Joseph Kanon - The Prodigal Spy

“No bother, no bother. What else would I be doing but hacking my lungs up?”

He walked them to the door, reluctant to see the meeting end, his eyes lively with interest, back on the case. “One other thing that never came out. Not about your father,” he said to Nick. “About the girl. It was really out of respect to the family.” This to Molly, tentative. “We figured they had enough on their hands already. Terrible thing, suicide, for a Catholic.”

Molly looked at him, waiting.

“Maybe she didn’t know it herself,” McHenry said. “She didn’t need the douche. She was pregnant.”

Molly was thoughtful in the car.

“Is that possible?” Nick said. “Not to know?”

“I suppose. For a while, anyway. Maybe she did, though. Maybe that’s why she wanted the money. Not for a dress.”

“A good Catholic girl?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“I don’t know. Remember in the letter how she made this big point about his not being married? I’ll bet she thought it was going to be all right. Once they got past the hearing.”

“I wonder if he knew.” She moved her hand, brushing the thought aside. “Anyway, you don’t kill somebody for that. You get it taken care of.”

“He did.”

Molly worked her phone magic again with the Justice Department’s Personnel Office, pretending to be unaware that her old friend had retired, and got Lapierre’s address out in Falls Church. They decided not to call first.

“What if he says no?” Nick said. But when they got there, a condo development pretending to be colonial row houses, there was no question of his not opening the door-he was in the garden. A slight man, still wiry, digging on his hands and knees. When he got up, slowly, his whole body seemed wary, not standing but uncoiling. His face was blank when they explained themselves, then drew even further behind an official wall. But his eyes stayed on Nick, curious, as if he were looking at an old photograph. “I can’t discuss cases.”

“It’s not a case anymore,” Nick said. “The statute of limitations was seven years.”

“On espionage. Not murder.” He wiped some dirt from his hands. “It’s still an open case.”

“My father’s dead.”

“Yes? I hadn’t heard that.” He looked at Nick again. “You were the kid. I remember you. At the house.” A man holding his hat, his face unfamiliar, just a blur even then. “Said you were playing Monopoly, wasn’t that it?”

“Scrabble.”

“Scrabble.” He nodded. “Right. Scrabble.” Noncommittal.

A woman opened the back door. “Dad, you all right?”

“Fine. We’re just talking here.”

She looked at them suspiciously, wanting more information, then had to give it up. “Don’t forget your pills,” she said, reluctantly going back in.

“My daughter,” he said. “She’s worse than Hoover.” But the interruption had the effect of drawing him to them, like a little boy not ready to be called inside. His body relaxed. “Tell me something, since you’re here. I always wondered after. Did he tell you to say that, about the Scrabble? Did you know he’d skipped?”

Nick shook his head. “I thought he was hiding somewhere.”

Lapierre took this in and nodded again. “He had us all going, didn’t he?” he said, his voice reminiscent. “They must have had every man in the Bureau on it. Turning over rocks. And all the time we were just chasing our tails. But who knew? The director didn’t want to hear it. Just find the sonofabitch. I remember that all right. Of course, we were too late. We started late. You get the locals in, trail’s cold before you get to it.” He glanced at Nick. “Kid says he’s home all night. Why not? We never thought he skipped. We checked everything. How’d he do it anyway? Do you know?”

“He went to Philadelphia, then Detroit, Canada.”

Lapierre’s face was busy putting pieces in his own puzzle, but all he said was, “Philadelphia. Huh.”

“Now can I ask you something?”

Lapierre looked at him, wary again.

“He wasn’t being accused of murder,” Nick said. “That would have been a police case anyway. Unless they asked you in. Which they didn’t. You just came.” Lapierre didn’t respond. “He wasn’t being accused of anything else either. So why the big hunt? Every man in the Bureau.”

“Well, when you don’t turn up at a congressional hearing, that’s-”

“The excuse,” Nick finished. “You put a dragnet out for a subpoena violation?”

Lapierre glanced at him shrewdly, intrigued. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

But Nick kept staring at him until finally Lapierre nodded, conceding the point, wanting to go on, playing one more hand to see what Nick knew. “Let’s just say the Bureau likes to take care of its friends. Welles was a very good friend to the Bureau, close to the director. Nobody likes to lose a star witness. All of a sudden you’re sitting there holding the bag. So I would guess he asked for a little help. That’s just a guess,” he added quickly.

“You did it as a favor?” Nick said skeptically.

“Maybe you don’t understand how things work. Everybody thinks the Bureau’s on its own, but it isn’t. Hoover’s got his boss too. Sometimes the AG’s on your side, sometimes not. Depends on the man, whatever his agenda is. That was a funny time. Tom Clark had just left-never any problem with him. He never gave a damn one way or the other. But the new one-” He left it unfinished, still discreet. “And you never knew what his boss would do. The director hated Truman. Mutual, probably. So it was important to take care of your friends in Congress. Kind of an insurance policy.” He stopped. “Well, that’s the political side. The director wasn’t going to let Welles hang out there. He made Welles. But the fact is, Kotlar was guilty-you don’t need an excuse to go after a spy. You can’t blame the director for that one. I don’t say he does everything right-that case was no picnic for us, I can tell you. No let-up. But hell, you’ve got a Red spy and you don’t go after him? That’s like putting blood under a hound’s nose and then sticking him in a cage. He’s got to do it. I don’t think you can blame him for this one.”

“I don’t blame him. I just want to know how he knew.”

Lapierre looked puzzled. “Kotlar was guilty. There’s no doubt about that.”

“Not now. But what made you so sure then?”

“I don’t think I understand you,” he said cautiously.

“One woman’s testimony. Not proven. What made you believe her? What made you go after her in the first place?”

Lapierre took a step backward, physically retreating. “That’s all before I got into it. You want to know that, you’re going to have to ask Hoover yourself.”

“And he’ll tell me,” Nick said sarcastically.

“The director?” A cool smile. “Not even on a good day.” He turned. “Anyway, what’s the difference? Turns out he was right. He usually is.” He looked at Nick, appraising again. “What do you really want to know? Is that why you came all the way out here? You know what happened. There’s no mystery about it. You know where he was. We looked for him, we didn’t find him. So what do you want to know?”

Nick waited. “What happened to the lighter,” he said finally, watching Lapierre’s reaction. “The police gave it to you. You didn’t put it in your report. Why did you lose it?”

Lapierre’s eyes narrowed, a new appraisal, and Nick saw that what interested him was not that Nick knew but how-a bureaucratic reflex, a fear the system had been violated. “The Bureau doesn’t lose things,” he said simply.

“But it’s not in the report.”

“That depends on which report you saw.” Again the narrow curiosity: how had Nick seen it? “Nothing was lost.”