Scimitar

by Ed McBain

  He was in the upstairs bedroom—lying on the bed, looking through the newspapers he’d bought in town, hoping to garner more information about the President’s Fourth of July speech—when the doorbell rang, startling him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, called, “Just a moment, please,” and then went downstairs. Standing just inside the front door, he asked, “Who is it?”

  “Mr. Hackett?”

  “No, I’m sorry, he’s not here,” Sonny said.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” a woman’s voice said, “but could you please open the door?”

  Annoyed, he unlocked the door and opened it.

  Elita Randall was standing there.

  There was, for each of them standing on either side of that door-jamb, an identical shocking instant of recognition. It was as if they had run into each other again at the base of Victoria Falls or the summit of Kilimanjaro, or for that matter any other unlikely, unforeseen, and totally unexpected location. Here across the open doorway of a house at Westhampton Beach, they stared at each other uncomprehendingly, and wide-eyed, and literally open-mouthed, neither of them able even to breathe a name, each separately stunned into mutual speechlessness.

  And then—just as there’d been separate agendas for each of them on the day they visited the Statue of Liberty—there were now separate recoveries and separate wonderings and separate fears and separate hopes and separate plans for the future.

  She was the first to blink her way out of the silence.

  “Jesus,” she said, “what are you doing here?”

  “I … Martin is a friend of mine.”

  He was shaking his head in wonder now. How the hell had she found him?

  “Mr. Hackett?” she asked, still astonished.

  “Yes. But … what … how …?”

  “My mother has the house next door,” she said, and nodded in the direction of the house where first he’d seen Carolyn Fre …

  Her mother?

  His heart was suddenly beating very fast.

  She was thinking how gorgeous he looked barefooted, in blue jeans and a T-shirt.

  He was thinking her mother was in black plastic bags in the basement.

  “This is … I just can’t … I just came over to ask Mr. Hackett if he’d seen her. And here I find … God, this is …”

  “It is amazing,” he said, and smiled.

  He was thinking she was trouble.

  She was thinking she’d never let him out of her sight again. Now that she’d found him again, she’d …

  “Was that you at the Plaza?” she asked.

  He had still not moved out of the doorframe.

  He was thinking he could not let her into this house.

  “The Plaza?” he said.

  Trouble, he thought. She’s trouble.

  “Wasn’t that you? In a blue suit? With a walkie-talkie in your hand?”

  “No.”

  “I was sure it was you.”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  “Well, I …”

  “God, I’m so glad to see you again,” she said, and threw herself into his arms, virtually knocking him out of the doorframe and back into the living room. “Listen,” she said, her arms around his neck, “you’d better not run out on me ever again, you hear?” She kissed him on the mouth, a light little peck. “Have you got that?” she said.

  “I’ve got it,” he said.

  “Gee, I’ve never been inside this house,” she said, taking his hand and leading him deeper into the living room. “It’s really very nice, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s lovely,” he said.

  Sunlight was streaming in through the French doors. Sunlight glowed like molten gold on the water beyond.

  “How do you happen to know Mr. Hackett?”

  “A friend of my parents,” he said.

  Careful, he thought.

  “I called you in Los Angeles, you know,” she said.

  “Called me? Where?”

  “At your apartment …”

  “How’d …?”

  “And also at the hospital. I spoke to a doctor named BJ something, he said you’d better have a good story for Hokie. What’s in here? The kitchen?” she said, and was about to push open the swinging door when he shouted, “Don’t!”

  The plastic bottle of sarin was in the refrigerator. He didn’t want anyone going anywhere near that bottle.

  “It’s a mess in there,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s try the bedroom instead,” and looked at him, head cocked, one eyebrow raised in faint inquiry. “Must be a bedroom, no?” she said, and smiled in invitation, her eyes narrowing smokily. “No?” she said again.

  He shook his head.

  “I have work to do,” he said.

  “Okay, later,” she said airily, but her heart was pounding. “I’ve got to make some calls, anyway, find out if any of her friends … hey, you didn’t see her, did you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Blond, blue-eyed? People say we look alike?”

  “No, I didn’t see anyone like that.”

  She came to where he was standing. Stood very close to him.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “Don’t go away.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  The place smelled as if a tiger had been let loose in it. Hogan folded his handkerchief into a triangular-shaped mask, and tied it over his nose and mouth. He knew that the Nineteenth had already been through the apartment and had probably bagged and tagged anything there’d been to find. He was guessing, too, that Santorini had been through both apartments with a fine comb, this one here on the east side and the one further uptown on the west side. What he didn’t know was whether or not he’d found anything that had led him to Albert Gomez, whoever the hell he turned out to be; with race relations bubbling close to the boiling point in this city, all the police needed was some crazy Latino fuck running around sticking icepicks in cops’ eyes.

  My God, the lady must’ve let her pet tiger piss all over everything in the place.

  Hogan wondered if Santorini had gone through the garbage.

  He did not want to go through the garbage.

  He went into the lady’s bedroom instead. Same stink in here, how could anyone have lived in this joint? He checked out the closet and the dresser drawers. Didn’t find anything but a lot of frumpy clothes. He sure as hell didn’t want to go through that garbage. There was a small desk in one corner of the room, gooseneck lamp on it, some envelopes sitting on the desktop, right where the lady had left them. The detectives from the One-Nine had probably gone through them, figured they weren’t going to be of any help to anybody, left them sitting there. A bill from Con Ed, another bill from a dry cleaning establishment named Madame Claudette’s, a third one from Citibank, that was it. He reached into the Citibank envelope, removed from it what turned out to be a MasterCard bill. Scanned the bill, nothing of any importance he could see on it, restaurants, shops, the usual … well, wait a minute …

  No.

  Saw the word United, thought it might be United Airlines, which would’ve meant the lady had taken a trip someplace. But it was only a charge to something called United Neighbors, which he guessed was some kind of Upper East Side Do-Gooder association to which she’d contributed twenty-five bucks which she should’ve spent on a cleaning lady instead, get rid of the tiger piss. He gave the bill another run-through, and then put it back into its envelope.

  There was a drawer over the kneehole.

  He opened it.

  One of those Month At A Glance calendars. He guessed the One-Nine had gone through that, too, and found nothing significant in it, otherwise it wouldn’t be sitting here like a lox. He looked through it, anyway, comparing the month of June to the month of May to see if the lady had done anything special or unusual that might have led to her murder on the twenty-sixth. He found nothing extraordinary. Well, two calendar entries for appointments at a place called Sea
Coast, which he guessed was a restaurant, one for twelve-thirty on the twenty-third of June and the other for the same time the following day. Eating in the same restaurant on two successive days seemed a bit odd to him, especially since the lady didn’t seem to dine out all that often. He found a Yellow Pages directory in the bottom drawer to the right of the kneehole, and looked up SeaCoast under restaurants. There was no restaurant named SeaCoast in the city of New York.

  He looked in the lady’s personal telephone directory, which the One-Nine again had left behind, or perhaps brought back after they were done with it, such courtesies were not unknown in the NYPD, although exceedingly rare in cases where the owner of the property was no longer alive to complain. Either way, the directory was here to be studied, but there was no SeaCoast listed in it, so Hogan figured the hell with it. His eyes were beginning to smart from the stink of tiger piss in here.

  In the middle drawer on the right-hand side of the desk, he found three little books with green covers.

  He lifted the topmost book from the drawer, and opened it.

  There was some kind of funny squiggly writing in it.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Agent Grant, please,” Hogan said.

  “Special Agent Michael Grant, yes, sir,” the woman said, subtly correcting his error; in the FBI, all agents were special agents.

  Grant came on the line thirty seconds later. Hogan introduced himself, told him what he was working, told him he’d found some kind of little green books with foreign writing in them, and wondered if Santorini had discussed these when he called.

  “If this is the Green Book,” Grant said, “then we …”

  “Three of them. Three green books,” Hogan said.

  “Collectively, I mean,” Grant said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “If this is what I think it is, then yes, we discussed it. In connection with the scimitar tattoos. Apparently he had some victims with scimitar tattoos …”

  “Yeah, the green swords.”

  “Yes. And he wanted to know if I knew anything about an Iranian terrorist group that called itself Scimitar.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I told him our current thinking was that they’d been inactive since the JFK bombing …”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “… back in 1989. So we sort of eliminated them as …”

  “He was considering them as possibles, huh?”

  “Well, I think he was looking for a place to hang his hat.”

  “Uh-huh. So where’d you go from there?”

  “We talked about Libya a little. Because the tattoos were green, you know …”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “… kicking around the idea that this might be something Libyan, those crazy bastards. He wears women’s dresses and makeup, you know …”

  “Who?”

  “Quaddafi. And goes to sleep with a teddy bear.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. Totally weird. Sends his people out to buy new bedsheets whenever he checks into a hotel room. Nuts.”

  “Uh-huh. So what’d you tell him?”

  “Your guy? I said I didn’t have anything new on Libyan intelligence, the whole thing sort of died down after the big scare six years ago, when everybody thought Reagan was on a hit list.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I told him he’d do better contacting the CIA. They’d be the ones with any current stuff. He said he might do that.”

  “I don’t see any indication he did,” Hogan said.

  “Well,” Grant said.

  They were both thinking he’d been murdered before he’d got around to it.

  “Have you got a number for them?” Hogan asked.

  “Sure, hold a sec.”

  Hogan waited.

  When Grant came back on the line, he gave him the number of the New York Field Office of the CIA, and told him the man he usually dealt with there was a man named Conrad Templeton. Hogan thanked him for his time, hung up, and checked through Santorini’s files again, to see if he’d missed anything about a call to the CIA. There was nothing. He dialed 755-0027, got a woman’s voice saying, “Central Intelligence,” and asked for Agent Templeton.

  “One moment, please,” the woman said.

  Hogan waited, wondering how a nice Irish kid from Staten Island had grown up to be a man phoning secret agents all over the fuckin’ city. He was hoping this really was some kind of crazy green spy shit from Libya; you could always unite New Yorkers by telling them some lunatic foreigner was running around hurting innocent people. Though, tell you the truth, most people in this city thought cops deserved to get stabbed in the eye. He kept waiting. He was just about to light a cigar, when a man came on the line.

  “Alex Nichols,” the man said.

  “This is Detective-Lieutenant Peter Hogan,” Hogan said. “Homicide North.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I was trying to reach Agent Templeton …”

  “In the field just now. I’m his superior, maybe I can help you.”

  “I hope so,” Hogan said. “One of my people was killed during a double-homicide investigation. The victims were tattooed with green scimitars, and I just now found three little green books that the Feds tell me …”

  “Where are you?” Nichols asked at once.

  She sat at the desk just to the left of the windows facing the beach, thumbing through her mother’s telephone directory, sorting out city people from beach people. The next beach name she recognized was McNulty, James and Amanda. She dialed the number and waited.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Mrs. McNulty?”

  “No, this is Helga,” the woman said. “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Elita Randall.”

  “Hold on, please.”

  “Tell her it’s Caro …”

  But she was gone.

  Another woman came onto the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. McNulty?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Elita Randall, Carolyn Fremont’s daughter?”

  “Hello, Elita, how are you?”

  “Fine, thanks, Mrs. McNulty. I’m sorry to bother you …”

  “No bother at all.”

  “But I’m trying to locate my moth …”

  “Helga! What is that dog doing? Excuse me, darling. Helga!”

  Elita waited. In the background, she could hear voices and barking. At last Mrs. McNulty came back onto the line.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she said, “we’re getting ready for a Fourth of July party, and the caterers are here, and the dog decides at this very moment … well, never mind, it’s been taken care of. You were saying?”

  “I’m trying to get in touch with my mother, would you happen to know where I can reach her?”

  “Well, I’m sure she’s out here, have you called the house?”

  “I’m at the house now, Mrs. McNulty. I came out when …”

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry, darling, I’m sure she’s all right.”

  “It’s just …”

  “Helga! Will you please get that damn dog …? Excuse me, darling,” she said. “Helga! How many times do …?”

  Her voice faded. There was more barking. More yelling. Elita waited a moment longer, and then hung up and began leafing through her mother’s directory again.

  Except for the bag containing her head, all of the black plastic bags were bulky and awkward to handle. He loaded all five of them in the trunk of the car, and then went back into the house for his suitcase.

  The suitcase was packed much as it had been yesterday, when he’d checked into the Plaza. In addition to some casual clothes he planned to wear tomorrow, there was the same blue suit and muted tie, a fresh white button-down shirt, clean underwear and socks, the same polished black shoes. The sealed plastic bottle of sarin was inside a shoe again, a fresh strip of transparent tape holding its nozzle in the OFF position
. He got nervous each time he handled it. He was nervous now as he placed the suitcase on the floor behind the passenger seat. He went back into the house for a last-minute check, making sure all the lights were out and the faucets turned off, and then he locked the front door, and got into the car.

  In the house next door, Elita didn’t hear the car starting because she was on the phone with a woman named Sally Hemmings who’d just told her she’d seen her mother at a cocktail party this past Monday night.

  “Actually,” Elita said, “I spoke to her after that. On Tuesday. But I haven’t been able to reach her since, and I’m beginning …”

  “Well, I’m not surprised,” Sally said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s probably in San Diego.”

  “San Diego? Why would she …?”

  “That’s where the young man lives,” Sally said.

  “What young man?”

  “The one she was with Monday night.”

  “Do you know his name?” Elita asked.

  “Scott Hamilton.”

  “And you say he lives in San Diego?”

  “Owns a cable television station out there.”

  “Then … what’s he doing in Westhampton?”

  “I assumed he was visiting your mother.”

  “Visiting my …”

  “Staying with her. That’s the impression I got.”

  “Well, no, he’s not here. Neither of them are here. I’m at the beach house, and it’s empty.”

  “Like I said,” Sally said knowingly. “San Diego.”

  The hotel Sonny had chosen was the Marriott Financial Center on West Street, just a short walking distance from Battery Park. He felt the room rate was exorbitant for this part of the city—two hundred and twenty-five dollars for a single—but the location was perfect, and there were five hundred and four rooms in the hotel, a number that virtually guaranteed anonymity.

  He allowed a doorman to take his suitcase out of the backseat of the car …

  “Anything in the trunk, sir?”

  “Nothing.”

  … and left the car with a valet who gave him a claim ticket for it. He checked in as Lucas Holding, Jr., showing a valid Visa card made out to that name. The bellhop carried his bag up to room 1804. He tipped him two dollars. The moment he left the room, he dialed Arthur’s direct line at SeaCoast. The phone here at the hotel wasn’t secure. He would have to go through the ritual.