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The Way You Look Tonight

Page 17

by Richard Madeley


  42

  ‘I honestly don’t know when you’ll be able to meet him.’ Stella pushed the marmalade jar across to her mother and used the butter knife to spread the dollop she’d just scooped onto her own slice of toast. ‘Lee’s not even in Key Largo any more – he went straight down to Key West with most of his team almost as soon as that boat turned up.’

  Stella took a large bite out of the toast and reached for her tumbler of orange juice. ‘The thing is,’ she went on indistinctly, ‘he can’t just take a couple of days off and fly up here to see me – and meet you, of course – much as I know he wants to. He phoned before breakfast. Reckons he’s getting close to finding his man. But he can’t afford to let up for a second. Woods is trickier to pin down than smoke.’

  Diana nodded. ‘I understand, darling, of course I do. It’s just that I fly home in a week and it would have been lovely to meet Lee. From everything you told me about him last night, I like the sound of him.’

  ‘I like the look of him,’ Sylvia chimed in from her end of the table. ‘Has Stella shown you his photo yet?’

  Diana shook her head while her daughter smacked her own forehead with the palm of her hand.

  ‘How idiotic of me to forget! Lee gave me a photograph of himself before I flew back yesterday morning. I’ll run and get it.’

  A few moments after she’d left the room, Jeb walked in carrying the morning mail.

  ‘Greetings all,’ he called. ‘Morning, Dottie; morning, Dee-dee. How ripping you both look this lovely October morning. It will break my heart to have to leave for work. Now, let’s see . . . letter for you, Dottie . . . one, no, wait, two for me . . . nothing for the darling daughter, but that’s hardly surprising, is it? For Sylvia’s generation the sixty-minute unbroken telephone conversation long ago replaced the art of writing a letter.’

  Sylvia stuck her tongue out at her father.

  ‘But perhaps I’m wrong – there is one more here,’ Jeb went on, turning over a thick white envelope so he could see who it was addressed to.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Well, well! My oh my! Who’d a’ thunk it? Our Stella continues to move in exalted circles.’

  Stella came running back in, oblivious. ‘Here you are, Mummy. This is Lee. Isn’t he a bit of terrific?’

  Diana took the photo from her daughter’s outstretched hand and almost immediately raised her eyebrows.

  ‘He certainly is. My word, you weren’t exaggerating last night, Stella – he’s . . . what do they say over here? “Straight out of central casting.” What a dazzling couple you must make!’

  Stella laughed, embarrassed. ‘Well, I don’t know about that . . . but I knew you’d like the look of him. Just wait ’til you actually meet him, though, Mummy. He’s so incredibly—’

  ‘Ahem,’ Jeb interrupted her. He waved the white envelope above his head. ‘Your attention, please, everyone. I believe I hold in my hand something almost as glamorous as that photograph. Stella, see what the mailman’s brought you. A letter from Washington.’

  She frowned at him. ‘But I don’t know anyone in Washington.’

  ‘You most certainly do,’ he said. ‘A person who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to be precise.’

  Stella was mystified. ‘I’ve never heard of that address in my life,’ she told him.

  Sylvia and Dorothy were now both sitting bolt upright.

  Thoroughly enjoying himself, Jeb shook his head in mock regret. ‘Tsk, tsk,’ he clicked, ‘such ignorance even in one so young, and despite the so-called special relationship, too. Still, I suppose I—’

  ‘Jeb! Stop teasing the child,’ Dorothy chided him. She turned to Stella.

  ‘1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the address of the White House, dear,’ she informed her. ‘If my ridiculous husband’s histrionics mean what I think they do, you’ve got a letter from the President.’

  Stella gasped and Jeb laughed.

  ‘Sorry, Stella,’ he said. ‘I’m annoyingly playful at this time of day; I have no idea why. I know it’s intensely irritating. Yes, this is from the White House all right. Look.’ He held the front of the envelope towards her; the Presidential crest and stamped lettering: ‘From the Office of the President of the United States of America’ were prominent.

  She gulped. ‘Would you open it for me, Jeb, please?’ she asked him. ‘I’m a bit overwhelmed here.’

  ‘Sure, honey.’ He picked up a knife from the table and slit the envelope open. ‘I’m probably committing a federal offence by interfering with a Presidential missive to a third party, but what the hell . . .’ He extracted the single folded sheet of paper inside. ‘OK. Here we go . . .’

  After a moment, Jeb gave a low whistle.

  ‘I don’t even have to turn it over to see the signature – I’d recognise this handwriting on anything.’ He glanced up at Stella. ‘JFK’s written this himself, Stella. I’m seriously impressed. I had a coupla letters from him during the last election campaign but they were mostly typed, dictated, with just a few scribbled notes from him in the margins.’ He looked appreciatively at the piece of paper he was holding. ‘You’re gonna want to have this framed. This’ll be in pride of place on your study wall when you’re an old lady.’

  Sylvia smacked the table with the flat of her hand. Everyone jumped.

  ‘Stop waffling, Dad, and let her read the damn thing! We’re all dying to know what it says and all you can do is talk!’

  Jeb looked abashed, as he always did when Sylvia told him off.

  ‘Sorry, Sylvie, you’re quite right . . . Stella?’ He handed the note out to her.

  She shook her head. ‘No, you read it out loud, Jeb. I’m not the only one here dying to know what it says.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Diana sighed. ‘For heaven’s sake, get on with it, Jeb.’

  Jeb needed no further encouragement. ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘OK . . . there’s a kinda formal stamp here at the top that says: “From the desk of the President” – I guess that means he actually wrote this in the Oval Office itself – and then his handwriting begins underneath that. He uses a fountain pen, by the way. Well, here we go, folks . . .’

  Dear Miss Arnold,

  Firstly, I should say that my brother Robert and I had high hopes of you when we asked you to travel to Florida last month to help with investigations into the recent terrible events in that state.

  I have to tell you that you have exceeded our expectations beyond measure.

  I have before me on my desk a summary of your contribution to the case, prepared at my personal request by the senior FBI case officer, and fully endorsed by the agency’s Director. It makes for remarkable reading and I have personally marked both these documents for immediate release to you and/or your family the moment national security considerations allow. This may be some time hence but a Presidential order is binding and will be executed in the fullness of time, I assure you.

  At the time of writing, the suspect in this case designated by the FBI as Most Wanted is still at large but the fact that he was so presciently identified by you – or at least, that his profile, age, job description, and likely escape route were all accurately forecast by you based on the slenderest of facts – is extraordinary. I offer you my warmest congratulations and deepest thanks on behalf of the people of the United States of America.

  I now wish to make two proposals.

  Firstly, that alongside your forthcoming studies at Smith, you make yourself available, entirely at your convenience, as an unofficial (but appropriately remunerated) consultant to the FBI in any future cases where your considerable gifts may be of assistance.

  Secondly, that you and any members of your close family who may presently be visiting with you in the United States join myself and Mrs Kennedy, and the Attorney General and his wife, here at the White House for dinner later this month. I hope the evening of October 14 is convenient.

  My office will be in touch in due course to confirm you
r acceptance.

  With my warmest personal wishes, and thanks,

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy

  43

  Lee Foster was far from the confident FBI agent who’d just told his girlfriend he was close to cracking the case.

  The truth of the matter was he was baffled, frustrated, and increasingly at a loss over what to do next.

  Logic dictated that John Woods had to be somewhere here in Key West.

  The island was dominated by the huge Naval Air Station on neighbouring Boca Cheeca Key, four miles east of downtown Key West. Warplanes busily took off and landed every few minutes, like suspicious wasps patrolling their nest. The town that lay just to the west was relatively small by comparison – a colourful, motley, cosy grid of a few streets of mostly wood-framed buildings that straggled down to Southernmost Point – not only the most southerly place in Florida, but in the entire United States. Next stop Cuba, which squatted just below the horizon on the other side of the Tropic of Cancer. Any of the fighter jets that continually roared into the air from Key West’s military runway could, if their pilots chose, be streaking over Fidel Castro’s communist stronghold in minutes. The wooden sign marking Southernmost Point informed tourists that Cuba was exactly ninety miles away.

  Lee stared gloomily out of the window of the boarding house he’d commandeered for himself and his men. He was looking down along Duval Street and its motley collection of bars, restaurants and shops. It was quiet at this time of the morning but by lunchtime the place would be thronged with tourists, hustlers, prostitutes and drifters. As he watched, a squad of leather-clad bikers cruised slowly down the sun-drenched avenue, heads wrapped in red and blue bandanas, the backs of their jackets studded with the insignia Hell’s Angels – Tallahassee Chapter. Duval had a seedy charm all its own, any time of day or night, an atmosphere now enhanced by the wanted posters Lee’s team had nailed to every telephone pole, tree and any available flat surface from here at the northern end of Duval, all the way down to Southernmost Point.

  The face of John Henry Woods stared blankly out at passers-by, beneath two words, printed in red letters: MOST WANTED.

  Under the photo was the terse caption: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? JOHN HENRY WOODS, BELIEVED TO BE IN KEY WEST. $10,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO ARREST.

  Apart from a couple of chancers and attention-seekers, there had been no response. Extra officers had been drafted in from the upper Keys and as far as southern Florida. They had knocked on just about every door in Key West, trawled every bar, visited every hotel and bed-and-breakfast, and examined every boat docked in the harbour.

  Lee had personally taken part in the shake-down and his hopes had been briefly raised when the owner of one of the larger conch houses being run as a small hotel had said a youngish man had checked in several evenings earlier and had yet to leave his room, asking for all his meals to be left on a tray outside his bedroom door. The owner had just taken the man his lunch and called through the door to tell him it was there. He had heard a muffled response so the guy was definitely inside. He hadn’t really looked at him that closely the evening he arrived, but he was certainly about the same age as Woods, early thirties.

  Lee had instantly summoned back-up and a few minutes later had men stationed on all sides of the wooden veranda that, in typical conch house style, ran around the entire building. Others stood guard outside the white-painted picket fence that surrounded the property which, with all its pink louvred shutters demi-closed against the fierce afternoon sun, appeared to be taking a siesta.

  ‘Jeez,’ one of the cops had muttered to the man nearest to him. ‘Looks like we’re gonna bust the Gingerbread Man’s house.’

  Minutes later Lee was crashing into the mysterious guest’s room, gun drawn and three burly armed officers at his back.

  It turned out the recluse was a thriller writer, behind deadline with his next novel and determined to finish it free from any distractions or interruptions from the young family he had temporarily deserted back in Tampa. Once he recovered from the shock of having his sanctuary stormed by gun-toting state and federal law-enforcers, he’d been almost grateful for the incursion, telling them enthusiastically he could ‘really use this’ in a subsequent chapter.

  The plain fact was that Woods was nowhere to be found and not a soul had seen him anywhere in Key West. The previous evening, Lee and his men had mingled with the crowds that by tradition gathered every day to watch the sunset from Mallory Pier. All the officers carried Woods’s photograph, but the picture merely provoked shrugs and shakes of the head.

  Lee’s conviction that Woods was somewhere close had been bolstered by the discovery of the tattered remnants of the stolen yacht’s missing dinghy. A sharp-eyed refuse truck driver had spotted it poking out of the dumpster where Woods had jettisoned it two days earlier. The man had read in the Lower Keys Shopper that morning that the ‘Keys Killer’ had probably rowed ashore in a now-missing inflatable. He made a shrewd guess at what the rubber ribbons dangling from the dumpster were, and called the police.

  ‘He has to be here,’ Lee muttered aloud to himself for the second time that morning.

  But for the life of him he couldn’t think of a new way to flush out his quarry. Also, he had no way of knowing if Woods was in deep cover or hiding in plain sight, camouflaged in some ingenious way against Key West’s multi-coloured, kaleidoscopic backdrop.

  Whichever it was, he decided, at some point his man would have to break cover; that was inevitable.

  The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was – when?

  44

  Down here they’d been calling Key West ‘the Gulf of Illinois’ since 1961, when the mid-west state became the first in America to repeal incredibly repressive laws outlawing homosexuality.

  In fact, the bar he’d been working in since the evening after he rowed ashore had recently and proudly re-named itself ‘The Springfield Tavern’ in honour of the Illinois state capital.

  Local police tolerated what they called ‘twinkie bars’ well enough. For some reason Key West had become a refuge for men who preferred each other’s company, along with parts of New York and San Francisco.

  What was more, down here the so-called pink dollar talked. The authorities increasingly turned a blind eye to the types of bars and their attendant micro-communities that in other parts of the Deep South would have sparked vicious mob attacks, violent arrests and aggressive prosecutions.

  He’d known all that, of course. It was why he’d chosen this identity, and it had served him well thus far. Very well indeed.

  The barman in the Hog’s Breath had grinned at him when he’d emerged from the restroom, propped himself elegantly on a high stool the other side of the counter and asked for a glass of Chardonnay.

  ‘Sure, man, comin’ right up. I’m thinking you’re new in town.’

  ‘Yes, I am, as it happens . . . how can you tell?’

  The other man laughed as he scrutinised the blond customer’s ultra-fashionable, flamboyant clothes and yellow-tinted spectacles. He gave a friendly nod as he pushed the drink across the polished bar top.

  ‘Cos you’re in here dressed like that, is why. Plus what you’re drinking there. There’s a coupla bars a little further down the street, towards Mallory, that I reckon you’d probably prefer. More your style, if you follow me.’

  He had affected haughtiness.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. More my style? What are you sayin’, that I’m a friggin’—’

  The barman had laughed, not unkindly.

  ‘Hey, it’s cool, man. You’re in Key West, remember? All I’m sayin’ is you might feel a little more comfortable somewhere like the Springfield Tavern, more at home, and all. I’m just tryin’ to be helpful, OK?’

  ‘Well, if it’s like that . . . OK. Sure. Thank you. Anyway, what do I owe you?’

  ‘Zip. First drink before nine is on the house. Welcome to Paradise, my friend.’

  The Springfield Tavern had turned out to be p
retty well damned perfect for what he needed. To begin with, they were looking for an extra bartender as the coming season approached and he’d fluked straight into the job. It helped that in between coming back from Korea and starting work as a mechanic he’d taken a part-timer at the Blue Flamingo in Key Largo for a few weeks. He at least knew how to mix a drink.

  What’s more, the job came with a small but decent room upstairs.

  It was an ideal set-up.

  The bar’s owner, Tom, was from Arkansas. He’d come down here in the late ’50s when his necessarily secret boyfriend – Little Rock had zero tolerance of men like them – had told him that he’d heard they could live and breathe a lot easier on the last fragment of the United States before you got to the tropics.

  So they’d sold their respective apartments and bought this place together – it was whimsically and incongruously called The Coral Heifer back then – before said boyfriend had fallen head over heels in love with a visiting lawyer who was passing through the Keys on his 60-foot yacht, and had sailed off to live with him back home in the Bahamas.

  Tom had taken this abandonment with good grace and bought out his partner’s share in the business. He now ran one of the best and most profitable taverns in the Key.

  Woods had worked out his cover story while he chugged down to Key West in the stolen boat. He told his new boss he was on the run from the authorities in Texas. He said he had been caught in a classic police sting operation – an undercover cop had come on to him in a Dallas hotel bar and when he’d responded to the man’s clumsy and, with hindsight, pretty obviously fake advances he’d found himself under arrest and down at city police headquarters being charged, outrageously, with soliciting. It was a brazen set-up.

  Luckily he’d made bail and immediately skipped town. He’d heard how things were down in Key West and had driven directly here from Dallas, completing the journey in two straight days’ driving, sleeping in his car overnight.

  Tom had offered him a parking space out back but, thinking on his feet, Woods told him he had no further use for the car and had sold it for cash at a car lot up where Route 1 connected with the Key. He added that for the time being he was going under a false name, Dennis Clancey, and he’d appreciate it if his new boss didn’t mention he’d just arrived to any police who might come snooping around, not that he thought they would, but you never knew.

 

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