Yarnell was assistant DDO at Langley when the Company went into its slump. The lean years, remember? … That was your era, Kirk. Who do you suppose pulled the plug on Chile?
10
McGarvey arrived in New York City after his five year hiatus with little or no fanfare. It was early afternoon on a chilly spring Friday. He took a cab into Manhattan, watching from the back seat as the great city showed itself from across the river. He had forgotten just how big and dirty and exciting New York was. He had forgotten about the billboards, about the derelict cars along the sides of the roads, not even worth the scrap. He had forgotten about the traffic and the city smells and the feeling of tense excitement here. Out of habit he took a room in a Forty-second Street hotel just around the corner from the United Nations, had a quick shower, retrieved his gun from his luggage, and then went for a walk. The city was alive in a different way than were cities in Europe. There was a roughness here that seemed to exist side-by-side with elegance very easily. Street people competed with limousines for the right of way. What was uniquely American, in McGarvey’s view, was that both belonged, both had the same right to be wherever they wanted to be, and no one seemed to notice, let alone dispute the fact. As a young man growing up on the plains of the Midwest, New York had been his Mecca. His escape from a humdrum existence. His salvation. Yet Washington had snagged him, and anyway he had actually spent more years in Europe and in South America than here in the States. So it was good to be back. If there was one spot in the world that was uniquely American — large, brash, contradictory, free — it had to be New York City, and he reveled in the fact that he had come home, no matter the reason.
After a dozen or so blocks he found that he had circled around to the United Nations complex. He crossed First Avenue, trudged up the few steps past the guards, and walked the broad footpath down to the East River overlook where he leaned on the broad rail. The wind was cool here, but he didn’t mind. After Chile, Kathleen had come up here to straighten herself out (while she was seeing her attorney friend). They had met right here for the last time out of court, and she had told him that she was through with him. It had been spring then, too. She looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her, though she had already begun to hold herself differently; prim, proper, a little disdain showing. She couldn’t go on like this any longer, she said. The uncertainty and fear had become debilitating. For a moment there he thought she was worried sick out of love for him. But she dashed that hope. Her life was no longer hers to control; too many sleepless nights, mistrustful friends (what few she still had), and ugly rumors she was having a hard time keeping from their daughter. Just what was it, after all, that he did do for a living? Could he just tell her that once and for all? They could not go on.
McGarvey looked up from his thoughts. He would have quit for her then and there. The Company fired him a few weeks later in any event. But already it was too late for them. Too late for him.
He had an early lunch at the Howard Johnson’s across from Grand Central Station (he was still on Swiss time), then entered the Grand Hyatt Hotel, where he used a public phone to call the Washington number Trotter had given him. It was his first request for assistance and thus the signal that he had accepted his assignment and had actually begun. When he was finished he felt dirty. He went back to his hotel, stripped, and stayed in the shower for a very long time.
The day of the starving artist or writer was all but finished in SoHo and Greenwich Village. St. Christopher’s was a large, exclusive, four-story nightclub-cum-salon with apartments above on Broome Street, which never had (in its new life, at least) nor ever would see anyone starving. Tucked between an art gallery and an antique shop, it once had been a sweatshop factory of some sort. On its facade a plaster shield near the roofline was carved with lions and the date 1907. The windows had once been bricked over. They were open now and looked stainless steel and new. It was just past nine-thirty. From inside came the sounds of music and laughter. McGarvey went to the doorman, as he had been instructed to do, and gave his name as Peter Glynn. He was let inside and into a small vestibule where he paid a twenty-five-dollar cover charge to a lovely young woman wearing a colorful off-the-shoulder peasant dress. A big bullfight poster from Mexico City was framed on one wall. Hung on another was an Aztec sun calendar. Now he could hear that the music was Mexican; several guitars competed with a flat trumpet. He signed the guest register.
“Welcome to St. Christopher’s, Mr. Glynn,” the young woman said, glancing at what he had written. “Have you been here before?”
“No. This is my first time.”
“I’m sure you will enjoy yourself.”
“I was told Ms. Perez might be here this evening.”
“Yes, of course. Shall I say who is asking for her?”
“Tell her an old friend,” McGarvey said. “From Mexico City. In the old days.”
“Certainly,” the young woman said, inclining her head. She picked up her telephone as McGarvey went through the frosted glass doors into a large, crowded room that had been designed to look as if it were a Mexican village on the edge of a lagoon across from which a large volcano spewed smoke and fire. A mariachi band played on a tiny stage at the base of the volcano.
A young woman, scantily dressed in what appeared to be nothing more than crepe paper, escorted him to a small table off to one side, where she took his drink order of bourbon and water, and then left. Across the room on a slightly raised platform couples crowded around a long bar; some also sat at tables on the main floor. He thought he recognized a few of the faces from television or movies. At one large table, half a dozen older men (with the unmistakable look of politicians) were seated with six young, very good-looking women (with the unmistakable look of high-priced call girls).
His waitress came back with his drink as he was lighting a cigarette. “Will you be dining with us this evening?”
“Perhaps later,” McGarvey said, looking up.
“Do you wish to be alone … for the evening, Mr. Glynn?” The girl was smooth, but very young.
McGarvey smiled. “It is being taken care of, thanks.”
“Of course.”
It was fitting, he supposed. Yarnell was selling himself to the Russians. The man’s ex-wife was apparently selling herself to everyone else. McGarvey leaned back, then forward, as if he were a weary traveler stretching his back. He reached beneath the table and with his fingertips explored the base of the support. He felt a tiny loop of wire which emerged from the tabletop and disappeared into the base. It explained why the girl had used his name; for identification on the tape recording.
More people kept coming in, but no one was leaving. There was a lot of smoke from the volcano and from people’s cigarettes. When the band stopped playing between sets McGarvey could hear the sounds of running water even over the babble of dozens of simultaneous conversations. Then the ragged trumpet would blare, the guitars would take up the beat, and the noise would begin to echo off the walls.