by David Pierce
At eleven-thirty, all was prepared and we were as ready as we'd ever be. I was surprisingly calm, considering the pressure on me, considering that I had the leading role, after all; but my supporting cast evinced plenty of first-night nerves, despite their gallant attempts to hide them.
At eleven forty-five I was sitting in our rented Chevy about a half block down the street from the office building, waiting for the curtain to go up, hoping it wouldn't be a balloon instead.
At five to twelve, whatever it was going to turn out to be went up.
One of Febrero Segundo's immaculate new Jeeps turned down out of 53rd onto our street and drew to a halt just outside 499, i.e., us. I got out of the Chevy in a controlled hurry and timed it so that I drew level with the Jeep just as the driver was opening the back for Lt. Joaquín Esparza, who stepped out nimbly, recognized me, threw me a smart salute, then shook my paw effusively.
"¡Sr. Blackman! ¡Qué gusto!" he said.
"Absolutely," I said. "Shall we entrar?"
I gestured toward the front door. He snapped a curt order to the driver, who was standing at attention by the Jeep, then led the way up the steps to the entrance. I drew his attention to the brass plaque beside the door.
"Nosotros," I said modestly, which means "us." Luckily the sign didn't mention what floor the real Cul. Ass. was on. We could have gotten around it somehow, maybe by distracting the lieutenant in the elevator so he couldn't count the floors, but most elevators have floor indicators inside them that light up, so we might have had to claim we were an annex or whatever, but we didn't have to, which was just as well, as it was already complicated enough. A lot too complicated, was the message that occasionally fought its way to my consciousness from that deep inner recess where invidious truth lurks.
It is perhaps apparent that the reason I'd waited outside for the lieutenant was to prevent him from asking Fred (or anyone else he came across) what floor the real Cul. Ass. was on and have him drop in on a mystified Ethel. I also made sure I interposed my not inconsiderable bulk in between him and the notice board that listed the whereabouts of all the building's tenants and which we had to pass to get to the elevator. I only prayed he wouldn't spot it on the way out or that if he did, he'd merely assume it was a mistake or, like I said, that the Cul. Ass. had more than one office in the building.
After a spot of Alphonse and Gaston when the elevator arrived, in we went and up we went without further conversation. When we entered our office, Doris was (pretending to be) on the phone, a pencil behind one ear and a wad of gum in her mouth, the pencil her idea, the gum mine.
"Certainly," she was saying. "One hundred and fifty posters, no problem. Monday at the latest. Will you send someone to pick them up or do you want us here to arrange delivery? Fine. We'll leave it like that, then. Grassy-ass. Adiós."
She hung up and scribbled a note in her desktop diary.
"That was Mrs. Oliver about the posters for the pottery exhibition," she said.
"Oh, swell," I said. "Lt. Esparza, may I present our Miss Day."
He had been casually checking out the place while Doris finished up on the phone; now he advanced on her, clicked his heels together, took one of her hands reverentially and kissed the air an inch above it.
"Ay, qué linda," he said, holding on to her hand perhaps a second or two longer than strict protocol demanded. But perhaps not—how much do I know about kissing hands?
"Why, hi there, Lieutenant," Doris said coquettishly. And she had the nerve to flutter her false eyelashes at him, but the effect wasn't quite as devastating as she'd hoped because the last thing I'd done before leaving to meet the lieutenant, to make her look more like a secretary, was to present her with a horrible, garish pair of plain-glassed specs I'd bought in L. A., the kind with pink plastic wings sticking out both sides.
"You're just doing this to get even, Prof," she'd said when I'd handed them over to her with a flourish.
"How right you are, Teach," I'd said.
I made a big production of unlocking the inner office door, which caught the lieutenant's attention, as it was supposed to do, then I held it open and gestured him in.
"Any calls?" I asked Doris over my shoulder.
"The big chief called, twice," she said.
"Right," I said, following the lieutenant into the main office, but not before he'd bestowed a last, gleaming smile at qué linda, and her likewise at him. I carefully locked the door behind us. Benny, who was tearing a (blank) strip of paper off the (unconnected) telex, crossed to one of the filing cabinets, unlocked a drawer, took out a cardboard file, inserted the message into it, then locked up the drawer again.
"More about Nicaragua," he improvised to me in an aside meant to be overheard. He then greeted our visitor, apologizing for keeping him waiting momentarily, asked him to kindly seat himself, which he did, in one of the spare chairs drawn up in front of my desk, Benny taking the other.
"Keith," I said, putting my glasses on, "would you get me the latest from the file on John Brown, please."
"Certainly, sir," he said. Hopping up again, he went back to the filing cabinet, unlocked a different drawer, took out another folder, extricated two pages from it, locked the drawer again, then came back and deposited the papers gently in front of me—during which time I thumbed on the intercom and told Miss Day to hold all calls except Washington. Miss Day said, "Sure," and popped her gum. During the same time Lt. Esparza was taking a not-so-casual look around.
Among the items of particular interest that he saw were the flag on my desk, of course, the telex machine, of course, the large map of the world, of course, all the office fittings and fixtures, of course, the photo of me and my adoring family, to say nothing of the cur, of course, and also a few new touches we'd added just for lucky old him—a framed, signed (by me, "To my good friend Blackie") photo of J. Edgar Hoover's unmistakable mug, which was sitting on my desk, courtesy Celebrity Photo Service on the Strip (with retouches by Wade's Pictorial); also, from the same source, a framed photograph of Richard M. Nixon apparently shaking hands with Blackie; and from the same team again a framed photo of Gerald Ford on the White House lawn waving at the camera, standing in front of a group of businessmen of some kind, the tallest of which bore a distinct resemblance to L.A.'s tallest and most cuddly private I. And Sara had contributed a framed reproduction of the United States Declaration of Independence, the one with all those signatures on it, which she claimed to have won for being first in her class in American history one year in high school, which I thought was about as likely as her winning the Nobel Prize for poetry one year. But anyway, there it was up on the wall behind my desk.
When I was sure the lieutenant had taken in all the visuals, including an ashtray I'd picked up in a junkstore one time that was made out of a brass shell case, I rustled the papers in front of me importantly and began, with Benny again acting as simultaneous translator.
"We have quite a file on your Mr. Brown," I said, "of which these sheets are but the immediately relevant material. And when I say 'we,' I am not necessarily referring to the United States Cultural Association. I trust that you catch my drift."
He gave a meaningful glance at the picture of Mr. Hoover and said something to the effect that my trust was not altogether misplaced.
I iced the cake by taking out my wallet and flashing my FBI ID at him, a fake, needless to say, which I must confess I'd used more than once before in my shameful career, but it looked real enough with the fingerprint and photo and signature all in the right places.
"Excellent," I said. When I reached forward to pick up the pen from the desk set, I inadvertently let my unbuttoned suit jacket fall open just enough so he could see I was wearing a shoulder holster. "Dear me," I said then. "I am forgetting my manners. We in the organization are not, of course, allowed to have alcoholic beverages on the premises at any time—it was a particular bugbear with our late, lamented chief—but may I offer you a coffee? I could sure use one. It's my one bad habit, my wife says." H
ere I laughed falsely. We all agreed we could use a coffee. I pressed the intercom and said into it, "Miss Day, please, front and center."
Benny got up and unlocked the door for her, and when she came in, he asked her for coffees all round, please, and why didn't she make herself a cup while she was at it.
"A small kitchenette," Benny said to the lieutenant when Doris had flounced through the door that did not lead to a small kitchenette but to the back stairs. Benny and our guest at the feast made small talk until Doris reappeared with four steaming cups of coffee on a tray alongside a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes, all of which, including the thermos of Java, Benny had shopped for earlier. Sometimes my guile appalls me. But not always.
As soon as we had all served ourselves and Doris had vamoosed and Benny had locked the door again, I continued: "Are you at all familiar with the laws of extradition between our two countries, Lieutenant?"
The lieutenant confessed that his knowledge of that complicated subject was minimal at best, which I was pleased to hear, since so was mine.
"I'm not surprised," I said, sitting back and shaking my head. "It can be a highly tortuous affair, and it is sometimes to everyone's benefit to endeavor to simplify procedures." I gave the handsome officer a long, cool, calculating look, as if I was trying to sum him up. Then I said, as if I'd made my mind up, "May I speak with total frankness?"
I may, it turned out. And I could also be assured that whatever I said would go no farther than the four walls of that very office.
"Among men of honor, that is sufficient guarantee," I said sententiously. "Now. Your Mr. 'Brown.' We know a good deal about him, including of course his real name." I nodded in the direction of the filing cabinet. "We know where he went to school. We know what his grades were. Who his friends were, and are. We know every address, every phone number, every car he has had and every job. We know what taxes he has paid. And we know of some he hasn't."
Benny smiled like a true yes-man.
"We first became aware of his criminal activities in late . . . 'seventy-six, was it, Keith?"
"Right, sir," said Keith.
"When he was part of the crew of a seventy-six-foot shrimper that capsized in Morro Bay, in upstate California," I said. I hoped it was upstate. "A so-far confidential amount of Colombian cocaine was discovered in the wreck, behind the bulkheads, to be precise, by Coast Guard officials, but as nothing could be proven against the crew and the captain had disappeared, perhaps drowned, the case, as far as we were concerned, wound up in the dead file. He came to our attention again in 1979 and this time we managed to convict him on three counts relating to the trafficking of drugs, the upshot of which was that he spent three years in a federal prison in New Mexico, the state in which he was finally apprehended."
My intercom buzzed once.
"Excuse me," I said. I pushed the listen button.
"Washington again," said Doris's voice.
"Oh, good," I said. "I'll take it in there. Keith, I may need you."
Keith excused us politely, saying we might be a minute or two, and we went out to Doris's office, closing the door behind us. She gave us a mouthed "How's it going?" I gave her the thumbs-up signal and took the phone from her. While I was chatting to Washington, who certainly wasn't saying much back, I was hoping that Lt. Esparza, as would only be human, would check out the papers I'd carelessly left on my desktop, which were what I'd dictated to the Secretary of the Year earlier, both pages of which were typed on FBI-headed notepaper, or facsimile thereof, courtesy of we all know who, and which discussed the intricacies inherent in extradition procedures and outlined several possible ways to streamline the problems. Words that the lieutenant could easily understand whether or not he knew any English—like Mr. Brown, Febrero Segundo, extradition, policy, cooperation, and dollars—were of course prominent, and in several cases underlined, just in case. I was also hoping that Joaquín mayhap might just decide to press down the listen button on the intercom, so temptingly near his manicured pinkies, because what he would hear would be me saying in as simple English as possible how well things were going and that we had made a superior local connection, one Lt. Joaquín Esparza, subcommandante, a highly intelligent, responsible, patriotic officer, and the very devil with the ladies. (I didn't really say that last bit.)
All right. We'd done all our numbers, laid all our traps, showed all our cards—it was time for the rousing finale. And when I returned to my desk. I noticed the two directives weren't quite lined up the way I'd left them, another hopeful sign.
"Sorry about that," I said. "Now. Where were we?"
"In a federal penitentiary in New Mexico," Benny offered helpfully.
"Thank you, Keith," I said, giving him a look. "The question was rhetorical. In 1983, after a massive undercover operation spanning over five years, which we had code-named Snow Removal, my organization was successful in smashing one of the largest drug distribution setups in the country. As a result of which, Mr. Brown was again arrested, again sent to federal prison, this time in Utica, New York. During a subsequent riot there, which we suspect was organized and financed by East Coast drug money, he and nine others escaped, killing two guards on the way and one of our agents later in a car chase."
The lieutenant continued to listen intently, swinging one of his highly polished boots from time to time. I don't blame him, I thought it was a real spellbinder myself. When he finally did interrupt me, it was to say that he was still uncertain what his role in the affair might be.
Then he took his cap off, placed it carefully on his lap, and ran one hand over his pristine mane to see that it was still pristine.
"I was just coming to that very point," I said. "There is a way you could be of inestimable help to us, and all it would involve would be a couple of hours of your time and that of a driver and perhaps one other. Lieutenant, we of the organization would very much like to get our hands on Mr. Brown again. He has not only an unfinished prison sentence to serve up at Utica, but we also want him for suspected murder in cold blood of a law enforcement agent as well as inciting to riot, car theft, transporting drugs across state lines, and so on. As far as we are concerned, the most serious is the brutal slaying of one of our men. It had been a tradition since the organization's founding that such cases remain permanently in the active file until the perpetrator has been caught, even if it takes decades."
"We, too, have a similar reputation for avenging the loss of one of our own," the lieutenant said with a small smile. I believed him without any trouble.
"So, here is what I have been leading up to in a somewhat roundabout fashion, I'm afraid," I said, taking off my specs and looking for something to clean them on.
"Allow me," Benny said hastily, taking out his neatly folded breast-pocket hankie and handing it over.
I went on without bothering to thank him: "Binding extradition papers can be served on a U.S. citizen in a foreign country only by handing them to him directly on American soil. The process itself takes only a few minutes." Who knows? It might even be true. "But what American soil does one find in a foreign country? By international treaty, the Treaty of Vienna, actually, in nineteen twenty-four—"
"Eh, 'twenty-six, Chief," Benny said in a servile fashion.
"Thank you, Keith," I said coldly. "By the Treaty of Vienna all embassies are deemed to be an integral and legally constituted part of the country they represent. As is well-known, they are not owned and do not come under the legal jurisdiction of the local country; they have, as do all personnel concerned, diplomatic immunity. This is also true of consulates, naturally, which are sort of a second-class embassy, if I may put it that way, headed by a consular official, not an ambassador. What is not as well known is there are other governmental agencies in foreign countries that are similarly protected; these others include libraries, occasionally a trade mission, sometimes a diplomatic mission, like one to the UN or the UNO, sometimes a military mission, such as a foreign base, and sometimes—" Here I paused expecta
ntly and smiled gently across the desk.
"Sometimes perhaps a cultural association," he obliged.
"Sometimes perhaps a cultural association or club. These can range from elaborate and well-financed operations like those the U.S. and Canada and India and Korea and a host of others maintain in the capital cities of the world, like Paris, down to the more modest level of ours here. What all such U.S. establishments abroad share, including ours, is that the moment you pass through the front door your feet are legally treading on American soil. Are you with me, Lieutenant?"
"I am in the seat beside you, señor," he said. "Correct me if I am wrong, but what you are asking me to do is to briefly visit your offices again, but this time in the company of Mr. Brown."
"When I will read him a prepared statement two paragraphs long, then hand him one document. And then the day he steps through the front gate at Febrero Segundo, myself or more likely my successor here, as I am due to be rotated to another post next year, will have him on a private plane we have access to, heading for America within an hour, and I can assure you, sir, it will be a long time before he gets to enjoy any more of your delicious Mexican food."
We all smiled at that one, for different reasons no doubt.
Then there occurred a more lengthy pause while Joaquín thought things over, into the middle of which Benny stepped smoothly.
"Did you mention the contingency fund, sir?" he asked me.
"Ah yes," I said. "The contingency fund, which is a fund that is contingent; on my approval, mainly. As a small gesture of gratitude, the United States would want to make some contribution to the overall well-being of your prisoners. The latest information we have from our penal reform studies suggest that such monies be best spent on recreational facilities. What was the sum mentioned, Keith?"