He ordered a beer, fella, and wondered, fella, how business was, fella, and gee, golly, what a great looking bar the guy had here, and by the way what were all those yellow barricades doing on the other side of the Concourse?
"Buildings. Tearing down. Niggers there," said the bartender whose English lacked Spesk's precision and clarity.
"Why are they tearing down a building, pal? Huh? How come?" asked Spesk as if he had worked his way through Douglas MacArthur High School by delivering Chicago Tribunes.
"They tear down. The politicians. They tear down, they build up."
"That's going up?"
"Nothing. Men there with guns. I bet drugs. They looking. I bet heroin," said the bartender.
"A lot of men?"
"Three blocks around. Cameras too. In apartments. You don't need to go there. Niggers over there. You stay here," said the bartender.
"You bet I will," said Spesk. "Say, was there anything in the papers about it? I mean, that's sort of wierd, isn't it, tearing down a building with a lot of guys with guns standing around?"
"Drugs I bet. Heroin. Does he want a drink?" asked the bartender, nodding to Nathan. Nathan stared behind the bar. Nathan drooled.
"You have a gun back there," said Spesk. "Please put it out of sight." He slapped Nathan on the shoulder and put his tongue over his lips to indicate he wanted silence.
Spesk spent the afternoon in the bar, buying drinks occasionally, playing a game of darts, and just chewing the fat with all the nice guys who came and went, fella, nice to see you, catch you again next time.
There had been a wounding of a young black there and some black minister had made a fuss, someone told Spesk. Guy's name was Wadson, Reverend Josiah. Wadson had a police record for breaking and entering, procurement, assault with a deadly weapon, rape, assault with intent to kill, even though the police had orders from City Hall to keep it quiet.
"I bet you're a cop, right?" asked Tony Spesk, alias Colonel Speskaya.
"Yeah. A sergeant," said the man.
Tony Spesk bought the guy a beer and told him the problem with New York City was that the cops' hands were tied. And they didn't get paid enough.
The sergeant thought this was true. God's honest truth. What Colonel Speskaya did not tell the sergeant was that the municipal in Moscow felt the same way, as did the London bobby and the Tanzanian people's constable.
"Wonder what all that stuff is over there? On Walton Avenue, is it?"
"Oh, that," said the sergeant. "Hush-hush. They moved the CIA in, about eight days ago. It was a fuckup."
"Yeah?" said Tony Spesk. Nathan eyed the little revolver in the sergeant's belt. He moved a hand out toward it. Spesk slapped the hand away and pushed him toward the door, motioning to their car. Spesk did not want to tell him to get out in Russian.
Back at the table, the sergeant told Spesk that he had a friend who knew one of the CIA guys there and everything was fouled up. Everything. They had been too late.
Too late for what? asked Spesk, Tony Spesk, Carbondale, Illinois appliance salesman. As with most rummies, an hour and a half of drinking had made Spesk a lifelong friend of the police sergeant. Which was how he was introduced as "my buddy, Tony" to another friend and how they all decided to go out for a night on the town because Tony had an expense account. And they took Joe with them.
Joe-you had to promise not to breathe a word of it-was an operative for the CIA.
"You're full of shit," said Tony Spesk.
"He is," said the sergeant with a wink.
They went to a Hawaiian restaurant. Joe had a Singapore Sling. He saved the little purple paper umbrellas they put in the drinks to make them cute enough to charge $3.25 for them. When Joe had collected five of those umbrellas with Tony paying, he had the damndest story to tell.
There was this German engineer. Frigging Kraut. Did he tell everybody that the guy was a German? Yeah? Okay. Well, he invented this thing, see. Whaddya mean, what thing? It was secret. Like a secret weapon. Invented it right in his Kraut cellar or attic or something.
Back during Double-U Double-U Two. Don't tell anybody because it's a secret. Now where was he?
"What kind of weapon?" asked Tony Spesk.
Joe inhaled the rummy fumes from the Singapore Sling. "Nobody knows. That's why it's a secret. I got to piss."
"Go in your pants," said Spesk with authority. The sergeant had passed out already and no one noticed that Spesk wasn't really drinking.
"All right," said Joe. "Just a minute. Okay. That takes care of that. Maybe this thing reads minds, nobody knows."
"Did you find it?" asked Spesk.
"Ooooh, it's wet," said the man earning thirty-two thousand dollars a year to protect America's interests around the world through his mental superiority, cunning, and self-discipline.
"It'll dry," said Spesk. "Did you find it?"
"It's too late," said Joe.
"Why?"
"Because I've gone already," said the agent for the most hooplaed secret service since Nero's Praetorian Guard.
"No. Why was it too late for the secret weapon?"
"It was gone. We couldn't find it. We only found out it existed because the East Germans showed up looking for it."
"And they didn't tell," said Spesk. There would be some dues to pay for this treachery toward Russia. Obviously some of the old Gestapo working now with East Germany had remembered the dead man's name and told how he had invented some kind of device, and the East German secret police went looking for it, without telling the Russian NKVD, and the Americans saw the East Germans looking and they looked, and then everybody went looking.
Of course, there was a possibility that America had planted something in that neighborhood to draw out spies from other countries, but Spesk dismissed that. If they caught you, they would hold you for a trade. Gone were the old Cold War illusions of being able to permanently keep other countries' operatives out of your own country.
Why bother? There was just too much traffic. They would monitor it; they wouldn't stop it. No. The story about the device was real. At least the Americans thought so. But why so much fuss? Thirty years old, the machine could not have had much practical application. Thirty years ago, there hadn't been lie detectors, bio-feedback machines, sodium pentothal. A whole trip sneaking into America wasted for just a nonsense device. Spesk almost laughed. For what? To look into people's heads and see what went on? Usually it was just disconnected gibberish.
Outside, Nathan slept in the back seat of the car. American traffic was inordinately heavy outside the restaurant. No. It was normal. Spesk was judging it by Moscow standards where there were few cars. Spesk was bothered.
The CIA man, Joe, had had a night off. His operation had started only ten days before. This wasn't a night off. CIA tours went on for a minimum of twenty days and, as often as not, until a mission was completed.
Joe had a night off because the mission was over. The Americans had not found what they were looking for and they were just pulling out the CIA.
Spesk would have to look for himself.
Spesk did not often worry but tonight he was worried. He woke up Nathan and gave him his gun.
"Nathan, I am giving you the gun. Do not shoot it at anyone just yet because you will have to use it soon enough. I do not want us hiding the gun because you shoot some stranger, when you may have to use it to save our lives very soon."
"Just one, now?" asked Nathan.
"None, now," said Spesk.
As he thought, he drove his large smooth American car into the area that had been sealed off by yellow painted roadblocks. The roadblocks were gone now.