“Can look Friday, too, no?”
“Yes, but that’s only the night before. It seems to me the chances are less likely…
“Cannot do Friday,” he says.
“Why not?”
“Daughter’s birthday Friday. Big party.”
For the next few moments, the conversation takes a ridiculous turn, as though the concept of an assassination having to wait upon a birthday party is too absurdly monumental for me to grasp. I hear myself asking him how old his daughter will be, and he replies she will be twenty, and I say, “Oh, that’s nice, I have a twenty-year-old son,” and he says, “Me, five sons — forty-one, thirty-eight, twenty-six, twenty-two, and seventeen,” and finally I say, “Listen, Weglowski, this bridge is more important than your daughter’s damn birthday party.”
“To who?” he asks.
“To me.”
“Then you do wire job, okay?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Okay. Then we do tomorrow night No difference tomorrow night or Friday night.”
His logic is irrefutable. If the dynamite is to be discovered, it can just as easily be discovered tomorrow or Friday or indeed ten minutes before the train is due. And yet I am vaguely uneasy as I agree to meet him tomorrow at nine. Is it because the actual wiring will bring me closer to the final act itself? Postpone it to Friday, and I will be one step further away from the reality of detonating the charges and watching the train plunge into the ravine below. Wiring the bridge will lend credence to something I have thus far only distantly perceived. The reality of it frightens me. I prefer the fantasy that is Sara. And yet, even that frightens me. They are both real, I know, Sara and the bridge — and both inextricably linked I take her back to the hotel at six o’clock.
I undress her, put her to bed, and then go downstairs for something to eat
There are two federal agents in the lobby.
I do not know who they are, but I know immediately what they are; I have entertained visits from their colleagues often enough, first when I was preparing the defense for the Baltimore draft resisters, and later when I was working on the Hoffstadter brief. They are instantly recognizable, both wearing dark overcoats and gray fedoras, enormous men who stand at the desk in quiet conversation with the girl who relieved Ralph. The redhead blinks up at them from behind her eyeglasses. I move silently past them, through the lobby and into the coffee shop.
Two college-girl waitesses are taking about a new lipstick they saw advertised on television. One of them glances at me, finishes what she was saying, and then walks to where I have taken a stool at the end of the counter.
“Yes, sir?” she says.
“I'd like a hamburger and some French fries,” I say.
“How would you like that, sir?”
“Medium rare.”
“And to drink?”
“Have you got any imported beer?”
“Don’t have any beer at all, sir.”
“A glass of milk then.”
“Thank you.” She glances toward the entrance door behind me. My palms are suddenly wet. She goes to the small opening leading to the kitchen, bawls out the order, glances toward the door again, and comes back to the counter in preparation for the newcomers. They seat themselves two stools away from me. They take off their fedoras almost simultaneously and put them on their laps. They are both blond. One of them is wearing a crew cut The other has hair about the length of mine. He glances at me briefly. His eyes are green.
“Help you?” the waitress asks.
“Just coffee,” the one with the crew cut says.
“Two coffees?”
“Mmm,” the green-eyed one says, and nods.
“Regular?”
“Regular.”
The one with the crew cut gets up, walks to the jukebox, turns to his partner and asks, “Anything you’d like to hear, Bob?”
“No, doesn’t matter to me,” Bob answers.
“Well, anything special?”
“Anything by what’s-her-name in there?”
“Who? Streisand?”
“No. What’s-her-name.”
“I don’t see anything. There’s some Streisand, though.”
“Sure, Harold.”
“Streisand?”
“Sure.”
Harold nods his crew-cut head, deposits a quarter in the juke, makes his three selections, and comes back to the counter. Bob’s green eyes flash sidelong at me again. The waitress brings my hamburger and milk. Streisand’s voice soars into the room.
“I’ve got some French fries coming, too,” I remind the waitress.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” she says absently.
She draws the two coffees, deposits them on the counter before Bob and Harold, and then yells through the opening for my potatoes. The man in the kitchen yells back, “Coming!”
“Coming,” she says to me.
“You go to school here, miss?” Bob asks abruptly.
“Me?”
“Mmm.”
“Yes, I do. Why?” She is smiling a trifle coquettishly, as though expecting a pickup. Bob is not looking at her. His green eyes are fastened to the sugar bowl. He has ladled three teaspoonfuls into his cup, and is now working on a fourth. Harold is watching the transfer in fascination, as though his partner is dredging the Mississippi.
“Know anybody named David Hollis?” Bob asks.
“Why?” the waitress answers. The smile has dropped from her face. She has recognized them, too. She has perhaps never confronted one of them before, but she has heard enough about them, and now she recognizes them and is instantly wary.
“What’s your name?” Harold asks. He slides the sugar bowl over in front of him and puts a carefully measured, level teaspoonful into his coffee. He does not look at the girl as he performs the operation. Neither of the pair seems even the slightest interested in her. This is undoubtedly their personal method of interrogation, and they perform it effortlessly, like two softshoe dancers in a vaudeville palace. It is a frightening routine. Sitting two stools away from them, I feel their overpowering menace and am terrified for the girl. And for myself. And for the plot.
“Why do you want to know my name?” the girl asks.
“You have something to hide?” Bob asks. He is stirring his coffee now. He has not once looked into the girl’s face.
“No. No,” she says, and shakes her head.
“Then what’s your name?”
“Mary.”
“Mary what?”
“Mary Brenner.”
The other waitress, who up to now has been following the conversation with only mild interest, suddenly decides it is time she went to the ladies’ room. She takes her bag from under the counter and unobtrusively disappears. Mary Brenner watches her departure, and then wets her lips.
“Do you know David Hollis?”
“No,” Mary Brenner says. “Who is he?”
“We thought everybody here on campus knew David Hollis.”
“Well, I’m just a soph, you see,” Mary Brenner says.
“Have you got any Danish pastry?” Harold asks.
“I think so. Do you want some?”
“If you have some.”
“Yes, I think so. Cheese or prune?”
“Prune,” Harold says.
Mary Brenner goes to the pie rack, slides open one of the glass doors, picks up the pastry with a pair of tongs and puts it on a plate, which she carries back to the counter. My potatoes are waiting in the opening just behind her.
“You weren’t here last year then, huh?” Harold asks, biting into the Danish.
“No. Well, yes. But I got here in the fall. I wasn’t here last spring.”
“Why? What happened last spring?” Bob asks.
“I don’t know. I was just saying.”