"Who killed Havlicek and Stemple?" I asked.
"That part, you're going to have to learn on your own. It's either Hutchins or the FBI. I just can't tell you who."
Standing there, I suddenly felt the driving urge to get somewhere fast, though I wasn't quite sure where I needed to be. I was sitting on information that no one else in the world had, but I wasn't quite sure how to let anyone else know.
I nodded slowly to Gus. I couldn't well be angry, but I was somewhere shy of appreciative. "I've got to get out of here," I said.
"You have what you need?"
I don't think he meant luggage. "I have, I think, whatever I'm going to get."
I looked back at my bodyguards and gave them a wave to approach. Their car started, and they raced up to where we were standing. Gus took a step toward me, reached his arm out to hug me, and I fell into his embrace. As we stepped back from each other, he looked me in the eye and said, "You're a man of words. Me, I'll never be able to tell you how sorry I am. For everything."
He smiled and hit me softly on the shoulder with his open fingers.
Then he added, "You're on your own now, and for you, with your talents, that's not a bad place to be."
twenty-two
So on your own really means being on your own. It means having a newspaper that doesn't want you on the story. It means having a key informant who has nothing else to give. It means having an FBI that may be trying to kill you rather than help you. It means returning home to Washington to nobody and nothing but the presence of imminent danger.
After all that had gone on that day, with all that was left to come, my hotel room seemed depressing, if I had the time or inclination to be depressed, which, right now, I didn't. As I fired up my laptop, I leaned back in my chair and pondered what I had. The president of the United States was a former armored car robber named Curtis Black who had entered the federal witness protection program at the invitation of the government under the name of Tony Clawson, switched names again to Clayton Hutchins, became a prominent businessman in Iowa, was elevated to the governorship by the eleventh-hour whims of a fickle electorate, was nominated vice president without a public vote, became president when his predecessor dropped dead, and was now one day away from being elected to a full term.
How did I know this? Well, two of his cohorts on the armored heist told me-one who was now dead, another who wouldn't allow me to use his name.
While we're at it, let's not forget that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was trying to kill me and had succeeded in killing my colleague, Steve Havlicek. And how did I know this? Well, the suspicions of those same criminals and my own gut instinct.
All this would go over big with Appleton-trying to end the Hutchins presidency on the word of two admitted criminals, but without the benefit of sharing their identities with our readership. I couldn't help but smile to myself. My sourcing, if that's what you want to call it, was so weak as to be laughable. I knew the facts. I just couldn't put them in the newspaper. I imagined the pitying look on Appleton's face when he fired me, or maybe he'd just do it by telephone, and all I'd get would be the pseudo-sympathetic tone of his voice.
I flicked the television on and turned to CNN'S Headline News to see where Hutchins was campaigning. A couple of minutes later, the network played footage of him speaking to a huge rally at Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, urging his supporters not only to vote themselves but each to bring a family member and a friend or neighbor to the polls-all, he said, "To guide our own destiny, to renew that most sacred of institutions, the American dream."
The camera showed men and women and children laughing and applauding and shouting high into the air. Balloons, red, white, and blue, fell from the sky, framed by the mammoth skyscrapers of New York. I stared hard at Hutchins, at his features, his smile, his face, his eyes, his graying hair. Frustrated, I flicked the picture off.
So do I call Martin? I decided it wasn't the right time yet. I decided I wanted to be armed with more information before he raced over and threw me off my game. On a legal pad, I scribbled down the names of people I needed to calclass="underline" Sammy Markowitz, Kent Drinker, Clayton Hutchins. Neither Markowitz nor Hutchins would be particularly easy to raise, though I imagined by now, Drinker might well be all too easy.
Chances were, he would find me before I even began looking for him.
Which, of course, begged the question: which was, the killer FBI agent-Drinker or Stevens, Stevens or Drinker? Or both? Stevens was an obvious suspect, given her mysterious presence at the airport. But then I recalled Havlicek telling me in the car before he died that he had talked to her that day. He just didn't explain what he had said.
Perhaps he really had given her my arrival time.
Well, I wasn't going to answer that question now, so I flipped through my datebook for Markowitz's number. When I called, some dullardly gentleman picked up the telephone, announced the name of his fine establishment, the Pigpen, then yelled to someone nearby, "Hey, leave the fucking jerky alone. I'll get it for you when I'm done." Pause, then, "Yeah, what."
"Is Sammy there?" I asked.
"No."
Great. This song and dance all over again. I said, "Well, when he gets in from church, could you tell him that Jack Flynn called. Tell him it's urgent that I speak to him."
"Hol'on a second," the man said. I heard him ask someone else, "Hey, Rudy, the boss go to church or somethin'? Isn't he in his booth?"
There was no pulling one over on this guy. A long pause followed, then the phone rang, then Markowitz's voice said, "You have nine lives?
Hate to tell you, but I think you're down to about two."
I wasn't much in the mood to make funny with him, given the day.
"Sammy, I need you to tell me something, and I need you to be straight.
Is there anyone up there in your world who'd be worried about me digging around on Curtis Black? Let me take it a step further. Is there anyone up there who'd kill over this? His cohorts in that failed robbery? Debtors? Anyone you can think of? And is there anyone who would want to kill Black himself if they found out who he is or where he is?"
There was silence. I heard the flick of his lighter, the sound of him inhaling a cigarette, then blowing smoke out toward the decrepit environs of his bar. "No," he said. "Black kind of became a nobody when he left, and that was a long time ago-over twenty years. We don't hold grudges that long in my business. Only in the movies. Too much money to be made." He paused as if he was calculating something, like that day's bookmaking receipts maybe, then added, "And I'm tallying the people up here. Everyone involved in that particular heist is either still in jail or dead. There's no one free who gives a rat's ass about Curtis Black."
I asked, "You're absolutely sure?"
He paused again, then said, "Yeah, unless there's something going on I don't know about, but that's at best unlikely. Yeah, I'm sure."
I said, "Let me ask you something else. You by chance mention to anyone that I was talking to you about Curtis Black? If you did, no hard feelings. But I'm at a point in my story that it would be really helpful to know."
There was another long pause. I could hear him puffing on his cigarette. I could hear the mindless chatter of his small-minded clientele in the background, some woman on a jukebox singing a country song about a car stealing her man or maybe her man stealing her car.
"No," he said. But it was the way he said it, anything but firm. He sounded uncharacteristically weak, begging more questions.
So I asked him one. "Who? Who'd you tell? I need this."
I heard him take a deep breath, then let out a mouth full of smoke. "A fed, some fucker by the name of Drinker-I told him he should own a bar with that name. He came by, wanted to know what I knew. He kept pressuring me, wouldn't get out of my face. He was raising your name.