt you,” the voice shouted.
“Who will? Tortora and Sonnenberg?”
“Edward.”
“Edward who?”
“Edward who sent Hackett.” Charley's finger tilted toward the dead man in the bathtub.
“Wait a minute.” Harrigan stiffened. “Who's Hackett? The stiff?”
“Yes.”
“And someone named Edward sent him?”
“Edward sent him. Edward is going to hurt you and Tanner and make Baker sleep. The other man is going to hurt Sonnenberg, and they know you hurt Hackett and they'll hurt you worse.’7
“What other man?”
”I don't know. The white-haired man.”
“How can you know Edward's name and Hackett's name and not the other man's name?”
“They didn 't say it yet.”
“Jesus Christ,” Harrigan sputtered. “It must be going on right now. Charley, are they talking now? This minute?”
”Yup.”
“Within a block or two? Yelling distance?”
Charley blinked.
“Did they say any other name?”
“Tom Dugan. They sacrificed him. Biaggi. Biaggi helped them. Haig. Haig has aluminum.”
“Who is the white-haired man, Charley?” Harrigan's voice was like flowing ice. He knew the answer. He wanted it said aloud. He wanted Tanner Burke to hear it.
“He's sir. He's . . . Mis . . . ter. . . Peckkkk.” The ball of sound seemed to stretch thin this time and then dissolve into a distant echo. Charley went rigid. There was a stiffening surge to his body, much like the effect of water slowly winding through a coiled garden hose. One hand reached for the edge of the bathtub. By the time it touched, there was a purpose and tone to the movement where there would have been only a half-slap before. In the time that Harrigan glanced toward the reaching hand and then returned his attention to Charley's face, the eyes had become keen and focused. Harrigan let his own hand fall across the dart pistol on his lap.
“You can relax, Harrigan.” The voice was clear and strong. Jared Baker pushed slowly to his feet.
4‘Jared!'' Tanner half-shouted.
Baker met her eyes and looked away. “Not very attractive, is it?” he muttered.
“Attractive? Jared, never mind that, for Pete's sake. Are you all right?”
“I'm better. Thank you.” Baker seemed relieved. If she felt disgust, she didn't show it. “Listen, Tanner,” he said uncomfortably, “about Charley listening in to your private thoughts, there's something you should understand.”
“Can we save all that?” Harrigan waved impatiently. “Baker, do you know what's happened here?”
”I know,” he answered, his eyes still on Tanner. ”I heard you outside before the door was kicked in. You said you'd pick up my daughter. Did you mean that?”
“We talk first,” Harrigan said.
Tanner ignored him. ”I meant it. I'll get her myself if I have to.”
”I have no right to ask you to do that.” This was a new Jared Baker, Harrigan realized. Much more controlled. Not the confused and troubled man who locked the bathroom door a short while before.
”I have a right to give something back to you,” she answered. “And anyway, Tina is my friend.”
“What you're going to have is the right to get your ass shot off,” Harrigan spat out. “My turn to read minds. Baker's thinking maybe he shouldn't try for his daughter himself because he's going to be drawing shooters everyplace he goes. He figures if he can draw them off someplace else, Miss Burke can waltz in and take Tina bye-bye. Forget it, Baker. If I figured that's why you're here, so did the shooters. That place will be covered like a rug if it isn't already.”
“Can you get Tanner in and out?”
”I imagine,” he answered. “What'll it buy me?”
“Information.”
“Shit!” Harrigan shot back. “What are you going to tell me? That Duncan Peck is downstairs ready to blow us all away? I knew he'd be around sooner or later when I saw his number on Hackett's pad. Edward figures to be Ed Burleson out of Special Operations. Peck also figures to be moving in on your pal Sonnenberg this morning. I know why better than you do. And most of all, I know you can't count on Abel the terrible anymore. He's not going to let you retire him.”
“He'll behave,” Baker answered. “We reached an understanding.”
“Bullshit!”
Baker ignored the response. And Harrigan softened almost at once. He could see by Baker's expression that it was more than wishful thinking. Maybe they did make a deal.
“What do you want, Harrigan, for delivering Tina?”
“Your enduring friendship,” Harrigan answered. “No vanishing acts. Go wherever you want but stay in touch. On my end, I guarantee no one else will know where you are. Believe that part, Baker. Because you're going to be my life insurance.”
“What you get is one day at a time. Get my daughter, meet me afterward, and we'll talk about tomorrow. That's if you do your job right and no one even looks cross-eyed at anyone I care about.”
Harrigan saw Tanner Burke brighten a shade at the last part. One way or another, he thought, he'd keep in touch. The dealing's not over. “I'll deliver,” he said simply.
“Don't get overconfident, Harrigan. This might be your kind of business, but I have to tell you, you're all alone.”
“Yeah!” His eyes went cold. ”I got the feeling from Charley that I just lost my bench.”
“Someone's laying for you down in your car. Can you handle him?”
“I'll handle him. Where do we meet you?”
“The ape house at the zoo. I'm going to call and let Tina know you're coming.”
“No dice. That house probably has more wires than Western Union by now.”
“No one will hear me but Tina. Anyway, both she and the woman caring for her know I'm coming sometime today. This is just to tell her about you.”
Harrigan's face darkened. He hadn't forgotten about those silent phone calls. But it hadn't fully sunk in that the daughter could do head tricks too. Now it's Frankenstein's daughter, he thought disgustedly.
“It's past seven o'clock now,” Harrigan said. “Figure we'll get back to Central Park near noon. You going to be in the neighborhood?”
“By then, yes. I'll be nearby.”
“Doing what?”
“Listening. Keeping things simple.”
Harrigan understood. “Speaking of simple”—he pointed to the bathtub—“ordinarily I could make a phone call and get old Hackett hauled out of here in a laundry cart. Right now, no one can connect him with Miss Burke except the night manager, and all he saw was a uniform. I think we take the uniform with us and stash him a couple of floors down on the fire stairs.”
Tanner shivered. “Naked?”
“You want modesty or you want to stay off the front pages?”
“He's right,” Baker told her, wincing at Harrigan's grace-lessness. “If it helps, keep in mind that his job was killing people and that he liked doing it.”
Knowing that helped Baker even more. Even Abel didn't kill like that. And it helped him understand Sonnenberg's view of a world he didn't much like living in. Baker didn't have much use for it either.
“You'll need a suitcase.” Tanner straightened. “I'll s
ee what's in the other room.”
Harrigan waited until she closed the door behind her before he reached for the knot of the dead man's tie.
“What is he, Baker? Freelance or one of ours?”
“One of yours, Harrigan. Your government isn't mine.”
“Treasury? CIA? What?” Harrigan unlaced Hackett's shoes.
”I don't know. All I heard was ‘animal house’ from the street. And while he was creeping down the stairs I heard how glad he was that he got to kill Connor Harrigan. He wanted to make it last if he could. Your people are a class act, Harrigan.”
“CIA.” Harrigan nodded, tossing the trousers in a heap. “Animal house is a nickname. The CIA is divided into Intelligence Services and Special Operations. Staffers and field agents. The field agents in Special Operations are called the animals. They're not all like this, Baker. Don't get down on the Fed because there are guys like Hackett and Burleson. Burleson would have killed Hackett anyway if he found out the guy wrote down Peck's number. And I'm going to have Burleson's ass.”
“You talk like this will be easy.”
”I got a hell of a partner.”
“You haven't paid for that yet.”
Harrigan tossed the jacket to Baker, who folded it and added it to the pile. “When the actress and I move, we can use some blocking. That what you had in mind?”
“I'll cover you. I'll leave fifteen minutes ahead of you.”
“Now you're talking like it's easy. These guys won't be patsies.”
“Neither am I, Harrigan. Not anymore.”
“Yeah!” Harrigan nodded. But you're not a prick either, he thought. Sooner or later you're going to stop to worry about who deserves to get hurt and who doesn't. And that's going to get you killed. That, or your two friends inside you are going to pick the wrong time to stop playing ball. And what's left wouldn't last ten minutes. “These guys inside you,” he said. “You're sure you're back in the driver's seat?”
“There isn't any they, Harrigan. They're me. Just like yours are you.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You have your own Abel and Charley.”
“Like hell I do.” Harrigan stood up, bunching Hackett's blue shirt into a ball. He stared expectantly at Baker.
“Forget it.”
“You prove it.”
Baker took a long breath and let it sigh out slowly. Tell him, he thought. Tell him you heard all the Frankenstein and Wolfman wisecracks and tell him he doesn't have a goddamned thing to be smug about. Tell this man who thinks you're a freak what's sitting inside him and everyone else right now. ”I was standing at the mirror before. You remember?”
“Out in the other room? Yeah. You were talking to yourself and going into some kind of trance.”
“And it made you angry, didn't it? Do you remember being very angry, Harrigan? You felt something like it in Dayton and again in California.”
”I remember.” He shrugged. “Tanner Burke felt it too. You were trying to read my head is what I figured and it pissed me off.”
”I can't read minds, Harrigan. I told you that.”
“So?”
“But Charley can. Would you like to know how?”
Harrigan threw the blue shirt to the floor. “Come on, Goddamnit. No games.”
Baker smiled. “You felt a sucking feeling. What that was, Harrigan, was my Charley probing your Charley. Forming him. Pulling him together and then letting him go. Your Charley's all there, Harrigan. He's only in pieces now, but he's there. He's everything you ever feared or despised about yourself, Harrigan. He's a fat and frightened little man.”
“Bullshit!” Harrigan reddened. “It's your guy who was a piece of suet. I didn't feel like that. What I felt like was tearing your head off.”
“Do you begin to get the picture, Harrigan?”
Harrigan's lips moved but no sound came. The color began to drain from his face.
“When your Charley is pulled together, Harrigan, what does that leave? Wanting to tear my head off should have told you something.”
13
At the elevator bank in the lobby of the Plaza, another athletic club type named Carter Merrick paced distractedly. Now and again he would dip his fingertips into the unzippered leather briefcase he carried, brushing them over the two pistol butts hidden between its folds. His eyes, wherever he paced, did not stray far from the elevator dials above him.
At his back, forty feet toward the Central Park entrance, Doug Peterson closed the other end of the trap. Merrick checked his watch. Thirty minutes. If Harrigan or Baker were not down by then, they would go in. In force. But Merrick hoped they'd come. You don't get your ticket punched, he knew, by being one of a crowd. But being the one to take Connor Harrigan, and this Baker character, that's promotion city. That's a month's leave in France or the Greek Islands, with Duncan Peck picking up the tab. And he had the best chance of anyone. Harrigan didn't know him. Harrigan and Baker and maybe the girl would walk right past him into a crossfire, and Harrigan would be down before he knew what hit him. Merrick and Peterson had practiced the move ten times already on guests descending from other floors.
He turned away from the dials, none of which was within four floors of fifteen, long enough to scan the lobby once more for potential interference. It was mostly empty now. Just enough people to make the scene seem normal. A woman, fortyish and expensively dressed, sat with an open purse on her lap and a mirror in her hand, probing an eye with a piece of Kleenex. Lazy rich, he decided, noting the carefully done hair that probably covered a tuck scar and the tan that was the work of several seasons. And probably a screamer if anything more violent than a fallen souffle happened in her sheltered little life. Merrick mentally prepared himself for the scream. And for the contents of her purse being scattered all over the floor. They would distract Harrigan or Baker, but they would not distract him. Carter Merrick would be ready.
There was one other man, a tourist in a safari jacket, who stood at the desk of the fruity little clerk, trying to decipher a Manhattan street map. The clerk was drumming his fingers and making a face at the tourist's outfit. Neither would be a problem, Merrick decided. He returned his attention to the elevator dials.
On the twelfth-floor landing of the fire stairs, Harrigan paused and raised a hand. He nodded to Baker, who was grunting under the weight of Hackett's body, and pointed silently toward the corner nearest the fire door.
Jared Baker eased to one knee and allowed the corpse, now dressed only in Harrigan's worn raincoat and a pair of socks, to slide from his shoulder. Harrigan crouched and began arranging the body.
“What are you doing?” Baker asked, rubbing his burning shoulders. He tried not to look at the dead man's face.
“Confusion to mine enemies,” Connor Harrigan grunted. He tidied the folds of his raincoat, which he'd donated less out of concern for Tanner's emotions than in the hope that the assassin might pass for an hour or two longer as a sleeping drunk. Or better yet a sleeping pervert, which would cause him to be shunned all the more. Now he drew up Hackett's knees and folded his arms across them, forming a nest that would hide his swollen face. Baker was relieved that this was done. Hackett's eyes had begun to open and the skin beneath them had blackened. The tip of his tongue was visible through lips that were covered with a crust of dried foam. The sight was making Baker sick. And he didn't much like Harrigan for being so comfortable with the broken remains of a man who had been alive only hours before.
Harrigan, satisfied with the effect he had created, now began patting his pockets in search of items he might leave with the dead man to confuse matters further. Meaningless little clues that would lead nowhere. An empty airline ticket envelope, perhaps. Or a matchbook from a California motel. Ah, but that would be inconsiderate, he decided. No way to treat the lads of the local precinct who'd be assigned to identify the body of the mysterious Plaza flasher. Simplify, Connor. Always simplify. He drew a fiber-tipped pen from his pocket, and on the back of Hackett's hand
he carefully printed the unlisted phone number of Mr. Duncan Peck. Pleased with himself, smiling, he rose to his feet. The smile faded when he saw the look of disgust on the face of Jared Baker.
“This troubles you?” he asked.
Baker told Harrigan with a look that he'd asked a thoroughly stupid question. ”I have to get going” was all he said.
“You do get used to it, lad,” Harrigan said softly. “You live with it or you fold, as with any other sorrow.”
“You're more than used to it, Harrigan,” Baker answered wearily. “You enjoy it. You make a game out of it.” He gestured toward Hackett's hand. “Living the way you do isn't worth the effort.”
Harrigan reddened. His eyes and teeth flashed, and it seemed for a moment that he might bring the back of his hand across Baker's face. But he only shook his head and turned away to make a last adjustment to Hackett's position.
“Notice,” he said, standing erect to face the taller man, “notice how I restrain myself from telling you what a smug son of a bitch you are. Not being in the happy circumstance of being able to blame some inner beastie for any unpleasant behavior on my part, notice how I rise above the insult. I won't even tell you that my little game, as you put it, was as much to draw the dogs away from Tanner Burke as it was to cause discomfort for Duncan Peck. I don't tell you these things because my attention is now focused on the business of surviving the day and not on the task of preserving my humanity at the cost of my life. You can go to hell, Baker. You can go to hell and take your two friends with you, which I suspect is what you have in mind if the beastie will not behave. But for all our sakes, go to hell tomorrow, not today.
Today you'd better damn well find your own way to live with it.” Harrigan brushed past Baker and walked up the three flights of stairs. Baker followed.
Baker hesitated at the door of Tanner's room, then touched Harrigan's shoulder and motioned him down the carpeted hall toward the elevator alcove. Baker pressed the down button.
“You'll watch out for them, Harrigan?” Baker's voice was subdued.
”I said I would. You look out for you. You're sure you can draw Peck's people off without getting shot?”
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