Aaron Elkins - A Deceptive Clarity

"I'm in London, at the Britannia. Harry, listen, I've been talking to people, and there are a few things you need to know. In the first place, I know what Robey was doing on that flight to Frankfurt. He's got a girlfriend in Sachsenhausen."

"How do you know that?"

"Jessick told me."

"And how does Jessick know?"

"Don't ask me. Jessick's the kind of guy that knows those things. This means Mark's in the clear, doesn't it?"

"Maybe, or maybe he just made up this girlfriend bit and told Jessick, knowing good old Conrad would pass it on to you. And even if it's true, that doesn't mean he couldn't have arranged the whole thing as an alibi, to make it look as if he had some reason for being in Frankfurt that night just in case someone found out he was there. Or-"

"Harry, I think you've been a cop too long."

"You and me both. Well, I'll check it out."

"Here's something else to check out. The Heinrich-Schliemann-Grundung is one man. And that man…" I paused dramatically.

"Is Earl Flittner," Harry said offhandedly.

"You knew?"

"Well, sure."

"Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"I just figured you already knew. Jesus Christ, isn't it obvious?"

It was, now that I thought about it. "You don't think it's important?"

"Why important?"

"Because maybe Peter knew even though Earl says he didn't, and maybe he was killed to keep him from talking."

"You really believe that?"

"Well-"

"Because if it's true, there goes your forgery theory again. How's your investigation going, anyway?"

No worse than yours, I thought meanly. "So-so," I said. "Incidentally, I found Peter's calendar."

That got a rise out of him, especially when I told him it was waiting for him in the Columbia House safe.

"Great! I'm on my way."

"Wait, there's something else." I sipped the Scotch, looking out over Grosvenor Square, which looked more gray than green in the dismal light of a wintry, misty London evening; at Roosevelt's statue on the lawn, so arresting and odd because he is standing unsupported on his feet; at Saarinen's jarringly modern American embassy with its tangle of metal barricades across the front; at the sedate, symmetrical red-brick buildings that border the rest of the square.

It was Christmas, and strange to see London without automobiles. Ordinarily, no city in Europe is noisier and more crowded with cars than London, and it is a mark of just how civilized it is that people don't go around shooting or even shouting at each other out of sheer frustration. That much traffic in Rome, or Madrid, or Paris, and the streets would be war zones.

"You still there?" Harry said.

"Harry, can an unloaded gun hurt you when it's fired? Not just powder burns, but… well, could it put a hole through a few layers of clothing?"

"If what you mean by 'unloaded' is that it's shooting blanks, you're damn right it could. It could put a hole through you."

"It could? But how? What is there to make a hole?"

"Oh, well." He cleared his throat. "Well now. A lot more comes out of the end of a gun than a bullet, you know. There's always some gas-which comes out real fast and real hot-and there can be some primer fragments. And even the wad can do a hell of a lot of damage."

"What's the wad?"

"What's the wad? Boy, you don't know anything about firearms, do you?"

"No."

"All right, let me start from the beginning. What you probably think of as a bullet is actually a cartridge, okay? Now a cartridge has three parts: the primer-that's what explodes when the hammer hits; and that detonates the propellant; and that explosion shoots the bullet-which is the lead slug in front-along the barrel and out… Hello? Anybody there?"

"I'm with you, sort of."

"All right. Now, what makes a blank cartridge blank is that it doesn't have that lead slug in front-but it's got the powder charge in back. The wad is, like, a cover that holds the charge in place when there isn't any bullet in front. People get killed by blanks all the time. There was this TV actor a couple of years ago, fooling around with a prop pistol between scenes-held it to his head, you know, and pulled the trigger. Killed him. Let me tell you, blanks can be as lethal as live ammo from close up."

"How about thirty or forty feet?"

"Usually no problem, but there's this case where a guy watching a show in the balcony had his hand blown away by some balled-up newspaper they were using as wadding in a little cannon on the stage. Oh, God, then there's this really horrible case-"

"Please, no more cases. I believe you."

"Tell me, Chris, why are we having this particular discussion? No holes in you, are there?"

"No, just a groove," I said, and told him what had happened. "From what you said," I concluded hopefully, "it sounds like it was just an accident."

Harry let that sink in for a few moments. "I don't know," he said soberly. "Could be. See, here we're not talking about cartridges at all, just loose black powder, and that puts out a lot of burning crud. But thirty, forty feet? I don't think so. I think maybe you got shot with an honest-to-God ballistic projectile."

"Ballistic-?"

"A bullet. Maybe somebody ought to go back and look at the place and see if there's a ball, a slug, imbedded in a tree or something."

"I did that this morning, first thing. I didn't find anything. Look, let's say somebody really wanted to kill me. Why get so damn intricate? Why not just shoot me with an ordinary. 38 on a dark street?" I startled myself by breaking into sudden laughter. "I can't believe I'm saying these things." I took a long gulp of Scotch.

Harry wasn't laughing. "You're right; killing somebody is pretty easy. But killing somebody and making it look like an accident-that's harder."

"Shooting me would look like an accident?"

"Yeah, your particular death would look accidental, if you know what I mean-beside the point."

"Oh, beside the point. My particular death. I see."

Now he laughed. "Hey, cheer up, buddy; we're just thinking out loud, right? I don't think there's really any reason to get worried; it probably was an accident, considering all the boozing that was going on."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," I said, somewhat relieved. "Anne told me that there are a few injuries every year, so-"

"On the other hand, it wouldn't be such a bad idea to sort of exercise some caution, you know? Don't go where they're firing guns anymore. Don't fool around on the edges of cliffs. Avoid standing directly underneath glaciers."

"I'm in London, Harry. No glaciers."

"Oh. Well, then, keep your ass the hell out of Soho."

Five minutes later, as I was finishing the drink and trying to remember whether that basement pub with the terrific steak and oyster pie was on Davies or Duke, the telephone rang. Harry again.

"Chris? Who knew you were going to that shooting thing last night?"

"Why? I thought it was an accident."

"I said it was probably an accident. Did anybody know?"

"No, I didn't know it myself until a few hours before- Well, there was a German, Herr Wecker, but he's some kind of Bavarian official; he's worked with the Americans here for years."

"Uh-huh. Nobody else?"

"No, I told you. I hadn't even heard-wait a minute…"

"I'm waiting, I'm waiting. Who?"

I put the glass slowly down on the pad of embossed Britannia notepaper on the desk.

"Jessick," I said. "Conrad Jessick."

The next morning was damp, gray, and cold-London's reputation for awful weather is well earned-but the walk to 20 Portman Square, where the University of London's Witt Library is located, was a pleasure. Portman Square is at the border of Mayfair and Marylebone, in a part of London dotted with little green mini-parks around which are two- and three-story Georgian town houses of mellow brown brick, with white-painted ground-floor exteriors and black wrought-iron balconies one floor up. Whenever I think longingly of London, it's not of the great monuments of Wren or Inigo Jones but of these plain, tasteful, quietly elegant squares, where it's easy to imagine yourself in the eighteenth century. Especially on a foggy Boxing Day morning, with the ferocious traffic still reduced to a purr.