‘Yes sir. Do you want me to send a boy to his room to tell him you’re here?’
‘Before we do that, I just want to make sure I got the right Dex Devereaux. If it is he’ll have been booked into the hotel from Washington DC, is that right?’
The clerk continued to smile. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give out that kind of information.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘I quite understand.’ I took three pound notes from my wallet and laid them on the reception desk, my fingers pinning them to the mahogany.
‘I believe you are correct,’ said the clerk, still smiling, and the notes were gone. ‘Shall I send a message?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned and saw Devereaux standing behind me. He must have been waiting in the lobby. ‘Hey there, Johnny Canuck… Your surveillance skills stink,’ he said and looped a firm, guiding arm through mine. ‘Let’s take a walk.’
We headed out of the hotel and Devereaux suggested we take my car. As he did so he waved a hand vaguely in the Atlantic’s direction. My guess was that he had spotted it, or me, from the back of the police car that had dropped him off.
‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked.
‘Somewhere quiet,’ he replied, without letting the smile drop from his face. ‘Where we can talk.’
Ten minutes later we were parked beneath a sheltering arch of trees on Kelvin Way where it dissected Kelvingrove Park.
‘Nice day for a walk,’ said Devereaux as he got out of the car. I followed, locking up the doors. He led the way into the park and in the direction of the museum and art gallery until we found a tree-shaded bench. Devereaux was in a suit of exactly the same style and cut as he had worn the night he’d called at my flat with Jock Ferguson, except this time it was blue. Several shades too light a blue for a local ever to have worn. I imagined it would have looked okay in the swelter of a New York summer, but amongst the muted tones of tweed- and serge-bound Glasgow, it was the sartorial equivalent of a screeching jazz trumpet played through a loudspeaker.
‘So you thought you’d try to find out who booked my hotel room for me?’ he said, and placed the straw trilby on the bench next to him, exposing the precision engineering of his flat-top haircut. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and drew it across his brow before putting the trilby back on.
‘This is all very Graham Greene,’ I said. ‘Parleys in parks, that kind of thing.’
‘Did you think that was how to work out who had sent me here?’ Devereaux ignored my diversion. ‘My client?’
‘Your client?’ It came out almost a snort. ‘If you have a client, then their motto is Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.’
Devereaux laughed and eyed me as if appraising me. There was a hint of respect in his gaze. Also a hint of the lion appraising the antelope.
‘Yep, Jock Ferguson was right,’ said Devereaux. ‘You are a smart cookie. Okay, you got me.’
‘So what do I call you?’ I asked. ‘ Special Agent Devereaux?’
‘Dex will still do just fine. And what we talked about the other night was all true.’
‘So what in hell’s name is so important about John Largo that the FBI send one of their finest on a tub all the way over to Glasgow.’
‘Actually I flew. To London. I took the train up here. And John Largo is that important. Seeing as you’re so all-fired curious about me, and seeing as you enjoy an interesting relationship with the local law enforcement, I thought it would be good for you and me to have a talk without Jock Ferguson present.’ Devereaux stood up and we started to walk through the park.
‘You don’t trust Jock?’ I asked.
‘I’m just cautious, that’s all.’
‘Yet you’re prepared to trust me?’
Devereaux laughed. ‘Now, there’s a question: do you trust a man who doesn’t really trust himself? Well, let me tell you, Lennox, you’re an interesting kind of guy. You’ll have guessed that I’ve been through everything that’s on file about you. War record. Post — war record. I know that you deal with crooks. I know that you’ve done the odd crooked thing yourself. And I know more than you might think I would know about everything that happened last year.’
I said nothing. He probably did know more than I’d like. More than Jock Ferguson knew; or was sure that he knew.
‘Like I said, I saw your war record. I know what it was like to have your kind of war. I was with the First Ranger Battalion. That’s one of the reasons I put myself forward to come over here… I know Scotland. I trained here with the British Commandos before Omaha Beach.’
Again, I said nothing. Everybody had a war story.
‘I also know about the…’ Devereaux paused, looking somewhere in the park’s trees for the right word. ‘… difficulties you got into towards the end of your war service. The accusations about black-market dealing. And I know all about your German associate ending up face down in Hamburg harbour.’ Devereaux stopped in the path and turned to me. ‘Do you know what I see, Lennox? I see a man who can be trusted for the best reason of them all. Money. I don’t know what schemes Ferguson has going. Maybe none. But it looks to me like every second cop in this city is on the take. I’d be pretty sure that Largo has a couple in his pocket. So here’s the deaclass="underline" I’ll pay you for anything I can use to get Largo. You give me the goods that lead me to him and I’ll pay you a thousand dollars. That’s over and above anything you make on the side from the cases you’re investigating. It should also be enough to resolve any conflicts of interest, should they arise.’
‘That’s an interesting offer, Dex…’ All of a sudden I felt comfortable using his first name: promises of large sums of money tended to make me more amenable to widening my social circle. ‘But, to be honest, a lot of people have been paying me to find people. So far my batting average has been pretty lousy.’
‘You don’t need to find him, Lennox. Just get enough to point me in the right direction.’ He led on and I followed. A woman in a flared shirtwaister dress and winged sunglasses pushed a pram the size of a taxi past us. Devereaux lifted his hat to her and I followed suit. We were pretty elegant for a couple of New World Joes.
‘You still haven’t told me why he is so important,’ I said. ‘What did he do: steal George Washington’s wooden teeth from the Smithsonian?’
‘When we met at your apartment the other night, I told you how Largo has built up a chain of supply across three continents. It’s a very, very impressive operation. But what’s even more impressive is the vision behind it. You and I saw all kinds of hell in the war, I’d say, but John Largo has a vision of the future that would give us new nightmares. Have you heard of a narcotic called heroin?’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said. ‘It was used in the war instead of morphine. I’ve heard of people getting hooked on it, but it’s less addictive than morphine, I believe. That’s why they used it.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. That’s where everyone behind heroin got it wrong. It was created as a less addictive alternative but it actually creates a higher dependency among those who use it. That’s not been a problem. Here in England it’s still legal and a prescribed medicine. If your kid has a cough that won’t go away, the doctor will write you a script for a dose of heroin drops. In fact, the authorities here only started to keep a record of heroin addicts this year. There are just short of four hundred recorded addicts in Britain. Almost all are doctors or connected to the medical profession. You don’t have a problem here. But in the States we do, and it’s getting bigger. Heroin has been controlled since the Harrison Act and we made it completely illegal more than twenty years ago.’
He paused as a couple of young men in shabby business suits walked past.