At first I thought that was the worst of it.
There was the tedium of dealing with the police. Then Joe Cutter arrived — he was the one I’d phoned first. Of all the people in our sector of the Agency, Joe is the one I want on my side in an emergency. He’s too handsome for his own good and he’s arrogant sometimes — he thinks he’s as good as I am but he’ll never quite achieve that — but he’s leagues ahead of the others. Joe Cutter is a throwback; like me he works from premises of talent and experience and instinct, and he never forgets a thing. Unlike the new breed, Joe knows there are still problems you can’t solve with computers and microfilm and hypodermics.
The County Medical Examiner was making his preliminary study; they hadn’t moved the body yet. Technicians and detectives prowled around, seeking clues, and Joe Cutter said to me, “Myerson had four kids, I think.”
“None of them worth a damn.” A workaholic father and an alcoholic mother — what could you expect? The four Myerson children — three boys, one girl — were in their twenties and thirties now but none of them had amounted to anything. Myerson had been forever bailing them out of jams, financial and otherwise. It was one reason he’d been unable to afford a better house than this clapboard white elephant by the tracks.
“For their sake,” Joe murmured, “I hope his life insurance was paid up.” He looked down toward the retaining walclass="underline" two cops and a dog handler with a Doberman were scouting the grass. Joe said, “They won’t find much. You said you heard a train go by just as the shot was fired? Whoever shot him probably jumped down on top of the train. They must move pretty slowly through that curve. Or maybe the guy was already on the train and shot Myerson from there. A tricky shot from the top of a moving freight car but I guess it’s possible. Myerson could’ve come down here to receive a package, you know — something somebody was supposed to toss to him from the train.”
The M.E. looked up at us. “He wasn’t shot from the train. Powder burns on his shirt front. He was shot at close range.”
Joe scowled at the bloodstained grass. “Then the train was the getaway vehicle. He used the train to mask the sound of the shot and then he used it to make his escape.” Joe turned to me. “So who was he?”
I shook my head: no idea. But I knew one thing. The bastard who’d killed Myerson might have done the world a favor but he’d done me out of a job.
I said, “I don’t suppose there’s a chance in hell they’d give you Myerson’s job.”
“No. They’ll give it to some hack who plays golf with the Director — somebody who’s earned a political favor. The same way they gave it to Myerson in the first place.” Joe looked bleak — partly, I’m sure, because he didn’t relish the idea of having to break in a new section chief.
“Funny,” I muttered, “all the dicey capers we’ve survived — Berlin, Moscow, all the tightropes and guantlets, and it ends here in the grass in his own backyard.”
Joe regarded me glumly. “What was the piece?”
“Standard thirty-eight caliber issue from the Agency armory. Why?”
“It’s not here.”
“I know.”
Joe said, “As a matter of policy the Agency keeps a sample bullet fired from each armory weapon. For ballistic comparisons. What happens if they dig this slug out of Myerson and it turns out to have been fired by the gun you signed out?”
“I know. They’ll try to pin it on me.”
“Everybody knows how you and Myerson felt about each other. He used to mention your name in the same tone of voice Napoleon must have used when he talked about Wellington.”
I said, “You’d better search me right now. I haven’t got it on me, but frisk me and make sure.”
“All right. But it won’t matter. They’ll say you had plenty of time to get rid of it. Charlie — listen. You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“And do myself out of a job? No. I didn’t shoot him, Joe.”
“And you don’t know who did.”
“No. I don’t know who did.”
“All right. Then we’d better find out what happened. Because if we don’t, they’ll hang it on you — and you won’t just be terminated, Charlie. You’ll be terminated with extreme prejudice.”
“Why not just say killed? It’s the damned euphemisms that’ll do us all in, in the end.”
When I arrived next morning at the Agency there were long faces around the conference table. Joe Cutter wasn’t there; this was Internal Security and the agent in charge was an amiable hatchet-man named Philip Grebe. He had small hard eyes and polished fingernails; his grey suit was too well tailored and his mustache too neatly trimmed — he was compulsive about details, a thorough and ruthless man but a fair one. He had an unpleasant job but he was good at it. I’d rendered a few favors and assistances to him in the past but that didn’t count for anything now, not with a cool sort like Grebe.
“You understand this isn’t a formal inquiry, Charlie. If we learn anything that’s pertinent to the case and not subject to the security laws we’ll pass it on to the county attorney in Virginia. But we’re not officially empowered to investigate murder cases. If it turns out, for example, that his wife killed him for the insurance or to settle a domestic spat then we have nothing to do with the case. But if it proves to be a problem inside the Agency we want to know about it.”
I said, “Was his insurance paid up?”
“To the hilt. He had outside policies in addition to his Civil Service insurance. Nearly half a million in benefits, all told. The beneficiaries are the widow and the four children — roughly a hundred thousand each.”
“Five good motives for murder,” I observed.
“Possibly.”
“But they don’t explain why he went down to the embankment with a loaded gun in his pocket, do they.”
“Quite,” Grebe said.
The silence that followed his comment was ominous.
Finally he said, “Shall we begin?”
“I thought we already had. You mind my asking one more question? I’ve been out of the country for a while, you know. I just got back day before yesterday. I’m not up on whatever’s been going on here in Langley. Myerson mentioned something yesterday — said I. S. was searching his office. What were you looking for?”
“Sorry, Charlie. That’s need-to-know.”
“Then can you tell me if you’ve got any glimmering of why he might have wanted a revolver?”
“I can answer that one. The answer is no.”
Joe cutter was on the phone when I went up to our section late that afternoon. When he cradled it he said, “How was it?”
“They’re friendly enough. But they think I blew him away.”
It was a bit of a jolt to see Joe in what had been Myerson’s chair. He said, “I’m acting chief until they appoint a replacement for him. It’s no fun, let me tell you. His papers are in a mess. I. S. was in here all day going through the stuff. They’ll be back again tomorrow.”
“What are they looking for?”
“They didn’t say.”
I glanced at the row of locked filing cabinets. “How far did they get?”
“They’re up to P to Q Third cabinet, top drawer.”
“Have you got the keys?”
He brooded at me. “What do you think you’d find?”
“Something that might tell us who he had the appointment with on the embankment.”
Joe considered it. “We haven’t time. They’ll be back in here at eight in the morning.”
“That gives us fifteen hours. Look, we’ll start with the R-S drawer — if there was anything in the earlier drawers they’d have found it.”
“Anything that vital, he’d have coded it into the computer and shredded the papers.”