John Abbott - Scimitar

The third call Sonny made was to a firm called J.D. Bowles Laboratory Sales, Inc., in St. Paul, Minnesota. He spoke to someone in sales, telling her he wished to order some isopropyl alcohol. She looked up the item in the company catalogue, told him it came in 480-milliliter bottles and sold for $9.75 plus tax, how many bottles did he want? He told her he would need only one, and said he wanted one-day FedEx delivery. She said it would go out in the morning. When she asked him his name and company affiliation, he told her he was Hamilton Pierce of SeaCoast Limited and gave her the firm’s address and telephone number. She asked him what sort of company it was.

“We do research,” he said.

“Can you be a bit more specific?” she asked.

“We do a wide variety of experiments for private physicians,” he said.

“Can you tell me how you plan to use this product?” she asked.

This surprised him. Isopropyl alcohol was common rubbing alcohol, harmless even in the hundred-percent concentration stocked by a chemical supply house.

“We’re running toxicity tests on rats,” he said.

“Toxicity tests on rats,” she said, obviously writing. “Very well, sir. Someone will call you regarding billing. Meanwhile, this will go out tomorrow.”

“Thank you very much,” he said.

Nodding, he put the receiver back on its cradle.

The photography shop was located on the second floor of a brownstone on East Seventieth Street, between First and Second avenues. There was a tailor shop on the ground floor and a palm reader on the first floor, and then the photography shop at the rear of the second-floor landing. Sonny did not get there until a little past five that Friday afternoon.

A man named Angus McDermott ran the shop. Four years ago, he had prepared Francine Dumar’s suicide note from a sample of her handwriting. Sonny told him he was looking great, which wasn’t quite true. McDermott had lost a lot of weight in the past four years, and his normally ruddy complexion was now somewhat sallow, his reddish hair thinning. McDermott was gay; Sonny wondered now if he’d contracted AIDS since last he’d seen him.

“How can I help you this time?” he asked.

There was the faintest burr in his voice. He had once lived in Glasgow, Sonny knew, but he was certain the man’s heritage wasn’t Scottish; the cover name was as false as his own Krishnan Hemkar. The night he showed Sonny the perfect suicide note, handwritten on Francine’s own stationery, they got drunk together in a Third Avenue bar. In the empty hours of the night, McDermott confessed his abiding hatred for the United States, but never once mentioned what had provoked such murderous rage. Sonny got the feeling a woman was somehow responsible, but he knew better than to ask McDermott.

The studio in which McDermott worked was fronted by a huge picture window that flooded the room with natural light. Pale blue backing paper hung behind a raised platform on one wall. A half-dozen power packs were on the floor near the platform, their cables snaking to strobe lights on stands topped with grey, umbrella-shaped reflectors. A Polaroid was mounted on one tripod, a Nikon on another. A green door on another wall was marked with a red hand-lettered sign that warned the room beyond was a darkroom.

They were sitting now at a long table strewn with snippets of film, grease pencils, magnifying glasses, developer, metal clips, capped lenses, order forms, and a half-empty bottle of Heineken beer. Sonny took from his jacket pocket an envelope containing the card Karin Lubenthal had given him. Careful to handle it only by its edges, he placed it on the table before McDermott, who picked up one of the magnifying glasses, leaned over the card, and studied it:

“What do you need?” he asked, still peering through the glass.

“An ID card.”

“What on it?”

“The hotel seal, my name, my...”

“Do you want the seal in gold, as it is here?”

“Yes. Exactly as you see it.”

“What else?”

“My name, my picture...”

“Do you have a photograph?”

“I thought you might take one today.”

“Sure. What else on the card?”

“Across the bottom, in bold letters, the word security .”

“Do you have a sample of the type?”

“No. A good block lettering will do.”

“What color?”

“Black.”

“How about the photograph? Color, or black and white?”

“Color.”

“Do you want the card laminated?”

“Yes. With one of those little fastener clips on it, so I can pin it to my jacket.”

“Plastic strap and fastener,” McDermott said, nodding.

“Yes.”

“How big should it be?”

“Two and a half by four, approximately.”

“Seal at the top...”

“Yes.”

“... in gold, photo where?”

“On the right-hand side of the card.”

“Name on the left then?”

“On the left, yes.”

“What name?”

“Gerald Ramsey.”

“And the word security across the bottom, block lettering, in black.”

“Yes.”

“All caps or just initial cap?”

“All caps.”

“Do you need this card back?” he asked.

“I have no further use for it.”

“How does Monday sound?”

“Tomorrow would be better.”

“Tomorrow’s a bit early.”

“Sunday then.”

“I suppose.”

“Early Sunday morning.”

“Well...”

“Time’s short.”

“All right, Sunday before noon. Need anything else? A birth certificate? A...?”

“No.”

“Driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“What name?”

“Same as the Plaza card.”

“How about ID cards?”

“Have you got NYPD stock?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need one for the First and one for the Eighteenth. Both of them detective ID’s.”

“What grade?”

“Second.”

“Any particular name?”

“James Lombardo.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Can you make up an FBI card?”

“Yes, I’ve got blanks in stock.”

“Put the name Frank Mercer on it.”

“You plan to be all these people?”

“I don’t know yet. How about Secret Service?”

“Don’t know what it looks like, never had a call for one. Sorry.”

“No problem,” Sonny said, but he was clearly disappointed. “Can we take the pictures now?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

From a phone booth outside The Food Emporium on the northeast corner of Second Avenue, Sonny dialed the number she had given him on the train.

“Elita?” he said. “Hi, this is Sonny.”

“Oh, God,” she said.

“Ever been to the Statue of Liberty?”

“Oh, God,” she said, “it’s you!”

It had been a long hot Friday, but Saturday was even hotter.

At ten minutes to two that afternoon, the temperature in Washington, D.C., soared to ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, shattering the ninety-eight-degree record set for this day on June 27, 1980.

Agent Samuel Harris Dobbs was sweltering in the lightest-weight seersucker suit he owned. His immediate superior, Daryll Phillips, had taken off his jacket, and pulled down his tie, and was sitting in his shirtsleeves behind his big uncluttered desk, the Treasury Department seal on the wall behind it. But this was the boss’s office here, and Dobbs didn’t feel he could risk the liberty of making himself quite so much at home. Not with Phillips seeming to have a hair across his ass this hot summer day.

“I don’t like surprises,” he told Dobbs.

“Nossir,” Dobbs said.