George Chesbro - Shadow of a Broken Man

Garth reached into his desk and took out two manila folders. He opened them and absently gazed at the contents.

The papers inside were photocopies of the Rafferty and Morton files.

"It's pretty risky having that stuff in your desk, isn't it?" I asked. "A lot of people would be unhappy if they found out you were going to nose around."

Garth replaced the folders in his desk and closed the drawer. "Just wanted you to know that a humble public servant is on the job," Garth said with a smile. "When do you leave for the Sunny South?"

"Thursday."

"Remember to send me a postcard."

I tried to shake off the feeling of exclusion, the suspicion that I'd gone gun-shy. "How about that steak now?"

"You hungry?" Garth sounded distracted.

"Not really, no. But I'd like to buy my brother a steak. You mind?"

Garth pushed the typewriter aside and rose. "I thought you'd never get around to it," he said. "But I don't like it when you sound like you're buying a condemned man his last meal."

After lunch I went to my uptown office to wait for Foster. Another call to Abu's office told me he still wasn't in. The secretary wouldn't give me his unlisted home number. I tried to occupy myself by reading the junk mail that had accumulated. Two o'clock came and went. At two forty- five I left a message taped to the door and caught a subway downtown. I was getting edgy. For all I knew, Abu was holed up somewhere with a mistress, but I wanted to do a little personal checking.

A few blocks from the subway station the upended stone- and-glass slab that was the U.N. Secretariat building rose into a cloudless, azure sky-a gigantic symbol of man's striving for something better than the economic and political squalor the majority of his fellows were accustomed to.

Sunlight glinted o ff the polished windows on the upper stories as a flock of starlings rode an air current up o ff the East River and across the face of the building. Suddenly another, larger bird appeared, a little behind the others. This bird was surrounded by a glistening shower of what looked like water. The bird flapped helplessly and plunged toward the earth as its companions flew on without it.

I was running before the body hit the ground.

The screams of police and ambulance sirens were closing in as I reached the U.N. plaza. Theirs was a futile, hopeless sound; the man who had fallen would never need an ambulance or a policeman again.

Stunned pedestrians and U.N. guards stood around staring at something just out of my line of vision. I pushed through the gathering crowd and stopped a few paces away from the bloody, broken thing splashed over the concrete apron. The head was a shapeless jam, but one hand lay in macabre, ironic repose atop the caved-in chest. I'd seen the large opal ring on the finger before.

I stared at what was left of the gentle Pakistani for a few moments, then turned away and dazedly groped my way back through the crowd toward the street. Cops and stretcher bearers raced past me in the opposite direction, but it seemed as if they and everything else were going in slow motion. I heard Abu's voice, speaking to me from the opposite end of a long, dark tunnel, telling me how happy he'd be to help me.

Now he was dead. He'd asked the wrong people the wrong questions.

Now I needed some answers. I needed to know why a friend of mine was dead; to find out what terrible knowledge Victor Rafferty had possessed. There was only one person besides Lippitt who I thought could give me those answers, and that was where I intended to go.

Still numb with shock and something like terror, I managed to hail a cab. I mumbled Foster's address, then sank back into the cab's cracked leather seat. I thought I heard Garth yelling at me as the cab pulled away, but I wasn't sure whether the voice was any more real than Abu's, and didn't really care.

Feeling started to return during the long ride to Queens, but I still saw mental flashes of Abu's body plummeting like a wingless bird to be squashed on a hot sidewalk. Garth was going to be asking me some tough questions when I got back, and I intended to ask them of Mrs. Foster first. The toughest questions were the ones I was going to be asking of myself.

I was wound down by the time I reached the Fosters' home: an expensive trilevel on a street with just enough other houses to provide neighbors, but not enough to make anyone feel crowded. I'd originally intended to come on like Dr. J driving for the basket and start firing questions. Now I realized that that wouldn't help anyone. I wasn't going to feel particularly gallant pumping Mrs. Foster for information if she was alone, so I stood on the sidewalk, hands in my pockets, staring at the house and trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

There was no sign of the Olds: just a black Falcon in the driveway, probably Mrs. Foster's. A phone started to ring inside the house. It rang five or six times, then stopped, unanswered. The muscles in my stomach knotted. I walked up to the front door and tried the bell. There was no answer. I rang the bell again, then pounded on the door; still no answer. It suddenly became very important to me that I get inside the house. It was broad daylight, but I was in a hurry and not thinking too clearly; I used a plastic credit card to jimmy my way past the spring lock and into the house.

Not sure what I expected to find, I went through the house room by room. The fact that the door was locked and hadn't been tampered with seemed to be a good sign. Everything inside the house seemed in order; there were no signs of a struggle. The Fosters had apparently left the house under their own power. The question remained as to where they had gone, and why Foster hadn't kept our appointment.

I used the phone to call my answering service. There were no messages from Foster, or anyone else. Next I called Garth's station house. Garth was out. Finally I called a cab, then the airline to cancel my flight to Acapulco.

Garth was waiting for me on the steps of the station house when my cab pulled up to the curb. He came down to the sidewalk to meet me. "You knew him, didn't you?" he said perfunctorily. His eyes were opaque, stirred by conflicting emotions.

"Yes." He didn't have to tell me whom he was talking about. "And I think I'm responsible for his death."

"You have an inclination toward self-pity," Garth snapped. "Some bloody bastard pushed him out a window, and I sure as hell know it wasn't you."

"I'm sorry I ran out on you back there," I said, my voice thick with fatigue. "I couldn't. .handle it at the time."

Garth nodded. "It has something to do with the Rafferty case, doesn't it?"

"I think so," I said, knowing so.

"Then maybe it's time you told me everything you know, right from the beginning."

We went into Garth's office and spent the next three quarters of an hour going over what I knew and a little of what I suspected. A second shock wave of horror rolled over me, taking away my breath. Garth saw and tried to beat it back with words.

"You say you talked with him yesterday morning," Garth said, poking me on the arm and forcing me to focus my attention on his words. "Then it all happened incredibly fast."

"Somebody inside that building killed him. And it wasn't a visitor-not up on those floors."

"Rafferty?"

"More likely somebody looking for him. Whoever did it probably thought that Abu knew something. God damn!"

"You could be the next target."

"I hope so," I said evenly.

"That sounds suicidal."

"No. Homicidal."

Garth looked at me for a long time. "These boys are rough, Mongo, and they seem to be in a big hurry. There was enough left of your friend to determine that he'd been tortured."