George Chesbro - Shadow of a Broken Man

"Tell me about this Mr. Lippitt."

"Real weirdo. There was something wrong with him: Here he is wearing a heavy overcoat in August. You could see him shiver every once in a while." He paused, staring hard into the past. "When he found out Rafferty was gone, he chewed my ass good."

Lippitt was beginning to sound like a stand-in for Boris Karloff. But he was real enough; he'd certainly made an impression on O'Connell. "He actually shivered ?" I asked. "Even with the overcoat?"

"Sure did. And it must have been eighty-five or ninety degrees; he still seemed cold. Didn't make him any less mean, though," he added as an afterthought.

"Did he say what agency he worked for?"

"No, and I didn't ask."

"Don't misunderstand me, Mr. O'Connell," I said, touching his elbow, "but I'm surprised you weren't disciplined in some way."

"The Department was thinking about it, I'm sure of that. My guess is that the weird guy talked them out of it."

"Why should Lippitt have done that?" I asked.

"I suppose he was decent enough not to want to see me punished for something that wasn't all my fault. He knew Rafferty was a hypnotist."

"Were you asked to file a report?"

He laughed. "Hell, I was told not to." He paused, coughed. "I probably shouldn't be talking about it now."

"I appreciate the fact that you did, Mr. O'Connell. I won't keep you any longer."

I shook his hand and started for the door.

"Frederickson!" I stopped and waited while O'Connell shuffled after me on his sore feet. "I just remembered something else," he said. "Whoever helped Rafferty get out of that room may not have been his friend."

"Oh? What makes you say that?"

"I think they hurt him. There were spots of blood all over the floor and scratches on the doorjamb, like a man would make with his fingernails. It looked to me like Rafferty'd put up a struggle. Maybe he didn't want to go."

My firm intention was to kill half of Sunday in bed, but I found myself wide awake at eight thirty, thinking about Victor Rafferty. So I got up, brewed a pot of strong coffee, and fried two eggs. One of my neighbors had been kind enough not to steal my paper that morning; I ate over the Times sports and editorial sections.

I'd planned to spend the day getting my packing out of the way and recording my notes on the case, so that whoever took over for me would have a solid foundation of information to work with. At the moment I didn't feel like doing anything.

When I went to the window and pulled back the curtain, I could see that Foster had already been around to pick up his car, which made me suspect that he wasn't sleeping too well either. Directly across the street, two men were sitting in a black Chevrolet. It seemed an odd thing to be doing on a Sunday morning, so I got my binoculars out of a drawer and looked the men over. Both were well dressed in light summer business suits and had close-cropped hair; they'd popped out of the same cookie cutter as the men in the newspaper photograph. I was under surveillance.

My telephone rang and I picked it up.

"Garth, Mongo." My brother's voice was tense and low. In the background, I could hear the distinctive sounds of the station house. "I see you've been goosing elephants with your usual casual abandon."

"What's the matter, Garth? I thought you were off today."

"Well, let's say there's a lot of unusual activity around here this morning. I got called in. The Chief's been in and out all morning asking about the Rafferty file. The funny thing is, I get the impression he's not even sure what he's talking about. I had to tell him you were in here asking questions about it. It didn't make him happy. I take it you called that Washington number?"

"Afraid so, Garth."

"I figured as much. They asked me if I'd given you a copy of the file. I said no."

"That's true enough. Has anyone mentioned the Morton case?"

"No. And I can't bring it up without admitting that I at least pulled some files for you. I just wanted you to know what the reaction's been like around here. I'm playing dumb, so I don't think I'll be lining up for unemployment. You just be damn careful where you're digging; you're liable to hit a land mine, if you haven't already."

"Thanks, brother. I appreciate it. I owe you a couple."

"You owe me a gross, but I'll settle for the steak dinner you promised."

"Lawdy, lawdy, I haven't forgotten."

"I'll be mighty glad when you're gone to Acapulco," Garth said, and hung up.

I checked through the phone book, looking for Jack's Cakewalk. There was a listing for a restaurant with that name on West Thirty-sixth. I decided to go for a walk.

Three minutes after I hit the street, the black Chevy passed me; it had lost one passenger, and I'd undoubtedly grown a tail. I did a quick-shuffle around a corner, down into a subway station, and up to the street on the opposite side, where I hailed a cab. There was no black car in sight, but the exercise had been wasted; a crude hand-lettered sign on the window of Jack's Cakewalk proclaimed that the restaurant was closed on Sundays.

The Chevy, with its full contingent, was waiting for me across the street when I got back to my apartment house. Neither man looked at me, but I thought their faces seemed slightly redder than normal.

The rest of the day I spent packing and taping. I went to bed early, lulled to sleep by the thought that big wheels turning just might grind out a few answers.

The possibility that those same wheels might run me over left me relatively unperturbed. Some years ago a psychiatrist had told me that finding out things other people didn't want known was my way of trying to stay even with a society filled with people bigger than I was. The remark had been meant to startle, to provoke insight, and eventually to alter my behavior.

Instead, I'd simply found that I thoroughly agreed with him, and had gone out after a private investigator's license.

The next morning I ate breakfast out, just to see who was on the surveillance team's day shift. The men had changed, and they were using a pink Pinto, but the haircuts had remained the same. The man who actually got out of the car and followed me into the restaurant wore a black-and-white checked suit and open-necked red shirt.

After breakfast, with the man in the checked suit in tow, I took a short bus ride downtown to the United Nations. Since the man made no effort to disguise the fact that he was following me, I didn't bother losing him; he provided a kind of comforting reassurance that I was doing something right.

At the U.N. I walked under the rainbow of flags, across the plaza, and into the lobby of the Secretariat building. My companion stayed outside. He looked bored as he leaned against one of the concrete barriers, crossed his feet and arms, and heaved a huge sigh.

During my years with the circus, I'd participated in more than my share of benefits for UNICEF. The U.N. official I'd worked with most closely was a Pakistani by the name of Abu Bhutal; if Abu was still with the U.N., he'd be a valuable contact.

I sat down on a polished marble bench in the lobby and took out one of the copies of the conference program Richard Patern had given me. I took a quick count and came up with about two hundred and seventy-five names, from every part of the world. That was just too many names to work with. I knew it was risky, but I winnowed the list down to around fifty Americans, including aides. I put a double line under the name ELLIOTT THOMAS; that certainly looked like two first names to me. Then I went looking for Abu.

An attempted end run around the security guard at the elevator didn't work, so I used a phone to call the UNICEF office. I gave Abu's secretary my name. There was a short pause, I heard a few clicks, and then came a booming "Mongo the Magnificent! How are you?"