Night Watch

by David C. Taylor

  He spotted Kay near the fireplace talking to a tall, square-jawed, silver-haired man he recognized as Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s White House chief of staff. Kay saw him at the same time, raised her eyebrows in recognition of his presence and with a small shake of her head, signaled that he was not to interrupt. He turned away and scanned the crowd for a familiar face, and there were some, but they were only familiar from the newspapers and magazines: Sam Rayburn, the speaker of the house, Walter Lippmann, the political writer and journalist, General Omar Bradley, Washington Redskins quarterback Eddie Le Baron, New York Governor Averell Harriman, Washington Senators third baseman Eddie Yost, and a couple of other faces he could not put names to.

  For a while he circulated through the room. The talk was about the coming elections or the situation in Europe, Hungary on the edge of rebellion, the hope for a relaxing of tension now that Krushchev had consolidated power in Russia and had denounced Stalin’s purges. After a while, he got another martini and went out onto the porch that overlooked the garden.

  There was a grouping of high-backed rattan chairs on the porch. They reminded Cassidy of the black-and-white movies he watched as a boy of British colonials in linen suits sitting around in chairs like these on their plantation verandas, drinking scotch and soda and waiting for the natives to attack out of the jungle. He took refuge in one of them.

  He was halfway through the martini when someone came out and sat in another of the rattan chairs. The man leaned forward to put an iced bowl of caviar and a tall drink on the low glass-topped table that separated his chair from Cassidy’s. Cassidy recognized Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA. He looked at Cassidy through round, wire-rimmed glasses. Cassidy returned the inspection. Dulles was a handsome, stocky man about six feet tall and in his early sixties. He had a big square head and heavy chin. His clipped mustache did not extend past the corners of his mouth. He wore a conservative gray suit, a white shirt, and a green-and-yellow-striped tie. He studied Cassidy with the bland regard of a man who is sure of his high place in the world and then dipped two fingers into the bowl and carried a gob of caviar to his mouth.

  Cassidy disliked him on sight.

  There was something in Cassidy’s blood, passed from his Russian father, that recoiled from the lordling, the man on the horse with the whip and the power. Allen Dulles was such a man. He was the head of the CIA. His brother, John Foster Dulles, was the secretary of state, as their uncle and their grandfather had been. It was said, Aunt Kay had told him, that the brothers formed their own foreign policy and then told Eisenhower only what they wanted him to know so that he saw the world through their eyes. Their grandfather, John Foster, had been the first US secretary of state to engineer the overthrow of the government of a sovereign nation. The brothers followed the path he cut.

  Dulles raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’ He took a sip. ‘Ahh, that’s good. Hello, I’m Allen Dulles. I don’t think we’ve met.’ He had a gift of instant affability. ‘Do you mind if I join you out here? I can stand about fifteen minutes of that chatter, and then I want to scream.’ He leaned over to offer his right hand.

  Cassidy shook his hand. ‘Michael Cassidy.’

  ‘Sure. Kay’s nephew. You’re the New York policeman, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Good for you. The world would be a better place if more men with your background would do what you’re doing. It can be unpleasant work, but we leave too much of it to unpleasant people.’ He spoke with the winning, open sincerity of a practiced liar. ‘Have some caviar. It’s Iranian beluga. The Shah sends it to Kay and I steal as much as I can when I know it’s here.’ He took a pipe from his jacket pocket, stuffed it with tobacco, and lit it with a kitchen match struck on the bottom of the table. He flicked the burned match out into the garden. Dulles dipped his fingers back into the caviar and ate another scoop. ‘What are you in DC for, Michael? Business or pleasure?’

  ‘I came to see my brother.’

  ‘Brian, isn’t it? He’s a journalist of some kind. Wait … I know. He’s with one of the television networks.’

  ‘Yes. ABC.’

  ‘What’s he working on?’ Dulles had the honed curiosity of a long-time spy. Secrets were his currency and a source of his power.

  ‘He didn’t say.’ Cassidy’s instinct was to tell this man nothing.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Out doing what he does.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’ Dulles took a pull on his drink. ‘How long have you been a cop? Do you mind my asking?’

  ‘I joined in 1947.’

  ‘After college?’

  ‘Six months at Columbia. I dropped out.’

  ‘College doesn’t really matter.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘You learned more on the street than any classroom could have taught you. Do you like being a cop?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Why?’

  There was something about the scrutiny and the questions that chafed Cassidy, like something scratching along the outside of the house looking for a way in.

  ‘An early fixation on Bulldog Drummond and Sam Spade, I guess.’

  ‘It was a serious question.’

  ‘I don’t have a better answer.’

  ‘We’re looking for good men with a variety of experiences that would be useful in our work.’

  ‘The CIA? No, thank you. I like the simplicity of my job. The crimes are usually clear, and the bad guys are usually identifiable.’

  ‘I can offer you bigger bad guys. We’re at war to preserve our way of life. Unless we hold the line, the Communists will destroy everything we stand for. There is nothing simpler than that.’ He was a man armored against doubt.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll do fine without me.’

  A look of annoyance crossed Dulles’s face. ‘You don’t like me, do you?’ It was a ploy, an accusation that demanded a courteous denial, and then, by some peculiar chemistry of polite society, Dulles would have gained the moral high ground.

  ‘No, not much,’ Cassidy said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t like people who tip the table so everything slides down to their end.’

  Dulles looked at him with cold eyes. He was used to greater deference. He tapped his pipe out to gain a moment.

  High heels clicked on the porch flagstones, and Kay Lockridge walked past them to lean on the porch rail. She was a tall, slim, regal woman in her sixties. Her hair was dramatically white. She and Cassidy’s mother had a similar beauty that had passed on in a different form to his sister, Leah. She wore her late husband’s thin gold watch on a leather band on her left wrist, a necklace of flat gold links and matching earrings, and a dark green Chanel suit. She took in Dulles looming over Cassidy.

  ‘Hmmm, I get a strong whiff of burning testosterone. Have you two been at each other?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Dulles said. ‘We’ve been having a very interesting discussion.’

  ‘That’s what I love about spies,’ Kay said. ‘They lie instinctively and believably. The good ones do, anyway,’ Kay said cheerfully. ‘Allen, you’re staying for dinner, aren’t you? I learned something on the Hill this afternoon I’d like to discuss with you.’

  ‘I can’t tonight, Kay. Something’s come up. Tomorrow for lunch?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ She accepted his kiss on the cheek, and then turned as Cassidy rose to kiss her. She smelled faintly of the same perfume his mother used to wear. ‘Have you heard from Brian,’ she asked.

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘Kay, I have to go,’ Dulles said.

  ‘I’ll walk you out.’ She put an affectionate hand on his arm. Allen Dulles was married, but he had a reputation as an extracurricular cocksman, and in Cassidy’s family it was understood that he and Kay Lockridge had a longstanding, on-again-off-again affair.

  Dulles kissed her on the cheek at the front door, and patted her on the hip. ‘I’ll call you in the morning.’
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br />   She turned back into the house as he walked down the stone path to the waiting Cadillac.

  Cassidy was smoking a cigarette when she came back out to the porch.

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’ Kay asked.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Were you rude to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Not really. Sometimes you meet someone who’s like fingernails on a blackboard to you.’

  ‘You don’t want him as an enemy, Michael.’

  ‘He’s got the whole world to run. He’s much too busy to worry about a lowly New York cop.’

  As the Cadillac rolled toward the street Allen Dulles leaned forward from the back seat to give the driver an address in McLean and then slid the dividing window shut for privacy. He took the telephone receiver out of the polished wooden box built into his armrest and dialed a number. Spencer Shaw answered the phone on the third ring. Dulles did not bother to identify himself. The people he called were expected to know his voice. ‘Is he responding?’

  ‘We’re in the process.’

  ‘What has he told you?’

  ‘Very little so far. We’re trying different doses.’ The safe house he was in was similar to the one in the Village in New York. It was single-family house in a seedier part of town where neighbors would pay little attention to comings and goings. Shaw was in a room on the second floor. He could see Brian Cassidy in the next room through the one-way viewing window. Brian sat in a wooden chair in the center of the room. His arms were strapped to the chair’s arms, a new precaution since the unfortunate events in the Village safe house. His head lolled back, and his eyes were closed. As Shaw watched, Magda Brandt swabbed his arm with alcohol-soaked cotton and then gave him an injection. Karl Brandt smoked a cigarette in a short black holder as he leaned against the windowsill and watched.

  ‘His brother is here,’ Dulles said into the phone.

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘That would be one of the lines of questioning. What do they know? How did they penetrate the operation? What’s the cop’s part in it?’

  ‘We’ll ask.’

  ‘I want both these men neutralized.’

  ‘Neutralized,’ Shaw said. ‘Permanently?’

  A look of irritation crossed Dulles’s face. ‘I don’t believe there’s any need for that at the moment. I want less noise, not more.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  Kay took Michael to dinner at Rive Gauche, a small French restaurant in Georgetown. The owner guided them to a corner booth, and the waiter brought their drinks, took their dinner orders and went away.

  ‘What did Brian talk to you about yesterday before he went out?’ Cassidy asked.

  ‘Not much. He said he was working on something to do with the influence of money on the legislative process. It’s a story that every generation of newsman discovers.’ Kay leaned toward Cassidy so he could light her cigarette. ‘Money and politics have always gone together. Sometimes the money influence is heavy, and sometimes it’s just grease for the wheels. I remember Frank telling me that if you can’t take a man’s money, eat his food and drink his liquor, and then vote against his interests, you have no business being in politics.’

  ‘Can many people do that?’

  ‘No. Not many.’

  Dinner arrived, and they ate in silence for a while.

  ‘Michael,’ Kay said, ‘don’t worry about Brian. He’s a big boy, and he’s a well-respected journalist. He’s busy chasing a story. He’ll be home when we get there.’

  But he wasn’t home when they got there. He had not called, and he wasn’t there the next morning.

  SIXTEEN

  The dream was the same: running from something he could not see. Corridors branched, and when he turned a corner, the thing would be in front of him. If he turned back, it was there waiting for him. Darkness at the end. Something waiting there to kill him. Cassidy awoke. He was naked on the floor in the corner of a room with his back pressed hard against the join of walls. What room? Where was he? His .38 was in his hand pointed at the door. The hammer was back, and his finger was on the trigger, about three pounds of pull away from killing whoever came through the door. Dawn light came through the window. He could see the outline of a bed, and a desk against the wall opposite. He was in Brian’s room.

  No one came through the door. The house slept.

  Cassidy eased the hammer back down and put the gun on the bed. He went into the bathroom and splashed it on his face trying to drive away the remnants of the dream that still scraped his brain. Splinters of the nightmare were with him, but he could not recapture the details. He turned on the shower and stepped in. The cold water was a shock, and the dread of the dream died to a prick of unease. He knew there was a man out there threatening to kill him: the guy on the subway platform, the one with the rifle. Who was he? Maybe next time the dream would show him a face.

  He wrapped a towel around his waist and went back into the bedroom and turned on the lights. The pad was still centered in the middle of the desk. The top page was blank. He picked up the pad and tilted it toward the light. Brian had written on the top page and had then torn it off, but the pressure of the pen had left indentations on the page below. Cassidy found a pencil and swept the lead lightly back and forth across the paper until the ghosts of the writing from the missing page appeared. It was a phone number.

  Cassidy pulled the phone over and dialed. It rang six times at the other end and was answered with a click. The taped voice of an answering machine announced that he had gotten the congressional office of Representative Martin Williams of Utah, the offices were closed, and normal office hours began at nine o’clock.

  Williams was the congressman Brian had interviewed for returning a campaign contribution.

  At nine o’clock Cassidy was in a phone booth at an intersection of two echoing corridors in the Congressional Office Building listening to the phone ring. The voice that answered grated with impatience. ‘DCPD. Logan speaking.’

  ‘Is Sam Watkins on duty?’

  ‘Yeah, I just saw him come in. Who wants him?’

  ‘Michael Cassidy.’

  ‘Hold.’ The receiver clunked on a desk and the man shouted Watkins’s name.

  Moments late the receiver was picked up.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sam, it’s Mike Cassidy.’

  ‘Hey, Mike. What’s up? You in town?’

  ‘Yes. I need some help, Sam.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Do you remember my brother, Brian?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘He was down here working on an assignment, and he went missing the day before yesterday. He was due to meet our aunt for dinner. He didn’t make it. No one’s heard from him or seen him since.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you know, a guy’s down here on his own, out of his regular orbit, so to speak. Maybe he meets someone in a bar. Maybe he finds some place else to sleep. It happens. Besides, you know how it works – they want a guy to be missing forty-eight hours minimum before they start throwing manpower at it.’

  ‘Do you have time to call around, hospitals, other squads?’

  Watkins hesitated. ‘Okay. Does he still look pretty much the same? A bit over six, a couple of hundred pounds, sandy hair. Just in case he got mugged or something, lost his ID.’

  ‘Yes. A scar at the corner of his right eye about an inch long. And he’s had his appendix out.’

  ‘Where can I reach you?’

  ‘I’m up on the Hill to see someone. I’ll call you.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Thanks, Sam. I owe you.’

  ‘I’ll collect. Your father got a play on?’

  ‘Next month.’

  ‘Tickets?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And a blow job by some big Broadway actress. Not Ethel Merman. Gwen Verdon, maybe. Jesus, those legs.’

  ‘Sam, even God can’t get you that.’

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bsp; ‘Then what’s he good for? Call me.’

  Congressman Martin Williams’s office was a meager space that befitted a freshman congressman with no accrued power. There was a small reception area with worn leather chairs, a leather sofa and a secretary’s desk, a small side room not much bigger than a closet for two congressional aides sitting opposite each other at two small metal desks pushed together, and a closed door that led to the congressman’s office. The two aides were arguing about something in low, intense voices when Cassidy walked in. The secretary looked up at him with the cheery smile designed to welcome constituents.

  ‘Good morning, sir. May I help you?’

  ‘My name’s Michael Cassidy.’ He slid his identification across the desk to her. ‘I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping to get a few minutes with the congressman before his day got too busy.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but the congressman won’t be in today.’

  ‘Is there any way I can contact him? Maybe he has some time.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s gone home for a few days.’

  ‘Do you have the address?’

  ‘Oh. I mean he’s gone to Utah to talk to his constituents. He feels he should stay in touch as much as possible, so he goes out there once a month while Congress is in session. He’ll be back Monday. Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘My brother, Brian Cassidy, either called him or came by to see him.’

  ‘Yes. That’s why the name was familiar. He was here for about an hour.’

  ‘Do you know what they talked about?’

  ‘No. They were in Congressman Williams’s office.’

  ‘How about the guys in there? Do you think they might know something?’

  ‘Jeremy? Excuse me, Jeremy.’ The two young men stopped arguing and turned to look at her. ‘This is Mr Cassidy. He’s a policeman. His brother was in with the congressman yesterday. He wants to know what they were talking about. Mr Cassidy, this is Jeremy Hauser and Andy Steadman. They’re the congressman’s aides.’