by Bill Granger
“You all right, my man,” Peewee said to Kools in the middle of his thought. Kools picked up a Rainier beer and tried it and looked around.
Kools stared through him for a moment and then softened. What the hell, wasn’t Peewee. Just thinking about what he was going to jump into the next time.
Seattle had been edgy the first day and he thought he had made a mistake staying at the Pacific Plaza and maybe made a mistake charging the trip down, but what the hell, it would take them a month to figure out the charges and he’d be long gone by then.
“What’s rolling tonight, my man?” Peewee said. Peewee was always talking that way, talking sort of hip and it annoyed Kools, who didn’t like to talk very much at all. Kools thought there was something of the chump in Peewee but Peewee had some guts at least, had stuck a few, had a face that looked like it had been hit by a brick wall.
“Everything,” Kools said. It meant nothing was happening. Kools felt the jitters again and poured more Rainier down his throat. He held the neck of the bottle the way some boys hold the necks of their girlfriends.
“We score, first of the month, always money in Seattle on the first of the month,” Peewee said.
“You think like that, you think small.”
“First of the month, I gotta man take welfare checks, all he can get, runs a grocery by East Side—”
“Thing is, you get time for the big business as much as the small business,” Kools said.
“You’re talking.”
“I know,” Kools said. Peewee was dumb. “We need to score, man, at least I know I do. I ain’t gonna be working in no fish market, smell like a fish.” Peewee did smell a little and he knew it. He washed his cut hands all the time but it was still there, the slightly rotting odor of the trade.
“What’s on your mind?” Peewee said. His voice was quiet against the noise of the bar. The place was full. There were office workers cutting loose and office girls looking at losers. There was a desperate sort of gaiety to it all, to the noise and the loud laughs and the music up too loud and to the rain coming down so hard against the windows. The rain was part of it, too.
“I don’t know, I keep seeing money around in this city and I got to be able to get it. Make one solid score and get out. Was in a place today with money. Get me someplace warm, go down south a while around L.A. You know L.A.?”
“I never been,” Peewee said.
“L.A. is good, man,” Kools said. He had never been there. “L.A. is just like Hollywood, like you think about when you’re cold sitting in the church hall, watching the movies of these big women with big breasts, watching these sissy guys kiss them up in the movies, that’s what L.A. is like but it’s not like that. It’s like down and dirty and you can have everything you want, so it really is like the movie, if you can see what I mean. I mean, when you’re sitting in fifty below and some Baptist shows you a movie about this pretty valley and this girl with big bazoos—”
Peewee waited and Kools finished. Peewee couldn’t understand about looking for something, that L.A. to Kools had been like the Promised Land when he first found it and he saw it just that way, no matter if there were boys dressed like girls on Hollywood Boulevard, selling their filthy fannies. Kools had been cold and he never wanted to be cold again. Never wanted to think about the sound his partner Noah made screaming out of the copter or the dark old man on the submarine with his crazy stories.
“What you wanna do?” Peewee said.
“Get us some of those white uniforms. Those uniforms that the kitchen help wears. I been over to this big hotel, I was watching, I see the way it is. You ever do a hotel?”
“No, man, I was never in that action.”
“It’s easier than you know. You get this cart, you roll it up and down the corridors. You look for the room. You knock on the door. Work it about seven at night, make it Friday night when the tourists out touring. You knock on the door. Someone’s home, you say you got the wrong room, you go down the hall. You knock on the door and when they don’t answer, you go in.”
“Those doors are locked.”
“Locks don’t mean shit,” Kools said. “Besides, I do the outside and you do the inside. You go in and you find the stuff to look for. Look under the mattress all the time, you be surprised how many times they put the wallet under the mattress. Purse. Jewels. Watches. Keep it small, we want to travel. You game for this? I gotta be opening doors. It takes forty minutes tops. We hit two floors and then we don’t get greedy.”
Peewee put it in his mind and turned it over. It was big time, just the way he knew Kools was big time. Kools had that big-time look about him.
Peewee thought about the way things were and about Mai-Lin turning those pity eyes on him. Shit, didn’t do any good. Mai-Lin was out of his league but he loved her anyway, she was kind. Peewee told Kools about Mai-Lin, pretty Chinese girl or whatever she was.
Kools pretended to listen while he sketched out the plan in his head. He needed Peewee but he’d cut loose from Peewee as soon as they knocked over the hotel. Big hotel down the street that was real glittery and full of money.
38
A MAN WITH TWO COUNTRIES HAS NONE
The submarine suddenly began to dive. It was very quick for such a big thing in the water. The inlets filled with water, the buoyancy tanks took on weight, the thing began to shake and sink.
The two sailors saw it at the same time and they began to shout in Russian. Denisov understood the words and looked at Devereaux and decided.
Rather, the submarine had decided everything and he felt the same helpless feeling now he had that day in Santa Barbara.
He took out his pistol and said four words in Russian and everyone in the dinghy raft understood.
The submarine shuddered down beneath the waters of the gray sea. Now everyone could see the American frigate that was coming around the spit from Norton Sound.
“Did you plan this?”
Devereaux stared at Denisov. “Perhaps Henry McGee’s stories aren’t the only interesting ones.” Before the frigate appeared, Devereaux had begun to think Hanley had failed him.
“I wanted you to know—” Denisov began. But it was no good. They were too skilled at this game of lie and counterlie to ever believe each other.
Devereaux said, “Have him untie me.”
Denisov spoke to Karpov. He had to say it twice. Karpov’s mouth was open. The sailors were still shouting at the submarine but they were watching the gun in Denisov’s hand. All that was left of the submarine now were the waves washing roughly against the dinghy. The fat craft went up and down and everyone had to hold on. Denisov held the pistol on the other men.
“Have you decided?” Devereaux said.
“You arranged this thing, this other thing?”
“I told you I never trusted you,” Devereaux said.
They had planned finding Devereaux in the cabin; Denisov had not understood it all. Until the moment he saw the frigate, Denisov had decided nothing. He agreed to the plan proposed by Devereaux because Devereaux had the say of his life and death in the United States then; nothing had changed.
The frigate was immense and it loomed closer to the shore. The submarine was completely gone.
Karpov said, “They have abandoned me.”
Denisov said, “Untie him.”
“You don’t know who you are talking to,” Karpov said.
“Welcome to America,” Denisov said in perfect English. It was exactly what Devereaux had said to him seven years ago on the beach in Florida.
Devereaux rubbed his wrists a moment later and stared at the large Russian he had known so many years. Denisov still had the gun; perhaps Denisov still did not see he had no choice.
“What must we do?” Denisov said.
“Try to do the right thing,” Devereaux said.
“Will it be safe for me?”
“What choice do you have?”
“To kill you.”
“That would not be the right thing; you tried t
hat once and it was wrong.” Said in the same flat voice, without inflection and without irony.
“Do not trust,” Karpov broke in.
“Shut up,” Denisov said. Then, to Devereaux: “Take the automatic weapon.”
The sailors took a long time to row back to shore. They saw the foreign land and thought of many things: Their ship and mates, their wives and homes, the sound of Russian, the smell of the countryside.
The sailors were a problem, Devereaux thought. He had not expected it to come this far.
He had expected Denisov to cross him, especially after Hanley told him of the murder of Pierce in Anchorage.
“The sailors will have to get back on their own,” he said. “You tell them the way. How far are we from Nome?”
“Fifteen miles,” Denisov said.
“Tell them the way and the distance and hope they make it. Tell them to walk fast. The weather isn’t so bad and maybe someone will pick them up.”
“They might freeze if the weather turns bad,” Denisov said.
Devereaux said nothing.
Denisov told them and the weapons were thrown in the dinghy and it was shoved offshore and it floated across the waves with violent bobbing. The frigate had turned in the water and it was tracking the submarine.
“What about me?” Karpov said.
Devereaux looked at him and said nothing. He took Denisov’s pistol and fired once at the dinghy. The craft had several air compartments and Devereaux had to fire two more times. The shots were muted in the vastness of the countryside.
The three men got in the car then and drove to Nome. The sailors, still cursing the submarine, began to walk south toward the Teller Road.
39
PERSUASION
“Where is Henry McGee?” Devereaux said.
“I don’t know,” Karpov said.
“Who knows?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who knows?”
“I don’t know.”
After that, Devereaux said nothing.
The plane landed at Merrill Field fifty minutes later and the three men got out. A car was waiting and the driver took them to the hotel.
Section had rented six suites on the eighth floor, three on each side of the suite where Alexa waited.
Denisov had refused to betray Alexa’s hiding place in Anchorage. Devereaux had smiled at that. “She’s going to have a long wait for you, then,” he had said.
Denisov had betrayed Alexa then, after he thought about it.
Karpov was reasonably afraid but he knew American methodology in interrogation. It was not violent, did not use physical force to compel answers.
He blanched when he saw Alexa, dressed in black, standing in the hotel room. He wore handcuffs now, like any federal prisoner, and he wondered what Alexa was doing here.
“What must I do?” she said in perfect English to Devereaux.
“Find out where we have to go,” Devereaux said. “Can you do it in fifteen minutes?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Maybe a little longer.”
“We’ll be at the airport.”
“Then what about him? I mean, if I have to kill him after?”
“You decide,” Devereaux said.
Karpov spoke in Russian to Alexa. She did not change expression. Her face was white, her dark eyes were deep pools without any focus in them at all, without any threat or any pity.
“Take him into the bathroom.”
She had him kneel at the edge of the tub filled with cold water.
“I don’t know anything,” Karpov said in Russian. Devereaux and Denisov opened the door and walked out.
She said to Karpov, “Where is Henry McGee?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She put his head in the icy water and held him under for a minute. She pulled his head out.
“My God,” he gasped.
“Where is Henry McGee?” she asked in the same toneless voice.
“I am a messenger—”
She drowned him for a minute again.
There was pain through his body now and the cold water was in his mouth and nose and ears and it rubbed at his eyes. He did not know cold could be so painful.
“Where is Henry McGee?”
“The Americans do not torture spies—”
“I am Russian,” she said.
Devereaux listened at the pay phone a moment and then replaced the receiver.
He nodded at Denisov and they crossed to the Delta Airlines counter.
“Did she kill him?” Denisov said.
“I didn’t ask,” Devereaux said, taking out his American Express card.
40
SEA CITY FRIDAY NIGHT
Kools was in room 614 of the big, square-block Olympic Hotel. It was a nice room. That was the first part of the plan, to actually be in the hotel so they could have a place to divide up the swag. The second part was to order room service. He ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with steak fries and Heineken beer. The boy brought it up and Kools signed for it, and while he was doing this, he talked to the boy about the hotel and about the people who were in it.
When the boy left, Kools ate the sandwich. He took out the tomato because he didn’t like tomatoes.
He was eating the fries when Peewee came in. Peewee had cleaned up some, washed good, tried not to smell like fish. His face looked bad but a lot of people have smashed-in noses. Like Kools, who had gotten his nose busted twice.
They started working it after Kools finished the fries and after Peewee and he changed into the right clothes. Clothes had cost $200 from a couple of dudes who worked in the hotel. Everything was for sale and now it was payday night.
It was 7:01 P.M. when they knocked at the first door and got no answer.
Henry McGee picked up the phone after the second ring.
“The matter is aborted,” said the voice. That was all.
Henry put the receiver down. His eyes went flat for a moment, thinking about the plan, thinking about what could have gone wrong.
He was naked and Mai-Lin was on the bed, crying.
“Shut the fuck up,” Henry McGee said in a very soft voice.
“You hurt me,” Mai-Lin said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Henry McGee said. He was thinking of the story, how it was going to come out. He was figuring out his own comebacks.
He got up from the bed and went to his shirt on the chair and took out the slip of paper with all the numbers written on it.
He dialed a number.
“I got to have transportation,” he said.
“A brown Toyota sedan will be on the Pike Street entrance in thirty minutes, license 3H487,” the voice said. The voices at these numbers always sounded the same.
“Where are you going?” Mai-Lin said. She had stopped crying but Henry had really hurt her. What had hurt her was not the kinky stuff but the fact that he didn’t care if he hurt her or not. That was new to her. When some of the others had wanted to hurt her—not that she was into that—they were always very nice about it and sorry afterward.
Henry put on his shirt and trousers.
“Where are you going?”
He stared at Mai-Lin. Was she a comeback? But she didn’t know anything about this operation, nothing at all. Except if they came back to the hotel, she was always working the hotel. He could have lost her on Tahiti, it wouldn’t have mattered then.
On the other hand, what was the percentage? He could kill her really soft, just put a pillow over her face and push it down until she was dead. He didn’t get any kicks from that, he liked life too much to get kicks from that.
What had gone wrong?
Devereaux.
Henry McGee smiled at the thought and Mai-Lin thought more than ever that he was crazy. She was starting to get very afraid of him because she had been in the suite for three days and that was scary in itself. She wanted to go out, take a walk down Pike Street, go jogging on Alaska Way alongside the docks and the big ships. She wanted
to get out of here.
Henry went over to the bed and bent over and gave Mai-Lin a nice gentle kiss.
Mai-Lin tried to tongue him but he pulled away.
He reached in his pocket and took out four $100 bills and dropped them on the bed.
“Sleep tonight, honey,” he said.
He had decided not to kill her. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t know that Peewee had knocked at the front door of their suite or that Kools and Peewee had opened the door and come inside. Henry turned to the bedroom door and he saw Kools standing there, just staring at him.
Bob Wagner was drunk and unhappy. Karen O’Hare was trying to smile. They were in Spagoli’s, the week’s newest sensational restaurant according to the San Francisco news media. There was always a new and improved restaurant being touted in the city and the crowds were always enormous once the name was whispered in Herb Caen’s column. The restaurants were invariably Italian in nature, had something to do with vegetarianism or fresh fish, and everyone ate fifteen-dollar-a-plate spaghetti and said they were very satisfied with it.
This one was on Broadway, toward the wharf. It was Friday night and crowded.
Karen O’Hare was watching him because this was crazy.
He plunged ahead. “I really want to get on the right foot with you, I want you to know that you and I should not be fighting.”
“I’m not fighting,” she said. She had said it six or seven times in the past two hours. The spaghetti, she thought, was dreadful, especially the green sauce.
Since he was going to kill her, he wanted to apologize with a nice meal in a nice restaurant. He wanted her to like him.