by Phil Swann
I put down the phone and moved toward the bar.
“Easy,” he said.
I placed the revolver on the bar and raised my hands.
“Sorry, Trip,” Shorty said, grabbing the gun and putting it in his apron.
“I’m sure you are,” I responded sarcastically.
Skipper said, “Why don’t you come out from behind there, Trip. You’re making me nervous.”
I did as I was told and moved in front of the bar.
“Sit,” he ordered, motioning with his gun.
I sat down on a barstool.
“You know, Trip, we wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t been such a busybody.”
I shrugged. “One of my many faults, I guess. Tell me something, Skipper. That story you told me about your wife dying, and you traveling around unable to keep a job, and finally finding a home among the hobos. Was any of it true?”
Skipper smiled, “Not much. But it was a good story, wasn’t it?”
Shorty said, “What are you doing here? I could’ve handled Callaway. You know the rules. Never in the same place at the same time.”
“They have the list,” Skipper replied. “Trip had to get the record from them to save the girl, but they had it, and they got the names. I went with him to The Ranch and heard their plan. They’re going to start rounding up our people immediately. The ones they don’t arrest, they’re going to use like they did Kustov. We have to alert Moscow. Our people need to go under.”
I turned to Shorty. Now I was shocked. “Oh my God, you’re the boss. I thought you were just a ratfink, but no, you’re the chief ratfink. You run this whole thing, don’t you? You give the orders.”
Shorty smiled and took off his apron. “I prefer the title commander, if you don’t mind. So how did you figure it out? What gave me away?”
“It wasn’t one thing. It was many things that just started adding up.”
“Such as?”
“Does it matter?”
“Amuse me.”
I looked at Skipper, who raised his gun a little higher. Message received.
“When I called Detective Barnard and told him I knew what everybody was looking for and asked him to meet me at my apartment, you were standing right where you are now. Nobody else was even in here. I’m guessing I wasn’t out the door three seconds before you called your thug in the turtleneck and ordered him to get over to my apartment, kill me, and take the record.”
“It might have been five seconds,” Shorty responded. “Anything else?”
“I couldn’t understand how you guys learned what Ken—sorry—Yuri was planning to do. Clegg told me you had his house bugged, but Clegg also said Yuri told Lydia about the famous list right here in the club Friday night, not at his house. So how did you people know about it? You heard him, that’s how. I bet if I was to go to that booth over there, Ken’s usual table, I suspect I’d find some clever little microphone hidden under it, or over it, or somewhere, right? I’ve recently learned you folks have some very ingenious little toys nowadays.”
This caused Shorty to chuckle.
I continued, “Of course, that also meant you’re the one who scared the living daylights out of him Saturday night. How’d you do it? Did you threaten him directly? Did you flash him a secret sign? Or is there some new gadget you guys have to do that too?”
“I slipped him a note on a cocktail napkin,” Shorty answered. “Just so you know, Yuri didn’t know about me. As far as he was concerned, I was just Shorty, The Jam Jar’s happy-go-lucky bartender. I thought it best to keep it that way. Especially since he considered The Jam Jar to be his sanctuary away from all this business.”
“And that’s why you got a job here?”
“From the day Yuri started coming in on a regular basis. See, we believe it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on our property.”
“How could you do it? Luther and Betsy would have done anything for you. How could you betray them? How could you betray your country?”
“Betray my country?” Shorty spit. “I’d never betray my country. But if you’re talking about this country, the country I bled for, got my leg all shot up for, devoted everything I had, only to be repaid by drumming me out of its pathetic army with not so much as a thank you, then that country I happily betray. I was a somebody, Trip. People respected me. Looked up to me. Took orders from me. This country of yours used me up and then tossed me out onto the street like an unwanted dog—just another gimpy little man with no job and a sob war story to tell while playing checkers. But fate was on my side, Trip. I found a country that actually wanted me. One that valued what I had to offer. One that respected me. And I’ve been loyal to that country ever since.”
I locked eyes with Shorty, but didn’t respond.
Skipper chimed in, “What are we going to do?”
Shorty took a deep breath and regained his composure. He put on a sport jacket, grabbed his hat, and headed for the front door. I had known the man for four years, but it was a complete stranger who said over his shoulder, “Take him to the desert and kill him. Make sure he’s never found.”
“Where are you going?” Skipper asked.
“You’re right, we need to alert Moscow as soon as possible.” He stopped and glanced back at me. “Sorry, Trip. It’s not personal, but this is war, and unfortunately, you’re the enemy.”
I didn’t reply and only watched in horrified disbelief as Shorty put on his hat and casually walked out the door.
It was just me and Skipper, but I had my speech ready. My plan, if one can call it that, was to call upon the man’s better nature. After all, he had saved my life out in the desert, so maybe he held some sense of ownership for my wellbeing. If he did, I reasoned, perhaps I could talk him out of doing what Shorty had ordered him to do.
“You know, Skipper, I’m not sure I thanked you enough for what you did for me out there in the desert. I don’t know what I would have done had—”
“Knock it off, Trip,” he said raising his gun. “It’s like he said, it’s not personal. Come on, let’s go.”
I’m not a black belt in karate. Nor am I a devotee of the sweet science. I do, however, know my way around a barstool, which includes a little trick I picked up a few years back while playing an Irish wake that ended up getting a little too Irish toward the end of the night. As Skipper came toward me, I placed the toe of my shoe under a rail at the bottom of the barstool in front of me, and then with a sudden kick, flipped it up, sending it airborne in his direction. It wasn’t much of a diversion, but it was enough for me to leap up, roll over the bar, and fall to the floor on the other side.
“Seriously, Trip?” I heard Skipper say. “You’re really going to do this? Come out from behind there. You’re not getting away.”
What Skipper didn’t know was that as I rolled over the bar, I grabbed Shorty’s apron—the apron where he’d stashed the Colt .45.
“I swear, Trip, if I have to come back there and get you, I will not be—”
I fired off a shot. It didn’t come close to hitting Skipper, but it was enough to take him by surprise and for me to scramble to the end of the bar.
“Damn it, Trip,” Skipper yelled, jumping over the bar.
My heart pounded like a Sousa march. I didn’t think. I just acted. I knew I had no chance of winning a gun fight with an ex-army MP slash disgraced CIA officer, but I also knew I didn’t have to. Bullets are bullets no matter who’s firing them, and as long as I could keep Skipper having to duck every few seconds, I stood a chance of getting out alive. I had the advantage of intimately knowing every musty corner of The Jam Jar, and he didn’t. I fired again, and Skipper fired back. I returned fire and then crashed through the kitchen door on all fours.
Once in the kitchen, I bolted for the rear exit. A shot whizzed past my head, and I dove to the ground behind a steel table. I fired a shot over the table and heard a crash off to my left. I fired in the general vicinity. It wasn’t until I heard another crash on the other side of the ki
tchen that I realized what Skipper was doing. He was making me use up all of my bullets.
If I counted correctly, I had one round left, and I needed to make the most of it. The door was tantalizingly close, only a few feet away. All I had to do was get to it, and I’d be outside where I knew I could disappear among the buildings. I looked under the table and saw Skipper’s feet a few yards away next to Luther’s office. I crawled on the floor as quietly as I could until I made it to the door. I was reaching for the knob when I heard the metallic click of a trigger behind my head.
“Put the gun down, Trip,” Skipper said.
My mind raced through every available option.
“I said, put the gun down.”
Finally, I let out a sigh of surrender and placed the gun on the floor.
“Stand up,” he commanded.
As I stood, he grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around hard. “I got to hand it to you, Trip. I didn’t think you had it in you. Nice try, anyway.”
“Is there anything I can say to talk you out of this?”
He shook his head in fake regret. “No.”
I’ll forever be amazed at the human spirit’s will to survive. Even though there was no hope I could overpower him, and zero chance I could outfox him, my brain refused to give up. My spirit’s innate desire to exist refused to go gently into that good night, as the poet said. Turns out, the human spirit knows more than we humans give it credit for.
Skipper led me back through the kitchen. As I pushed opened the swinging door, someone grabbed me by my collar and yanked me into the club. I fell to the floor face first. When I rolled over, I saw Clegg standing at the door with the barrel of his gun pushed against Skipper’s temple.
“Give me the gun, Greg, or I will absolutely blow your brains out right here and now.”
Skipper closed his eyes, chuckled, and handed Clegg the gun.
Square Head and Tonto rushed past me. Clegg handed Square Head the gun as Tonto restrained Skipper’s hands behind his back.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Clegg, still lying on the floor.
“Saving your butt, as usual,” Clegg said, offering me his hand. “This is becoming a habit, Trip. You okay?”
“The bartender, Shorty, he’s the one who—”
Just then, Detective Barnard walked in. He had Shorty in front of him in handcuffs.
“He give you any trouble, Detective?” Clegg asked.
“This little fella?” Detective Barnard replied. “Nah.”
Chapter 19
Clegg and Barnard pow-wowed in front of the stage while Square Head, Tonto, and three other serious looking men in dark suits went over The Jam Jar inch by inch. By the time Luther and Betsy arrived, they had located four listening devices hidden around the club.
Luther and Betsy sat at the bar as I explained everything that had transpired. To say they were surprised wouldn’t be right—devastated and heartbroken would be more accurate. I had waited until after Shorty and former CIA specialist Greg Newsom, a.k.a. Skipper, had been escorted from The Jam Jar before I called Luther. I saw no reason to subject the Beaurepaires to Shorty’s betrayal any more than needed. To hear about it was hard enough. I didn’t want them to have to look their Judas in the face to boot.
“Mr. Beaurepaire, Miss Beaurepaire, I assume Trip filled you in on everything?” Clegg asked, walking up with Barnard.
Luther shook his head. “I would have sooner believed the Earth was flat before you could have convinced me Shorty was spying for the Russians.”
“Well, that was his job, sir,” Clegg responded. “It’s a nasty business, espionage. After the jig is up, it leaves the people closest to them questioning everything about everybody they know. Don’t you do that. There won’t be any more Shorty Wallaces in your life. He was an apparition, that’s all he was.”
Barnard added, “And a very good one. We’ve had a devil of a time trying to ID him.”
“So you’re one of them?” I asked Barnard, pointing at Clegg.
“A fed?” Barnard chortled. “Lord, no. I’m a cop through and through.”
Clegg said, “Detective Barnard has been working with us for several months now. We knew the KGB had infiltrated the Las Vegas police force, and he agreed to help us root out the bad apples.”
“And did you?” I asked.
“I did,” Barnard replied. “I mean…we did.”
Clegg smiled. “Captain James David White was arrested early last night at a gas station north of the city. He was the one who kidnapped you, Miss Beaurepaire. We picked him up right after he released you.”
“He was a cop?” Betsy hollered. “Well, that figures.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “Captain White?”
Clegg said, “We’d suspected him for some time. After the spy ring’s usual muscle, Sokolov, was killed in your apartment, the job of enforcer fell to him.”
I said, “So that’s how the complaint Lydia made out on Ken was planted.”
Barnard jumped in, “The Soviets wanted Ken Baldwin to die and stay dead. The more they could make him look unstable, the less chance someone might inadvertently find out who he really was. But White had help, which is why we’ve arrested two desk officers and a rookie patrolman as well. Once they start talking, there could be more. It’ll be an embarrassment to the department, but we’ll recover. Bottom line is, we got ’em.”
“And Skipper?” I asked.
Clegg nodded. “We’ve suspected Greg Newsom from the beginning. In truth, he was the only person in the spy ring we were fairly sure about. After he was drummed out of the agency, he disappeared. We believe that’s when he was recruited by the Soviets. When he turned back up here in Las Vegas, we kept a close eye on him, though he was hard to stay on top of. His cover as a hobo was perfect. His transit life allowed him to live under the radar of normal society while still moving around as much as Moscow needed. He was their communications officer, their go-between, if you will. His job was to receive and deliver information. Quite an ingenious cover, actually.”
“So, if you knew about him, why did you let him back into the—”
“Trip, please,” Clegg interrupted, “we need to at least pretend to exercise some modicum of restraint when discussing, or not discussing, certain places and things.”
“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”
“To answer your question, we did it because we wanted him in. If our plan was to work, we needed him to be there and see everything he saw.”
“But I thought the plan was to—” I stopped myself. The cogs in my noggin began to spin. Suddenly, it was all clear. “It wasn’t me you needed at all, it was him. You didn’t need me to tell you what was on that record because you already knew what was on the record. It was all theater, a dog and pony show for Newsom’s benefit.”
Clegg looked at Barnard. “See what I mean? The kid’s sharp.”
“Am I right?” I asked.
Clegg surrendered a nod. “Yes. Minutes after Yuri told Agent Simon about the list, we were at his house. We had the microdot off the record, the list analyzed, and back on the record within minutes.”
“And?”
“And, it was useless. We don’t know when Yuri compiled the list, but it must have been shortly after he was recruited by the KGB. Half the people on the list we already knew about, the other half we picked up years ago. It had no value whatsoever.”
“But the KGB didn’t know that, did they?” I said more than asked.
“No, they didn’t. Which gave us a golden opportunity to ferret out a spy ring we knew had been operating in Las Vegas since the Gary Powers incident—one we knew about, but one we hadn’t been able to crack.”
“Why not?”
“They were very good, and very careful. Credit their ringleader Shorty Wallace with that. No direct contact, and they never talked to each other by phone. Everything went through Newsom. They were ghosts.”
“But if you could make them believe one of their own was abou
t to turn over a list of names revealing all their people, they might get desperate.”
“And they did,” Clegg replied. “When you showed up at the police station and told your story to the detective here, he smartly made sure White heard it too. White did exactly what we thought he’d do. He alerted the others about you, and about me and my men being at Yuri’s house. That’s when you became a target of the KGB, and their anonymity began to crumble. They got desperate. Sokolov came after you. Captain White kidnapped Miss Beaurepaire, and as soon as we loaned Newsom a car last night and sent him on his way, he drove straight here to tell Shorty about our plan. They always get sloppy in the end.”
“You fellas play a very dangerous game, Mr. Clegg,” Luther said.
“It’s a very dangerous world, Mr. Beaurepaire,” Clegg replied.
“Did Lydia…Agent Simon know about this plan?” I asked.
Clegg put his hand on my shoulder. “Son, it was her plan.”
“That was one tough broad,” Barnard said, nodding his head in respect.
Clegg elaborated, “After we learned the list was useless, Agent Simon came up with the defection scenario. The Soviets would come after Yuri with everything they had, and we’d be there waiting.”
“But Yuri got spooked and ran,” I said.
“Right,” Clegg said. “We lost him, and they killed him, and Agent Simon too. We’d completely blown it. They didn’t know it, but our whole operation was over, done, failed, caput. They were off scot-free. They just didn’t know it.”
“Because they’re idiots,” Barnard said.
Clegg chuckled. “Well, they should never have kidnapped Miss Beaurepaire. That was their big mistake.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it made you do something completely crazy.”
“I went to Skipper to help me get into…” I looked at Luther and Betsy, “that place.”
Clegg actually laughed. “Yes. All we had to do was let you two in, tell him our plan, and wait for all of them to hang themselves. Which they did.”
I sat down on a barstool and shook my head. “So all of this was only about busting up some little spy ring.”