by Len Deighton
Major Mann opened the refrigerator and took a carton of buttermilk. He reached for tumblers from the shelf above and poured two glassfuls.
'You like buttermilk?'
'Not much,' I said.
He drank some of it and then tore a piece of paper from a kitchen-roll and wiped his mouth. All the while he held the refrigerator door wide open. Soon the compressor started to throb. This sound, combined with the interference of the fluorescent lights above our heads, gave us a little protection against even the most sophisticated bugging devices. 'This is a lulu,' said Mann quietly.
'In that case,' I said, 'I will have some buttermilk.'
'Do we want to take delivery of Mrs B.?' He did not conceal his anger.
'Where?' I asked.
'Here!' said Mann indignantly. 'Right here in schlockville.'
I smiled. 'And this is an offer from gentleman-Jim Greenwood and our friend Hart?'
'And the two vodka salesmen from downtown Omsk.'
'K.G.B.?'
'Big-ass pants, steel-tipped shoes, fifty-dollar manicures and big Cuban cigars — yes, my suspicions run that way.'
'Perhaps Hart got them through central casting.'
Mann shook his head. 'Heavy,' he said. 'I've been close to them. These two are really heavy.'
Mann had the mannerism of placing a hand over his heart, the thumb and forefinger fidgeting with his shirt-collar. He did it now. It was as if he was taking an oath about the two Russians.
'But why?'
'Good question,' said Mann. 'When Greenwood's goddamned committee is working so hard to give away all America's scientific secrets to any foreigner who wants them — who needs the K.G.B.?'
'And they talked about B.?'
'I must be getting senile or something,' said Mann. 'Why didn't I think about those bastards on that Scientific Cooperation Committee — commie bastards the lot of them if you ask me."
'But what are they after?'
Mann threw a hand into the air, and caught it, fingers splayed. 'These guys — Greenwood and his sidekick — are lecturing me about freedom. Telling me that I'm just about to lead some kind of witch-hunt through the academic world…'
'And are we?"
'I'm sure going to sift through Bekuv's friends and acquaintances… and not Greenwood and all his pinko committeemen will stop me.'
'They didn't set up this meeting just to tell you not to start a witch-hunt,' I said.
"They can do our job better than we can,' said Mann bitterly. 'They say they can get Bekuv's wife out of the U.S.S.R., by playing footsie with the Kremlin.'
'You mean they will get her a legal exit permit, providing we don't dig out anything that will embarrass the committee.'
'Right,' said Mann. 'Have some more buttermilk.' He poured some without waiting to ask if I wanted it.
'After all,' I said in an attempt to mollify his rage. 'It's what we want… I mean… Mrs B. It would make our task easier.'
'Just the break we've been waiting for,' said Mann sarcastically. 'Do you know, they really expected us to bring Bekuv here tonight. They are threatening to demand his appearance before the committee.'
'Why?'
'To make sure he came to the West of his own free will. How do you like that?'
'I don't like it very much,' I said. 'His photo in the Daily News, reporters pushing microphones into his mouth. The Russians would feel bound to respond to that. It could get very rough.'
Mann pulled a face and reached for the wall telephone extension. He capped the phone and listened for a moment to be sure the line was not in use. To me he said. 'I'm going back in there, to tug my forelock for ten minutes.' He dialled the number of the C.I.A. garage on 82nd Street. 'Mann here. Send my number two car for back-up. I'm still at the same place.' He hung up. 'You get downstairs,' he told me. 'You go down and wait for the back-up car. Tell Charlie to tail the two Russian goons and give him the descriptions.'
'It won't be easy,' I warned. 'They are sure to be prepared for that.'
'Either way it will be interesting to see how they react.' Mann slammed the refrigerator door. The conversation was ended. I gave him a solemn salute, and went along the hall to get my coat.
Red Bancroft was there too: climbing into a fine military-styled suede coat, with leather facings and brass buttons and buckles. She winked as she tucked her long auburn hair into a crazy little knitted hat. 'And here he is,'
she said to the intruder alarm manufacturer, who was watching himself in a mirror while a servant pulled at the collar of his camel-hair coat. He touched his moustache and nodded approval.
He was a tall wiry man, with hair that was greying the way it only does for tycoons and film stars.
'The little lady was looking everywhere for you,' said the intruder alarm man. 'I was trying to persuade her to ride up to Sixtieth Street with me.'
'I'll look after her,' I said.
'And I'll say good night,' he said. 'It was a real pleasure playing against you, Miss Bancroft. I just hope you'll give me a chance to get even some time.'
Red Bancroft smiled and nodded, and then she smiled at me.
'Now let's get out of here,' I whispered.
She gripped my arm, and just as the man looked back at us, kissed my cheek. Whether it was nice timing, or just impulse, was too early to say but I took the opportunity to hold her tight and kiss her back. Tony Nowak's domestic servants found something needing their attention in the lounge.
'Have you been drinking buttermilk?' said Red.
It was a long time before we got out to the landing. The intruder alarm man was still there, fuming about the non-arrival of the elevator. It arrived almost at the same moment that we did.
'Everything goes right for those in love,' said the alarm man. I warmed to him.
'You have a car?' he asked. He bowed us into the elevator ahead of him.
'We do,' I said. He pressed the button for ground level and the numbers began to flicker.
This is no city for moonlight walks,' he told me. 'Not even here in Park Avenue.'
We stopped and the elevator doors opened.
Like so many scenes of mortal danger, each constituent part of this one was very still. I saw everything, and yet my brain took some time to relate the elements in any meaningful way.
The entrance hall of the apartment block was brightly lit by indirect strip-lighting set into the ceiling. A huge vaseful of plastic flowers trembled from the vibration of some subterranean furnace, and a draught of cold wind from the glass entrance door carried with it a few errant flakes of snow. The dark brown floor carpet, chosen perhaps to hide dirty footmarks from the street, now revealed caked snow that had fallen from visitors' shoes.
The entrance hall was not empty. There were three men there, all wearing the sort of dark raincoats and peaked hats that are worn by uniformed drivers. One of them had his foot jammed into the plate-glass door at the entrance. He had his back to us and was looking towards the street. The nearest man was opposite the doors of the elevator. He had a big S. & W. Heavy-Duty.38 in his fist, and it was pointing at us.
'Freeze,' he said. 'Freeze, and nobody gets hurt. Slow now! Bring out your bill-fold.'
We froze. We froze so still that the elevator doors began to close on us. The man with the gun stamped a large boot into the door slot, and motioned us to step out. I stepped forward carefully keeping my hands raised and in sight.
'If it's money you want,' said the alarm manufacturer, 'take my wallet, and welcome to it.' He was frantically reaching into the breast pocket of his camel-hair overcoat.
The alarm manufacturer's voice was such a plaintive whine of terror that the man with the gun smiled. He turned his head so that the third gunman could see him smiling. And then his friend smiled too.
There were two shots: deafening thumps that echoed in the narrow lobby and left behind a whiff of burned powder. The man with the gun screeched. His eyes popped wide open, he gasped and coughed blood. There was a brief moment before the pistol
hit the carpet with a thump, and its owner slid slowly down the wall, leaving a long smudge of blood. Red Bancroft gripped my arm so hard that it hurt. The second shot hit the man watching the stairs. It went in at the shoulder, and smashed his clavicle. He threw his gun down and grabbed his elbow. They say that's the only way you can ease the pain of a fractured collar-bone. He couldn't run very fast with that sort of wound. That's why the alarm manufacturer had time enough to put his gun up to eye level. He got him in the spine with the third shot. It was enough to tumble him full length on to scattered particles of impacted snow and the plastic sheet that had been put down in the outer lobby to protect the carpet. He died with his head resting on the word 'Welcome'. There wasn't much blood.
It was the body of that second man that obstructed me as I opened the glass door. It had an electric solenoid lock. I had to push the override.
The intruder alarm man collided with me in the doorway but we both scrambled out into the street in time to see the third man running. He was hatless now and halfway across the avenue. I heard a car being started. The alarm man raised his gun for a shot at him but slid on the ice and lost his balance. He tumbled. There was a clatter and a curse as he fell against a parked car. I ran out into the empty roadway. On the far side of the avenue the door of a black Mercedes opened to receive the gunman. The Mercedes leapt forward while the door was still open. I saw a flurry of arms, and one leg trailed, and cut a pattern in the snow, before the man was inside and the door closed. As the Mercedes reached the cross-street intersection, the driver switched his lights on.
'Fulton County plate,' said the voice of the intruder alarm man. 'Did you see that? It was a car from Fulton County. Did you get the number?'
He was breathess from the tumble he'd taken, and I was breathless too.
'Three digits and FC,' I said. 'It was too dirty to get it.'
'Goddamned weather,' said the man. 'I would have plinked him but for that damned patch of ice.' He turned and we walked back to the lobby.
'I think you would,' I said.
He slapped me on the back. 'Thanks for taking his attention, young feller.' he said.
'Is that what I did?'
'Raising your hands and acting scared… that took his attention. And that was cool.' He stepped over the body that was sprawled in the doorway. I followed him.
'Spread that around,' I said. 'But just between the two of us — I wasn't acting."
The alarm man laughed. It was the strangled sort of laugh that releases a lot of suppressed tension. He toyed with the.38 revolver that was still in his hand., It was a blue-finish Colt Agent, with the hammer shroud that prevented it from snagging when drawn from a pocket. He must have thumb-cocked the hammer, for there had been no time for the double action between the movement of his hand and the sound of the shots.
'I'd put that away,' I said. 'Put it out of sight before the cops arrive.'
'I've got a permit,' he said indignantly. 'In fact, I'm president of my local gun club.'
'They come down the street and see you standing over two corpses with a hot shooter in your hand they are likely to shoot first and check the permits afterwards.'
He put the gun away but not before bringing the next loaded chamber into position. He unbuttoned his overcoat and jacket, to place his gun into a highly decorative Berns-Martin spring-grip shoulder-holster. As we got back to the lobby Mann arrived with Tony Nowak.
'You stupid bastard,' said Mann to the alarm manufacturer although I had the feeling that some overfill was intended to splash on to me.
'What am I supposed to do,' said the alarm man, looking in a mirror and combing his hair, 'let those punks drill me? I'd be the laughing-stock of the whole intruder alarm business.'
'They're both dead,' said Mann. 'You shot to kill.'
The alarm man turned to look at Mann. Then he looked at the two corpses and back to Mann again. For a moment I thought he was going to express satisfaction at what he'd done but he knew too much about the law to do that. 'Well, that's something you'd better talk about with my lawyer,' he said finally. Some of the bubbly elation that always follows such danger was now fading, leaving him flat and a little frightened.
Mann caught my eye. 'No, I'm getting out of here,' he said.
'I'm not Wyatt Earp,' said the man. 'I can't shoot guns out of guys' hands.'
I took Red Bancroft's arm. 'I'd better get you home,' I said.
'The police will want to talk to me,' she said.
'No. Tony will fix that,' I said.
Tony Nowak nodded. 'You get along home, Red. My driver will take you. And don't lose any sleep about those guys… we've had a whole string of muggings here over the past month. These are rough customers. I know the Deputy Inspector — I'll get him to keep you out of it.'
I thought the girl was taking it all with a superhuman calmness. Now I realized that she was frozen with fear. Her face was colourless and as I put my arm round her, I felt her body twitch violently. Take it easy, Red,' I said. 'I'll have to stay on here.'
'They're both dead,' she said, and stepped high over the body of the man in the doorway, without looking down at him. Outside in the swirling snowstorm she stopped and wound her knitted scarf round her head. She reached up for me and planted a sisterly kiss on my lips. 'Could it work out to be something special… you and me?' she said.
'Yes,' I said. While we stood there a police car arrived, and then a car with a doctor's registration.
Tony Nowak's driver opened the door of the Lincoln for her. I waved, and stood there a long time until the car could no longer be seen. By the time I got back to the lobby the cops were there. They were stripping the dead gunmen naked, and putting the clothes into evidence bags.
Chapter Five
Tony Nowak's apartment is in the seventeenth police precinct, but dead bodies from those plush addresses go down to the Twenty-First Street Morgue and are put in the chilled drawers alongside pushers from Times Square and Chinese laundrymen from the Tenderloin.
'Can we smoke?' I asked the attendant. The cold room had an eerie echo. He nodded and pulled the drawer open, and read silently from the police file. Apparently satisfied, he stepped back so that we could get a good long look at the hold-up man. He came out feet-first with a printed tag on his toe. His face had been cleaned of blood and his hair combed, but nothing could be done about the open mouth that made him look as if he'd died of surprise.
'The bullet hit the windpipe," said the attendant. 'He died gasping for air.' He closed the file. 'This has been a heavy night for us,' he explained. 'If it's O.K. with you guys, I'll go back to the office. Put him away when you're through with him.' He put the clip-board under his arm and took a look at his pocket-watch. It was 2.15 a.m. He yawned and heaved the big evidence bag on to the stainless steel table.
'Medical examiner had them stripped at the scene of the crime — just so Forensic can't say we lost anything.' He prodded the transparent bag that contained a peaked hat, dark raincoat, cheap denim suit and soiled underwear. 'You'll find your paper-work inside.' He twisted the identification tag that was on the dead man's toe so that he could read from the U.F.6 card. 'Died on Park Avenue, eh. Now there's a goon with taste.' He looked back at the body 'Don't turn him over until the photographer has finished with him.'
'O.K.,' I said.
'Your other one is in drawer number twenty-seven — we keep all the gunshot deaths together, at this end of the room. Anything else you want and I'll be in the M.E.'s office through the autopsy room…'
Mann opened the bag and found the shirt. There was a bullet nick in the collar.
'A marksman,' I said.
'A schmuck,' said Mann. 'A marksman would have been satisfied with the gun arm.'
'You think this hold-up might have a bearing on the Bekuv situation?' I said.
'Put a neat little moustache on Bekuv and send him up to Saks Fifth Avenue for a 400-dollar suit, grey his temples a little and feed him enough chocolate sodas to put a few inches on his waistline,
and what have you got?'
'Nothing,' I said. 'I've got nothing. What are you trying to say?'
'Mister snap-shooting goddamn intruder alarm — that's who you've got, stupid.'
I considered for a moment. There was a faint superficial resemblance between Bekuv and the intruder alarm man. 'It's not much,' I said.
'But it might be enough, if you were a trigger-happy gorilla, waiting in the lobby there — very nervous — and with just an ancient little snapshot of Bekuv to recognize him by.'
'Who'd think Bekuv would be with us at Tony Nowak's party?'
'Greenwood and Hart: those guys wanted him there,' said Mann.
I shook my head.
Mann said, 'And if I told you that thirty minutes after we left Washington Square last night Andrei Bekuv was in his tux and trying to tell the doorman that I had given him permission to go out on his own?'
'You think they got to him? You think they gave him a personal invitation to be there?'
'He wasn't duding-up to try his luck in the singles bars on Third Avenue,' said Mann.
'And you agreed?' I asked him. 'You told Hart and Greenwood and Nowak that you'd bring Bekuv to their party?'
'It's easy to be wise after the event,' said Mann defensively. He used his tongue to find a piece of tobacco that was in his teeth. 'Sure I agreed but I didn't do it.' He removed the strand of tobacco with a delicate deployment of his little finger. These guys in the lobby: they didn't ask for cash, wrist-watch or his gold tie-pin, they asked for his wallet. They wanted to check — they were nervous — they wanted to find something to prove he was really Bekuv.'
I shrugged. 'Wallet… bill-fold… a stick-up man is likely to ask for any of these things when he wants money. What about the Fulton County number plate?'
'Do you know how big Fulton County is?'
'On a black Mercedes?'
'Yes, well we're checking it. We've got the guy from the Department of Motor Vehicles out of his bed, if that makes you feel better.'
'It does,' I said. 'But if we'd found that "ancient little snapshot of Bekuv" amongst these personal effects that would make me feel even better still. Until we've got something to go on, this remains a simple old-fashioned New York hold-up.'