He felt the phone had been ringing since time began. As his eyes opened Cy Stevenson frowned into the darkness. He was in a chair, an armchair. Something was rolling around his feet. A bottle. Two even. And the phone was ringing. The curtained windows showed thin cracks of daylight. He had no idea what time it was.
He reached left and knocked over a lamp. His hand connected with the telephone. He picked it up. As he spoke into it the memory surged over him of last night. He could hear a woman’s voice in his ear. Frantic, repetitive. ‘Cy, is that you? For God’s sake speak. Speak, for God’s sake.’
He grunted.
‘Cy, I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour. Sunny knows,’ Mary’s voice said. ‘About us.’
He reached down for one of the rolling bottles, put the neck to his lips and let the last few drops of whisky trickle across his tongue.
‘Cy, did you hear me? Sunny’s left for Virginia. We have to talk. I’m coming straight over?’
He put the phone on the arm of the chair and felt about on the floor for the light. Clicking the switch he screwed up his eyes as light jumped across the pale carpet. Mary’s voice was still coming from the phone. He picked up the receiver. His suit, he saw, was covered with mud.
‘Listen,’ he said, infinitely weary. ‘Just for Christ’s sake leave me alone.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
In the mirror behind the barman’s head Hal Bolson caught sight of Max hurrying down the steps and swung round on the stool.
‘Thanks for meeting me at such short notice, Hal,’ Max said, shaking his hand.
Bolson grimaced. ‘Now I’m retired I find I have all the time in the world. And I don’t like it. On the phone you sounded like a worried man.’
‘I am. Unless I can find Nan Luc in the next few hours. You said there are things you can tell me.’
‘There are things I might be able to tell you,’ Bolson corrected him cautiously. ‘But I have to get clearance first.’
‘Clearance? From the Pentagon, you mean? The CIA?’
Bolson shook his head. ‘In the bars of Saigon there were more agents than there were whores. But I wasn’t one of them.’ He paused. ‘You really think Nan Luc’s going for the jugular?’
‘The wrong jugular.’
‘But she doesn’t yet know where to find Stevenson?’
‘Don’t count on it.’
Bolson signalled to the barman. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’
Max shook his head. ‘I don’t have that kind of time, Hal.’
‘OK. I get the message.’ Bolson pushed himself off the barstool. ‘I’ll do what I can.’ They walked towards the stairs. Bolson took his topcoat from a hook and shrugged himself into it.
‘This clearance you’re going to have to get, Hal. Who is it from?’
Bolson buttoned his coat. ‘A woman,’ he said. ‘I have to check with her first. All this could put a cannon shot through her life.’
Max stood under the plastic dome of a call point and punched the numbers for San Diego. He was looking through the clear side of the booth at the picture of the Vietnamese woman on the front page of a stack of newspapers at the newsstand on the street corner. Within seconds he heard the soft, unhurried voice of Edward Brompton.
‘Mr Brompton,’ Max said, not trying to disguise the urgency in his voice, ‘this is Max Benning.’
‘I told you, Mr Benning, that I couldn’t help you with my wife’s New York address.’
‘Do you know who I am?’ Max said carefully. ‘Do you know I was a friend of your wife’s in Vietnam?’
‘Yes. I know who you are, Mr Benning. I’m afraid the answer’s the same.’
‘I have something to tell you, Mr Brompton, which I think might make a difference.’
‘What’s that?’
‘In Vietnam Nan Luc used to say that if she ever got to America she would trace her father through her Aunt Louise whose husband she thought might be a New York cop.’
‘Yes, that’s probably one route she’s following,’ Brompton said cautiously. ‘What is it you have to tell me?’
‘I believe Louise has been murdered, Mr Brompton. I think it’s her picture on the newsstands here in New York. Louise Cartwright, policeman’s wife. Found murdered in the early hours of this morning.’ He paused. ‘I think there’s every chance the man Nan Luc’s looking for is a murderer.’
At the other end the phone was silent. Then Ed Brompton said abruptly. ‘Nan Luc isn’t at her apartment in Greenwich Village. I don’t know where she is. You think she could be walking into danger.’
‘I know she is. I’m not sure she knows it.’
‘OK,’ Ed Brompton said crisply. ‘I’ll give you the address of the apartment and arrange for the superintendent to let you in.’ For the first time his voice betrayed his anxiety. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘maybe there’s something at the apartment that can point the police to where she’s gone.’
She had never seen such a restrained display of wealth. Cars, clothes, tennis courts, the furnishings of the club itself, all proclaimed a cautious Eastern Seaboard affluence.
The trick, Nan Luc thought, was to leave you in no doubt that this was a highly exclusive club and that its members were the wealthiest families in the county, all without hammering a notice on the door. Portraits, old and new, lined the long wall of the dining room. Jason Rose was seated below an eighteenth century wigged figure under which was written, ‘Joshua Meyerick, Esq. Born 1699, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. Died 1789, Meyerick City, New York, in the United States of America.’
Jason Rose stood as she approached and stretched his hand. Only then, by the slightest miscalculation of direction did she realise he was blind. He smiled as the chair was drawn out for her. ‘You’re very quick, Mrs Brompton. I can usually fool most people for five minutes or so. It’s a sort of childish game,’ he added dismissively.
‘It was good of you to ask me here, Mr Rose,’ she said sitting down.
‘Pure selfishness,’ he assured her. ‘When you told me you’d lived in Vietnam up to last year I saw my opportunity to find out what’s going on in a land I loved. There are tourists now of course but I suspect that’s not really for me.’ She watched him move easily into his chair opposite her.
‘You were wounded there?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Along with many, many others on both sides. First let’s have some tea. Then we can tackle your questions. And then mine.’
From the attitude of waiters and passing members, Nan Luc quickly came to understand that Jason Rose was well liked in the Meyerick Club. The tea he ordered was overseen by Vic Impari himself.
‘So what can I do to help?’ Jason asked. ‘I can call you Nan Luc, can’t I?’
‘Of course.’
‘The girl at the fund office said you were looking for information.’
‘In the US evacuation I was left behind,’ Nan said carefully. ‘My mother was already dead and my American father somehow lost me. I was barely seven years old at the time. The truth is, I don’t remember it that clearly.’ She was throbbing with excitement, trying to keep her voice as flat and calm as she could. But she was certain that she was at the end, or very nearly, at the end of her search. Certain that her father was known to this young man, perhaps even well known.
She knew now that she must make no mistake. She had planned this moment carefully, trimming the story she was prepared to tell Jason Rose. Her plan was to leave herself at the end of the meeting knowing where her father was to be found, without allowing Jason enough information to believe she knew. Certainly without allowing him to guess why she wanted to trace her father. Above all, she didn’t want him warned in advance.