19 Purchase Street (31 page)

He went over backward.

Fell the ten feet into the pond.

Fell into the middle of an expanse of water lilies.

He sank and came up spewing, thrashing the water, trying for a hold on anything substantial. There were only the water lilies. Their stems, thick and strong as ropes, grown all the way up from the bottom of the pond, were covered with algae. Ponsard felt their sliminess in his grip as they refused to support him. He kicked to keep his head above the surface, tried to raise his legs in order to float, but the stems of the lilies prevented that. They were wound around his ankles. The more he kicked the more he became entangled. The stems of Monet's lilies seemed to be coiling, tying themselves around his lower legs and then his thighs, tightening. And soon he could not move his legs at all.

He saw Gainer above.

He thought, stupid amateur.

He went under and began breathing water.

A
SHORT
while later, under way in the green Bentley, Gainer was bleeding on Rodger's leather seat, though Leslie had not yet noticed.

“What did you do with Astrid?” Gainer asked.

Took her to the pâtisserie. Bought the little tart a whole bagful.”

“Then what?”

“Gave her Ponsard's five thousand francs and pointed her toward Paris. How are you?”

“Okay.”

“Take some Rescue,” she got the bottle from her carryall.

He didn't bother with the dropper, unscrewed the cap off and drank the bottle down to empty.

Leslie scowled. “You shouldn't have done that.”

“Why not?”

“I needed some.”

He doubted that. “How about Rodger's paintings?”

“They're in the trunk.”

He was glad to hear that, had thought she just might not give a damn. “You covered a lot of ground,” he told her.

“So did you.”

“No more expert.”

“He died from Monet.” Gainer only shrugged, and Leslie thought better of what she'd said. She shouldn't deprive Gainer of any of the revenge he needed. “Well,” she adjusted, “at least it seemed that Monet helped you some. I mean, he didn't like Ponsard either.”

She glanced over to see how Gainer took that—and saw the blood on the seat. Her insides went hollow. If anything happened to him she'd give up. “Are you … shot?”

“Yeah.”

“How bad?”

“I don't know.”

She pulled the Bentley over and stopped.

He took off his jacket and his sopping shirt.

The wound looked as though it had been made with a knife rather than a bullet. Not deep but a four-inch swath of skin laid open. Still oozing.

Leslie wiped away a lot of the blood with the dry half of Gainer's shirt, then tore off part of her gauze dress for a bandage. She did not daintily use the hem the way women did in Western movies. She ripped off a wide piece from it straight up the front and used it to compress and wrap the wound as best she could.

“Say ‘Ezekiel sixteen-six.'”

“Sixteen-six what?”

“From the Bible, the sixteenth chapter sixth verse of the Book of Ezekiel.”

“Why?”

“It's good for the good guys on this side like us when they get hurt. Helps stop the pain and the bleeding.”

“I don't know it.”

“You don't have to say the whole verse. Just saying ‘Ezekiel sixteen-six' gets the point across. Damn it,
do
it.”

“Ezekiel sixteen-six,” Gainer mumbled.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE
late morning sun struck on the Tiffany chafing dish and reflected onto Darrow's bare chest. It seemed to beatify the gray hairs that formed a curly cross on the front of him, from the notch below his throat nearly down to his navel and horizontally from nipple to nipple.

Darrow was not aware of it. He nudged his sunglasses down enough for an inspection of the sky above Number 19, approved it and pushed them back into place. The frames of the glasses got smeared with the white sun-blocking substance Darrow had applied to the bridge and tip of his nose. A peeling nose was a vulgar, plebeian trait and he couldn't have that. Some of the white also got on a finger. He wiped it away with his napkin and examined the finger closely to make sure it was as impeccable as before.

The man seated around from Darrow decapitated his three-minute egg and spooned out the part he had lopped off. His name was Donald Hunsicker. He was sixty. He had an ingrained serious look, the sort one might expect, for example, from an insurance executive, someone who knew too well the chances for disaster in practically everything. His mouth was a straight, thin-lipped affair with neither down nor up lines at its corners. Also somewhat hyperthyroid eyes. Two-thirds of his hair was gone and at least that percentage of the teeth in his mouth were not really his.

“How's Eleanor?” Darrow asked, as though paying a verbal debt. Over the ten years that he had been seeing Hunsicker he had never met the man's wife, but he would not think of referring to her as Mrs. Hunsicker.

“She's fine.”

“When you were here a few weeks back you mentioned that she wasn't feeling well, had to go under the knife for something.”

“Just some female trouble. She's recouping now.”

“No worse than having a tooth pulled these days, I suppose,” Darrow said, and allowed a mild, private curiosity about the hollow a woman must feel after being all cut out below. The word that came to his mind was
cavernous
. It closed the distasteful thought.

Hunsicker put a dab of butter into the crater of his egg. “Marjorie-Anne comes out this year,” he said.

Darrow asked “who” by raising his head.

“My granddaughter,” Hunsicker told him.

“Where?”

“Grosse Pointe.”

Nice enough but a long ways down from Boston, Darrow thought. If it had been his granddaughter he would have arranged for Boston. A few of his conscious dreams were of a young girl of his own, exceptionally pretty and personable, winning everyone for him at the annual presentation cotillion in the main ballroom of the Copley Plaza in Boston. That would never be now, of course. One way or another his wife Barbara had always prevented whenever he'd raised the possibility of a child to her, and at the time he'd let it go because he hadn't foreseen how useful a child could be.

“Barbara still in Antibes?” Hunsicker asked.

“No.” Darrow thought back to his last sitdown with Hunsicker and was sure he hadn't said where Barbara was. In fact that meeting had been very brief, no more than ten minutes, no small talk. It didn't alarm Darrow or surprise him that Hunsicker had special knowledge of his personal life, but he resented the way Hunsicker had slipped it in, obviously demonstrating his advantage. Darrow unscrewed the lid of the Wedgewood egg coddler that was on the saucer in front of him. He glanced into the coddler, as though to discover something other than the two eggs and bacon crumbles it contained. He told Hunsicker, “At the moment, Barbara's in Spain.”

“Hell of a place to be in August.”

“Exactly what I told her.”

“Especially Madrid,” Hunsicker said, casually.

Darrow took it as another little prod. Hunsicker and his people probably even knew how much Barbara had paid whatever young man or men she had probably slept with night before last. No matter. “She likes the bullfights,” he said.

“A lot of people used to.”

“She still does.”

Hunsicker bit a corner of toast. “Remember how squeamish people used to be about seeing the bulls killed, how outraged they were on behalf of those
poor
creatures?”

“Hardly hear anything like that sort anymore, I agree.”

“People shifted their indignation—to whales and baby seals. And even those causes never really caught on. They're good for a moment of conscience on some street corner while signing a petition but that's about as much thought anyone gives them.”

“I guess everyone's too preoccupied these days …”

“I agree,” Darrow said.

“… with their own survival. People have come to feel perhaps they're the endangered species,” Hunsicker said.

“Is that how you feel?”

“No.”

“Nor I,” Darrow said with, he felt, just enough emphasis.

They were on the broad raised terrace at the south end of the house at 19 Purchase Street being served brunch at a round outdoors table that had a pale yellow umbrella up through the middle of it. The table had about a quarter-inch wobble because of the unevenness of the terrace surface. A servant had repositioned the table twice and finally slipped a fold of cardboard beneath one leg. The problem was solved until Hunsicker happened to kick that leg.

Darrow avoided as much as possible putting any pressure on the table, spooning lightly into his coddled eggs and setting his drink down with care. Hunsicker, meanwhile, went about eating as though nothing was wrong, even put his elbows on the table, Darrow noticed. After Hunsicker had caused numerous wobbles, Darrow had the urge to tell the man to be more careful. Instead he put down the urge, taking two swallows of his Mimosa, orange juice and champagne, and extending his legs so that his calves as well as his thighs were exposed to the sun.

Darrow wore lightweight cotton trunks of a faded khaki color that went appropriately with his tan. Also, in the same shade, a pair of canvas deck shoes. Darrow—color-coordinated.

Hunsicker had also put on trunks, borrowed green ones with a wide gathered elastic band that nearly came up to his rib cage and ballooned out, leg holes gaping, exposing the built-in nylon jock.

Hunsicker was uncomfortable being that undressed. He had only consented to it, out of prudence, so as not to appear out of place. Actually he hadn't been to a beach or pool in forty years. His skin was so pale it looked as though it had just been unbandaged. There were hardly any contours to his body. His upper arms and forearms were nearly the same measurement around, and his legs were like posts, ankles thick, thighs thin.

It was the obvious peasant in him, Darrow thought. Competence was one thing, grace another, and for that reason Hunsicker had never risen above his present slot, never would. He was a mere implementer.

Hunsicker was the Distributor.

At least that was the name for him used by those on the inside. Officially, for any public purpose, he was vice-president in charge of client accommodations for a firm called Intelco. That company represented itself as a management consultancy firm specializing in all types of intelligence services—from getting proof against disloyal or sexually indiscreet executives to providing security for those of particular value. Well known was Intelco's system of protecting large corporations from infiltration by organized crime. Nothing unnerved a board of directors more than Intelco's pitch about the possibility of a gradual takeover by the criminal element. To prevent such a thing, Intelco offered sophisticated psychological and electronic methods of interviewing anyone considered for a key position. The complex ways it interrogated, analyzed and collated was reassuring and more often than not its recommendations were followed. Two hundred of the bluest blue-chip corporations were Intelco clients. Never did it occur to them that Intelco was in a position to promote exactly what it was supposed to deter.

Why should it? On the advisory and the active staffs of Intelco were nearly seventy-five percent of the most notable figures of the intelligence law enforcement communities—those of the recent past who had chosen to leave government employment for the greater rewards of the private sector—and so when a corporation bought Intelco it was also buying a former director of investigations of, say, the National Security Agency, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a former senior security advisor of the Department of State, and so on. It was a list so extensive it had to be set in six-point type to fit down the entire left-hand border of Intelco's engraved letterhead. It certainly appeared as though Intelco was an independent firm, owing subservience to no one. Who could possibly possess the clout to compromise such eminence?

The High Board.

Intelco was its satellite. An organization descended from that cadre of OSS fellows Winship and the High Board had enlisted to make the crime bosses bend in the forties. Of course, there was no way of tracing that; the thread that tied back to them was so purposely tangled and even broken at times that no one could follow it. Besides, anyone trying could dig forever and find nothing. Unlike most surreptitious affiliations, the one between Intelco and the High Board was not all dirtily honeycombed and burrowed. The connection was overhead, direct and uncomplicated, from the top to the top. Intelco had a hundred persons on its staff, not including clerical help. But at least ten times that number around the world were clandestinely connected, and many of them were so far out on the edge of things they had no idea for whom they were actually working. In many respects Intelco operated like a government intelligence agency, with the same sort of high-handed attitude and methods that put it a step ahead of everyone. No red tape, though. Throughout Intelco only the most prosaic matters were put to paper, all else was verbal—no matter how crucial a situation might be. In fact the more crucial, all the more reason to mind the rule. It might seem an archaic way of doing business, but in this instance, in this business, very effective, and secure.

Intelco especially served the High Board by seeing to the behavior of everyone within the organization. According to the codes prescribed by Winship himself, behavior was never gray, circumstances were never extenuating. Either a line was stepped over, or it was not. No one was exempt from such judgment. Especially not those in charge of the various divisions.

Darrow at Number 19, for example.

The eye and the pressure of Intelco were on him.

Any foul-up within his area was his foul-up. If it was a serious matter, he would answer for it, and the High Board would accept only one answer. Darrow, of course, knew that. His predecessor Gridley had known it too. Gridley himself hadn't skimmed a hundred million from The Balance but he had been responsible for it. When the shortage was found, Gridley did not try excuses or explanations. He just took it, and died.