by Ed McBain
“Felix. How are you, son?”
“You killed that man.”
“I certainly did. Maybe if you hadn’t told him about Lansman I could have kept him alive but—”
“You mean you blame you killing him on me?”
“As soon as you mentioned Lansman he was sure that we had identified him as the assassin. It was either us or him. I tried to tell him that I didn’t care but he was a professional and he had to at least try and kill us.”
I sat down on the corner of a sofa nearest to him.
“How can you be so cavalier about a murder?” I asked.
“I did not murder him,” he replied. “I saved our lives. That man was a stone cold killer. If I hadn’t been keeping up with my tai chi he would have gutted me and then cut your throat.”
I remembered the impact of his kick against my chest and the speed with which he attacked the seemingly unassailable Lawless.
“What about all those witnesses?”
“There were no witnesses.”
“The people in the windows across the way. We were in plain sight of them.”
“Oh no,” Lawless said, shaking his spiky head. “Those windows were one-way panes. I’ve used the same brand myself.”
“So no one saw?”
“No. And even if they did. He was trying to kill us. That was self-defense, Felix.”
“Would either of you boys like to have some tea?” our hostess asked.
“I’d like some English Breakfast if you have it, ma’am,” I said.
She smiled at me and said, “I like this one, Arch. You should hold onto him.”
“He doesn’t want to work for me, Red. Thinks that it’s too dangerous.”
She smiled again. “Green tea for you?”
Lawless nodded and she made her way out of the room.
“What did you call her?” I asked.
“Red.”
“Red Tuesday?”
“Has she asked you if you were Catholic yet?”
For some reason I hadn’t thought that Red Tuesday was a real person. At least not a beautiful middle-aged woman living in a standard working class home.
“If she does,” Lawless continued, “Tell her that your parents are but that you have lapsed in your faith.”
“Okay.”
“Now,” he said. “Lets talk about what we have to do tonight.”
“Tonight? I’m not doing anything with you tonight or any other time. You killed that man.”
“Did I have a choice?”
“I have a choice,” I said. “The choice not to be in the same room with you.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding at me. “But this is a deep problem, Felix. You can see that even I’m in danger here. Sacorliss was an assassin. We certainly ran the danger of a violent confrontation with such a man. But now we’re going to a sanitarium, to see a sick man. There’s no danger involved.”
“Why the hell do you need me in the first place?” I said. “You never even knew me before three days ago. How can I possibly help someone like you?”
“My kind of work is lonely, Felix. And maybe it’s a little bit crazy. I’ve spent a whole lifetime trying to fix broken systems, making sure that justice is served. Lately I’ve been lagging a little. Slowing down, breaking down, making mistakes that could be fatal. Having you by me has given me a little bit of an edge, some confidence that I hadn’t even known was eroded.
“All I ask is that you stick with me until we find the answer to why Sacorliss was activated. Just stick with me until the police believe they have the killer of Henry Lansman.”
“I thought he had a heart attack?”
“No. He was accosted by an aerosol toxin. The autopsy showed that last night. And there’s a warrant out for your arrest in connection with that killing.”
“Me?”
“English Breakfast,” Red Tuesday said as she came into the room. “And green tea for man who watches his health and the health of the enslaved world.”
She carried the delicate teacups on a silver tray, proffering us our drinks.
“Felix?” she said.
“Yes, Ms. Tuesday?”
“Are you a Catholic by any chance?”
“My parents are, ma’am, but I never went after I was twelve.”
Oberman’s Sanitarium had only a small brass sign on the wall to identify itself. Otherwise you would have thought it was a residential prewar building like all its neighbors on the block.
It was twelve-fifteen by the time Derek dropped us off.
Lawless rang the bell and stood there in his gold suit, carrying his medical briefcase. He looked like a rattlesnake in a Sunday bonnet, a stick of dynamite with chocolate coating up to the fuse.
I was sickened by events of the day but still I knew I had to stay with the anarchist because that was the only way for me to keep on top of what was happening. If I left then, even if I ran and went back to New Orleans, I would be vulnerable to dangerous people who could get at me without me ever knowing they were near. And there would still be a warrant out for my arrest.
The door was opened by a woman wearing all white. She was young, tall, and manlike in her demeanor and visage.
“Lawless?” she asked me.
“It’s him,” I said.
“Come quickly.”
We hustled into the building.
She led us to an elevator made for two and took us to the sixth floor.
When we got out she said, “Do you have it?”
Lawless took out a large wallet from his front pocket and counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills. He handed these to the manly nurse.
“No funny stuff,” she said as she folded the bills into her white apron.
“What room is he in?” Lawless responded.
“Seven.”
18
I was surprised by the hominess of the room. Darkish yellow walls with a real wood-framed bed and knickknacks on the shelves and bureaus. On the wall with the largest expanse hung a framed picture that was at least six feet wide and almost that in height. The colors were buff and pale blue. It was a beach at first light. Almost devoid of details it seemed to me a commentary on the beginning of the world.
In a small padded chair next to the one window a thin white man sat looking out on the street. He wore a gray robe over striped blue and white pajamas. His elbows were on his knees, his small mustache was crooked.
“I, I, I thought you were here for me,” he said softly.
The only clue that we were in some kind of medical facility was metal tray-table at the foot of the bed. There was a medical form on a clipboard hanging from the side. Lawless unhooked the clipboard and began to read.
“Yes,” he said to the patient. “I was told that you’re suffering from a mild breakdown. I was called by Dr. Samson to administer Cronomicin.”
“Wh-what’s that?”
Lawless put his briefcase on the metal table and opened it. He took out a hypodermic needle that had already been filled with a pinkish fluid.
Gesturing at the needle, he said, “This will alleviate your anxiety and impose a feeling of calm that will allow you to sleep and wake up without a care in the world.”
I wondered if he had given me some of the same juice.
“Why haven’t they, why haven’t they given it to me before?” Lionel Strangman asked.
“Cronomicin is very expensive. There was a hang-up with the insurance.” Lawless’s smile was almost benign.
“You don’t look like a doctor.” Strangman seemed to be speaking to someone behind the big amber liar.
“Catch me at office hours and I’ll have on my smock just like everybody else.”
“Maybe I should—” Strangman started.
“Give me your arm,” Lawless commanded.
The thin white man did as he was told.
Lawless took a cotton swab and alcohol from his briefcase, cleaned a spot on Strangman’s arm, and then began to search for a vein. I turned my back on them. I
don’t know why exactly. Maybe I thought if I didn’t see the injection I couldn’t bear witness in court.
I went to the picture on the wall. It wasn’t a print, as I had at first thought, but an original oil painting. It was old too. From a few feet distant the beige sky and faint water looked to be seamless. But up close I could make out thousands of small brushstrokes composed of dozens of colors. I imagined some asylum patient of another century making this painting for the inmates of today.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Strangman?” Archibald Lawless was asking the man in the chair.
“Good,” he said without hesitation. “Peaceful. Maybe I should lie down.”
“In a minute. First I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Okay.”
“Dr. Samson told me that you had the collapse after a theft.”
“Yes,” he said. He looked down at his hands. “Funny, it doesn’t seem so important now. They were beautiful, you know. Almost like rubies.”
“They were stolen from a safe in your home?” Dr. Lawless asked.
“Yes.” Strangman looked up. His eyes were beatific as if they were meant to be paired with that painting of the primordial first day. “I woke up and they were gone. They must have drugged me because the police said that they used an explosive on the safe.”
He brought hands to lips as a reflex of grief but the sorrow was forgotten now with Lawless’s elixir in his veins.
“Do you know Benny Lamarr?” Lawless asked.
“Why yes. How did you know that?”
“He called to ask how you were doing. Him and his friend Wayne Sacorliss.”
“Wayne. To look at him you’d never think that he was from Lebanon, would you?”
“No,” Lawless said carelessly. “It surprised me that he was a Moslem.”
“Oh no,” Strangman said in high feminine voice. “Christian. Christian. His mother was from Armenia. But he’s an American now.”
“Did you work with him?”
“No. He works for Benny. Poor Benny.”
“Why do you say that?” Lawless asked.
“He brought his fianceé to a party at my house. The next night she was in my bed.” Even under the spell of the narcotic Strangman was a dog.
“Who are you?” I asked Archibald Lawless.
We were sitting in the window seat of a twenty-four-hour diner on the West Side Highway at 2:57 A.M.
“You’re not questioning my name again, are you?”
“No. Not that. How did you get into that clinic? How did you know what drug to give Strangman? How did you know what that killer was thinking? No one man can do all these things.”
“You’re right.”
“I thought so. Who do you work for? Really.”
“You’re a very intelligent young man, Felix. But intelligence alone doesn’t help you rise above. You see clearly, more clearly, than most, but you don’t apprehend.
“I am, everyone is, a potential sovereignty, a nation upon my own. I am responsible for every action taken in my name and for every step that I take—or that I don’t take. When you get to the place that you can see yourself as a completely autonomous, self-governing entity then everything will come to you; everything that you will need.”
A waiter brought us coffee then. I sat there drinking, thinking about the past few days. I had missed two seminars and a meeting with my advisor. I hadn’t been home, though I doubted if my roommate would notice. I had been arrested for suspicion of my involvement in a murder, made love to by a woman I didn’t really know, I had been an accessory to a killing, and party to the illegal impersonation of a doctor—in addition to the unlawful administration of contraband drugs. I was temporarily in the employ of a madman and involved in the investigation of the theft of millions of dollars in diamonds. And, even though I was aware of all those aspects of the past few days, I was still almost totally in the dark.
“What are we doing, Mr. Lawless? What are we involved in?”
He smiled at me. The swamp of his eyes grew to an endless, hopeless vista.
“Can’t you put it together yet, Felix?”
“No sir.”
He smiled and reached over to pat my forearm. There was something very calming about this gesture.
“To answer one of your questions,” he said. “I once saved the life of the daughter of a man who is very influential at the St. Botolph Hospital.”
“So?”
“Botolph funds Oberman’s Sanitarium. I called this man and asked him to intervene. A price was set and there you are.”
“I thought all you wanted me to do was take notes,” I said, exhausted by the stretch of Lawless’s reach.
“Tonight we’ll go to a place I know across the river and tomorrow we’ll come back to clear it all up.” He reached in his pocket and came out with two dollar bills. “Oh. I seem to be a little short. Do you have any cash, son?”
“What about that big fat wallet you paid the nurse from?”
“I only had what I needed for the bribe. Don’t you have some money left from that IOU you left me?”
I paid the bill and we left.
There was a motorboat waiting for us off a dilapidated pier across the West Side Highway. Because there were no stairs we had to jump down onto the launch, which then took us up river and deposited us at strange river inn on the Jersey side of the Hudson.
The inn had its own small dock. The boat captain, who was dark-skinned and utterly silent, let us off there. The key to the door was in a coffee can nailed to a wall. Lawless brought us in an area that was at least partially submerged in the River.
There was no one else in residence, at least no one there that I could see. The door Lawless opened led to a circular room that had four closed doors and led to an open hallway.
“Room two is yours,” the anarchist told me. “Breakfast will be at the end of the hall when you wake up.”
The bed was bunklike but very comfortable. Maybe the drug I’d been given before was still in effect but whatever the circumstance I was asleep as soon as I lay down.
19
The sunrise over Manhattan was magnificent. It sparkled on the water and shone brightly in my little cockleshell room. For almost the first full minute of consciousness I forgot my problems.
The respite was soon over, however. By the time I sat up anxiety was already clouding my mind. I dressed quickly. The hall outside my door led to a wide room under a low roof that was dominated by an irregularly shaped table—set for two.
“Good morning, Felix.”
Archibald Lawless was eating scrambled eggs. A small Asian woman sat on a small stool against the wall. When I entered the room she stood up and pulled out the seat next to the anarchist. She nodded for me to sit and when I did so she scuttled out of the room.
“Mr. Lawless.”
“Don’t look so sad, son. Today all of our problems will be solved.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, half smiling, looking like the main deity of some lost Buddhist tribe that found itself marooned in Africa an eon ago. “This is a halfway house. One of many such places where certain unpopular foreign dignitaries and agents come when they have to do business in America.”
“Like who?” I asked.
“Militants, dethroned dictators, communist sympathizers, even anarchists have stayed here. Presidents and kings unpopular with current American regimes have slept in the same bed that you have, waiting to meet with clandestine mediators or diplomats from the UN.”
“But there’s no security.”
“None that you’ve seen,” Lawless said, bearing that saintly mien. “But there’s enough protection close at hand to fend off an NYPD swat team.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
“All right,” he replied. “Have it your way.”
The small woman returned with a plate of eggs and herring, a small bowl of rice and a mug full of smoky flavored tea. After serving me she returned to her perch a
gainst the wall.
I ate for a while. Lawless looked out of the window at Manhattan.
“So at the office you look at New Jersey and here you look at New York.”
He cackled and then laughed. He grabbed my neck with his powerful hand and said, “I like you, boy. You know how to make me laugh.”
“Who do you plan to kill today?”
He laughed again.
“I talked to your girlfriend last night,” he said.
“Who?” I wondered if he had somehow gotten in touch with Sharee.
“Lana,” he said articulating her name as an opera singer might in preparation for singing it later on. “She and Mr. Lamarr practised being engaged before she seduced Strangman.”
“Okay.”
“He told her things.”
“What things?”
“People he trusted . . . places where certain transactions were to transpire.”
“And where might that be?” I asked, sucked into the rhythm of his improvisational operetta.
“Today we go to Peninsula Hotel,” he said. “There all of our problems will come to an end.”
We exited the Refugee Inn (Lawless’s term for it) by climbing a steep trail which led to a dirt path that became a paved lane after a quarter mile or so. There Derek was waiting for us. He drove off without asking for a destination.
On the way Lawless talked to me about my duties as his scribe. I was tired of arguing with him, and just a little frightened after seeing how easily he killed the assassin Wayne Sacorliss, and so I let him go on without contradiction.
A block away from the hotel I began to get nervous.
“What are we going to do here?” I asked.
“Have breakfast.”
“We just had breakfast.”
“The sacrifices we must make for the movement,” he said. “Sometimes you have to wallow with the fat cats and follow their lead. Here, put these on.”
He handed me a pair of glasses that had thick black rims and a blond wig.
“What are these for?”
“You’re going to be incognito.”
I donned the glasses and wig because I had already learned that there was logic to every move that my would-be employer made. I also half believed that the outlandish getup would get us thrown out of the hotel.