“Just wanted to see how you were,” Petty announced at once.
“I’m fine,” O’Farrell said. Thinking that sounded too short, he added, “Thank you.”
“How did you get on with Lambert?”
It was a professional question, and O’Farrell thought the psychologist could have answered that more satisfactorily than himself. “I appreciated the advice, the chance to talk. It was very helpful.” Everything was coming out very stilted. Why was Petty delaying?
“You expect an official inquiry?”
At last! O’Farrell said, “I would have thought it automatic.”
“It isn’t,” Petty said brusquely. “And there isn’t going to be one.”
“Nothing!” Lambert had made it possible for him to live with himself, to accept the accident and justify what he’d done in the past, but O’Farrell still believed what he had told the man, that the Agency would from now on consider him unreliable.
“The circumstances are obvious,” the section chief said. “Nothing happened to embarrass anybody. So it’s a closed matter. Over.”
O’Farrell’s thoughts were disordered, refusing to form, and it was several moments before he could speak. Finally, stilted still, he said, “What then, precisely, is my position?”
Petty frowned, as if the question were difficult. “Your position?”
“Am I considered to be still”—O’Farrell stopped, seeking the laughably absurd description Lambert had used—“considered to be on the active roster?”
Petty’s frown remained. “Of course. I thought I just made that clear.”
Once more there was a long pause, from O’Farrell. Then he said, “I see.”
“Something wrong?” Petty demanded.
“No … I … no, nothing.”
“What is it? You seem unsure.”
“Nothing,” O’Farrell reiterated. “Nothing at all.” A soldier, a lawman; that’s what Lambert had called him. That’s what he was.
That night Ellen telephoned from Chicago and asked them to come up at once.
Rivera had gone to Henrietta’s twice under escort and the sex had been sensational. He guessed he had been right, that she was stimulated by the thought of the guards being outside. The British detectives remained courteous and formally interviewed him again, admitting they weren’t making any progress and once more pressing him to suggest a reason for the attack. Once more he claimed it to be a mystery to him.
Rivera considered the very absence of any demand from Pierre Belac for final settlement of the arms deal a confirmation, if any confirmation were needed, of the man’s involvement in the bombing. Rivera was curious why the man hadn’t waited until after the last delivery, to get the last of the money.
The ambassador had changed his mind yet again about that final payment, forever conscious of the daily accruing interest. He wouldn’t settle automatically. With every passing day he became more convinced there was no physical risk. So he’d wait and give himself the satisfaction of making Belac ask.
Henrietta telephoned on his private line at the embassy at five, to check that tonight was still on, and Rivera said it was. He intended coming straight from High Holborn to collect her after the arrival of the daily communication from Havana. They were dining at the Gavroche.
“Will they be round us all the time, these bodyguards?” Henrietta demanded.
“All the time,” he guaranteed.
The diplomatic pouch was on time and Rivera sat staring down at the official Foreign-Ministry letter. In view of his outstanding ability, he was being considered for promotion to the central government. To that end he was to prepare himself to attend a forthcoming international conference.
TWENTY-SIX
O’FARRELL AND Jill caught the late-afternoon flight and from O’Hare telephoned the number Ellen had given them. She was still there. They drove straight over. It was obviously an official building, although no one wore uniforms and there was definitely no indication of any association with the police.
Ellen looked strained, which was understandable, but mere was no sign of crying. She was alone in an office with a man she introduced as McMasters; she apologized for not remembering the first name. The man said it was Peter. He stood politely to greet and to seat them, his attitude and expression sympathetic.
“Where’s Billy?” Jill demanded at once.
“He’s okay,” Ellen said. “He’s with a counselor.”
“How bad is it?” demanded O’Farrell.
“Bad.”
‘That’s an exaggeration, and it’s important not to exaggerate,” McMasters said gently. He was a naturally big man who gave the impression of fatness, which was misleading. The checked shirt clashed against the tweed of his suit; the tie hung abandoned from a coatrack but that didn’t coordinate, either. The man said, “Your daughter has been very sensible. Billy’s been arriving late at the after-school day-care center. And men she found money, a fair amount, hidden in his room. I don’t know if you were aware of it, but there seemed to be a drug problem at his school a while back. We left a hotline number, if any parent wanted to talk about anything—”
“Billy’s taking drugs!” Jill said, aghast.
“No,” the man said, quiet-voiced, reassuring.
“Worse,” Ellen said.
O’Farrell had expected his daughter to be crushed, despairing, but she wasn’t; she seemed to be tight, flush-faced with anger. She must have been here a long time, he reasoned. The despair and the helplessness would have come and gone a lot earlier.
“We don’t know that, either,” McMasters said, calmly. “Billy was picked up outside school this afternoon. He was carrying crack, in a sealed package. Quite a lot. And some loose, uncut cocaine.”
“Crack!” O’Farrell exploded.
“In his backpack,” McMasters confirmed. “Sealed, like I said. And cocaine.”
“But what…?” stumbled Jill.
“He says he didn’t know what it was,” Ellen broke in. ‘That some people asked him to take it to another man who gave him ten dollars for doing it. He’s done it before. That’s where the money I found in his room came from.”
“My vote is that he’s telling the truth,” McMasters said. “What he had was a street dealer’s stash; no way a user’s purchase. We’re talking big thousands; he’d have been stealing, not saving. And we’ve had a doctor check him out. There’s no evidence at all that he’s a user: no urine trace, no nasal irritation.”
“You’re not saying Billy’s a dealer!” Jill said. “He’s short of being nine years old, for Christ’s sake! That’s preposterous.”
“I don’t believe it is so preposterous,” said McMasters. “But no. I think Billy was a courier, an innocent but ideal courier.”
O’Farrell was trying to clear his head of all the easy reactions, the shock and outrage and the refusal to believe. He said. “Does that happen?”
“A lot,” said McMasters. “If a dealer’s been busted, he’s a face. From that first arrest we’ve got him marked and at any minute one of our people can come out of an unmarked car to see what he’s got in his shopping bag. And his supplier knows that best of all; needs to protect himself from association. So what’s better than getting some nice innocent kid to complete the run? Just a few blocks, that’s all; just sufficient to break the chain.”
“But a kid that young!” Jill protested.
“The younger the better,” McMasters said. “The supplier doesn’t go away; he stays around to see if the delivery is completed. He’s known for hours that we’ve got his stuff off Billy. Probably already replaced it by now, through some other child.”
“What’s going to happen to Billy?” O’Farrell asked, the bottom-line question he should have asked before.
“We need to know more at this stage,” McMasters said. “Billy’s the child of a single-parent family, he’s not yet nine years old, and he’s become associated with drug dealers. And innocent or not, he’s known something isn’t right, because
he’s hidden the money he got for doing what he did.”
“You didn’t quite finish,” Ellen said.
O’Farrell looked briefly at his daughter and McMasters, and to the drugs officer he said, “What?”
“Billy won’t tell us about it, not properly. Just how much he got; nothing about the people.”
“He doesn’t know them!” Ellen pleaded. “How can he tell you what he doesn’t know. And you know anyway that wasn’t what I meant!”
“There’s got to be something more,” McMasters said. “We agreed on that before your parents came in.”
To O’Farrell, not to the investigating officer, Ellen said desperately, “They think I was involved, that Billy might have been carrying for me!”
“What!” O’Farrell said. He was too incredulous to be angry.
“I’ve asked your daughter to take a drug test,” McMasters announced flatly.
“No!” O’Farrell said. And then, in immediate contradiction, he said, “Yes! Why not! Prove that’s nonsense!”
Ellen hesitated for a moment, and O’Farrell felt the horrified flicker of doubt.
Then Ellen said, “Of course I will. I’ve already agreed.” She sat upright and strangely isolated, the unshed tears at last flooding from her. Jill reached out, pulling Ellen to her, and Ellen gratefully put her head on her mother’s shoulder. She made an obvious effort to stop crying but sobbed on, instead, dry, racking sobs.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Jill kept repeating, looking imploringly over their daughter’s slumped shoulders at O’Farrell, expecting him to do or say something.
To the other man, O’Farrell said, “Can I see him?”
“Yes,” Jill picked up eagerly. “We want to see him—”
“Alone,” O’Farrell finished.
Jill looked at him, stiff-faced, but didn’t protest.
“Sure,” McMasters agreed at once. “No reason why not.”
O’Farrell left the office slightly behind the other man, following him down the gleaming, buffered-clean corridors. Underfoot there had to be some rubberized material, because there was only a faint squeak of movement as they walked. In fact, this section of the building was very quiet, no sounds of people or telephones from other offices. They only passed two people, both of whom greeted McMasters by name and smiled at O’Farrell. They pushed through two firescreen doors and went halfway down a corridor to the right before McMasters halted outside a door set with wire-reinforced glass. McMasters said, “You should know the room is covered by video cameras and sound; really there for child sex and molestation cases.”
“I’ve read that it works,” O’Farrell said.
“Sometimes,” McMasters said.
It looked like a child’s playroom. There was an enormous tub of overflowing toys near a wall-mounted blackboard, upon which some stick figures paraded in a neatly chalked line. Beanbag seats were strewn around the floor and there were assorted desks and chairs, without any order. Billy was at one of the larger tables, head bent in concentration over a large sheet of paper on which he was crayoning something. A very young and pretty girl whom O’Farrell didn’t think could be long out of her teens was sitting opposite, providing the colors as Billy asked for them. Billy’s legs were too short to reach the floor; he’d tucked his feet around a cross support, halfway down. One of his laces was undone.
The girl rose from the table, shaking her head at McMasters in an obvious signal that Billy had disclosed nothing.
“Hi, Gramps!” Billy said with forced bravery. “Come and see what I’ve drawn!”
“Why don’t we take a coffee break?” McMasters suggested to the girl. She smiled her way from the room ahead of the man, without any introduction.
O’Farrell stood slightly behind the child, gazing down at a spill of colors vaguely resembling some humanoid shape. There was a lot of body armor, something he guessed to be a ray gun and a spaceship, in the background. “It’s great,” O’Farrell said. “What is it?”
“A Zirton.”
“What’s a Zirton?”
“A space warrior. I just made him up.”
“A good guy or a bad guy?”
“Not sure,” the child said, head to one side. “A good guy, I guess …” He pointed to the chest armor. “That’s red. Red’s a good color, not a bad one.”
O’Farrell took the chair vacated by the girl. “So what happened here, then?”
Billy bent over his drawing, to avoid O’Farrell’s eyes. “Some men looked through my backpack and found a package. They brought me here.”
The history of the world, written on a postage stamp, O’Farrell thought. “That’s it. huh?”
“Guess so.”
“You know what was in the package?”
“Nope.” The denial was immediate.
“Didn’t you want to know?”
“Not really.”
“What if it had been something nasty? Mushy? Had leaked out all over the place?”
“Knew it wouldn’t.” There was a lift and then a drop of Billy’s head, bottom lip between his teeth at being caught.
“How could you tell, if you didn’t know what was inside?”
“Hadn’t leaked out before.”
“There’d been other packages, then?”
It was becoming difficult for Billy to find anything more to do to his picture. He nodded his head and said, “Uh-huh.”
“How many?”
“One or two.”
“Let’s do better than that, shall we?”
“Can’t remember.”
“You’ve got to remember, Billy. I want you to.”
“Five,” the child mumbled.
“You quite sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No more?”
Billy shook his head.
“How did it start, the first time?”
“I dunno.”
“ ’Course you do, Billy. That’s silly, to say you don’t know.”
“A man came up to me one day, before the school bus came. Asked me to run an errand. Said I’d get money for it.”
“Didn’t you wonder if you should do it?”
“It wasn’t to get into his car or anything. Mommy told me not to do that.”
“What did he want you to do then?”
“Just put the package in my backpack, that’s all. He said when I got off, I was to wait for a man to come up and say did I have a present for him? When I gave it to him, he would give me ten dollars.”
O’Farrell felt hot, his collar restrictively tight, at how exposed Billy had been. An image came into his mind that he didn’t recognize at first and then he did: it was a boy eating dinner in an exclusive London restaurant with his beautiful mother and ambassador father. O’Farrell blinked it away. He said, “Is that how it happened, all five times?”
“Kind of,” Billy said. “Sometimes I had to wait around.”
“But you always did?”
“Sure, always.”
“They must have liked that, knowing you were reliable, a good guy.”
“They did!” Billy said, smiling up, proud again.
“You become friends?”
“Kind of.”
“What did they call you? They call you Billy or maybe something else? Just kid or something?”
“Always Bill, after that first time,” the boy said, still proud. “Sometimes Billy-boy.”
“What did you call them?”
“I used—” The boy stopped and his face closed, as if a curtain had been drawn across ii.
“What, Billy?”
“Nothing.”
“You were telling me what you called them.”
“Didn’t call them anything. Never knew their names.”
O’Farrell turned Billy’s drawing around so that he could see it better. “What’s that again?”
“A Zirton,” the boy said. He was cautious now against relaxing at an apparently casual question.
“They make Zirtons in those things
I bought you, a few months back?”
“I just told you. I made it up.”
“So you did,” O’Farrell said easily. “That was a good weekend, wasn’t it?”
“It was okay,” Billy said stubbornly.
“I enjoyed that hamburger and fries we had, near the lake,” O’Farrell said. “You remember what we talked about then?”
“Yes.” Billy said, unexpectedly direct.
“And the promise you made me?”
“Yes.”
At last the child’s lips were trembling, the first sign of giving way. O’Farrell was surprised Billy had held out so long and thought his grandson was a plucky little bastard. Just as he thought of himself as a shit, for coming down on him like this, and hoped it would all be worthwhile. Relentlessly he went on, “I don’t think you’ve kept it, Billy. I thought we were friends, loved each other, but I don’t think you’ve kept your promise.”
“You said I was to tell Miss James or Mommy if anyone tried to sell me drugs at school,” Billy said.
It was a lawyer’s escape and bloody good for a kid so young. O’Farrell said, “You knew what was in those packages, didn’t you, Billy?”
“No!”
“Or didn’t you want to know?” O’Farrell asked, changing direction with the idea. “Was that it? You thought you were safer if you pretended not to know what was in them? Even though you did, all the time.”
Billy couldn’t hold his grandfather’s eyes. He looked down into his lap and O’Farrell thought the tears were going to come then, but still they didn’t. “I didn’t know,” the boy mumbled.
“It was cocaine, Billy. That stuff that makes you feel funny, the stuff we talked about. And crack is cocaine in crystals, which is even worse.”
The boy shrugged, saying nothing.
“You do know some names, don’t you?” O’Farrell persisted. “Not all, not even complete. But you know some.”
“Can’t.”
The word was so quiet that O’Farrell feared he’d misheard. “What? What did you say?”
“Can’t,” Billy repeated.
“Why can’t you?”
“Frightened.”
“You mustn’t be frightened,” O’Farrell urged. “People will look after you. I’ll look after you. It’ll be all right.”
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