Twenty-Four
MARCO DISCOVERED THAT RAYMOND WAS IN Washington very quickly. However, by appearing at the Press Club (where he had found himself, to his chagrin and resentment, exactly once before in the years of his political reporting) Raymond unwittingly eluded the men of Marco’s unit. The unit was out in force and in desperate earnest. They knew how to unlock the mystery, that is, they held the key in their hands, but now they could not find the lock. As each day had passed since the afternoon Raymond had rented the rowboat in Central Park, and Raymond had been beyond their reach, every element of responsibility in the unit, and in the direction of the nation, had watched and waited tensely, fearing that they might have arrived at the solution too late. By going to the Hill and to the White House on a Saturday afternoon in summer, Raymond kept showing up exactly where they did not expect him to appear, so they missed him again. Fifty minutes after he had left the Washington bureau of The Daily Press, and after the bureau chief had taken off for the weekend in an automobile with his wife and their parrot and the information as to where and how Raymond would spend the day, two men from Marco’s unit arrived to take up permanent posts waiting for Raymond to return to the office. At the White House Raymond duly registered the fact that he would be in Washington for the weekend but Hagerty said how the hell could he have time to have breakfast when there was a national convention opening Monday?
Because Raymond was known to detest his mother and stepfather under any normal circumstances and because Marco’s unit calculated that he would never speak to the Iselins again after the viciousness of Johnny’s smear of Raymond’s father-in-law, they missed Raymond again by ignoring the Iselin house. Marco’s unit ate, drank, and slept very little. They had to find Raymond so that he could play a little solitaire to pass the time and tell them what they had to know because something was about to cut the thread that held the blazing sword which was suspended directly overhead from the blazing sun.
Just before midnight, Raymond crawled into the back of the panel truck, stretched out, and went to sleep. It had started to rain. As the truck came out of the Lincoln Tunnel into New York, thunder was added and lightning flashed, but Raymond was asleep and could not heed it.
Raymond’s mother had been merciful. She had understood completely the operation of the Yen Lo mechanism. She knew Raymond had to do what he was told to do, that he could have no sense of right or wrong about it, nor suspect any possibility of the consciousness of guilt, but she must have sensed that he had to retain a sense of gain/loss, that he would know when the time came, that by having to kill Senator Jordan he would be losing something, and that his wife, too (and so very much more dimensionally), would suffer an infinity of loss. So, out of mercy, she instructed Chunjin to let Raymond sleep until he arrived within a block of the Jordan house.
Chunjin stopped the truck on the far side of the street, opposite the house. It was raining heavily and they alone seemed to be alive in the city. Three other cars were parked in the block, an impossibly low number. Chunjin leaned over the seat and shook Raymond by the shoulder.
“Time to do the work, Mr. Shaw,” he said. Raymond came awake instantly. He sat up. He clambered to sit beside Chunjin in the front seat.
Chunjin gave him the gun, to which a silencer had been affixed, making it cumbersome and very nearly impossible to pocket. “You know this kind of gun?” he asked efficiently.
“Yes,” Raymond answered dully.
“I suggest you keep it under your coat.”
“I will,” Raymond said. “I have never felt so sad.”
“That is proper,” Chunjin said. “However, sir, if you do the work quickly it will be over for you, and for him, although in different ways. When the work is done you will forget.”
The rain was like movie rain. It streamed heavily against the windows and made a tympanous racket as it hit the roof of the truck. Chunjin said, “I circle block with car, Mr. Shaw. If not here when you come out you walk slowly toward next street, Third Avenue. Bring gun with you.”
Raymond opened the car door.
“Mr. Shaw?”
“What?”
“Shoot through the head. After first shot, walk close, place second shot.”
“I know. She told me.” He opened the door quickly, got out quickly, and slammed it shut. He crossed the street as the panel truck pulled away, the pistol held at his waist under his light raincoat, the rain striking his face.
He felt the sadness of Lucifer. He moved in the flat, relentless rhythm of the oboe passages in Bald Mountain. Colors of anguish moved behind his eyes in VanGoghian swirls, having lifted the edges to give an elevation to the despair. His nameless grief had handles, which he lifted, carrying himself forward toward the center of the pain.
The doors of the house, outer and inner, opened with the master keys. There were no lights in the rooms on the main floor, only the night light over the foot of the stairs. Raymond moved toward the staircase, the pistol hanging at his side, gripped in his left hand. As his foot touched the first riser he heard a sound in the back of the house. He froze where he was until he could identify it.
Senator Jordan appeared in pajamas, slippers, and robe. His silver hair was ruffled into a halo of duck feathers. He saw Raymond as he stood under the light leaning against the wall, but showed no surprise.
“Ah, Raymond. I didn’t hear you come in. Didn’t expect to see you until around breakfast time tomorrow morning. I got hungry. If I were only as hungry in a restaurant as I am after I’ve been asleep in a nice, warm bed for a few hours, I could be rounder and wider than the fat lady in the circus. Are you hungry, Raymond?”
“No, sir.”
“Let’s go upstairs. I’ll force some good whisky on you. Combat the rain. Soothe you after traveling and any number of other good reasons.” He swept past Raymond and went up the stairs ahead of him. Raymond followed, the pistol heavy in his hand.
“Jocie said you had to go down to see your mother and the Speaker.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How was the Speaker?”
“I—I didn’t see him, sir.”