“More,” he demanded.
“The videocassette was made for Angelo Generoso,” she went on. “His family and the Carbones have been in an undeclared war for years. Paxton was the low-level torpedo the Generosos sent to Carbone’s pad to dismantle the equipment and bring back the cassettes when it was all over. Only Paxton found out what was on that one tape, saw a chance to get rich, and disappeared with the thing instead. He’d grown up in rural Wyoming, so he came back out here to hole up till the heat died down. Then he phoned Frank in Washington and offered him the cassette for $25,000.”
“Okay.” The bald man nodded slightly. “That’s the same story Paxton tells. You got the money?”
“Yes. You have the cassette?”
“Hold still a minute.” He strode across the room and out into the corridor, leaving the door slightly ajar. She watched him enter the alcove down the hall that held the soft-drink machine. There was the sound of a lid being lifted, then the rumble of ice cubes being displaced. He re-entered the room rubbing the moist white protective jacket of the cassette against his shirt. “Ice machine didn’t do it any harm,” he said. “Let’s see the money.”
She bent over the bureau, pulled out the bottom drawer, and removed the Gideon Bible. Then she shook the Bible out over the bed. Twenty-five $1000 bills fluttered down from the pages onto the rumpled blanket. She picked them up and arranged them in a neat stack but did not hold them out to him.
“They could be counterfeit,” the bald man muttered.
“Oh, for God’s sake! This is throwaway money for Frank Bolish. Now give me the damn cassette!”
Hesitantly he placed it on the blanket beside the bills, then perched on the edge of the formica again, while she rebolted the chain lock. She then dragged the large gray Samsonite suitcase out of the closet, lifted it to the bed, and unlocked it. She took out the videocassette player, set it down on the bureau top, and used a tiny screwdriver to connect its wires with certain wires of the room television. When the player was ready she flipped the ON switch, took the cassette out of its protective jacket, and inserted it into the machine. Then she depressed the PLAY button and turned on the TV to watch the images from the cassette.
The tape ran for about twelve minutes. Its technical quality was poor, which was natural considering the secrecy in which it was made. It showed a quiet conference between two men in shirtsleeves. The older she recognized — Vito, lion of the Carbones. The younger — tall, slender, hypnotic-voiced — certainly looked like Senator Vega. The hidden camera caught the quick transfer of an envelope, the counting of the money, the careful repetition of what the senator must do in return for the gift.
She hit the STOP button before the scene had ended. “I don’t like it,” she said. “There’s something stage-looking about that payoff. One of them’s an actor, maybe both of them.” She chewed her underlip nervously and turned her back for a second to switch off the TV.
When she faced him again, he was holding a small .25 aimed at her middle.
“You took a gamble and lost, lady,” the bald man said. “It happens I do read Bolish’s column every day, and I got a real good memory for names. He’s never mentioned you in any of his material. Now, who the hell are you?”
She took another long deep breath to gain time. “All right,” she told him then. “I — guess I gave myself away with what I said about that tape. My name is Arlene Carver but I don’t work for Bolish. I’m a troubleshooter for Senator Vega. We heard rumors about a plot to smear him with a phony videotape, and then when Paxton offered the tape to Bolish one of Bolish’s staff leaked the story to us. My partner managed to sidetrack the man Bolish sent out to make the pickup and I came on in his place. Look, what do you and Paxton care who pays you? The tape’s a phony, but the media could crucify the senator with it, so we’re willing to pay to keep it under wraps.”
“Sure it’s a phony. All you true believers who think Jorge Vega can pull together that good old Sixties coalition of the Hispanics and the blacks and the feminists and the Indians and the kids, you’ll all swear till you’re blue in the face the tape’s a phony so your boy can become President in ’84. Only if the tape gets out, it’s Vega’s finish, and you know it.”
“It’s no use talking politics with you,” she said icily. “Take the money and leave this room, right now.”
“Not quite yet.” He waggled the .25 at her lazily. “You see, I still don’t know who you are, lady, but I surely know who you’re not. You don’t work for Jorge Vega. But I do.”
Consternation flushed her face, and she jerked back as though he had struck her.
“Paxton didn’t just make one long-distance call to Washington about that cassette,” the man explained. “He offered it to Vega for the same price he wanted from Bolish. I’m a Wyoming boy, so the senator took me off my other work on his staff and asked me to get the tape from Paxton. I did. Didn’t use money, just muscle. But then I decided to keep Paxton’s date with Bolish, hoping I could find out what Bolish planned to print about the senator. Now, you’re not with Bolish and you’re not with Vega, so before I get angry and ask you the hard way, you tell me who you are and what your game is.”
He took two slow steps toward her, his fingers tightening on the .25 as he moved.
“Put that toy away,” she told him calmly, “before you find yourself in deep trouble.” She reached inside her blouse with careful motions, pulled out a hinged leather cardholder, opened it, and held it out so he could see the gold shield and identification.
“Oh, hell,” he mumbled, and gently set down the gun on the dresser top. “Why didn’t you say you were F.B.I.?”
“Well, your loyalties weren’t exactly displayed on a billboard,” she told him. “The Bureau heard rumors about that cassette too, and my job was to run them down. A woman on Bolish’s staff leaked it to the Bureau when Paxton made him the offer. I told the truth when I said my partner intercepted Bolish’s messenger and I came on in his place. Another two minutes and I would have been reading you your rights. Depending on whether that tape is real or a phony, either Vega’s going to be charged with taking a bridge or some big bananas in the Mob are going to face extortion charges. I don’t think you broke any Federal laws by hijacking the cassette from Paxton, but I’ll keep the tape from this point on.”
“I’m not so sure of that.” He grinned at her, reached down to his oversized cowboy belt buckle, and disconnected it from its leather strap. From the interior of the hollow buckle he extracted a leather cardholder of his own and flipped it at her. “Damndest thing I’ve seen in fifteen years with the Bureau,” he laughed. “Two agents playing cat and mouse with each other like this. Yeah, I’ve been working the case from the other side. Picked up Paxton in Laramie on Friday night and decided to keep his appointment with Bolish’s messenger on the off chance I’d get something we could use against Bolish. He’s written a lot of columns the Bureau doesn’t appreciate.”
“Nice job,” she said. “You fooled me all the way. I never would have guessed you were with the Bureau.” She came toward him slowly, almost seductively, until she was two steps from the corner of the dresser that held his gun.
She leaped for the .25 at the same moment his hands leaped for her throat.
Late the next morning, when she entered to clean Room 114, the cleaning woman found the two intertwined bodies — the man shot with a .25 at point-blank range, the woman strangled to death. The police quickly determined what had happened but had no idea why they had killed each other, nor could they make sense of the inordinate number of artifacts of identify found in the room, all of them turning out to be spurious.