Tom, appalled at the persecution and perfidy from which this pleasant young man had been forced to flee, promised complete discretion.
‘I’ll have a quiet word with the other guys, too, er . . . Dennis. Trust me, no one here’s gonna give you away to those bastards.’
He had smiled gratefully and gone upstairs to his room to unpack.
He hid the gun and what was left of the chloroform under the spare blanket on top of the wardrobe.
He wouldn’t be needing them again for a while.
So he thought.
45
Jeb’s Lincoln Continental had gone through the little-known security checkpoint at the back of the White House and was now following two dark-suited Secret Service men who jogged easily in front of the car at a steady 5 mph.
‘Bet those guys wish we weren’t having this Indian Summer,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘They’ll be sweating through their coats by the time we pull up at the side-door.’
Jeb had visited the White House several times before and he knew the routine. On the drive down from Northampton he’d regaled Dorothy, Stella and Diana with stories about the celebrations there in the heady days after Kennedy had won the presidency two years earlier.
‘It was all still pretty rumbustious by the time Jack and Bobby asked me down to raise a glass,’ he told them, ‘and that was three days after Jack and Jackie and the kids moved in. But apparently their first day was wild. Bobby said he slid all the way down the bannisters in the main part of the house and Ethel said she’d have done the same if she’d been wearing pants.
‘The kids – mostly Bobby and Ethel’s, obviously – ran riot through the rooms and everyone went for a swim in the pool in the basement. Then they had a bowling competition in the President’s private alley.’
‘Who won?’ Stella had asked him.
‘Are you kidding?’ he’d laughed. ‘Ethel’s team. Ethel Kennedy is the most competitive female in America. I swear if she’d been born fifty years later she’d be the first woman president of the United States. You’ve met her, Stella. Every one of that Ethel’s switches and buttons is permanently set to ON.’
‘Will she be there at dinner tonight?’ Diana asked. ‘I’d love to meet her. I know everyone’s obsessed with Jackie but it’s Ethel I’m fascinated by.’
‘Sure she will. It’ll be the four of us, plus the President, Jackie, Bobby and Ethel.’ Jeb had turned around to grin at mother and daughter and the car swayed alarmingly on the turnpike.
‘Jeb!’ shrieked Dorothy. ‘Keep your eyes on the road!’
‘Sorry, honey.’ He steered the Lincoln back on to the line. ‘All I was about to say was . . . well, Stella, the Kennedy boys are genuinely grateful to you. One, you got C. Farris Bryant off their backs – I hear the talks with Disney are on again – and two, everyone agrees it’s only a matter of time before golden boy down in Key West gets the cuffs on whatshisname . . . Woodward . . . no, Woods, right? Anyway, that won’t really matter either way to the snowbirds. All they care about is that the bastard’s on the run and the Keys are safe again for their wives and daughters. Crisis over. Mostly down to you, my dear. Light me a cigarette, would you, Dottie?’
A few moments later Jeb returned to his theme.
‘And Jack’s serious about making you a hired gun for the Feds. He’d never have suggested it without running it past old J. Edgar himself. Hoover may be a son of a bitch but he’s a son of a bitch who likes results. And trust me, he’ll find a way to take credit for your work down in the Keys. He’ll probably say it was all his idea in the first place and he had to force it past the President and Attorney General.’ Jeb gave a short laugh. ‘You have no idea how much that man hates Jack and Bobby.’
Stella, looking out of her window at the outlying suburbs of Washington that were now beginning to appear, shrugged. ‘I couldn’t care less if this Hoover person wants to claim credit for anything I might have done. He sounds a repulsive man, from everything I’ve heard about him from Lee. He says he’s a perfect bully, and obsessed with power. Lee told me that most of the FBI loathe him and politicians are terrified of him because he knows all their secrets.’
Dorothy had turned around, grinning. ‘Jack’s rightly wary of him but Bobby’s not remotely afraid of the guy,’ she said, ‘still less his wife. Last year Ethel took her kids on the official tour of FBI headquarters and outside of the firing range she said there was a suggestions box, with a big sign above it saying: “Tell us how to make the FBI a better place.” Ethel took out her red pen – everyone knows she always uses a red pen – and wrote: “Get yourselves a new Director.” Good for Ethel!’
‘Hmm . . . up to a point,’ replied her husband. ‘Jack’s right to tread warily. You don’t want to make an enemy of that man, honey.’
‘Oh Jeb, don’t be so stuffy.’
Half an hour later the Lincoln was approaching its destination and the women insisted Jeb pull over so they could refresh their make-up.
‘Are you nervous, Mummy?’ Stella asked, as she passed Diana her powder compact and accepted a lipstick in return. ‘I certainly am, and I’ve met them before, and on my own, too.’
‘A little, I suppose,’ her mother admitted, powdering her nose. ‘Who wouldn’t be? But from everything you told me about that day on the beach in Martha’s Vineyard, I think it’ll be fine after the first few minutes. Anyway, Jeb and Dorothy here know them pretty well, don’t you?’
‘Yup, and your mother’s right, Stella,’ Jeb replied, lighting a fresh cigarette and opening his window. ‘I’ve seen folks who looked like they were gonna have kittens just before meeting the Kennedys, and a few minutes later it’s like they’re talking with the folks back home.’
He turned and gave Diana an unmistakable look of warning. ‘But a word to the wise, Diana. And I’m being serious now, OK? Jack’s a great guy but he’s a player. He can’t help it. You’re a beautiful woman of around his own age and you’re unattached, not that that makes much difference to Jack.’ He glanced slyly at his wife. ‘Remember when he suggested that you and he—’
Dorothy clamped her palm over her husband’s mouth. ‘Shhh, Jeb. That can keep for another time.’
She turned to Diana. ‘But he’s right, dear. If Jack Kennedy can make a pass at an old stick insect like me—’ she ignored the loud protests that erupted all around her – ‘he’ll be enraptured when he sets eyes on you. So stay with the pack and don’t accept any offers for a personal presidential tour round the Oval Office.’
Diana tried to suppress a smile as she snapped the compact shut.
‘Don’t worry, everyone,’ she said drily. ‘I can take care of myself, believe it or not. So . . . are we all ready?’
The Lincoln moved smoothly away from the kerb and towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
46
Lee reluctantly placed the long-distance call on the morning of his tenth day in Key West. He couldn’t think of anything else to do, other than just waiting around like this.
Former FBI department head Ted Bradley picked up the kitchen extension on the seventh ring. He’d just come inside from his daily early morning swim in the garden pool of his house in Scottsdale, Arizona. He and his wife had moved there from Washington the year after his early retirement in 1959. Although barely in his sixties, Bradley had fallen prey to the arthritis which had plagued his own father three decades earlier, and his doctor had recommended he quit Washington – alternately damp or freezing in winter, hot and humid in summer – for the bone-dry heat in the deserts of America’s south-west.
It seemed to have made a difference, as Bradley’s wife had told him only the evening before. ‘You’re moving more easily than you were even two years before you retired, Ted,’ she said over supper. ‘At the very least it’s not getting any worse.’
He grunted. His wife’s optimism notwithstanding, it was nevertheless an undeniably gnarled and swollen hand that now reached for the receiver.
‘Bradley.’
&nb
sp; ‘Ted, it’s Lee. How the heck are you?’
His old boss gave a dry chuckle. ‘I’m just fine, Lee. Been waitin’ for you to call. Still not got the cuffs on him, huh?’
‘Nope. He’s close by, Ted, I can feel it. I just can’t seem to cut a break down here. Thought if I spoke with you, you might see something I’m missing.’
The older man nodded. ‘Sure. Just let me have some coffee and eat those flapjacks I can see Helen starting to mix up, and then we’ll talk. Call me back in an hour – say, eight-thirty?’
‘That I will surely do. Thanks, Ted. Say hi to Helen for me.’
Bradley had been Lee’s chief mentor and cheerleader at the FBI. Early on he’d spotted the young man’s instinctive feel for how a case might be cracked, when the Mayor of Cincinnati’s young son was abducted and a series of ransom notes received.
Local Feds suspected the kidnapping was the work of the city’s mafia. The mayor had declared war on them in his election campaign the year before and the ransom messages, as well as demanding a huge sum in cash, appeared to contain coded warnings to the frantic father to back off in his crusade against organised crime.
But Lee was doubtful. The ransom notes somehow smelled wrong to him with their odd mix of the pecuniary and the political. He struck off on his own, delving into the mayor’s chequered marital history. Seven years earlier he’d divorced his drunken, faithless first wife after her third affair; the missing child was the issue of his second, happier marriage.
Lee followed a hunch and tracked the first wife to a run-down apartment on the city’s east side. He had her movements watched and within twenty-four hours she had unwittingly led detectives to an even seedier apartment nearby where her current boyfriend, a small-time hood, was holding the missing boy. The ransom notes’ hints of mafia involvement had been a ruse to throw investigators off the scent.
Bradley had gone out on a limb to support his protégé’s intuition so the successful outcome to such a high-profile case reflected well on both men. They formed a deepening friendship based on mutual trust and respect. Even when they were working on cases in different parts of the country, it wasn’t unusual for one to call the other for advice.
Lee had been downcast two years earlier when his mentor told him he was planning on retiring early. ‘Who’ll I call for advice now?’ he grumbled over farewell drinks in a Washington bar.
‘Me, of course,’ the older man answered, surprised. ‘For Chrisakes, Lee, I’m not handing my brain in along with my badge.’
When he called Bradley back, Lee spoke more or less uninterrupted for almost ten minutes before pausing for breath, closing his long monologue with: ‘So that’s about the size of it, Ted. There’s a chance, of course, that he’s slipped away, but like I said I don’t believe that for one second. I’m looking down Duval from my office window now and every bone in my body is telling me he’s out there, maybe not two hundred yards from where I’m standing right this moment.’
‘Yeah . . . reminds me of the Clevedon case, remember that one?’ his old boss replied thoughtfully. ‘Clevedon spent more’n a month pumping gas on a forecourt not one hundred yards from my headquarters. I felt just like you do now. You know, that not only was the murdering bastard lyin’ low, he was within smelling distance of me too. Damnedest feeling I ever had.
‘Your man Woods has gone to ground all right, that’s obvious,’ he continued, ‘and let’s assume that the old Foster instinct is playing you true and he’s right there in Key West. So we need to kinda wander over the course here a little; establish some fundamentals. To be honest with you, Lee, I’ve been doing some thinking about the case anyway, based on what I’ve read in the papers and seen on Most Wanted. Like I said, I’ve been expecting your call. Just hold the line a second now – I’m gonna get my briar. Helps the old mental juices flow.’
After a moment Lee heard the rattling of drawers followed by the unmistakable strike and flare of a match. Then Bradley was back, coughing and clearing his throat. ‘You still there, Lee?’ he asked between hacks. ‘Sorry about this racket. First pipe of the day. Always does this to me. Hang on . . .’
After more hawking and spluttering, he was able to continue.
‘OK, so . . . let’s see now . . . first off, Woods’s night-run down there to Key West. I’m thinking it was pretty much opportunistic and unplanned. You say there’s no evidence he’d been there in recent months so I very much doubt he’d established some sort of redoubt or hideaway there, stocked with provisions, that sorta thing. Anyway, he wasn’t expecting the cops to get anywhere near him so early on in his beautiful new career, was he? The arrogance of the psychopath, huh? One of the weaknesses they all have in common, thank the Lord . . . anyway, he had to get out of Key Largo fast as soon as he realised you and this Arnold girl were breathing down his neck. I’d like to meet her, by the way, Lee.
‘Second, he’s not Superman. He needs to eat, drink, sleep, go to the bathroom. That means he has to be interacting with others. Getting their unwitting co-operation – unwitting, because who’d help an on-the-run homicidal maniac like Woods? No one in their right mind. So it’s reasonable to infer they don’t know who he really is. That being the case, we come to the all-important point three.’
‘Oh, Christ. I know exactly what you’re gonna say next, Ted.’
His old boss laughed. ‘Of course you do. We used to call it the Sherlock mantra, didn’t we? Go on, refresh my memory. How does it go?’
‘As if you need reminding. OK . . . “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”’
‘Well spoken, Agent Foster. Conan Doyle would be flattered by your power of recall. So what’s our little nugget of truth here?’
Lee sighed. ‘Christ, it’s so goddamned obvious now I’m speaking with you . . .’ He sighed again. ‘He’s changed his appearance, hasn’t he? He’s in serious disguise, right? He’s moving around right under everyone’s nose. Why the hell didn’t I—’
Bradley cut in quickly. ‘Don’t go beating yourself up. What else does Holmes says to Watson in that same story? “Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.” Everyone needs a sounding board from time to time to help them focus. And as far as I remember, you’ve never dealt with a disguise case before, have you? They’re much more unusual than people like to think and as M.O. they tend not to jump out of the frame at you. I’ve only seen one and it took me a helluva long time to figure out what was going on.’
Lee had been profuse in his thanks but Bradley brushed them aside.
‘You’d have got there yourself in the end. You know what to do now. Good luck, Lee. I don’t think you’ll be needing to call me again on this.’
Ten minutes later two of his best officers were standing before him scribbling down a string of orders.
‘Get hold of a really good police artist. There’ll be one in Miami – chopper him down here today. Have sketches done and wire them to the papers. If we work fast we can get them in tomorrow’s editions, and on TV news tonight too. I’ll call WCBA in a minute.’
‘Sir?’ one of the men interrupted. ‘Why don’t you go on the local TV station yourself with the drawings? Have more impact that way.’ He coughed to cover his mild embarrassment. ‘I, er, heard one of the girls in the Marshal’s Office here say you’d look good on TV. I’m just sayin’, sir.’
Lee laughed. ‘I’ll think about it. Now, about these sketches. If I’m not around when the artist gets here, tell him to base them on Woods’s photograph, but to make several versions. He’ll have dyed his hair, either lighter or darker. He may well have grown a moustache or beard – it won’t be much of one, he’s only been down here a few days, but even a light growth would help change the shape and nature of his face. I’d bet a ten-spot he’s wearing glasses of some kind – maybe those fashionable coloured lenses to hide his eye pigment.
‘We need to put some drawings out there based on all his options – blond, dark, hirsu
te, clean-shaven, bespectacled – every possible permutation. One of them will be him as he is now and we’ll start getting calls. That means I’ll want everyone in later, and I mean everyone – we have to be ready to send out a series of snatch squads to check out every possible sighting as soon as they’re reported to us. I’m not having the bastard doing another duck-dive. Not this time.’
The second man opposite him nodded and lit a cigarette. ‘We’ll get right on it. But pardon me, sir, no disrespect, why didn’t we do this earlier?’
Now that’s a damned good question, Lee thought to himself, and it deserves an answer. Because I’ve been eyeballing this case up close since the day I landed in Florida and I’m damned tired. Because I was tired even before I got here, straight from nailing that last one in California. Because I didn’t have the guts to tell the Director I needed some furlough first; just a few days would have been enough. Because Stella’s not here. Wise, clever, intuitive Stella. How many reasons do you want?
But all he said was: ‘Because I didn’t think of it until now. Which is what’s known as a fuck-up, sergeant. My fuck-up and no one else’s. Let’s just hope we’re not too late.’
‘No one thought of it, sir. Don’t beat yourself up.’
That’s the second time someone’s said that to me this morning, Lee thought gloomily.
‘I already have,’ he replied succinctly. ‘Right, let’s get those sketches taken care of and assuming they’re ready this afternoon and I get a six o’clock slot on local TV tonight, I want everyone in here by four at the latest for a full briefing. We should get some responses after the telecast but if not, I’ll want everyone back in by five in the morning ready for the papers. Also, I want as many copies of all Woods’s potential new looks run off so we can post them in every bar and on every telegraph pole in Key West first thing tomorrow.
The Way You Look Tonight Page 18