“I had some trouble,” I said, for the millionth time, thereby managing the difficult feat of overstating an understatement.
“I wanted to phone the police,” Karen told me. “But Gertie was sure you’d make it.”
“I’m not sure I was right,” said Gertie.
The receptionist came back at that point, carrying a white laboratory smock, saying, “This is all I could find, sir.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Anything.” I headed toward her.
Quickly she put the smock down on a chair and retreated to the other side of the room.
It’s discouraging to be a pariah. Feeling very hangdog, I went over and picked up the smock and asked the receptionist to direct me to the men’s room. She did, and I left them, taking my green miasma with me.
In a stall in the men’s room I stripped down to the skin and put on the smock, which was—happily—too large for me. My hands disappeared inside the sleeves, and the bottom of the smock reached to my shins. I rolled the sleeves up till I could see my hands, and then went over to a sink and washed as best I could, patting myself dry with paper towels. At one point a portly man smoking a cigar came in, looked at me, made a U-turn, and went out again.
My clothing was ruined, all of it, even my shoes. I threw everything into the trash can and then, wearing nothing but my smock, I padded barefoot back down the corridor to the offices of CAC.
The door was propped open, held by a Manhattan phone book. Both windows were open wide. A faint trace of my previous perfume still hung at nose-level in the air.
This time everybody was pleased to see me. Or maybe amused to see me. In any case, they all smiled broadly when I came into the room. Karen said, “Oh, that’s much better, Fred. Come sit down beside me.”
The receptionist spoke briefly into the phone and then told us, “Our Mr. Bray will see you in just a few minutes.”
“Thank you,” we said.
Karen said, “Tell me what happened to you, Fred.”
Gertie said, “You looked like they tried to drown you in garbage. Nobody’s that mean.”
I told them about my getaway. Karen tried to keep a straight face and failed. Gertie didn’t even try.
“I’ll laugh tomorrow,” I said shortly, picked up a Kiplinger magazine, and read about life among the rest of the paranoids.
A few minutes later a very distinguished-looking man came in—gray hair, fawn topcoat, well-fed look—and said to the receptionist, “Ah, there, Mary, is Callahan in?”
“Good morning, Senator,” she said. “No, he had to see the Commissioner this morning. Did he expect you?”
“No, I just thought I’d drop by, see how things are doing.” He looked at his watch. “When did he expect to be back, did he say?”
“No later than eleven-thirty, he said. I think he meant it this time.”
The Senator laughed, saying, “We’ll take him at his word, I think. I’ll wait.” He turned toward the bench where we were sitting, and apparently took a good look at us for the first time: two comely women of wildly disparate types, and sitting between them like a hospital patient waiting for the operation on his gall bladder a sort of sheepish madman in white coat and bare feet.
Political training has probably never come in handier. The Senator’s smile turned glassy for barely a second, and other than that he gave no visible reaction at all. Recovering, he gave the three of us the sort of blank cheerful smile an outgoing man always offers when taking a seat with others in a waiting room. I gave him back a weak version of the same smile, while Karen studied the floor and Gertie studied the ceiling. Then for a while the four of us sat there with magazines open in front of us, like a surrealist’s painting.
Finally the door to our right opened and a harried-looking young man in shirt sleeves came out. He had a pencil behind one ear, his collar was open, and his tie was loose. He gave me a brief odd look, and then said, “Hello, Senator! Nice to see you again.”
The Senator stood up, and they shook hands. The Senator said, “Good to see you, Bob. I believe these people have been waiting.”
“Yes, of course.” Bob now turned his full attention on us. “I’m terribly sorry to keep you waiting, folks,” he said. “We’re a little understaffed around here. You said something about reporting a crime?”
“A whole box full of crimes,” Gertie told him. “Murder, kidnapping, attempted murder, bribing cops, you name it.”
Bob seemed a little taken aback. Chuckling a bit, he said, “That’s quite a list, madam. Have any idea who’s been doing all this?”
“Two brothers named Coppo.”
The Senator suddenly burst out, “The Coppos again! They’re becoming a two-man crime wave, Bob.”
“You can say that again,” said Gertie.
The Senator said, “Bob, with your permission I’d like to sit in on this interview.” He turned to me. “That is, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Gertie said, “You’re Senator Dunbar, aren’t you?”
He smiled acknowledgment. “Former Senator, I’m afraid. Otherwise, guilty as charged.”
“You run this outfit.”
“Honorary Chairman only,” said the Senator, smiling graciously. “A mere figurehead.”
“You can sit in as far as we’re concerned,” Gertie said, and turned to me. “Right, Fred?”
“Of course,” I said. I was pleased to have him; if we could get somebody important interested right away, it couldn’t hurt and it might even help.
“Then come along,” said the Senator. “You lead the way, Bob.”
We all trooped on into Bob’s tiny office, settled ourselves in chairs, and for the next twenty minutes Gertie and Karen and I told our combined story.
42
“THAT,” said the Senator, “is one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, it’s all true,” said Gertie. “Every word of it.”
“Oh, I believe you,” the Senator assured her. “I merely mean that it is incredible to me that in this day and age this sort of thing can still be permitted to go on. Vendettas, mob killings, kidnappings of innocent individuals from their very doorsteps—no, it’s unforgivable.”
“The question is,” I said, “is it stoppable.”
The Senator turned to me. “I wish I could tell you, Mr. Fitch,” he said, without my having to ask him not to call me Fred, “that it is stoppable, that an easy solution awaits you here in this office. But I’m afraid I can’t. We already have an extensive file on the Coppo brothers, I believe they’re in our top ten—Bob?”
“Numbers seven and eight, I believe,” said Bob seriously.
“Not that it matters,” the Senator said, “unless we can show results. But we want those two, we want to see them behind bars. We have our top ten here, the same as the FBI. All it means is, those are the criminals we concentrate on. Buy information when we can, try to find witnesses who are willing to testify—”
“Well, we’re willing to testify,” Gertie said. “Aren’t we, Fred?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Ah, well,” said the Senator, “but it isn’t really that easy. The Coppo brothers can afford the best attorneys, you know. And what do you have, really, to bring into court against them? What proof?” He turned to me. “You have the word of a dubious character, someone calling himself Professor Kilroy, whom you can’t even produce to verify what he told you. Hearsay, nothing more.”
“But the shots at me,” I said. “The car that followed me. The phone calls.”
“Proof,” the Senator said. “You have no proof, no witnesses, no corroboration.” He smiled sadly, and leaned toward me, saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Fitch, I truly am, but these are facts I’m telling you. Our legal system does seem to offer more protection to the criminal than to his victim, but a democracy could hardly operate otherwise.”
“Why not?” Gertie demanded. “Why not just toss bums like those Coppos in jail and get em out of the way?”
“Would
you really want to do that, Miss Divine? Let’s change the words from criminal and victim to accused and accuser. A small exercise in semantics, but notice how everything changes. Our legal system offers more protection to the accused than to the accuser. Would you truly want it any other way?”
“I know what you mean, Senator,” I said, “and I suppose you’re right. But that’s abstraction, and I’m here in the concrete.” I laughed self-consciously and said, “Maybe with my feet in the concrete.”
“I sympathize, Mr. Fitch,” he said, “and I wish I could offer you a brighter prospect, but it would be unfair. You see how understaffed we are here, and even with a full staff, and adequate financing, we could hardly do more than scratch the surface. Oh, we might dispatch our top ten, but there’s always ten more behind them, and ten more behind them. Believe me, Mr. Fitch, the criminal statistics are frightening.”
“It isn’t just the statistics,” I said.
Gertie said, “What about me on the witness stand? I was kidnapped, that isn’t any hearsay.”
The Senator smiled sadly at her. “Again, have you any proof? Witnesses? Did the Coppo brothers themselves kidnap you, and could you identify them?”
“The guys that guarded me called the Coppos on the phone.”
“Can you prove that? The use of a name doesn’t prove a thing, Miss Divine.” The Senator sat back and spread his hands. “Forgive my taking the role of the devil’s advocate, but I do want you to see what we’re up against. The enemy is an elusive one, and well represented by counsel.”
“What does it take to win?” Karen asked.
“To be honest,” he said, “it takes money. Most of our success has come as a result of information bought and paid for. For instance, if we could know for certain which police officers have been corrupted by the Coppo gang, we could by-pass them, go to the honest officers, arrange traps to catch the bribe-taking police red-handed. If we could buy from informants, for instance, the names of the two men who kidnapped Miss Divine, if we could offer one of them an inducement to turn state’s evidence—” He spread his hands. “We can do it,” he said, “but only a little at a time. We chop off the tentacles, slowly, but the head seems always to remain.”
“And meanwhile,” Gertie said, “the Coppos are still after Fred and me.”
“All I can suggest,” the Senator said, “is that you leave the city, perhaps even leave the country, until such time as these criminals have been put safely behind bars.”
Karen said, “But what if they never get behind bars?”
“I really don’t know what to tell you,” the Senator said.
I had been mulling things over the last couple of minutes, and now I said, “Senator, could you use a donation?”
He smiled wistfully. “We could always use donations,” he said.
“I’ve got one for you,” I said.
Both women were looking at me oddly. Karen said, “Fred, what are you going to do?”
“I’m giving it away,” I told her. “Here’s my good cause, putting people like the Coppo brothers behind bars.”
The Senator said, “Mr. Fitch, what are you driving at?” Karen said, “Fred, don’t!”
But I was determined. “Your organization gets the whole thing,” I told the Senator. “Three hundred thousand dollars. I don’t want the damn stuff, and it can do you people a lot of good.”
43
OF COURSE, they all tried to talk me out of it. Karen just kept doggedly telling me not to do it, while Gertie was vehement, telling me I was crazy, nobody in his right mind would give away three hundred grand, and so on. The young man, Bob, kept saying, “You don’t want to do this on the spur of the moment, Mr. Fitch.” And the Senator said such things as, “You really should think this over, you know,” and, “Why don’t you talk to your clergyman first, see what he has to say,” and, “You don’t want to do something today you’ll regret tomorrow.”
But I knew what it was I wanted. I’d suspected for a couple of days that I wasn’t going to be keeping the money, that the only thing left was to decide where was the best place to donate it. And when we’d come in here, when I’d seen this place and heard the Senator talk, I’d known then where my money could do the most good.
My money. But it wasn’t my money, not really. I’d inherited under false pretenses, surely; if Uncle Matt had known the kind of goofball and born mark I am he would hardly have left me in charge of his ill-gotten loot. And it wasn’t Uncle Matt’s money, any more than mine, because he too had gotten it under false pretenses, stolen it from a man who’d ended his life as a result. If it belonged to anybody, really, it was the heirs of Pedro Coppo, his two sons. But the idea of giving those crooks any of the money just stuck in my craw; they were worse than Uncle Matt, worse than any con man. A con man may pick you for a dollar or a hundred dollars, but when he goes away he’s hurt nothing but your pocketbook. He doesn’t beat people up, or kidnap them, or kill them.
No, here was the best place for blood money. Let it go to the Citizens Against Crime, let it do good for a change. Let it put the Coppo brothers in jail, let it keep them there the rest of their lives. The rest of my life, anyway, that was good enough for me.
When at last they saw I was adamant about giving the money to CAC, and about doing it right now, the Senator said, “Well, sir, I hardly know what to say. Your donation will do a great deal of good, I can tell you that much. And it’s the sort of windfall we don’t even dream about around here, do we, Bob?”
“Not hardly, sir,” said Bob, smiling weakly. “Frankly, I’m stunned by all this.”
“I suppose what you’ll want now is a lawyer,” said the Senator. “Would you like to phone your attorney from here?”
Goodkind? Oh, no. “Let’s use your lawyer,” I said. “He probably knows more about this sort of thing than mine does. All we have to do now is draw up some sort of paper for me to sign, guaranteeing delivery of the full inheritance. That way, if anything happens to me in the meantime, you can still collect.”
“Oh, I’m sure nothing will happen to you,” the Senator said. “In fact, I think what we’ll do is send a team direct to the Coppo brothers to tell them about this. What say, Bob?”
“I’d like to do it myself, sir.”
“Good boy. You and Callahan.” The Senator turned back to me, saying, “All right, we’ll get the organization’s attorney right up here. Bob, would you see to it?”
“Certainly, sir.” Bob got up from his desk, excused himself to the rest of us, and left.
Senator Dunbar turned to me and said, “I wonder if you’d be interested in a job with us here, Mr. Fitch?” He smiled and said, “We’ll be able to add to our staff now, of course.”
“I don’t know anything about this kind of work,” I said, but I was pleased and flustered at having been asked.
“What sort of work do you do?” he asked me, and for the next few minutes we discussed my profession as researcher and the possibilities of adapting that profession to something useful to CAC. I finally said I’d think it over, and then the Senator told us something about CAC’s history and record, and some specific anecdotes about the activities of the organization. All in all, we chatted about ten minutes before Bob came back in and said, “All set, sir. I cleared the conference room for us, we’ll have more space there.”
“Very good, Bob,” said the Senator, getting to his feet. He and I spent a few seconds bowing each other out the door, and then I gave in and went first. Karen and Gertie, both still disapproving, though silently now, trailed after us.
We crossed the reception room and went through a door on the other side, into a long and rather narrow room dominated by a gleaming conference table flanked by comfortable-looking chairs with wooden arms and red-leather upholstered seats. A man was standing at the far end of the table, with a black attaché case open on the table in front of him; he was taking papers and pens from it, and lining them up.
There was something immediately familiar about this
man, but I couldn’t think what. He was perhaps fifty, medium height, slightly stocky but not overweight in any real sense, well dressed; the sort of man you see at half the tables every lunch hour in midtown restaurants. Was that it, merely that he reminded me of a type? But why did I have this odd feeling that I had seen him somewhere before?
Senator Dunbar came around me, saying, “Ah, Prescott, good to see you again.” He and the new man shook hands, and then the Senator turned to me, saying, “Mr. Fitch, may I introduce the man who has donated his legal services to our organization free of charge ever since its founding. Mr. Prescott Wilks, here’s perhaps our greatest benefactor, Mr. Fredric Fitch.”
Prescott Wilks. The lawyer who’d written the letter to Uncle Matt.
All at once I felt a chill in the back of my neck. Something was wrong somewhere. I was surrounded by smiling, amiable, convincing people; we were all sliding effortlessly down the chute together.
It was happening again!
Then Prescott Wilks came toward me, his hand outstretched, a pleasant smile on his face, and all at once I knew where I’d seen him before, and that meant I knew who he was, and that meant …
“Professor Kilroy!” I shouted. “You’re Professor Kilroy!”
44
I WAS SURROUNDED by blank stares of incomprehension, but I didn’t care. I felt as though a great fog were suddenly lifting and all at once the landscape was clear all around me.
“He is!” I told everybody, told myself. “He put on a fake beard and a fright wig and those glasses, he dirtied his face, he put on old clothes that were too big for him to make him look smaller and scrawnier, he walked funny, he talked with that gravel voice—”
Senator Dunbar approached me with a concerned look, saying, “Mr. Fitch, do you feel unwell? Has the strain—?”
“No strain at all,” I said. “You know how I know? That attaché case there. You had it in a locker, with your regular clothes in it. You went and got it and went into the men’s room and changed your clothes in a stall, and that’s why Professor Kilroy never came out again. Because you came out! The minute I walked in here I knew I’d seen you somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where. It was at Grand Central. You were one of the men that came out of that men’s room.”
God Save the Mark Page 19