Briarpatch (15 page)

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Authors: Ross Thomas

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Briarpatch
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Singe nodded and looked away. “He committed her.”
“You know why?”
“Because she drank too much.”
“That's not quite it. He committed her because she threatened to kill Felicity, not just once, but often.”
“Felicity never told me that,” Singe said in a voice that was almost a whisper.
Dill picked up the key Colder had given him. He held it up for Singe to see. “I want to use this tomorrow after the funeral. I want to go see where Felicity really lived. I want you to go with me.”
“You want a witness.”
“Right.”
“Okay. Fine.” She finished the rest of her brandy, put the glass down, and looked at her watch. “It's late,” she said. “You want to stay here or go home?”
Dill didn't answer for several seconds. “I think I'll go home.”
She nodded and rose quickly, as if to speed the parting guest. Dill also rose. She stood looking at him, a bemused half-smile on her face. He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was a long greedy kiss that neither seemed willing to end. Dill's hands went exploring and discovered a remarkable body. Just before they both reached the sexual terrain from which there could be no retreat, she tore her lips and tongue away, stepped back, and said, “Something's happening, isn't it?”
“You mean with us?”
She shook her head. “That'll happen or it won't. I mean something else, something lousy.”
“Yes,” Dill said. “I think so.”
She gave her head a small puzzled shake and then went with him to the door, where they kissed again. This time it was more definitive than before. Questions were asked and answered. Needs and proclivities stated. Mild aberrations noted. When it was over Dill felt they knew and even liked one another much better. He
smiled at her, and instead of murmuring something tender, asked, “Where did Felicity say she got all the money?”
Singe didn't seem to expect anything tender. It was as if they had already gone past all that and were now approaching absolute intimacy. She frowned and said, “For the down payment on the duplex and everything?”
Dill nodded.
“From you.” She added a small wry smile. “She said you'd got rich.”
“Too bad she was lying.”
“Yes,” Anna Maude Singe said. “Isn't it though.”
Dill parked the Ford sedan in the basement garage of the Hawkins Hotel, got out, locked it, and headed for the elevator. As he passed the second large square concrete pillar a man stepped out from behind it and said, “How's the neck?”
Dill stopped short. His right hand moved almost involuntarily to his neck. “Still a little sore,” he said.
Another man joined the first man. The second man was thin the way a knife is thin and about six feet tall. He looked short and frail next to the first man, who was well over six-three and built like a weight lifter who had given it up when he reached forty, which Dill guessed was three years back, possibly four. The weight lifter had thinning gray-blond hair, still blue eyes, and a wide happy mouth. The knifelike man had dyed black hair the color of coal, dead blue eyes, and a tight mouth that looked either sad or mean. Mean, Dill decided.
Both men wore rumpled summer suits of tan poplin. The weight lifter wore a blue shirt; the skinny man had chosen white. Neither wore a tie. The suitcoats were buttoned and seemed a trifle large. Dill assumed that the coats concealed the pistols, since neither
man looked as if he'd bother with a jacket once the temperature rose above 80 degrees. As Dill had driven down Our Jack Street on his way to the hotel, he noticed that the First National Bank sign was claiming a temperature of 87 degrees at 1:17 A.M.
“Says his neck's still a little sore,” the weight lifter said.
The other man nodded regretfully. “I'm sorry.” He studied Dill for a moment. “We don't want any trouble, Mr. Dill.”
“Neither do I,” Dill said.
The lean man nodded toward the far end of the garage. “We're down there in the van,” he said and started walking toward a large blue Dodge van that was parked head-out against the wall. Dill hesitated. The weight lifter smiled pleasantly and opened his coat. The pistol was there. Dill got only a glimpse of it, but it seemed to be a short-barreled revolver. The weight lifter nodded toward the van. Dill turned and fell into step behind the lean man.
When they reached the van the lean man slid the side door back, revealing a customized interior. Dill could see the small sink, propane stove, refrigerator, and the floor which was carpeted with tan shag. The walls were paneled with what seemed to be wood, although Dill suspected it was some kind of grained plastic. There were no windows in the rear of the van.
“You'll find a nice comfy chair on your left,” the lean man said.
“Where're we going?” Dill asked.
“Nowhere.”
The weight lifter touched Dill's shoulder lightly and nodded at the van's interior. Dill stepped up and into the van, turned left, saw first the chair, and then the man who was seated at the rear of the van behind a table. On the table were some glasses, a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, a Thermos bucket of ice, three bottles of Schweppes tonic, and the file on Jake Spivey. The last time Dill had seen the man behind the table had been in Genoa. In the Hotel Plaza on the Piazza Corvetto. There had been four persons
gathered in the living room of the suite on the fifth floor. Suite 523, he recalled, surprising himself with his memory. There had been Dill, the then Mrs. Dill, Jake Spivey, and the man who now sat behind the table, Clyde Brattle.
Brattle smiled. “Well,” he said. “Ben.”
“Well, Clyde,” Dill said and indicated the contour swivel chair that was covered with a very good imitation leather, “This mine?”
“Please.”
Dill sat down in the chair and found it to be quite comfortable. The two men came into the van. The lean one sat down across from Dill in a twin contour chair. Dill couldn't see where the weight lifter sat. On the floor maybe. Dill turned to look. The weight lifter was seated on a hinged stool that swung out and down from the kitchen unit. It was for sitting on while you scrape the carrots, Dill thought.
“Remarkably compact units, aren't they?” Brattle said after Dill turned back.
“Remarkably.”
“That's Sid across from you and behind you is Harley.”
“Harley and Sid,” Dill said.
“It's been a while, hasn't it?” Brattle paused. “Seven years?”
“Closer to eight. Genoa. Hotel Plaza. Suite five-twenty-three. Your suite.”
Brattle smiled in appreciation of Dill's memory. “I believe you're right. And how's the charming Mrs. Dill?”
“She's fine and we're divorced.”
“Really. I didn't know, or if I did, I guess I forgot.” He frowned. It made him look thoughtful, solemn, almost sincere. “I read about your sister, Ben.” Brattle paused exactly long enough. “I'm sorry.”
Dill nodded.
“Funeral's tomorrow, I understand.”
“Yes.”
“I assume that's the real reason you're down here.” Brattle tapped the file on Jake Spivey with a forefinger. “And not because of this garbage.” He smiled warmly. “How is Jake, anyway?”
“Jake's fine.”
“Old Jake.” Brattle shook his head, still beaming in evident appreciation of that old rapscallion Jake Spivey's many endearing qualities. The head that Brattle shook was handsome in the way that busts of long-dead Roman statesmen are often handsome—but not too handsome. The features are never too regular. The expressions are never too remote. The blank eyes never betray anything. Dill had once spent a long rainy Spanish afternoon studying a roomful of such busts in Merida. He had seen on those long-dead faces what he now saw on the face of Clyde Brattle: worldliness, cool detachment, and utter cynicism. He felt it must have been a useful mind-set back in Roman times, what with the Visigoths on the way down from the east and the north.
Now fifty-five, Brattle could easily have passed for one of those banished Roman consuls who had served too long in some dreary distant province. There were that same faint curl of lip, that same thin haughty nose, and those same illusionless eyes of no particular color unless winter rain has color. The shortish hair finally had gone gray—gray-sky gray—but it was still thick, unparted, and combed with the fingers only, if at all. The voice was still that scratchy overeducated drawl from which any regional trace had long since been excised.
“What would you say to a drink?” Brattle asked.
“I'd say fine.”
“Good.”
Sid, the lean one, rose and silently mixed two vodka-tonics. He set one in front of Brattle and handed the other to Dill. Brattle took a swallow, sighed, and smiled. “I suppose you heard I was back,” he said.
Dill nodded. “They say you crossed at Detroit.”
“It's rather tedious, as you well know, Ben, being on the dodge like this.” He looked at the man called Sid. “Mr. Dill used to be with Jasper, Sid.”
“No shit,” Sid said. “Who's Jasper?”
“It's a what, not a who,” came the voice of the weight lifter from his perch on the stool.
“You're right, Harley,” Brattle said. “It was a what. The Ford White House set it up shortly after Mr. Nixon's rather sodden farewell. How much do you think he'd put away that day, Ben? The best part of a fifth?”
“I don't know,” Dill said. “I don't know how well he could handle it.”
“So why'd they call whatever it was Jasper?” Sid asked.
“It's my understanding,” Brattle said, “and Ben can correct me if I'm wrong, that when the negotiations were going on for Mr. Nixon's pardon, Mr. Ford was shocked to learn that, in his words, ‘Some Jasper's made off with three million fucking dollars.' From all that money that was floating around back then. The Committee for the Re-Election of the President. The CREEP money.”
“Sure,” Sid said. “I remember that. I always did wonder who got well off of that deal.”
“So they set up Jasper,” Brattle continued, “and brought some people in, outside people, untainted people, like Ben here, and set them off in pursuit of the missing swag. All extremely sub rosa. Not even Langley knew about it. Or the FBI. In fact, both were rather high up on the list of suspects, right, Ben?”
“Right.”
“So Ben here and a few other patriots spent the years of the Ford administration roaming over Europe looking for the Jaspers who'd made off with the three million fucking dollars. You had
nearly a year in London, didn't you, Ben, and then almost two years in Barcelona?”
“About that.”
“So what happened?” Harley asked from the van's galley. “I never did hear what happened.”
“Nothing happened. Although you did come close, didn't you, Ben?”
“Very close.”
“I like to think that Jake and I were of some help.”
“You helped, Clyde.”
“But not quite enough.” Brattle sighed. “They were dead by then—the Jaspers, I mean. There were three of them as I recall.” He looked at Dill for confirmation.
“Three,” Dill agreed.
“Two men and a woman. A messy combination when you think about it. Doomed to failure.”
“So who finally got the money—the three million?” Sid asked.
Dill looked at him. “The people who killed them.”
“Oh,” Sid said with a look of total understanding. “Yeah, well, sure. I can see that.” He nodded as if it all made perfect sense.
“And Ben here had a perfectly splendid three years or so in Europe.” Brattle looked at Dill and smiled. “They were good years, weren't they, Ben?”
“As you say, Clyde, they were splendid.”
Brattle was wearing a white polo shirt which made his deep tan look even deeper. The shirt had no identifying brand on its pocket. Dill suspected Brattle would gladly have paid bespoke prices for the shirt as long as it bore no trademark. He now reached into the shirt's pocket, produced a gold Swiss gas lighter, picked up a pack of Gauloises from the table, and offered them to Dill, who refused with a shake of his head. Brattle lit one of the
cigarettes, inhaled gratefully, and blew the smoke out. His fifth smoke of the day, Dill thought. Maybe his sixth.
“You've been with the subcommittee how long now—three years?” Brattle asked.
“About that.”
“As a consultant.”
“Right.”
“Pay anything?”
“Enough.”
“Spartan habits, simple needs, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“You and young Senator Ramirez have a good working relationship, I presume.”
“Based on warm mutual respect.”
Brattle smiled at Dill's answer and its edge of sarcasm. “And then there's the minority counsel, young Mr. Dolan. Timothy, isn't it?”
“Timothy.”
“Schooled by the Jesuits and the old pols of Boston. Who could wish for a sounder or more practical education? He is a man of some ambition, I suppose—young Tim?”
“He's a professional Boston Democrat, Clyde.”
“It goes without saying then.” Brattle had another swallow of his drink and another deep drag on his cigarette, which Dill envied him. “As you no doubt suspect, Ben, I have a proposition for the Senator—and young Dolan, too, of course.”
Dill nodded.
“I'm willing to take my medicine, you might say.”
“How much medicine, Clyde?”
“Perhaps two years in one of the more relaxed federal hoosegows and a reasonable fine of, well, not more than two or three
hundred thousand.” He smiled. It was a warm smile that spoke of unshakable self-confidence.
“Two years instead of life, right?” Dill said.
“Life is such an indeterminate sentence. Once the prison gates clang shut behind me—they do clang, don't they?—I could be dead in a week, and think how cheated everyone would feel then.”
“In some joints I know,” Sid said, “you might not even last the week, Clyde, once the boogies get a look at your sweet ass.”
“What does the Senator get?” Dill asked.
“A tidy package. He could go to the Justice people with three, plus me, which equal four, if my arithmetic still serves.”
“Which three are you willing to shop?”
“Dick Glander for one and also Frank Cour. They could drop the net on both of them within twenty-four hours.”
“Glander and Cour and you go back quite a long way, don't you? Nineteen years, twenty?”
Brattle nodded, a slight sad smile on his lips. “Nineteen.” He shrugged and the slight sad smile went away. “But the time comes in a man's life when even the oldest friendships must be sacrificed to serve the common good. Fortunately, I have everything on them—good solid stuff—and they have virtually nothing on me. Were the roles reversed, well, I'd expect them both to make the same hard choice I've made. In other words, I'd expect them to do me before I did them.” He smiled again, this time with genuine amusement. “My sanctimony isn't getting to you, is it, Ben?”

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