Firebird_A Spy Story of the 1960's

by Noel Hynd

  John Ironhorse looked at the man and the woman sitting to one side, the woman in particular in a state of shock. The man was comforting her.

  “So?” Ironhorse asked. “Mr. Cooper? Did you know this guy?”

  Cooper shook his head. “No,” he said. He stood.

  “You?” Ironhorse asked Lauren.

  “No,” Lauren said.

  “And he had you at gunpoint?”

  “He was marching us up the stairs when someone came up quietly behind him and shot him,” Cooper said.

  “That was careless, wasn’t it?” Ironhorse said.

  “Of us or him?”

  “Both.”

  “And you didn’t see no one?” Ironhorse asked.

  “Not that I’d recognize,” Cooper said. “When the first shot was fired, I hit the deck.”

  “So did I,” Lauren said.

  “Whoever shot him turned and ran downstairs.”

  “Yeah,” Ironhorse said. “Nobody saw nothing. Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

  Cooper shrugged.

  The homicide detectives arrived.

  The first detective flashed his shield and gave his name as Corelli. He looked down at the dead man and the German pistol that lay near him. He pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows but said nothing. The second homicide detective was Det. Eric Młynarski. Corelli and Młynarski exchanged a glance. Looking at a fresh corpse, they elevated nonchalance to an art form.

  Corelli turned to Ironhorse. “Anyone see anything?” he asked.

  “The gentleman here. And the lady,” Ironhorse said, indicating Cooper.

  Cooper stood.

  “What can you tell us?” Det. Corelli asked.

  Cooper had his more detailed account ready.

  “This guy accosted us when we were coming in the front door. Pulled a pistol on us. Made me unlock the front door, held the gun to Lauren’s head. Told me to lead him upstairs.”

  “Robbery?” Corelli asked.

  Cooper hesitated. “I used to be an investigative reporter,” he said. “Someone with a grudge probably hired someone. How the hell do I know? There must be a hundred people out there who’d like to kill me.”

  “Which one of you lives here? Or do you both?” Młynarski asked.

  “I do,” Cooper said. “We both work for the New York Eagle.”

  “Doing what?”

  “We’re both reporters,” Lauren said.

  “We were working election night,” Cooper said. “Just coming home.”

  Młynarski was busy writing notes.

  Cooper continued with his version of the events.

  The gunman was marching him and Lauren up the stairs at gunpoint, he said. It could have been a robbery but thought it was more likely a grudge. He wasn’t sure which. The gunman seemed to mean business and threatened to shoot Lauren in the head if there was any resistance.

  Lauren corroborated that part of the story.

  They arrived on the third floor landing when a shot rang out. A hell of a loud shot, he recalled. Deafening. Cooper said that he thought Lauren had been executed and he would be next. Instinctively, as he told it, he ducked, averting his gaze.

  Then there was a second shot, maybe two seconds after the first. He hit the ground and was amazed that he was alive. He realized that someone had come up behind the gunman and shot him from behind, Cooper related. By the time he turned and looked, the second assailant had hurried away and gone downstairs. It was all over in a matter of seconds, maybe three, Cooper said, though the shock effect would linger forever.

  “Certainly less than five seconds,” Lauren agreed.

  “So you never got a good look at the trigger man?” Corelli asked.

  “Nope,” Cooper said.

  Lauren shook her head. “Like I said. When the first shot was fired, I dropped down. I hid my face. I thought I was going to die.”

  Corelli turned to a new arrival. Jonas Halász, the superintendent. Jonas, a wise man, had not seen anything, either.

  “Asleep,” he said. “I heard commotion. Shooting. Then shouts. People in building opening doors, slamming them. Then fast footsteps coming downstairs. A man running out the door. I come out and I hear commotion upstairs, I come up and find Mr. Cooper and this lady. I’m so glad they all safe.”

  “You have a peephole,” Corelli said. “You didn’t look?”

  “Not always smart to look.”

  “Yeah,” said Młynarski.

  Jonas was remarkably calm. He looked as if he had just showered. His hair was wet, his hands freshly and carefully scrubbed. Cooper wondered where the cagey old Hungarian freedom fighter had stashed his semi-automatic FÉG PA-63.

  Cooper knew it was stashed somewhere, perhaps down a drainpipe, at least temporarily. No good could come of subjecting that piece of small artillery to a fresh ballistics test.

  “Got any idea who might have been lurking in the building?” Corelli asked.

  Jonas shrugged. “Ukrainians. Russians.”

  “Huh?”

  “They all crazy fuckers,” Jonas said. “They lurk. They come here. They all kill each other. No good.”

  Corelli gave Cooper a glance. Cooper opened his hands in a who knows? gesture.

  “Why would there Russians in this building?” Młynarski asked.

  “They’re everywhere.”

  “Yeah, but why here and now this evening?”

  Jonas shrugged.

  “Don’t ask me, ask him,” said Jonas, indicating the dead man.

  “He’s not going to do much talking,” Corelli said.

  “Dead people never do,” Cooper said.

  “Something ain’t right here,” Corelli said.

  “Mr. Halász fought Russians in Hungary in 1956,” Cooper said. “He can be a little obsessive. Maybe even imaginative. Inventive. But he’s the best building manager in the damned city. Take my word.”

  “I get it,” Corelli said.

  Corelli turned back to the superintendent.

  “You killed Russians in '56, huh?” Młynarski said.

  “Soviets. Proudly!” said Jonas. “Invaded my country, murdered my family. I wish I killed more of them!”

  Młynarski flipped shut his notebook. “They raped fucking Poland, too. Someone should have given you a medal for killing Russians,” the detective said.

  Jonas stood an inch taller.

  The people from the crime lab were arriving.

  The detectives invited Cooper, Lauren and Jonas to come over and give official statements the next afternoon. They accepted.

  Cooper and Richie went back upstairs to Cooper’s apartment as the forensic work continued. Cooper was no sooner in the door when he reached for the nearest bottle, which happened to be Bushmill’s.

  “Join me?” he asked.

  “A damned big one,” she said.

  “I’m glad we understand each other,” he said, pouring liberally.

  She came to him.

  They embraced and trembled into each other’s arms. Idly, Cooper wondered anew how close he could come to death without death finally embracing him. At least, he felt, he could put off the embrace for another day.

  Downstairs, the mobile unit of crime lab removed the body by three a.m. They concluded its inspection of the area by 4:30 a.m. There would be nearly twelve hundred reported homicides in the five boroughs in 1968, in addition to another few hundred unreported and scores undiscovered. As was the case here, there was no immediate arrest.

  Chapter 92

  S.W. Murphy sat in his corner office Thursday morning, looking at a document on his desk. He barely looked up when Cooper, summoned, came in. He gave a slight jerk of the head to the chair to his left in front of the desk. Behind him, the gray landscape of Manhattan was visible in the plate glass window, but rain was streaking the glass.

  “Sit down,” Murphy said, still not looking up. “Right there,” he said, indicating the chair. “Don’t say a damned word till I talk to you.”

  This time, Cooper
did not dare.

  From somewhere behind Cooper, Constance Higgins he assumed it was, quietly went to the door. She closed it with a soft click.

  Several seconds passed. Murphy finally looked up.

  “Well, now,” he said. “Hot night on the upper west side the other evening, wasn’t it? Must have been interesting, a dead man in the hallway, blood-spattered walls and all that. Your building, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “It was. Yes.”

  “Not the type of thing that happens in Southport, Connecticut where I live. I love a fascinating inside story. Want to tell me one?”

  “Not really. There was a pretty good account in our paper. Did you read it?”

  “I read it. I was wondering if you could offer a tad more?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, be generous. Why don’t you share your personal version with me?”

  Cooper thumbnailed it for the boss, adding a small detail but keeping the picture small.

  “So that’s it?” Murphy asked. “That’s all?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Word reaches me that another of our employees was with you, ascending the staircase of doom in that roach hotel where you reside, probably with the light of love in her eyes.”

  “It’s not illegal, you know.”

  “Maybe it should be,” Murphy said. “I’m not fond of your habit of dipping your pen into the company inkwell. And with a girl half your age?”

  “Lauren is older than that.”

  “Two-thirds, then?”

  “Is this what I’m here to discuss?” Cooper asked.

  Several seconds passed. “No,” said Murphy. “To use your catch-all answer, ‘Not really.’”

  “Just an old man stretching out his lines of curiosity,” Murphy said. “How the other half lives. Love and death on the New York Eagle.”

  He pushed the papers in front of him to the side.

  “You haven’t seen Brother Friedkin in the last day or so, have you?” Murphy asked.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Either here or anywhere else on this earth?” Murphy persisted.

  “Nowhere. I haven’t seen him at all.”

  “Confess.”

  “What are you trying to find out, Steve?” Cooper asked.

  “I’d like to get my damned hands on him, if I may, so I can wring his dark head, the head with the ink stains and the one that contains the tongue with the lexicon of a pornographer. So I was hoping you could send me in the proper direction.”

  “Can’t help you.”

  “Spoken to him? Phone? Semaphore?”

  “Nothing,” said Cooper. “I was wondering about him, myself.”

  “I’m told he had a lithe little female friend, given to stringed instruments and illegal drugs. Long hair and short skirts, which is better than the other way around. Does that ring a bell?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “Do you know where we might find her so that we might contact him?”

  “No.”

  “And so it would come as a surprise to you to learn that he’s been canned in absentia, I suppose,” Murphy continued. “Sacked. Terminated. Axed. Pink slipped. I’ve kicked his sorry pushy speak-British-act-Yiddish ass off this paper. Come as a shocker, does it?”

  “Am I surprised? No,” Cooper said. “Normally he’s here today to hand in his column. But now that you mentioned in, I haven’t seen him.”

  “’Haven’t seen him.’ And you damned well won’t,” Murphy said, carefully repeating Cooper’s words. “Not in this architectural treasure of a building if he values his life. Did you read that off-color piece of crap he wrote in the Wednesday edition?”

  “I read it.”

  “And what did you think?”

  “A little harsh, maybe. Opinion piece. Isn’t that what you pay him for?”

  “’A little harsh!’ Damned Bolshevik! Where does he get the brass balls to turn in a column laden with obscenities and claiming the United States is on the road to fascism when we just had a fair and honest election?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Cooper said. “Ask him.”

  “He’s not to set foot in this building again!” Murphy said, his voice rising suddenly in extreme anger. “Nor will I be breaking bread with him. If anything gets broken, it will be his legs. Or, maybe better, his neck. Or perhaps I’ll have him slowly eviscerated for the illicit use of profane gerunds. Do you read me?”

  There was a longer silence.

  “So why are you telling me?” Cooper asked.

  “Because the two of you are cozy,” Murphy said. “Perhaps you can— “

  Indignation rose to Cooper’s defense. “I haven’t seen him. I haven’t spoken to him and I’m not responsible for what he writes. So get off my back, okay?” he snapped. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Your job is on the line here, Frank Cooper.”

  “What the hell else is new?”

  Murphy seethed. He fingered the papers in front of him.

  “I thought everything he wrote went past you,” Cooper continued. “No? You didn’t sign off on his last column? It required your initials to go to press.”

  Murphy smoldered.

  “Not always,” Murphy said. “My initials were on the copy but not by my hand,” Murphy confessed. “Mr. Siegelman is having a shit fit over the fucking use of fucking profanity in his fucking newspaper! And he didn’t like the rest of Friedkin’s fucking coverage either.”

  “Well, who put him on the Wallace campaign to start with, Steve?” Cooper asked. “That’s your real problem.”

  “The edition with the profanity sold out on every newsstand in the city. I’m told it’s a collector’s item in New York journalism. Mr. Siegelman remains furious despite the one million dollar one-day profit.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “That’s all I have to say,” the managing editor said. “Kindly, get out of my office.”

  Cooper took the suggestion without uttering another word, profane or otherwise.

  Chapter 93

  Over the ensuing weekend, Cooper came up with some curious further revelations about his visit to the boss’s office. He and Lauren were unwinding on a Saturday evening at Lincoln Center. There was a light drizzle, but a heavier rain had stopped. For fresh air, they started walking uptown on Broadway. At 80th Street, they took a detour to walk into Zabar’s to buy coffee. There they ran smack into Martin Friedkin who was buying a chocolate babka at the pastry counter.

  “Yes, I was fired,” Friedkin said, responding to Cooper’s inquiry. “I’m not to go into that salt mine again. Isn’t it great?”

  “Great?” Lauren asked.

  “Right-o,” said Friedkin. “Just what I wanted. I’m happy as hell to be out of that place. Murphy tore up my contract and paid me a severance.” Friedkin paused and proudly continued, “I’ve already been hired by the Guardian.”

  “Which Guardian?” Cooper asked.

  “The only Guardian that matters,” said Friedkin. “The one published in Manchester. In the UK.”

  A chubby female clerk with a pinkish face behind the baked goods counter smiled. She handed Friedkin his babka in a waxed bag.

  “So you’re going back to England?” Cooper asked.

  “Hello, no. Not a chance. I haven’t lived there for years and want no part of repatriation. I’m staying here. I’ll be on the Guardian staff in Washington. Covering politics. I’m happy as a pig rolling in shit.”

  Cooper laughed and gave him a pat on the arm. “I’m glad someone is,” he said.

  A lithe woman appeared at Friedkin’s side. Frank and Lauren assumed it was his muse, at least for the evening. She immediately latched onto Friedkin’s arm.

  “Hi,” she said. She was a lean woman with a stark beautiful face and reddish hair. “This is Elizabeth,” he said, introducing her. “She keeps me out of trouble on Saturday nights.”

  “Not very likely,” said Elizabeth in an accent that indicated sh
e was American. Friedkin further introduced her as a music student at Juilliard.

  They shared a laugh. Friedkin then tugged Elizabeth along. They were about to be on their way when Friedkin turned back. “Oh, Frank, listen. I feel a little bad about what happened to Murphy,” he said. “Tell him that if you see him. Express my regrets, would you? But then again,” he added with a smirk, “he brought it on himself by shagging his mistress when he should have been in the office, right?”

  “What do you mean by ‘what happened’?” Cooper asked.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Neither of us were in the office today,” Lauren said,

  “Oh. Murphy fired me Thursday morning. Then Siegelman fired Murphy Friday evening.”

  “Who’s the new managing editor?” Cooper asked.

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Friedkin said. “I heard Siegelman snatched someone off the Philadelphia Daily News, but that’s just hearsay. Can’t print hearsay, you know?”

  Chapter 94

  Cooper returned to the obituaries on the Eagle. Lauren Richie returned to the sports desk. Sam was doing well on rehab now, so Lauren Richie became assistant editor, and acting editor until Sam’s return, the first one on sports on a big time New York journal.

  Some strings were pulled in Washington and New York pursuant to the messy shooting on West 96th Street. Brett Molloy took a few meetings with the New York City Police Commissioner as well as the commanding officer of the precinct where the shooting occurred. As a matter of national security, and local convenience, the investigation was relaxed.

  Molloy even dropped by the Eagle a few times. Finally, with a handshake, Cooper and Lauren agreed to drop their various inquiries into Firebird, at least for the time being, and at least as far as print was concerned.

  Emotionally, professionally, it was a wise decision. They were both basket cases.

  And so in the weeks and months that followed, Cooper and Lauren shared the unsettling sense of having watched the events of the previous year unfold in slow motion, one horror after another, first starting in distant places—the Martin Luther King assassination, the Robert Kennedy assassination, the ongoing war in Viet Nam, the Wallace campaign—and having them move inevitably closer to him until a bullets whizzed close to their own heads and left them splattered by blood and bone fragments.