John Abbott - Scimitar

“I’m here with Heather Broward,” the reporter said, “who is organizing the President’s appearance here tomorrow. How does it look, Heather?”

“Well, I’d have preferred sunny skies along about now,” Heather said. “ But... ”

Both women smiled.

“... hopefully we’ll have good weather today.”

Can’t even speak their own language properly, Sonny thought. Wouldn’t mind being in bed with both of them, though, rainy day like today.

“When do you think you’ll be hanging the bunting?” the reporter asked.

“Well, Mary...”

Mary and Heather, he thought.

“... I was hoping we’d have it up by now, but this rain...”

She shrugged prettily. Bad case of the cutes, Sonny thought.

“But the minute it stops, we’ll begin draping the wall just behind the President,” she said, and indicated the white wall behind the women. “The podium’ll be here,” she said, “just about where we’re standing...”

Good, Sonny thought. Just where I figured.

“... and we’ll be decorating that, too, around the Presidential Seal, of course, and in keeping with the theme of freedom and prosperity...”

In this wonderful country of ours, he thought.

“... in this great nation we’re so lucky to live in,” Heather said.

Close but no cigar, Sonny thought.

“Thank you, Heather Broward...” Mary said.

Thank you indeed, Sonny thought.

“This is Mary Mastrantonio at the Statue of...”

He clicked off the set. The manila envelope Arthur had given him this morning was sitting on the desk. He took the sign from it, studied it again, and then sat down behind the desk. Using a black Magic Marker, he added a handwritten message to the sign, and put it back in the envelope.

Then he began packing his camera bag.

The three men were waiting for Geoffrey when he got back to the consulate office. They introduced themselves and then began asking him all sorts of questions about the two women with the false British passports. He had frankly thought that both women were well behind him by now, and he was tired of explaining to everyone — including Joseph Worthy of Her Majesty’s own infernal spy machine — that neither was in actuality British, and that therefore the British Government felt no obligation to pursue the matter further.

“Joseph who ?” the one named Nichols said.

“Worthy,” Geoffrey said. “He was called in when London learned the passports were false. Although, actually, I suppose it was the tattoos that alerted them.”

“He knew about the tattoos then?” the one named Dobbs asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“What’d he think about them?”

“He thought a Libyan intelligence group might be hatching a plot against the former Prime Minister.”

“Mrs. Thatcher?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of plot?”

“Assassination. Which turned out not to be the case at all. She’s come and gone quite safely.”

“Pretty good guess, though,” Nichols said.

“Bush instead,” Hogan said, and both other men cut sharp glances at him.

“Well, thanks for your time,” Dobbs said. “We appreciate it.”

“Not at all,” Geoffrey said, and led them out, wondering what in blazes that had been all about.

After he’d left Arthur’s office this morning, he’d made two stops. The first thing he’d bought was a black fedora. The next thing he’d bought was a camera bag. The bag was made of a sturdy black fabric, its flaps fastened with Velcro. There were removable panels inside it, to accommodate lenses and cameras of different sizes and shapes. There were pockets outside the bag, to hold film or lens paper or whatever. It was an entirely convenient bag, some seventeen inches long by at least fifteen inches wide and ten inches deep. The man at the camera shop told him it would hold a video camera, at least two still camera bodies, several lenses, and whatever Sonny chose to stuff in the pockets. He pointed out that there were two Velcro-fastened straps on the rear side of the bag, designed for carrying a folding tripod. It was an entirely convenient bag. Sonny packed into it:

The bottle of sarin, wrapped in a towel and sitting upright in one of the compartments.

The loaded 9-mm Parabellum pistol.

Two extra magazines for the gun.

The basting tool.

The walkie-talkie.

The muted silk tie.

The various identity cards McDermott had cobbled for him.

The sign Arthur had given him this morning.

The roll of transparent tape.

A four-foot length of the monofilament fishing line.

His Walkman radio.

And a box of toothpicks.

“How’d you happen to find this?” the cop asked.

The man he was talking to was from Pakistan. He had given the cop his name three times, and the cop still hadn’t caught it. Something like Pashee. Or something. And the cop didn’t know whether this was his first name or his last name or both names put together. The cop, whose name was Mangiacavallo, wished names were still simple in this city.

“I was throwing garbage in the dumpster,” Pashee said. He had a terrible accent, but Mangiacavallo had been listening to him for ten minutes now and was beginning to believe he understood Urdu. Except for the guy’s name. “I tossed up a bag, and it hit this other bag on top of the pile...”

“This one?”

“This one, yes. And it came toppling down.”

“So how come you opened it?”

“It looked like something might be in it.”

What was in it was a fuckin’ human head , is what was in it. What the fuck did he think was in it?

“What’d you think might be in it, sir?” Mangiacavallo asked politely.

“It felt like something heavy. I thought it might be something good.”

“So you opened the bag.”

“Yes. And closed it again right away.”

I’ll bet, Mangiacavallo thought.

“What’d you do then?”

“Called nine-eleven.”

So here we are, Mangiacavallo thought.

It was still raining, but only lightly, when the man walked out of the Marriott at three o’clock that afternoon. The man was wearing a dark blue suit, black shoes, and black socks. His white shirt was buttoned to the very top button, and he was wearing no tie. A black fedora rested atop his head, and he was carrying what appeared to be a black duffle bag. He looked somewhat like an Orthodox Jew.

The homicide cop who caught the squeal on the severed head was a detective/first grade named Max Golub, who worked out of Homicide South in the Thirteenth Precinct downtown on Twenty-first and Third. He dutifully typed up his report in triplicate and at three-twenty that afternoon, he gave one copy of the report to his lieutenant, whose name was Albert Ryan.

Ryan was eager to get home — he would be relieved at a quarter to four and didn’t want to get involved in any long telephone conversations. But he knew that in cases where you found one part of a body, you could suddenly start finding other parts all over town. So he called Detective-Lieutenant Peter Hogan, his counterpart in Homicide North, and asked if any arms or legs had turned up in his bailiwick today? Hogan told him he hadn’t seen any yet, thank God, but he’d keep his eyes open.

“Why?” he asked.

“’Cause we got a head belongs to a white female down here, blond lady tossed in a dumpster on Beaver Street.”

Which is how Hogan found out that Carolyn Fremont was dead.

Although nobody yet knew the dead woman’s name.

He caught the almost empty three-thirty ferry to the island. The rain had tapered off to a drizzle. No one asked to look into his camera bag. He had not expected that anyone would. He wandered around the deck with the rest of the tourists — though there were not very many of them on this wet afternoon — eyes wide in wonder, looking like someone who might next visit Ellis Island to trace the history of an ancestor who had come here from Russia or Poland.