He sat there for two hours, hardly moving' He may have dozed off a few minutes, but mostly he stared at his wife. She was sleeping calmly and deeply. No one came into the room. He heard the corridor sounds dimly. Still he sat, his mind not so much blank as whirring, leaping, jumping about without order or connection: their children, Handry, Langley, Broughton, the Widow Zimmerman, the ice ax, Thorsen and Johnson, a driver’s license-a smear of thoughts, quick frames of a short movie, almost blending, looming, fading…
At the end of the two hours he scrawled a message in his notebook, tore the page out, propped it on her bedside table. “I was here. Where were you? Love and violets. Ted.” He tiptoed from the room.
He walked back to their home, certain he would be mugged, but he wasn’t. He went back into his study and resumed his readings of the histories, motives and methods of mass murderers. There was no one pattern.
He put the books aside, turned off the study lights shortly after midnight. He toured the basement and street floor, checking windows and locks. Then he trudged upstairs to undress, take a warm shower, and shave. He pulled on fresh pajamas. The image of his naked body in the bathroom mirror was not encouraging. Everything-face, neck, breasts, abdomen, ass, thighs-seemed to be sinking.
He got into bed, switched off the bedside lamp, and lay awake for almost an hour, turning from side to side, his mind churning. Finally he turned on the lamp, shoved his feet into wool slippers, went padding down to the study again. He dug out his list, the one beaded “The Suspect.” Under the “Physical” column he had jotted “An athlete?” He crossed this out and inserted “A mountain climber?” At the bottom, under “Additional Notes,” he wrote “Possesses an ice ax?”
It wasn’t much, he admitted. In fact, it was ridiculous. But when he turned out the study lights, climbed once more to the empty bedroom, and slid into bed, he fell asleep almost instantly.
2
“You didn’t give me much time,” Thomas Handry said, unlocking his attache case. “I guessed you’d be more interested in the assassination itself rather than the political background, so most of the stuff I’ve got is on the killing.”
“You guessed right,” Captain Delaney nodded. “By the way, I read all your articles on the Department. Pretty good, for an outsider.”
“Thanks a whole hell of a lot!”
“You want to write poetry, don’t you?”
Handry was astonished, physically. He jerked back in the booth, jaw dropping, took off his Benjamin Franklin reading glasses.
“How did you know that?”
“Words and phrases you used. The rhythm. And you were trying to get inside cops. It was a good try.”
“Well…you can’t make a living writing poetry.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
Handry was embarrassed. So he looked around at the paneled walls, leather-covered chairs, old etchings and playbills, yellowed and filmed with dust.
“I like this place,” he said. “I’ve never been here before. I suppose it was created last year, and they sprayed dirt on everything. But they did a good job. It really does look old.”
“It is,” Delaney assured him. “Over a hundred years. It’s not a hype. How’s your ale?”
“Real good. All right, let’s get started.” He took handwritten notes from his attache case and began reading rapidly.
“Leon Trotsky. Da-dah da-dah da-dah. One of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, and after. A theorist. Stalin drives him out of Russia, but still doesn’t trust him. Trotsky, even overseas, could be plotting. Trotsky gets to Mexico City. He’s suspicious, naturally. Very wary. But he can’t live in a closet. A guy named Jacson makes his acquaintance. It’s spelled two ways in newspaper reports: J-a-c-s-o-n and J-a-c-k-s-o-n. A white male. He visits Trotsky for at least six months. Friends. But Trotsky never sees anyone unless his secretaries and bodyguards are present. August twentieth, nineteen-forty, Jacson comes to visit Trotsky, bringing an article he’s written that he wants Trotsky to read. I couldn’t find what it was about. Probably political. Jacson is invited into the study. For the first time the secretaries aren’t notified. Jacson said later that Trotsky started reading the article. He sat behind his desk. Jacson stood at his left. He had a raincoat, and in the pockets were an ice ax, a revolver, and a dagger. He said-”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Delaney protested. “Jacson had an ice ax in his raincoat pocket? Impossible. It would never fit.”
“Well, one report said it was in the raincoat pocket. Another said it was concealed by Jacson’s raincoat.”
“‘Concealed.’ That’s better.”
“All right, so Trotsky is reading Jacson’s article. Jacson takes the ice ax from under his raincoat, or out of the pocket, and smashes it down on Trotsky’s skull. Trotsky shrieks and throws himself on Jacson, biting his left hand. Beautiful. Then he staggers backward. The secretaries come running in and grab Jacson.”
“Why the revolver and dagger?”
“Jacson said they were to be used to kill himself after he killed Trotsky.”
“It smells. Did Trotsky die then, in his study?”
“No. He lived for about twenty-six hours. Then he died.”
“Any mention of the direction of the blow?”
“On top of Trotsky’s head, as far as I can gather. Trotsky was seated, Jacson was standing.”
“What happened to him?”
“Jacson? Imprisoned. One escape try failed, apparently planned by the GPU. That’s what the Russian Secret Police was called then. I don’t know where Jacson is today, or even if he’s alive. There was a book published on Trotsky last year. Want me to look into it?”
“No. It’s not important. Another ale?”
“Please. I’m getting thirsty with all this talking.”
They sat silently until another round of drinks was brought. Delaney was drinking rye and water.
“Let’s get back to the weapon,” he said, and Handry consulted his notes.
“I couldn’t locate a photo, but the wonderful old lady who runs our morgue, and who remembers everything, told me that a magazine ran an article on the killing in the 1950s and published a photo of the ice ax used, so apparently a photo does exist, somewhere.”
“Anything else?”
“It was the kind of ice ax used in mountain climbing. First, Jacson said he bought it in Switzerland. Now the testimony gets confused. Jacson’s mistress said she had never seen it in Paris or New York, prior to their trip to Mexico. Then Jacson said he like mountaineering and had bought the ax in Mexico and used it when climbing-wait a minute; I’ve got it here somewhere-when climbing the Orizaba and Popo in Mexico. But then later it turned out that Jacson had lived in a camp in Mexico for awhile, and the owner’s son was an enthusiastic mountaineer. He and Jacson talked about mountain climbing several times. This son owned an ice ax, purchased four years previously. The day following the attack on Trotsky, and Jacson’s arrest, the camp owner went looking for his son’s ice ax, but it had disappeared. Confusing, isn’t it?”
“It always is,” Delaney nodded. “But Jacson could have purchased the ax in Switzerland, Paris, New York, or stolen it in Mexico. Right?”
“Right.”
“Great,” Delaney sighed. “I didn’t know you could buy the damned thing like a candy bar. Was Jacson really a GPU agent?”
“Apparently no one knows for sure. But the ex-chief of the Secret Service of Mexican Police says he was. Says it in a book he wrote about the case anyway.”
“You’re sure Jacson hit Trotsky only once with the ice ax?”
“That’s one thing everyone seems to agree on. One blow. You need anything else on this?”
“Nooo. Not right now. Handry, you’ve done excellently in such a short time.”