Red Rag Blues (33 page)

*

The Shamrock Bar was closed between four and five but Tommy the barman knew Kim Philby well enough by now to let him bring his bicycle in so it wouldn't get stolen and watch the TV while he rested in the cool, sawdust-scented gloom.

“It's himself, at it again,” Tommy said. “God knows what part of Ireland his people are from, but he has the gift of the gab.”

Almost at once, Kim saw Luis Cabrillo, above and behind McCarthy's right shoulder, and couldn't believe his luck. He squinted and blinked. Yes, definitely. Outside the Capitol. “Forgot something,” he said. Grabbed his bike. Ran out.

The English,
Tommy thought.
Running, in this heat. Never stop to think. That's how they lost India. One day they'll lose Ulster too, God willing.

*

“You all know how Red subversion works,” McCarthy said. “It's an evil formula, polished and perfected by evil men. It's how they seized power in Russia, in China, in a dozen nations that once were free and now are slave. Communism targets the vital organs of a nation! It infects them with its evil virus, a poison that spreads and grows unseen until it is no longer the parasite, it becomes the host, the master! What are the vital organs of America but those centers of power and influence where I have exposed treachery, callous and persistent treachery, year after year: the State Department, the Atom Bomb, the Universities, the Army, Hollywood. Yet there is one other center of power. Some say—and it give me no pleasure, but the truth must not be denied—some say it is the biggest business operation in America. I speak of the Mafia, organized crime, which has been infiltrated and controlled and manipulated by the Kremlin. And when the Mob takes orders from Moscow, what hope is there for decency and honor in the USA?”

Stunned, shocked silence.

“I want you to look at this. It is a Communist Party Membership Card.” McCarthy opened it, held it where the cameras could zoom in. Fifty flashbulbs popped. “The man whose face you see is Jerome Fantoni, head of one of the biggest New York crime families. For decades, Fantoni and his henchmen have conspired with Stalin to sell America down the river. Henchmen like Mafia leaders Fitz Delaney and Bender Costello, whose Party Cards I also show. These crooks are double traitors. First they betray justice, then they betray patriotism. They will deny it. Of course they will deny it! But here is hard evidence that the tentacles of the KGB are deep in the Mafia, and that must mean they are deep in America …”

Uproar. Reporters swarmed around McCarthy. Questions, questions, questions. Thirty minutes later he was still talking, naming names—Stefano Magaddino in Buffalo, Carlos Marcello in New Orleans, John Scalisi in Cleveland, Frankie DeSimone in LA—and hinting at rackets that were linked to the Kremlin, extortion, protection, tax-skimming, judge-bribing, union-corrupting. Luis Cabrillo was at his shoulder, quietly pleased with the sound of words that he had suggested.

Wagner was in the crowd. So was Philby. When the party was over, Luis walked away and got a taxi home. Wagner followed in another taxi. Philby, pedaling so hard that he got chest-pains, followed by bike. It was rush-hour; traffic was sluggish. They both reached Connecticut Avenue in time to see Luis leave the cab and enter the apartment building. For a brief moment, Philby thought of abandoning the bike and chasing after him, to get his apartment number. But Philby was dripping sweat, he was gasping for breath, and stars were wandering across his eyeballs. He quit while he was winning. He went back to the hotel.

Wagner took the taxi back to his car, and drove home. He had a shower, sat on the bed, and thought the problem through, as a good infantry commander should.

*

“No.” Prendergast clicked his fingers and Fisk killed the TV.

“No, no, no. That doesn't hang right. It's cockeyed.”

“The senator sounded very confident,” Fisk said.

“Think, man. Where's your training? The Mob doesn't do politics. It would be like baseball on ice. Fundamentally wrong.”

“We saw Fantoni's Party card.”

“And you saw the shit-eating grin on Cabrillo's face. I tell you, something is seriously wrong here. Why would the Kremlin infiltrate the Mafia?”

“Money,” Fisk said. “Power. Influence.”

“But they kill each other!” Prendergast shouted. “The Profacis shoot the Bonannos, the Gambinos shoot the Costellos! Where in God's name is the Party discipline? You can't hear the
Internationale
for the sound of gunfire!”

“Messy,” Fisk murmured.

The colonists licked the British; wrote a Constitution and elected a President; and made their capital in a place where the air is soggy as a hot dish-rag for three months of summer. The British sent a peacekeeping mission in 1814 and, as a gesture of goodwill, burned most of Washington. The colonists came right back and rebuilt it, which displayed that gung-ho can-do pioneer spirit, but it couldn't change the climate. Even after the sun goes down, Washington in summer still cooks at a steady simmer.

Luis wore a pair of basketball shorts, and he swaggered about, bare-chested, with a gin-and-tonic in a pint tankard, while they all watched highlights of McCarthy's Press conference, switching channels from ABC to CBS to NBC and any other station they could find.

“Is that true, about the San Andreas Fault?” Stevie asked. She was wearing a man's shirt, loosely buttoned.

“It doesn't have to be true,” Luis said. “As long as it's not proven untrue.”

“Yeah, but … I seen pictures. I mean, San Andreas Fault exists. It's this big long crack, keeps gettin' wider.”

“On the subject,” Julie said, “keep your legs together, sweetheart, or go put some panties on.”

“Too damn hot… You got a fine brown frame, Luis.”

“Look!” he said, pointing. “There I am again. Damn, I look good in profile.”

“McCarthy, he ain't married, am I right?” Stevie asked.

“He's a lush,” Julie said. “Don't ever marry a lush.”

“That's me again,” Luis said. “Not such a good shot.”

“I bet Jerome's looking at these same pictures right now,” Julie said, “You being on TV was not a smart idea.”

“Jerome's going to be looking at a subpoena tomorrow.”

“How much sex do you guys have in a week?” Stevie asked. “Average week?”

“Go take a shower,” Julie said.

“God, it's hot,” Luis said. He strolled onto the balcony. It would be dusk in an hour. There was a bucket of shrimp in the fridge and much white wine. “We should eat out here,” he said.

Kim Philby went to the Shamrock, had two Irish whiskeys with beer chasers and made himself eat a hamburger. It would do no good if his hands were shaking from hunger as well as nerves. Also, eating killed some time.

He was not nervous about killing Cabrillo. He was nervous about missing him with the first shot, maybe just winging him, having to reload and fire again. By then Cabrillo might be running, or crawling, trying to hide. A poor target. Two or three shots must attract attention. It would get awfully messy.

In the old days, Moscow would have found a technician to handle this sort of problem. Philby was too valuable to risk, then. No longer. Now Moscow expected him to clear up his own mess.

He went back to his room and looked at his bed. An hour's sleep would settle his nerves. No. He knew that if he fell asleep, the night would be lost. He washed his face, scrubbed it dry, combed his hair, and stared at the reflection. It blinked back at him.
Don't think,
he ordered.
Do it now. Go.

He went downstairs and fetched his bike. Bullets were in his pockets. Rifle was in the old canvas bag. He hung it on the handlebars. Nobody was likely to stop a middle-aged white man who was riding a bike with an old
Al Fruit Farms
bag hanging on it.

The block where Cabrillo lived was all apartment buildings. Philby stopped near the front door where he had seen Cabrillo enter, and immediately he knew he couldn't go inside. Even supposing he was lucky enough to find Cabrillo, Philby knew he
couldn't shoot him at close range and walk away. Or, worse still, run away. Not possible.

Small things tumbled out of the darkness and rattled softly on the sidewalk. They crunched under his foot. He picked one up. Peanut shell.

More followed. There was laughter high above.

He crossed the avenue and got a better look at Cabrillo's building. Each apartment had a balcony. Lights were burning in most apartments. Anyone on a balcony was silhouetted at worst, illuminated at best. Philby began to feel a strange emotion. It was hope.

*

Wagner waited until the dusk was a deep purple, and he drove into Washington. He parked on Connecticut Avenue and wrapped the rifle in his jacket. He was an infantryman; it took him only a few seconds to appraise the terrain and decide that the best way to kill Arabel was from the roof of an apartment building on the opposite side of the avenue: good view, clear shot, no witnesses.

It was surprisingly easy to get onto the roof. He just kept climbing the stairs and went through the last door. The roof was a public space, with a couple of kids playing ping-pong, and an old guy watering his pot plants. Not a problem. If anyone got in his way, Wagner would shoot them too.

If Wagner hadn't been so eager, he would have chosen the next apartment building. It was one floor higher but it had an elevator. Philby took the elevator and found stairs leading to an open door. The roof was flat and empty except for a man practicing the tenor sax. He was at the back of the building, and he didn't seem to notice Philby. He was working on
Bess, You Is My Woman Now
and having trouble with some of the octave jumps.

Philby took the scope from the bag and used it to study the apartments across the avenue. Most were lit. Many of the balconies had people on them. It took him about twenty minutes to find Cabrillo. By then the tenor sax had moved on to
Summertime, An' The Livin' Is Easy.
Fewer octave jumps, but
some tricky sustained notes in the lower register. Philby assembled the rifle.

*

Stevie did the cooking. “My second husband said he loved shrimp Jambalaya,” she said. “Reckoned it put poke in his pecker. That was the night he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“No disrespect,” Julie said, “but your sexual track record depresses the hell out of me.”

“In the morgue, I had to identify him, the corpse had an erection you could hang your hat on. The bum was mockin' me from the grave.”

“I'm going to watch TV,” Julie said.

“I'm not sayin' they wear hats in the morgue,” Stevie told Luis. “Don't get me wrong.”

“Never,” he said. “Call me when the shrimp's ready.”

He took plates and cutlery and glasses to the balcony and put them on a wrought-iron table that lived out there. He added garlic bread and he took the salad out of the fridge. The wine was uncorked. The night looked like black velvet. Smelled of burned barbecue, but looked like black velvet. He went inside and found Julie lying on a couch, looking at the ceiling. “Where is this rollercoaster going to end?” she said. It wasn't a real question and he didn't give an answer. “I worry about the McCarthy-Fantoni stuff,” she said. “It's too rich.”

“Relax. It can't fail. Piece of cake.”

“Yeah. That's what General Custer said.”

Silence. End of discussion.

“Come and get it,” Stevie called. They strolled to the balcony.

*

Wagner was unsure until Arabel lit the candles. They dipped and flickered in the occasional breath of wind, but candlelight made all the difference. Then the difficulty was Arabel: he was too restless, he wouldn't sit. He strolled about, poured wine for the others, performed the odd dance-step, waved to neighboring balconies. Wagner settled down and waited. The click of ping-pong went on behind him. The old guy with the potted plants had disappeared. Wagner felt very comfortable with a rifle. A rifle was a simple solution to the most complex problem. His mind
was weary but as long as it held that one, single, simple thought, he knew that, sooner or later, all would be well.
Alles in ordnung.

*

The scope made Luis big. Philby's hands made the image shake. The cross-hairs wavered and wandered. He was holding the rifle too tightly and pressing the butt into his shoulder too hard. He told himself to relax. Gripping the rifle as if that alone would stop Cabrillo escaping was no damn good and it made his hands sweat. He laid the rifle on the parapet and dried his hands with his handkerchief. Without the scope, his vision was blurred, his eyes felt sticky. Probably more sweat. It was trickling down his forehead, dropping off his ears. The night wasn't
that
hot. So this sweat had to be the product of stress. Yet his mouth was dry. He couldn't swallow. What a bugger. You'd think the body would make a greater effort to help when a chap needed help the most.

The tenor sax had moved on to
It Ain't Necessarily So.
The tune was straightforward enough but too often the fellow ran out of breath in mid-phrase. Must be inhaling at the wrong time. Someone should tell him.

Philby wiped his eyes. He rested his elbows on the parapet and tried to imagine the rifle was fragile, delicate, not to be bruised. The scope made Luis leap into view, bare-chested, happy, waving a drink in one hand and a stick of celery in the other. Philby had stopped breathing and was allowing his forefinger to touch the trigger, when a hand raised the barrel. “Not a good idea, Kim,” a man said. His voice was deep and rich. A good trial attorney's voice. “We can do better.” Now the rifle was completely off target. Philby released it.

“Whoever you are,” he said, “you cut this very fine, didn't you?”