by Garbo Norman
Well, Tony … thought Burke.
He thought it sadly and with true pain because Kreuger had been a friend, and Burke had not had many. But more than friendship was involved. It was Kreuger himself who had recruited Burke right out of college, been his chief sponsor and protector, and taught him pretty much all there was to know of the trade. Apparently you could never know quite enough. Even when you were the absolute best. No one in the Service had ever doubted that Kreuger was that. And before he had died, Burke was quite certain he had given them the name of Dr. Obidiah Stern. There was no condemnation in the thought. Finally, everyone told what they knew, and it had nothing to do with any lack of such things as strength, loyalty, patriotism, love, or courage. It was simply a matter of the vulnerability of flesh and possible levels of pain.
Then Burke put aside for the moment what he chose to consider the idle luxury of grief, and let his mind move into the more practical considerations of survival. On the positive side was the fact that the surgeon’s identity was the only potentially damaging piece of information that Kreuger could have given them. Tony had never known where Burke lived or what his new face * looked like. Nor had he known the name, Eric Cole, that he had. used in the hospital.
All right, Burke thought. So what could they have? To begin with, the name of a New York plastic surgeon. And because Obidiah Stern had done work for the Service through Kreuger for years, he always followed tight security guidelines. No pictures or descriptive records in his files. No questions answered, not for anyone, regardless of official rank or alleged authority. And that included the upper levels of the Service itself, the State Department, both houses of Congress, and the Oval Office. As a further safeguard against possible pressure in that area, Kreuger had even banned himself. “No matter what I ever ask about the identity or appearance of someone I’ve sent you,” he once told the surgeon,” no matter how I may rant, scream, order, or threaten, don’t — and I mean don’t ever — tell me.” And from whatever Burke had observed of Obidiah Stern’s nature, he judged the surgeon to be strong and intractable enough to hold to those instructions.
But just as Burke had to assume that Kreuger had finally been forced to give them Stern’s name before they shot him, he had to also assume they were now serious enough to use the same methods on the surgeon. Such being the case, Stern would eventually give them the name of Eric Cole (which no longer meant anything since he had switched to the name of Thomas Hutchins immediately on leaving the hospital) and a description of the changes he had made in his face, which would mean little more. Additionally, Stern would give them the precise dates he had entered and left the hospital, as well as the names of other patients who may have been there with him at that time.
Then he remembered their little New Year’s Eve celebration. And having recalled this, it didn’t take him too much longer to conjure up a champagne-blurred image of David, sentimentally recording the celebration with his camera.
“My God,” he thought. “I’ve been senile for almost a year.”
It was necessary to see Obidiah Stern alone. Burke waited until late that night. The surgeon was unmarried and lived with a housekeeper in an East Sixty-fourth Street townhouse that also contained his office. Burke walked down the block shortly after eleven and stood in a doorway across the street from the house, watching it. The house was dark except for a light in a third-floor window. Burke had no way of knowing whether the housekeeper slept in; that was a chance he would have to take. At three minutes to midnight, he put on a pair of thin, leather gloves, crossed the street, and tried the front door. He had it open in less than a minute.
A small night light was on in the foyer and he stood there for a moment, listening. Muted traffic noises came from outside, but the house was quiet. He breathed in the mingled odors of a doctor’s office, that night’s cooking, and a piney disinfectant. He had hoped to be free of all this, had hoped to be able to ring doorbells and enter houses as normal people entered them, but here he was again, breaking and entering, stealing into a man’s home just to talk to him.
He had to tell this gentle, eminent man: you’ve done a lovely job on my face and I’m quite pleased with it, but I’m afraid there are complications. You see, Obidiah, there are some people who would like to see me dead. I don’t know their names or what they look like, and they don’t know my name or what I look like, so we’re faced with a bit of a problem. And unfortunately, you’re included. Because very shortly now, I expect them to pay you a visit to get your help in identifying me. And whoever they are, they don’t fool around. They’ve already killed Tony Kreuger and they’re not likely to treat you any better. So I’m breaking into your house tonight like a thief, because I couldn’t risk the phone, or your housekeeper seeing me, and I had to warn you.
A foolish dialogue, he thought, climbing the stairs slowly, planting his feet with care and listening after each step. What good would a warning do? Stern could hardly run away and hide. Short of surrounding himself with armed guards, what possible action could he take? Still, he had to be warned and this seemed the fastest and best way to go about it. Burke liked Obidiah Stern. At a time when the word physician was increasingly coming to mean equal portions of greed and callousness, Stern still clung to the heart of his Hippocratic Oath. “It’s our liferaft,” he had once said. “Without it we’d drown in a sea of avarice.” Unhappily, many of his colleagues seemed to have already done their drowning.
On the second floor landing, Burke breathed the air again, consciously and deeply. He had a difficult nose to live with. It was too sensitive. It told him too much. Obidiah may have changed its size and shape, but not its capabilities. He went up the stairs and did not stop again until he had reached and entered the lighted third-floor room.
The room was half bedroom, half study, with books lining two walls, an old-fashioned double bed, a few scattered chairs, and a large mahogany desk covered with papers, assorted memorabilia, and the body of Dr. Obidiah Stern.
The surgeon lay with his head on the desk, dark hair rumpled as if from sleep. His left shirtsleeve was rolled up and there was a hypodermic syringe in his right hand. His eyes were open, glinting in the light, eyes perfectly clear and blue. He was quite dead.
Richard Burke — Eric Cole for a short time and currently Tom Hutchins — stood looking at Obidiah Stern’s face. Every instinct told him to get of there, fast, but a peculiar apathy was upon him. They had moved a lot faster than he had expected, which meant he was high priority — probably Code-One. Very flattering.
There was a handwritten note near the body. Scribbled on a prescription blank, it read “I’m sorry …” and was unsigned. They were apparently big on suicides these days. Everything all neat and accounted for. No loose ends. And apart from whatever else he felt, it suddenly made him angry. Of all those he had ever known, none had less reason to take their own lives than Tony Kreuger and Obidiah Stern. To have them stamped as suicides, was insult added to the ultimate injury. There was nothing he could do anymore about Tony, but Obidiah was something else.
Carefully thinking it through, Burke rolled down and buttoned the dead man’s sleeve, removed the hypodermic from his hand, and put it and the suicide note into his own pocket. Then in a short, vicious, cutting blow, he drove the side of his hand into the back of Stern’s neck and heard that awful cracking sound. Ah, Obidiah. Even dead, it hurt. But all right. Let the bastards worry a little about that. It would also give the locals something to do besides chase whores up and down Eighth Avenue. It was a small victory and the satisfaction was brief. A decent man with the unfashionable given name of a minor prophet was still very much dead, and unless he himself was willing to join him soon, there was a lot to do.
He left the surgeon at his desk, a murder turned into suicide and then into a murder once more. The broken neck would confuse them for a while. The autopsy would later reveal the murder as drug-induced, but it would never be a suicide again.
On his way downstairs Burke checked the rest of t
he house for the housekeeper, not really expecting to find her. They could not have done what they did, had she been around. They would not have had any qualms about killing her along with her employer, but a second murder would have ruined their neatly plotted suicide script.
Using a small flashlight, Burke went through Stern’s first floor offices until he found the cabinet that held his patient’s files. He had to assume that before they allowed Obidiah the privilege of dying, they had drained him of all pertinent information. And this would have included the name Eric Cole, the dates he entered and left the surgeon’s private hospital, and the names of other patients who had been there at the same time and might he of help in identifying and locating Cole. First, he looked for his own file under the name of Cole. It was not here. Then in quick alphabetical order, he looked for the folders of Pamela Bailey, Lilly Moraine, Hank Ryan, and David Tomschin. Without surprise, he found them gone.
He left the front door locked behind him and walked west on 66th Street. When he reached the entrance to Central Park, he went in and continued for a while on the east-west transverse. Then he cut north on a pedestrian path, walking slowly because he did not want to get home too soon, and letting the anger build until it felt cold and solid in his chest. Lost in it, he did not see the two men until they were almost in front of him.
“Hey, man! Got any bread?”
He stopped and looked at them. The one who had spoken was big, with a flowering Afro that made him look even bigger. His companion was shorter, but wide-shouldered and well set up. Standing together, they blocked the path. The shorter one, Burke saw, was carrying an open switchblade. There was no one else in sight.
“Sure,” he said. “I’m loaded, man!” He grinned as he mimicked the man’s speech, certain he had somehow dreamed these two up because they fitted his mood so perfectly.
His response and grin threw them off. Finally the big one said, “Okay, man, give it here.”
“Screw you, man.” Burke said.
This drew another long moment. “Hey, don’t go messin’
‘round,” said the one with the blade. “Hand it over or you gonna get cut.”
“Come and get it.”
Feet scraped nervously. Burke could not see their eyes, but could feel the uncertainty. Maybe they thought he was a police decoy or had a gun. The park was getting tougher all the time for hard-working dudes. The silence stretched and Burke was afraid they were going to back off entirely.
Then grunting, the big one came at him with a wide, looping right. Burke stepped inside, drove his fist into the man’s middle, and knee’d him as he doubled over. He dropped and his partner lunged. The blade glinted as Burke turned to let it go past. He grabbed the arm with the knife and twisted until he heard it go. The blade fell, the man screamed, and Burke sent him down with a cold chop to the throat.
He walked away without glancing back.
He couldn’t sleep, so he spent the night trying to work it through. Here he was, he thought, an invisible prey for equally invisible hunters. Yet there was a particular irony even in this. Somewhere high up, there were those who wanted him dead because they feared he could tie them to a political murder that had begun to stink. He had no idea who they were.
By the end of the night he found himself no closer to a useful answer than when he had started. The more he thought, the more bleak his prospects seemed. Seeking respite, his mind drifted to the tiny group in the hospital on New Year’s Eve, to the warmth, the gemutlichkeit, the good feeling of sharing. Now they were about to share something different, he thought. But this time, there was going to be damned little good in it for any of them.
Chapter 3
Burke stood in the narrow hallway outside David Tomschin’s apartment and felt himself sweat with frustration. He could make out two voices beside David’s. They had locked the door behind them and there was nothing Burke could do until they came out. Burke had resigned himself to that. Now he just hoped the kid was smart enough to give them what they wanted as quickly as possible and not get himself hurt.
They had been waiting outside in a car when Burke first strolled past the building. David arrived home and went upstairs about an hour later. The two men followed close behind, and after a short interval, Burke did the same. He had not recognized either of the men. He had been calling David’s number since early morning, but had received no answer, and it was late evening now. Too bad he had not been able to get to David first. It would have saved them all a lot of trouble.
The self-service elevator opened and a couple came out and walked down the corridor, talking. Burke fumbled through hispockets, as if searching for keys or cigarettes, and hurried towards the elevator. When the couple disappeared into one of the apartments, he went back to David’s door. The voices were still going. Then he heard a sharp cry and the sound of something heavy falling. He put his ear against the door. A moment later he tied a handkerchief across his face below his eyes and took out a pistol. It had a silencer attached. As the door opened, he levelled the gun.
“Back inside,” he said.
Silently, the two men backed up. One was tall, with a gaunt, ascetic face, the other was chunky, and they both stared at the pistol with total fascination. Burke closed the door behind him and took a quick inventory. Books were strewn about, drawers were open and emptied, and David was stretched out on the floor. His face was white and his mouth was bleeding. He looked dazed but not badly hurt.
“Okay, give me the pictures,” said Burke.
“What pictures?” asked the one with the ascetic face.
Burke’s eyes held him. “Don’t sweat it.”
“Sure. They’re all yours.”
But the man did not move and the three of them stood there like figures in a tableau.
“Now,” said Burke.
“You got it, friend.” said the chunky man, which must have been some sort of pre-arranged signal because both of them lunged forward at precisely the same instant, arms extended and fingers reaching. In fact it all happened so fast that Burke never saw whose hand reached the gun first and ripped it free. He knew only that it hit the floor with a clatter, and he made a dive for it. But the tall man kicked it across the floor where it struck a chair leg, bounced off, and came to rest against David’s thigh.
Seeming to react out of pure instinct, David reached for it, picked it up, and pointed it at Burke and the two men, frozen again in another tableau. Burke’s handkerchief-mask had fallen during the struggle and David stared. “Eric,” he whispered.
Then the moment broke and the two men went for the pistol. They went for it with no more apparent thought or con36cern than if it had been lying loose on the floor and not pointing at them from David’s hand.
“I’m not shit!” David yelled and showed them he wasn’t, showed them pointblank as they came, with the silencer cutting the explosions to a soft whoosh… whoosh … whoosh and the bullets going in without any sound at all.
The gun was empty long before he finally stopped squeezing the trigger. Then he got up and started to kick the two bodies where they lay. He kicked and kicked until Burke dragged him away and sat him down in a chair. He started to sob then, and Burke took some ice from .the refrigerator, wrapped it in a towel and pressed it to the back of his neck. “Oh, my God,” he wept. “Oh, my God, my God.”
Burke found some brandy in a cabinet and forced him to drink. After awhile he stopped crying. “Now pay attention.” Burke said. “Are you okay? Can you understand me?”
David stared through him for a moment. Then his eyes focused and he nodded.
“Good,” said Burke. “Now tell me everything those two men said and did from the moment they walked in here. And take your time. Think carefully.”
David blew his nose a few times, but the hysteria seemed to be over. “The dirty sons-of-bitches. They pushed me around like I was shit. .. like I wasn’t even human. Even at the end, even when I was pointing a gun at them. You saw? You saw how they just came at me?”
Burke nodded. “Who did they say they were?”
“Cops. They said they were cops investigating Dr. Stern’s murder. They showed me their shields and said they just wanted to ask me a few questions.” He started to weep again. “Oh, Jesus. I’ve gone and killed two fucking cops. I don’t believe it. I;..”
“What kind of questions?”
David took a deep breath. “Questions like, When did I last see or talk to you and the others from the hospital? When did I last see Dr. Stern?’ Things like that. Then when they found out I’d taken some pictures during our New Year’s Eve party, they went kind of crazy. They said you’d killed Dr. Stern and they needed a picture of you because otherwise they’d never find you with your new face. But I didn’t believe that shit. I knew you couldn’t have killed Stern. So I made like I’d forgotten where the pictures were. But they just tore the place apart until they found them. When I picked up the phone to call the D.A. — because they had no search warrants or anything — they just slapped me down. Just put me down like I was nothing.” He sipped his drink and the glass rattled against his teeth.
“What else?” Said Burke.
David stared blankly at him.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” David shook his head. “No. I mean one of the bastards made a phone call. He told someone that pictures were taken at the hospital.”
“Did .you hear who he called? Did he use any name?
“No.”
“Did he say where he was calling from, or who took the pictures?”
“I … I don’t think so.”
“We’ve got to be sure of that. No thinking. Sura “
“Oh, God,” David whispered.