Jig

by Campbell Armstrong

  Walter Bull nodded. His penchant for longevity within the Bureau came from his natural gift for servility. He had spent many years agreeing with the different men who occupied the chair in which Leonard Magoo Korn now sat. Like a good call-girl, he knew how to give pleasing service.

  Korn continued. ‘There are certain people in our society, Walter, who have nothing better to do than send the Bureau off on wild-goose chases. This caller in Albany seems to fit that particular category.’

  Bull said, ‘I wondered if it might be connected with Jig.’

  Korn narrowed his eyes. The whole subject of Jig was supposed to be secret, the way the White House wanted it. But Korn knew that in the grapevine of the Bureau nothing remained concealed very long, especially from a man like Bull, who had access to almost everything.

  ‘Jig is persona non grata, Walter,’ Korn said. ‘We ought to keep that clearly in mind. Officially, Jig doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Bull turned towards the door, stopped. ‘What’ll I tell Albany?’

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ Korn replied.

  Walter Bull went out, leaving his trademark aroma behind, thick cologne and sweat.

  Alone, Leonard Korn realised he would have to place two telephone calls. The first would be to the field office in Albany, giving strict instructions that the crime was to be handled discreetly and that no information was to be given either to the Albany PD or to the newspapers. The second and more important call would be to the White House.

  Korn wasn’t altogether sure that it was Jig who had committed this crime in provincial Albany and then called the local FBI office to claim responsibility on behalf of the Irish Republican Army. But why take any chances? President Thomas Dawson, deeply concerned as he was with the Irish assassin, would want to be informed anyway. Korn didn’t plan to place this call at once, though. He wanted to wait until he had heard from Agent Arthur J. Zuboric that the Englishman’s scheme in New York City had worked. It would be very gratifying to tell Thomas Dawson that Jig was safely in custody and that the Bureau, somewhat maligned in recent years, could be counted on to come through in the end. If there was one obsession in Leonard Korn’s life, it was the reputation of the Bureau. He had neither wife nor mistress. Nor had he any intimate friends. The Bureau was all things to him, and he loved it with more passion than he was ever capable of showing to a human being. He loved its computers, its chicanery, its internecine power struggles. But more than anything else, he adored the possibility of its omniscience. He liked to think that a day would come when a sneeze in The Oval Office would register on the Bureau’s data banks before it even tickled the President’s nostrils. Leonard M. Korn’s ideal of the FBI was a huge cyclopean entity made of stainless steel, unblemished, all-seeing, its bloodstream composed of infinite corpuscles of information, its heart one enormous muscle forever pumping data, its brain an insomniac scanning device classifying all this data day and night.

  If the plan in New York City worked, excellent. And if it didn’t – well, the blame could always be laid on Frank Pagan, a perfect scapegoat, thus sparing the Bureau any Presidential wrath.

  Leonard M. Korn smiled. He liked having things both ways.

  17

  New York City

  Artie Zuboric said, ‘It was a brilliant plan, Frank. It was probably the most brilliant plan I’ve ever been associated with. When I’m an old man looking back I’ll remember it with total fucking admiration. I’ll gather my grandchildren up on my lap and tell them about the day Frank Pagan tried to catch an Irish gunman.’

  Pagan flexed his bruised fingers. He didn’t like sarcasm at the best of times and he found Zuboric’s brand particularly juvenile. His hand stung. He rubbed it gently, then stared from the window of Zuboric’s office.

  ‘You had a clear shot at him,’ Zuboric said. ‘When he was standing there on that landing, Frank, you could have taken him out. You had all the time in the world.’

  And on the roof-top too, Pagan thought. But he hadn’t narrated the chase to Zuboric in any detail. He’d fogged the pursuit through the basement, not because he thought it embarrassing but because he wasn’t about to throw more fuel on Artie’s little bonfire of sarcasm.

  ‘Granted he moved like lightning,’ Zuboric said. ‘Granted it was unexpected. But that doesn’t excuse you, Frank. If I’d had the same opportunity, I’d have pulled my trigger. But I was knocked on my ass when Tumulty crashed into me. So I didn’t have a shot. You bombed, Frank. You screwed up.’

  Pagan watched the street, where a shaft of gloomy March sunlight penetrated the greyness of things. What he kept coming back to was Jig’s smile on the roof-top, the moment when the man had turned and glanced back and the smile on his lips was somehow knowing, as if Jig understood that Frank Pagan wasn’t going to shoot him in the back. But that wasn’t it either, it wasn’t anything so sentimental, so nice, as an unwillingness to shoot a defenceless human being. It was something else. It had nothing to do with any concept of fair play.

  He had never dreamed of taking Jig dead, that’s what it came down to. Even if he had never entirely admitted it to himself before now, he had always imagined Jig alive, intact. He had always envisaged himself looking Jig straight in the eye and taking the measure of the man, talking to him, questioning him, as if there were some revelation to be found in the mystery of Jig’s soul. He wanted an understanding of the assassin, something you couldn’t get from a dead man. He wanted to know Jig, who played the game of terrorism according to his own meticulous rules. It was his appreciation of Jig’s calculated acts of violence, so economic and accurate, that made it difficult to gun the man down in cold blood. And if there was irony in this, in his unwillingness to meet Jig’s violence with violence of his own, Pagan wasn’t going to recognise it. He wanted Jig badly, but not dead. Not shipped back to England in a bloody box, which would have been an empty triumph.

  There was even something admirable, Pagan thought, in the fact that Jig, during that first visit to St. Finbar’s, had actually approached Pagan to ask if he could help. There was gall in the man, and bravado, and surely an overwhelming sense of confidence. To come straight up to Pagan and look him in the eye the way he’d done – it was quite an act.

  Pagan rubbed his aching hand again. He wondered if he was simply trying to rationalise his own failure, trying to explain it away in manageable sentiments. He thought suddenly of Eddie Rattigan’s bomb and how it had destroyed Roxanne, and he realised that what he felt towards Jig was almost a kind of gratitude for the fact that the assassin had introduced dignity into the whole Irish conflict, that he had transcended the brutal behaviour of the Eddie Rattigans of this world. He thought of the enormous gulf that separated somebody like Rattigan from Jig. Rattigan killed the innocent, the blameless, the harmless bystander. Jig would never have casually detonated a bomb at a public bus-stop. He would never have indulged in such mindless destruction. He would never have taken Roxanne away. You didn’t shoot a man like Jig in the back. ‘I want him alive. That’s all.’

  ‘You could’ve shot to wound,’ Zuboric snapped. ‘You ever think about that?’

  Pagan didn’t respond. He considered the two shots he’d fired at Jig on the roof-tops. The first had been a warning, fired in the vague chance that Jig would stop running. Vague indeed. The second had gone close to Jig, but Pagan wasn’t sure now if that bullet had been intended to wound the man. In the heat of the moment, in the confusion of the chase, he hadn’t had time to take careful aim.

  Zuboric said, ‘I get this sneaky feeling you’ve been after Jig too long. I think you’ve actually begun to admire the sonofabitch. You want him alive because you can’t understand what makes you admire him, so you’d like to sit down with him over tea and crumpets and tell him what a jolly good fight he’s fought. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to a cop.’

  ‘Call me unpatriotic, but I don’t eat crumpets,’ Pagan said. He was remembering the basement, the moment of contact when Jig, find
ing the means of escape in a coal-chute, had finally lunged out at him with his foot. He’d almost had Jig then. Almost. A coal-chute! It was extraordinary how people who wanted desperately to survive somehow always managed to find the means of survival in the basic material around them. Somebody other than Jig, somebody with less of the sharp instinct to escape, might never have found that opening in the basement. Chalk up another point for the man, Pagan thought. Did that wonderment at Jig’s ability, his slipperiness, constitute admiration?

  Zuboric stared at Pagan. He was beginning to perceive his life in terms of how much the Englishman irritated him. The prospect of calling The Director with news of the Canal Street Fuck-Up, which was like a newspaper headline in his mind, made him very unhappy. He had been putting it off ever since they’d come back to his office. Why had he ever listened to Pagan anyway? He was suddenly very weary. Of his office, his job, the Bureau, the whole ball of wax. And last night, when he’d been in bed with Charity, who always made the act of sex seem like an enormous favour on her part, she’d once again reiterated her determination never to marry anyone who didn’t have two cents to rub together. Especially a man connected with any law enforcement outfit. She’d had her share, she said, of deadbeats in the past. Zuboric hadn’t wanted to hear about her past particularly. It was the future he was interested in, and it was going to be a wintry future if Charity wasn’t in it. She had driven him last night to the limits of sexual bliss. He didn’t like to wonder how she’d learned some of the tricks she knew.

  He picked up a pen and rapped it on his desk, still staring at the Englishman. ‘As for Tumulty, I knew that cocksucker couldn’t be trusted,’ Zuboric said. ‘I knew it all along.’

  ‘You told me that,’ Pagan answered. ‘You were very happy to tell me that, Arthur.’

  ‘Jesus, Frank. I saw the guy slip something into Jig’s hand. I don’t know what exactly. A piece of paper. Something. I was standing in the goddam doorway watching.’

  Pagan closed his eyes. His entire body hurt from the exertion of roof-top acrobatics. He was thinking of Tumulty now, whom they had brought back to Zuboric’s office from Canal Street. Father Joe was locked inside a cell along the corridor. He claimed that Zuboric was imagining things, there was no piece of paper, nothing. Maybe it was time to turn the screws on Joe a little tighter.

  ‘I’ll talk to him again,’ Pagan said.

  Zuboric shrugged and tossed a key into Pagan’s hand. ‘Be my guest. In the meantime, I’ve got the unpleasant task of reporting this failure, Frank. If you don’t see me again, it’s because I’ve been abruptly transferred to Carlsbad, New Mexico.’

  ‘I’ll come and visit you,’ Pagan said in the doorway. ‘I’ve always wanted to see the bat caves.’

  ‘I bet,’ Zuboric replied, thinking that the caves of Carlsbad would be a perfectly fitting place for Frank Pagan to die and be buried in, under a million tons of bat shit. ‘After you’ve talked to Tumulty, do me a favour and make sure you lock the door behind you, huh? We wouldn’t want to lose two Irishmen in one day, would we?’

  Frank Pagan slid the key in the lock and stepped inside the room where Joe Tumulty sat propped up in the corner. Zuboric’s last remark niggled him. He suddenly wished he’d shot Jig on the roof when he’d had the chance. Who the hell would have cared anyway in the long run other than himself? He’d have been a hero. The Man Who Killed Jig. So what the fuck was he doing, dickering with this appreciation of his prey? What was this bullshit about wanting Jig alive? If he’d gunned the Irishman down he wouldn’t have had to put up with Zuboric’s snide comments.

  ‘You really let me down, Joe.’ He spoke between clenched teeth. He felt confined inside a triangle whose sides consisted of Zuboric’s criticism, Tumulty’s pigheadedness, and his own failure to apprehend Jig. He wasn’t in the mood to fart around with Tumulty.

  Tumulty didn’t speak. Pagan squatted alongside him. The priest blinked, then closed his eyes slowly.

  ‘What was written on the paper, Joe?’

  ‘There was no bloody paper.’

  ‘My arse. Zuboric saw you.’

  ‘Look. I said the grace you wanted. I put the finger on your man. Don’t blame me if he slipped out of your hands. I did everything you expected, so why the hell am I locked up like this?’

  Pagan placed his hand on Tumulty’s shoulder. ‘You’re locked up because you’re a fucking criminal, Joe. You impeded the investigation of a Federal agency. I bet you just loved it when Jig pushed you into Zuboric, didn’t you? I bet you loved making that little contribution to Jig’s escape.’

  ‘I made no contribution,’ Tumulty said.

  ‘What was on the paper?’

  ‘I’d like to call a lawyer.’

  ‘No lawyer,’ Pagan said.

  ‘It’s my constitutional right.’

  ‘What right? What constitution? You don’t have any rights, Joe. You signed them all away when you helped Jig.’

  ‘There’s something to the effect that a man’s innocent until he’s proven guilty –’

  ‘Where did you hear a fairy tale like that?’

  Tumulty sighed. ‘Thank God this is a country of litigation and hungry lawyers. I’ll sue. You’ll see.’

  Pagan smiled. ‘What was on the paper, Joe?’

  Tumulty shut his eyes again. He tipped his face to one side, away from Pagan. Pagan reached out and deftly took Joe’s cheek between thumb and forefinger and pinched very hard. Tumulty’s eyes watered before Pagan released his grip.

  Pagan stood up. ‘I’ll tell you what really bothers me about all this, Joe. It isn’t the fact that you’ll probably go to jail. It’s the end of the road for all that good work you’ve been doing down on Canal Street. It’s curtain time, folks. No more good works. No more charity. You’ve lost your little bid for sainthood, Joe. Pity.’

  ‘There isn’t a court in the country that would send me to jail,’ Tumulty said, rubbing his cheek and looking annoyed.

  Pagan shrugged. ‘Even if you don’t go to jail, your life’s going to be sheer hell, Joe. You know what Zuboric is planning?’

  Tumulty shook his head.

  ‘First, he’s contacting some friends in the IRS who owe him a favour. You know how that works. Zuboric reckons his tax pals can hassle you so much you’ll wish you’d been sent to prison. That’s for starters. Second, he’s going to arrange for the local health department to go through your establishment hunting for sanitary violations. They also owe Zuboric favours. In other words, they’re going to be hard on you.’ Pagan paused. He wasn’t absolutely sure if Tumulty was absorbing this. ‘I’m not finished yet. He’s also making arrangements to bring the local cops down on you.’

  ‘He can’t do that.’

  ‘He can do anything he likes. The Director of the FBI is God, which makes Artie Zuboric a minor kind of deity by association. He asks for something in this town, everybody is ready to just bloody jump for him. You’ll see. As far as the cops coming in, it seems they’re going to suspect some of your clients of carrying narcotic contraband and using your place as the source, as it were, of their deals. Suddenly, no more St. Finbar’s. Big headlines. Lapsed Priest Runs Drug Ring. Tabloids love anything to do with lapsed priests, don’t they?’

  Tumulty said, ‘This is blackmail.’

  ‘Hardly, Joe. All I’m doing is painting you a picture of your dilemma. Bleak days lie ahead. Unless, of course, you decide that cooperation is the best way to go.’

  The priest stood up. He studied Frank Pagan a moment. Then, very deliberately, he said, ‘There was no paper. I gave Jig absolutely nothing.’

  ‘I admire a man who sticks to his story,’ Pagan said. He turned to the door. ‘Don’t let anybody convince you to change it.’

  He went out. He drew a cup of water from the cooler in the corridor and drank it, leaning against the wall and staring at a portrait of Thomas Dawson. He thought Dawson looked vapid, homogenised. But these were the very qualities the American electorate found endearing in its Presiden
ts.

  He crumpled his little wax cup. He wondered if Joseph X. Tumulty was pondering the exaggerated portrait of doom Pagan had painted for him. Maybe. God knows, he had to do something to shake Tumulty loose from his posture of innocence.

  Pagan moved back in the direction of Zuboric’s office just as the agent, looking as if the heavens had parted and God had roared angrily at him, stepped out into the corridor.

  ‘I thought you’d be in Carlsbad by now,’ Pagan said.

  Zuboric had a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘I just talked with The Director.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s angry. He’s angry and goddam impatient. He doesn’t think a whole lot of you, Frank. Quote. If the limey doesn’t shape up, I’ll have him shipped back to England so fast his feet won’t touch the ground. Unquote.’

  ‘Harsh words,’ Pagan said. He didn’t remotely care what Leonard M. Korn had to say about him.

  Zuboric waved the sheet of paper. ‘Which brings me to this tidbit of information he gave me. It seems that a man was murdered early this morning in Albany. He’d been garrotted by a length of wire and dumped in a culvert. A very nasty death.’

  ‘Garroting can be unpleasant,’ Pagan agreed.

  ‘The killer called the local FBI office at two A.M. and claimed that the killing had been carried out by the Irish Republican Army.’

  ‘In Albany? New York?’

  Zuboric nodded. ‘My precise reaction, Frank.’

  ‘It’s a hoax. It has to be.’

  ‘Also my own first reaction. But it becomes more plausible when you hear about the victim.’ Zuboric read from the paper. ‘Alexander Fitzjohn, aged thirty-eight, resident of Camden, New Jersey. Entered the United States legally from Belfast in August 1984.’

  ‘Belfast?’ Pagan said. He wondered where this was leading.

  ‘According to what I’ve got here, Frank, Fitzjohn had once been a member of the Free Ulster Volunteers.’