‘I don’t think so,’ said Denver.
From the look that passed between the two men Slater knew it was a requirement they hadn’t asked about. Shouldn’t lose his temper, he told himself; he hadn’t expected to get this degree of consideration and he didn’t want to lose it. ‘He could have flown back, ran David down and been back in California in two or three days, without the probation officer knowing he’d left the West Coast.’ Emotion had started to rise as he spoke and he finished thick-voiced, coughing to clear the difficulty.
‘Mr Slater,’ said the obese man. ‘We’ve all three of us got experience of things, the sort of things we’re talking about. You can’t plan intentionally to kill a person like that, like it’s a day trip. It takes time, preparation. In your specific case, how could Mason have known that on May nineteenth David would have been going to school on his bicycle and not as he normally did on the school bus?’
Slater felt the exasperation growing but then punctured it with a sudden awareness. ‘You’ve spoken to Frederick police … to the people investigating David’s killing. And the murder of the man in the underpass gully?’
There was another exchange of looks between the two other men. Potter said, ‘Yes, I have.’
‘I didn’t tell them who I really am.’
‘Neither did I,’ said Potter.
‘How did you explain your interest?’
‘That there could be a pattern, with other car incineration murders in other states. They’d be quite happy for the Bureau to take the investigation over. They’re getting nowhere.’
‘Which means they’re getting nowhere investigating David’s killing?’ seized Slater.
‘I’m afraid it looks that way,’ said Potter.
‘Are you taking it over, the death of the man in the underpass as well as David’s? pressed Slater.
‘It was a cover story, Mr Slater. It doesn’t – can’t – come within FBI jurisdiction.’
‘If you can’t take it over, why make the approach in the first place?’ persisted Slater.
‘Because we want to know everything to satisfy ourselves that Mason hasn’t found you,’ said Potter. ‘I’m going to be honest with you, Mr Slater. And I apologize in advance if I offend you. The Witness Protection Programme, tidied up with all the various amendments over the years, works remarkably well. We snared a real son of a bitch in Mason, because you knew you’d get protection. We’ve made some big hits against organized crime with the same guarantee.’ The smile did become apologetic, as promised. ‘Here comes the honesty. If, in some way we can’t work out, Mason has found you and is planning some half-assed revenge, we want to stop him. Because if he managed to cause you or your wife some harm the protection programme goes to hell in a handcart and people stop coming forward and telling us things we need to hear. I’m sorry but that’s the reality of it.’
‘So what is the reality of it?’ Slater threw back. ‘You think he’s found us?’
‘The jury’s still out,’ clinched Denver, awkwardly.
‘There’s something else I haven’t told you,’ admitted Slater, anxiously, needing to keep them with him and not dismiss everything that seemed so easily dismissible. ‘Something that might sound ridiculous – why I held back from mentioning it – but could be the opposite—’
‘You’re not doing a great deal to help yourself, let alone help us,’ broke in Denver, accusingly.
‘What is it, Mr Slater?’ demanded Potter.
‘My wife and I go every day to David’s grave,’ explained Slater, avoiding the looks of both men. ‘We did, after the confrontation in Lafayette Park. When we got there, there was a bouquet of tulips very definitely placed on top – taking precedence – of our own wreath. There was no card. I took them to a laboratory I’ve occasionally used and had them checked for fingerprints; tulip stems are very smooth, a good surface—’
‘What did the laboratory get?’ interrupted Potter.
‘Nothing,’ said Slater. ‘They were absolutely clean. Which they shouldn’t have been. No one could have touched those stems without leaving a trace … unless they’d been very carefully and individually wiped. Or whoever put them there wore gloves.’
‘Which whoever laid them there could have been doing,’ said Denver. ‘Why’d you think it could be Mason?’
‘Goading us. Letting us know he’s found us.’ Slater looked up at last, tensed for the ridicule. Instead of which Potter said, ‘Where are they now, these flowers?’
‘I left them at the laboratory.’
Potter went quickly to speak but didn’t. More slowly, gesturing towards a side table upon which there was a telephone that Slater hadn’t seen before, the FBI man said, ‘Call them! Make sure they haven’t disposed of them!’
‘They will have done by now,’ said Slater. ‘Why should they have kept them?’
‘Call them!’ insisted Potter, making a vague hand movement. ‘At the Hoover Building downtown we’ve got state-of-the-art laboratory facilities no commercial laboratories could afford or dream of.’
Slater knew he shouldn’t feel self-conscious, the object of their attention standing at the telephone, but he did. There was a delay locating the man through whom he usually dealt and to whom he posed the question, and he was kept even longer on hold while the man tried to find the answer. Almost ten minutes elapsed before he was able to turn back to the two intelligence agents, the relief surging through him. ‘They’ve still got them! They were my property that they didn’t have authority to dispose of. They’re holding them, for me to collect.’
‘Something that’s been saved at last,’ said Denver, critically.
‘There’s something else you haven’t told us about, isn’t there, Mr Slater?’ accused Potter.
Slater shook his head, confused. ‘No!’
‘You haven’t told us that you and your wife have bought handguns.’
‘It hasn’t come into the conversation,’ protested Slater. ‘We only made the purchase and went through the formalities a day or two ago!’
‘The local PD have set up a computer base on their combined enquiry. Your name registered automatically, with the application and confirming address,’ said Potter.
‘I’ve already told you that my wife has been diagnosed without any mental problems, which I know would have precluded a licence being granted,’ said Slater, knowing it was important to cover every prohibition. ‘We’re going to join a club, take lessons. I said earlier that my wife is devastated by David’s death, as I am. She’s also terrified, as well as convinced, that who she saw on the CCTV was her ex-husband. She’s at home now, refusing to go back to her gallery, every alarm and protection on until I get back.’
‘What do you think she’d do, if she saw someone on the street she identified as Jack Mason?’ asked Potter. ‘Do you think she’d wait, to be sure? Or shoot and wait until afterwards to find out if she was right?’
‘Are you going to block the licences?’ said Slater.
‘That isn’t an answer to my question, Mr Slater.’
‘I don’t have an answer to your question.’
‘What would you do in exactly the same circumstances?’ came in Denver.
‘Ensure I’d properly identified the man.’
‘And then what, after you had properly identified him as Jack Mason?’ said Denver. ‘Would you try to kill him?’
It took a long time for Slater to reply, convinced as he was that the gun application depended on his response. ‘If I thought he was going to try to kill Ann or me, harm us in any way, I’d have every legal right to defend both of us.’
‘If you genuinely believed your lives to be in danger,’ agreed Potter.
‘Do you think they could be?’ asked Slater.
‘I told you we don’t have any positive evidence or reason to believe they might be,’ reminded Potter. ‘More immediately I think we should go and retrieve those flowers, as soon as we can.’
‘I would have imagined there’s good enough reason fo
r my wife and I to get handguns,’ argued Slater.
‘Maybe,’ conceded Potter. ‘It’s evidence we’re short of, not reasons. We’ll all go,’ decided Potter.
‘What about the gun licence application?’ said Slater.
‘Something else that’s out of my jurisdiction,’ said Potter. ‘That’s something for the local PD.’
They hadn’t laughed or ridiculed him, Slater realized. He hadn’t felt they despised him as a defector, either. There was, in fact, a lot about the encounter that he hadn’t expected. Some, indeed, that he hadn’t fully or properly understood.
‘Sorry I was irritable when we last talked,’ said Mason. ‘That’s why I’m calling so soon, to say sorry.’
‘You said you weren’t mad,’ reminded Beverley.
‘I’d had a bad day.’
‘How come?’
‘Now I’ve decided to settle out there I’m transferring banks,’ said Mason, the lie one of several he’d rehearsed during the interceding and unsettling nineteen hours.
‘You didn’t tell me you were doing that.’
‘I hadn’t thought about it until I got here, which was stupid.’
‘What’s the problem?’
The problem is that you haven’t already told me what you and Glynis Needham are talking about, thought Mason. ‘I imagined it was going to be easy but it isn’t. I’ve got to go back tomorrow and sign some more forms.’
‘How’s it going with the lawyer?’
He had to switch this fucking conversation! ‘Slower than I expected there, as well. I miss you.’
‘I miss you, too. What—’
‘I don’t want to talk about me,’ Mason cut across her. ‘I want to talk about you. What are you doing?’ Mason felt hot, stifled, and wished he could open the door of the booth at the Annapolis main post office.
‘Working, what else?’
‘Busy?’ Why was she holding out on him?
‘I heard from Glynis.’
At last! ‘She planning to come out again?’
‘About you.’
‘What about me?’ Mason hadn’t intended the question to be so sharp and bit angrily at his own lip.
‘Wanted to know if you’d got fixed up with a job yet.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That your interviews were going well. That’s what you told me, wasn’t it?’
That wouldn’t take two telephone calls. ‘Why’s she so interested? I thought you were my case officer now.’
‘She also wanted to know about the compensation claim. She was glad you weren’t going to go ahead with it.’
‘That all?’”
‘What else could there be?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mason, in rare honesty. The damned dyke had kept on about the penitentiary case, he reminded himself.
‘She did talk about coming out again,’ conceded Beverley.
Getting there! Mason said, ‘What did you tell her?’
‘She didn’t talk dates. I told her to call me again when she was more definite.’
‘You think asking about me was just an excuse to make plans to come out and hit on you again?’
‘That’s exactly what I think.’
‘Is that why you’re sounding so down?’ There wasn’t a problem, Mason determined: no cause for him to re-plan or reschedule anything. Just one thing, he corrected himself. He didn’t think he’d bother to go back to San Francisco, convenient – and pleasurable – though it was to have his very own sex slave.
‘I’ve got my period. It’s a bad one.’
‘We’ll think of something to put Glynis off.’
‘You going to give me your number?’
‘That’s another pain in the ass,’ said Mason, coming to another rehearsal. ‘I checked out this morning from where I’ve been for the last couple of days: you could have thrown a saddle on the cockroaches and ridden in the Kentucky Derby. I’m going to try a Marriott, downtown. I’ll give you a call later, with the number. You going to be in the office all day?’
‘All day,’ she said.
‘I hope the period gets better.’
‘So do I. When do you think you’ll get back?’
‘It’s difficult to say. Not much longer.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you back.’
‘Goodbye, darling.’
‘Goodbye Beverley,’ said Mason, meaning it.
‘What do you think?’ asked Denver.
‘It’s definitely Dimitri Sobell,’ said Burt Hodges, the original CIA debriefer, whose retirement home was at Harper’s Ferry, and who’d recognized the Russian’s assumed name from the Frederick News-Post and watched the entire interview on video link to an upstairs room. Hodges was a trim, upright man, the only hint of him passing seventy years his almost total baldness.
‘We’d confirmed that from the voiceprint,’ reminded Potter.
‘You think your guys will be able to pick up anything from those flower stems?’ asked Hodges.
‘If it’s scientifically possible they’ll get it,’ insisted Potter. The coffee had been replaced at the Tennessee Avenue safe house with a bottle of Wild Turkey, the video turned off. All three men were drinking.
‘It would be a hell of a confirmation,’ said Denver. ‘What did you think of Slater?’
‘Pretty good,’ judged Hodges, who’d spent virtually every day for three months with the man during his defection debriefing. ‘Not as rusty as I’d expected. His story sounds genuine by its very weakness. If they were fantasizing they’d have made it a hell of a lot better than that.’
‘I’m not happy about the handguns,’ cautioned Potter. ‘If some innocent gets shot it’ll be my tit in the wringer.’
Denver smiled at the thought of the physical impossibility of that being inflicted on a man of Potter’s size. ‘It’ll work out. There’s not a lot of options.’
‘There never is,’ said Potter. ‘So far I’ve been lucky. I keep worrying it can’t go on without breaking.’
Twenty-Six
Slater hoped that Ann’s conviction would be allayed by knowing that both the CIA and FBI were jointly involved, but it wasn’t. Since the discovery of the bouquet on David’s grave, she’d become more adamant than ever that Mason was stalking them and it remained the only all-consuming subject of every conversation between them, not discussed as a possibility but as an indisputable fact. She even argued that the intelligence organizations’ interest was confirmation of their having been found by her ex-husband, continuing to refuse to leave the house except for their mourning vigil at the cemetery, where the nervousness shivered through her. Her only slight recovery had been to re-open the gallery, although at a distance, liaising by telephone several times a day with Jean, whom she officially appointed manager, with a salary increase. The day of Slater’s safe house encounter she agreed to her former PA employing a recently graduated art student who applied for a work-experience position and had Slater drop off some pre-signed cheques for Jean to keep the finances up to date. She also had him reiterate her refusal to stage any further exhibitions. Among the accumulated mail had been two enquiries, one at the international level for Andre Worlack. There was no one resembling Jack Mason on the CCTV footage Slater examined and reset, as he had done in yet another effort to reassure Ann since her self-imposed imprisonment.
Slater kept to the arrangement he’d agreed with David Potter after the flower retrieval, despite Ann’s demands that he call the FBI supervisor earlier, using the intervening time to fully catch up with everything outstanding at his own office. He, too, declined two overdue enquiries, although he could have fitted them into his existing schedule. In reply to a letter from the San Jose company, he promised to let them know as soon as possible when he would be able to return to New Mexico to discuss the further, promised work. He enclosed with that letter the provisional plans for the first two already agreed contracts. On his w
ay home to collect Ann for that evening’s cemetery visit, he enrolled them both in the gun club with which he’d so far only had telephone conversations, despite not having received their handgun permits. The senior instructor warned that it was extremely unlikely either of them would be granted a gun carrying licence.
Slater hadn’t told Ann of the discussion with Potter about the guns, knowing it would increase the tension that seemed to be permanent between them and which quickly surfaced when he refused to make the scheduled telephone call to the FBI man before noon.
‘You told me he fixed today!’ she flared.
‘Because today he might hear something but it won’t be yet, not nine o’clock in the morning. People have to get to work, look at and assess whatever experiments they’ve carried out before they can tell him.’
‘So now you’re a scientist! Know how it’s done!’
‘Stop it, Ann. It’s wrecking us,’ said Slater, a familiar plea.
‘We’re already wrecked!’
‘We could stop it happening if we tried.’ He was coming more and more to believe that she was right.
‘If I tried, you mean!’
‘I mean we’re not going to achieve anything if we go on fighting … making things worse than they already are. We could today get the results of the Bureau tests that prove Mason didn’t put the flowers there.’
‘He did!’ insisted Ann, irrationally.
‘What if they find fingerprints that aren’t Jack’s? Are you going to believe the findings of the best scientific criminal investigation facilities in the world? Or yourself?’
‘Call them!’ Ann insisted, refusing the logic as she customarily did.
‘Not before noon,’ refuted Slater, just as insistently. ‘I’ll come back from the office, do it from here. You’ll know the moment I do.’
Would they know, one way or another? Slater asked himself, on the first of his journeys that day into the town, the routine automatic now to stop at the gallery to go through the overnight CCTV film as he had at the house before leaving. Abruptly, unable to stop it, Slater sniggered, immediately conscious of the curious look from a commuter next to him in the momentary traffic jam, hurriedly and visibly putting his hand out to the radio, which he wasn’t playing, as if turning a programme up. It was surreal, absurd, to realize so much depending upon a dollar’s worth of flowers! Except that it wasn’t funny. Neither Denver nor Potter had laughed, thought it ridiculous. This was how things were in real, serious life: situations being resolved or exacerbated by the unreal, the unexpected. He was as uncertain and worried as Ann, just better able to control it – conceal it – because of his ingrained professional training. Perhaps not as easily able to control it, though. There was a tinge, maybe more than a tinge, of hysteria in that giggling outburst. He’d been so quickly aware of the curious frown from the guy in the next car because he was constantly alert to everything around him, relieved that the traffic was moving again, as anxious as Ann to pick up their handguns and undergo the lessons.
Time to Kill Page 27