Scimitar

by Ed McBain

  “SeaCoast Limited,” Arthur said.

  “Arthur Scopes, please,” he said.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Scott Hamilton.”

  “This is Martin, go ahead, Scott.”

  “I’m here. Room 1804.”

  “Fine. I have that item you wanted.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  “And will you still be here at ten?”

  “You can be sure,” he said, and hung up.

  From his room on the eighteenth floor of the hotel, Sonny could see the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty.

  He looked at his watch.

  5:27.

  Still time to do what had to be done.

  He would go out for dinner at seven-thirty, eight o’clock, and then come back to the hotel for the car.

  It was hard to believe that the two men from the Westhampton Beach Police Department were detectives. They looked as if they should be selling haberdashery in Oxnard, California. Then again, Elita’s concept of what detectives should look like had been derived entirely from motion pictures and television. These two didn’t seem like cops, but they seemed to be asking all the right questions, so she guessed they were okay.

  One of them was named Gregors and the other was named Mellon.

  They wanted to know what she and her mother had talked about on the phone this past Tuesday.

  “Did she say where she might be going that night?” Gregors asked.

  “Or the next day?” Mellon asked.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”

  “And you say some of these people you spoke to on the phone saw her on Monday night, is that what you said?”

  “Yes. With a man named Scott Hamilton.”

  “Do you know anyone by that name?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Mother ever mention anyone by that name?”

  “No.”

  “Better call these people she spoke to,” Mellon said to Gregors.

  “See if they can describe him for us,” Gregors said.

  “Can you give us their names?” Mellon asked. “These people you talked to?”

  “I’ll get my mother’s book,” Elita said.

  She went over to the Hackett house the moment the detectives left.

  Sonny’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

  She rang the doorbell. No answer. And then knocked. No answer. She tried the doorknob. The door was locked. She went around to the kitchen door and tried that one, too. Locked. There were no lights on anywhere in the house.

  She guessed he was gone again.

  After the huge grey buildings of finance and justice closed their doors for the day; after all the work was done, and all the people were gone; after darkness fell, and the streets emptied, and the only sound was that of a patrolman’s footsteps, or the hiss of a passing automobile, or the click of a traffic light; then here in this lower part of the city, there were only eyeless buildings and long shadows and emptiness.

  Sonny was looking for garbage dumpsters.

  Whenever he spotted one, he checked the street ahead and behind and if there were no pedestrians and automobile traffic, he stopped the car alongside the hulking metal container, popped the trunk from the button on the door to the left of the driver’s seat, got out of the car at once, went around to the back, raised the trunk lid all the way, hoisted out one of the black plastic bags, and hurled it up into the dumpster.

  Took maybe forty seconds.

  By eleven o’clock that night, he had disposed of all five bags.

  He wondered if he could still catch a late movie.

  13

  He was awake with the sun.

  He felt alert and alive and anticipatory—but today was only the third, and tomorrow seemed an eon away. He ordered a hearty breakfast of orange juice, eggs over easy with country sausages, buttered biscuits and coffee. He switched from morning show to morning show, hoping to catch a glimpse of where the networks planned to film the President’s speech to the nation, but there was nothing. At a quarter to eight, he dressed casually and went downstairs.

  At the camp in Kufra, they used to run the trainees ten miles every day in the desert heat. In Los Angeles, he used to do three miles around the UCLA track, morning or evening, depending on which shifts he pulled at the hospital. This morning, dressed as he was, he had to settle for a fast, brisk walk. This part of New York was strange to him, even stranger in that a holiday pall already seemed to have settled upon the city. Early Friday getaways were common enough during the summer months, but this was a long holiday weekend, and with the Fourth falling on a Saturday, most people didn’t have to work next Monday. As he walked through the sparsely populated streets of the financial district, he had the sense of a city already abandoned, its inhabitants having fled to the mountains, the seashores, or the lakes.

  He was alone in an alien land.

  A country he had slept in for more years than he cared to count.

  Awake at last.

  Walking uptown along the East River Drive, he looked out over the water to where a red tugboat was churning through a mild chop, raised his gaze farther out to where a tanker plodded heavily along, and wondered what kind of river traffic he could expect tomorrow. He had already concocted what he believed to be a feasible means of escape by water—if ever he managed to get three feet from the scene without being gunned down. Getting killed was a distinct possibility. But losing his life was something to be desired, not feared. Only failure was to be scorned.

  Tomorrow, he would get to the President by whatever means possible. If it meant unscrewing the cap of that plastic bottle and hurling the sarin at him from a foot away—he would do it. If it required running through a storm of bullets to reach him, tossing the poison into his face, into his eyes, onto his lips, killing the murderer before he himself was slain—he would do it. And he would seek no greater glory than the knowledge that he had served his God and his leader and his people. But if there was the slightest chance that he might live to serve again, then he would seize it.

  He felt certain that his plan of attack would work.

  The President would die.

  He felt less confident about his means of escape, but here too he might succeed … if only because they were so very stupid.

  Running along the river on the way back to the hotel, he grinned broadly, and felt as if his heart might burst through his chest, so joyous were his thoughts.

  She had heard nothing from the police.

  She called that morning at ten minutes to nine, and spoke to Gregors, who told her they had some very good descriptions of this Scott Hamilton person, which a police artist was putting together right that minute into a composite drawing they could circulate.

  “From what we’ve been told,” Gregors said, “from people who were at that cocktail party—men and women alike, by the way—this was a very handsome person, that’s one thing they all agree on. You sometimes …”

  She was wondering how her mother could’ve been so goddamn stupid.

  “… get descriptions that vary, you know, depending on who’s doing the talking. You get brown eyes, you get blue eyes, you get green eyes, hazel eyes, whatever, this is the same person all these people are describing. What we’ve come up with, though, what the artist is working on now, is a male Hispanic—but a very educated one, no accent, nothing like that—in his late twenties, early thirties. Dark hair, light eyes, very handsome. Runs a cable television station in San Diego, by the way, we’re checking out there right this minute, see if there’s any paper on him. See if he’s got a record, that is.”

  “When will you know?” Elita asked.

  “Well, it isn’t morning there yet, but they should be getting back to us soon. Meanwhile, we’ll get these people back in to look at the drawing, fine tune it, you know, fix an eyebrow here, a nostril there, get it to look as much like the person as we can. We’re working on this, Miss Randall, don’t worry. You realize, of course …�
�

  He hesitated.

  She waited.

  There was a crackling on the telephone wire. She wondered if a storm was on its way.

  “There’s no indication yet that any foul play is involved here,” Gregors said at last. “Your mother was seen with this man at a party, but that doesn’t mean anything has happened to her, or if something did happen to her, it doesn’t mean this man is responsible for it. We’ll have cases where a person will go off and not tell anyone where she’s going and she’ll turn up safe and sound right around the corner. All I’m saying is that we’re working up the composite as a precautionary measure, in case we should need it in the future, but you mustn’t think we’re automatically assuming something has happened to your mother. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I do. Thank you very much.”

  “We’ll keep in touch,” Gregors said.

  “Thank you,” she said again, and hung up.

  The house seemed utterly still.

  She looked at her watch.

  A little past nine. She wondered if Geoffrey was at work yet. She hadn’t spoken to him since Wednesday night, hadn’t even called to thank him for what had been a truly wonderful time. By now, he had to be thinking she was the most ungrateful jerk imaginable. She looked for his number in her handbag, dialed it, got a woman telling her this was the British Consulate, asked for Mr. Turner, and was sure that the next woman who came on the line was the absurdly strident Lucy Phipps, to whom she did not identify herself. She asked for Mr. Turner again and was put straight through.

  “Elita!” he said. “I’ve been worried sick about you! Where on earth are you?”

  She told him where she was and told him why she’d come out here, and all at once she found herself bawling into the mouthpiece, sobbing out the whole story of not having been able to get her mother by phone …

  “Do you remember my calling her from the Plaza?”

  … and no one having seen her since Monday night, and the police interviewing people and getting a composite drawing made …

  “Oh, Jesus,” she sobbed, “I don’t know what to do!”

  “I’m sure she’s perfectly all right,” Geoffrey said. “Now listen to me, Elita. You can’t help the situation an iota by sitting out there all alone and waiting for the phone to ring. Did you drive out there?”

  “No.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “By jitney.”

  “Can you take one back to the city?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think I should.”

  “Why not?”

  “Suppose they learn something?”

  “I’m sure they’ll learn she’s fine. Just give them your number in New York, and they’ll …”

  “Suppose she isn’t,” Elita said.

  There was a silence on the line.

  “Elita,” he said, “whatever the case, I think you need to be with someone who cares about you. What time is the next jitney?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to look at the schedule.”

  “Look at it,” he said.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Now, Elita. Look at it now, please.”

  She blew her nose, found the schedule, and went back to the phone. Still sniffling, she told him that the next bus left at twelve twenty-five and arrived in Manhattan at two-fifteen.

  “Where in Manhattan?” he asked.

  “Thirty-ninth and Third. And then it makes stops …”

  “I’ll be there to meet you at two-fifteen.”

  “Geoffrey … I really think I should stay here.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  She could not think of a single reason why.

  “Call the police and give them your number in New York,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “I’ll see you in a little while.”

  “All right.”

  “Elita?”

  “Yes, Geoffrey.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “All right, Geoffrey.”

  “Elita, please stop crying. You’re breaking my heart.”

  Which words, for some odd reason she couldn’t quite understand, almost broke hers. Or perhaps she’d just remembered what he’d said earlier. About her needing to be with someone who cared about her. That.

  Arthur opened one of his desk drawers and removed from it a large manila clasp envelope. He unfastened the wing tips of the clasp, reached inside the envelope, and pulled out a thin rectangle of cardboard, somewhat longer than it was wide.

  “According to your specifications,” he said.

  There was thick block lettering on the sign, black on white.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes, perfect,” Sonny said, and then carefully put the sign back into the envelope. Arthur was still watching him.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” Sonny said.

  “All ready for tomorrow?”

  “Almost.”

  “Would it were day, hmm?” Arthur said, and smiled.

  Sonny looked at him.

  “’Will it never be morning?’” Arthur said.

  Sonny kept looking at him.

  “Henry the Fifth,” Arthur said. “‘Would it were day!’” he said, quoting again. “The French camp, near Agincourt.”

  “Oh,” Sonny said.

  “I still don’t know your plan,” Arthur said.

  “I’ll be laying in,” Sonny said.

  “I assumed. And when you surface?”

  “I’ll blend in. Till it’s time.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be speaking?”

  “Twelve noon.”

  “High noon, hmm?”

  “High noon, yes.”

  “Catch the West Coast, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “How will you do it?”

  “From above. The level above him.”

  “Using?”

  “Sarin.”

  Arthur raised his eyebrows appreciatively.

  “Careful with that stuff,” he said.

  “I will be.”

  “Don’t want to get any on you.”

  “No.”

  “Or even breathe any of it.”

  “I know how dangerous it is,” Sonny said.

  “Should do the job nicely, though.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Get away. If I can.”

  “How?”

  “A boomerang,” Sonny said.

  “Ah. Yes. Good,” Arthur said. “Very good. And where will you go afterward? Back to Westhampton?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Where then?”

  “The hotel, I think.”

  “I’d like to know for certain.”

  “I’ll call you,” Sonny said. “If I get off the island.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you will,” Arthur said. “Which is why I’d like to know where you’ll be, hmm? So we can help you with your future plans.”

  “I’ll call you,” Sonny said.

  “Please,” Arthur said, and smiled.

  The three men met in the CIA office in lower Manhattan, its exact location known only to the people who had legitimate business there, and incidentally to any foreign spy who happened to be tracking them. None of the men was quite sure an actual threat to the President existed, but they damn well wanted to make certain it would be properly addressed if it did exist.

  Well, actually, one of the men frankly didn’t give a damn whether the President got murdered or not. This was Secret Service Agent Samuel Harris Dobbs, who saw this latest brouhaha as just another plot to keep him here in New York when all he wanted to do was go back to Washington where his wife was. Nobody had killed Reagan at the goddamn Canada Day thing the other day, and nobody was about to kill Bush tomorrow, either. But Hogan and Nichols, the two men with him, kept worrying the thing like a dog gnawing on a bone. Nichols was the one who seemed most convinced that a conspiracy was afoot; but he was CIA,
so what could anyone expect? Hogan seemed desperately trying to understand the arcane terminology Nichols kept tossing around. He understood murders, though, and three people had been killed so far, and it looked possible that someone just might also have his sights on the President; crazier things had happened in this city.

  “They call themselves Sayf Quaṣīr,” Nichols said. “That means scimitar in Arabic. It looks like this,” he said, and carefully lettered the word on a pad, and then showed it to the other men. Dobbs figured he was showing off.

  “Pretty writing,” he said.

  “Pretty little tattoo, too,” Hogan said.

  Ta-2-2, Dobbs thought. Sounded like a robot in a science-fiction movie. Tell the truth, this whole damn thing sounded like science-fiction. A conspiracy to kill the President? The way he figured it, if no one had killed the son of a bitch yet, no one was ever going to kill him.

  “It isn’t so farfetched,” Nichols said, as if reading his mind. “He’ll be here tomorrow, you know. Coming in by jet to La Guardia, then by helicopter to the island.”

  “These two British ladies had tattoos,” Hogan explained belatedly.

  “What British ladies?” Dobbs asked.

  “These two murder victims. Green scimitars.”

  “What?” Dobbs said.

  “Just under their … ah … breasts,” Hogan said delicately.

  “What?” Dobbs said again.

  “We think it’s a means of positive identification,” Nichols said. “A way of exposing impostors.”

  “What do they do?” Dobbs asked. “Open their blouses, flash their boobs?”

  “In interrogation,” Nichols said. “If they catch a double.”

  Hogan wondered what baseball had to do with this.

  “Check him out,” Nichols said, “they’ll know right off.”

  “Flash their boobs,” Dobbs said, refusing to let go of it. “Don’t shoot, I’m a spy.”

  “Well, I don’t know what they do, actually,” Nichols said, looking offended. “We don’t know very much about them, actually. But we feel certain the green scimitar tattoo identifies them.”