The Wabash Factor

by Howard Fast

  “There is no sunshine in Ireland in March.”

  “And have them look a bit Irish, Sean—you know, some old Irish clothes, and if anyone speaks to them, let them put on a heavy brogue so they won’t be spotted as Americans.”

  “For God’s sake, will you let me talk to them?” Fran cried.

  Sarah was on the telephone first. After a few words, Fran choked up. The day was taking its toll. “Is Mommy all right?” Sarah wanted to know.

  “Yes, just full of emotion right now.”

  “Mommy, Mommy,” Sarah said. “You mustn’t worry about us. It’s just such an adventure, and Gavin taking such good care of me, and really, I feel like someone in a film—” That went on for a while, Fran pulling herself together and managing to talk reasonably well, and then Gavin saying to me, “Look, Pop, I have things under control, and believe me, I won’t let Sarah out of my sight, and I can take care of both of us. You know that. And, Mom, you don’t worry about either of us. But, Pop, you have to tell me something. What’s going on?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Just a hint or something.”

  “No. Nothing. Only, you and Sarah must take new names for the few days you’ll be there. I spoke to Sean about other things.”

  “You’re sure? Just a few days? Pop, you have to call both schools, otherwise they’ll report us missing.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “But we can drift around Dublin, can’t we?”

  I hesitated. “All right—but always together. And be careful.”

  “If I didn’t know you and Mom, I’d think you were crazy.”

  “We’re not crazy.”

  “But Pop, you have to admit the whole thing is crazy.”

  “Oh, no. Now you do as I tell you, Gavin, and when you’re out on the street, if anyone comes onto either of you, pushing to know who you are, you get the hell back to St. Joseph’s.”

  I let Fran do most of the talking after that, only cutting in to tell them that we’d call back in a few days.

  When I put down the telephone and walked into the bedroom, Fran was standing, breathing deeply. “Oh, I feel wonderful,” she said. “They’re so beautiful and clever—oh, I do love them. Harry, can he, they—whoever is doing this—can he find them there?”

  “In time, I suppose. He would have to find the drivers who took them to the airport and then what airline and then get to the ticket files and then find out who in Ireland has a connection with us, or maybe get it from the cabdriver at Shannon—yes, he could trace them, but it would have to take three to ten days, and only if he felt the necessity to get at them.”

  “Harry—Why? Why must they find our kids?”

  “To close our mouths without killing us. The kids are a trump card. He’d have to be lucky. It wouldn’t be easy.” She fled into my arms, and I held her tightly. “We just have to get him first,” I said, as calmly as I could.

  “It would be nice if we knew who he is.”

  “We’ll know. Sooner or later. And we’ll stop him.”

  She shook her head mutely and said, “Turn on the TV.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Harry, don’t you want to know what happened back there?”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “Harry,” she said firmly, “turn on that damn TV. It’s just eleven o’clock, and I want to see the news.”

  You didn’t fuss with Fran when she got that tone in her voice. I switched on the set, and after a rundown on the Hart, Mondale, and Jackson primary campaign, the anchorman turned to local matters, showing us some pictures of a broken water main in midtown. That was followed by pictures of firemen spraying water on what was left of a burning car. Against the film, the anchorman said a few words about the strange chase in midtown Manhattan, then turned it over to the network’s man on the scene. He was more explicit, informing us that, “No light has as yet been shed on this strange and somewhat terrible tragedy. As near as we have been able to piece it together, this car had been engaged in a wild chase after a medallion cab. We have a witness here.” The witness was a stout middle-aged lady, who, enjoying the position of being observed by millions of viewers, said firmly, “Well, I was just coming out of the store there when I saw these two cars come screeching by. The first car was a cab, and chasing it was this other car which I don’t know what it was. Both cars turned the corner so fast I thought they would turn over, but they didn’t.”

  “Apparently,” the network man said, taking it back from the fat lady, “the two cars sped down to First Avenue, turned north and then west on the side street. The garbage truck was parked as you see it.”

  He pointed his mike at the sanitation man standing beside the truck, who shook his head sadly and said, “We always try to park to leave a decent lane, but it ain’t always possible. When you get a rotten job of parking, like that car at the curb, we got to block the street until we pick up. No other way. So help me God, I don’t know how that cab got through. There couldn’t have been more than a tiny fraction of an inch of clearance on either side. The second car hit the truck and then was smashed against the parked car on the other side.”

  The network man then turned to the fireman in charge. The flames were out and they had turned off their hoses. He said to the fireman, “Both men in the car are dead—right?”

  “They’re dead, yes. More than dead. They’re pretty well burned to a crisp.”

  “Beyond identification?”

  “Oh, yes. I would think so. Even the dental work goes in that kind of heat.”

  “And the car?”

  The fireman shrugged. “Sure, they can look for an engine number or some such thing when it cools down, but it’s not likely they’ll find anything. Too much heat. It melts the metal. You know”—pointing to two other skeletons of cars—“three fires, not one, and a lot of gasoline. It didn’t do much to the garbage truck except to burn the rear tires and some garbage. It’s the rubber that makes the smoke and the heat—”

  “Let’s go to sleep,” Fran said.

  I switched off the TV. I didn’t want to hear any more either.

  Chapter 9

  SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT, Fran and I awakened at the same time. That happens to us quite often, as if we were connected some way in our sleep, and Fran felt for my body, as if uncertain that I was there, and then she said, “Harry, how long has this awful business been going on?”

  “Not much more than a week.”

  “No, you’re wrong. It’s been months.”

  “No, baby.”

  “A week?” She was silent, and I lay there with my eyes open. “A week—Harry, do you remember you once told me that if an assassin wants to kill someone and is willing to put his life on the line, he can’t be stopped?”

  “Did I say that?”

  “He’s going to kill all of us, isn’t he, Harry?”

  “Over my dead body,” I said, without realizing what I was saying. Then, hearing a strange sound, I asked her whether she was crying.

  “I’m giggling, Harry. Over my dead body—did you know what you were saying?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Why don’t we go to the cops?”

  “I’m the cops. Try to sleep, Red.” I hadn’t called her that in years. Only her oldest brother, Charley Murphy, who was a wealthy, important downtown lawyer, called her Red and got away with it.

  “Red?”

  “I don’t know where that came from. Deep inside. The kids on the block called you Red, didn’t they? You used to go crazy. But you remember the time old Harry beat up Crazy Louey and saved you?”

  “I’m sleeping.”

  “Good. I always thought that was why you married me. Crazy Louey was twice my size. I was heroic.”

  And after that, I actually fell asleep for a couple of hours.

  I woke up at seven, to the sound of the shower. The woman who came out of the bathroom looked better than she had in days. She had brushed off my suit, and had provided a clean shirt and ti
e. I was fairly presentable. Fran in a white blouse, blue pleated skirt, and white sweater, looked more than presentable. We went downstairs to the coffee shop, which was the only restaurant the small hotel could boast of, and we ordered a large breakfast. Apparently, speaking to the kids had restored our appetites. Bill Hoffman came by and sat down at our table for a moment and asked us how it went last night.

  “Good and smooth.”

  “Now remember,” he said to us, “anything I can help with, including some fat and muscle that’s still pretty effective.”

  I asked him whether he could cash a check, and he said that a couple of hundred dollars would be no problem at all. When he had gone, I said to Fran, “You remember the program?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “I’m absolutely certain they don’t know we’re here. There’s no way they can cover New York, not with a thousand men, and why should they think of the public library?”

  “I wish we could stay together, Harry.”

  “No. The thought of anything happening to you makes me sick, but we have to do it this way, and we have to move very quickly.”

  “And what’s our destination, Harry? Will you tell me that. Do you know where we’re going?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of? What does that mean?”

  “Can’t you trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “Please don’t start that, Fran. We can’t have one of those rotten fights that we fall into. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “Walk, if you don’t mind—on foot is safer.”

  “Harry, I love you so. I never mean for these stupid fights to start, and if we ever come out of this, I’ll never fight with you again.”

  “I know. I said to walk, darling, because the more we avoid things like cabs, the better off we are.”

  She was able to smile. “What things, Harry? There aren’t any things like cabs—except cabs.”

  “I only said it to make you smile.”

  “Oh, yes. And what’s your program for today?”

  “To track down the beast.”

  “That’s very colorful, Harry, but a cop doesn’t say that. A cop says to arrest the perpetrator.”

  I stood at the entrance to the hotel, watching her walk down the street. She was a damn fine figure of a woman. She went uptown, I went downtown. At a street-corner phone booth, I stopped to call Oscar. I can now admit that my precautions were paranoid, but at the time I was not in a logical frame of mind, and how did I know that they had not tapped Oscar’s phone? I caught him just as he was about to leave the apartment, and he wanted to know what was happening to me, and had I gone off the deep end, and was Fran with me, and why had Sergeant Toomey called him last night, and why had Captain Courtny called him at half past seven this morning to find out whether Oscar knew where I was, and why had my kids walked out of their respective schools and disappeared?

  “I’m all right, Fran’s all right, the kids are all right.”

  “Harry, what on God’s earth is going on?”

  “I can’t explain over the telephone. When this is over, I’ll give you a blow-by-blow account, but meanwhile I desperately need a favor.”

  “I’ll try.” A long moment of silence then. “Harry, are you still there?”

  “Where will you be in fifteen minutes?”

  “Twenty minutes. In my office at the university.”

  “I’ll call you there,” I said.

  I walked on downtown. There is no way in the world to trace a call in less than six or seven minutes. At a public telephone on 23rd Street, I called my station house and asked for Captain Courtny.

  “Golding? God damn you, Golding, where the hell are you?”

  “Outside.”

  “Well, get your fuckin’ ass in here.”

  “Just hold on!” I snapped back. “What were you doing calling my kids at college?”

  “Trying to find you.”

  “You are a fuckin’ liar! I was with Toomey! You knew that!”

  “You are stretching it, Harry—you are stretching it. You once were a cop; now you’re an asshole. Where are you?”

  “Outside. I said that before.”

  “When can we expect you, Lieutenant Golding?” he asked nastily.

  “Three-thirty or so.”

  He slammed down the telephone. I replaced my phone, walked slowly over to Park Avenue and 18th Street, and called Oscar on a telephone there.

  “I thought your phone might be tapped,” I explained.

  “Harry, are you sure you’re all right?”

  “You mean have I flipped out? No, I haven’t. I am very cool-headed and precise in what I am doing, but I need help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I have to talk to someone who knows as much about the financial structure of this country as you know about its social structure, I mean the kind of stuff they keep track of in Fortune magazine, stocks, industries, the whole shtick. You must know someone in that line of work.”

  “I do.”

  “Good, good. Who is he?”

  “His name is Harvey Crimshaw, and he’s the head of research and analysis at Denton, Frobish and Kemp.”

  “And what is Denton, Frobish and Kemp?”

  “Only the third largest brokerage house in America, and what Harvey doesn’t know about American business is not worth knowing.”

  “All right. I must talk to him, today. Can you arrange for us to have lunch?”

  “Harry, hold on. Just hold on. A man like Harvey has his luncheon meetings scheduled weeks in advance. This is one of the most important financial experts in America. They come to him from Washington when they’re looking for a few facts to pad out their illusions.”

  “Oscar, this is life and death. Not life and death, but the kind of death where you stay dead. It’s my life and Fran’s life and maybe my kids’ lives—and it must be now, today.”

  “Are you putting me on, Harry.”

  “No. No, believe me.”

  “I believe you, and somehow I’ll persuade him. I’ll be out of my class in an hour and a half. Can you call me then?”

  I blessed him and thanked him, left the public phone stand, and walked across 18th Street to the building that housed Wabash Protection. According to the information board, Wabash had three full floors, and the uniformed concierge, sitting at his desk in the lobby, had probably been supplied by Wabash. He stopped me as I started toward the elevator and asked me where I was bound for. I told him, and he pointed to a bank of elevators. “Those for Wabash,” he said.

  “I want the executive offices.”

  “Seventeenth floor.”

  When I left the elevator on the seventeenth floor, on the wall at the opposite side of a large, painfully modern reception room, there was an enormous map of the United States with small lights spotted all over it. The print underneath the map read, THERE ARE OVER TWO HUNDRED WABASH OFFICES IN THE UNITED STATES. A very pretty blond lady, sitting at a desk in front of the map, smiled at me and asked me who I would like to see.

  “Whoever runs this place. The top man.”

  “That would be Mr. Comstock. Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m afraid it’s impossible. He sees no one without an appointment.”

  “Just call in and tell him that Lieutenant Golding of the New York City police wants to talk to him. I think he’ll see me.” I showed her my badge. “Just to quiet any doubts you may have.”

  The pretty blonde looked at me, and suddenly she was no longer simply a smiling, pretty blonde, but a tough, sharp-nosed young woman whose cold blue eyes studied me shrewdly. She picked up her phone, punched some buttons, listened after she told them who I was, and then said to me, “Please follow me.”

  Was I afraid? Afterward, Fran asked me that. Was I afraid? And I told her that I was damned afraid, but then it wasn’t the first time. All cops are afraid, except for
those few who are genuinely demented. It comes with the job, and here, inside Wabash, I was very much afraid. I’m no hero; I’m just a middle-sized, middle-aged Jewish cop.

  The blonde put me into a corridor, where another blonde was waiting. My son, Gavin, who is a science fiction fan, would have called them cloned. I accepted the fact that they used the same hair bleach and wore the same makeup. The second blonde opened the door of an office for me and nodded for me to enter. It was furnished in the tasteless modern style of the reception room, the only interesting piece in it a large free-form marble tabletop. There was no desk as such. The man who occupied the place sat at one end of a big couch, thumbing through a clipboard holding a dozen sheets of paper. Behind him, an enormous painting, meaningless to me, covered with splashes of paint and two large circles, one black and one red. He put aside the clipboard and rose. He was a tall man with a lean face. Quite good-looking. “I’m Comstock,” he said, “and you’re Golding.” He didn’t offer to shake hands or ask me to sit down.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, not with annoyance or anger or cordiality—just flat.

  “I’d like some information about two of your operatives. One, by name Bert Smith, was murdered in San Fernando. He had been practicing medicine illegally under the name of Green. The other, Piper Heston, was arrested conducting a search of my apartment.”

  “We don’t give out information about our operatives, Lieutenant. You should know that.”

  “What was one of them doing in my apartment?”

  “My dear Lieutenant,” Comstock said, “in New York City alone, we have over eight hundred operatives. Do you really expect me to know what one of them was doing in your apartment?”

  “Yes, I damn well do.”

  “Lieutenant, I agreed to see you because I had assumed that you were here on police business. Apparently, you are not, so I am afraid our little chat is over.”

  It was cold, quick, and humiliating. He opened the door for me and pointed down the corridor. No blonde this time. “The elevators are to your left,” he said. Then he closed his door and I was alone in the corridor. Well, what had I expected?

  As I started to walk down the corridor to the elevators, the reception room, and the pretty blonde, one of the office doors in the wall opened and a young man stepped into the corridor. He was about six two in height, hair cropped short, his neck the size eighteen of a football player, his muscles filling out his suit very nicely. He had a good-looking boyish face, and he smiled as he informed me that Mr. Comstock would like me to wait around for an hour or two because someone was expected who could answer my questions.