Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“As rain,” he said absently, then, aware of Mills watching him, picked up the phone to call Holliday.

“Howdy,” Doc said when he got on. “I was just about to call you.”

“Let me ask you something,” Connolly said briskly. “You examined the body.”

“Well, I saw it—”

“Could a woman have done it?”

“Not unless she was one hell of a strong woman. He was hit more than once, you know. Kicked too. Not many women’d do that. At least, I hope not. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Just a little crazy, I guess.”

“It’s the altitude. You ought to watch that. They say half the people up there are crazy.”

Connolly said nothing, running his finger along the edge of the phone, his mind elsewhere.

“Want to know why I was going to call?” Doc said finally.

“I’m sorry. Yes. Sure.”

“You’re going to like this. Cheer you right up. You know those bars you told me to look into, the ones we haven’t got? Turns out you were right. We got one.”

Connolly said nothing but looked up from the phone, puzzled.

“Now I suppose I got to keep my eye on it. Wish I could say I was better off knowing about it, but I doubt it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m getting to it. Turns out there was a little loose talk there and one of my boys heard about it. ‘Course, everybody was quiet as a mouse before, but now that they’ve got the guy-well, you know how it is. A few beers and—”

“Doc—”

“All right, all right. Hold on. You going to let me tell this my way? Seems one of the customers was in the park that night. Taking care of a little business. He don’t want to talk about that, though. Anyway, point is he saw someone taking old Karl into the bushes. Just like you figured-thought he was drunk. Car pulls up and before you know it the two of them are heading somewhere quiet. Our boy don’t think nothing of it. Tell you the truth, sounded like he was annoyed. Didn’t want any company around.”

“What was he doing there?”

“Said he was taking a leak.” Holliday paused. “Yeah, I know, looks like I got to keep an eye on the Alameda now too. All kinds of stuff going on I didn’t know about.”

“Did he get a look at him?”

“Nope. Said he was tall.”

“Tall.”

“That’s right. Now Ramon, he struck me as on the short side, wouldn’t you say? So I asked him about that. But he says tall. ‘Course, given what he might have been doing there, maybe anybody’d look tall.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else. Next thing he knew was when he heard the car driving away. Like I said, he didn’t think nothing of it. And then, when it comes out there’s a body found there, well the whole thing just goes right out of his head. You know.”

“He didn’t see his face?”

“No. Tall, that’s it. I asked.”

Connolly was quiet. “So what have we got?” he said.

“Not much. He’s not even what you’d call a real witness-all he saw was two guys going into the bushes, one of them drunk. Court of law, it wouldn’t mean shit. But he saw what he saw. Only reason I got it out of him now is he probably thinks it was Ramon he saw and it’s all over anyway. He’s the nervous type. But I figured you’d like to know you weren’t imagining things. Happened just like you thought.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Doc. What about the car?”

In the pause, Connolly felt he could see Doc smiling.

“Oh, I almost forgot that. He did see that. Funny thing, isn’t it, he didn’t see the guy but he did remember the car.”

“Let me guess.”

“If you said a Buick, he wouldn’t argue with you.”

“You still holding him?”

“No, I’ve got no call to do that. I could charge him with something, but why would I want to go and do that and stir up everybody? He was practically pissing in his pants the way it was. Now what’s all this about a woman? You on to something up there?”

“No, nothing. Just thinking out loud. Trying to figure out, you know, how strong—”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll be down in a few days. I’ll fill you in.”

“What’s the matter? Your phone tapped?”

Suddenly he was Karl again. His hand instinctively recoiled from the black telephone, as if Doc’s words had carried their own shock. Of course. Oppenheimer’s phone. His. Naturally they’d do that. He looked over at Mills, blandly signing forms, paying no attention. He tried to remember everything he’d just said, imagining it typed up, one carbon for the files. Was there a phrase that drew the eye, that would have to be passed along? His mind was busy again.

“Mike?” Doc said.

But don’t let them know that you know. “That click you hear is me hanging up, Doc,” he said easily. “I have to go. I’ll call you. And thanks.”

Then, the receiver back in its cradle, he looked at it again. They had every right to know. That’s what they were all doing here. Karl, at least, had known that, had stayed alert.

After a while he felt Mills looking at him.

“Now what?” Mills said.

“Nothing. I’ve been thinking. You know those security files?” Karl had noticed her right away.

“Intimately.”

“The vetting and the updates. I want to see everybody who arrived on the Hill-when was the first two hundred bucks? October? Let’s say from September on. Just the new arrivals. Foreigners. How many do you think there are?”

Mills shrugged. “Some. The Tube Alloys group came through Canada about then. They’d all be foreign. But not Americans?”

“If they were naturalized. First I want the ones who were vetted abroad.”

Mills raised his eyebrows. “What’s up?”

“We’re looking for any left-wing history-groups, contributions, Popular Front, any of it.”

“Communists?”

“Not officially. What was it Karl said to you? It’s what’s not there. I think that’s what Karl knew. A Communist who wasn’t there.”

Mills looked at him for a minute. “What makes you think so?”

“A hunch.”

“A hunch.”

“That’s right,” Connolly said, looking at him directly.

“Okay. I’ll get started on the arrival list. You want to look at all these yourself?” It was another question.

“Both of us,” Connolly said. “But no one else. No reports.”

Mills stood in front of the desk, raising his palms in a kind of pleading. “It’s my job, Mike.”

Connolly looked up at him, just a soldier following orders, but what he heard was himself, talking to Emma, mad as the rest of them, and then the noise in his head began to clear and he felt ashamed. “Trust me a little,” he said, and now the voice was hers.

He went out to Ashley Pond, shrunken now in the drought, and walked around its necklace of dried mud. The late afternoon sun burned against the windows of Gamma Building, making rows of little fires. The Hill, as always, was in motion, trucks grinding past scientists rushing to meetings and secretaries in wobbly heels heading to the PX on their break. It all went on behind him, around him, while he stood apart on this margin of water. Karl hadn’t said anything. Why? Out of some improbable decency? No. Maybe he thought it wasn’t really over, that he could always return when his new interest had been satisfied. Or maybe he thought there was nothing to tell, just another European story they would never understand. Questions would have to be asked, about him too, already compromised. What good would it do? He lived to protect himself, now in a world of tapped phones and secret reports and files that told everything about the past except what it meant. You had to be careful. Loyalty was a bargaining chip-you had to hoard it until you could play it to advantage. And meanwhile the Hill would go on around him too, indifferent, busy with itself. Connolly saw him standing by the same pond, outside of things, looking for a way in. Why would they trust him? The Germans hadn’t, the Russians hadn’t. Would his new masters be any different? Unless he had something really important to offer, something more than a sloppy vetting. So he waited.