FOUR
“I still don't see what the hell Sidney Greenstreet has to do with this,” Bernie Kirkwood said, leaning over the back of the front seat as the sound of the car's engine faded and the night silence closed in around them.
Burt Nolan, the six-foot-four Pinkerton bodyguard who was behind the wheel of McAlister's white Mercedes, said, “Do you want me to come in with you, sir?”
“There won't be any trouble here,” McAlister said. “You can wait in the car.” He opened the door and got out
Scrambling out of the back seat, Kirkwood said, “I suppose I'm allowed to tag along.”
“Could I stop you?” McAlister asked.
“No.”
“Then by all means.”
They went along the sidewalk to a set of three concrete steps that mounted a sloped lawn.
“You've been damned close-mouthed since we left the restaurant,” Kirkwood said.
“I guess I have.”
“The description in the newspaper… You recognized the man who beat up on that hooker.”
“Maybe I did.”
At the top of the three concrete steps, there was a curving flagstone walk that led across a well-manicured lawn and was flanked on the right-hand side by a neatly trimmed waist-high wall of green shubbery.
“Who is it?” Kirkwood asked.
“I'd rather not say just yet.”
“Why not?”
“It's not a name you toss around lightly when you're discussing sex offenders.”
“When will you toss it around, lightly or otherwise?”
“When I know why Beau called him 'that Sidney Greenstreet.'”
The house in front of them was a handsome three-story brick Tudor framed by a pair of massive Dutch elm trees. Light burned behind two windows on the third floor. The second floor was dark. On the ground level light shone out from stained, leaded windows: a rainbow of soft colors. The porch light glowed above the heavy oak door and was reflected by the highly polished pearl-gray Citroen S-M that was parked in the driveway.
“Who is this Beau Jackson?” Kirkwood asked as McAlister rang the doorbell.
“Cloakroom attendant at the White House.”
“You're kidding.”
“No.”
“This is an accountant's neighborhood.”
“What kind of neighborhood is that?”
“Right below a doctor's neighborhood and right above a lawyer's.”
“It isn't exactly what I was expecting,” McAlister admitted.
“What does he do on the side, rob banks?”
“Why don't you ask him?”
“If he does rob banks,” Kirkwood said, “I'd like to join up with his gang.”
A dark face peered at them through a tiny round window in the door. Then it disappeared, and a moment later the door opened.
Beau Jackson was standing there in dark-gray slacks and a blue sport shirt. “Mr. McAlister!”
“Good evening, Mr. Jackson.”
“Come in, come in.”
In the marble-floored foyer, McAlister said, “I hope I'm not interrupting your dinner.”
“No, no,” Jackson said. “We never eat earlier than nine.”
McAlister introduced Kirkwood, waited for the two men to shake hands, and said, “I'm here to talk to you about a man you once compared to Sidney Green-street.”
Jackson's smile faded. “May I ask why you want to talk about him?”
“I think he's involved in a major criminal conspiracy,” McAlister said. “That's all I can tell you. It's an extremely sensitive and top-secret matter.”
Jackson pulled on his chin, made up his mind in a few seconds, and said, “Come on back to my den.”
It was a large, pleasantly stuffy room. On two sides bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling. Windows and oil paintings filled the rest of the wall space. The desk was a big chunk of dark pine full of drawers and cubbyholes; and the top of it was littered with copies of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and other financial publications.
Picking up a Journal, Kirkwood said, “You don't rob banks, after all.”
Jackson looked puzzled.
“When I saw this beautiful house, I said you must rob banks on the side. But you're in the stock market.”
“I just dabble in stocks,” Jackson said. “I'm mostly interested in the commodities market. That's where I've done best.” He pointed to a grouping of maroon-leather armchairs. “Have a seat, gentlemen.” While they settled down, he looked over the bookshelves and plucked several magazines from between the hard-bound volumes. He returned and sat down with them. To McAlister he said, “Evidently you've learned who Sidney Greenstreet was.”
“Bernie told me,” McAlister said. “Greenstreet was one of the all-time great movie villains.”
“A fat man who was seldom jolly,” Jackson said. “His performance as Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon is one of the greatest pieces of acting ever committed to film.”
“He wasn't bad as the Japanese sympathizer in Across the Pacific” Kirkwood said.
“Also one of my favorites,” Jackson said.
“Of course,” Kirkwood said, “he wasn't always the villain. He did play good guys now and then. Like in Conflict, with Bogart and Alexis Smith. You know that one?”
Before Jackson could answer, McAlister said, “Bernie, we are here on rather urgent business.”
The black man turned to McAlister and said, “When I referred to Mr. Rice as 'that Sidney Green-street,' I meant that he is very cunning, perhaps very dangerous, and not anything at all like what he seems to be. He pretends liberalism. At heart he is a right-wing fanatic. He's a racist. A fascist.” Jackson's voice didn't rise with the strength of his judgments or acquire an hysterical tone; he sounded quite reasonable.
“Mr. Rice? Andrew Rice? You mean the President's chief aide?” Kirkwood asked weakly. He looked as if he were about to mutter and drool in idiot confusion.
Ignoring Kirkwood, certain that he was on the verge of learning something that he would have preferred not to know, McAlister stared hard at Jackson and said, “You're making some pretty ugly accusations. Yet I'm sure that you don't know Rice personally. You probably don't know him even as well as I do — and that's not very well at all. So what makes you think you know what's in his heart?”
Back in the early 1960s, Jackson explained, he had reached a point in his life when he finally felt secure, finally knew that he had gotten out of the ghetto for once and all. He had plenty of tenure on the White House domestic staff. He was making a damned good salary. His investments had begun to pay off handsomely, and he had been able to move into a good house in the suburbs. He had been successful long enough to have accepted his new position, and he had gotten over the lingering fear that everything he had worked for might be taken away from him overnight.
“All my life,” he told McAlister, “I've enjoyed books. I've believed in continuous self-education. In 1963, when I moved to the suburbs, I felt financially secure enough to devote most of my spare time to my reading. I decided to establish a study program and concentrate on one subject at a tune. Back then, I was most interested in racial prejudice, having been a victim of it all of my life. I wanted to understand the reasons behind it. The psychology behind it. So I worked up a reading list, both fiction and nonfiction, and did considerable research. Eventually I was led to these two magazines owned by a man named J. Prescott Hennings.”
“I know of him,” McAlister said.
Jackson said, “He's published some of the most hateful racist propaganda ever committed to ink and paper in this country. It's not all directed against blacks. Hennings despises Jews, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos…”